There is an article on instructables explaining how to make photo voltaic panels from “Broken” solar cells. There is a company selling 1KG of broken solar cells for £46. 1KG of broken sells is enought to produce over 320W of power.
Archive for the ‘electric’ Category
electric
Make your own photo voltaic solar panels
Wednesday, March 30th, 2011USB thermometer – The heart of the central heating control system!
Saturday, February 26th, 2011I bought a few of these USB thermometers from Hong Kong on ebay, with a view to using a 240v USB Switch to control valves and the central heating pump. It seems like a waste of time at the moment, it’s cold throughout the barn … heat is needed throughout the barn! The USB thermometers [...]
EDF France Temporary Electric Connection
Friday, November 26th, 2010Finally the electric is connected, no more cables connected to my neighbours house!
Fitting Nalto Tableau électrique – Consumer Unit (Brico Depot)
Wednesday, November 24th, 2010Here we have the budget Nalto Tableau électrique consumer unit, much cheaper than the Legrande ones, and plenty of poor quality plastic pieces that snap off all too easily, still its going to be hidden in a cupboard so nobody will see it, and once you’ve managed to assemble the thing you’ll probably never have [...]
Air to Water Heat Pumps
Wednesday, October 13th, 2010Air to water heat pump systems consist of two units, a Hot Water Distribution Unit or HDWU which is usually fitted inside the building and an external unit that extracts heat from the cold air outside the building. An HWDU can only be used in conjunction with an external air/water unit, and this provides a [...]
Pompe a chaleur – Climatiseurs fixes – Air Heat Exchanger, Heating and Air Conditioning Systems
Thursday, September 30th, 2010Heat pumps should only be considered in properties that have excellent insulation, it is also advisable to have an additional heating system available in very cold conditions. A 12kW pompe a chaluer that heats underfloor piping and hot water can be bought in the for around £2000. In both France and the UK cheaper systems [...]
CAD : France Electricity plan – plan d’installation
Friday, March 26th, 2010The free trial versions of AuroCAD and ArchiCAD now have the ‘save’ and ‘print’ functions disabled so they are no good for planning your electrical installation. CYCAS3 is free for non-commercial use an easy to use CAD package, there are no electrical symbols included with the package, but there are some to download here. CYCAS3 [...]
French Wiring – Lesson 1! The GTL, Consumer Unit and Wiring Regs
Sunday, February 28th, 2010French Wiring – Colours! New installations should use brown for live, blue for neutral and green/yellow for earth. The chart shows that these colours should have been used since 1977. The definitive reference on French wiring (the Leroy Merlin catalogue!) states that the live wire can actually be any colour except blue or yellow and [...]
ADSL is connected
Tuesday, August 18th, 2009Ordered broadband on the 13th of August, arranged for phone connection on the 18th at 2pm. France telecom engineer arrives at 9am and seems a little surprised that there no windowframes that he can drill through to feed the wire through, and no skirting boards to attach the phone point to. Engineer leaves at 2pm [...]
Wind & Solar power – Cheaper and less hassle than connecting to the grid with EDF
Tuesday, May 19th, 2009The sooner I can use my laptop at this barn, the sooner I will be able to stay there and hopefully move the project forward. At the moment there is no mains electric, I have used a generator to power the concrete mixer and power tools when necessary. But petrol generators are expensive to run [...]
British -> French multiway power adaptor
Friday, January 2nd, 2009If you plug a UK trailing socket into a french travel adaptor, you can easily draw too much current through the travel adaptor. Some cheap british > french adaptors are only rated at 600 watts. A safer way to plug your British tools and other electrical items into the french supply without changing all the [...]
