Planning your installation well can save you a lot of money and can save you a lot of grief as well. We were very much constrained by the moment our house was transfered, and if I could do it again I would choose to have it happen a bit earlier in the year. If you already own the house that you wish to convert then that is probably of no concern to you.

Workplace safety is the easiest to overlook, it is also the easiest to take care of.

* Always keep a path free where you can still walk, and make sure you know it's placing blindfolded. In the case of any emergency you should be able to 'get the hell out of there' without having to think twice.

Safety glasses (also known as goggles) protect your eyes from flying particles, nails and so on.

Over time you will find they become scratched (the do not use glass but a very tough plastic) and will need replacement.

You also need to replace them whenever something catastrophic happens (for instance if the glasses stop a nail or if you step on them).

A good pair doesn't have to be really expensive. If you already wear glasses you may want to wear them 'behind' your safety glasses or use contacts for jobs that need safety glasses.

* Use tools for their intended purpose. A screwdriver is not a chisel, pliers make a very poor hammer and so on. The risks are not always obvious, but as a general rule tools were designed with a particular job in mind and perform inferior or unsafe when used for different jobs.

Gloves protect your hands from all kinds of smaller (and sometimes not so small) damage.

Think of splinters, blisters and splashes of acid.

Not all gloves are equally suited to all tasks. You should have a minimum of two pairs on hand, one heavy leather construction gloves, the other rubber to handle chemicals (like battery acid).

Your ears are more sensitve than you probably think they are and it is really easy to damage them in a lasting way.

Sounds that contain a large amount of noise (griding, sandblasting, cutting concrete, using a chainsaw) are more damaging than those that contain only a certain tone because our pain levels get triggered much quicker for non-noise sounds.

Safety boots do a pretty good job of protecting your feet against all kinds of mishap, such as stepping into nails and dropping things on your foot. When working on structural stuff they're not at all optional.

They don't make you superman, a steel toed boot is not going to allow you to kick through concrete walls, but you'd be amazed how much difference it makes when you get something heavy on your foot the first time and it doesn't hurt at all.

Electrical safety is one of the hardest subjects here. Installing an alternative energy system exposes you to all kinds of electrical hazards. The battery stores an enormous amount of energy that can all be liberated in a really short time (that's an explosion) if you short it out by accident.

Safety is one of the most important things to keep in mind when you are tackling a job of this magnitude as a 'do-it-yourselfer'. More people get wounded/killed/maimed in DIY projects anually than in traffic accidents. Not all the accidents are severe, but any one of them could probably have been avoided with a little bit of attention to safe operating procedures.

A birdseye view of an alternative energy system goes something like this:

Energy is created in Solar Panels, a windmill or a small hydro generator, and transported through cables to a charge controller. The charge controller monitors the state of charge of the batteries, and when neccesary allows the energy to be passed on to the batteries. The batteries supply energy to an inverter, which converts the energy stored in the batteries into regular 'house current', and another cable transfers this house current to the main breaker panel of the house.