The Weather Notebook: The Power of Weather

The Power of Weather
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Dave Thurlow, Host

Chris Carter is the owner of Solar Village, a company that builds renewable energy systems for homes, including his own. His lights, computers, appliances are all powered by the sun and the wind.

Hi, I'm Dave Thurlow for The Weather Notebook. In a recent conversation with Chris, he told me that with a renewable energy system, you're always aware of the weather:

Delabole Wind Farm, Cornwall. The UK's first wind farm uses just 10 turbines to provide enough electricity to meet the annual needs of 3,000 households. Photo: Paul Glendell

CC: In the summertime, the solar charges the batteries and the wind generator pretty much doesn't turn, except when a few thunderstorms come through. Right about now we begin the wind season.

By the way, I spoke to Chris just a day before Hurricane Floyd was approaching his home near Charlotte, North Carolina:

CC: We start harvesting electricity whenever any wind tops about 9 miles an hour. And on up to 25 miles per hour we're producing our maximum rate and it's all rated at about 120 mile an hour winds. So, we're not that worried about the hurricane.

So, it's basically solar in the summer and wind in the winter. So, you can watch the weather anytime of year:

CC: You become so tied to the weather when you have one of these systems. You're hyper-aware of when it's sunny. You're aware of when it's hazy as opposed to sunny or when there's intermittent clear sun between fluffy clouds. And when the wind starts to blow, we don't even think about conserving anymore. We just leave all the lights on. We go to a movie, we don't even turn anything off at home. We just walk out the door. All the lights are blazing.

DT: Isn't that funny, it's so counter-intuitive in this day and age.

CC: It was totally unexpected.

Unexpected, because the whole concept of wasting energy at times, just goes away when you're making your own power. The Weather Notebook is underwritten by Subaru and the National Science Foundation.