Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Annual budget increases & capital improvements

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On 20 Feb 2012, at 9:22 AM, Sharon Villines wrote:
> On 19 Feb 2012, at 7:23 PM, Katie Henry wrote:
> 
>> Before I left EVC, I was talking to Stan (the TVC and EVC reserve 
>> study expert) about a solar-powered battery backup system that would 
>> provide long-term power for a handful of emergency functions -- 
>> a few outlets for recharging things and running a fridge, one heat pump 
>> for emergency heat in the CH, emergency lights in the stairs, running a 
>> pump that prevents flooding in heavy rain, etc. Maybe you guys should 
>> consider something like that.

My response to this was too cryptic, sorry.

We've not found anyone who does solar consulting who felt it was a good 
solution. For some reason it seems to sound better than it is. During the last 
outage of several days, we used a gas generator to do all these things, plus a 
plug in strip so people could recharge cell phones, etc.

> The Prius solution. With an increasing number sitting in our parking lot, we 
> have always ready electric power. There is some way to harness this to the CH.

The Prius solution, if Eric can get it to work, is best because all the 
batteries are charged every day (except one who rarely drives his). There is 
proposed solution that ties all of them together and hooks them into the CH 
circuit the same way we connected the generator (which is veeeeeery noisy). We 
just haven't tested it.

Sharon
----
Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org