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Solar panels, cheap!

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your will need a least a 2kw array to run a room in a house full of pc's

looking in excess of 20,000£

whats you solar insolation for your area??
 
your will need a least a 2kw array to run a room in a house full of pc's

looking in excess of 20,000£

whats you solar insolation for your area??

according to a website Detroit is 3.53 and Columbus is 3.83 I'm in between in Toledo Ohio, USA

There are houses that have solar around here, but I don't know how much they are supplementing with. I need to get in touch with a buddy that works at FirstSolar here in town and see if he gets discounts. I worked there as a temporary back in the day and they said that after they got on their feet they were going to start offering discounted rates to employee's for panels.. So I don't know.
 
That Newegg thing isn't (er... wasn't, it appears to be sold out now) that great a deal anyhow. Harbor Freight carries a 45W set pretty similar, might even be the same thing with a different brand name, for $199, and I've even seen it go on sale for $150.
 
^ Yep, Harbor Freight.

Can't do much with this kit anyway, it's kind of silly. If I had one though, I would build a mini itx desktop or server to run off it.
 
I Googled around on this a bit, and saw on the Seattle City Light page (my local power company) that some power companies will pay you incentives per megawatt, and you can also get a federal tax credit for 30% of the cost of your system. Pretty interesting. And, if your system is big enough (like the one above), you can probably sell some of that power back to the grid. I agree with others, though - the system in the link is pretty small.
 
My next door neighbor is making one of these. I gave him some n50 super-magnets so he can figure out what magnets would best suit this project.

He's like McGyver's uncle Fred, who taught McGyver all he knows. All I know is if he makes one, I'm making one as well, except I already have been working on something using radiant heat and wind in a 'tower fan' type of bladed system turned 90* (My goal was to build something stealthy, eliminating the gigantic fan on my roof common with wind turbines, and dual powered via radiant heat and wind, if the radiant heat can't help spin the blades, it'll be powered by solar and wind.) :thup:

If mine doesn't work as well as my next door neighbors, I'll just copy his or just buy the Honeywell, as it's a practical home wind turbine that can generate power with as little as 2mph of wind. Normally home wind turbines wont spin up unles you have 7 or 8 mph wind speeds. Tons of solar arrays on my roof isn't for me as my house is blanketed by live oaks covered in Spanish moss blocking much of the Florida sun.
 
SSS,
you know i thought about trying to use some cheap fans i have from old cases. to come up with a wind generator, i figured why not, they were free with the case. worst case is it wont work to well... its free and will be interesting for sure..
 
SSS,
you know i thought about trying to use some cheap fans i have from old cases. to come up with a wind generator, i figured why not, they were free with the case. worst case is it wont work to well... its free and will be interesting for sure..

Building the turbine in any configuration is only half the battle, electric generator or direct current items, gearbox, controls and other stuff is needed, especially if you manage to gain an excess and want to sell it to the utility companies.

I just bought my 1st home a few months ago and I've always wanted solar and wind power. I've been watching the technology over the years, the biggest problem for consumer wind turbines is the wind used to have to be 7-10mph to get a consumer wind turbine to spin, but that Honeywell unit needs 2mph, so I'm checking out my options. The guy next door to me is a broker, in his garage he has a solar array he built in two weekends. It's a good ten foot long and made from scratch & he's not just smart, but serioulsy mechanically inclined, he puts me to shame. You should see the bedroom he made for his daughter. He built her a small scale winding staircase from her room into a finished attic playroom he made her. I'll take a picture of it next time I'm there. Not something you see everyday.

Whatever he does I'm following suit, I'll give him my ideas about low profile and radiant energy wind turbines and see where he takes it goes.
 
I just bought my 1st home a few months ago and I've always wanted solar and wind power. I've been watching the technology over the years, the biggest problem for consumer wind turbines is the wind used to have to be 7-10mph to get a consumer wind turbine to spin, but that Honeywell unit needs 2mph, so I'm checking out my options. The guy next door to me is a broker, in his garage he has a solar array he built in two weekends. It's a good ten foot long and made from scratch & he's not just smart, but serioulsy mechanically inclined, he puts me to shame. You should see the bedroom he made for his daughter. He built her a small scale winding staircase from her room into a finished attic playroom he made her. I'll take a picture of it next time I'm there. Not something you see everyday.
making solar panels doesnt seem to be that hard from what i have looked into. the thing is depending on the solar cell you use in the panel can be tricky. as the more efficient cells are very easy to break...
^is the video that got me interested in making a panel. i then found different kinds of solar cells on some e-tail stores. found one guy on ebay selling 170 solar cells for $130+shipping. the ones from the guy on ebay are CIS or Copper Indium di Selenide. which is a thin film, with a plastic covering, ad says they are from Shell. i was going to try to make the panel to play with first. then possible have some led lights run off it from a small bank of batteries. the tie in inverters ihavent looked at yet. though the wind tie in someone posted looked the best route to go. would better even better if they offered it with the turbines you posted to. i did look on that site but i didnt see any Voltage or current ratings for that wind turbine.

something else that i found rather interesting
if you tied that to this
seems like a good way to go, not only that but you could use the steam from the first link. to power say your stove, i was wanting some show where in greenland or iceland. There is a cafe that does all its cooking with geothermal(or steam). even the oven is using steam to bake the good, the interesting part was boiling water in about 30secs.

this is something im still trying to figure out if its a fake or for real..
 
Evil,

You can get cheap solar stuff at Electronic Goldmine, granted its not the same parts they retrofit for the Hubble telescope's solar wings, but it's good enough to tinker around with.

I wanna live on the "other side" of you Sam.

:D

You'd be a good neighbor no doubt I'd be able to leave my doors unlocked :D.

I have McGyver on one side and the guy on the other side of me is 80 years old and deaf as a doorknob I finally met him a couple weeks ago, he's a nice guy it turns out. It's perfect. The only thing McGyver next to me can't fix is laptops, maybe he's to busy building a mini 100% efficient hydrogen plant in his guest room, but all I know is he went to North Carolina so his kids could see snow and he dropped off his busted laptop before he left; asking me to fix it. Truth be told I was honestly surprised he couldn't do it himself.
 
I just called my city hall and asked if I could install a wind turbine. The guy said he had never had a request like this one and needs to do some research. He said he will call me back later today.

This would be soo awesome if I can make it work in a relatively inexpensive way. I have been thinking about this for the last year or so. I'm glad I saw this thread because it has given me some motivation. :)
 
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