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Orbital Renewable Energy germinated in 2004 when David had a vision to create an energy business based on using Wind Turbines, but didn’t action anything because he was waiting for the South African Government to implement incentives and feed-in-tariffs to promote renewable energy. When this didn’t happen, David decided to start a process which has resulted in the formation of the company Orbital Renewable Energy.
A year later David and his wife, Mirjana started a Reiki Masters course which they finished 2 and a half years later in 2007. Along this path they found themselves being called upon to heal people and the environment in holistic ways that didn’t only depend on using Reiki energy. This led David to deciding not to wait for government anymore, but to start researching costs and implementing solutions for himself.
In March/April 2008 David travelled to Israel and whilst there researched a number of renewable energy options and visited an Eco-Village in the Arava Desert. On David’s return, he and his neighbour, Ismail built a 12Volt 40 Amp Hour solar system using a 68 Watt 12 Volt Uni-solar thin film panel panel to charge the battery. This was a revelation for us. Using the sun to create energy to charge a battery and run a TV system. We were hooked.
Thereafter a huge amount of research ensued and David and Ismail built a 24 Volt 105 Amp Hour solar system using two Uni-solar 68 Watt 12 Volt panels in series and 2 105 Amp Hour Deep Cycle batteries in series. This would charge in two days and provide up to 10 hours of TV time on a 200 Watt TV system. After testing, these panels were mounted onto the roof of David’s house and if we watch up to 3 hours of TV a day, we don’t run out of power. See photo of these panels on our home page.
Once a month we electrically charge the 12 Volt and 24 Volt system. This is done to ensure that we get a reasonable life from the batteries. We have included fuses or circuit breakers in the above system to ensure that we don’t have electrical problems.
Whilst working on the 24 Volt system, we started researching a system to run the whole house and decided that we should have a system that runs everything except the swimming pool pump, the geyser, and the hob and oven. We decided on Uni-solar thin film panels, and an Outback Power system. Our first switch on off the inverter/charger was on the 14th March 2009, but we had some teething problems and “went live” on the 31st March are already powering part of our house.
Between April 2008 December 2009, David invested over 600 hours in this project and he decided that from January to March 2009 he would work work full time on the project and look after his IT clients part time (fortunately they agreed to this). In February David travelled to Phoenix and Nevada in the USA. Whilst in Phoenix, he attended a 5 day Solar Energy International Grid-Tied Photovoltaic Systems course followed by the AEE Solar dealer conference and then travelled to Las Vegas for the ACORE and Retech2009 conferences.
- Here the roof of his house showing 2 the following Uni-Solar thin film panels
- 2 x US64’s in series = 128 Watts at 24 Volts
- 6 x PVL128’s on Zincalume metal sheeting which has been riveted to brackets = each 6 metre panel is 128 Watts at 24 Volts
- a bracket with legs through the tiles and the legs bolted to the roof beams and battons
- The entire system is grounded. We have added 2 additional grounding rods to the house, plus 5 additional 3.6 metre grounding rods (earth spikes) have been installed under our 9 metre wind turbine tower.
During 2009, David helped many people with their requirements and looked for many opportunities in the RE landscape. In January 2010, David rekindled his relationship with an old friend, Michael O’Callaghan and together after about 40 hours of strategising, we decided to focus our strengths on RE investments.
For more information read our BLOG. Also read How South Africa can take advantage of clean energy.
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