Solar Panels

[witch]

The other half has bought 'us' some solar panels and is now thinking what to do with them. He would like a fairly easy project and would like any sensible ideas please. He has thought of wiring up the old immersion heater in the water tank to help give us hot water - can anyone think of anything else?

[Geoff]

Generating hot water is the simplest thing to do. Slightly more complex is to get a grid tie inverter, load centre and a new electric meter. Then you can sell spare power you generate back to the grid. You can only do this if power company is setup to let you do this.

[Lurch]

You'd be better off using them to power something you already use. If you have a fairly decent heating system heating the tank atm then switching to using the immersion heater would be a bit pointless and a waste imo. You'd be better off using them to power something that you already use, like all the heating and lighting. I'd connect them to a storage bank of some sort (a UPS would do) and then you don't have to turn all the lights off when it goes dark!

[ChrisH]

Hmm solar panels in this country.... I was expecting a joke

[pete]

Scaramanga style Solar Raygun (PIC chip with two ldrs out on arms, one on top and a servo so it can track and lock onto the sun)

 

Garden pond pump?

Provide electricity to an outbuilding?

 

It depends how much power he expects to get.

[Sirbendy]

I have a few bebsites at home that might be of use..I'll dig them out..

[laserblazer]

I've always had this hankering to build a swimming pool and use old central heating radiators, painted black, to heat it.

[witch]

Hmm solar panels in this country.... I was expecting a joke

Yes but this is the far South where we do get quite a lot of sunshine!

 

I like the raygun idea!

 

The UPS is a good one - I have one that I 'liberated' *cough* from one of my schools last year - would that sort of thing do?

 

He doesn't want to get involved with the 'tieing into the grid' bit - and besides, there isn't very many panels - I doubt it would generate anything much!

 

Thanks for the ideas - keep em coming.

[dhicks]

Thanks for the ideas - keep em coming.

 

Hook the panels up to a slow cooker - leave running for 8 hours and come back home to lovely slow-cooked stew?

 

--

David Hicks

[Geoff]

Hmm solar panels in this country.... I was expecting a joke

 

Anywhere north of Birmingham and it's not cost effective, down south it's a fine idea though.

 

Up north we're better off harnessing the hydro power of our house down spouts, due to the huge amount of rain we get.

[Sirbendy]

I thought of that before..heh...or small scale windpower maybe..

 

Solar I like...I have a solar radio, a solar torch, and a solar triffid at the sec...5 balls on sticks coming out of a stainless steel arty base thing..marketed as a garden light but makes a great low-level dining room lamp.

 

I'm very tempted to get the £20 4.8w solar panel from various places on the net, hitch it to a scrapyard car battery and use it to power an LED lighting grid in my garage, as well as providing an emergency boost if I can't get the car started. As a bonus, I have a spare stereo unit I could wire to provide me with tunes while I work on it, and a cheap "in car" 12-240v inverter could provide some scope for playing with the system.

 

Such things as the "Mintyboost" 2xAA battery to 5v USB charger intrigue me as well..we really do use 240v for convenience..most electrical stuff only knocks it back down to low level voltages again anyway.

 

I still thing this idiot government's insistence on nuclear power is stupid...go wind, invest in hydro, encourage home takeup of solar/wind, and encourage low energy product manufacture..

 

Look at TVs...the MILs Plasma uses 800 watts at least..my 21", 15 year old CRT based Tosh uses 60 watts...I could easily run my entire corner AV/Entertainment stack off a 12v inverter.

 

Sorry, I'm dribbling.

 

EDIT: This is the site I quite like...they have some interesting ideas you might like to browse..

 

Renewable Energy UK

Edited April 24, 2008 by Sirbendy

[Andrew_C]

I still thing this idiot government's insistence on nuclear power is stupid...go wind, invest in hydro,

I saw a headline last week stating that some Scottish island had a wind farm turned down to protect some birds. Don't these idiots realise that unless we do turn to renewables many more nesting sites are going to get trashed?

[torledo]

I saw a headline last week stating that some Scottish island had a wind farm turned down to protect some birds. Don't these idiots realise that unless we do turn to renewables many more nesting sites are going to get trashed?

 

The story i read was regarding protected birds of prey which were getting caught in the blades. So not just 'some birds' as you put it.

[dhicks]

I thought of that before..heh...or small scale windpower maybe..

 

I'm sure I've actually seen someone selling small-scale in-your-drainpipe generators, I just can't remember where.

 

I still thing this idiot government's insistence on nuclear power is stupid...go wind, invest in hydro, encourage home takeup of solar/wind, and encourage low energy product manufacture..

 

I'd hate to think we were shying away from developing large-scale wind/wave power stations just because of the engineering challenge. It does seem rather obvious - ruddy great chunk of sea, perfect for plonking a bunch of off-shore wind turbines in where they won't bother anyone. Nuclear power stations will still leave us dependant on foreign imports of raw fuel.

 

--

David Hicks

[enjay]

Nuclear power stations will still leave us dependant on foreign imports of raw fuel.

 

Not to mention the far greater question of what to do with the spent fuel!

 

While some people don't like wind farms (although personally I like them, and even find them rather hypnotic, especially XCO2's "quiet revolution" ones - http://tinyurl.com/4wcb8d), there are ways and means to install them, either in remote places or by taking the time to convince the local populous of their value, as they have done with the ones where my brother lives. People's knee-jerk reaction will often be "no", but they may come round to a "yes" if someone takes the time to address any concerns and dispel rumours (e.g. they really aren't very noisy) or - dare I say it - bribe the local community with offers of new facilities in exchange.

 

If endangered species were getting kebabbed on that Scottish one, then it should be moved, that is only sensible - emphasis on MOVED not abandoned.

[Roopert]

I would imagine the power required for an immersion heater would not be sufficiently supplied by solar panels, as heating elements use alot of power (though the panels may be nice expensive ones and i am wrong!). More ideal scenarios for solar setups are for house lighting, it is easily expandable, low power consumption, simple wiring, and when it goes bang not much breaks! It is a good 'first step' into solar power, make sure the batteries are hooked into the system though, solar doesnt like the dark for some reason

 

I would start with the panels charging batteries, (including a charge controller in there) working out what 12v appliances i want to use so that i can choose the right size batteries, taking into account the charging power of the panels (though in a small lighting system, with some liberated UPS 12v batteries it wont matter too much, just use a charge controller to prevent overcharging etc.).

 

I have ripped out the innards of a UPS system, wiring up the power inputs and outputs to the battery through a charge controller, so that you can just plug in the solar panels to the power input, then plug in any outputs you want. Go go recycle bot!

 

hope this helps

Edited April 24, 2008 by Roopert

[Geoff]

I'd hate to think we were shying away from developing large-scale wind/wave power stations just because of the engineering challenge. It does seem rather obvious - ruddy great chunk of sea, perfect for plonking a bunch of off-shore wind turbines in where they won't bother anyone. Nuclear power stations will still leave us dependant on foreign imports of raw fuel.

 

Indeed, we have some of the windiest, roughest seas and highest tidal ranges in the world, perfect for power generation.

 

You'll be interested to know that Australia has most of the worlds Uranium, so getting nuclear fuel is not nearly as troublesome as you might expect.

 

Also, we did have several fast breeder reactors in Scotland which can make fuel. We could either reactivate these plants (I'm not sure as to what state they are in) or simply build more reactors, utilising the same sites.

 

As for spent fuel, we already have the technology to turn most of it back into fuel rods and the rest into various interesting radioactive isotopes. Which makes for excellent fuel for space ships, satellites and medical purposes, amongst other things. BNFL is making quite a lot of money out of this, currently dealing with French and American spent fuel and reprocessing it into new fuel rods.

[GrumbleDook]

Wind and tidal power has raised concerns about their effect on the environment (including the positive and negative changes to costal erosion, destruction of habitats, etc) ... this is only starting to be seriously explored in US, NL and Oz.

 

Nuclear fuel is very profitable and the scare-mongering from many years ago is still having a detrimental effect. The industry has moved on in leaps and bounds (as pointed out by Geoff) so it is viable as a solution.

 

The danger of energy consumption is that we have not changed our energy uptake in light of what is going on ... get that sorted and it will give us a little more time to be forward thinking.

 

People will laugh that I have swapped to a SMART car ... and I would eventually like to go even more efficient too ...

 

The solar panels ... use them to run in house entertainment ... computers, tvs, VCRs, etc ... and try to sell energy back to the grid. Well worth it.

[Sirbendy]

My point indeed...

 

I have an MP3 player hitched to some 9v creative speakers and a 12v Sub..that's my entertainment centre. I have everything as low powered as possible, everything on timers, and the only thing that is always on is the fridge.

 

Which is why I only use £4 electricity per week, including cooking. Heh.

[dhicks]

Wind and tidal power has raised concerns about their effect on the environment (including the positive and negative changes to costal erosion, destruction of habitats, etc)...

 

It bothers me that we seem to be making only half-hearted efforts into solving the problems associated with various forms of power generation. Sod it, if we want proper renewable power generation then there's a huge great fission reactor hanging a measly 1AU away in space that'll be spewing power for the next couple of billion years at least.[1]

 

--

David Hicks

 

[1] Probably. Your mileage may vary. I take no responsibility if it only turns out to last 1 billion years.

[localzuk]

Wind and tidal power has raised concerns about their effect on the environment (including the positive and negative changes to costal erosion, destruction of habitats, etc) ... this is only starting to be seriously explored in US, NL and Oz.

 

Nuclear fuel is very profitable and the scare-mongering from many years ago is still having a detrimental effect. The industry has moved on in leaps and bounds (as pointed out by Geoff) so it is viable as a solution.

 

The danger of energy consumption is that we have not changed our energy uptake in light of what is going on ... get that sorted and it will give us a little more time to be forward thinking.

 

People will laugh that I have swapped to a SMART car ... and I would eventually like to go even more efficient too ...

 

The solar panels ... use them to run in house entertainment ... computers, tvs, VCRs, etc ... and try to sell energy back to the grid. Well worth it.

 

However, the damage caused by wind and tidal power generation is lower than the damage caused by pumping billions of tonnes of co2 into the air, or digging up giant swathes of land for coal mining, or to mine uranium, or the massive damage caused by the exploration of and extraction of oil.

 

No method of producing enegy is going to be perfect.

[GrumbleDook]

It bothers me that we seem to be making only half-hearted efforts into solving the problems associated with various forms of power generation. Sod it, if we want proper renewable power generation then there's a huge great fission reactor hanging a measly 1AU away in space that'll be spewing power for the next couple of billion years at least.[1]

 

--

David Hicks

 

[1] Probably. Your mileage may vary. I take no responsibility if it only turns out to last 1 billion years.

 

It reminds me of an episode of The West Wing where Josh got lumbered with working with the alternative energy groups, all of which slagged each other off.

 

IIRC the problem with solar power in the states was that to get an amount to make a serious dent in the problem they had to cover Vegas and chunks of the Grand Canyon in solar panels.

 

Alternative energy sources actually does not stop the problem, only shifts the problem to some extent. Reducing the power usage is the goal.

[witch]

This is blowing up (hee hee) into a different discussion!

Thanks for your ideas guys, especially Roopert and SirBendy

I'll let you know what he did do in the end (and what it cost us!)

[SYNACK]

Wind and tidal power has raised concerns about their effect on the environment (including the positive and negative changes to costal erosion, destruction of habitats, etc) ... this is only starting to be seriously explored in US, NL and Oz.

 

I know that its off topic but NZ has just approved a trial tidal power plant trial to test its viability.

 

There are also wind farms being built but the tidal power would be far more efficient and generate more power. This is especially important as we are looking at yet another power crisis due to low rainfall (thanks global climate change), not a certainty yet thankfully but deffinatly an annoyance.

Edited April 25, 2008 by SYNACK

[beeswax]

I saw a headline last week stating that some Scottish island had a wind farm turned down to protect some birds. Don't these idiots realise that unless we do turn to renewables many more nesting sites are going to get trashed?

 

 

this could be the one.

As for solar power, I thought that daylight was enough to power the panels, rather than sunshine. There's an old article from the BBC here which suggests that it was going to be tried out on the Isle of Foula. This may have been superseded by more current events.