Latest & Greatest News @ 19 Manapau Street, Meadowbank, Auckland, New Zealand
Solar Energy House NewsWe have just started to investigate how we can make our two Honda cars more fuel efficient. I don't believe the answer is to sell them, and purchase a hybrid. (What do you do with the batteries when it dies... and they are too expensive). We know that a standard car petrol engine is roughly 21% efficient and diesel engines are about 40% efficient. (This is a FACT). We have found out, that when hydrogen gas (HHO / brown's gas) is added to the combustion cycle, for every 1% increase in the adiabatic efficiency, you get a 2.5% decrease in fuel consumption. So the more hydrogen, the better the fuel economy - to a point!
We are looking at what systems are out there, and will start to tinker and play and give you the results and tell you where you get hold of this technology for your car :-) We have been through our first winter successfully with the wetback. Has been brilliant! Warm toasty house, oodles of hotwater. Yes, very happy wife and I am getting used to walking around in jockstrap and jandles cause so warm! (Well maybe not, but you get the idea)
We connect up our wetback to the 300 litre hot water cylinder and thus turn on our radiator system :-) We now have the ability to heat the underfloor in the bathrooms and heat the rooms throughout the house with our radiator system. It works! Yipee! (Very happy wife).
Television New Zealand (TVNZ.co.nz) our largest free to air TV channel here in New Zealand sent around Ian Sinclair - Interviewer from the 'Holmes Show' to film a segment for the show on the energy efficiency features of our house/office here at 19 Manapau Street, Meadowbank, Auckland.
After 6 months of working on the house full-time, we finally move in
the house :-)
As soon as we put the new roof on, and install the PVs on it, the SMA SunnyBoy Grid Intertie inverter arrives from Germany. We immediately plug it in to the 2kW photovoltaic array on the roof, and meter starts to spin backwards :-) In fact for 3 months from Jan to March we have little draw on the system and when the March actual bill comes in the power company owes us money! Yes!
We live in Mt Roskill in my (Simon Cope) first house that was solar powered for 8+ years. To read the story about this house, click here.
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