I heard about a solar powered generator, can someone provide some info on this, are they legit?
Yes, they are legit: read this article:
If you’ve ever found yourself without power in the middle of a storm, especially with today’s unpredictable weather patterns, you may have also wondered whether it would be worthwhile investment.
Who would find the technology of a solar power generator useful?
There are many benefits of having a solar generator available for powering the necessities and even those things you just want to function when you’re experiencing a power outage.
Reasons to have a solar power generator might include:
Life support – An elderly person, child, or person who is on oxygen or other life supporting machines that require power
Being able to power appliances, cook, work, and function normally during a power outage
Medical facilities can power essential equipment during a power outage, saving lives and preserving supplies
Saving on food – Residents lose hundreds of dollars and restaurants lose thousands of dollars of food every year when a natural disaster strikes and they are without power to keep the refrigerator and freezer operational. A solar generator would save a lot of money.
Solar power generators can be used virtually anywhere including in a home, business, boat, cabin, tent, desert, and many other climates and locations throughout the world.
Solar generators are available in several sizes and wattages. Your purpose for having a solar generator and the number of watts you’ll need to keep your home or business up and running will determine how big your generator will need to be and how much it will cost.
The general rule of thumb when considering the cost of a solar generator is to assume the more wattage it produces, the more money it will cost to purchase.
Cost of Solar Powered Generators
The most expensive part of a solar powered generator is the solar panel system. The power inverter and the deep cycle batteries required to operate a solar generator aren’t as expensive, but necessary.
The price range for a solar powered generator varies from a mere $30.00 all the way up to a whopping $50,000.
If you want to recharge your camera or small hand-held device, the small generator at the price point of around $30 will be just right. However, if you are looking to power an entire building or home that has no power at all, you should expect to spend up to $50,000 for a solar generator that can handle the job.
The price range for a small generator would run between $750 and $2,100. This is the most popular size and the most affordable for most people.
Portable solar powered generators can be very small, as in a few inches across. However, the larger units can run as large as 20 feet long and would need special transportation to get it to its destination.
No matter what size generator you have, it must be installed in a location where it gets direct sunlight whenever possible. The greatest disadvantage of solar power generators of course, is that they do require direct sunlight to be able to convert and store the sun’s energy for later use.
Cloudy days or extended periods of inclement weather will prevent you from being able to recharge your generator.
Despite the drawbacks, a generator powered by the sun is an excellent supplemental power source or a great alternative power source in the case of an emergency.
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A follow-up to my last question about microwave generators.
If we had a solar powered device capable of producing radiation only in the UVB band, and it were directed straight up, would this cause the stratosphere to heat due to the higher concentration of ozone there?
And if so, then since the device is solar powered and is essentially ‘stealing’ energy from the sun that would have otherwise gone into warming the surface, it will have the effect of redistributing solar energy from the surface to the stratosphere.
So if enough of these devices are built on a large enough scale, would that "rebalance" the energy imbalance caused by global warming (where the upper atmosphere is cooling and lower atmosphere is warming) and eventually bring both tropospheric and stratospheric temperatures back to preindustrial levels, even without worrying about CO2?
Don’t worry about practicality, I am just wondering if the physics add up or if there’s some key piece I’m missing.
since the oceans are absorbing 95% of the energy, i don’t think so.
clearly if you could cover 1/2 the oceans with mirrors, you’d be able to reverse global warming.
but you’d create an environmental disaster in the process.
we’ve already reduced fish stocks to critical levels in much of the ocean.
depriving the remaining ocean of sunlight would reduce algae and all of the fish that depend on it.
so the 2 problems are,
1. scale, it really is not scalable to the size needed, and
2. location, it doesn’t lend itself to being deployed where the problem is most serious.
i painted glass but it keeps pealing off.what do i do to make it stick?
Check out this site for great directions: http://www.wikihow.com/Paint-on-Glass-and-Have-a-Smooth-Finished-Effect
Good Luck
Assume that the albedo of the solar panel is equal to the albedo of the surrounding land, and that the generator is not a blackbody, so that 100% of its power output falls within the microwave band.
Will this device warm the planet more than if it did not exist at all? Or would the visible light converted into electricity by the solar panel equally and exactly offset the energy contribution to the atmosphere from the microwaves, thus keeping total energy (and thus temperature) constant?
wouldn’t make any difference.
most of the microwave energy would be lost in space.
reflected light is also lost.
there was a pretty good weather channel special that pointed out that 95% of solar heating is absorbed by the oceans.
that’s why it’s not generally visible outside your front door.
it’s also why solutions that address the ocean are far more important.
i took some solar yard lights apart and put them together in a series. i was told if you take AMPS times VOLTS = WATTS. do you test it with ac volt or dc volts? I tested mine with dc volts and got 41 volts in good sun and had my meter set on Ma or milliamps and got .83 which i am asuming that is .83 of one amp now i took those and multiplied .83 times 41 volts to = 34.03 watts. Is this large enough to charge a car battery in a day? And doese it make a difference for amps on how fast it charges or watts. i also was looking around and found 30 watt panels but had higher amps. I am very interested in building solar panels but i realize i dont know what i need to do to make shur they are big enough. my panel is only 9inch by 10 inch. It seems weird that i am putting out 41 volts
A solar panel is a DC device, you so want DC voltage.
I don’t think your panel is big enough: milliAmps are THOUSANDTHS of an amp, not hundredths. So 83 mA = 83/1000 = 0.083A, ie your power is 3.403 watts rather than 34.03 watts.
To get a 30W output in good sunlight you’ll typically need a panel area that’s equivalent to about about 50cm x 50cm.
Car batteries are apparently about 1kWh:
http://mb-soft.com/public2/storing.html
So even if you had 30W, you’d need to run it for 1000/30 = 33 hours in good sunlight. So it won’t do a great job.
The reasons for the tiny output will probably be the small surface area (normally people cover whole roofs in solar panels and that way you get sensible power output), and because yard lights are cheap, so have cheap solar panels made from the cheapest amorphous silicon they can get their hands on – so they’re not very efficient either!
solar energy
If you want to know how solar panels are made look here
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=how+solar+panels+are+made&meta=&aq=4&oq=how+solar
If you want to know how they are manufactured, look here
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=how+solar+panels+are+manufactured&meta=&aq=2&oq=how+solar+panels+ar
If you want to know how they are installed, look here
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=how+solar+panels+are+installed&meta=&aq=4&oq=how+solar+panels+are+
Rated, here
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=how+solar+panels+are+rated&meta=&aq=3&oq=how+solar+panels+are
Hope this properly answers your question
