I am at the starting stage of adding Solar and WInd to my lake home.  Does anyone have a good book they can recommend that would be a good place to start?

there are tons of info available in the Net. you can also put your questions and concerns here, we will be more than happy to answer them

jfdevans,

If you are interested in passive solar heating which is the most efficient/simple use of the sun's energy, one of the best primers on the subject is: The Passive Solar Energy Book by Edward Mazria, 1979. Complete discussions of what is required to make a home comfortable and inexpensive are included as well as tons of technical details.

Hope this helps.

Dave

There are sevearl solar panel guides available online for $49. I have bought almost all of them (7 and counting). Most all of them are complete junk and include only 50 pages of generic info you can get for free online.

The best (by far) solar guide that i've found is Energy 4 Green http://safepay123.energy4gre.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=GF

This diy solar kit has over 190 pages of detailed info on building solar panel systems (plus 500 more pages on wind and renewable energy info). I was real impressed and it really gives you the step by step details you need to build solar panels. lots of pictures and diagrams and check lists.

Hope that helps.

Earth 4 energy sure looks like the other $49 book recomended in the residential forum the other day. I taste snake oil. I wonder if its on amazon

Yes, Earth 4 energy is one of those DIY solar guides. It was only 68 pages and was a complete joke.

They are both the same company, notice the similiar names. But i think you know that "solarguy"

I looked into it a little more. It looks like they are different companies (just similar names i guess). The guides that they sell are definetely different! One is very vauge and the other goes into great detail.

One of the "great details" you mention is how you will save enough money on eletricity to purchase a plasma tv. A plasma? No on with a strong background in solar tech would reccomend a plasma, which uses twicw what a LCD uses. Just one example. These "books" are SCAMS