Solar power

[ncboman]

anyone here generating your own electricity?

[Wismon]

It doesn't work; don't listen to the greenies.

Wind, solar, wave power, and other genies in bottles will never hold a candle to the candlepower and efficiency of petroleum and nuclear power.

That, of course, is simply my opinion.

[ncboman]

So, if I could find an affordable system that does work to reduce those electric bills, the product should sell very well. :rolleyes:

[Rock Chuck]

The new Nat. Geographic has an article on the future of solar. The simple voltaic cells just aren't powerful enough, but new developments hold real promise. A much more efficient way is to use solar to heat water which in turn is used to turn a turbine to generate power. They claim that a single solar plant 100 miles square will provide all the power the US needs. That's 10K square miles, but that's not an overwhelming area in the west...except that the greenies would NEVER allow anything that big to be built, even in much smaller pieces. The province of the liberals is obstruction, not progress. It doesn't matter what kind of power we try to use. They'll fight it tooth and nail. They want us all in tipis.

[ncboman]

I'll have to check that out.

I'm interested in a household size system presently working that provides electric at the same price or cheaper than the utilities are now charging. ... if there is such a thing. :rolleyes:

[Bill Gunn]

They are putting up 100's of these windmills in the county I live in.

http://pic90.picturetrail.com/VOL2250/777751/1363903/373621250.jpg

And paying the farmers a minimum of $2000.00 a year for leases for each windmill.

There are so many that they show up on the local weather radar as a thunderstorm !!

http://pic90.picturetrail.com/VOL2250/777751/1363903/373621415.jpg

I know from one hill where we deer hunt you can count 75 of them on neighboring hill tops.
I don't know how well they work, or how well a small home size version would work (Zoning problems too), but someone is makin' a lot of bucks !!
(Probably subsidized by you and me).

[ncboman]

interesting, I know the windmills are going up in lots of places so they must be working.

Doan see any rooftop solar collectors though and I think that's where the homeowner niche may be if it's feasable and profitable.

[Altjaeger]

interesting, I know the windmills are going up in lots of places so they must be working.

Doan see any rooftop solar collectors though and I think that's where the homeowner niche may be if it's feasable and profitable.

If you dig around for some old Mother Earth News magazines they use to have articles regularly on home produced power. It did require maintenance of room size banks of batteries collecting variously wind/water/solar power. Most still lived on the grid and drew from it when they exceeded the capaciry of the batteries. However, when the batteries recharged then excess production went back to the grid and was bought by the utility.

In extreme cases such as north Canada some had such set ups as their only source.

[Altjaeger]

It doesn't work; don't listen to the greenies.

Wind, solar, wave power, and other genies in bottles will never hold a candle to the candlepower and efficiency of petroleum and nuclear power.

That, of course, is simply my opinion.

I do agree commercially that is true today. I think we really are wrong in not using nuclear power as the most environmentally supportable means available today having fished trout in the cooling pond of such a plant in Germany. (make all the jokes about that fact you want):)

However, remembering laughing at the gadgets of Dick Tracy and Buck Rogers 50 years ago I have learned never to say never ( except of course when I say never say never).:D

[Wismon]

Well I just called my local raygun salesman on my two way wrist tv to ask him about the topic and he pointed out that while all matter and all electromagnetic radiation contain energy that does not make all forms of energy equally amenable to being used efficiently for human needs. I’m sure the polar ice cap has enough heat in it to power the county if not the world. However, pumping that heat to a usable form and location is another matter entirely. On Earth we have some substances that are spectacular energy sinks, that produce great volumes of heat efficiently and are of almost no use otherwise: coal, oil, and uranium. Why not use them? They’re not doing anyone any good sitting in the ground.

Energy independence is a pipe dream and, as Holman Jenkins of the Wall Street Journal pointed out, it’s a worthless goal in any case. Even if the Mid-East had no oil that wouldn’t make our need to be involved there go away. Probably the only time wind or solar are ever used in any significant capacity is when they’re subsidized by the government at taxpayer’s expense. Its’ just a totem of modern worshipers of the earth and sun who want to sacrifice the rest of us on their altar to their false gods.

[Renegade]

I find alternative energy interesting, especially those that use the no-cost sun. But I'm curious as to why our slow progress to more affordable means. I've been hearing for at least a year now that pv's have had a breakthru with efficiency by using thin mylar sheeting. This would seem to me to overcome their biggest drawback... price. Even the smaller panels to charge a battery or two aren't really that cheap.

Same goes for battery storage. That's the next stumbling block. Here's an interesting article on a breakthru for that. Wonder how long till it benefits the average Joe. http://www.heraldextra.com/news/article_b0372fd8-3f3c-11de-ac77-001cc4c002e0.html

And then there's wave power, which to me is a great solution, though I know little about it, but I do know most of the US is surrounded by waves.... free of charge. It works on a similar principle to those battery-less shake flashlights, magnetic induction.

And I know one other thing. When the sh!t hits the fan, we'll be scrambling for energy in one form or another, and I plan on being ready to be self sufficient. Then all I have to do is protect it!!!

[Rock Chuck]

They're working on solar heat storage now. The current idea is to use the excess heat generated to melt some kind of salt which is then stored underground. At night, the heat in the salt is used to heat water for steam power generation.
Many solar generators currently in use heat water or oil. They use computer driven curved mirrors to reflect the sun onto a pipeline containing the water or oil. The heat is then used to turn water into steam to generate power. Once the water is hot, all the technology is old stuff, good old steam turbines.

Of course this is beyond the homeowner. We need to keep it simple and cheap. I've been mentally designing a hot water pre-heater. I want to make a rooftop panel with water circulating from a drum in the garage. The incoming water will circulate through tubes (a heat exchanger) in the drum picking up heat, then go to the electric water heater. The circulating water will contain anti-freeze so I don't have to worry about winter freeze-ups.

I once saw a home made rig using hot water from a geothermal spring. It was nothing more than a truck radiator and a pump to circulate the hot water through it. They used a fan to force air through the radiator to the house. The thermostat was only used to run the fan. As the water left the radiator, it then ran through tubes under the driveway to keep it clear of snow. It ended up in a nearby river, still as clean as it came out of the ground.

[happycamper]

This book has some interesting ideas regarding solar/wind/water power.I think some of them would work for a small place but not for commercial or large scale use.I entertain the idea of not being so much "green", but having an alternate power supply.

[ncboman]

Funny you should mention that book. My wife brought me a copy a couple weeks ago and it sits on my desk ... unread so far. :rolleyes:

[ncboman]

Not impressed with the solar section of that book. All old news. I made and sold those passive solar heaters 30yrs ago. :rolleyes:

In one of my trade mags there was a piece on a new photoactive film that is applied over new metal roofing to generate electric. Apparantly it works but I don't see it as feasable. This stuff is expensive and a new metal roof breaks the bank for most folks without the solar package.

[Rock Chuck]

The price on some of this stuff is too high to make it pay for itself.
I've also looked at some of the small wind generators. Same thing. There's one that I've seen in several stores that puts out 400 watts, which isn't much. It sells for around 5 or $600. However, if you read the fine print, it only puts out 32w in a 10mph wind. That won't even light up 1 room. It requires a sustained wind of 28mph to get the full 400w.

[Bushman]

NCB, I got a look at that photo active film at one of my accounts a few years back that was coating the stuff for the big supplier. They had it in the light fixtures for their under ground parking facility. Florescent lights don't draw a lot of power, but if you need to light up an entire inside parking area they probably do. It was ground floor technology back then, but I suspect that we will see it more for commercial and residential use for the green guys. You couldn't tell it from florescent lighting.

[Rock Chuck]

You should take a drive along the Columbia River between Pendleton and The Dalles, OR. There are windmills by the thousands going up. That area blows all the time and it's all sagebrush hills. I think the issue is keeping them slowed down, not whether there's enough wind to turn them.
Windmills are high maintenance, though. There's a tremendous amount of stress on them.

[Alan R McDaniel Jr]

Wind power certainly won't (probably won't) power my pickup but it will do a somewhat reasonable job of raising water out of the ground. It is not without maintenance or repair, much more so than an electric pump requires. I am open to the idea of running a windmill to generate electricity and then using that electricity to pump water out of the ground. Whether that is an efficient use of the wind, the electricity or the water remains to be seen. The wind blows as it will and there are situations where, if there was a windmill being turned by it and that windmill was generating electricity, the value of which was over the cost of the windmill, then I feel this would be a good thing. Capitalism and the free market system take care of these things on their own and produce excess value (profit) for those who use or sell them. On the other hand, when someone forces the issue as part of their own agenda and personal view of "how things should be" and they use taxes collected from everyone to advance that agenda and view, then I see that as a bad thing.

I don't see wind farms as being a bad thing, not any more so than damming a river and flooding hundreds of thousands of acres of land to generate hydroelectric power. Nuclear power is great too but it is certainly a genie that once released from the bottle is really tough to get back in. I know the idea is there that those responsible for the nuclear plants have a vested interest in the plant and will not do anything that would cause a meltdown because they want it to continue to be profitable. At some point, someone, in any endeavor takes a shortcut, and that's where the problem is. Keeping a tight rein on good people is a must with nuclear energy.

The internal combustion engine is going to be with us for a long time and as far as I know and can predict will require some sort of combustible substance to power it. Corn squeezins won't cut it either.


nc, to address your question "anyone here generating your own electricity?"

Unfortunately, no, not yet.

nc, to address your question "So, if I could find an affordable system that does work to reduce those electric bills, the product should sell very well."

I don't know about "sell very well" but If I thought I was going to be in my current home for another 5 years then I would certainly be interested in doing several things to reduce my electric bills, including exploring solar energy options.

Alan

[Rock Chuck]

I had an uncle who was a Nebraska wheat farmer. They used a windmill to pump their water into a big cistern. Problems arose when they had a couple weeks without wind.
Around here, a wind powered pump isn't 'ideal'. My water table is 180'. I know of some wells over 400'. You can't use suction pumping over about 30' so it has to be a submersible pump.

[Renegade]

I came across this in an advertisement in F&S magazine. This is the flexible solar panel material I spoke of earlier. I have never seen it offered in a product to the general public. They still aren't cheap but definitely more versatile.
Brunton Solar Panels http://www.brunton.com/product.php?id=256
Anyone ever try these?

[tincan]

I've been hearing for at least a year now that pv's have had a breakthru with efficiency by using thin mylar sheeting.

the first article I saw using the "less efficient but much cheaper solar cell" angle was when i was around 19- and the payoff was "just around the corner" then. Since, I read an article like that one every six years or so.

seems to me it would have been implemented by now...

[ncboman]

metalmag has been featuring green roofing via metal for a good while now. The number of companies using it is quite astounding.

A recent feature is of Melfred Borzall Inc of Santa Maria, Ca.


Two photo-voltaic roof installations on the company's Santa Maria plant provide 90% of the company's manufacturing facility's electrical power.

They used silicon based 648 PV solar panels on the first building and larger 347 solar panels on the 2nd building, both attached to the galvalume standing seam metal roof with clips.

Cost on the first system alone was $575,000 but the anual electric bill dropped from $36,000 to $3,064 in the first year. Thru tax credits and rebates the cost of the first roof was reduced to $214,500. They did even better on the 2nd roof.

Green roofing, esp in commerical usage, is the cutting edge these days. :)