DIY Solar Generator

All I have to say is this is so absurd that it isn't even funny.

Before I go, read this from your fantasy land site:"using something called Pascal's Law, to raise heavy weights so they then can then fall and make a shaft rotate. 96% efficiency of conversion is reasonable"

96% conversion? Really?

You are joking, I hope.

This guy you refer to is clearly insane....While he may once have been a qualified professional, those days have passed....There are plenty of off grid systems that are in service at this time, and can be scrutinized for suitability for your purpose....A reliable system that will meet your needs will be thousands of dollars....A good estimate would be anywhere from 20k to 100k depending on design and needs....

http://www.treehugger.com/sustainable-product-design/generating-off-grid-power-the-four-best-ways.html

http://energy.gov/energysaver/articles/grid-or-stand-alone-renewable-energy-systems

Pseudoscientific nonsense.

Talljoe-

Consult with the best there is on the subject, Dr. Rube Goldberg. He is the definite expert on such complicated design projects.

He can be contacted at (215) 616-1506. Very intelligent and straight to the point.

Good Luck, Old Salt

"lifting" any weight isn't a freebie. I dont even need to check your link.

Well the concept of lifting water to an artificial reservoir, then letting it go thru a turbine at peaks of energy usage is well established in practice. But my fellow GlobalSpec members tell me this link isnt ......

Where does the energy come from to 'lift' the water to the artificial reservoir?

Unless the water comes from a natural, and thus, not 100% reliable, source the energy has to cost, in some way.

The solution to a complex problem (powering an off grid home with a thermal/gravity driven power generator) is not easier to solve if you mask the challenges by ignoring them. They are still there, and the solutions will cost much more than they are worth, which you are not quite ready to accept, it seems, so reading this info is a bit difficult to stomach. If you want to talk about a specific system component, materials, etc, I think you would at least get some useful guidance about identifying critical problems that you will need to solve. You may have some ideas that you could share. We would appreciate that.

? a chimney & "wind" turbine + solar ? (the vent.-extraction may charge your NiMH-s and mobile perhaps on sunny summer day -- just thinking by myself(Surprise!¯\^.^/¯))

The idea is not old but has been presented in a very different size. Sixteen feet is the joke, try 1000 meters in height. Solar Chimney generators were discussed in a previous CR4 entry. A DIY project, not a chance. You might want read here and click on the last "here" in that entry. The animation is slow to load but maybe worth the wait.

I think Physicist Carl Johnson is a bit delusional! If sun light radiated 100 watts of energy per square foot it would be lethal to life as we know it on our earth and solar energy business would be highly profitable. We would be sweating gallons of water every hour to maintain body heat. Neither is true. While cars and other Real life devices are way less than 50% and the most photovoltaics used on satellites run less than 20% this guy's devices run 91 efficiency% Note in a lab there is a cell that is over 40% efficient. Consumer photovoltaics run about 10% +/- 5%. Our house uses on average 10 times the electricity the 'average kw consumption' for 9 months out of the year and it doubles during 3 months of the winter. We have a 3,000 sq' single family house that uses electricity for everything.

I would be very interested to see how this works out for you.

If this doen't work out try buying a professionally built unit. They will probably only put out about 20% of the predicted power but they do work and are relyable (no moving parts!) if they have enough sun.

average daily maximum solar radiation is in fact not far from 100 watts per square foot. Generally accepted values are 1000 watts per square meter, which is pretty close to the 100 wpsf number. Altitude can increase that number.

We use panels that average around 16% module efficiency, so a panel that is 16 % efficient with one square meter of surface area would be rated at 160 watts, and in Virginia, would average that production for (equivalent to) about 4 1/2 hours per day. Of course, if you graph that production, over 12 hours, it's likely to be a bell curve, a 0%-100%-0% cycle each day, weather permitting.

Off grid living is not possible, with the standard of living we enjoy, at a comparable cost. It's analogous to flying your personal plane to work. It can be done, but very few do, and it has little social value.

Grid interconnected PV is very much a mature technology that is just now becoming financially feasible and very valuable to the infrastructure, environment and geopolitical issues.

average daily maximum solar radiation is in fact not far from 100 watts per square foot. You sound like a PV salesman. That all sound reasonable if I didn't know better. I worked in PV R&D in the early 80s.

I think the 100 watt/sq' is a number recorded in the 70s. The PV industry funded a year long project to find brightest sun light measurement in the world to be used to calculate PV wattage . That was near 100 watts per sq'. I do not know where it was recorded but probably somewhere like the Sahara desert recorded at high noon. It was a real measurement but not indicative of Virginia. When the sun light is that intense people do not go out in the sun. Even if your body exposure was only 2 Sq' you would need to remove almost 700 BTUs per hr to maintain body heat. That would mean sweating almost a pound of water every hr. to stay alive. Woops I forgot! The hundred watts was an average number so high noon would need to be maybe 400 watts, enough to boil water! Imagine that near where I live!

I have known persons second hand that lived off the grid. They did not use electricity for heat or light and forget air conditioning. They had a generator and car batteries to store some electricity but the supply was meager. A PV panel would be better than a generator.

PV efficiencies continue to creep up at the same time energy costs continue to rise.

The total amount of energy received at ground level from the sun at the zenith is 1004 watts per square meter, which is composed of 527 watts of infrared radiation, 445 watts of visible light, and 32 watts of ultraviolet radiation. At the top of the atmosphere sunlight is about 30% more intense, with more than three times the fraction of ultraviolet (UV), with most of the extra UV consisting of biologically-damaging shortwave ultraviolet.^[3][4][5]

Altitude increaases this number, plus clouds. I have personally measured over 1300 watts visible light psm, full sun with scattered clouds, at 3900 ft.

1 meter = 10.56 sf. ( so I'm not sure why you think that number is wacky) or 123 wpsf

... calculated a limiting efficiency of 71.7 percent ...