The Weather Notebook: Life With Renewable Energy

Life With Renewable Energy
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Dave Thurlow, Host

Chris and Lynn Carter, at their home in Saxapahaw, NC, have not received an electric bill in 8 years. Hi, I'm Dave Thurlow from the Mount Washington Observatory and this is The Weather Notebook.

The Carter's make their own kind of what they call gourmet electricity and plenty of it. Here's Chris Carter:

Chris Carter has been off the grid since 1992. SolarVillage.com

CC: Well, we're off the grid here. So, we don't have any safety net so to speak. And we have a battery bank. And we use the solar panels, which produce DC power to charge up the battery bank. And then we have an inverter that uses the DC power and converts it into 120 volt AC and provides our house with standard AC power. So, we have the same appliances, same lights, although they're compact florescence, and we have a gas cook stove, hot water heater, those sorts of things.

DT: So all the comforts of home. You're not really sacrificing any need to use a computer or something like that?

CC: No, we have computers, several on all day long, everyday, because we have a little business here. I have a full welding and woodshop. We have a farm. Pump a lot of water. So, no, we use a lot of power here.

So, what about power outages if there's no sun or wind?

CC: It's not that we never have power outages, it's that we can anticipate a power outage because we're watching the level of our batteries. So, we can cut back our usage. If we don't' have much power, if the sun ain't shining and the wind's not blowing, we don't vacuum the house or do all our laundry. And when we start making big power, we do all those jobs.

Making your own power requires you to be especially aware of the weather and I'll talk about that tomorrow, here on The Weather Notebook. Our show is underwritten by Subaru with major support provided by the National Science Foundation.