Photon Phreak

Folks who haven't done the math and who don't understand the concepts of efficiency, scalability, finance, return on investment, or energy density in fuel.

Folks who think that 35-50% efficiency is better than 80%. Thats with fuel cell, round trip effficiency will be even less with internal combustion...

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20060008706_2006006323.pdf

milo

Uninformed Utopists

A farmer who plows his fields with a coffee cup might find it to be a good idea. I would not waste my time and ENERGY to do it.

not me. in my opinion, it is one of the possible wrong approaches. i am not an engineer, but the true engineers here understand that the math just isn't there. example, if you have excess photo voltaic above your needs, put it into the grid for everyone else to use, or charge up an ev. if you have a need for high power, such that you would need steam, just pull it from the grid when needed. if you are talking about off grid, then maybe, as in maybe it might be worthwhile, but doubtful. just my opinion.

Here is my premise. I heard of a story the PV arrays are out in the desert of Saudi Arabia, and they built a stand alone PV plant, Japanese design I think, such that enough watts were generated to power a remote facility, and enough excess PV to disassociate H20 and contain the 02 and the H2, and run theses gases through an engine having water as an exhaust, and that exhaust was water which was recycled to the HOH cell. We may be looking at a 20 kw arary to give 10kw 24/7 power stream.

There is a lot of net-zero PV systems going on houses, but not many folks know about having a average annual load on the grid of 0 watts.

Both concepts seem forward in thinking and as a very clean power supply.

Hi Joe

My family and I have lived off the grid not from choice but from necessity. Photovoltaic arrays, small wind turbine, diesel gen set, methane, propane, solar, wood heat....you name it and I've got it. Next year the grid is being extended to my home and I'm anxiously looking forward to finally getting hooked up.

For twenty years it has been an expensive exercise in maintenance and repair. My photovoltaics are well past their useable service life and I was not looking forward to spending the $30 g's to replace them.

In this area the equation for consumer payback rests with what the utility wishes to pay for excess power at specific load times. At night it's 9c/kw/hr. During the day it's 27c. When this equation changes it will then be worthwhile to spend the time, effort and money to install a photovoltaic system. However.........a single bolt of lightning can easily put a stripe through ones' solar aspirations.

cheers

duck