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I have been thinking about some green ways of depending on the grid as much as I do. There are so many things that can be done but most are very expensive unless you use some build some of it yourself. Have a look at this solar and wind system that uses some home made sun tracking units. "The systems tracks the Sun using a controller from Red Rock Energy and a Satellite Jack Arm. The tracking device is custom made. The accuracy is very good and the arrays are very synchronous throughout the day. They begin parking movement (East) exactly when the Sun dips below the horizon to get ready for the next day. The Photovoltaic panels are consisting of 24 Uni-solar 64’s. On the day the picture above was taken the system was producing 2200 watts, both PV and Wind at 1:30 pm in Sept."
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May 23rd, 2008
Solar power is only viable if EVERYBODY does it. The thing about the sun and solar is that efficiency stays the same no matter how big of an area you use. So for everybody to have enough power all the time, we will need to have so many arrays that every single flat surface would have them on there.
Then we would need such huge battery banks to store the energy when we aren’t using it that much (Such as during the day, when everybody is at work) and a power infrastructure to let the areas that are producing more distribute it back to the areas that are using more.
Which is NOT THE GRID as it is now. The Grid is a horrible and vastly outdated system that needs to be updated.
May 23rd, 2008
The grid as it is, is in sad shape, but there are steps being made to eliminate the wasted power that many grids leak. The smart grid, which was originally developed for rural co-ops to watch their power usage and consumption, as well as do remote meter readings is leading the way for a newer smart grid that would more readily accept systems that produce their own electricity and feeds it back into the larger picture. A plus that comes with a smart grid is the ability of broadband of power (BOP) that would let you plug in an adapter to your outlet, pop in a verification CD that tells the system to turn on the service. The speeds we’re talking about over BOP are equal to or better than say Verizon FIOS. The even better thing is that 99.9% of everyone is already equipped to handle it, just a new meter is needed.
May 30th, 2008
how many kilowatts per day that it can store.
May 30th, 2008
Storage isn’t tied to the size of the panel, but the size of the battery array it’s hooked too.
June 4th, 2008
See this movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEPA4Y1sq8E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbaNkXtT9LU&feature=related
our Sun Tracker web cam: http://integral2005.com/online.html
June 7th, 2008
[…] left a comment on this sun tracker project that shows his cool Solar Hot Water Panel with Sun Tracker in operation. The panels follow the sun […]
September 4th, 2008
In response to alexander,
the world average energy need is 1.5*10^13 W. If the entire world was covered with totally efficient solar cells we could get 10^7 W of energy. So even with solar panel efficiencies what they are today, (20%) much less than 1 thousanth of the surface would have to be covered.
September 4th, 2008
There are some problems with your logic, and math, AVI.
1. This scenario requires the use of super-conductor wires to get the power from the sun that is shining in Australia to let me run my AC at night in Cleveland, USA. This isin’t possible, but even taking into consideration that the wires are somewhere near 7% the world over. So, we must also take this into consideration.
2. You cannot put solar cells just anywhere on the earth. The ocean is your biggest enemy here. Once you take out all the surface area of the ocean, you are left with just over 148,000,000 square kilometers of land. or about 29% of the total surface area of the earth. This too must be taken into consideration.
3. Even that land is going to have hills, valleys, mountians, and all kinds of stuff. The best energy is going to be at the equator or near it–there is less equator square footage than there is surface area of just the USA alone. So, you aren’t going to get optimal transmission of the energy.
So unless you can get me some numbers (solar panel square meter, wattage, cost, some way to distribute it world wide, how to collect it from the oceans) then I cannot help you further as your argument makes no sense.
And please take this info with the knowledge that I WANT SOLAR ENERGY. I just realize that it’s just not going to happen.