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Solar Power From Home Curtains
kaliann writes "With the push for more sustainable energy, easy DIY kits for alternative energy sources are likely to become quite popular in the coming years. We may see some big improvements in our ability to 'green up' if these photovoltaic curtains become widely available."
they only produce power when the curtains are closed.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
With the push for more sustainable energy, easy DIY kits for alternative energy sources are likely to become quite popular in the coming years.
Two words. Doubt it. There are all kinds of ways to save money, but most people don't do them. To put it into a computer perspective, how many people do you know upgrade RAM? Out of that many how many do them themselves? How many people upgrade a CPU? How many people salvage CD-ROM drives from old computers? How many save old cases and build computers in them? Very few I would think. Same thing with these, they are a way to save money, but for most people they will just complain about high oil prices, try to get a raise, petition for an increase in minimum wage, repeat. These will be about as popular as running BSD on your toaster. You can do it, it might be cool, but most people don't see the need.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I know we're at a point where solar is looking like a good investment. Still... Isn't it easier for a solar contractor to just make large solar power plants to supplement the grid than worrying about the specifics of installing home to home?
I'm all for the day when I can offset my electricity bills a small amount because I have my house decked out in solar material... I'd rather just have cheaper electricity though especially in the near future. Plugin, hybrid cars are going to start sucking on the power grid. If we don't add more solar or nuclear plants to the grid, we could see an electric shortage in the form of higher prices for one.
Oh and I'm still bummed about the study the government is doing to make sure solar is environmentally friendly. I mean, isn't the waste output from coal plants harmful to the environment? If we had the option to cut that waste back, aren't we helping the environment?
Anyway, the future looks bright to me. The US economy is holding even though it has taken some hits. If we can just get to a new era in surplus solar energy, we can get into some really interesting solutions to getting off oil. Some people think it will be hydrogen. Some people think it will be electric cars. I'm not sure which is going to take off in the long run. I think it is going to be hybrids that make the most initial impact because they don't have the limitations of the electric car's maximum range. For electric cars to have a long range, gas stations will have to be refitted with a tool to swap out battery arrays. Hydrogen faces a similar challenge in that it'd need special fill up stations too. Plug in hybrids work off traditional gas stations.
I like Nanosolar's approach because it is so high tech and also economically feasable. Still low tech solar options such as parabolic mirrors to focus sunlight and run steam turbines could be good at first. I think we have a lot of unused land on Earth, and the faster we can cover it, the faster we can have surplus energy. Surplus energy makes transportation costs go down so you can travel all that you want even if you're poor. And even more interesting is that surplus energy lowers the cost of transporting food, so impoverished people can be supplied better. Oh yeah, and surplus energy also means that everything is cheaper so people have more disposable income which incidentally, also helps poor people.
God spoke to me.
The trend is the other things will become more expensive. So you will pay, do not worry.
Is that enough?
And hail, errant footballs, vandals...
They still let in plenty of light than can be used for generating solar power according to my calculator.
Unless they post the watts/hr it can produce under normal conditions. Its like seeing a car in a car lot without a price on it... You just keep on rollin. Seeing this 'form of energy coolness' seems worthless without some type of qualitative evidence. I want to see the watts/curtain/hr.
Again, I don't know what world you're living in, but there are millions of us who are getting this stuff done as fast as we can, including plenty of real companies like Sequential, with stock and everything, who are making quite a nice living selling biodiesel and are already tying up every rational source of supply they can get their hands on. Oh, and those of us who understand things like cellulosic sources never thought that corn-based approaches were ever anything but yet another bit of agribusiness welfare.
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.
As people keep having to point out, nobody is presenting one form of sustainable power generation as some sort of panacea. Where it's windy, use wind; where currents and tides are strong, use hydro; where it's sunny, use PV, where there's trash land, grow switchgrass; and so on. And even beyond this, per capita demand is a result of many behaviors that people like me are working to change. It's not just about power generation. It's about all kinds of changes from better insulated houses to more mass transit, to eating more food that's grown locally. (Food is actually the biggest energy cost for many Americans.) This doesn't require moving into a teepee and living on uncooked twigs. It's possible to live very elegantly and very comfortably indeed in a sustainable way. We just need to make the changes that make that possible.
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.
Stupid idea, the whole gimmick.
If you want to do solar power, better do it properly and mount decent solar cells in a place where it really can generate power (eg on the roof in the right direction with the right inclination).
The idea of those curtains is just stupid, because you dole out good money to get some crappy cells which end up being mounted in a bad place.
If you happen to live in a hot area, it would be far more ecological if you invested in some proper shading that the load on the air conditioning can be reduced. That saves more that those stupid curtains will ever produce. For the money saved, get decent cells on the roof.
If you live in a cold area - usually with only few hours of good sunlight - the curtains are even more stupid, because they produce even less. Invest in good double or triple glazing to keep the heat in and catch the few sun-rays you get to heat the room.
To sum it up, this junk gimmick is exactly what home shopping TV would try push to ride the eco-wave. Do the environment a favor and forget about that stupid idea.