Dan Minette wrote:
> > Solar power is very popular here - loads of sunshine and lots of room
>
> What fraction of your/your community's electricity is generated by solar
> power? What fraction of the total energy budget?
Wouldn't know how to quantify that. Solar is only used large scale for
individual water heating apps - most new houses have solar panels, and probably
20% of older houses, almost none on houses more than 30 year old. I don't know
how much grid supply/gas supply this saves. (LPG and Natural gas are also used
for hot water systems, making it very hard to quantify hot water production
requirements)
Lots of vertical applications - pay phones, highway equipment (including
lighting), farm equipment - anywhere it's hard to run wires. One of my
colleagues at work has a completely solar powered house (and a backup generator
but it's not needed much) including a solar powered microwave phone connection.
Our grid has some small inputs - businesses with roof arrays contribute around
30kWh/day per site to the grid, which is basically nothing - more a public
relations exercise for the businesses than any real contribution. (as an
example we get around 24GWh pa from hydro and 14GWh pa from wind)
Cheers
Russell C.
