12/21/2011--Earth Shelter is officially running on battery power!

(copyright Hybrid Home Guy Productions, LLC picture taken 12/21/2011)


Today the Earth Shelter Project Michigan officially switched off the generator power as its primary source of energy. Before I explain how the renewable energy system works on the Earth Shelter project, I must first mention what I was reminded of. Today is 12/21/2011, exactly one year from "2012". The Earth Shelter project is producing and storing its own energy well in advance of our original target dates. Thanks in part to a nice grant from the USDA! (thank you USDA).

There has been much talk throughout the last two years about why the Earth Shelter Project Michigan was built, why I dropped everything and headed north to lead the team that worked on it, and if I would ever be done with that project.

First off, the Earth Shelter project was built to be a sustainable farm for the homeowners. I agreed with their views in some ways. Most importantly, I think we are all already heading in a bad direction and that we should not worry about a specific date to prepare for. The Earth Shelter Project is a place for the homeowners to live life the way they feel safe. Raising and growing their own safe food and being off the grid. Hooray for them! I was so happy for them today as they prepared to have an informal family "off the grid party". Watching a movie powered by solar charged batteries and popping corn on their wood stove. How fun.

Why did I drop everything to build the project? At the time, I thought that I wanted to give up and quit being the Hybrid Home Guy, so much so that my dad (Uncle Rog) dropped everything in his life and came with me to make sure I was going to be ok. Over the past two years I realized why I took this project. One, because it is sooooo cool! Two because I love a good challenge and without listing a ton of reasons, third, I felt it would help us to forward our message of living a healthy sustainable life. I am a different person after two years, the Earth Shelter Project changed my life for the good....see, it is already changing lives and it isn't even completed yet!

Will we ever be done with the project? The answer is yes. At this time, I have signed on until Memorial Day 2012. After that, I, along with my new management team, have been reviewing a number of projects that we are interested in designing in building. If you have a neat project that you want us to take a look at, let me know. In a few weeks, I will let everyone know some big news on Hybrid Homes.

Let's talk about how the renewable energy system works on the Earth Shelter Project.

Check out the picture at the top of the page again. The solar array you see in the lower left corner of the picture is considered a 5,000 watt system. There is actually more wattage if you count the solar panels and times that by the wattage of each panel. For this explanation, consider the solar array to be a 5,000 watt system.

(you tracking? ok, good, let's continue)

The Earth Shelter is not connected to the grid at all, no way, never has been and never will be. That means that the solar array will only charge the battery system, not supply power to use as in a grid tied system. The solar array sends two 20 amp lines of power back to the mechanical room, which means there is a 40 amp service at the Earth Shelter. Most houses not a days have a 200 amp service. (side note: most houses in built in and before the 1950's had 40 amp electric services, and now most houses have 200 amp services. Kinda shows how things have changed, but I digress). Those two 20 amp lines in go through a series of devices that ultimately guide it to charge the battery bank.

OK, the battery storage system is a 48 volt DC system which consists of 24-2 volt Trojan renewable energy batteries. These batteries have a storage capacity of 2,000 amp hours of power. Is that good? Yes it is. I will explain in layman's terms. Consider this. Most of our hybrid houses that we built run on about 27 kWh of electricity per day. That is below the national average. The Earth Shelter battery storage system provides on the high side, about 35 kWh of power per day. We plan on the batteries providing about 24kWh of power per day because we can not fully drain the batteries nor do we want to tax the systems to its full extent. They have an optimal charge and out put range that we need to stay within. The homeowners and workers at the Earth Shelter will need to be very conscience of their energy use to avoid having the generator run.

Tracking still? I hope so. The point is, the renewable energy system is very powerful. You might be thinking; what about ovens, vacuum cleaners, dryers and other high energy using devices. The system has built in load limiters and load/draw adjustments. Currently, we have the system set to recognize the high energy draws at the Earth Shelter and once the system sees the need for a large amount of electricity, the generator automatically will turn on and shut off the battery storage system. When the generator is running, the system will use the generator's energy to charge the batteries if needed. The plan is to run the high energy sucking appliances on cloudy days to be sure that the generator is charging the batteries when the sun is not shining.

Its a very cool system! I am so excited to see this place be off the grid. When the generator shut off, everything went silent. My dad works with ear plugs in because of the noisy generator. After the noisy thing shut off, he was still shouting when he was talking. I simply said, "dude, it's quiet not, you can take out the ear plugs." When he pulled the plugs out of his ears, he said "wow." It was so quiet and great!

So that is what I know. I can't send a picture of the battery system, as there are some things in there not on the market yet and we don't want to ruin those companies' marketing campaigns that are part of this project. Let's just say, that it is very neat looking and very much in line with what cell phone towers are being equipped with.

Stay tune to this blog as I will post updates here until the Hybrid Home Guy fan page comes up on Facebook at the beginning of the year.

Also, check out www.hybridhomeguy.com for information on my book and our other media projects. (website will be up in January 2012)

Thank you all for you support, 2011 has been another banner year!

Adam