Go Green Energy – Living Off Grid

Ms Valerie answers:

As far as I know they are all privately owned. You have to have lots of land to get a permit.

But, if a grant does exist you will find it, and how to apply for it at http://www.grants.gov

Ms Valerie answers:

Mr. Solar
Specializes in renewable energy products including solar panels, batteries, solar kits, and other items:

http://tiny.cc/fqmdc
www.mrsolar.com
Kyocera Solar
Network of solar energy companies answering the growing worldwide demand for reliable, economical, solar-generated electrical power.
www.kyocerasolar.com
Big Frog Mountain
Manufacturer of solar panels, wind generators, inverters, batteries, and other renewable energy equipment.
Www.bigfrogmountain.com
Sierra Solar Systems
Engineers solar electric and solar pumping systems worldwide.
www.sierrasolar.com

Ms Valerie answers:

First off a standard car generator such as used on the old VW beetles is self generating. A turbine such as used in hydroelectric dams is self generating.. The difference between the two? Turbines produce AC power which does not charge lead acid batteries…and generators produce DC power, which can charge a lead acid battery. You do not need a battery.

Most high-output alternators need an initial power supply such as a 12-volt car battery before the alternator will produce power,  and that power is AC . It then needs to have a rectifier to take half of the current and use that half only (similar to DC) to charge the battery in a car.

Read up on electricity principles on Wikipedia to gain a better understanding as to how it works and design your own system. Also, learn to understand the relationship between voltage, amperage and wattage. And by the way, gear ratios (or in this case pulleys) are the best design of a windmill blade.

Ms Valerie answers:

http://tiny.cc/fqmdc

I know that tractor supply company carries solar panels but they are not high producing. Each set cost around 300 bucks not including the batteries. I’m going to use complete solar energy for my house. I figured that it would take 3 sets of solar panels from tsc. Each set using 4 marine batteries would cost 2500 to 3000 bucks and it would produce enough power run my most basic energy needs. As far as wind mills i haven’t checked that idea out yet but i will soon enough. I hope that you find what you need. Good luck.

Ms Valerie answers:

It looks like you need help in converting electrical power requirements to mechanical power requirements. I’ll try to provide you with the knowledge to do that.

1. Because the wind is variable, the windmill will not be on all the time. There are a couple of options. You could oversize the windmill to generate excess power and store it in batteries. Or you could just use the power from the windmill when it is available and rely on the grid for the rest of the time. If the windmill generates more electricity than you are using, you can send the power to the grid. But the selling price is much lower than your buying price.

2. If you use 1000 kWh in a month like me, then the average power is 1000kWh / (31*24hours) = 1.344 kW. If your generator is 80% efficient, then you’ll need to supply 1.344/0.80 = 1.68kW worth of mechanical power on average.

Since power is torque times angular frequency, you can see that as the RPM increases, torque decreases. This presents a unique problem. If you put too much of a load on the generator, it will cause the windmill to stall. So, the faster the windmill turns, the less torque required for the same output power. There’s some math involved here. Mechanical power can be in horsepower or watts, and you can convert between the two.

I had to get out my old physics book. This will help you in determining the input mechanical power. One horsepower is equal to 746 watts. Rotational power (in Watts) is torque (in Newton meters) times the angular frequency in radians per second (one full rotation is 2pi radians).

Setting up a home windmill is not cheap. The payback time may be longer than you’re willing to invest in. You’ll need several things besides the windmill and generator. Battery storage is optional, but helpful. You’ll need an inverter to convert the power from the windmill to 60Hz 120V, and synchronize the frequency with the grid’s power.

Ms Valerie answers:

You will not be able to manufacture solar power cells in your own home.

See this link for solar cells.

Http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGLR_enGB241GB243&q=solar+cells

That is like trying to manufacture a CPU in your own home, you cannot make the semi conductors.
You need a clean factory and millions of pounds worth of equipment for that.

See this link for do it yourself wind turbine.

Http://www.scoraigwind.com/axialplans/index.htm

and this might help

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=t&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGLR_enGB241GB243&q=wind+generatore%2e

Ms Valerie answers:

A car alternator coupled with an appropriate means to increase the speed may be your most economical method. You might even be able to directly get the voltage your laptop requires if it has an old style mechanical regulator that you can adjust.

Don

Ms Valerie answers:

Hey USA, Bramble is quite correct. You have two issues here. First, design of the generator itself. The number and size of windings has more to do with the frequency of the generator output and the current you expect to carry through the winding. The power output will be a function of the current and the voltage that is generated. Once you have the generator built, and you know what RPM it needs to turn at, then you can get into the gritty part of designing the turbine. Your generator will require a certain amount of horsepower to turn it, and since most wind turbines operate in the 25% efficiency range, you then have to build a unit that can sweep an area and wind speed about 4 times the power output of your generator. 1200 KW by the way is huge, do you mean 1.2kw by chance?

We live in a home that has been powered by the wind and sun for years. Our wind turbine is rated at 900 watts, or .9kw, it’s just big enough to run the house on a windy day. We should have a 1.5kw unit, but for now, we are making due. There are formulas for figuring power output in watts for a given wind speed, air density and swept area of a wind turbine, the best place to go is the American Wind Energy Associations website. Go to google, type in, “wind turbine power formula,” and look for a link to the AWEA.ORG website, that page has all the math work you’ll need for designing the turbine once you have the generator specs in hand. You’re embarking on a fairly complicated project, I don’t want to dissuade you from trying, but there are a lot of turbines out there for sale today for a whole host of locations and requirements. We tried to build our first one, it ran for 4 minutes. The second one kept burning up regulators because the wind was too strong for it. Our current one is working fine, but still has issues from time to time. Good luck with your project, and take care, Rudydoo

Ms Valerie answers:

You can look at the average usage you have now (from your electric bills) and talk to the experts (there are questionaires and averages). You have lots to take in consideration with this..many will suggest you do a wind test with a meter for a few months to a year to ensure you have enough to power a turbine. Then you have to look into your area..the height laws, how close you are to your neighbours who might complain because of the noise. Next you will have to decide if you want to be off grid, or supplement (energy storage or none). Then you will have to deal with different options with your power supplier. No matter what, it is a large financial decision and you need to check out everything before making your choice. If you are considering this for resale value..I have talked to many different agents..at this time where I live you will not have an advantage in the market and chances are you will not re coup the money your spend on this.

Ms Valerie answers:

No.  At least not directly.  It is conceivable to have a hybrid electric/combustion vehicle that can run on bio fuel.

The electric batteries can be charged on a system that uses solar, wind, hydro, and bio fuels to produce electricity and/or hydrogen. The electricity could be used to charge batteries or super capacitors in the hybrid vehicle for short trips and a hydrogen or bio fuel engine could recharge the batteries on longer trips.

Ms Valerie answers:

Hydroelectric power by far. Biomass is just now coming online. Tidal power is not going to be a big source ever. There are only 40 spots on the whole globe that are serious places where tidal will work without being in danger of being destroyed by hurricanes, severe storms, and other such natural forces.

Ms Valerie answers:

A. Coal

Is this a question on your homework or something? It seems pretty obvious and I’m surprised you’d use up points on asking this. LOL

E. Isn’t all that good, either.

Ms Valerie answers:

B. Natural gas

Wind power is from wind, reblowable.
Solar power is from the sun, reshineable.
Biomass conversion is from dead plants, regrowable.

Ms Valerie answers:

Clearly the answer is C. But this is actually a trick question. The point you are trying to make is that we have to take into account the environmental impact of the new energy source since infrastructure development affects the environment adversely in most cases.

Ms Valerie answers:

Advantages:Fossil Fuels
-Readily Available
-Cheap
Disadvantages:
-Increases Greenhouse Gases
-Contributes to environmental problems like smog
hydroelectricity:Advantages
-Relatively clean
-can generate a large amount of electricity
disadvantages
-Damaging to the ecosystem of rivers/nutrient depletion downstream
-Will eventually decline in efficiency and fail because of sediment buildup in reservoir
This should get you started

Ms Valerie answers:

Biomass -

Ms Valerie answers:

Biomass;

I thin unhealthy and small trees from forest. The part of tree that cannot make a log for lumber is chipped. The chips are sold to a local biomass plant.
The biomass plant feeds the chips into a “burner” the heat is used to heat water that turns to steam, the steam is routed to vanes on a turbine generator, the generator produces electricity that powers housing.
1 truck load (25tons) of chips will power 9000 homes for 1 hour

Ms Valerie answers:

With the recent advances in their technology, solar and wind are looking forward to being on top in the next 20 years. Cleanest and soon to be most efficient.

MyGreenPal answers:

They actually considered this like 20 -25 years ago.  The problem is getting it back to Earth.
If we focus the light beam or use micro waves and send it to collectors;We’ll have to be dead on with our aim.  Can you imagine what would happen if something went wrong and sent a beam through a major city?  You would also have to create large no fly zones to keep planes from flying through them.  Maybe We could use the energy to fuse Nitrogen and hydrogen into ammonia.  Then We could separate them back here on Earth and extract the heat.
Of course that would create a problem also.  What if We had another challenger or Columbia accident while they were loaded with ammonia

MyGreenPal answers:

I suggest continuing your education. Take lots of classes in science if you want to work on stuff like this. What you “believe”, “feel”, and “need” does not rise to the level of a scientific “theory”, especially since you “don’t know how kind of like” how to do anything about it. And stop wearing you hat backward.

MyGreenPal answers:

We could use the steam produced by the meeting of water and volcanoes to generate a steam turbine. We could also connect a wind turbine to a constantly venting (but not exploding) volcano lava tube. Most volcanoes produce sulfuric acid and hydrogen sulfide during the mixing with air and water, which we could use for batteries to run off of. All of these are theoretical and crazy possibilities. Solar wouldn’t really work though.

MyGreenPal answers:

You could gain an enormous amount of information about plasma physics, stellar astrophysics, particle physics and probably a dozen other fields of study if you *could* send a probe to travel through the outer atmosphere of the sun.

It would have a huge number of obstacles to overcome – intense temperature, magentic fields, gravity, x-ray/gamma-ray radiation and massive particle flux … To name a few!

Even if a probe could get there and measure something useful without the instrumentation being destroyed – how would it communicate with earth. Almost any radio signal would be swamped by the solar radiation!

MyGreenPal answers:

Vacuum energy

wikipedia:
Vacuum energy has a number of consequences. In 1948, Dutch physicists Hendrik B. G. Casimir and Dirk Polder predicted the existence of a tiny attractive force between closely placed metal plates due to resonances in the vacuum energy in the space between them. This is now known as the Casimir effect and has since been extensively experimentally verified. It is therefore believed that the vacuum energy is “real” in the same sense that more familiar conceptual objects such as electrons, magnetic fields, etc., are real.
Other predictions are more esoteric and harder to verify. Vacuum fluctuations are always created as particle/antiparticle pairs. The creation of these virtual particles near the event horizon of a black hole has been hypothesized by physicist Stephen Hawking to be a mechanism for the eventual “evaporation” of black holes. The net energy of the Universe remains zero so long as the particle pairs annihilate each other within Planck time. If one of the pair is pulled into the black hole before this, then the other particle becomes “real” and energy/mass is essentially radiated into space from the black hole. This loss is cumulative and could result in the black hole’s disappearance over time. The time required is dependent on the mass of the black hole but could be on the order of 10100 years for large solar-mass black holes.

Unsolved problems in physics: Why doesn’t the vacuum energy cause a large cosmological constant? What cancels it out?

The vacuum energy also has important consequences for physical cosmology. Special relativity predicts that energy is equivalent to mass, and therefore, if the vacuum energy is “really there”, it should exert a gravitational force. Essentially, a non-zero vacuum energy is expected to contribute to the cosmological constant, which affects the expansion of the universe. However, the vacuum energy is mathematically infinite without renormalization, which is based on the assumption that we can only measure energy in a relative sense, which is not true if we can observe it indirectly via the cosmological constant.

The existence of vacuum energy is also sometimes used, outside of mainstream physics, as controversial theoretical justification for the possibility of free energy machines. It has been argued that due to the broken symmetry (in QED), free energy does not violate conservation of energy, since the laws of thermodynamics only apply to equilibrium systems. However, consensus among particle physicists is that this is incorrect and that vacuum energy cannot be harnessed to do usable work. In particular, the second law of thermodynamics is unaffected by the existence of vacuum energy.

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MyGreenPal answers:

Maybe u can put the latest green tech that we have/achieved nowadays as add value for no.7
(e.g hotovoltaic Solar power technology)
Maybe you can refer below link as a guideline:

http://linksages.blogspot.com

MyGreenPal answers:

What a lot to read. Ignoring the essay
-Can anyone explain what active and passive solar energy is
Active is collecting the energy and moving it as hot liquid, air, steam, or electricity. Passive is having the sun shine in windows and soak into heavy masonry walls or other collection masses that give up the heat at night.

-Is it true that solar panels create pollution, if so how is it better used in space?
No solar panels do not create pollution in use. Making of silicon solar cells may involve industrial pollution.

-When silicon or other semiconductors in solar cells absorb solar energy do they create electricity because the electrons “move” instead of shaking and producing heat? No, heating involves molecular vibration. Silicon and other semiconductors involve the photons of light increasing the energy orbits of electrons and the potential then translates to an electrical voltage that can be moved as transistors control electricity.

MyGreenPal answers:

Related to your power production are methods to harness the heat of the sun: Solar water heating for a single house, trombe walls, greenhouses, cold frames.

MyGreenPal answers:

No doubt Manila and Luzon will learn a lesson about flood control and disaster pre-paredness. .. For a time. Same thing happens in the USA, coastal communities go a long time without a big storm and become very relaxed and fail to prepare even when a major storm appears to be heading right toward them. Hurricane Andrew did a lot of damage to south Florida in 1990, so Florida was very concerned abour hurricanes and flooding, changed the building codes, and other precautions.. Which may explain why Katrina and other storms in 2004 did relatively little damage to Florida, who had flooding, evacuation and releif plans well rehearsed. New Orleans had not seen a major storm for a very long time, and unfortunately was unprepared for Katrina, which caused a lot of damage and loss of life. Storms happen. Everyone and every home, and every community should have a plan on what to do when they happen. The Red Cross /Red Cresent is really good at helping communites to prepare for disasters, and they need volunteers to do thier job.

MyGreenPal answers:

My dad made a solar heater the following way, maybe you can modify it for your needs?

You will need foam insulation, 2 junk glass patio doors, about three cases worth of empty soda cans, black spraypaint, epoxy, caulk, dryer hose, plywood the size of the patio doors, and a thermostat-controlled fan.

Cut a hole in the plywood the same diameter as the dryer hose. Spray one side of the plywood black. Cut tops off soda cans, epoxy to plywood. The cans should touch at the sides and completely cover the wood. Spray all cans black. Cut insulation to make “sides” of a box, a little taller than the soda cans on all four sides of the plywood. Seal patio doors to the insulation “sides” after installing thermostat on the patio doors. Run dryer hose inside.

Make sure you put this in direct sunlight. The way it works is that the sunlight heats up the sprayed metal through the glass. As soon as it gets as hot as you’ve set the thermostat, the fan kicks on and blows hot air into the house until it cools off again. I know it sounds sort of MacGuyver crazy, but it kept my basement bedroom warm when I was a teenager. Good luck!

MyGreenPal answers:

Despite what many people say, you don’t need batteries for a solar system if you are going to also be connected to the electric company (grid). You just need the panels and an inverter (and mounting hardware and safety equipment like breakers and fuses).

Most people don’t generate all of the electricity they use. They offset some of their use with solar and buy the rest from the grid. You can get a very small grid-tied solar system for as little as $3000. However, it won’t generate much electricity at all. I’d say an average size system is around $10k – $20k. Here are some packages that show all of the components needed. Http://www.altestore.com/store/Kits-and-Package-Deals/Grid-Tied-Systems/Alt-E-Designed-Grid-Tie-Packages/c1087/

If you want to see how much you need, look at your electric bill and see how many kwh you buy each month. Put that number into a calculator like this one, and see how big of a system you need. Http://www.altestore.com/store/calculators/on_grid_calculator/. Installed cost is about $8 per watt of solar panel.

MyGreenPal answers:

It is not that simple. You need panels, batteries to store the energy, an inverter. Your usage can be figured out by a professional who will ask you questions about your lifestyle to figure out your average usage, determining your panel/battery needs. You cannot run any high usage items such as electric dryers or electric stoves, or electric furnace (depending on where you live). There are a lot of variables. You will be looking at around $20-30000 per average 4 person household.

MyGreenPal answers:

They don’t really produce enough electricity to sell to the National grid. I assume you’re in the UK. A better bet is panels that heat water using the heat of the sun. In winter the water coming off the mains is close to freezing, warm it up before it goes in to your hot water tank and that will save energy and much cheaper than solar panels that produce electricity. I assume you are turning your computer off when not needed. Turning your TV off instead of leaving it on standby. Using low energy light bulbs. Wearing warm clothing in winter and turning the heating down a little. Driving only when you have to? Saving energy is usually better than producing it. I’m quite interested in these new “bright” LEDs – they are really efficient at producing light. I find “low energy” light bulbs are useless for many applications. Like I can’t see to read! Leds may replace them soon. I had LEDs for my Christmas lights and they were efficient and controllable.

MyGreenPal answers:

I’m not there, so the best answer I could give is:
Look in your local newspaper and yellow pages and look for locals who specialize in this type of work. If anything like Indiana, we almost all will be glad to come inspect your home and give a free estimate. That would be your best bet on learning the answer to this question.
Go Green!

MyGreenPal answers:

You either can buy the solar kits which are DIY type of self contained units which you need some technical and handyman lattitude to set up. These are considered small but need to be put on a structure with care and know how.

If I was as serious as you sound – I would start small by buying a small outdoor light one that usually has a spotlight and a 1 or 2 foot square panel that you put up on a pole or a tree or a high spot on your house. They have a wire that you can run to that spotlight. It will turn on when it gets dark and usually you have little control over it- as in no fancy switches or wiring.

The reason I suggest this is that it will get you started and will help you to understand how solar works. Check out these types of units at your local garden center/hardware store.

Try also look at the various ones they sell on ebay.
These will give you a good idea of how diverse the many kits that are out there. Try two searches “Solar panel kit” and try “solar panel” . You definitely want to do a “solar power” book that gives you a good overview. (Make sure you change the catagory to “books” otherwise you will bring up too many other solar items in your search result.) Its a little complicated and it can get costly and technical. Having read a good recently printed book would give you a good overview of what is involved and help you make your decisions.

In some places you can actually hook up multi panel kits up to the electric companies power grid and get credit on the solar power you sell to them (for when you’re not home). You also can get considerable tax credits in some states and you also can get rebates from your electric company. I would suggest consulting a solar installer and even your town clerk in your town hall who might be able to steer you to people in government who would know what type of compensations you can get. Someone in your town (like a building inspector) may be able to recommend a company that has good reputation for installing high wattage solar panels for residential and businesses.

MyGreenPal answers:

You may want to hold off buying for a while….there’s a new technology for them being developed call “thin-cell” solar which may cut the costs for them in half to 1/3 per watt produced. It uses other materials than silicon like cadmium-telluride and others.
Http://welcome.colostate.edu/features/ava-solar.aspx

MyGreenPal answers:

While it is possible to solder together solar cells to make a panel, it would not be allowed to be connected to the house in the US, as it is not UL listed. If you are looking for a fun project that would be stand alone and power a CFL light with a battery or something like that, it is fine. You can find sites that give instructions for free, avoid the sites that tell you you can power your house for $200. You can not.

MyGreenPal answers:

Go on line there are piles of them don’t forget wind energy check out Jay Leno’s home and garage he is going right of the grid with his power and he has the name of the companies he buys from there was an article in Popular Mechanics awhile back on it

Valerie answers:

Don’t have an exact number, I’d guess at 20mA at 60 volts (half wave to drive a LED) or about 1 watt.

I’d use non-lighted switches, unless you already have them installed.

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Valerie answers:

Look at your electric bill and see how many kilowatt hours ( kWh) you use a month

divide by 30 for daily use. Most people are in the 20kW a day range

So you need to put that much into a battery bank each day

the Dept of Energy has a calculator for how much usable sun a day you have where you live ( like say 8 hours a day year round in Key West, 3 hours a day average in Seattle)

4 hours a day? You need a 5 kW system…more is better for there are various losses and inefficiencies to deal with…….

Panels: this would mean about 30 2×3 foot 175 watt panels; add wire, battery bank, inverters to take the 14 volt of the battery system back up to 1120 volt home use……add 10% for “stuff”…….and then the labor for the carpenters roofers and electricians to put it all in, plans permits and gov regulations…..

And time and again the number always comes out to about $6.00 a Watt installed..

So for a 5,000 Watt system plan on $30,000.00

Valerie answers:

The battery capacity is determined by the load and the number of days it will work without the sun.

Battery capacity is usually determined in ampere hours. First determine what load you have in Watt hours or kilowatt hours over a selected 24 hour period. If you have 800W and it is on for 4 hours a day, that is 3200Wh. Allow a figure for the losses between the battery and the load. This is cables and inverter. Maybe 20%. So now the battery has to supply 4000Wh.

Now what is the nominal battery voltage, under load, and not under charge. Lets say it is a 24V battery which is more suitable for this load than a 12V battery. The capacity is 4000Wh/24V = 167Ah. That is a battery large enough to carry the load for a single day. Now allow for a number of days without charging (no sun). This might end up being a compromise. Perhaps 5 days. The total capacity is then 5 x 167 = 835Ah. Perhaps the next nearest size is 1000Ah capacity at 24 Volts.

Checking the maximum load current…
The peak load is at least 800W (we started with that) but maybe there are short term peaks that are larger while the fridge starts etc. Let’s say 1600W. This represents a current of 67A with a 24V battery. A 1000Ah battery should easily handle that, as it is less than 1/10 of its capacity. Cables and circuit breakers and inverter must be sized for the 800W load, but also capable of handling this surge. Usually the voltage drop determines what size cable, rather than the current carrying capability of the cable, so it will be bigger than the 33A cable expected to carry 800W. Use the 67A figure to calculate voltage drop.

At this size I doubt there are any tubular types of batteries. I think that is more a personal choice than anything else. I am not a fan of sealed lead acid batteries. I would tend to use a flooded electrolyte type intended for deep cycle usage, especially in a hot climate. Note that batteries need to be well ventilated (hydrogen).

The solar panels themselves are a separate issue, used to recharge the batteries. There is a loss due to the battery chemistry. Consider using a Maximum Power Point (MPP) charger for efficiency. The panels have to charge the 24V battery with 1.4 x 167Ah = 234Ah per day minimum. This charge has to occur during the equivalent full sun hours in your location. It is a good idea to allow more, for aging, losses, rainy days etc. This tends to be all about the cost in the end. For this case you need at least 234Ah per day, so if there is 5 equivalent hours that is 46.8A from the panels for 5h per day. This is 4 sets of 12A panels in parallel.

Valerie answers:

Depends where you are. Thats a lot of electric! I would start by trying to reduce consumption.

A 1 kilowatt peak system will generate around 1,500 – 2000 kWh per year in a sunny climate (e.g. Cal.) and about 750 kWh/yr in a cloudy climate (e.g. England), so you might need a 10 or 15 kWpeak system.

Valerie answers:

Firstly you need to set a budget, both for $$$$$ and power requirements. This will tell you how much money you need to spend and whether you can afford it.

This exercise will lead you to what scale of system you need: how big an inverter, battery capacity, solar panel output etc.

If that doesn’t put you off the project, the only extras you might need are a switch to prevent battery overcharge and overdrain (cuts off if voltage is not within preset limits) These are called regulators and could be sourced from auto spares.

Below are a couple of links you might be interested in.

Http://www.rpc.com.au/company.html

http://www.solaronline.com.au/

Valerie answers:

I don’t know of anyone that has a solar powered attic fan. But I know of people having solar on their homes and run an attic fan.

I would think that the tiles would make the cost of anything more. Simply because they know you can afford the tiles so you could afford to pay a little more for their services.

It takes a tile kit to put solar on a roof and no one wants to get on a roof with tile on it. I know I will turn down any job that involved tile.

Good luck, but I bet it will cost a little more then you expect.

Valerie answers:

It’s there during the summer for ventilation, and during the winter, to prevent it from getting too cold we tie a plastic bag over it to keep the rain/snow/etc out.

Valerie answers:

Unless you live where it gets very hot you would save more money by improving your insulation. The service department of the company I work for installs these and I cannot say that I recommend them for any area that does not regularly reach 100 degrees in the summer.

Valerie answers:

Yes, you can add a Solar Controller. It will allow you to plug your solar attic fan into electric power and automatically kicks on when the sun goes down.

Valerie answers:

I would close the opening when not in use for proper attic venting as you mentioned plus to conform to Fire Hazard Prevention needs. The opening should have the same rating as the rest of the ceiling in normal mode to prevent fire from easy access to the attic structure.