Shaka Doug
Contributor
Aloha Ohana,
These days everyone is thinking Green, right? I put my head to it and I came up with a couple of great ways to use renewable energy on my dives. This season I am happy to announce that Shaka Divers will be using Solar Energy on some of our dives. How am I going to do that you might ask? Let me tell you!
First, I've figured out a way to reactivate my Wetsuit Heaters using my Solar Oven. In the past I would have to boil a pot of water, place the heaters in the hot water and wait for them to turn back into liquid form. This was not only time consuming but wasted a lot of extra energy and it required my attention during the boiling process. Any time the water boiled too long I was simply throwing money and energy down the drain. I was always looking for a better way. Well now I have it. My Solar Oven easily gets up to 260-280 degrees on a sunny day which is more than enough to boil water. I placed my heater packs inside one morning and when I came home from diving I checked them. Sure enough, they had gotten hot enough to transform and now they were ready to go. They were even cooled off enough so I could just pull them out of the oven and put them in the box for next time. No gloves, no mess, no pots to put away. Awesome! Never again will I have to boil water on my electric stove to reactivate my heaters! Anyone want to see how they work? You know how to find me!
Second, I installed a Solar Electric PV Panel on my lanai, next to my Solar Oven. Instead of buying a bunch of deep cycle batteries to use as a storage bank, I decided to wire up my Torpedo Scooter batteries all in parallel. I have about 20 of these batteries that had to be recharged with the electric battery chargers that came with the Torpedos. They usd to just sit around in the garage taking up space. Now I simply keep all my batteries charged and plugged into the system. It's 12 volts DC and actually runs at over 13.7 V when in full sun. When I get a call for a Torpedo Tour I pull out a few batteries to do the job. They're always topped off and ready to go! When I'm done with the dives I plug the discharged batteries back into the battery bank. They charge up rather easily and passively until next time. Next scooter dive I pull some other batteries and keep them in "rotation". The rest of the system continues to work all the while and I can use power from it via a Power Inverter as I need to. I use this power to run my laptop computer so even my SB time has minimal carbon footprint!! I also charge my Netbook and my U/W Digital Camera batteries from this grid so I can have computer capabilities in the SCUBABUS and I don't need to give so much of my money to the utility company! Pretty cool!
Do any of you use solar for things like this? I can highly recommend trying it. Especially here in Hawaii. Over here in Kihei, I've heard we have a solar index of 5 out of 5. That means we are in a really great place to capitalize on solar energy. I'm happy I figured this out and looking forward to sharing my solar power with you!
Got to run, my solar oven is making my lunch right now and it smells like it's just about ready! Mmmmm-mmmm-mmmm!
These days everyone is thinking Green, right? I put my head to it and I came up with a couple of great ways to use renewable energy on my dives. This season I am happy to announce that Shaka Divers will be using Solar Energy on some of our dives. How am I going to do that you might ask? Let me tell you!
First, I've figured out a way to reactivate my Wetsuit Heaters using my Solar Oven. In the past I would have to boil a pot of water, place the heaters in the hot water and wait for them to turn back into liquid form. This was not only time consuming but wasted a lot of extra energy and it required my attention during the boiling process. Any time the water boiled too long I was simply throwing money and energy down the drain. I was always looking for a better way. Well now I have it. My Solar Oven easily gets up to 260-280 degrees on a sunny day which is more than enough to boil water. I placed my heater packs inside one morning and when I came home from diving I checked them. Sure enough, they had gotten hot enough to transform and now they were ready to go. They were even cooled off enough so I could just pull them out of the oven and put them in the box for next time. No gloves, no mess, no pots to put away. Awesome! Never again will I have to boil water on my electric stove to reactivate my heaters! Anyone want to see how they work? You know how to find me!
Second, I installed a Solar Electric PV Panel on my lanai, next to my Solar Oven. Instead of buying a bunch of deep cycle batteries to use as a storage bank, I decided to wire up my Torpedo Scooter batteries all in parallel. I have about 20 of these batteries that had to be recharged with the electric battery chargers that came with the Torpedos. They usd to just sit around in the garage taking up space. Now I simply keep all my batteries charged and plugged into the system. It's 12 volts DC and actually runs at over 13.7 V when in full sun. When I get a call for a Torpedo Tour I pull out a few batteries to do the job. They're always topped off and ready to go! When I'm done with the dives I plug the discharged batteries back into the battery bank. They charge up rather easily and passively until next time. Next scooter dive I pull some other batteries and keep them in "rotation". The rest of the system continues to work all the while and I can use power from it via a Power Inverter as I need to. I use this power to run my laptop computer so even my SB time has minimal carbon footprint!! I also charge my Netbook and my U/W Digital Camera batteries from this grid so I can have computer capabilities in the SCUBABUS and I don't need to give so much of my money to the utility company! Pretty cool!
Do any of you use solar for things like this? I can highly recommend trying it. Especially here in Hawaii. Over here in Kihei, I've heard we have a solar index of 5 out of 5. That means we are in a really great place to capitalize on solar energy. I'm happy I figured this out and looking forward to sharing my solar power with you!
Got to run, my solar oven is making my lunch right now and it smells like it's just about ready! Mmmmm-mmmm-mmmm!
