Noel and Daisy’s “Dream”. Perth, Western Australia.
Latitude 32 degrees South.

Commissioned Dec 2000. Not passive solar, but nevertheless a beautiful home for retirement, in the hills above the Perth coastal plain. The power utility is somewhat unreliable in that area, and Noel and Daisy decided to fix the problem and avail themselves to $8000 of Federal loot under the Photo Voltaic Rebate Program.

The solar power system supplies electricity for all of the specially selected suite of high efficiency appliances and light fittings. The utility company supplies power for the electric booster in the solar water heater, the spa pump and the ducted vacuum cleaner. Also, in the event of sustained cloudy weather (rare) the homes energy control system will switch all appliance circuits back to the mains for a few hours, to allow the solar power system to recharge it’s batteries.

Power System

• 24 x Uni-Solar US-64 Advanced, thin film, triple junction, photo-voltaic panels. (1536 peak watts) Nett daily energy production (after system losses) is 7000 watt-hours in Summer, and 4500 watt-hours in Winter.
  
  
• 1 x Plasmatronic PL-60 regulator / controller with automatic mains changeover switch
  
  
• 12 x Exide 2 volt 1350 amp-hour, deep cycle battery cells which are connected in series, delivering 32,400 watt-hours of energy storage. This could power the residence for up to 4 days , but the controller reverts back to the grid after two consecutive days of heavy cloud, to preserve overall battery life, which is around 10 years.
  
  
• 1 x Solar Energy Australia SEAP-24-2K2 True sine wave inverter. 2200 watts continuous rating, 2800 watts for 0.5 hours, 6000 watts for 10 seconds. This unit converts the D.C energy generated from the solar panels, and stored in the battery, into 240 volt A.C power.

Notes;

This is a grid-reactive system, and does not export power into the utility companies sewer! Rather, all the precious solar energy is used on site and value added with efficient appliances so that it actually does some good, instead of disappearing down a black hole of ignorance and waste.