GOING SOLAR - Green Power for the Garden

Is it time to seriously consider renewable power supplies for our water gardens? Does the technology not come up to scratch? If it does, is it too expensive to be worth considering?
These are questions we hope to be answering this week.

Sustainable resources, ‘green power’, renewable energy and carbon footprints are terms that persistently intrude on our daily lives. With the ever increasing worry about our energy consumption leading to increases in the levels of ‘greenhouse gases’ and therefore the threat of global warming, is the use of electrical power to pump filter water in our fish ponds just total decadence and pointless squandering of electrical power? The Marshall's Sustainability Garden at the Chelsea Flower Show gave a good example of how we might deal with it, so are Solar Power with Photovoltaic panels the answer in our dull country?

Oase leads the way in Solar pump and panel marketIn response to a growing concern, manufacturers of submersible pumps have tried more and more to make their pumps more energy efficient. But perhaps this is not enough, since these pumps areThe Solar panels in the Marshall's Sustainability Garden at the Chelsea Flower Show 2007 likely to be running none stop 24/7, and a continuous use of a small amount of electricity (like with the stand by lights on home electrical items) adds up to being the main drain on our domestic power consumption.

Meanwhile the manufacturers of Solar Power driven products have been keenly trying to tap into an ever-increasing demand for products driven by the sun. Unfortunately some of these manufacturers have been their own worst enemy in providing products to meet the demand, because basically the products don’t work.

Lights that barely light and pumps that hardly pump and solar panels that just fade away in just a short time do not endear the concept of Solar Power to the general public. So many people have been tempted by the prospect of some useful bit of lighting (cheap with six gallons of petrol from their petrol station) and been disappointed by pathetic glows that could be generated more effectively by luminous paint or glow-worms. As for solar powered submersible pumps, I have come across innumerable aquatic storekeepers that have actively discouraged people from considering solar power pumps and fountains.

The truth is that although the demand for solar power is increasing exponentially, even in the dull and cloudy UK, the technological magic of producing power from the sun has not got proportionately more sophisticated. HoweverA floating fountain with a remote panel is more effective than one that is integral. the technology is there to produce useable power for the home and gardener, it just aint cheap. Or at least I should say, it does not seem cheap.

If you were to take all your prospective electrical fuel bills at the current rates for the next ten years, you might find that you were paying a bit over the odds by having PROPER PROFESSIONAL STANDARD Solar panels installed. But if you were to factor in the probable increase in fuel costs in that time and that the power generation from your home will continue, you will then start to see you are on the winning side. If you have chosen to link into the National Grid you may even be earning money from the power you generate. If you have chosen to store your power, bear in mind the possible cost replacement storage batteries in that time, but in the long run this is no great expense.

On top of that you can rest assured that you ‘carbon-footprint’ is pretty small and that you positively doing something FOR the planet rather than doing LESS to damage it.
This week I am reprinting an article I wrote back in 2002 when I visited Anthony Skelton one of the first people in the country to make his house (his parent’s house actually) completely self-sufficient in electricity and even to generate more than enough power so that the excess actually was fed back into the National Grid and paid for by his electricity board. Anthony cut through reams of red tape to make his parent’s house the smallest power station in the country, a private bungalow in the heart of Warwickshire.Anthony Skelton's parents home rigged up to be self sufficient from solar power.Anthony Skelton loved any gadget driven by solar power. He found it fascinating and it was his determination to have solar power running fountains and waterfalls in his Father’s garden that led him to eventually running the whole house on Solar Power.

At the time there were Government grants that gave a bit more of an incentive to the Solar pioneers, now these are few and far between. With a bit of patience and cunning they can be still be found and there are links in the article to help people interested on their journey of discovery.

To compensate for the lack of grants the costs installing solar power have come down. Anthony’s problems with the bureaucracy, which turned out to be a major expense at the time, have largely disappeared thanks to him and people like him paving the way. Material costs have come down to a certain extent but mainly at the cheaper end of the market, which produces less efficient panels. However good products can be found cheaply because there are many more second hand units and panels from industry about. Using second hand stuff is one way of doing it on the cheap.

So this week I will devote to finding out what products really do the job they claim to, how to spot a good product. And for those of you that want to do it really seriously, some big directional arrows on the ways to go – particularly for those of you in the UK.