The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #80377   Message #1464833
Posted By: JohnInKansas
18-Apr-05 - 09:26 PM
Thread Name: BS: Solar Energy Questions???....
Subject: RE: BS: Solar Energy Questions???....
Although I know it may set your teeth on edge to consult Boss Hawg, the National Center for Photovoltaic Energy has some fairly interesting stuff. You'll have to dig around in the site to see what - if anything - interests you.

A commercial source for possibly useful components is at National Solar Supply. Click on their "Prepackaged Kits" on the left sidebar to get a look at the range of things available. You're likely to get more "practical" info on what you might be able to do here.

Another commercial bunch, at Southwest PV also has some stuff on some typical installations. You'll likely want to poke around their site, but you can go straight to their home power systems.

In some parts of the country it's "doable," but takes careful advance planning to make sure the system will be useful and not just a maintenance chore.

Note that the National Solar guys also do wind turbines. With any solar/wind/fuel cell system you will need a battery bank, if only to stabilize voltages, a charge regulator of some sort, and an inverter or dc/ac motor generator to make your power into ac.

Another Boss Hawg site, at EERC Storage Batteries References site may be helpful if you start getting serious about spec'ing out a system. A very few links on this page may actually lead to something useful, but you'll have to Google up most of the references.

I've been looking at smaller stuff - perhaps for an RV, and haven't found anything very useful yet; but I'm limited on how much $$$$$ I can feed it. Larger installations are usually more efficient, and very large ones (factory size) can be break-even or better on costs - they say... Fuel cells actually look better there, but PhotoVoltaics would probably be prefered for house power.

Got room for a 40' wind turbine?

John