Stu’s Shed goes a little greener

Or is that whiter when the carbon loading gets decreased?

I’m not weighing into the climate change discussion / arguments etc, but an opportunity presented itself, and that may be the end result, if not the justification used.  Australia’s primary power generation fuel is brown coal after all.

Through a government rebate initiative, and $8000 grant for installation of solar power systems, we are installing a 1kW system that is costing $8000.  No, it isn’t a huge amount of power generation, but the systems are typically very expensive, so being able to do it without dipping into our own pocket seems a no-brainer. If it wasn’t for the zero-net-cash aspect of it, we would not have made use of the government grant, nor had any solar system installed so a little is better than nothing.

The average over the year is said to be about 6kW / day.  It will be mounted on the house, and feeding into the house supply, but I like to think that while I’m in the shed, the first 1000W I use are solar (whether that be 1000W of my 2400W tablesaw, or half the dust collector’s power requirements or whatever.  The rest of the time the power being generated won’t get wasted – it will be utilised in the house keeping important things in the fridge cold 🙂