Studio FD goes green
Some people might have already read something on Google+ about our new project, but today I will give some more information about StudioFD going green.
We as photographers capture the present time for our future generations to enjoy.
For me however it’s also important that our future generations can enjoy the world as we enjoy it, maybe even better preferable. The way we are consuming energy at the moment this will be a problem for the future, so by going for 100% solar powered is for me one way to, at least from our part, help to balance some of the consumption with green power.
Now this sounds incredibly green, responsible and environmental aware….. well to be honest I do care a lot, and find it weird and downright unbelievable that we still cut down our forests, burn our natural resources etc. while there are so many alternatives, however there is of course also a more “human” reason, over the last few years we have cut down on energy costs A LOT, just simply by using different lightbulbs, different heating system, making sure there are no devices that “steal” power when on standby etc. well we hoped at least to cut down on costs….. in reality we did not cut down on costs, in fact we pay a lot more than let’s say 5 years ago. In other words our energy consumption has gone done by a large number but we pay even more, this is because most of the costs are based on added costs like taxes etc. I recently heard that in the Netherlands we pay the most for our electricity from all countries except 2.
Solarpanels waiting to be added to the studio roof.
Now that the government is almost in panic and trying to get more and more money from the citizens one idea is to add taxes to power, everyone needs it, and they get a huge income by just adding let’s say 1-2%…. for me this is a troublesome idea and seeing the way prices are rising, the yearly changing of supplier because it can literally save you hundreds of euros on a yearly basis was just plain terrifying for the future, because what will happen when………. without power we are nowhere and I will not work just to pay my electric bill……
Poor guys working on the roof, on the day they installed the panels the temperature was app 45 degrees C on the roof…. pffff
So on the first place of course we installed the solar-panels because I really do care about the environment, however we placed them a lot sooner because I’m simply also thinking about my own wallet and as it goes now this installation will save us hopefully around 3500.00 euros each year, which is a huge amount of money and will cover almost 75%-100% of our whole energy consumption and more than 100% of our studio needs.
We do have a rather unique location for this purpose, as you can see in the images our studio building is a free standing building, however it’s connected to our home with a drywalk (we call it the sauna sometimes), both roofs (house and studio) get a lot of sunlight during the day, in fact at the moment the installation already starts working at app 6AM and stops when the sun goes down, this will change of course in the winter but we get the sun almost the complete day. Even better is the flat roof on our garage which gets the sun under the perfect angle for the complete day.
Now some people will start out with 3 panels and build from there…. for me that’s not a real option because I believe that when you do something you can better do it right (saves money and in the end we want it anyway), so we opted for 47 panels, totaling the energy revenue 11.280KWh per year. Which in fact would cover our usage for both the house and studio for about 100+% but it’s the Netherlands so we will have some very bad days, but there is always something to save somewhere so I think in the end we will probably bring down our consumption to almost zero.
The whole installation took the dealer 3 days, a lot more work than I expected to be honest. We got an almost completely new breaker box (we now call it power central) in our hallway and a lot of new wiring. One thing that we opted for was to equip every 2 panels with a micro inverter. With the older/cheaper systems all panels are connected and one large inverter is used as the final step to the breaker box, the disadvantage of this system is that if one of the panels catches shade or a large bird needs to do it’s business in the wrong place ALL panels that are connected will go down in power, meaning it would be possible that you are generating 80% less power than you could.
The system with the separate converters is a lot more expensive but I think in the long run (and that’s what we’re doing here) it will earn itself back rather quick.
We only have the system up and running for 3 days when I write this and thanks to an amazing monitor system you can already see the system doing it’s “magic”, during a cloudy day (and hey we have a lot of those) some panels on for example the studio were generating almost 25% less than the other panels, so immediately we were glad we went that extra mile.
As you know I LOVE gadgets, so the monitoring system I really love, I would say it’s addictive…..
Of course I also love the way our meter now runs backwards like crazy on a sunny day and slowly backwards during a cloudy day (when using a lot of video/audio equipment and moderate airco) but the monitoring system is beyond cool.
Here you can see the power of ALL the panels on the studio, per 2 panels you see that they are different, meaning normally the lowest value would be the total value, now shade etc. only affects two panels.
Total overview of the three locations, double click and see the image before with all the different panels.
Love the samples of bulbs, refrigerators and plane miles.
The way you can see the revenue of all the panels is really nice, you can of course see just the total, or just one or all separate. This way you can quickly see which location does best and where you can tweak the system maybe a little bit by making sure no shade hits the panels.
Normally a lot of photography on the blog, today something else, but I strongly believe something that is maybe even more important.
We as humans have only one mother earth, we are supposed to take care of her, but what we do is in fact destroying it for our future generations, now of course one person (or even many) can not make a dent into what the whole world population is doing, but seeing the fact solarpanels saves you a lot of money in your wallet PLUS gives you the feeling that at least you’re trying to do something for the future generations does feel good on both sides.
If you have experiences with solar power just comment and share your opinion.
Can you tether those panels to a Macbook? Seriously, this is an ambitious move and will surely pay off for you in just a short time. Here in US, there is a push to do away with plastic shopping bags, so what do they do? Increase demand for more paper bags that must come from trees! I don’t get that. But you do what you can and save the extra money to buy a new camera, right? 😀
Sometimes it’s indeed a strange world (well sometimes ? :D)
For me it’s a double sided story, one way I love to save the environment, but also think about my own wallet, I won’t pay more for green power for example to our supplier while I know I still get the same power.
Let me explain, in the Netherlands there was a time where you paid let’s say 10% more for your power because it was green, but you could choose…. we never did this because it was still the same power. So in the end I think we are all human 😀
Way to go Frank, thanks for taking a step to help the world be a better place!
Oooh, as a fellow gadget lover I want that monitoring system too!!! Since I live in a rented house, this is not really an option for me, but I hope you’ll report your experiences with this system, I’d be interested in knowing how it works out. Have you thought about further home automation???? You know what I mean, sensors that lower the shades when the sun is shining, close the window when it starts raining, lower the thermostat when you open a window, etc. Some home automation also saves power as well (or I could simply want more gadgets 😉 ).
Hi,
We use iRule for our Home Theater and Home Wizard for our home automation, although we don’t have a lot that is automated 😀
With home wizard we use some thermometers and lights on/off, and soon we will add a weather station I think.
But most of the home doesn’t need the automation.
Frank, your vision and ‘big picture’ thinking is inspired as are your views through the viewfinder! Just one person as focussed as you are MAKES A DIFFERENCE (dent), it creates more awareness, momentum and because you are an inspired commentator on life and living (your voice and reach is as powerful as a ‘giant’ Deep Octa… you walk your talk, you set the example, you document the process, you report real results… that Frank is why you are so respected and appreciated.Through your work and your blog, you teach, inspire and you raise the bar. By any standard Frank, you are an Olympian like your countrymen/women currently performing in London, you deserve GOLD. Here in Dubai with abundant sunshine 360 days/yr, we are not implementing solar energy, WHY? because they argue, the panels will be inefficient due to the dust, like we could not come up with a solution for that! Thank you Frank.
Wow, thank you so very much, I’m really speechless.
Appreciate this a lot.
P.S. Next time, would you put Nadine up on the ladder instead? Thanks. 😀
We could do that 😀
Mooi hoor Frank, ik dacht die doet een paar panelen, maar dit is echt het serieuze werk 😉
Bij ons is er zoiets als een welstand commisie die mij dus verbied om groen te gaan, omdat ik in een bescherm stadszicht woon 🙁 Dat veel mensen jouw voorbeeld mogen volgen.