Solar

[E_]

Wonder why Solar companies never seem to make it even after taking tons of taxpayer money...

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[Lock5]

Because it take many many many more amps to power a car/home/ect. than can be made with Solar Power.

Think square footage of panels required to power a home would be larger than the footprint of the home. Same with Automobiles.

Fuel Cells are working nicely but we don't have any infrastructure in place to support them for the public. Crown has installed over 5,000 of them in lift truck applications. Battery technology is developing rapidly, Tesla is now approching 300 mile range on their all electric(read no gas motors) car, but all the engineers at GM can only get us 40 miles with the Volt(right).......

We will all be driving electric cars once we suck the last drop of oil out of this rock we live on. Latest data says that is about 300 years from now.

Until then, looks like calculators, and watches.............

[E_]

Actually that is not entirely accurate. I figured it up and it would take about half of my roof area to get me 20kw which should most of the time power my entire home with no issues. I thought I about doing it and just running off the solar to a inverter during the day and at night going back to the grid. The problem is such a system is anywhere from $30-$50k and that makes getting a ROI pretty hard. For me though I have some available space and I might would instead put a grid up facing due south in the field. They also make roof shingles now that are solar cells thus you can do your entire roof and it look normal.

I think solar is a GREAT idea and the cells continue to get more and more productive per square inch. The coverings get more and more durable and abrasive resistant. I thought about 10kw and I could actually get the smaller lesser quality 10kw setup for around $10,000 and that would handle the house minus running the radiant heat.

I am not anti oil, coal etc. I just love the thought of being able to be off the grid.
http://www.solarhome.com/catalog.htm Sad thing is China is leading the way on this and there are not very many USA options.

Anyone watch the coverage of the solar powered plane?
http://www.solarimpulse.com/

For vehicles I still love the idea of combustion hydrogen with solar powered hydrogen refueling stations. Don't need anything but sunlight and a water source thus infrastructure to pop up refueling stations would be fairly easy. No supply issues.

[Soak-up-the-Sun]

You are right E, there are so few solar materials made in the USA. Even fewer with reliable reviews. I have done alot of shopping to power my small camper so I could cut back on my generator use for air conditioning, microwave, electronics....I just don't know enough about how electricity works-- amps, volts, watts, inverters, battery banks, overcharging-- all foreign language to me. I barely understand how my generator runs my charger to bump up the one big battery I have now on the camper. So, I chicken out on the initial investment to get me started since there are so few affordable made in the USA options. I don't want to waste the first $500 with poor quality.

[Lock5]

It would take a solar panel the size of three campsites to generate enough electricity to power an AC unit for an hour. That is why this stuff isn't viable, they are made in China due to the fact they need to be cheap, American labor isn't.