Amen.JSPONSLER said:The New York Times today reports
"The United States imported a daily average of more than 1.45 million barrels of Saudi crude over the first five months of this year, compared to a daily average of roughly 1.15 million barrels over the same period last year."
In Saudi Arabia, women cannot vote, they cannot drive, they cannot attend college, they have no rights. Practicing Christianity or Judaism or Hinduism in Saudi Arabia would be a suicidal gesture.
Osama bin Ladin was ... a Saudi millionaire.
Please go out today and buy a Fisker, a Tesla, a Volt, or a Leaf.
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I thought you were in Marin? (Though, depending on where in Marin vs SF county, that might not matter anywayFabulist said:
)Anyway, I'm getting a mere ~3 kW and it should put out about as much energy as the car will use. (The reason mine is that small is partly to keep capital cost down, and partly because that was all the roof surface area available on the new bit of roof after putting up hot-water panels too. There is lots more space on the main house roof but originally it was not going to have any work done.)
The system they are putting in on my house uses "microinverters" (one per panel) so they can easily add more panels later.
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I live in San Francisco but my dealer is in Marin because there are no Fisker dealers in San Francisco at the moment. My solar PV system was also limited by the available roof space since, like most houses in San Francisco, my house is a multi-story unit built on a small piece of land. Here is what the roof looks like from Google Maps:ct-fiskerbuzz said:I thought you were in Marin? (Though, depending on where in Marin vs SF county, that might not matter anywayFabulist said:
Anyway, I'm getting a mere ~3 kW and it should put out about as much energy as the car will use. (The reason mine is that small is partly to keep capital cost down, and partly because that was all the roof surface area available on the new bit of roof after putting up hot-water panels too. There is lots more space on the main house roof but originally it was not going to have any work done.)
The system they are putting in on my house uses "microinverters" (one per panel) so they can easily add more panels later.
Since you need a 3-foot perimeter around the roof and to allow for all the skylights and vents, we could only shoehorn 18 panels in. I have a pretty big inverter so if I wanted to add new panels as awnings or on a trellis later, I could just wire them in to the existing system. Lately, though, I have been thinking about augmenting the PV with vertical wind turbines like this one from Windstream technologies.
All of this will take some time to evolve. At the moment, the only hybrid solar/wind generator I have in my house is this unit from Ikea.
Can't exactly charge my Karma with it, but at least it's a start.
They may not be widely available yet, but you can learn all about it here. [hr]rex said:
If I read this correctly, they actually tested the turbines for four years. This is a pretty comprehensive study. Here is a short video of the turbines in action during the test (don't worry, the video is not four years longDutch said:
)[video=youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ5n9B1zLuY&feature=player_detailpage[/video]
The problem for city dwellers like me is that we can't just put up a 40 foot tower with a turbine on top in the middle of a city and the shorter vertical turbines are a more low-key solution for us, but they are also significantly less efficient than the traditional turbines.
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