“Here comes the fun” with a Solar Shed as a Power Supply for a Virtual Vacation

The concept of the shed as a giant power supply for consumer electronics and recharging one's batteries in such gadgets as phones, personal movie theaters, electronic book readers, and netbooks computers as well as a living and storage place opens up the idea of my solar shed as a general purpose room for the universal traveler. It could be a garden room, a gathering room, a game room, or a gym, but in all cases, it must be powered by free energy. The idea of a portable and practical study and office occurred to me and, therefore, I located and began to use items such as LED battery powered lap desks, netbook computers, and all kinds of portable consumer electronic devices. I began to study power supplies for consumer electronics and appliances with meters to measure how much electricity they required. I found some portable solar recharging units for phones and laptops.

As an experiment, I developed a game controller for my graphic calculator. It began first as a science fair project, then developed into a software management project, and finally expanded into a new product development. I found books from a popular series to support each of these phases. I used a single AA battery first as my power source. The motivation for the project was that I had read a book on beginning game programming written for teenagers and had written a game I called “APONG” for the calculator. I could not compete with the calculator and needed a way to move my game paddle faster. I am now in the process of replacing the battery as a power supply with the fuel cell hydrogen solar car kit. This is an excellent project to do in a solar shed.

Back to BASICS at Home with my Solar Shed design

Physics is a very basic science. The first physicists were called natural philosophers. The solar cell, a invention brought about by 20th century physics, is the basis for solar energy. I decided I had to learn a little physics about how sunlight works and how I could farm it in order to be a good consumer of the available products. There is no better way to learn than to find toys to explore with, so I located electronic catalogs with selected toys and solar gifts and began to convert my study into a playroom. There is a fuel cell car kit as well as other alternative energy toys that are useful in this learning experience. Some of these devices include a set of experiments to inform the player about solar energy. I realized that a solar shed would be an ideal workshop for playing with these toys. I located a book that addressed the idea of a shed as a place to make stuff and included 101 things to do in such a space.

Money and energy seem to be in the news quite a bit. Imagine if Scrooge were alive in the Information Age instead of the Industrial Revolution. Among the collection of books in my library, I found a hardbound book that addressed this issue from a physics point of view. It is written in an easy-to-read way, demonstrates what energy is, and emphasizes how important it was and will be to us all. The approach of saving before, during, and after one spends money can be applied to the concept of the solar shed. It occurred to me that lighting was an important aspect of any outdoor structure and that modern physics had developed the LED to the point where it could be integrated with solar power to produce a great way to light the inside and outside of my solar shed. I even found suppliers of solar holiday lighting.

Start and Plan it: My first Solar Shed design

The energy crisis is still with us and growing faster than ever. Next came the housing crisis and then bigger economic problems. It is time for us all to accept the problem and do something about it. In analyzing these problems, I used the method of going back to the sun. Nowhere is this more evident as with solar energy. Many ideas came to mind surrounding the use of the sun as a source of power, the one I thought to be very useful in these times was the concept of the solar shed. I decided that this was an everyday math (and physics problem) so I imagined myself as a student studying the concept of sheds and sunlight. It seems as though this was a way to combine work and play and so I invite visitors to share in what I call the experience of “here comes the fun.”

I used my TI-73 calculator as a study tool for this project. It is programmable and consumes very little power as well as being the most cost effective of the 83-84 family with the same graphics display. Since it is my hobby to program this calculator, I constructed a software routine to design with rectangles. The rectangle is really an “in-shape” in our world and thus I called the calculator based design program “INSH” However, the 73 is powered by alkaline batteries. Solar energy can produce electricity and thus I located the “best alkaline battery recharger.” All I had to do was locate a solar battery source and I did so. Now, the design should include skylights as well as solar panels for the roof. The roof angles are important and the shed concept should be one of a garden shed, a place to extend the growing season. If it is going to be comfortable enough for plants, it should also be large enough and warm enough for people and thus should provide an efficient solar powered heating system. It should not be to hot in the summer and therefore should also be solar cooled. I found a supplier for portable solar energy packs, solar shingles, and a solar roof-fans and so I was on my way.