Last year I met a contractor in CT who will perform solar and wind energy surveys at your site and now that I am ready, of course I lost his card. Anyone know of companies that will perform this service?
We are contemplating PV and/or wind energy for our new home.
WIN
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Save your money. <G> unless somebody here is in that business in your area <G>.
Google the NOAA web sites for PV, wind, geothermal, GSHP, temperature extremes, etc. EVERYTHING you would need is there.
Of course, if you are to rich or lazy to DIY or search, send me some pix of the site for tree layout, etc., I'll do the google search for you and send you a 100 page report (mostly google copies) for $10K. I'll even come and do your survey for F/C airfare and hotel and car rental.
As long ago as 1978, got all the info needed from NOAA via fax from NOAA for a big development that contemplated solar and wind in Nevada, they sent it for the asking, they even paid the postage.
PV and wind was even bigger in the 5 years or so after the '74 gas crunch than it is now.
Art, do you forsee any substantial decrease in the price of solar panels in the near future?
Or some new technology that will replace the current panels for less?
Never did get power to my property, still thinking.
Joe H
Until about 1980 the price of PV cells was following Moore's Law*. Then the mfg. price essentially has stayed flat at $4 a watt or more. Concentration is the only way to get the price down.
*Moore's law has held for computer memeory since the 1960's in that every year or so the price per unit drops by 1/2 !!, to bad it didn't continue with PV.
Where you are, Cedar city IIRC, is one of the BEST areas in the country for solar. I did a very comprehensive study for So. Utah Nevada in 1979-80 for providing power to a proposed MX missile basing. At that time, the best trade on cost and reliability was PV concentrators, with a new Nuke plant and transmission lines 2nd, geothermal 3rd, wind did poorly in the trade because of 'spotty' conditions and long low wind spells. Recall on an area around Tonapah especially, the worst case sunless days were 3 in a row!!
If I were in your location, I'd have already installed concentrating solar arrays. The big reason everybody there does not have them is the installation cost, but DIY takes care of that.
On and off, Spectrolab has some reject cells for sale on their web site for relatively good deals. . but you need the know how to assemble, etc.
3 years ago built a 15kW-hr per day concentrator ( on NASA funding) with Entech lenses and state of art 3 junction spectrolab cells. MATERIAL costs were in the $50K range, took 2 of us about 3 weeks or so to build the array and assemble the cells.
I'd guess that if I did a DIY in So. Utah, with surplus cells and about everything else DIY, I could build a 20 kW-hr per day array for around $20 K material costs. 7300 kW-hrs per year at lost interest at 5% on $20K is about 14 cents per kW-hr, not counting labor and the time needed for education on building a concentrating tracker.
At $3 gal for diesel, fuel costs alone are higher than that for a gen set.
DIY would be the only way to go though, anyway else you get sucked dry. Remember a seminar in the 70's, a guy wanted to know why everybody with sun was not on solar. The $20 K above for DIY costs, translated into RETAIL-installed cost, is probably above $150K. Lots pricier then than diesel gen set.
e-mail me if you get serious about solar, I'll provide all the info and help I can.
For the public released info on the concentrating array built 3 years ago, see entechsolar.com, go to publications, then to 600 Volt Array - SPS 2004
Hi,
I want to get serious about solar and would love to know more info. You seem to have a scientific background? Are you one of the authors of the paper? I was wondering if you had an opinion about something that I have heard from a few suppliers. That the tests that are run to give the 'official' panel efficiency are not fair to the thin film type panels? They say that the actual year-round efficiency for a uni-solar type product is actually higher than the actual year-round efficiency of the Sunpower single crystal product. The claim is, as I understand it, that the thin film products can capture light from a larger angle than the single crystal panels and therefore produce more electricity over the year.
thanks,
Daniel Neuman
Restoring our second Victorian home this time in Alamdea CA. Check out the blog http://www.chezneumansky.blogspot.com/
Oakland CA
Crazy Homeowner-Victorian Restorer
Hi,
You can easily do your own survey with the tools here:
http://www.builditsolar.com/SiteSurvey/site_survey.htm
Its easy to do, only takes about an hour, and you learn some important things about sun paths through the year.
I put it together, so let me know if you find anything thats hard to understand. [email protected]
Gary
While you're at it, look at solar for water heating. It works very well, and the initial cost that you have to amortize over the life of the system is much lower.
-- J.S.