Also, with solar-hot-water panels, it is often much easier to move reflectors that are thing & light, to get the solar energy where you want it... in fact, a modified parabolic design should get a good amount of sun to the right place across the sun's arc, so with reflectors you might not have to have anything move on the roof... granted more reflectors take up more space and might need to be balanced with the home's normal light needs :)
Hydrogen is available but expensive. Even Coleman, the common maker of camping gear and such, has a home H2 unit on the market already IIRC. ben On 2/24/07, LinuxRocks! <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Fri, Feb 23, 2007 at 11:08:12AM -0800, dooger watts wrote: > Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2007 11:08:12 -0800 > From: dooger watts <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: Eugene Unix and Gnu/Linux User Group <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [Eug-lug] OT -- electric car > > LinuxRocks! wrote: > > >I talked with someone last summer, and he has successfully converted his > >house to solar, and it has paid well. but it took a lot of fanagleing to > >make it pay off... stuff like tax incentives, grants, and returning > >power to the grid (he gets paid for excess electricity). He still uss > >electricity from the grid, so he isnt completely self sustained. He > >worked it all out very well, and i think it took him less than 5 years > >to figure it all out, and get it working and paid for. I think he siad > >he ends up paying like $50/year to the electric company. In some places > >solar works realy really well... but oregon isnt the best for solar, but > >clearly, it can work. > > Hope he did it himself. Was outraged at the recent green home show, at > the fairgrounds. The solar "developers" there were all over about how > Oregon is perfect for solar--gets more sun than Germany, which is the > number one solar-powered nation on earth. > > But when you got a load of what they charged, your jaw dropped. These > dogs wanted more than thirty thousand bux to make your home electric. > And they had all these gee-whiz graphs and charts to show you how the > cost of investing in solar would pay for itself in--get this--"TWENTY TO > THIRTY YEARS." > > New technologies are always expensive--but goddam, where do these sharks > get off? Originally, solar technology was NOT so over-valued--and > usually it was a do-it-yourself proposition. > > S'pose there's gotta be predators ready to exploit--and we Oregonians, > with our hipper-than-thou smug, seem ripe for plunder. > > Got plans for a solar shower that's made of black ABS pipe. Total cost > less than twenty bucks. Remember the ole hippy saw, "people's prices?" Yeah, infact I think solar heating water is probably pretty easy compared to generating enough electricity to run a home. I know someone that made one with a 5 galon clear plastic water container (cubeish) sitting on top of a black plastic bag on the roof of his treehouse (and a sweet little tree house it was... had its own tiny wood stove and 20' deck! anyway I know personally that the shower works very good in the summer. I dont remember all the details, but i think he spent about 20k and did it all himself, and he also did a lot of research and probably worked every possible angle to make it affordable. He also had some neet panels mounted on fixtures that kept the panel at optimal angle (using a very simple device with a photocell, and some small motors to move the panel to keep the panel facing the sun). It makes the panel into kind of a mechanical sunflower, that produces electicity :) hey? how about hydrogen powered generaters for our homes ? prolly too expensive right now, but if hydrogen cars were common... and the fuel was inexpensive enough... Jamie > _______________________________________________ > EUGLUG mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.euglug.org/mailman/listinfo/euglug _______________________________________________ EUGLUG mailing list [email protected] http://www.euglug.org/mailman/listinfo/euglug
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