Solar Panel Owners

[MindoverMaster]

View attachment 5014

Saw this on HomeDepot.

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

You MAY en eligible, meaning, you must seriously improve your home efficiency.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

If you want to power all or most of your home it will cost far more than $2,000.

 

[patonb]

130W of power runs $1400...... Computers bout 500W..

SOLAR PACKAGES

 

[MindoverMaster]

Well, at any given time, there are at least 2 computers on. Sometimes more.

 

[Kharn]

There was a BBC artical about 3 months ago that had a useful fact that had a fact that was kinda Ironic, "Solar panels use more energy to create than they save" and are nearly unrecyclable as so many of the are made from so many toxic materials you can't just dump them and you can't recycle them because you can't reclaim the materials effectively.

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

That is true to an extent, a lot of power companies in deserts are building some very tall buildings, placing a few hundred thousand mirrors around it, focusing them at the top in a central point. Causes some kind of material to super-heat, and then the rest is just boiling water and so on to get power. But what is unique about it, is the fact this can stay hot enough to boil water for days with-out sunlight. But is normally only seen in areas that are sunny almost the entire time. Sad truth is, the closest to semi-clean power we can ever have is some type of nuclear energy, at least, in the near future. Wind farms are expensive, and difficult to maintain, solar is, well, very costly even though it has come a LONG ways in the last few years.

I know a project you could do if your good with plumbing and such. Build a set of boxes on your roof to contain copper pipes, put water in them, hook a pump up, and use that to heat your water in the water tank. This is a sealed system, and requires a highly efficient enclosure to allow the air inside to get hot, thus heating the water inside those pipes. I have thought about doing solar heating for our water, but, that's a lot of copper pipe to run.

 

[patonb]

Unfortunately the "power towers" are horrible due to alignment issues from minor breezes and such.

The best, imho, solar collecter is the miror tube method, where they reflect the energy a short ~1-1.5 m distance to a synthetic oil filled tube... but thats off topic.. Nevadas Solar One is like this. Theytare experimenting with molten salts to maintain the heat load over night or on under sunny days. The company states it could power the US wih just 10% of Nevadas Public land.

Saxons right, the gallium arsnide type collector panels use tremendous power consuming furnaces to grow the crystals, plus the toxicity of the process.


Sorta like how using aluminum to make things lighter... sure it uses less fuel to run your car, but Al smelting sucks power by the super gulp load.

Seems we cant figure out how to save the planet without destroying it to build the savior... Though biodeisel from alge grown on factory co2 emmisions seems cool.

 

[Slaymate]

Seems we cant figure out how to save the planet without destroying it to build the savior... Though biodeisel from alge grown on factory co2 emmisions seems cool.

alge grown biodiesel is to limited of a power source, they'll never be able to produce enough.

The planet is more than capable of saving itself. Mans attempt to change nature will be the end of man. A new species will take over and in the end the Sun will consume all. What man does and has done will be a feeble little scratch on the life of planet earth when all is said and done.

 

[patonb]

No! Once we get the DiLithium crystal, we can complete the warp drive technology!