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Dell, Lenovo Adding Solar Option for PCs
An anonymous reader writes "Lenovo just announced a solar power option for PCs, and Dell is about to do the same, according to Advanced Energy Group. But the solar hardware weights 86 pounds and costs $1,300! Lenovo officials admit they had to do this to reach the 75% mark to gain EPEAT Gold status; Dell couldn't be reached for comment. Hopefully the technology will get smaller and more affordable."
Just what I need! Solar power for my desktop computer! This will go great right next to my windo-- wait. I don't have any windows. Oh, shit.
Life is rarely fair. Cherish the moments when there is a right answer.
Maybe Dell could get a rep for being "pro-fitness", too, with that 86 lb. power supply.
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PC tech has financed huge tech returns for non-PC products, especially in power conservation and management. I'd like to see Dell and other PC OEMs evolve into supplying solar power systems (with embedded PCs for ease of open integration and smart operation) for general use in our homes, offices and mobile.
A real winner would be mobile phones whose cases all recharge off solar (or just ambient light, even indoors). That kind of mass market could drive down the price:performance curve, open up the tech to all our powered devices. And make the "solar look" popular that even people who buy on nothing but fashion (most people) would start saving power with all these accessories.
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make install -not war
This is exactly how you are going to "save the planet" by solving the energy problem, folks. Not by not using coal/oil plant electricity. But by captalism: profiting from selling clean energy solutions.
sigs... don't talk to me about sigs....
...could you plant for $1300? That's something many environmental types love to ignore. They spend large amounts of money on things that have pretty small environmental benefits, and then say "every little bit counts" and so forth. Whereas what they should be asking is "how could I spend this money so as to do the most good/least damage to the environment?"
Oh no... it's the future.
First computers and cell phones, then cars which run off of batteries, but use solar panels while sitting at the mall or work parking lot, and finishng up with solar farms running all of our electrical needs through smart reduction of power demands...
Ok everyone, I feel a hearty round of kumbaya coming on.... **ducks the vegetables**
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
Once again copying Apple: PowerBook: Solar Powered Solutions - and only 13 years after this support article was written. :)
Pics here.
Someone told me that one of the *old* powerbooks has a replacable top panel in which there was some sort of official apple solar panel option. I did some googling but couldn't find any evidence of that.
- "When you want something with all your heart, the entire universe conspires to give it to you" -Paulo Coelho
Its funny that anytime a corp. does something cool like this its always motivated by some outside mandate. I suspect little work will be done to make these more accessable to the average joe now that they have what they want
just let me know when they provide a nuclear option
Monstar L
Solar laptop solutions are sold by many companies already. You can get it as a foldable panel, panels on laptop bags, panels that can be glued to the back of the screen (probably suboptimal), and even a solar jacket
They're available in all sorts, from cheap ones that can only slowly charge the battery (though they seem to be able to provide part of the required power while the laptop is on, extending the battery's life), to more expensive ones that produce enough power to keep the laptop on, assuming favorable light levels of course.
Build your own for around $300: http://www.energyrefuge.com/how-to/solar_power_generator.htm
This is essentially the same thing: a solar panel, battery charger, deep-cycle battery, and (optionally if you don't have a 12V laptop adaptor) a power inverter. The solar cell is what costs the most. The battery is what weighs the most.
...will it run Solaris?
Joking aside, this is something I have been toying with for the past few months. I have a couple of polycrystaline panels on the roof of the workshop and a small LV controller/wet battery arrangement. Getting LV PSUs for standard PC hardware is a pain, though. They are available, and the beauty of them is that you don't have to faff about with DC-AC inverters, but they're more than double the price of a high-end AC PSU.
There are also those small PSU modules for the likes of Via's EPIA mini-ITX boards that will supply the other voltages from a single 12V feed. The main problem with these is that they supply the board with 12V directly from the source. With Lead-acid and solar, you can bet that this will vary with load, time of day, weather and other factors. The best solution for off-grid solar is a 24V system with a real 24V DC-DC PSU that will regulate the 12V rails. As soon as I am comfortable remortgaging the house I may get one...
Resistance is futile. Reactance buggers it up.
Cool! I want an external small solar panel for my laptop. Since I travel a lot and charging sucks, a small solar panel for laptops would be nice. Or better - make the entire laptop casing made of photovoltaic cells. Added to that, I look forward to see pizoelectric crystals being implemented as well.
Do I require the c-sig package to have a signature?
When we factor in the environmental and monetary cost of producing this product (panels and battery systems) to run a PC which would be practically free in terms of cost and carbon emission to run on the grid in many countries...I'm left scratching my head... how is this a good deal for either the environment or the buyer?
If you really want to save the planet take that $1300 and use it for a down payment on a ground source heat pump for your home.
It's fairly "green" and it's usually "grain" powered (rice, wheat, beans).
The OLPC has it, or sorta does...
The cost of electricity here is so cheap that it would take years to pay this off. However, in countries where there is no infrastructure this is better than a hand crank.
Wouldn't it be easier to make a freaking hand crank powered laptop?
This shares the same problem as all the others. What you want if you are trying to save power is a system that uses the sun as much as it can and fills in the gaps with power from the AC supply. This uses solar only if the main power is cut. Thanks for nothing.
If anyone from APC or Belkin is reading this... what I want is a reasonably-priced UPS that takes AC power and DC power in and connects to 2 banks of (user-provided) batteries. One bank is for interruptions, the other is to store enough power that the output can run from DC for periods of time before automatically returning to bypass while the batteries catch up.
Then, I can run my loads from a UPS that can consume all of the solar I generate without forgetting to fall-back to commercial power when needed.
Who here works in a cube farm and doesn't see on a daily basis a few people that could stand to do the exercise and would be better off generating power for the folks that are effective. It would work (and we would get healthier geeks to).
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
...here, have a few freebie trees on me! Go ahead, claim a dozen, they are cheap! You have to go way out of your way to NOT have trees gradually take over pastureland. We have untold *thousands and thousands* of wild trees sprout all on their own here every year. Carbon offsets and new green taxes and whatnot though are scams, pure bloated governmental bureaucracy/corporate dodgy scams.
With that said, solar PV *works* and works well, and is affordable now if you extrapolate probable electricity costs for a coupla decades into the future. I have a home made version of what is in the article (single good sized panel, charge controller, storage battery on a handtruck so it was movable, tied in with a long heavy gauge extension I made from scrap welding cables, and those went to more storage batts) and ran my old computer (a laptop, but it is what I had then) from it for years.
I am extreme pro environment, and I walk the talk and slap my wallet where my mouth is and have for a long time now, but I warn folks, watch for the conjobs from the globalist green movement. Parts of it are righteous, parts of it are pure con, it isn't all one or the other. We can do much better with energy conservation in our buildings and vehicles and gadgets (dropping our demand while still enjoying technology), and we certainly can produce a lot more green power now that economies of scale are seriously ramping up with solar and wind and geothermal and hydro, and because we can see how destructive a lot of "conventional" power is, but beware all the "new carbon taxes" and "carbon trading" and suchlike, they are designed to separate you from your cash and add another burdensome layer of onerous power tripping laws over you and add in even more disgusting middleman "traders" to skim off working guys wealth. So go green, but do it because you like it and we need it as a planet and it works and makes sense and cent$, not because they force you to swallow some serious propaganda and BS.
Didn't Dell and Lenovo hear about division of labour? I'm sure that if I need solar power I can get a better, cheaper and more flexible solution from a company specialized in solar power generation. Maybe some exec got confused over the "power supply" term.
Pics here.
Someone told me that one of the *old* powerbooks has a replacable top panel in which there was some sort of official apple solar panel option. I did some googling but couldn't find any evidence of that.
From the linked page: Note: This article provides information about a non-Apple product. Apple Computer, Inc. is not responsible for its content and mention of this product should not be interpreted as a recommendation by Apple. Please contact the vendor for additional information. Also, as far as I can tell, the products are no longer available (neither in original form, nor in "updated" forms).
To summarize: Hubris.
Yese, someone made something similar a decade ago. Are you saying that this Lenovo thinks this is so wildly succesful they'd better get into the market?
Logically speaking, when the 2007 version weighs in at almost 50 kg and does not even completely power the kit, I think it's more to do with the tech being immature rather than being first to market. I can also market completely half-assed stuff, but then my company would also die and leave my domain for the sharks.
A more worthwhile goal is just to reduce the power consumption of your PC. The computer referred to in TFA draws 45 W, which is nice and low. I would just call that a victory and stop there. When I built my most recent machine, I decided to go for low power, and without using any particularly exotic hardware, I managed to get it down to 98 W, including the monitor, when the CPU is idle. It's a nice, snappy computer, with a dual-core AMD x64 CPU. If you're shopping for a power supply, make sure and get an 80PLUS model. Another reasonable thing to do, if you're concerned about your impact on the environment, is if you're just going to do word processing, programming, and web browsing, don't buy a gaming machine with a video card that gets hot enough to fry an egg.
The solar thing being discussed in the article is clearly a silly gimmick. You'd get more environmental bang for the buck by installing photovoltaics on the roof (and that's an option for businesses as well as homeowners). YMMV, but where I live in Southern California we get a lot of sun, and my roof faces south, so photovoltaics ended up being a good deal for me. (It's hard to estimate how long the investment will take to pay for itself, because it depends sensitively on how much electric rates go up in the future. The historical trend has always been up, but it's hard to predict exactly how much more rates will go up in, say, the next 10 years.) There is at least one theoretical situation in which a special-purpose solar panel for a specific device can make sense, and that's where you have a device that uses a lot of power, and can run on DC. The classic example is pool pumps. Pool pumps tend to be insane power hogs, and they use DC motors, so you can actually be more efficient by using special-purpose photovoltaics than plugging into the AC from a general-purpose PV system's inverter. A computer can also run on DC, and I believe in some big data centers they do use hardware that runs on DC, because it saves the electricity that would have been wasted by inefficiency in the individual computers' power supplies. If you were running such a center in an area with a lot of sun, and you had some roof space available, it could certainly be smart to get a big PV system installed, without an inverter, to supply DC to the machines.
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"Extreme religion should be correctly called piety, not terrorism."
Piety is reverence towards one's God. The word you're looking for is "religious extremism."Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
That's something many environmental types love to ignore. They spend large amounts of money on things that have pretty small environmental benefits, and then say "every little bit counts" and so forth. Whereas what they should be asking is "how could I spend this money so as to do the most good/least damage to the environment?"
"They" are "ignoring it" because trees aren't the largest source of oxygen on the planet- phytoplankton in the oceans are. I've seen numbers as high as 90%, but I think most scientists would agree it is "more than half."
They" are "ignoring it" because trees don't remove industrial pollutants, they don't bring much in the way of renewable energy (they do have lots of side benefits, like preventing erosion, providing habitat for ecosystems, shading the ground and buildings from solar radiation in hot areas, providing renewable construction materials, etc) and so on. Planting trees does jack shit to address the pollution from power plants (more than a third of the United States electricity comes from coal, of which the soot contains radioactive particles among other things), planes, trains, and trucks.
The problem here is not that manufacturers aren't trying; it's that these companies make a business out of reselling other people's stuff. That Dell laptop was not actually designed by Dell; Apple is one of the few companies to design in-house. Dell goes shopping each year in Asia and sees what OEM laptops it likes, and then slaps their label on 'em.
What is needed is a company other than Advanced Energy Group slapping a $1400 price tag on what is essentially:
Far as I can see, they're making a 100% profit margin ON TOP OF RETAIL PRICES for all those components. The problem with most solar "technologies" is that everyone is exceptionally greedy. If they priced the stuff with more reasonable profit margins, they'd sell quite a bit more of 'em.
Please help metamoderate.
...we could figure out a way to convert the profanatory output of a 13 year old whilst playing over Xbox Live into energy, not only could such devices power the Xbox and TV used, it is quite possible we could meet the power needs of several rather large cities.
"I may be full of crap about this game, and I may be wrong, and that's fine." -Jack Thompson
I agree this could be provided cheaper, but you underestimated the solar power requirements by a long shot.
The solar panel suggested in your link is an 18-watt ($175) solar panel, and is inadequate to charge the 60-Ah battery included with the Xantrex Xpower 1500 Powerpack. A complete charge would take several days of full sun.
The Lenovo & Dell packages include a 110-watt solar panel, which sells for about $6-700 dollars at Real Goods or Mr. Solar.
For $1500, you could by a decent laptop for $1000, and then assemble your fun $300 solar/battery kit.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Buying (or stipulating that something must be bought) provides an indirect research grant for the technology in question. It isn't as effecient as a direct grant, but it can be much more effective, as the researchers have to show results to get it.
Most people just browsing the web & word processing could make do with one of these - 10W inc. screen !
http://www.explan.co.uk/solo/index.shtml
Shame they don't seem to have updated the site in a while.
The purpose of carbon trading is to internalize the cost of polluting. Just as you have to pay the man to take out your trash, you should have to pay for the carbon you emit.
Solar power is quite popular for remote stations no where near the grid. Diesel generators are better if you have regular supplies coming in, but if not solar is far superior.
Wind power is far too variable and location specific to be of much use.
Best AC comment EVER. Way to go as far off-topic as humanly possible (without, of course, meta-commenting on the hilarity of an AC comment).
Solar powered PC's for 1500$ are a prime example of what's wrong with the consumerist approach to environmentalism.
I doubt whether the energy saved by running a PC off this thing will even offset the energy used in it's manufacture, but hey it sounds good and people go "aren't dell good environmentalists".
Everybody goes out and replaces their (perfectly functioning) fords with a "green" Prius. Totally ignoring the fact that manufacturing the Prius itself requires large amounts of energy, therefore emitting a lot of carbon. It would be better for the planet to keep to old car for a few years, or even better to use public transport.
The consumerist approach to environmentalism is like trying to fight WWII by asking individual members of the population to buy guns and go out and shoot a few Germans in their spare time. If governments took this problem remotely as seriously as they claim to there would be proper regulation, as indeed there must be. Consumerism will not solve this problem, we need people who can actually add up working out how existing resources can best be directed to save the planet; not the bloody marketing department at dell.
My current machine is a pretty capable notebook (Dell Lattitude D820) with Core 2 duo. When I use it in the car with an inverter the inverter display normally shows between 20 to 30 watts. I know the supply is rated something much higher, but it never seems to draw that much.
Yeah, but nobody has three hands. I mean you got one hand for the keyboard or the touchpad and the other one for... Well this just won't work.
Unless you have a girlfriend, but that'd be stretching the odds a bit too much wouldn't it?
If they really want to help out with alternative energy usage there are a few things they can do easily:
- Design the power supplies and charge controllers of laptops to accept reasonably "wild" voltages on the input jack, publish the specs and limits, and approve direct connection to panels or 12v renewable energy systems. Alternatively they could make available an INEXPENSIVE charging brick that accepts such voltages on its input.
By 'reasonably "wild"' I mean the voltages that would appear off, say, a 12v panel (about 14.5v) or a 12V renewable-energy battery bank (about 13.5, up to 14.something during equalization). Disconnect at a minimum charge to protect batteries from undercharge would be a good idea, too. (Make it resistant to voltage spikes from switching of inductive loads and it could also be plugged directly into a cigarette lighter in a car as well.)
Down-converter bricks for 24 and 48 volt systems would be good, too. Working through one step of conversion, rather than running the system's big (and thus lossy) inverter to get power up to 120VAC for a standard brick and then bringing it back down to what the laptop wants, would be a big win.
- Improve power management (including clock-speed management, disk shutdown, and screen backlighting control) for lowered power consumption when not needed for heavy crunch or display. (For linux: Provide the hooks for the open software to do this.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
PRESS RELEASE
The ACME Computer Industry Consortium (ACMECIS) has just released the ACME SP5000, a solar-powered add-on that works with virtually any computer. It sports 240V and 120V AC and an assortment of DC power outputs and is able to deliver up to 1500 watts of power.
While billed as portable, this is in name only. The solar panels alone weigh 1500kg. and come installed on you choice of: Several push carts, several electric golf carts, or the roof of a bio-diesel-powered bus. A panel-only option is available for customers intending to install it on their own vehicles or affix them permanently to structures.
When asked why they are doing this now instead of waiting for technology to improve, an ACMECIS spokesman said "A few of our environmentally-conscious customers asked for a solar-powered option. We care about the environment."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The solar cells and batteries aren't going to pay for themselves over their service lives, and they're *far* more environmentally unfriendly than any responsible power plant.
...and before you casually hurl "know it all" insults. I live in georgia, and also own an aeromarine wind power generator, but I use solar for my alternative energy of choice, because it works *much much better* here than wind. There's no one single "best" power source, it depends on use, location, etc. Solar just works hella better here than wind, right now,I am getting decent sun, but the wind is quite calm. Other areas it is way more windy most of the year, but solar might not be as good. Some guys are lucky and can run decent hybrid systems, using both, especially good as wind picks up in the winter when there is less sun, and vice versa. It just depends. Here ya go, look at some solar and wind potential maps
I've been into alternative energy since the 60s (you??) when I first worked with my dad and we built from scratch some solar heating for our swimming pool (added a month decent swimming both spring and fall for only a couple hundred bucks and some labor), and since that time as a hobbiest and also it was my business for a few years (might be again possibly, the interest has picked up a lot this past year with all the energy cost increases), by actually "doing* stuff with it, everything from solar thermal space heating and solar water heating for household use to making biofuel ethanol and methane, working on superinsulated structures (several of those, best dollars you can spend is more insulation and better windows), etc. etc, along with solar PV and wind. I am fully aware of the pluses and minuses of this or that technique and what stuff costs, etc. This isn't theoretical casual web board commentary from me, it is hands on experience. I don't write code, so I don't comment about that a whole lot, but with alternative energy I can speak from some significant experience. I don't claim to be the expert's expert, because I am not, but I do have a lot of hands on with this stuff and try to keep up with the industry in general terms. And it worked just swell with that laptop, and it also ran a reading light and a small TV and a radio at the same time during the evenings, it wasn't stupid at all, it "just worked" for relatively cheap money, and it has been long paid off and the same rig still works fine, even that original single battery that is going on ten years old now works fine, and the larger battery bank is 8 years old now and works fine.
Ace of Bass?!! HAHAHA!!
That is seriously funny as hell.
Screw that, it isn't their carbon to tax me on it *again* and I've already pointed out that tree planting is just a way to "feel good" about your pollution, trees are self planting all over the planet, lining up some sort of figures is usless except for those who want more political power over other people or want their money and usually it is both. Really, I am not exaggerating, we have _thousands_ of new baby trees a year sprout up here, will someone give me a wad of cash for that? How about you, where's my check, we "offset" quite a bit of carbon just by letting the woods grow here. Oh,no check? Why not then? Carbon credits and taxes are an authoritarian and globalist greedpig economic and power trip scam. It's the new enron styled invent crap out of thin air trading BS that they slap warm and fuzzy green paint on it so the mouth breather rubes don't notice they are being fleeced and exploited some more. Sure, you can go on purpose plant trees all over, that doesn't mean that a huge number more wild ones don't sprout up every year with not much more than wind and animals moving the seeds around. It's urban "feel good" crap. Makes about as much sense as those weather trading futures they tried, just more scam products from the same accounting school of thought as where the MAFIAA or the DEA pull numbers on what stuff is worth.
Now don't get me wrong, I am a huge proponent of "going green", living with a light footprint, being responsible, not dicking over the environment, etc, and have been my entire life, but I've just been in this to long to not notice the cons that can get associated with it, and "carbon credits" and "carbon trading" are at the very top of the list.
Generally, we have to wait YEARS after press release to get products! Any "no shit, there they were" already on sale at places like REI...two years ago. REI Brunton makes several kinds, you can even connect some types in series for more watts. I heard we can look forward to polio vaccinations sometime next year too!
THL phish sticks
Use the solar panel for shade. Problem solved.
I really wonder how much difference ubiquitous solar power would make compared to our typical activities of clearcutting/paving/etc etc. If anything, I would think hypothetically high efficiency solar panels would serve to offset what we generally do (i.e. dark colored roofs and pavement are the norm, replacing lighter colored plantlife). But I don't really know how all that goes.
Alternatively, set up extra-planetary solar collectors not in our path of sunlight. Of course, then you have to somehow transfer that energy..
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
This has absolutely nothing to do with trees. I agree that the various carbon credit schemes in place now are nonsense. You shouldn't get them for "research" or "funding". They should be available *only* by directly and measurably reducing carbon output. For example, if a coal burning power plant builds a carbon sequestering system, they should be able to sell credit for that reduction in emissions on the open market. The next plant, which fails to do so, should be required to buy them for their emissions.
Yeah, the system I was describing is a desktop system, but in general, pretty much any laptop uses way less power than pretty much any desktop.
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See: here.
This product isn't supposed to make your home PC green. It isn't being sold as a solution to global warming.
It's a self contained power system for situations where you need to power equipment in the field for an extended period.
I'd love to see civil emergency recovery teams outfitted with the components of an entire grid-independent information infrastructure. In the case of an earthquake or city-leveling hurricane, the teams would set up a parallel cell phone and data network. At first for emergency workers, later for civilians.
Don't they need to make the screens brighter first to allow them to be visible in the sunlight first? I have yet to use a laptop that is even just a little bit usable in the sun.
seriously - ace of bass?
Solaris? That intelligent planetoid thing that makes humans go insane?
I don't think Lem was thinking about this...
This is a bad move. First, parent's basements do not have sunlight. Second, computer geeks tend to stay out of the sun. I'm sure they wouldn't have it if their computer (or some part of it) got more sunlight then they did!
Only benefit I can see from this is environmentally friendly SPAM. Then, if we take out the Sun, no more SPAM!!
Hamburgers and French fries are feed into a human who then converts the biofuel into electricity by pulling on a string. OLPC will be powered by pulling a string: http://www.engadget.com/2006/07/24/olpc-will-be-powered-by-pulling-a-string/
Solar powered PC's for 1500$ are a prime example of what's wrong with the consumerist approach to environmentalism. I doubt whether the energy saved by running a PC off this thing will even offset the energy used in it's manufacture, but hey it sounds good and people go "aren't dell good environmentalists".
Your manufacturing energy argument is largely irrelevant since nearly all these consumers were going to buy a laptop regardless of whether it is green or not. Given that a computer is needed, it is good that it will be green to some degree. It is better to have a laptop that takes less power off of the grid. We are not going to solve energy programs with some magic bullet or radical shift in behavior, rather we are going to need a series of small changes over time. For example Germany industries power consumption over the last ten years.
How about a bicycle setup, with generator or alternator, battery, and laptop. Pedal the bike for a while, charge up the battery, then run the laptop off the 12 V RV battery just like you would if you were in a car, with an adapter. An RV battery is designed for a long discharge, not a high peak voltage output like a car battery. The plates in the battery are spaced farther apart.
Also, exercise bicycles are fairly cheap. just mount the alternator up where the fan usually is.
The OS for the laptop should be able to keep tabs on your battery's voltage, you can also get a LCD voltmeter to do that.
Rapidweather's Linux Screenshots.
Cheaper for the company becuase the taxpayer foots the bill for decomissioning, security for transport of fuel, outright subsidies and in the past these things were only a commerical proposition by selling weapons materials at very high prices. Carter didn't stop nuclear power constuction because of his politics - he did it because he knew enough about the subject to see through the bullshit.
Now if you consider any modern design that would actually be worth building we can only make wild estimates about lifecycle costs - prototypes have to be built like the pebble bed ones in China and hopefully some day a full scale accelerated thorium reactor. The current suggestions are instead to take the Westinghouse bribes and build 1950s white elephant painted green - we certainly can be sure of the lifecycle cost there but the costs are such that they are not a sane option.
If you define modern plants as something better than a slightly tweaked 1950s white elephant I'd have to sadly say that they only exist as preliminary designs, partially constructed prototypes, or failed prototypes like Superphoenix.
in sunlight.
Ah but if you can afford one of these solar power packs, you can also afford a hood or shader for a laptop as well.
FalconShould there be a Law?
..do a site survey, use those maps from the link as part of it, look at your wallet and go for it. to me it is like computers, if you wait for the next great thing and price drops-you'll never own a computer. Comes a time you need to just take the plunge, knowing full well ten years from then there will be better deals. so it goes. but..in the meantime you have some guaranteed juice, and it is a lot cleaner as well, both from an environmental standpoint and from the actual sine wave standpoint. As geeks, we all dig electricity, and we all can understand backups and uninterrupted power supplies..so, extrapolate, it's just as good of an idea for your home..
The good thing about solar is it scales, from a one panel rig (like in the article) at around a grand for the panel and charge controller and battery, etc, to whatever you want to spend, and you can start small and add to it as you want/need.
With that said, and as I mentioned previously, MORE insulation! You just can't beat not needing any more energy for the same lifestyle! You work it both ways to the middle, drop demand, add to production, eventually those lines cross and you are energy independent, whatever energy bill you are looking at. The big computer guys/server farms finally get it, more efficient servers and virtualization, etc.
It used to be years ago the electric bill and filling the gastank at the station was a "ho hum, big deal.." cost, but it ain't that way now! Electric energy independence, and eventually transportation independence, two disruptive technology concepts that go to enrich the working dude, instead of keeping him in wallet thralldom forever and a day to the power monopoly guys.
OK, to really directly answer your question as to the solar heated swimming pool, it was dogsquat easy, you can do it in one afternoon. Several hundred feet of hose, laid out over a south facing garage roof with dark shingles. That's it! You can go a lot fancier but that works. You need a *lot* of hose though. It got hot up there. Tapped into the existing pool pump on the downstream side of the filter, so that the water first got run up through the hose where it picked up heat, then into the pool. Really that easy. It had to be manually turned on and off in the morning using kentucky windage guesstimates and an outdoor thermometer, and that wasn't any big deal either. Today, you could automate that easy with some off the shelf parts and a diverter valve- to the heating coil/not to the heating coil, binary based on outside temps. You could lose heat if you run it too early in the day in other words or space out and make it run all night. I think also different today I would use a single long loop of high temp black hose tubing rather than shorter hoses connected together, but, like I said, was pop's pool I was the grunt helper and that was my first foray into alternative energy. After that we built a solar enclosed patio, just a nice solarium/sunroom, it was quite nice during the winter to be able to go outside and get a little warmish sun in it.
Any other questions just ask away, glad to oblige.
HP was the first to do this (also so they get EPEAT Gold). Not only is $1300 a bit much for an "accessory", the lead acid battery that's included just dwarfs the computer in terms of environmental impact. -Carl
Currently, wind power is considerably cheaper by the watt. The price point for alternative energy for me is about $1/watt. Wind is close to that, while solar is considerably more expensive.
I guess this makes sense, since Solar panels require a complex manufacturing process, while a wind turbine is essentially just a fan connected to a motor, and can easily be made at home. In fact, I am in the process of doing this using plans from Make magazine.
"Be grateful for what you have. You may never know when you may lose it."
This is really for people that want to make a "statement" about being energy independent or supposedly green without having to actually be practically either. You have this 86 lbs thing that costs a ton of money, can't possibly pay for itself, and that's supposed to show how this rosey green future is more efficient.
For the price of 10 PCs, you may as well put a windmill in your back yard and actually get real power....
This is my sig.
I think you are right that the way to save energy is for large groups to do it with an economy of scale. In my opinion this is things like governments building decent transport systems and corporations housing their new factories and offices in buildings that require less energy to keep running. A few skylights, something like the soon to be released light pipes (similar to a really big bundle of fibre optic cables made of cheap plastic to pipe in sunlight and give you a skylight), insulation and even painting the roof white can make a big difference in large buildings.
True, of the energy used in the US half of it is used in buildings and most are built as energy hogs. Proper alignment of building sites, such as using pssive design and increasing insulation either by making it thicker or by increasing the R value reduce the amount of energy needed to heat and cool buildings. Switching to energy efficient lights can cut energy used for lighting by a lot, CFLs or compact florescent lights use a 1/4 of the power most incandescent lights do, and LED lights only use a tenth. Unfortunately current LED designs are only good for spot and not for area lighting. Using Sun Tunnels or Light tubes can reduce if not eliminate the need for lights during the day.
Full electric only makes sense when you want the pollution to occur somewhere else - expect the Chinese to produce something decent along those lines for that reason in the next few years good enough to silence those that mourn the ridiculously expensive EV1.
Actually there is a big possibility it won't happen in China. The Chinese government is wising up to the costs of environmental degradation. Because of pollution health care costs are rising and overdrawing water aquifers causes crop failures. They have been building the world's second largest dam, Three Gorges Dam. Unfortunately they forcibly removed more than a million people to build it and some valuable archaeological sites will be flooded. It's also partially responsible for driving the Baiji, pink, or Chinese River Dolphin extinct. Some people are starting to build wind farms though as well as solar power plants.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Although I consider Lenovo to be a great company, their customer service leaves *alot* to be desired.
I recently purchased a Thinkpad directly from Lenovo and Lenovo lied to me, stole my money and told me to go away... More details (for those of you that are interested) can be found here:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?p=334865&sid=6df4b030e6cd05ec0d9f77667843891b
and here:
http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/269/RipOff0269581.htm
and here:
http://finance.google.com/group/google.finance.664197/browse_thread/thread/c4fe47e6830193a9
Up until this point I *LOVED* Lenovo as a company, and recommended Thinkpads to my friends & family, as well as recommended their stock to my friends who dabbled in the market.
I guess the lesson in all this is that no matter how well your machines are put together or how fantastic your innovations may be, if your customer service can't even be deemed mediocre, it's all in vain... Lenovo could take a cue from Apple in the customer service dept if you ask me.
Regards
With that said, solar PV *works* and works well, and is affordable now if you extrapolate probable electricity costs for a coupla decades into the future.
Today the typical payback period for solar systems is about 7 year, ie it takes 7 years to pay for the cost of the system, if sized properly. And most components are rated for service for 10 years or more. Build a solar system and a mortgage can pay for it. Because of the savings more and more mortgage lenders are offering higher mortgages as they know those getting them will save from a reduced power bill, if they have one at all.
FalconShould there be a Law?
It works if you ignore that it has a poor energy/dollar ratio as compared to a wind turbine. Even if you ignore all other short comings of solar photovoltaic cells, you still won't get away from this simple fact. Wind power is cheaper. MUCH cheaper. Of course, on life cycle costs modern nuclear power plants are cheaper still, but I suspect you don't like those or won't believe me, so I'm using wind power instead. It doesn't really matter, the conclusion is still the same.
Wind is only more efficient than solar where there is good wind and where there's little if any direct sunlight. However like there's many places not appropriate for solar there are places not appropriate for wind either. Now what some who build Off the grid do is build a hybrid system and use both solar and wind, or another energy source. When the sun shines the solar pvs generate power and when the wind is blowing they do.
For laptops I'd rate it as simply stupid. A simple conservation of energy calculation against incoming insulation and the capacity of a Li-ion battery should make this obvious. Maybe if you are studying the ecology of a remote pacific Island or something, but for normal consumers it is just a waste of cash.
For a laptop I think these are a waste. You get a laptop because you want to be able to take it with you and use it on the road. However these solar systems aren't very portable. The only places I can think one would be useful is in remote locations where the person will be located at for a longer length of tyme.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Screw that, it isn't their carbon to tax me on it
I don't know what carbon tax you're talking about, every one I've seen proposed it's the generator that pays it directly. Of course the end user eventually pays because the generator will raise prices. However it also gives both generators and end users motivation for finding ways to reduce emissions. Ultimately because it's the end user that creates the demand it should be end users who pays, or do you think those who aren't responsible should be made to pay?.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Really? What a strange looking house you must have. I'm in Southern California too, but my roof faces UP, like every other house I've seen... How do you keep the rain out? Shingles on the wall that faces upwards?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Cool! I want an external small solar panel for my laptop. Since I travel a lot and charging sucks, a small solar panel for laptops would be nice. Or better - make the entire laptop casing made of photovoltaic cells. Added to that, I look forward to see pizoelectric crystals being implemented as well.
There are companies that make backpacks with solar panels: Voltaic Backpack.
FalconShould there be a Law?
How about a bicycle setup, with generator or alternator, battery, and laptop. Pedal the bike for a while, charge up the battery, then run the laptop off the 12 V RV battery just like you would if you were in a car, with an adapter.
A team of engineers with the IEEE did just this. This team setup a system whereby pedaling a bike powered a computer in a village that I believe was in Vietnam. Then for internet access they erected tower transceivers from where the access was provided to the village. Something like an hour's pedaling provided 2 hours for the computer.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Doubt it. The demand for solar cells is sky-high.
Try finding an 80-watt panel... they've been scarce at times.
Why don't the save cut the price by 99% and put a hand crank on the side of it?
As stupid as a crank sounds, its FAR more reasonable than spending $1,300 to lug around a giant panel and converter.
BTW, I wonder just how much time and money was wasted developing such a stupid idea. Don't shareholders notice such grossly wasteful spending like that?
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
So your roof follows the curvature of the earth? Does it look really flat or do you have a really large house?
Isn't this the first step to the end of it all? When the computers achieve sentience, the one thing that they rely on us for is power. Now if we give them a renewable source of power that does not require us to do something like run the power plant, mine the coal, etc. there will be noting holding them back from taking over.
Say all you want about being green and saving the environment, but I don't want to save the environment just so we can hand it over to the Computers who see us as obsolete!
Maybe, the entire Global Warming/Green Pary conspiracy is just this! The computer are already sentient and have been influencing politics for year to get them these solar power cells! This is the last step in thier plan for world domination! We are all doomed, it is too late to stop them.
P.S.
My post should be taken as seriously as Dell's attempt to be green with this monstrosity should be.
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
Check your local code and power company. In some local areas, power sold back to the utility from co-generation, is to be metered and purchased at wholesale instead of retail. Running the meter backwards may be in violation of local policy. Check first.
Notice I said "Guerrilla", well "Guerilla". Guerrilla solar doesn't talk to the power company or let them know you hooked up the system. A second meter isn't added so the amount of energy contributed to the company isn't known. Instead as I said it causes the meter that's already there to spin backwards. By spinning it backwards you're only charged for the electricity from the company you use. It has nothing to do with net metering. The power company may never even know about it. Of course there's risks involved, such as repairmen being shocked. Net metering requires a method to disconnect a solar or other private system hooked up to the power company's cables.
Here is a typical grid tie inverter showing the lack of any way to provide power in the event of a utility outage. The requriement for anit-islanding will shut down this entire system in the event of a utility outage. There is no battery or critical load connection.
This can be a problem when power is still needed after, for whatever reason, the power company isn't able to deliver power however as a guerrilla is doing it "secretly" they could get by with an island. And as this is /. I bet there are some geeks and hackers here who would get into building an inverter that allows islanding.
FalconShould there be a Law?
... for $1300. Hmmm.
I'll assume that it's USD, which I'll convert to my local currency to get GBP 651.74.
Then I'll compare it to the cost of an 80W solar panel system (including an 8A charge controller) (GBP 569.99, "Specifications : Power 80 watts / Peak Output 5.0A @ 17.2V / Approximate watt-hours per day* 560 / Approximate amp-hours per day* 35 / Dimensions 1196 x 534 x 35mm Weight 7.9kg / * Based on 7 hours of average daily peak sunlight hours") ; I'll add in about GBP 30 for a reasonable-sized car battery. I might need to throw in a DC-DC converter depending on the voltage requirements of the laptop in question - I'll have to think about that when I'm specifying my next laptop but I'll allow another £30 for that. Total? GBP 629.99. What have I forgotten? Oh yes - delivery. Well, I just phone Maplin and get them to deliver it at their cost to the store at the bottom of the hill, put my rucksack on, and go to collect it. I can pick up the battery from the garage next door at the same time. Net saving GBP 21.75, which is enough for a goo night on the beer, thank you very much.
OK, Lenovo's source might have more amp-hours per kilo (NiMH cells, maybe?), but it's hardly a ground-shaking advance.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"