Anyone Seen Usefull Solar Panels Around?

[mali]

QUOTE
My big hopes are on Algae and other bio-mass

Bio-mass is quite popular already where I live. You get Bio-diesel and Bio-ethanol as a car fuel replacement. The BIG problem is, that sometimes cheap food is used for production and many farms switch to Bio-energy farming and drop food production, because they make more money with Bio-mass. The recent price increase of some food products is directly related to energy speculations. Edit: There are already new turbines for combined heat and power units that are powered by bio-fuels.

QUOTE
Hydrogen is a dead end. and their needs to be replacement liquid fuels. Even if we got radiation free fusion and could generate more than we need, hydrogen (which is made from electrolysis) is still too dangerous. Electric cars have too many problems and are unlikely to be resolved in the foreseeable future. Imagine the nightmare of batteries. There is no existing battery technology that is ready for electric cars and a replacement liquid fuel is needed.
Hydrogen is used for fuel cells, that generate electricity. There are plans to build very large scale Solar farms in the Sahara to produce Hydrogen and send it to Europe via pipeline. You can burn Hydrogen directly in cars, you get it in Germany at some gas stations or you can generate electricity with a fuel cell and power an electric car with it(fuel cells still need more development, though).

QUOTE
Switchgrass and Algae (especially Algae) are very good for replacement liquid fuels. Algae can produce Airplane fuel (Kerosene), Diesel and Gasoline and can be "farmed" anywhere, not just on our valuable farm land. It can also be done with salt water. Imagine an algae farm in the desert using salt water irrigated in from the ocean. It also grows very fast and doesn't have a once a year crop. More like every couple of days which is constant supply.
Sounds like a very good idea

 

[christo930]

QUOTE
My big hopes are on Algae and other bio-mass

QUOTE
Bio-mass is quite popular already where I live. You get Bio-diesel and Bio-ethanol as a car fuel replacement. The BIG problem is, that sometimes cheap food is used for production and many farms switch to Bio-energy farming and drop food production, because they make more money with Bio-mass. The recent price increase of some food products is directly related to energy speculations. Edit: There are already new turbines for combined heat and power units that are powered by bio-fuels.



Biomass made from unusable parts of the food would be OK, but the EROEI is too low to use as primary source of energy. Using biomass that would otherwise be discarded might be worth it, but growing sugar cane or corn or palm all have major problem, not the least of which is EROEI. Then there is soil depletion, forest loss, fertilizer run off... Algae addresses all these things, but needs some work. It's not ready for prime time yet, but most experts believe it will scale up well and ultimately could b e the replacement liquid fuel.

QUOTE
Hydrogen is used for fuel cells, that generate electricity. There are plans to build very large scale Solar farms in the Sahara to produce Hydrogen and send it to Europe via pipeline. You can burn Hydrogen directly in cars, you get it in Germany at some gas stations or you can generate electricity with a fuel cell and power an electric car with it(fuel cells still need more development, though).



I don't think I would feel to safe with cars driving around with compressed hydrogen on board. Then there is the very low likelihood of producing electricity by a radioactive free fusion process (at least any time soon).
Compressed Hydrogen is highly explosive. I also wonder about the wisdom of putting thousands of tons of water vapor into the atmosphere. Granted, it will rain, but with the water vapor being put in the atmosphere every minute of every day, it will likely raise the temperature far more than co2 could, since water vapor is a more effective greenhouse gas than co2.

I really wonder what is going to happen as wind power is rolled out more and more. I wonder how much power we can steal from the atmosphere before the power is missed? And remember, it's inefficient so when we get a megawatt, we probably had to steal several mega watts of wind energy. The wind is a very big driver of global climate. I'm sure on low scale it makes little difference, but imagine if the world were getting just 50% of it's electric needs from wind. What impact would that have on wind patterns and local temperatures. All that heat and cold being moved around by the winds will no longer be moved around.
It would be reassuring to hear some climate experts say that we could steal all the energy we need from the atmosphere without altering local weather conditions.

 

[mali]

In Germany there are already hydrogen cars driving around and believe me, Germans are usually paranoid by nature and need to invent a new law for every crap. :lol: It should be save enough. For an explosive gas mix you always need the right concentration of oxygen. The water vapor wouldn't have any effect. Every combustion produces large amounts of H2O. The actual energy mankind needs is nearly unmeasurably small compared to the solar power that is reaching earth.

Edit:
As a side note, If we really decrease air pollution that much, it could have a converse effect on global warming. The fine dust actually lowers the greenhouse effect by darkening the atmosphere.

 

[VRAndy]

Btw. when I hear "Solar Charger" the first thing that comes to my mind is camping.

That is what makes that backpack so tempting, because presumably you're going to spend the daylight hours hiking or cycling or something where you might want a backpack anyway.

But even forgetting how many batteries you could buy with $200 minus the cost of a normal backpack, and setting aside the issue of whether it would even generate the power you need. I would be uncomfortable with a backpack that so blatantly advertises that it contains expensive electronics.

You would have to watch that bag like a hawk.

 

[Polossatik]

reviving an old thread of mine,
with now the pandora coming a bit closer to beeing I tought into looking again into options for solar etc.

I came across the new and very nice looking MAX8903A chip.

Basically this has it all, it could be used to make a generic charger/ that
* allows to recieve juice from a USB port (100mA/500mA limits) - hence it's a very generic way to get a charger hooked up
* allows to recieve juice from a 4.1V to 16V DC (up to 2 A) source so wide range of mains adaptors or solar panel(s) can be hooked up.
* allows a Pandora (Li-pol) battery to be used as battery pack

There is even an extra output but this is only 4.4V when usb/dc power is available or , if no source is there, it's the battery pack itself (minus 50m ohm), so this is in this case not so usefull. Might be an idea however to see if it's possible to add a second step up chip (like the LM2623) to get 5v from the battery to be able to also use this to charge/hookup usb MP3 players or so, making this a VERY generic tool. Not sure if this cascading in real life works, should work in theory. Might be a good idea to limit this to 500mA

This 5v output would not to be used to hook up the pandora trough the DC jack, if this would use an extra pandora battery, then it's better to simply switch the battery..

toughts? anyone who would be interested in something like this? I think the PCB would be around 30 usd (small scale batch)..

 

[Squidge]

Please don't revive threads that are 6 months old. Instead, create a new one and link to your old thread should people wish to read it.

(The board rules available at the top of every forum state no longer than 3 months. We are flexible, but 6 months stretching that a little too far)

 

[atomicthumbs]

Build your own!

http://www.goldmine-elec-products.com/prodinfo.asp?number=G15234

2 amp, 0.5 volt solar cell.

 

[Polossatik]

Please don't revive threads that are 6 months old. Instead, create a new one and link to your old thread should people wish to read it.

(The board rules available at the top of every forum state no longer than 3 months. We are flexible, but 6 months stretching that a little too far)

thank you, it states "posting in threads over three months old (unless you have a good reason)" , hence seen I've found new info relating straight to the matter I updated my own thread. And links have a tendency to break after time/board updates etc.... If updating after 3 months is really a big no go here for some reason, kindly make this more clear in the rules.

@atomicthumbs , thankx but the actual charger is more of an issue then finding solar panels

 

[Verb]

I am surprised nobody pointed to the Brunton fold up solar panels:


6 watts fold up

or

9 watts roll up

No internal battery (just solar panels) and pretty expensive > $200 for the foldup and almost $500 for the rollup, but not too bad for providing an amp or 2 at USB voltages.

My favorite is the 4.4 watt clamshell model since it gives the most bang for the buck and has a 12V car power plug in the hinge and allows daisy chaining. 530mA @ 6V is good enough to charge most devices:

Unfortunately I could only justify $190 if I were going to be away from any source of power IN A SUNNY LOCATION for many consecutive days. I long ago gave up my hobby of desert camping

After buying a few of the cheaper solar chargers I found there is a lot of promise, but no delivery since there are too many situations where you don't get sufficient sun to charge the suckers. They all want 8+ hours of direct sunlight to fully charge. Unless you babysit it for all of those 8 hours and constantly point it at the sun as it tracks through the sky then you will find the charging performance is considerably less of what is advertised. You are better off with one of the devices with a large enough LiPo battery to get you through your trip that you charge up at home before embarking.