This display is of of course around a pool, but you can imagine how awesome it would look around a curvy garden too. Here’s a more residential landscape idea for a garden path…

Solar Cynergy’s features will win you over too…

• Working Temp: -4 degrees to 158 F
• Their system combines LEDs with a tiny photovolatic cell. Solar Cynergy’s LEDs are made of Polycarbonite Resin (read strong) and PC/ABS.
• Lights are reported to run for 15 hours after charging for 8 in the sun.
• NO battery needed. (capacitor technology)
• 10 Year Warranty, 25+ year life
• Uses quality Nichia LEDs
• Weather resilient so perfect for outdoor lighting.
• Many choices of color and comes in three residential shapes – circle, square, rectangle.
• So well made and strong you can walk, bike, or even drive right over them.
• Perfect accent for landscapes, pathways, driveways

Also, even during the day, these lights don’t look obtrusive. They just appear as pretty blocks of color…

Visit Solar Cynergy to learn more.

Bonus Idea: Make your own garden lighting!

Both of these are semi the same but different types of instructions – both good though.

Quick, easy, temporary, and beautiful LED garden lights for the garden

Make Your Own Solar Light!

Post from: Blisstree

Solar LED garden lighting solutions

With President Barack Obama now at the helm of the United States, people are wondering just what will happen to the country. After all, it is in an economic crisis at present and the President does need to focus on things that will help the country make its way back to its prime.

One of the things that the new President is doing is looking at alternative energy as a good source of power. Instead of shelling out billions of dollars on how to further improve production of fossil fuel that the country has, he is instead aiming at how to further develop renewable power. And that is where he is putting his money in.

Renewable power does include solar power as well as the energy we all can get from the wind. But that is not all, according to this report I came across earlier, Obama is also looking at biofuels.

Source: chron.com
Image source: Freefoto.com

Post from: Blisstree

Obama Looks At Alternative Energy

According to the plans that Obama has listed, he is going to take the road towards putting in more of the nation’s budget into research. That way, there would be more knowledge on energy. He is also looking at having electric utilities moving towards renewable power.

Lyndon Rive is the president of SolarCity, a company that is into solar power and solar power technology. On this, Rive said, “This is a gift. We could not ask for a president who’s more focused on energy independence and renewable power.”

On the other hand, there are also those who may be frowning and feeling a wee bit nervous about what is happening and what is about to happen. This is the oil industry.

Source: SFGate

Post from: Blisstree

Obama Just May Be Alternative Energy’s Ally

GreenCore Technology Inc., formerly AquaCell Technologies Inc., has received an order from the United States Navy for its solar-powered air conditioners, which will be installed in a remote laboratory site operated by the Naval Research Laboratories (NRL).

You can download the Solar air conditioner’s technical specs here.   Model GC10200 – 2, the one that comes with the 170watt solar panel can provide  a cooling capacity of 10,200BTU/hr.   It has 2 batteries (450AH each).

The solar air conditioner runs on DC so no inverter is needed.    I think that’s great since normally, there are power losses attributed to power conversions from DC to AC   or AC to DC.

The only drawback I can see as of now is that it weighs about 500 to 900 lbs depending on the model.   It may not be applicable for residential applications yet but give it a few years, I guess they’ll be offering models for residential application.

[via mae.pennet.com ]

Post from: Blisstree

Navy Orders Solar Powered Air Conditioner

Another venue worth mentioning here in unpluggedliving is Beijing’s National Indoor Stadium.  A total of 1,124 solar panels have been installed on its roof.   These solar panels can supply up to 100kw of power which is enough to meet the lighting demands of the stadium.

The expected lifetime of this system is about  25 years,  and it is expected to  generate a total of 2.32 million kwh of energy during that period.   That’s  the equivalent of 904.8 tons of standard coal.   In terms of carbon dioxide emission,  this building saved the Earth some 2,352.5 tons of carbon dioxide.

Now that’s a lot of CO2 pollution avoided because of this initiative.

[via beijing2008.cn ]

Post from: Blisstree

2008 Beijing Olympics National Stadium contains 1,124 Solar Panels

1.  Detailed  Video Instruction on how to make your own wind turbine

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

2.  Astronomer Michael Davis’ Home made wind turbine

Mike used an old DC motor from those old computer tape drive motors.  Not those recent tape drive motors but those old mainframe days that spin those huge reel to reel magnetic tapes.    He has made a well documented webpage with lots of picture of each of the parts.    It even has a schematic diagram of the charge controller.

3.  Homemade Wind Generator from smallwind.co.uk

What’s great about this one is that there are CAD files available for download.  The files are in .IGES, also some DFX files are included.  I believe you can just send these files to a fabricator and they can load it up to their machine which can fabricate it according to the exact specs and measurement in those files.

4.  Homemade Wind Generator from otherpower.com

This one is a bit complicated and required one to make your own magnet rotor.  It is pretty detailed though.   It has 5 pages worth of very useful instructions complete with photos.

a. page 1 – metal work

b. page 2 – magnet rotors

c. page 3 – stator fabrication

d. page 4 – assembly and blades

e. page 5 – tower and erection

5.  Invention Nation Guys

One episode of Discover Science’s  Invention Nation,  the guys went to a guy who runs his entire house off-grid.  They learned about the concept of how a wind turbine generator works and created a homebrew wind generator themselves.

Check it out (see video below)

Post from: Blisstree

Top 5 Homemade Wind Turbine Instructions

The document contains information such as

1.  Investing in a PV system
2. Tax Incentives
3. PV Sizing
4.  Selecting a PV provider
5.  Connecting PV to the grid

Here’s the link to the document.

Post from: Blisstree

Consumer’s Guide to Solar Energy