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I'm kinda into eletricity and inverters and batteries and all that for no real reason.  I even rigged up an 800W inverter in my car so I can run whatever I want in there except apparently a hair dryer and toaster cuz their power usage ratings on the label are A LIE!!!  >:(  ;D  Compared to computing, simple electrical circuits like that are a piece of cake so don't get intimidated.  Since electricity costs are such a huge factor and almost the only ongoing expense, it makes perfect sense to cut it out.  So did anyone already make a solar powered or I guess wind or anything else "power out of nowhere"-ish?

Cuz here's my idea for one but I'm definitely open to suggestions.  Solar power sounds bad because you can't have your computer losing power every time a cloud crosses the sun and a USB shutdown-command-giving uninterruptable power supply is safer but loud and annoying and expensive and then your computer is still off a lot :P And I'm all about low costs so what I'm thinking is get a 50W solar panel or two over at Harbor Freight for about $110 (no idea where they all are in the US but just go to whatever mega cheapo demi-hardware store is near you :P).  I dunno what kind of voltage regulating capabilities those would have though so that may be a significant expensive.  Then get a 400W or so inverter at the same kind of shop or on newegg or whatever.  That could handle a midrange card, CPU, and hard drive pretty sufficiently.  They're only like $35 and an 800W pretty high end one is about $75 if you had to go that high, but you really wouldn't want to because the last piece is a battery.  A really big, high capacity, high output interstate battery is like $120 so screw that :P Walmarts carry a $25 riding lawn mower battery (+$5 lead core surcharge if you don't trade in a battery so $30).  I bought one just for testing subwoofer amps and stuff and when the power was out for half a day here after a big storm a few months back, I got my 200W inverter out and that battery and ran my 32" LCD TV for about 3 hours then ran my 120W gaming laptop off it for another couple hours and as far as I could calculate, it was maybe 30% of the way to a voltage that's too low for my inverter to use.  So those cheap batteries pack a lot of power!

So here's what I'm thinking.  Use your computer during the day and keep your solar panel hooked up to it.  Hopefully it's sunny :P then your battery charges and then near sundown, you bring the battery inside and hook up your inverter to it.  Most have jumper cable style clamps so it takes no wiring and like 5 seconds.  Turn it on and plug your computer into its AC outlet then boot it up.  It'll run off power from the battery via the inverter.  Start mining and hope that your battery has enough juice to not drop below approximately 10.4V before morning.  Then wake up, make delicious eggs, read slashdot, brush your teeth, then go shut down your computer.  Then unhook the inverter and put the battery back outside on the solar panel and repeat daily.  If you find your battery running out, calculate the draw and overall capacity of the battery via one of many methods and then add 1 or more additional batteries in parallel to have enough power.

Now, this would technically work for a total equipment price tag of as low as $175.  But if you REALLY wanted to do this long term, here's the ideal setup I'm imagining.

Several solar panels for ultra fast charging.

A voltage regulator for the solar panels to keep it under xx amount of volts.

A DC based battery charger with auto-shut off so you don't overcharge the battery (this is actually pretty much mandatory unless you want to check on the voltage every 15 minutes otherwise it will explode in a flaming ball of hydrogen and acid from overcharging)

A voltmeter and amp-meter so you know what's going on with the whole system at all times.

a really high end, efficient power inverter (or a 12V DC computer power supply instead if they make those)

A UPS that automatically shuts the computer down if the voltage dips too low

Proper fuses :P

A deep cycle marine battery that's build to perform many, many draw down and recharge cycles.  $30 walmart batteries may not last real long if you use them daily in this fashion :P

P.S. since I have almost all that equipment, I'm gonna rig up a demo of it and make a video, which is a lot more exciting than text :D  Oh and if the forum ever decides that 21 posts and about 3 days straight of being logged in is enough to get past newbie status, it'll be posted in the proper forum category too.

Seems good, but it's out of reach for most people I think, not everyone knows that much about electricity, and where you get 50w panels so cheap?

there is a 60W solar panel on Amazon for $270.90 with free 2-day shipping via Amazon Prime.   still up there in price, but for people with money to burn, have at it

Sorry but that doesn't works, lets do some calculations:
a midrange PC with high efficiency PSU will drain at least 280W, if the night is 10 hours long you need 2,8KWh
 lets assume you're using 2 of the solar panel to charge the battery, and that the charger has 100% efficiency you have in the 14 hours of day 1,4KWh of power put in your batteries. Thats means less than 5hr of power.
Even admitting that 5 hours is better than 0  if you do same is calcs come out that this is totally anti-economics: if you pay your current 0,2$/KWh you can save 0,28$/day, or 100$/yr so you need 3 years of full 14 hours of sunny days to pay your investment (or you live in a desertic area or actually is safe to think that you need at least 5...)

Oh trust me, a solar panel - battery - inverter - computer setup is about 10000x less complicated than this whole bitcoin system, which I only about 75% understand :P it's reeeeeeeeeally simplistic.  Like watch one 20 minutes video I make and you're an expert on it simplistic.

That not a terrible price.  Just to see if my memory was good, I looked up the one I saw in person.  Well...it was $120 on some crazy weekend super blowout price :P

http://www.harborfreight.com/45-watt-solar-panel-kit-90599.html

$180 now so that sucks but still :P

I'm no solar specialist but I would think 45W is what it would get on a sunny day in death valley or mounted to a satellite orbiting earth lol.  I'm sure in northern US conditions, it'd be less but I dunno how much less.  But pretending that 45W one generates 45W all the time and an electric bill of $0.12/KWh (somewhat close to average I think), it'd pay for itself after 187 days running just 8 hours per day.  That's not bad.  And if you buy 2 for double the price and they generate double the power for double the combined time, they pay for themselves in 187 days.  And if you buy 10, they pay for themselves in 187 days.  Well you get the idea :P

I could seriously see people who drop $500-1000 on rigs solely for coin mining spending even an extra $400 on gear that would allow them to operate their rig for free.  And if somehow bitcoins collapse, you can start inverting some nono-fulltime use appliances and lower your electric bill.  It's less convenient but power grid-caliber, power company approved, flow reversing inverters are $2000 on a good day.  Those are the ones people use who have big setups to supplement their own AC power in realtime use and that's the major reason they're not cost effective.

hmmmm, yeah I hadn't ran the precise math yet but I had a feeling that with 1 medium sized solar panel, you wouldn't be able to run your PC every single night.  And your theoretic machine would require a ballpark figure of 6 small batteries to operate for 10 hours.  That even kills a stepped implementation where you invest a smaller amount up front and use bitcoin profits to fun additional panels over time.  Well that sucks :P  But the good news is that that panel kit appears to include a voltage regulator, voltage transformer, and voltmeter :D

But I have another idea, which isn't my idea cuz I saw it on the discovery channel on that faux-post-apocalyptic semi-reality show: The Colony :P  Okay, so what charges the battery in your car?  Your alternator.  It spins and copper spinning past copper or whatever creates charge and that charges your battery plus runs your car.  Btw your local power plant does the exact same thing but the spinning turbine is a little bigger but this is the ideal way to create power efficiently.

A minimal alternator in a small sedan could do about 90 amps tops @ 14.4V @ 5000RPM and probably has an idling rating around 20-30 amps.  The average home car battery charger maxes at 6 amps and can charge an average battery in just a few hours.  BUT car batteries can obviously take more than 6 amps because in a car, it could be causing the alternator to supply it with like 50-100 amps if it was really low.  I have no idea the max rate they can safely absorb energy at, I just know it's REALLY high.  I mean, you leave your headlights on for a few hours while your car's off and your battery is at like 6V so you hook it up to your friend's truck and have him rev the engine (to create more than those 30 idling amps) for a few minutes and the thing's back up several volts higher already.

Now, an alternator takes less power away from the engine than an average air conditioning unit and even those don't exceed like 50HP.  In fact, you can spin an alternator fairly fast with just your hand.  So here's what I'm thinking and like I said, they actually built this on The Colony and it worked.  They just happened to find a bank of like a dozen brand new batteries, double zero gauge cabling, and fuses laying around but still :D ;D  Go get an old school stationary excersize bike on a metal plate frame at Goodwill or a garage sale or craigslist for $20.  Buy a small battery or two at Walmart for $30 ea.  Buy two cuts of a couple feet of about 8 gauge cable and some large alligator clamps at your hardware store for about $30.  Call your local junkyard and tell them you want any alternator of any size out of any car that can spin for about $50-75.  Oh and guess what, all modern alternators have voltage regulators built in already :D Get creative with a drill and a thick metal plate (about $30) and some bolts and mount the alternator a foot or two from your front tire.  Get a car belt matching the alternator's pulley size (about $20) and wrap it around the bike wheel, possibly after removing the back tire, and tension it up.  Then pedaling spins the alternator which you wired up to your battery and tada, it's charging your battery REALLY fast.  Oh and keep an eye on that amp meter and volt meter you hooked up to the circuit ($10 ea) and don't exceed like 50 amps and when the battery is at 14V, stop pedaling.  I'm thinking it would probably take just a couple minutes to charge an entire battery that way.  So tada, FREE ENERGY! :D

You know what that means? Are you ready to have your mind blown?  Like clear out the back of your head, blown? :P I hope you're sitting down for this!  You'd be making free energy for your bitcoin rig....to make bitcoins and make money.....while losing weight!  KABOOM! Mind officially blown lol.

Off-hand without doing the maths and factfinding, I'm going to bet that the average human won't be able to pedal hard/fast enough to drive the alternator to produce significant power. After all, we used to have these things on bikes that powered the lights... took a fair bit of pedalling to get the lamp working bright enough.

Most importantly, conservation of energy. We're going to be converting only as much food energy into electricity as we can absorb (or we'll get another news headline "Man dissipates himself generating power for bitcoin mining") so definitely not going to be enough... unless you run a slimming studio/gym with access to multiple free "workers" to join your "pool" :D

Just for math an average man can produce 70-100W, but the idea of the gym is fun ;D

Sounds a bit too many manual operations involved. Why don't you consider hooking things up in parallel, or triple source a cheaper UPS so that it would run off AC, Solar or Battery depending on which is available?

Alternatively, wiring the solar/battery directly to the most demanding +12V (with a regulator of course) auxilliary power inputs of the graphic cards so the solar powered stuff will just drive about 80% of the cards requirements and theoretically easier to expand to more cards simply by adding another set of panel-batter "modules"?

After all, 3 sets of 120W panel +  battery each capable of handling 3KWh is going to be cheaper and more reliable since a single failure doesn't take out your entire setup

Well if you're gonna go and use actual real world tests instead of roughly estimated numbers then of course it's not gonna generate enough electricity rofl.  Darn :( that explains why The Colony bike alternator was shown in like 1 episode for a few minutes followed by a montage of people complaining about it and giving up and getting off the bike lol.  They had one hell of a like $20,000 solar array too which, coincidentally, they also found just laying around lol.

Hmmm so you're saying get a seriously regulated solar panel system that will not under any circumstances go above 12V and then splice it directly into the 6 or 8 pin supplemental power and cut out all that nonsense in the middle and have automatic "who cares what the solar panel wattage is, the computer is still running" handling with no UPS?

http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/4f3ba4f3-55d0-44b7-9114-325a3f928bb3.jpg

Btw, cheezburger is ripping off wordpress's bandwidth for photo hosting on their site?!?

Anyway, that's a good idea.  But how is it 80%?  I thought if the PSU is sending 12.0V and the solar panel is 12.0V then in parallel, they each supply 50% of the current.

Since I know this one is coming, yes, I already considered charging a 2nd battery with a spare 12V line to my car's main circuit while driving around during the day then unhooking it and using its power overnight.  The most basic, undetailed estimate puts that are WAY more expensive gasoline-wise than getting power from the power company and I don't think it's gonna get any prettier if I add more accurate variables.  Oh, and it'll burn out your alternator real fast.

For practical purposes, the large battery connected to the solar panel is an UPS :D

Panel -> Battery -> Voltage Regulator -> direct to Card 6/8 pin or the mainboard's 6/8pin as well


Well, 80% was referring to the amount of current delivered through the +12V line, as compared to the the total from +5V/3.3V :D

Also, depending on the graphics card and where it connects most of its power pins to, the draw is not the same as a single load drawing from two parallel voltage source.

e.g. if the card has 3 regulators running off the +12V line, 1 is connected to the PCI-E slot, 1 is connected to the 6pin and 1 is connected to the 8pin, theoretically 67% of the draw would come from the now external solar source. This assumes the card distribute the load evenly of course. But if they draw mostly from the aux connectors (most of the high end card won't even boot if they find it disconnected), then it could be as high as 80% I suppose. I don't know enough about graphics card PCB layout to be sure they don't just merge all the incoming inputs though :D

TL;DR...

sorry trying to goto bed, I'll read later.

anyone link to this yet?

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=16377.0;topicseen

my dad used to have ~6 tons of AGM batteries he got from an auction for $1k for various projects, they ended up in some boats, and some guy's basement.  He's also worked on the SoCal's water pump in the middle of nowhere from the Colorado River, its got a backup generator, some batteries inverters and Solar Panels.

oooooooh neat thread!  That guy's awesome.  Of course he's proving my point with his estimation that the cost of supplementing power plant power with solar is fairly cheap but replacing it completely and not even using it as a backup takes the system cost up into the many thousands.  A really good long term storage system and power regulation system puts the price through the roof even if the solar panels and wind and fat guy on a bike with an alternator were free :P

You should totally grab like 8 of those batteries and buy a couple feet of some 4 to 8 gauge welding or car audio cable.  That's usually like $0.80 USD per foot.  Then just wire up all the batteries in parallel and get a cheap inverter and you've got a nice, almost free energy storage system.  People think that if each battery can output 700 amps then they need thicker and thicker cable as the chain of wire gets closer to the end with the thing drawing power.  That's not true.  Your PC is drawing let's say 300W so the entire chain needs to carry about 21 amps and that's it.  It'll be somewhat evenly across the batteries too.

It's seriously about this complicated :P
http://www.tlgwindpower.com/images/4_12_battery%20bank.jpg

But back to the solar panel supplementing DC current after the power supply idea...yeah, 12V is easily 80% of the total system power.  I certainly could remove the 12V wiring from most devices inside the computer and put it to a solar panel but as soon as the sun goes away, the system crashes.  So what I was thinking is splice in a parallel circuit to the solar panel on a dual molex to 6 pin graphics adapter.  Like basically hook one 4 pin molex into the PSU and the other 4 pin molex into a snipped molex to bare wire connector then run that to the solar panel.  I think power-wise it wouldn't be able to supply more than 50% of the power since it's in parallel BUT if the solar panel suddenly stops supplying voltage, the computer's power supply would jump to 100% without the system crashing.  I'll have to experiment with that idea.

That's why the battery is always the last step before the voltage regulator and the actual component :D

In a way the solar panel is charging the battery rather than supplying the gpu. So once the sun goes away, the battery will start draining. The PSU doesn't have to handle 100% of the load suddenly. You could set a schedule to shutdown the GPU miner once it is say 10pm if you estimate the battery will only last say 5 hours after sunset at 6~7pm.

Alternatively have a simple circuit that kicks in an AC connection to the battery once the solar input goes out if you don't want disrupted mining.

ooh, that's even smarter :P cuz then I could eliminate the 12V completely.  If the computer shuts off for some random reason though, there's power coming from the solar panel but no draw so the battery overcharges and blows up. 
Also, I dunno if there's reverse flow controls out the back of the graphics card though.  I would think there is.  Otherwise the battery would charge off the PCI-E 12V line cuz that is typically connected together with the card's supplemental power circuit.  I think the computer would crash due to lack of voltage before that happens though.
All I know is my old Nvidia 8600GTS OC had a cool feature.  You forget to plug in the 6 pin and the computer will boot but the driver will pop up a warning window saying insufficient power is getting to the extra power plugin on the back of the card so it clocked the GPU down to a super low clock speed and is running it off the PCI-E slot power, which caps at like 30W I think.  So when you do plug in the 6 pin, is it running 30W off the slot and maybe 100W off the extra circuit or does it switch to 100% extra power?  Who knows.  And someone said radeon cards just crash the system if you don't plug in supplemental power :P So maybe those are 1-circuit cards that ignore the available PCI-E wattage completely.  Either way, I'm gonna test this whole system with a less sensitive device than my card :P I have a molex 36W neon case light/neon inverter kit I can hook up to it first :D

Look, there is no way in hell that you are going to be able to run a mining rig on Solar cost effectively. In fact if you just take a basic mining rig with a couple of 5870's in running at full, you would need to probably cater for around 750w continuous drain.

As you would only be able to get any sunlight during the day, you only have around 8 hours max (if you're very lucky) of any usable light. So to power it up you would need (in good conditions) around 20 80w panels. Hmm add that up. Ok, then you would need about 6 40w charge controllers (They're going to set you back around $150 each!!). On top of that, the batteries, the inverter etc,.... There is simply no way that this is worth it,...... Jeez, let's get real here. And if there was another way, then we would already know about it. Better off looking at fuel rods or something.

That's why the voltage regulator is there between the battery and card it should have reverse current protection.


The Radeon cards simply refuse to start if they don't detect the aux power connector. I don't think they are one circuit card or else they wouldn't be able to tell if the aux power was connecter or not since a +12V/gnd connection would be present no matter where it was coming from. But the way it used to be detected was really stupid, the circuit only test for a ground connection and I was able to trick it into working simply with a piece of wire... :D

How about this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTvAL7ty53M&feature=related

Ok, this would do what you want (cheapest possible solution).

http://www.aliexpress.com/product-gs/473114247-Free-shipping-10-100w-solar-panel-grid-solar-power-system-800w-wholesalers.html

So just a bit over $2300 for a solution. Is it worth it?

Large panels are never worth it.  That's a fairly low price but out of my budget.  Also, I don't have room for it :P I think it has nothing to do with manufacturing price and everything to do with small solar panels only being able to sell for hobbyist price and large ones being able to be sold for super rich pro-green hippie prices :P I mean yeah thicker gauge cable in the whole system and a more expensive regulator and/or inveter isn't free but it isn't thousands of dollars more either.  They're jacking the prices up.

Btw..."just take a basic mining rig with a couple of 5870's"  Yeeeeeeah, that's a real basic rig *eye roll.* So triple the price on 3 cards and just under triple the mining power...and triple the heat to deal with and a way more than triple the price 3x PCI-E x16 board and a more than triple the price power supply.  That's not really the ideal rig as far as money vs bitcoins goes.  It will create more bitcoins faster but would take longer to pay itself off.  Also, DEFINITELY not for this kind of project.  You want to keep the power as low as possible while maintaining a respectable MH/s.  This rig I have should be able to theoretically push out 300MH/s on 250-300W.  Plus, I don't have enough room to create a device of any sort capable of suppling 750W in a green way.

I was actually considering a turbine based system with wood burning cuz mirrors are a pain and there's lots of geometric math and astronomy and crap involved.  But burning wood is about is green as the dead trees you're burning :P

I think with my budget, for now, I'm going to attempt the proposed "supplemental power" idea.  That's AC house voltage running everything but a solar panel wired in parallel to the graphics card so it's up to a 50% load reduction.  It's the cost of the panel kit plus $5 in wiring and that's it.  It can't get any simpler.  It's not a 100% free electricity solution but it will definitely take a sizeable chunk out of the electricity costs to operate it.

If it helps, I get 410MH/s on 300W (measured at AC) with a not-green CPU and a few HDDs since it's my gaming rig. If you drop to a low power CPU and minimize the HDD, I'll think 250W should be pretty doable. Personally I would had done this, might had gotten the panels cheap since the company next door sells them. Except my location doesn't give me enough direct sunlight :D

This IS a basic mining rig. The 5870's can be bought for £120 if you know where to get them and happen to be the best value for money at that price. I used to have 5830's. They are currently £75 in the UK. But let's get serious here, this is a very basic mining rig. I know people who are running banks of 5970's using 20+ machines in Russia. The 5970's are not value for money (well for me anyway), but depending on your contacts / job etc, it is viable for some people due to how cheaply they can get their hands on the cards. Now each of those machines are pushing 2400 MH . That's serious stuff. Anything less than say 1000MH from a machine is simply playing at it. Let's face it even at that speed you're not going to get much return. So I stand by what I say, a couple (2) of 5870's is simply playing at it and basic.

What about rigs using The dedicated Dual FPGA X6500 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=37904.0) One would reckon these instead of the 750w GPUs could make the world of alternative energy BitCoin Mining a reality.

Just finished my own solar install  3.1kwp system. Should take the edge off the little server rack i got going on.
Should pass my MCS acreditation next month then I will be back offering discounts to fellow miners  ;D 

Price seems too good to be true.

http://www.sunelec.com - $0.74 per watt with a 10 panel minimum.  And no, it's not too good to be true.  If any of you find a better deal anywhere, PLEASE send me a PM!

Ordering now.

Welcome to the dream of minimal-path value/entropy! I'll point out some stuff I already discussed on my thread ( http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=16377.0 )
- The power rating on electrical devices is not fake usually, just misunderstood, there are many variables to be ironed out, especially in such a complex system like this.
- A computer PSU wastes the least power at around 50-60% load, if you go below 30% or above 80%, the nominal efficiency (~80%) gets worse. That means you need a 1000W PSU if you actually draw 500W with your computer. Your goal is to get maximum mhash/watt.
- With solar power, you can basically achieve over-nominal power during the day, allowing for overclocking and over-volting to increase your performance by up to 25%, while you can underclock and undervolt during the night to use less power but still a good mhash/watt value
- A computer UPS can run for longer than it's original battery, but it's not designed to. You need to actively cool it and make some modifications or new components to allow it to actually charge a bigger battery bank (if you use more batteries) and not burn up when running. You might also use other solutions, rectifiers and inverters dedicated for solar applications. A rectifier and an inverter will have 60-80% efficiency.
- Batteries will offer the most power if discharged at a certain rate. Discharge them too fast and they offer less than nominal power. This is why a 15 minutes UPS holds less than 5 minutes if you double it's load. The bigger the load, the less power you get to use.
- Solar panels cost about 1$/watt, and you need about 1m^2 for 100W. Besides the panels, you need an almost identical budget for the wiring and inverters (either common inverter or micro-inverters for each panel), so you pay 2$/watt for solar power capacity (4000$)

Now, let's review. A 500W PC with 400W of hashing power (800 mhash/s) will need a 1000W PSU, over 700W from the inverter, and over 1000W from the panels. And for running it at low solar activity, you might require 700Whr per every hour. Suppose you need about 14 hours of offline power (more for cloud cover) or almost 10kWhr. Most deep cycle 12V batteries have around 100 AH, so you need 8 batteries. The price seems to be 0.1$/Whr, so you need 800$ for those.

This is definitely something to do if you already have parts of the installation or plan to use it for other purposes too. Basically you don't need to sell your excess power to the grid for a measly price, you store it in monetary value which does not decay as opposed to other forms of energy storage. Depending on where you live and how much you get the stuff priced at, look at 5 to 12 years ROI.

Please post more details about your installation :)

30 x Schott ASI 103
 http://www.schott.com/australia/english/download/schott_asi_data_sheet_95-103_en.pdf (http://www.schott.com/australia/english/download/schott_asi_data_sheet_95-103_en.pdf)

2 x SB 1200/1700
http://www.ausenergy.com.au/pdf/SMA_SB1200_1700_data_sheet.pdf (http://www.ausenergy.com.au/pdf/SMA_SB1200_1700_data_sheet.pdf)

One string of 15 modules for each inverter.
Inverters mounted outside to make my life a little harder than it needed to be.

West south west facing sadly and with some shading issuses hence the the Thin film ASI pannels as they are great under low/poor light conditions.

Dude to shading and orientation I doubt this would be financially viable unless you can do it at cost.....Which I haz



Had to reinforce the roof a little too and dig  a dirty great hole to get that cable to the DB thats in the garage (no idea why its in the garage i didnt build the house).

http://i1030.photobucket.com/albums/y370/fredsfreds/Wholeroof.jpg


Systems in the Uk taking advantage of feed in tarrifs meaning I'm getting paid £0.44 per KWh just for producing the juice even tho I'm using every watt mining i still get paid.

No working data yet but I have a SMA web box that cost a fortune that I will get sorted at some point.

That's a nice lookin house.

Indeed.  I know nothing about solar panels, but that house looks really good 8)

What what whaaaat?!

k i skipped all of this but main post plus 2-3 comments. great idea. totally agree. skip batteries. hook solar to home grid. energy used will deduct from bill. if more energy is made than used local power company send u a check. look into it ;). if u have the time and are open to other options, look into fresnel lenses in a geodesic dome harnessing heat to create steam (steam account for 80% of world electricity) since the steam would also be creating clean (no nuclear waste) distilled water which can be sold as well. steam nuclear power plants (the most common kind) run at 550 degrees F. one 40 foot diameter by 20 foot high dome would create over 10000 degrees F. the math is there. the tweaking is yet to be done. just an idea. not yet practical. I am going to build one. worst case scenario i make 2million gallons of distilled water with one dome a year :D. nobody likes my idea. thinks im a troll. but i stg imma build one and if it doesnt work. then ill admit i was wrong happily. power to ya whatever u decide on doing. :)

nifty idea however the roi.. return of investment is too long to reap the benefits 3+ years.. ouch

i agree. but here is an idea. i used to be a glazier (build highstory glass buildings) we use aluminum framing to create these structures. (kawneer, vistawall, etc) you can goto your local glass company and see if they will sell you 33-36" cutoff pieces from large jobs, you will need 1/4" pockets for fresnel lense glass. 65" pieces can be ordered for aprox 150$ they will have to be custom cut by you, (not that hard) to fit into structure. structural pieces only need to be aprox 33 inches. you could save 9/10s of cost to build. reinforcing with steel as need. since ive worked for alot of these companies locally i would get them for next to zero. spending less that 5k on fresnel lenses and building myself............ then the geeking comes in.... have to fuck with that shit for a minute. but say i made a working product. and leaked it to the world. we could all have free energy. free clean water. this is a big issue in 3rd world countries. idk. im a dreamer, if my dream proves to be false i would die happy knowing i tried. what else am i going to spend my money on? jersey shore shit, being a complete tool? lol naaa im good, did that, never was happy doin it. id rather work towards what i believe and helping others see what we can be capable of. the amount of energy that hits the earth each year is enough to replace all energy sources on the earth 2x over. energy cannot be created (that we know of) so all we can do is try to harness the energy we have. using energy that exists on the earth will never work... its a matter of time... if the sun goes out... then we have alot more to worry about than running out of energy :) call me crazy. crazy with a dream is fine with me.

65" FRESNEL LENSES* sorry... also each 65" piece produces over 3000 degrees F. but you would be losing surface area reducing that. i think my original calculations had the 65" x 65" surface area in a triangular shape. reguardless. its worth investigating.

3000 degrees F is only in direct sunlight. hence the idea of using geodesic dome to make the energy come to you. many efforts in using fresnel lenses to track the sun have already been pursued. highly expensive. use geometry to your benefit. :D also photons (energy from the sun) might be focusing heat to a wider area at the base of the dome. not creating full heat potential. using another (larger) lense would then focus the photons to a more centralized area. repeat this process again and yet even more focused area. it would also be possible to transfer these photons through fiberoptics cables to transfer energy to specific areas. e.i. if heat creates x amount of energy new fiberoptics portals would be opened up to send photons to another area creating a more vast surface area of heat at aproximately 550 degrees F boiling more water into steam. further super critical steam can be created at 705 degrees F and 2000 lbs of pressure. this creates a scientific phenomenon which cannon be explained. the benefit of this to use would be to be able to remove oil from water which is extremely expensive to do. you might be aware of project XL pipeline which wishes to create oil pipeline through ogallala aquifer. If this water was to be contaminated this could be detrimental to life in the area. If we could clean that water for pennies of investment vs long term profits we could save ourselves from potential disaster. regardless we could always clean seawater (which is the original reason distilling water originated) IDK i think crazy thoughts like i said. but it all comes down to cutting overhead (which is the original reason for this post) you have to goto the source, the source is the sun. creator of all energy. (that we are aware of)

sorry my mind keeps rambling to itself.... lol... even furthermore if fiberoptics were to fail due to too much heat etc... crystals have power to transfer and store energy which we do not yet understand. COMPLETELY off the wall but if you study stories of ATLANTIS (like i said off the wall) there are depictions of energy which is being harness through a "DOME" into crystals which make certain frequencies. Furthermore they were able to use these crystals to filter energy (different colors of the energy, e.i. the rainbow which shows these different aspects of photons) certain energies doing certain things. Healing/destroying living beings. My concept is that the sun being the creator of all energy hence created all matter. Matter "grows" to its certain existence due to chemical makeup and the reaction of that makeup from the suns energy. That is why we grow. we absorb energy and that energy makes us into what we are whether we go outside, eat food which is a result of absorbed energy, or drink water (which is a phenomenon I believe in itself) regardless there is alot of possibilities that could occur.

*Living matter not matter.

Yep in the UK its called a feed in traiff but it really should be called  a generation tariff. Ace hey!

So any brits here want one ?

In other countries it's called green certificates, for each kWh you generate, the other (non-green) consumers electricity on the grid have to contribute to paying you a fixed fee, and it does not matter if you consume the generated power yourself or if you sell it back to the grid. For example, I'm getting from EUR 450 to EUR 300 per green cert (per 1000 kWh generated). Over subsidised, sure. But with a 20 year contract, profit ;-)

Well a ratshack solar cell manages about 2.5 volts for 7 bucks, so If you invested about 336$ with those numbers, you could fool your PSU into thinking they are equivalent to an outlet. I actually see that working, if your rig is worth it.

Do you have to use contractors to build your installation to get this contract, or can you build it yourself then get it certified somehow? I ask because contractors around these parts charge a 150%-200% premium over the cost of materials, what should be a 5 years return on investment becomes 15 years, so even if you sell the electricity you make off completely it would take 7-10 years to pay off.

You can build it yourself but you'll need to get it certified (and use authorized equipment like the kWh counter). Getting that done means you'll have to run through all sorts of paperwork and you'll need to have some electrictian do the final hookup to the grid. Having it done by a specialized roofing firm is much easier and there is plenty of competition. And by law, they need to offer 10 years of warranty (sometimes extended to 20 or 25) which is worth the premium.

Hate to say it but the paperwork is shocking. I cant see how you could do it yourself and get the feed in tariffs but if you find a way please let us know. You must use MCS approved moduals and inverters and also be MCS acredited <--- this is epic good luck ;)  or have a MCS acredited dude commision it and take responsiblity for it.

The Green energy certs are a nice little bonus but thats on top of the feed in tariffs we get in the UK. They are not the same thing they are additional and not easy to sell IMO in small quantitys to heavy industry.


Edit : er solarsilver whats stopping me buying up these certs here in the UK and selling them to you? since your subs are prob way better than here in the UK. Maybe the UK ones are not the same because we are not fully Euro ?  Not looked into this tbh.


@ BombaUcigasa  yep 150% sounds a little much. I will be aiming for around £4k per KWp thats around 100% mark up but also what MCS suggests is a fair price. I think you might be fogetting the overheads involved not to mention the labor involved (putting roof hooks in is a right bugger somtimes and involves some meaty powertools while working up on a roof. Which means horribad insurance costs also.
To be honest those roof hooks are the biggest pain in the ass. What we need is a company that makes a wide selection of solar tiles then its a simple refit...ow man how easy would that make my life...hhmmmm

Not only that, but the queue for applications appears to be filled completely for this year. People usually get solar water heaters because they don't really need lots of electricity (0.14$/kWh).

Now about those costs, I know there is overhead for every Wh installed, but if I do the bill of materials myself, I get around 1$/Wh for panels, and about the same for wiring, mountings, inverters, controllers, etc. I am quite sure the companies that install these would get the same kind of prices, so that would be like £1.5 per Wp. Of course they charge at least £3 per Wp, but also include shipping, mounting, installations, tests, etc.

I will look into my options for both honest and bribe-enhanced applications for these kinds of subventions.

Now, I know that roof-mounting is a space-saving and simple installation layout, but if anyone else is interested, they should look into a tracking platform, especially one-axis horizontal trackers. You can mount the horizontal tracker on a manually controlled equatorial declination platform, such that you can obtain ~100% solar incidence if your declination is less than 1% (you only need to change it every week or so). Also for security and shade issues, you could mount the platform on a pole that reaches above the canopy, giving you 100% sun exposure all day long. And even though polymer panels are resiliant, polycrystaline and monocrystaline panels are more efficient per surface area.

Trackers are defo the way forward if you have the space.
Over here tho you have to face Planning permission for them. We're are all living ontop of each other, its really crowded so its always going on the roof  :(
Some really cool methods of tracking out there and one day I hope to have my own farm of them (if i can find some space/money).

To keep the cost down you could always check out some of the new pannels coming outa China ( I wouldnt but then I take the long term view in these things). Perhaps make your own roof hooks or even the tracker if you have a workshop/will etc.

EDIT:

m3 wise yep its Mono>Poly>Thin film/amorphous but check out the newish shiny HIT pannels that  are a Hybrid of sorts cos their are winning hands down atm.
Some liquid cooled ones about too that also act as solar thermal for your hotwater while bringing down the pannel temp which is win win when you look at the temp co efficancys on the pannel datasheets for mono and poly cells.


Soz bout spelling etc im dyslexic and too much effort to..

I believe the 70-100w is the amount of heat a person produces doing nothing. Not how much work they can do. A professional cyclist can produce almost 2000w/hr. I would like to think I can make at least a quarter of that, lol

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Just for math an average man can produce 70-100W, but the idea of the gym is fun ;D
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First of all, in some countries, small producers don't get any feed tariffs. Anything you put back onto the grid, and you don't consume later, you don't get paid for it. We only get green certs (but they are rewarding ;-) In France for example you can only sell your electricity to EDF which offers a low price. Netherlands is not very good either. Belgium and Germany are the opposite with green certs. Just take a cross country drive and spot the difference on the roofs.

As for the green certs, they are local as they are paid for by the other local (non-green) consumers. I don't think you can trade them outside of your region, at least not like things are setup here. It's not like you get a printed paper you can trade on to another party, you just fill in your meter value on a website (after registration and accreditation) and they wire you the money.

As for costs, most house insurance covers the pannels for free against storm damage (if they are fixed to the building, they are covered, just like your ceramic electric stove is covered against glass damage but your plasma TV is not). The going rate (without 6% VAT) for a large installation (say 10kWp) is EUR 0.28 per watt, so about EUR 30k everything in. You can get a loan @ 1.7% to pay for it. Pays itself back in 5 or 6 years, green certs for 20 years, warranty on the installation for about 20 or 30 years (80% capacity guaranteed). Oh and free electricity for that entire period, enough to run plenty of computer equipment

In regions where there is over subsidising, trackers are not worth it:

0. you need planning permission,
1. they are more expensive,
2. they are complicated equipment, bound to suffer long term wind damage and need maintenance.

If you have enough room, just plunk down more panels. I have North-West facing pannels that give 30% less return but because we have room and we get free loans to pay for it, we just put double the amount of panels.

In Germany it's not uncommon to see buildings with panels on all orientations (not just south, also north).

As for the quality of panels, I've only bought European produced panels (not just assembled, but also produced here) because of the environmental concerns (it's really polluting to produce them) and the company should be able to guarantee me 20 or 30 years of use. Unless they go broke of course but good luck in getting that from a Chinese factory. Purchase price is not everything...

I live in Ohio where there's not to many solar bonuses. Was thinking a small solar array would still be good for emergency backup or just charging a laptops battery directly.

I do have a google chrome laptop that I got for free. So if the power ever goes out charge it and use the free   
100MB a month(yeas 100 MB :-\) satellite internet that that gives.

http://i-cdn.apartmenttherapy.com/uimages/re-nest/09172008hampster2.jpg



Source: http://www.re-nest.com/re-nest/pets/green-power-use-the-hamster-wheel-062855 (http://www.re-nest.com/re-nest/pets/green-power-use-the-hamster-wheel-062855)

What if you hooked up the original idea to an uninterrupted battery backup? It's not totally off grid, though.

I'm in LIPA's jurisdiction, and in a condo, and I'm playing around with the idea of getting a little windmill to supplement my power usage.

Peters teacher should be shot.

Not if he found the instructions on the internet. If he came up with a unique design using old step motors from printers or something, rock on!
I've been trying to figure out a way to get a battery array to charge from an array of potatoes and a joule thief. :)
Being from Ohio does not make sunlight a year round practical solution. And unfortunately steam and other outdoor fire burners don't produce enough to be cost effective.
Nothing I have checked out allows for anything shorter then a 3 or 4 year ROI.

Ya the whole getting a C for making a hamster charger is a little low. I used to make models of the solar system and get A's lol. Also tried to make a laser and test what would resist it best which didnt work quite as well  ::)

And where did you get the ruby for the laser?

My uncle has a homemade wind turbine on his farm. It puts out about 3.5Kw/h. (His assumptions) The best part is he built it for a few thousand dollars. I'd love to have "green" energy to mine with.

It seems that you already have...

I was wondering where do you guys purchased solar panels and in what cost. I am thinking of buying a 1000watt solar panels but only have limited information bout solar panel and it’s usages in the daily life like the operation of solar panels Colorado and it’ maintenance. Can someone give me ideas or menu for understanding the functionalities of solar panel before purchasing it..

solar panels colorado (http://www.getsolar4less.com/)

It largely depends on where you live and what government subsidies are available, in some cases you can't do the buying and install yourself if you want subsidies (needs to be done by a certified company).

You need panels and an invertor to turn DC into 230 V AC (or in your case 110V AC). Solar panels range in prices from cheap (need large surface to put them down) to super expensive (you only need 3 panels to get 1000 Watts). I don't know how much roof you have available. Solar panels last 20 years, invertors break down after 10 years.

A 240 Wp Solar panel costs here about $USD 600, a 3k VA PVI costs $USD 1800. Add costs for cabling and roofmounting and you are looking at $USD 4 / 1 Wp for a large installation.

Unless you want to use a system disconnected from the grid, where you'll need batteries to store the excess capacity and then it becomes really expensive.

But if you want it in the grid, you need an inverter. The whole science behind planning one is very difficult, kinda like building your first computer. You almost worry that you bought incompatible parts.

Nice epic bumps guys.