Readers have told me they like to build small-scale photovoltaic installations like those that power Low-tech Magazine’s website and office. However, they don’t know where to start and what components to buy. This guide brings all the information together: what you need, how to wire everything, what your design choices are, where to put solar panels, how to fix them in place (or not), how to split power and install measuring instruments. It deals with solar energy systems that charge batteries and simpler configurations that provide direct solar power.
Conventional solar PV installations are installed on a rooftop or in a field. They convert the low voltage direct current (DC) power produced by solar panels into high voltage alternate (AC) power for use by main appliances and rely on the power grid during the night and in bad weather. None of this holds for the small-scale systems we build in this manual. They are completely independent of the power grid, run entirely on low voltage power, and are not powering a whole household or city but rather a room, a collection of devices, or a specific device. Small-scale solar is decentralized power production taken to its extremes.
Most of the work in building a small-scale solar system is deciding the size of the components and the building of the supporting structure for the solar panel. Wiring is pretty straightforward unless you want a sophisticated control panel. You only need a limited set of tools: a wire stripper, some screwdrivers (including small ones), and a wood saw are the only essentials. A soldering iron, pliers, and a multimeter are handy, but you can do without them.
An excerpt from a talk by Richard Perkins from Ridgedale Farm - one of the worlds most influential small farms - at GEN Global Ecovillage Network Meeting 2024, Sweden
The reconstruction of the power grid in the areas of Appalachia where it was wrecked by Helene will ultimately offer a chance for the utility industry to rethink how the electricity system should be structured. “In areas where there could be more extreme weather events like this, it’s going to be more and more difficult to maintain far-flung distribution systems,” Norris said. “And the cost of service is going to rise, and you either have to muddle through that or think about other measures, like undergrounding lines, or trying to bring load into higher degrees of concentration so it isn’t so far-flung, or, obviously, to think more about distributed energy systems and backup power.”
There are ways to build grid resilience that could be implemented on a more local level — although they’re costly.
✅ Assemble kelp parts in cold, nutrient-rich water ✅ Add fish and invertebrates ✅ Add sea otters! 🦦 ✅ Watch your kelp forest thrive ⚠️Warning: Without sea otters, your kelp forest may end up with an urchin overload!
e360: How did the sites look different after the work that you did on them?
Stevenson: They became basically beautiful meadows of native plants that were flowering, and now there are bees and birds and all sorts of life coming through. We had a very high success rate. In three months we saw a more than 50 percent reduction in all [petrochemical] pollutants. And then by the 12-month period, they were pretty much not detectable.
Extinct in central Europe for 300 years, 36 northern bald ibis are following an ultralight aircraft on their long-forgotten migration route from Austria to Spain
Fritz was inspired by the 1996 film Fly Away Home in which the main character flies an ultralight plane to show orphaned geese their migratory path. The film was based on the work of “Father Goose” Bill Lishman, a naturalist who taught Canadian geese in the same way in 1988.
Breeding efforts to increase their population over the past two decades have been successful, but without guidance from wild ancestors, the birds – known for their bald red head and long curved beak – no longer had any knowledge of which direction to fly for winter. Early reintroduction attempts were largely unsuccessful – instead of returning to suitable wintering grounds such as Tuscany, Italy, the birds flew in different directions and died.
When they reach the wintering grounds, the birds become fully independent and no longer need their foster parents, although they still recognise them years later and actively approach to say hello (the birds have a ritual greeting in which they spread their hair and bow, making a “chrrupp” noise).
The central European population has increased from zero to almost 300 since the start of the project in 2002, and in 2011 the first bird migrated back to Bavaria from Tuscany without human help.
Watching Przewalski’s horses run free on the Kazakhstan steppe for the first time in 200 years
It’s my time to shine as a horse girl!!
These horses went extinct in the wild 60 years ago! They were reintroduced in other parts of Mongolia and Central Asia earlier than they were reintroduced on the Steppes, but having them back here has been generational conservation work. It’s truly amazing.
These horses and other kinds of horses are probably different branches of evolution, which is CRAZY AWESOME. Modern horse breeds trace back to one branch, and these dudes evolved separately. They have 33 chromosome pairs whereas the horse you’re used to seeing in movies and TV shows (or riding if you too are a horse girl - gender neutral title of expertise) have 32.
Despite this, you can interbreed these two species and they will have fertile offspring. That’s really rare! (A common equine cross between species, the mule, is an always-sterile offspring of a donkey and a horse, for instance).
I did have to look the exact numbers up here, full disclosure, but it’s believed that Przewalski’s horses and other breeds have a common ancestor about between 160,000 and 38,000 years ago
The horses you see on cave art? These guys!
It’s likely that Attila the Hun and his armies rode these horses (though hard to prove decisively)
Part of the conservation efforts around them involved CLONING to avoid a genetic bottleneck. ISN’T THAT DOPE. You can read more about that here
These are the only truly wild horses. All other “wild” horses – Australian brumbies and American mustangs, for instance – are feral descendants of domesticated horses, which is partly why you can see such a wide range of heights, colors, conformations, etc in those populations.
Anyway. This is incredible news and this species of animal is very special, very ancient, and very cool.
Maybe controversial opinion but my favorite trope in solarpunk is the “building a better world with or without your permission” rather than stories focusing on the end goal of solarpunk.
My first solarpunk collection I read was Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation and The Boston Hearth Project by T.X. Watson is not only my favorite story in that book specifically, but probably my favorite solarpunk story of all time. (So far)
It’s told in an essay style, beginning with email correspondence about a college essay and the security of information sent to the college, due to the illegal nature of the story. In the essay part, the writer discusses how they use tech to break into The Hale Center, a self supported smart building that houses its own closed ecosystem. It’s supposed to be used for wealthy business men, but the main characters have a better use for it. The story is set in Massachusetts, and it discusses the deaths of homeless people due to polar vortices caused by climate change, and basically the story is about them taking over the building to house the homeless population.
It’s a really great read and obviously i recommend it. I don’t want to reveal too much, but I really think it embodies solarpunk perfectly with both the high tech part of the building (and the tech used by the characters) and the -punk part of repurposing a building meant for the wealthy for the people who need it most.
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