ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Solar a viable energy alternative?

On ethenol... It has artificialy driven up and created corn shortages in the markets... As a result there is a slight shortage of tortillas due to corn being diverted to fuel.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/26/AR2007012601896_pf.html

Apparently all of the subsidized corn farmers of our country were not enough to supply enough as fuel... So sooner or later we will be paying top dollar for both gas, and tomales, or corn bread if you preffer...

Why is it that people here can't think outside the square?.
The PoCo here have used 110VDC supplied by 2 banks of cells in parallel for years and that supplies all of our IT and WLAN gear, never had a problem with it either, although fed by PV panels.
Of course there will be those that will crop up and say "yet!".
Good battery maintenance will ensure good life in the cells, and you will have a better idea of when the cells will likely fail.
As I said over on the thread that Paul posted I have a local mate that has a house that is run on PV panels, he lives by himself though and has a power bill of $10 amonth, but he does have a well insulated house, most peoples money goes out through the windows and walls, roof and floor.
Also you don't need real sunlight to run a PV panel.
2 3000W inverters run his place, biggest load would be the stove on Grill, he uses that infrequently though.
One other thing about inverters, if you are going to run a Microwave oven on one, get a pure sine-wave unit, not one of them cheap square-wave jobs, nothing but junk.


{Message edited for a typo}

[This message has been edited by Trumpy (edited 02-28-2007).]

Solar pv may be on the threshold of being able to compete with carbon fuels. A report in last Monday's respected UK Daily Telegraph, [ Money section, google UK Daily Telegraph; search; solar ] was that CIGS cells [ CuInGaSe ], printed on foil, are set to come down below US $1 / Watt by 2009, putting them level par with conventional generation capital costs. Anil Sethi, CEO of Swiss corp 'Flisom' says he "don't need subsidies" he "just wants governments to get outa the way!" I second that! There may well be not enough roof area to support cells for 100% solar, as Steve says, but any mass development will hurt Pocos, shaving margins in the middle of the day, just when they earn most money and pv effectiveness is highest, which I surmise will knock on the head them paying for reverse metering your excess!

The price of corn, or indeed any crop producing oil, has shot up because of alternate use of agricultural products for fuels. Whole Grain burners, [ corn, wheat etc.] are now freely available for heating. Converting vegetable oil to biodiesel is a thiving UK/US/OZ/EU backyard industry - basically all you need is a set of scales, a jug, methanol, 'Drano' [hydoxide] and some 5 gallon HDPE drums. Using free waste oil [WVO] from burger joints is very attractive too, if a bit extra work filtering the crud. [Google WVO.]
I'm just starting to build a waste-oil central heating burner, having returned from the UK with all the necessary kit - hopefully more shortly; but a taster is I'm going to filter using a centrifuge, with electric oil pre-heat, a [commercial not home-made] electrically operated nozzle heater and electrical fire safety equipment, having taken on Iwire's advise, thanks Bob- two heads are better than one - even if they are sheeps' heads, as my old Pa used to say!

Alan

I have been tempted to reply several times to this thread. I have found solar power very useful in limited applications, all off grid.

The solution I like the most is solar water pumping, no batteries as the storage tank with gravity feed, stores the energy. I do not care for them at all if going with a pressure tank (with batteries).

I am ok with off grid housing, but the stuff I've done here is for temporary housing (the occupants, not the structures). As such, I can cheat on the sizing. It still gets very costly.

I am a fan of having a solar panel on the top of a RV. But we RV owners must have money to burn, and we already have the batteries. I do not care for the idea of solar powered RV connections, but in working through that, I have come up with compromises where we provide a solar powered charge your battery (only for more permenant guests like a site host).

Having provided generator power for off grid residences, I like the hybrid (using both generator and solar) though there are many that I have designed generator only because of initial cost.

My first and foremost choice is just to connect to the grid. When solar does become reasonable, I would like to adopt it and convert. My money is safe for a few years at least.

It is nice to have the choice and even better to have electricity. I have lived where running water meant sending the house boy out to the community well with a bucket and electricity was available 1-2 hours per week. I am thankful to live now where when you talk about things like this and people are in awe and miss the point saying "You had a maid and a house boy?" I would much rather have the running water, electrical service, gas service, garbage service, paved roads, and the vermin free house.

You had a maid and a house boy? I wouldn't mind that country... Maybe hire some more help for rats and such... So what I don't have a big screen TV! I don't have one now. And no offense anyone, but the lack of a computer wouldn't bother me either Truthfully wouldn't miss the toilet either....

With ya'lls permission, may I weigh in here?

Isn't there an underlying issue here?

What was the electrical load of the last house you residential guys put together?

I'm exagerating of course, but a 40 gigglestinker sq ft summer house with the hot tub swimming pool whirlpool tub in the master bath home theater landscape lighting electric dog washer three dishwashers multiple big screen tv's etc etc etc etc.

The ones that make PV work are the ones willing to forgo some of the bells and whistles that so many of the consumers feel are a "right". Alternative energy is a good thing, but it will only work if somehow all of the users of the electricity are willing to say "This much and no more"

The CA energy crisis of a few years ago could have been a lot less, if everyone would have turned some things off, turned the a/c a little warmer, and thought about what they were doing before they turned something on, but how many people were willing to do that?

There are some comments on the ethanol boondoggle here, the electric car is the same thing. They are remote polluters. I read that it takes more energy to make the electricity to charge the car to drive for 10 miles than it takes to make the half gallon of gas to go the same distance in a "average" car.

I think the whole point of my somewhat rambling post, that until something convinces everyone that they "help the cause" by not using as much as they did, we are stuck with what we have.

BTW I use PV here at the railroad, it powers some of my signals that are out in the middle of nowhere, LED bulbs are a good thing.

TW

The wave of the future in alternative energy seems to be wind generators, not solar panels. I saw a show on ethanol production several years ago. The producer wasn't using corn, he was using waste Halloween candy.

Dave

Tiger, I'm inclined to agree with you.

I have seen several successful, small wind turbines. Some of these ... even most of these ... were rebuilt models from the 1930's. (At that time many farms had them, and the government insisted on their destruction as a condition of bringing out power lines).

Today, many of these turbines have been dug up from the mud around the towers that they were pushed from, have had the major work needed to make them functional, and attached to the various devices that allow them to 'back feed' the grid.

This is NOT to be confused with the pretty white elephants you're always seeing pictures of. Those massive wind turbines are generally non-functional, with frozen bearings or simply free-spinning, without producing a watt of power. The only things they seem to do well is make noise and dice condors.

The role of wind seems also to be on a smaller scale, and has been much more successful than solar attempts.

I have always wondered if you would be able to cobble up a wind turbine out of an old automobile alternator, a couple of deep cycle batteries and an inverter, if it would be possible ( and feasible) to generate enough power to operate choice loads throughout a house ( lighting, and perhaps the fridge and freezer. Nothing big really, just something that could be bolted up atop an unused T.V antenna that it seems many people still have bolted to the sides of their houses, well at least around here they do.. Put the inverter and batteries in the basement and there ya MIGHT have a limited but cheap source of "green" power.
Just a thought....

A.D

Trainwire, the residential market here varies from 100a services with barely anything on them, to 320A services that are maxed out easy. On a few occassions 600A that hit 90% during what I feel is the highest energy consumption times - Chistmas Parties, and hot summer days... That is all single family homes....

While I'll agree that better lighting should be used more, but it is really hard to force that type of lighting down the throats of people who think 'green' until they look green under the lights. Or for that matter don't feel like spending the green stuff on LED's that haven't been able to get that warm incandesant feel to them yet. The sticker shock on 3000k and 5000k white LED's puts people right off of them, fast.
And I have to twist peoples arms to install the legaly required flouresent lighting.

What people do want,so it seems, is 50W MR-16 cans more or less every 4'!