Power4Home

[Cheryl in SD]

Power4Home

"46-Year-Old Home Energy Expert Discovers The Only Practical Method Of Generating Your Own electricity For Less Than $200 And Finally Reveals Everything, In Easy To Follow, Fully Illustrated Manuals + Step-By-Step Instructional Videos"

Is this legit?

TIA
Cheryl

[Windy in Kansas]

Selling you the information is probably legit. I do however doubt that the information contained therein is worth the price.

Telling a person where to get free batteries---in this day and age and price of salvage material such as batteries with the lead they contain---doubt you will find any for free.

Also, $200 for parts to build your own systems sure doesn't buy much product these days.

I like reading all sorts of information but this is something that I'd pass on. Now if you had 200 friends that would each pitch in a buck-------

[Old Vet]

For $200 dollars I could build one. It will not have all the power you want or figure in fuel but it can be done. All I would need is a generator from a big truck and a power source like a gasoline engine and it will provide all the 12 volt power you need to power a light and some small appliances.

[Windy in Kansas]

Old Vet, my hat is off to you if you can spend $200 for enough material to slash the average homeowners utility bill by 80% which the ad attempts to lead one to believe.

Did you notice that in my post "systems" is plural? The ad leads one to believe that the $200 will build a solar photovoltaic system and a wind system.

You're a better scrounger than I am if you can do it.

[Nevada]

It looks like he wants $50 to tell you how to do it. That's an awful lot to pay for information so readily available for free. But in direct answer to your question, there are scam alerts for this publication all over the Internet.

http://www.ripoffreport.com/searchre...&Search=Search

I built my own solar system, with both wind generator and solar panel components. While you could certainly build a solar system for $200, I doubt that you could get even the solar cells to make 150 watts for that price, let alone the materials to fabricate the panels and purchase the solar charger, batteries & inverter to complete the system. Note that he doesn't make any wattage promises.

For my solar panel design, I basically followed this guide.

http://www.mdpub.com/SolarPanel/index.html

Here's what it looks like.



I also built a wind generator. I tried following a guide from the same guy who wrote the solar panel guide.

http://www.mdpub.com/Wind_Turbine/index.html

The difficulty I ran into with following his guide was that the 30 volt Ametek generators aren't available any longer. The only Ametek generators available now are the 38 volt model, which are readily available at eBay for around $50. The problem with switching from the 30 volt to the 38 volt Ametek is that the 38 volt requires about twice the RPMs to reach charging voltage (30 volt requires ~550 rpm, while 38 volt requires ~1100 rpm).

You will find a lot of information around the Internet about people trying to increase the velocity of the 38 volt Ametek wind generator with blade geometry. Both from reading and from personal experimentation, I can tell you that blade geometry isn't going to give you the 1100 rpms you'll need. What I did instead was to develop my own method to gearing-up the generator drive with a v-belt. Here is a clip I made of what I came up with (note that my clip has had well over 40,000 views so far).

YouTube

I suggest that you read the scam warnings for Power4Home carefully. There may or may not be any useful information available in that publication, but in any case I doubt that it's worth $50. But hey, it's your money...

PS -- I did see on one of his other sites where he says you can save $177/month with an 80 watt solar panel. Evidently this guy's math background is lacking. An 80 watt panel will generate more like $1.50/month worth of electricity (assuming 15 KWH/month and 10 cents/KWH). The promises he makes are simply not credible.

[mnn2501]

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

[Old Vet]

Originally Posted by Windy in Kansas

Old Vet, my hat is off to you if you can spend $200 for enough material to slash the average homeowners utility bill by 80% which the ad attempts to lead one to believe.

Did you notice that in my post "systems" is plural? The ad leads one to believe that the $200 will build a solar photovoltaic system and a wind system.

You're a better scrounger than I am if you can do it.

I never said anything about saving the average home owner anything. All I said was that I could build one for 12 volts and could run a light and some small appliances that ran on 12 volts. $0 for the motor that I would take off a mower and $150 for a generator, $0 for the metial that comes from my junk pile, and $20 for the belt.

[Jim-mi]

Yes its legit to sell you information.


Doesn't mean that the info is any good.


Hold on Very tightly to your wallet.


there ain't NO free lunches.

[Nevada]

Originally Posted by Old Vet

I never said anything about saving the average home owner anything. All I said was that I could build one for 12 volts and could run a light and some small appliances that ran on 12 volts. $0 for the motor that I would take off a mower and $150 for a generator, $0 for the metial that comes from my junk pile, and $20 for the belt.

For that matter, here's a 12-volt battery charging system for $20, right off the shelf.

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/cta...emnumber=44768

I don't know what you're going to do with 1.5 watts though.

[SolarGary]

Hi,
There are a bunch of these $50 guides out there now -- I think they are 99% scam. Anything with the spend $200 to cut your energy bills by 80% is sure to be a scam.
This is not to say that there are not a lot of good DIY projects that have really excellent paybacks out there.

This kind of information is widely available for free from my site and other:
Homemade PV panels here:
http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/PV/pv.htm#MakePV
More PV:
http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/PV/pv.htm

DIY wind turbines:
http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/Wind/wind.htm

Home Power is a good and reputable source for wind and PV info:
www.HomePower.com
They have a $10 online subscription

The best payback projects tend to be ones that use Conservation/Efficiency, or solar thermal for heating space or water:
http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects...nservation.htm
http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects...ce_Heating.htm
http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects...er_heating.htm

Gary

[Cornhusker]

Nevada
Thanks for posting the info and links.
How much power will your setup generate?

[Nevada]

Originally Posted by Cornhusker

Nevada
Thanks for posting the info and links.
How much power will your setup generate?

The panel pictured is 60 watts, and you can consider the Ametek wind generator about a 100 watt unit when it's running. Solar is a lot more reliable than wind, even up here where it's really windy a lot of the time, so I would concentrate on solar.

You can add as many panels as your charge controller will allow, but multiple chargers are no problem if you need more. My charge controller is a 30 amp, so I could safely put 360 watts on that charger. That would be 6 of the pictured panels, which would make about 3 KWH/day, or about $9/month worth of electricity at 10 cents per KWH.

I'm paying about $1.50/watt for untabbed unbroken solar cells at eBay. You can get broken cells (they don't look as nice, but still work fine) for more like $1/watt, and unbroken cells with tabbing for about $2/watt. The plywood & plexiglass that I make the panels out of aren't too expensive, and I source them locally at Home Depot. I also order the proper tabbing ribbon from a vendor at eBay.

[Nevada]

Just to give you an idea of what's required for a minimal system, if you just want to watch TV, use a laptop, and have light from low-power CF bulbs then you'll need 400 to 500 watts of solar panels, charger, 6 deep cycle batteries, and at least a 400 watt inverter. Even if you make your own panels, I think you're looking at:

Solar Cells: $1000
Panel Materials: $250
Charge Controller(s): $125
Batteries: $500
Inverter: $50 (400 watt, modified sine wave)

I think you really need a $2000 budget for even a minimal system. Of course that assumes that you'll be using propane for heat, cooking, hot water, and fridge. You'll need to give-up your toaster and microwave too, unless you invest in a much larger inverter and some additional charge capacity.

[Jim-mi]

A WARNING if I may

All well and good if you can assemble your own PV panels.......

But Please DONOT mount them on your roof.................

Plywood and plexiglass are excellent fuel for a FIRE.

The sun will get those cells very hot.

If I were more puter savey I would post pictures here of the aftermath of a roof fire caused by home assembled PV panels.

The panels were put together with plywood and plexiglass.

The people in this case were very lucky in that they only live two blocks from the fire house station. . . and a passerby spotted it early.

Mount your "homemade" away from your house . . . . . . . . . . . .

[Nevada]

Originally Posted by Jim-mi

A WARNING if I may

All well and good if you can assemble your own PV panels.......

But Please DONOT mount them on your roof.................

Plywood and plexiglass are excellent fuel for a FIRE.

The sun will get those cells very hot.

If I were more puter savey I would post pictures here of the aftermath of a roof fire caused by home assembled PV panels.

The panels were put together with plywood and plexiglass.

The people in this case were very lucky in that they only live two blocks from the fire house station. . . and a passerby spotted it early.

Mount your "homemade" away from your house . . . . . . . . . . . .

Thanks, but I built a rack for them far enough behind the house (to the north) to be in sunlight all day. Mainly, I wanted them to be easy to access for maintainence reasons.

[Nevada]

As a suggestion to anyone who wants to try his hand at building his own solar panels, you can try it without risking a lot of money. What I would do in that case is to buy 36 inexpensive solar cells, which is enough to make a lower powered solar panel. As a specific suggestion, here is an eBay auction that is selling a lot of 36 solar cells that are rated at 0.5v & 0.875a (0.4375 watts for each cell, or 15.75 watts total) for a buy-it-now price of $25.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...B:FSEL:US:1123

Those solar cells will allow you to make an 18 volt (that's what you'll need to charge 12 volt storage batteries) solar panel that generates about 16 watts. With those solar cells, you should be able to build your first solar panel for under $50 (if you already have a multimeter & soldering iron). Just follow the same guide I used.

http://www.mdpub.com/SolarPanel/index.html

The set below that makes a 35 watt panel isn't a bad deal either at $62.50, and saves a lot of soldering since they're already tabbed. Personally, I don't mind soldering so I got mine untabbed.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...B:FSEL:US:1123

If you have any questions about fabricating the enclosure or soldering the solar cells together, just ask.