Um, yeah, you might say that.Has anyone done this or looked into it?
We don't get much hail but it isn't unheard of. I will ask about the effects.Interesting. Living here in BIG hail country has kept me out of thinking about solar.
We've been in some pretty good sized hail. Big enough to crack some of the plastic on top of our motorhome and put a few dents in the top of our jeep (1.5 to 2 inch?). But our 100W motorhome roof top solar panel appears impervious which amazes us.We don't get much hail but it isn't unheard of. I will ask about the effects.
Rambler,
Before I left northern CA, I noticed they were building houses with the 'tiles' that were solar tiles - how do those work and are they efficient - they are a bit more aesthetic for sure? here in Europe, you see a lot of people with solar panels (and businesses) - energy costs here are very high in comparison to the US. I am fascinated with solar - I grew up in AZ where's there's lots of sunshine and it just made sense - the key is the payback time, for sure. I've also been watching the conversion technology closely - Nords was amazing in his do-it-yourself approach, although working on a submarine for years and having to memorize circuitry and fail-safe mechanisms probably made it a walk-in-the park for him.
In any case, my goal is to be fairly self-sufficient energy-wise in my retirement home someday - and not to save the planet, just to be independent - the planet does a good job of saving itself over time with different types of purges - whether they be weather, bacterial, fungal, or viral in nature
I will be watching this thread for sure.
Erd50, while having existing utility companies do it would have some benefits, it essentially would work very poorly, without very heavy and costly regulation. Perhaps new utility companies could be setup to compete directly with existing utility companies, which would hire expert talent, but existing utility problems would have one, huge, unsolvable problem.
Conflict of interest.
They have no reason to cut off their existing, more lucrative business, and replace it with a cheaper one. They have sunk costs. Even if there was a strong incentive to do so, they would wish to phase it in as slowly as humanly possible.
I strongly suspect there will be new companies, and there are new companies now, that have already setup industrial solar panel supply systems, just not on a nationwide scale. Some of the existing utility companies do it as well on their own, but not many and only to a very limited degree.
I understand the view behind what you say, but aren't utilities already a regulated industry? So I'm not sure that much of what you state above really applies, due to the regulation already being in place. I suspect one reason that the utilities are not putting in much solar is a combination of not getting the incentives that homeowners do, and that it just doesn't make economic sense for them.
I'm getting here a little late, but part of that absentee time was spent analyzing a minor flaw in our PV array and then fixing it. Essentially our two strings of panels weren't balanced to provide the same amount of voltage to the inverter's inputs, and the inverter was only optimizing one of the string's power-conversion processes-- to the detriment of the other. Now the two strings are balanced and we'll know in a few months how we did.Well, this looks like the most current thread so I will jump in to blog my experience which is just beginning. I skimmed the threads Nord's referenced (and followed them back in the day) but they seem a little dated.
...200 kw of panels?