DIY: 7 Great Weekend Solar Power Projects

planetgreen.discovery.com:

Looking for a fun project to take on this weekend? Looking to improve your skills with solar? We have some suggestions to accomplish both of these to-do items, ranging from quick, cheap and easy to rather involved but still pretty cheap and easy.

Read the whole story: planetgreen.discovery.com

Comments

[Merrimack]

Until we find a way to store the power created by solar it will do nothing to reduce the needed size of our legacy power grid. We will still have to increase the output of our Nuclear and oil powered generation to fill in the gap when solar can't support the demand. Its like having 2 times the number of employees with 1/2 on stand by because the primary group only work 20 hours a week. All it does currently is make people feel good about themselves.

The last 3 weeks in South Florida are a great example as we haven't had more than one day straight with much sun; in the summer no less. Actually, there was a whole week the entire East Coast was under constant cloud cover. Our grid is based on 5 nines of reliability; solar is a waste if it can't provide 99.999% up time.

[research]

Utilities already have massive natural gas generators to handle peak load: Air Conditioning.

Rooftop solar reduces peak generating requirements. Really, why do you think utilities encourage solar?

Rooftop Solar REDUCES grid load. Nuclear increases it.

Nuclear power is insane: Proliferation, nuclear war, dirty bombs,meltdowns, terrorist attacks, 16 million deaths from nuclear waste, decades to build, quadrillions of dollars to store the waste for a million years, 25-30 cents per KWH. Limited fuel,

A 2008 study based on historical outcomes in the U.S. said costs for nuclear power can be expected to run $0.25-.30 per kWh.[37]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_new_nuclear_power_plants#cite_note-36

http://www.ratical.org/radiation/inetSeries/RB89.html 16 million deaths.

[Merrimack]

Reading comprehension isn't one of your valued skills, is it? Solar does nothing to reduce the needed size of our legacy systems if the power from solar can't be stored for some reasonable amount of time. The power grid must provide power at all times and be capable of providing the maximum amount of power ever used at any time because they strive for five 9s of reliability. This maximum or peak requirement may come at a time when solar isn't available. In the case of FPL they had a day that 22,000 mwh were demanded in a single day; their capacity was 23,000. If that happened and they relied solely on solar to build up their capacity and the 22,000 KWH demand occurred at night; there would have been a lot of very upset customers. So, no matter how many feel good solar panels people put up, it will not reduce the investment that FPL has to make in the legacy grid if they want to provide reliable power to their customers.

http://www.fpl.com/about/profile/fpl_facts.shtml

[Merrimack]

Now to your claim that Nuclear somehow increases grid load. As it creates x amount of power for no additional cost to boost that power as the fuels use or degradation is a factor of time not the amount of power created, and does not use power how on earth would it increase grid load. I think you meant that it increases capacity. Solar does as well but can't be counted on.

Lastly your numbers are way off. From a study by the EU: Applying the same cost of capital to nuclear as to coal and gas, nuclear came out at 6.6 c/kWh, coal at 8.3 cents and gas at 7.4 cents, assuming a charge of $25/tonne CO2 on the latter.

In the same study wind was double any of the legacy methods for power generation and Solar wasn't even mentioned as it would be pretty unreliable in northern Europe.

[research]

When Sun Shines,

Air Conditioning go on.

You understand?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaking_power_plant

There is at least 2x base load gas turbine generators available for air conditioning peak load.

Solar is considered "Peaking generator" because of this.

So if for some reason there is a night time demand for two times the normal electricity, the gas turbines will be turned on.

BioFuels from waste can provide more than enough additional energy and fuel for the worlds needs.

And we have Natural gas in the meantime.

Solar is distributed. The energy is more locally absorbed. Nuclear is central. It must travel much more of the grid. Grid load is current times distance traveled. That distance is much shorted with rooftop solar.

"A 2008 study based on historical outcomes in the U.S. said costs for nuclear power can be expected to run $0.25-.30 per kWh.[37]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_new_nuclear_power_plants#cite_note-36

[research]

If you live in an appropriate sunny home with the roof for it, save money and install rooftop solar system.

large installation can be purchased ind installed for about 3 cents per KWH over 30 years (2$ per peak watt)

1.85 per peak watt! retail!
http://www.atensolar.com/14.html
http://www.ecobusinesslinks.com/solar_panels.htm
complete grid tie systems for 3.9$/peak watt
http://www.dmsolar.com/4000w-solar-gridtie-sy.html

See my profile for more links and proof.

[KillTheMessenger]

OK... projects 1,2 and 3 aren't even green because the solar cells used will NEVER return as much energy as was used for their production. In order to do that they would have to sit on your roof for about three years.

The umbrella with the aluminum foil is a rather poor design. There are way better ways of doing this. Two thumbs down. Same for the solar cooker.

#6 shows a solar thermal plant, which technologically is waaaaay beyond a weekend project. That's a "don't try this at home, kids" application. Of course the caption talks about solar panels, which this is NOT.

#7... the broken solar cells you can buy on eBay... well, there is a reason why they are broken... and if you buy them you will make the guy rich who sold them to you. He gets this scrap for the price of the silicon, which is cents and sells them to you for almost the price of a good, well characterized normal cell. Add to that the difficulty of soldering cells reliably (I am soldering electronics projects since I am seven or eight and I have yet to figure out how to make reliable solder connections on scrap cells...) and what you have is a sucker project.

:-)

[bdaved]

It's my old buddy KTM at it again. You got some things right there, but you got some wrong, and you accidentally got some more right. Project 2 refers to recycling solar cells from malfunctioning garden lights, which kind of renders the issue of energy-for­-productio­n moot. The cooking designs aren't perfect, but you used to not even believe in the concept; now you seem to leave a little wiggle room on that. Project 6 uses a misleading picture: it's about photovoltaics. And Project 7-- I agree with you that I'd sure hate to have to solder busted solar cells for a living. However, a lot of broken solar cells available on ebay and elsewhere are from people who already sell solar cells, not scrap recyclers, and prices are often quite a lot less than comparable whole cells. They're not necessarily just shards and pieces from large broken cells; they might be a bunch of smaller individual cells from a larger panel. And the article describes how somebody successfully did it.
Come on, pal, don't forget that the perfect is the enemy of the good, and maybe factor in that people can learn a little from projects like these.

[KillTheMessenger]

Garden lights will never return their money, either, so that's not much of an issue.

Oh, I believe in the cooker concept. But you still have to make one that's 1-2m^2 in size to actually cook something. Sorry... laws of nature haven't changed much since last time.

I got solar cells from eBay, just for fun and I characterized them... total crap. Now, maybe I didn't get the "right" ones... but how would you know that you will? Are they giving you a guarantee and a data sheet with them?

The problem with the home made solar panel is that you have to make it work for decades. That's a real material science problem, not something you can do at home.

Sure, you can always make something sort of work for a short while, but we pay engineers and scientists big bucks to make things work WELL for a LONG TIME. Totally different problem.

:-)

[TJCole]

We did it years ago plus an 80 ft windmill and hydrogen generators...

It took a little more than a weekend though...

[lizardbrain]

DIY solar is the best way to get an appreciation for the simplicity and effectiveness of solar energy. Here are 18 solar project areas with lots of videos explaining the projects: http://diysolar.dasolar.com/