DIY PV panels

[Adrian C]

Why pet rats? What about purposely breeding working rats (or faster rodents) for the generation of electricity. Dump waste food at the top of a huge container and encorage them to run in a hampster wheel scambling to get at that food.

Ye only have to take out the dead (if not, er, 'recycled') and, er, other mess (which could be used to make methane). Apologies to those eating their tea....

And then there is all the prisoners in jails, and those in fitness clubs. Get them to run in similar wheels. House of Commons and the Lords, the same.

There, world fuel crisis sorted.

:-)

[Huge]

Having experimented with a black painted radiator to warm my "swimming" pool for the last 2 years, I'm going to try enclosing a few metres of black MDPE pipe in a glass fronted box - the radiator worked well enough but the brown water was a bit of a turn-off.

[John Rumm]

qualify for FiT. Then flog the install complete to the next punter in the line, and hookup a feed from your neighbours electricity supply. Make sure you have a bit of logic in there to control the rate of feedback based on sun level and time of day etc. Flog their own power back to them!

[george [dicegeorge]]

I once heard that between the wars farmhouses had a treadmill outside with dogs giving electricity for light and radio, is this true?

[g]

[Clive George]

Cragside was one of the first houses to get electricity, with a pelton wheel turbine involved somewhere along the line.

It also had a more traditional spit driven by a dog wheel.

[dom]

Ah - so we should be setting up production for a market in *fake* solar panels, so no-one spots you've sold on your kit.

[pete]

The thing I'd be wary about when installing a PV system is that you only get one shot at it. If the current best technology has an efficiency of X Watts of electricity per hour ... but in 5 years time that has increased to X + 50% (or even X + 10%) then you don't have the opportunity to rip out the existing investment and install new. Not without having to write off a large wad of money. It's also a fair bet that as efficiency increases, the cost will drop as well. That would be from two drivers: improved manufacturing and a by-product of increased efficiency, that the demand for PV would increase so the extra manufacturing would drop the price as well (unless material shortages cause it to rise - gah!). [the "Jevons paradox": increasing efficiency increases consumption]

So if both of these improvements are on the cards I would expect the system to become more cost-effective (more juice and lower cost) as time goes on. With the qualification that the government keeps subsidising the installation at the same rate, since it would be hard to decrease payments to people who had already taken up the offer. In the mean time, hold on to your money and invest in something that won't decrease in value over ime - as a PV system would.

[Clive George]

What's more likely to happen is the government stop subsidising new installations, but keep paying for existing ones. The guess is then when to invest - the chances of the economics changing vs the improvement in technology.

[Spamlet]

You don't get the various subsidies unless you use an approved supplier so there is not much point in even trying at the moment. If you want to see some of the complexities try looking up inverters: a huge subject in itself.

S

[John Rumm]

Yup, should be doable. You could have a whole street flogging juice to the next house along!

[Tabby]

Its possible to make pv cells, but as said the output is so tiny as to be utterly useless. Manufacturing silcon solar at home - not sure if possible, but it would be at best very demanding.

Its far cheaper to use solar rays to generate usable heat than electrickery, so it makes more sense to do that. And cheaper again to just harvest light.

NT

[Jules Richardson]

Yes, that's exactly what I did for my tests - glass box and black MDPE pipe. I didn't try and focus the rays at all; it was just a box (and lining the inside with a reflective layer didn't show any significant increase in performance). I used 1/2" pipe; smaller-diameter stuff would presumably have better heat-transfer abilities, at the expense of needing more coils for a given capacity.

My little test-rig would get water in the coils at 55F up to a useful

125F quickly - but the problem is one of scale: if I've got my sums right, one (US) gallon of coil capacity is 1176 inches of 1/2" diameter pipe, or near enough 100 feet. A minimum capacity of around 20 gallons is probably necessary to be useful, which probably means some form of holding tank and pumping of water around the system (and of course although the tank can be heavily insulated, it's not contributing to the heating effect) - 2000 feet of coils in glass-fronted boxes probably isn't viable :-)

cheers

Jules

[chris French]

IIRC According to some friends how have recently signed up to get some PV installed, the FIT contract is such that the payments are guaranteed, whatever the government decides to do in the future.

[Huge]

What the Government has done, the Government can undo.

[Nutkey]

Wouldn't there be a phase difference between the neighbours which would make that difficult?

[Vortex5]

Yup,

It's a contract between the householder and the energy supplier. Nothing to do with the government.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Not really. Solar panel are DC, so simply feed the mains inverter from a rectified neighbours mains supply.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Yep double glazed picture window is the most effective solar generator there is.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I am sure they will be, but will there be a PV income tax?

Or a special buy rate premium for people with socially abusive PV panels?

Or will the proletariat rise up in arms and simply smash them to the point where they are uninsurable.

I don't mind having to pay 45p a unit for PV output, provided every house that has one has to buy electricity at 45p a unit if they are installed, and stop working. Like at night.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Well that's easy. Energy supplier arranges to go bust, and is bought by another energy company, and all its contracts are torn up.