Yes, a well-done story on one person's effort. A slight variation on his approach is to use "PG&E as the battery" and have a grid-tied system that takes advantage of the Net-Metering Law allowing your meter to run backwards during the day, wherein you're getting full retail price for your extra generation (it nets out to approximately zero after 12 months [PG&E's billing cycle for net- meterers.]) There are only two components: the solar array and the inverter; much cheaper and a very elegant implementation. You don't have protection if the grid goes down, but if that's a problem for you, just buy a 2kw generator and hook that into your buss with the appropriate disconnect. -Steve Grube
jf noonan wrote:
>
> On Mon, 12 Feb 2001, jf noonan wrote:
>
> > After they invested how many 10's of kilobucks in solar panels
> > and stuff? Here's a link from a guy in CA that really badly
> > wants this to work. But he has to admit that even with
> > government subsidies it doesn't even come close to paying for
> > itself.
>
> Bah, forgot to paste the damn link. Here it is:
>
> http://people.qualcomm.com/karn/pv/pv.html
>
> --
>
> Joseph Noonan
> Houston, TX
> jfn1 at msc.com