On Aug 1, 2007, at 12:38 PM, EnergyLab wrote:
Lets see, where I live I consume 63kw/24hrs for 280 days of the year.
There is something wrong with the above because the units are wrong. That must mean 63 kWh/day, or about 1953 kWh per month. Should be about $195 a month. If that is so, then you use about 2.63 kW of power on average. At $1 per watt (this must be do-it-yourself?) that's $2630. However, for $.50 a watt you can replace your hot water heating, and maybe a good part of your home heating too. A combined system works best.
Of curse you would probably need around 5 times the average watts to cover your electric bill, but the more watts you add the less you get in return. If you live where it is sunny and you run an air conditioner then having only about 3 kW of cells will probably save quite a bit on air conditioning.
It might be neat to design an air conditioner that runs on direct solar heat. I know there are propane coolers that run on a propane flame, so how difficult could it be? Plenty I'll bet! 8^)
Horace Heffner http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
