The Renewable Energy Handbook

The Renewable Energy Handbook: A Guide to Rural Energy Independence, Off-Grid and Sustainable Living (Paperback) by William H. Kemp (Author)

I just finished reading this book the other day (thanks Tim), It was a very informational book with lots of resources and information about the powering of an off the grid or grid tied home, some of the information was pretty straight forward for anyone who has already looked into the Photovoltaic, and wind generation options. For me the information on Micro hydro power was the most interesting as I had not known very much about this technique, and he went into great detail of its designing and specs, the biggest eye opener for me on this subject of micro hydro was its 24/7 operation, why I never clued to this before who knows, but I always saw the low wattage ratings and blew them off, not realizing that they make up for the low watts with longer hours of production ie. 24 hr of 250W compared to 4 hours of 800W for say Photovoltaic. however that said, finding a piece of land with a usable river/stream could prove a lot harder then a nice south( Solar South) facing hillside, and of course the micro hydro system is considered the most complex setup of any other off grid power.

The book helped me understand the many options and many variables that need to be considered before diving in to any sort of off the grid setup. things I never thought about until reading this book were phones, Internet, TV, what to do with excess power generation, how to deal with not enough power generation, the many electrical devices involved in such a system, and even helped me understand electricity ie, watts, voltage, amps, 12V 24V 48V AC/DC.

There was of course much more information on other subjects, but these were some of the things that I picked up from this book.

As well I should note that it was written in 2005 and some of the information is already outdated mostly in the battery section.

Now if I could just figure out how to tie some of these ideas into the earthship design?(see earlier post)

P.S. This is the first book I've read since 2002, I can't read anything that's not non-Fiction zzzzzzz....