GO SOLAR!!!

by the end of next month my computer will run of the sun
i can do this for less than $500
with a brewkit and a vegie garden

im set for life :]
oh and i should get wireless too

cept u will drink all the brew
neglect the garden
and be bak to square one :)

Nah
I have faith in you
Go hard son

Tell me the plan man, im intreged

Intrigued..

Tell us your plan.

please let it involve high amperage, and you practising to be a conductor

well ha ha harb
no im serious
do it !!!
research yr own plan
there is plenty of ways
------------------
solar panel bout $350
then get a deepl cycle battery of watever
and so on so on
follow the instructions
and you we be running your computer with no bills for ever (sun permitting)
self sufficient is the way to go

So you obviously don't use your computer much then... one pissy solar panel isn't going to do anything.

An inverter will cost you about $200 for I think around 150w...

And what happened to the brewing kit and the veggie garden? :roll:

nah dude 1 can fully sustain a computer, i know ive done it
the brew and vegi garden is diff matter
and look u can do it for under $500
it can be done

Darwin here, half the year, "there is no sun"
secondly, the size of solar panel you would need to run my cmputer all day all night from would probly require more money than its worth :S
also considering that you can apparently run your computer from this $500 system, i would suggest that at 14cents per kWh or whatever it is, is probly more economical than that, because your computer apparently draws NOTHING, which means it costs NOTHING to run, which means that u really arnt saving anythhing :P

ActuallyI have looked into it.. I did it about 3 years ago ( the research ).

U do it properly U can get a government rebate ( $5000 ) cos U are doing a Eco thing. And the 5 grand is a fraction of what U ned to invest.

Now for the first 5 years U are paying off the panels, batteries, regulators, inverters, controllers.

But from there U are totally self sufficient..

Also during the day when U are @ work, the panels still charge the system. And if the cells ( batteries ) are full, U actually back feed into the national power grid and they pay U.

Dont think U get the money that U pay for power now as a consumer. U get a percentage. But your meter runs backwards as U feed the grid, and they pay U for it.

Now, $500 is a joke. Im sorry U cant do it for that, unless U are using a cheap dick smith inverter, a car battery and a secondhand solar panel..

Not exactly a proper system.

Now in Darwin your screwed, cos as Harbs said U dont get sun for half a year.. And solar panels require Direct sunlight to create current..

Which also means, to use the computer, and who knows what else at night requires a lot of large ( quite expensive ) cells to sustain that charge..

So in Darwin if U get direct sun, for half a year, and for half that time.. Solar dependance isnt really feasable..

wat is the lifespan of solar panels?

I think they're about 10 - 20 years.

They degrade over time though.. so the amount of power you get at the end isn't going to be the same as at the beginning..

Working in PAWA and Navcom we found solar panels needed replacing every 4 years
The cells just shit emselves and the substrate on which they are mounted errodes away

Quote from Eater_Of_Souls:
Working in PAWA and Navcom we found solar panels needed replacing every 4 years
The cells just shit emselves and the substrate on which they are mounted errodes away

What causes the erosion of the substrate?

how much dose it cost for a solar pannel to run a air con cause mom bitches about my air con being on to much and it is making to power bill high
dose the air con really make the power bill high?
its a split system like 3 yrs old now

Damn 4 years..

I'd have thought that would be in fairly extreme cases though?

Erosion of the substrate caused by the very chemical reaction that makes the cells work (in essence).

Built a Sun tracking solar array a few years back for a relly which still runs their laptop.

The array is not the problem but as was indicated earlier is storage.

We picked up at a tip a large amount of old telstra batteries which still hold their own even now. But their life is limited and you could not buy these things yourself. Why? They're massively expensive new or even secondhand.

Quote from Cubed:
Erosion of the substrate caused by the very chemical reaction that makes the cells work (in essence).

So a more efficient solar cell would wear down faster?

And a cheaper, lower quality cell would last longer?

I hope he's talking about batteries because there is NO chemical reaction in a solar cell :S
its some tricky work with quantum physics.

And you weren't born from parents but instead found in a marijauna plantation?

Just kidding :P

Quote from Harbinger:
I hope he's talking about batteries because there is NO chemical reaction in a solar cell :S
its some tricky work with quantum physics.

Yep. A solar cell works by the photoelectric effect - incoming photons from light knock electrons loose in the material which then flow around your circuit and come back in again the other end. There is not chemical reaction going on at all.

Corrosion would simply be caused by the fact that the cells aren't sealed 100% (anyway, they're constantly being battered by the weather), and eventually air/sand/water/bat crap will get in and eat them away.

Darkwolf.

Quote from Darkwolf:
bat crap will get in and eat them away.

I've seen how corrosive that stuff is, it can do alot of damage to a cars paintjob.

Reaction of substrate to UV

to sly's comment
you are right $500 would be cheapo way
and yes it's wont power it like more than 5 hours straight.
but it's a start.
I'm going to move bak to tassie soon.
where I want to be a rural computer service tech.
I want to have sattelite , and there aint no electricity at the land
so starting solar now would be a good choice for me

oh and u dont need an inverter if u run dc apliances,
car jak thingo
my idea is better for simple lighting, radios, and pocket books
ect.

I know rural comminity's run whole solar grid's instead of deisel
and they are much happier.
but that's thousand's , but if a rural com get together it's very feasible

Quote from Darkwolf:

Yep. A solar cell works by the photoelectric effect - incoming photons from light knock electrons loose in the material which then flow around your circuit and come back in again the other end.

Nearly, it's even trickier than that actually, because with the semiconductor in its basic form, the knocked loose electrons just drop back into their original energy state, the tricky bit is like a chemical valve that stops the little fockers from dropping back, and the quickest way back then is to flow through the circuit back into the little gap they left behind :S

or something :D

So there 'might' be a chemical reaction there somewhere? :wink:

Not when making the electricity, only when producing the cell themselves :?

solar cells work by creating two differnt types of silicon impurities
adding an impurity with 1 more proton makes a n type silicon
adding an impurity with 1 less proton makes a p type silicon (i think i may have them the wrong way round)
now p type silicon has holes in the structure were electrons should be but rnt
and n type silicon has too many electrons.

now these two are placed touching so when electrons r knocked off by the photoelectric effect instead of returning its attracted to the holes left in the p type silicon. so now the p type silicon is negative and n type is positive and electrons want to travle back so u create an alternate path then back through the middle so u can use the current for something