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What have I learned from going green? |
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Herb’s Thoughts on Going Green— Second page
My first efforts with a small renewable energy system for our house provide me with a wonderful assortment of learning experiences.
· I found out that wind turbines do not work well in an urban setting but they are wonderful to use on a farm.
· With some effort I found that there are lots of other people who find an interest in building small system and many of them have some really good ideas.
· I found that a solar system works best when an MPPT controller is included.
· I found that using small modified sine wave inverters has worked out well for running our lights, TV, satellite box and DVD player.
· I found that using a small microcomputer is not as difficult as I first thought.
· I also found that translating the lessons I had learned, as I was building our small back yard system, to a practical application on the CSA farm we joined, provided me with a sense of satisfaction I only recently came to fully appreciate.
This last point has provided me with an epiphany that was unexpected. I very much enjoyed the translation of lessons learned in our back yard to implementing a real working system in the field at the CSA farm we are members of. The efforts at the farm to build a hybrid renewable energy system were considered tinkering for me but in reality, the system will eventually touch a number of people I had not expected.
The food grown at the farm will feed a number of people, Barbara and I included. With the use of the irrigation system more crops are possible and much less effort is going to be required. In addition, I have a plan to expand the system to include power for more parts of the farm and further reducing the costs of growing the food. This translates to the production of additional farm produce and serving a greater number of people.
While the steps are each quite small, I can foresee that many people will benefit from Marie’s vision. The extension is that the very small part the renewable energy system played in achieving her vision gave me a level of satisfaction I had not anticipated.
Although I originally started my own project with the idea of making a small contribution to the greater picture, I never envisioned that it would be possible to really see a result. Now that I can see a result, I am even more enthusiast about continuing to improve both the system at Maries farm and my own in our back yard.
Small steps can made a difference.
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Herb & Barbara our interests and family |
