Richard and Lexie’s “Star ship Freedom”. Perth , Western Australia.
Latitude 32 degrees South

Commissioned Dec 2000. Outer hull is double brick, with tiled meteorite shield. This is a true passive solar design, with the majority of port holes on the Northernside, for deep and intimate penetration of the Suns’ warming rays in Winter.

The carefully calculated eave overhang plus deciduous creepers (grape vines) act as a radiation shield in Summer, preventing overheating of the crews quarters, galley and control deck.

Power System

• 24 x UNI-SOLAR US-64 Advanced, thin film, triple junction photo-voltaic panels. (1536 peak watts) Nett daily energy production (after system losses) is 7000 watt- hours in Summer, and 4500 watt-hours in Winter.
• 1 x Plasmatronic PL-40 Regulator with SH200 current shunt and PLS shunt adaptor. This allows all solar energy generated and consumed to be monitored, giving an accurate indication of the ships energy reserves at all times.
• 24 x EXIDE 2 volt 670 amp-hour, deep cycle battery cells. These are connected in series, to deliver 32,160 watt-hours of energy storage, enough to sustain the life support systems for 5 days of complete solar eclipse on a full charge.
• 1 x Solar Energy Australia SEAP-48-2K4 True sine wave inverter. 2400 watts continuous rating, 3000 watts for 0.5 hours, 6000 watts for 10 seconds. This unit converts the D.C energy generated from the solar panels, and stored in the battery into 240 volt A.C power, for the suite of carefully selected, energy efficient appliances on board.
  Notes;

This is a grid re-active system, and does not export power into the utility companies sewer ! Rather, all the precious solar energy is used on site and value added so that it does the most good, instead of being squandered and lost in an inefficient network . The grid is used merely as a backup, for those few days of the year when the planet’s atmosphere contains excessive water vapour !