Changes to Save Energy

Speaking from experience, running 12-volt wiring for lighting is expensive as you will need very fat cables to carry the current (12 volts will require 10 times the current as 120) and, IMHO, not worth the expense. I think you will lose more power due to resistance of the wiring than you will lose in the inverter converting 12 to 120. I had thoughts along those lines, but backed away from it when I saw how expensive the wiring would be. LED lighting is fine lighting a walkway or an outside night light, but try working, reading, and living with LED lighting and you will discard it faster than fluorescent as the frequency spectrum of the light is very limited; it is REALLY hard on the eyes.

Modern solid state power inverters are VERY efficient at converting 12 or 24 volts DC to 120 or 240 volts AC. I never saw any mention in the literature of there being a difference in efficiency between 120 and 220 inverters. The efficiency is right around 90%. The actual efficiency is dependent upon 100% load, but I don't think I have seen one that drops much below 90% and some as efficient as 95%.

Your heat exchanger question? It depends on how much you run the Air conditioner. The air conditioner will be WAY more efficient if you use cold water as the heat sink rather than ambient air. is there a reason you can't use cold water as the AC heat sink, then pipe it up to a passive solar array and then on to the holding tank (or conventional water heater/holding tank)? The rate of heat transfer is directly proportional to the mass flow rate of the cooling media. Now, water being way more dense than air, one can readily see that using cold water as the heat sink would make for a tremendous boost in efficiency.

Solar energy is for heating is good option if you have good sunshine around the year. You can consider solar cooling using Vapor absorption technology using solar energy.

by vapor absorption, do you mean the way a gas refrigerator (ammonia) works or something else? Please elaborate, I'm interested.

Yes we can use vapor absorption technlogy to use the heat generated by solar energy for cooling . It can be of NH3 water or Lithum Bormide water combination. V.A technolys is used for cooling purpsoe since many years. It is recommended to use when we get waste heat.

Good Day,

Saving energy and getting results is a fine art. I am building systems for off grid and wanted to offer some insight. First rule I noticed, the lower the input voltage for an Inverter the larger the losses. Industry is using 48vdc to convert to 120 & 220VAC....the efficiency is around 87-95% with heat as the energy loss. The lower 12vdc inverters are less expensive than the higher voltage inverters. Look for some used Lamarch 48vdc true signwave inverters.

Florescent lights are one of the best energy to cost values. Teh use of golf cart batteries are also the best value and small 220VAC inverters are available on eBay.

If you want to heat water I recommend starting with boro-silicate (Glass) vacuum water heat tubes are around 80% efficient. These vacuum water heat tubes use the near IR suns energy to heat a small copper tube inside each glass tube. This type of solar water heat is being used all over Asia and in my backyard. Another addition to this is a wood burning boiler or something called a "Rocket Heater/Stove". between the two you can have hot water for heat!

Electric heat from solar or batteries is kind of a no no, as the energy for normal heating electrical heaters is one of the worst efficient. The so-called heat pump that uses the compressors cycling is about 50% efficient.

PS. LED lighting is getting better and better, try 3 watt LED lighting cells for a start.

The warm spectrum is best (for my eyes) for indoor lighting. I have both LED and CFT in my house.

I hope this helps!

The simplest way of energy savings is avoiding "vampire or phantom energy" by switching off standby power consumption. The easy method is to fix an remote switching adaptor to each socket/receptacle in the house, numbering the receptacles and use a TV type remote control to switch on/off each receptacle as & when required. Each receptacle should incorporate a manually operated switch & led to indicate/warn that it is supplying power to connected equipment. Even those in wheel chairs could operate these without going near the receptacle & bending down to access it.

This seems to be good