They’re no longer in print but have a downloaded archive of all their articles online.

Best advice I ever heard is do a small DIY project first to learn the basics. You can get most components from eBay. There are many articles on Home Power magazine for ideas. For example, a small system as an emergency backup for refrigerator & charging gadgets.

Best wishes on your plans!

I am so looking forward to having property and doing things like this. I am also reading about permaculture and regenerative agriculture.

Main thing you will need pros for is the interconnection with your electric if you're not going utility free. Used pannels will save you money if you don't need to squeeze them on a roof.

You'll want to make friends with an electrician who is competent with AC, DC, and exterior electrical power systems.

If it's panels on the roof you'll need competent roofer too.

You can become that person yourself, but that's more than one book.

It's much easier to conserve electricity than it is to produce it yourself.

I have a few hundred watts of solar. It could power our phones, internet, and a few reading lights in an extended power failure, but I'm not at all certain our phone and internet service would continue working in any catastrophe. It's not the 'sixties anymore, back when phone networks were built to survive nuclear attacks.

The nice thing about solar is that you can start small and scale up as you gain experience with the technology.

Youtube can be a good resource or a terrifying one.

This guy doesn't terrify me but I imagine some of his viewers don't really know what they are doing and have improvised some pretty scary systems.

Thanks

It's much easier to conserve electricity than it is to produce it yourself.

Insulation, good windows, proper orientation of the house for your location will reduce how much solar you need.

Take a look at a passive solar design for the structure.

https://sustainability.williams.edu/green-building-basics/passive-solar-design/

If as suggested that you put your solar on the ground, consider building it high enough that it would provide shade for a garden that might get burned out from a hot summer sun. Or maybe as a carport?

I will also 2nd Hunter's recommendation that you have a licensed electrician do the hookups. Make sure everything is to code - you have to have an emergency cutoff switch in case of a fire to keep the fire dept safe.

RE: used panels - current panels have a warranty that guarantees 80% output after 25 yrs so a10 old panel would have plenty of life left.

Also, something I didn't realize before I had my system installed - if you are connected to the grid you have to have some type of battery storage for the system to work if there is a power outage. Of course Powerwall is a possibility but there are also some modular batteries that would allow you to start with enough to keep the essentials working but then add more as needed.

Good luck.

I have never met an "I'm not an antinuke" antinuke with a sense of decency.

What a freaking jerk. Powerwall is the standard.

Interesting how you completely ignored this >>>

but there are also some modular batteries that would allow you to start with enough to keep the essentials working but then add more as needed.

Here's an alternative

https://www.generac.com/solar-battery-storage/

So who knows what a PWRcell 2 is??? Most know what a Powerwall is...

Last edited Thu Feb 6, 2025, 06:42 AM - Edit history (1)

When a Tesla burns or a Powerwall burns what are the combustion products in the presence of water of the lithium phosphorous hexafluorophosphate?

Now of course, having a serious interest in environmental issues, a professional life as a chemist, an interest in electrochemistry, and experience with hydrogen fluoride, I do have some immediate insight to that question.

For other people, there's Wikipedia:

Lithium hexafluorophosphate

When I was a kid, I managed a peptide synthesis laboratory. Some guys that worked for me, spilled maybe 50 ml of liquid HF in the hood. I kicked them out of the lab, suited up, and cleaned it up myself with calcium carbonate, because even if they were incompetent enough to leak it - which was my fault inasmuch as their training was obviously insufficient - I didn't want them to die or suffer serious intractable chemical burns.

I thought about this chemistry when all those rich people's homes in Pacific Palisades burned. I'll bet many of them had Tesla's and solar cells, maybe the swell cadmium telluride versions of solar cells.

After all, they're not scientists (largely) but entertainers, business people and the like. Many of them have surely bought into the "solar will save the world" and "electric cars are green" bullshit that flies around from people who think that "nuclear energy is too dangerous" but burning batteries aren't, and "nuclear energy is too expensive" but a fucking burning planet isn't "too expensive."

As best I can tell, the thermal decomposition of cadmium telluride requires access to the scientific literature which I have access:

Here's a very recent paper on the topic, a timely ASAP paper: Zalak S. Kachhia, Sunil H. Chaki, Ranjan Kr. Giri, Zubin R. Parekh, Rohitkumar M. Kannaujiya, Anilkumar B. Hirpara, M.P. Deshpande, Jiten P. Tailor, Thermal decomposition study of cadmium telluride (CdTe), Materials Today: Proceedings, 2023 (In Press as of this writing)

The text:



Now, the decomposition was followed in this case under argon in a gas jacketed TGA/DSC.

This is very different than the case in oxygen/water.

The cadmium, happily seems to be retained in the melted glass in solar cells, and most of the weight loss on the thermal heating is associated with the release of tellurium.

This said, HF dissolves glass, so I wouldn't want to breath the air where solar cells are being burned in the presence of one of Musk's Powerwalls..

As for the released tellurium, it burns in air to form tellurium tetroxide, a suspect teratogen.

Of course, the issue here isn't really about the toxicology of the ashes of Pacific Palisades. It's really about the grand success of the fucking carrying on about magical solar and batteries didn't do a fucking thing to prevent the fires, and half a century of antinuke bullshit and magical thinking about the useless, expensive, and toxic solar cells left the damned planet in flames.

There will be health consequences for the people who fought that fire, much like the WTC fires and the Iraqi burn pits.

Of course, there won't be the same carrying on about any of this that there was about Fukushima, although there's zero evidence that anyone actually died from radiation releases there and no one gives a shit about the people who died there from seawater and the resulting toxicology of the debris of a destroyed coastal city.

Got it?

No?

I couldn't care less.

If I sound angry, it may be because I am so.

I'm not amused that the sales of Teslas and Powerwalls worked to bring down one of the world's greatest and oldest democracies, and placed in the hands of a virulent racist, so there's that.

Have a swell day tomorrow.

Most of what we manufacture and buy these days have hazardous compounds that pose a health risk when burned in a wildfire.

This is from google

Hazardous compounds commonly found in flat-screen TVs include brominated flame retardants (BFRs), which are often used in the plastic casing, mercury in the backlight of LCD screens, cadmium in the phosphor coating of older CRT screens, lead in various components, and liquid crystal monomers which can be released during manufacturing and disposal of LCD panels; all of which can pose potential health and environmental risks if not properly managed.

Last edited Fri Feb 7, 2025, 06:23 PM - Edit history (1)

Short video on installing Solar

edited to correct the link