I don`t want to use carbon offsetting, eg planting trees that nominally soak up some agreed amount of carbon/CO2 (for a while), but rather I want to genuinely and measurably reduce consumption and/or (micro)generate some of the energy that I consume, causing a net reduction in energy actually imported to the house each year. I`d already taken all my office lighting off-gridv by the start of this project in 2007/2008, so other than embodied manufacturing energy costs, I`m already zero-carbon there. The Internet Server is sometimes taken off-grid and powered from the system used for the office lighting (eg ~5% of December, ~10% of Oct/Nov) so I have put a slightly lower mean power (25W) than the measured 27W. As of the start of 2009 the separate SDSL router and WiFi are now one ~8W box (up to 10W with my laptop plugged into a LAN port), so daily consumption on the above metrics is probably below 1kWh/day. Thus my average daily energy consumption in the office is ~1. 1kWh/day, reasonably constant all year round. (This is down from ~16kWh per day before my efforts to eliminate waste. ) If I could attach fixed (non-tracking) panels to a completely unobstructed south-facing roof at optimal pitch (~37 °), and if I could regard the grid as effectively a 100%-efficient storage for power from a grid-connected PV system, and if for the southern UK I assume a year-round average of about 2. 47W/day per Wp of installed panel, then to cover the 1. 1kWh/day of consumption I`d need ~450Wp of panel. (PVGIS roughly agrees with this. ) The roof on our house is at about 23 °, but faces east on one side and west on the other, not south anywhere. This knocks about 15% off year-round collected energy requiring a boost of the panel to ~550W to cover 1. 1kW/day average. The collection reduction is especially savage in winter (~50%) when the sun is low in the sky and stays more or less due south. As discussed in Towards a Real LZC (Low/Zero-Carbon) UK Home and Saving Electricity it is probably not reasonable to regard the grid as a perfect energy store, since I will export most power in the summer when UK demand is low and can probably be largely met from low-carbon fuels such as natural gas and nuclear (as well as renewables such as other solar PV), so I probably end up preventing the burning of some natural gas. In winter, when I would need to import, UK demand is high, probably with a higher-carbon-intensity fuel mix, and more strain on (and losses in ) the grid. If I wanted to cover each day`s consumption locally without any imports even in mid-winter, I`d probably need at least 3kWp of panels on the roof (east- or west- facing) and a more complex system including at least about 3+ days` worth of energy stored for consecutive overcast days. (If the roof were south-facing, 1. 1kWp of panel would probably suffice. ) Thus, realistically, aiming to cover a reasonable chunk (but not all) in winter, and significantly over-exporting in summer to compensate for the difference in carbon-intensity of summer-displaced exported units vs winter/night-imported units (say 0. 22kgCO2/kWh for efficient natural-gas-generated electricity now and near-future projected UK electricity carbon intensity, vs 0. 43kg+CO2/kWh average UK electricity carbon intensity circa 2007), is probably a reasonable balance and close to carbon-neutral. A 1. 1kWp system, ie twice the minimum computed for year-round zero-electricity reflecting the export/import CO2 ratios above, is probably reasonable. This margin can also be taken to cover the embodied e
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This project fits more for custom made battery casing that can have more space to hide things inside. This switch with few alterations can be used for any other project as well but is designed based on e-bike needs! This project use a clever functionality of....
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