Folding Forum

The Sierra Club's latest newsletter has an article on solar power and the incentive of the government paying you back 30 percent of the cost of your solar installations, up to a maximum of $2000.
See Solar Projects for Under $1000

At present the only use for solar on houses that i see is by moving your lighting to the batteries charged by the solar panels. A heating solution also exists, but it locks your system to heating.

If all houses in reasonably bright parts of the world had solar panels and used 12/24v lighting systems, then we could cut back on power usage a little. But the big problems come with high wattage items like vacs, washing machines, microwaves, etc. As invertors can easily drain a bank of batteries very quickly.

My preference though will always be wind turbines, as folding requires a bit more power than solar can give. Plus i live in a windy area.

I agree with the wind preference.
The area which I live is home to many NIMBYs though,
citing noise and ugliness of the turbines as their reasons for being anti-wind power.

I do wish they could figure out how to cut turbine noise down. I don't care how they look though.

Another project... solar attic fan.

Not a product endorsement... just an example. http://www.sunrisesolar.net/ Gable mount fans available also.

Obviously, an attic fan in Arizona runs a lot more than other places. The fan helps cool the attic which helps cool the house, and lengthens the life of roofing materials (asphalt shingles in my case). It also allows me to use the attic for more storage. Also in my case, the fan would pay for itself in about 2 years.

I just can't convince myself to rip out the old electric attic fan that is still under warranty. While it's costing me a little more each summer, it seems like a bigger waste to trash it.

It will be the end for the FAH DC if all will go overly green.

7im wrote:Another project... solar attic fan.

Not a product endorsement... just an example. http://www.sunrisesolar.net/ Gable mount fans available also.

Obviously, an attic fan in Arizona runs a lot more than other places. The fan helps cool the arctic which helps cool the world, and lengthens the life of roofing materials (asphalt shingles in my case). It also allows me to use the attic for more storage. Also in my case, the fan would pay for itself in about 2 years.

I just can't convince myself to rip out the old electric attic fan that is still under warranty. While it's costing me a little more each summer, it seems like a bigger waste to trash it.

Hmmm, why dont you just admit it powers the cooling for all of your computers.

Ivoshiee wrote:It will be the end for the FAH DC if all will go overly green.

If i had a 10kw turbine, id run even more computers, hell i'd be running 30 quads by now, but for now electricity costs too much to run more than 3.