» Why Not Try This at Home?

solar and wind power is affordable with a little effort

Save money, go greener and have the satisfaction of doing it yourself!

There are many ways to save money, whether there’s an economic downturn or not.

Often these mean we need to change our thinking, to get away from the modern ways of buying everything we need. There’s a tremendous amount of satisfaction from making things, especially things that – we’re told – can only be made by the experts. Browse the web and you’ll find lots of examples of this: people powering their cars with water, building homes from bags of earth or metal shipping containers, using things designed for one purpose for a completely different one.

In our desire to live a greener, more economical life we’re also trying to do as much as possible ourselves here in Greece. Many Greeks are set in their traditional ways, especially when it comes to building anything, so we’re regularly facing the question: ‘Why do you want to do that?’ Explanations and justifications for our ideas often fail to get across, and we’re increasingly falling back on one of two answers: ‘Because we do’ or ‘Why shouldn’t we do it?’

As we now have an accessible piece of land to build on, we’re starting to make plans of how to use it efficiently. We hope to get mains water, but mains electric is a non-starter, partly based on cost, but also because we have massive supplies of sun and wind available, so we’d be fools not to take advantage of them.

Browsing the web to find out about solar energy systems and wind turbines can be off-putting. There is so much information out there, and so many companies looking for your business, usually at a cost that will take many years to recover. And there’s no guarantee that these companies offer the best route: we have friends who failed to site their solar panels in the best place, because they weren’t given all the information they needed. They were, however, persuaded to buy an expensive freezer that was designed to be powered by a solar energy system, only later realizing that it was no more efficient to run than a normal one that cost much less.

If, like me, you never studied physics and have no idea about volts, amps, watts and all those other obscure terms, you may feel daunted at the possibility of building your own solar energy system or wind turbine. There are lots of guides out there offering to help, but how do you know whether the one you buy will give you help at the level you need?

Solar energy systems and wind turbines need to be built properly, and for many of us that means we need a simple step-by-step guide with lots of pictures. As far as the technology is concerned we need straightforward explanations of those things we need to understand, without confusing us with the complexities of those things we don’t.

We’ve found a product that looks the business. It has clear instructions, lots of pictures, DVDs so you can see someone actually going through the process, plus a lot of supporting information. Check out this video for a preview of what I mean.

Then if you get the bug, like we have, why not give it a go?