Highly Efficient Solar Cells

I have a ford fiesta my interest in cars ends about there it might stretch as far as the escort unless i get a compressed air car in the near future that can be charged on solar power

I don't know of import tax specifics thats the only thing making me wary of ordering and so far i have no idea of where i can get info on import tax

Agreed...

I agree with the comments made here.
This article was published in haste and although it has proven a interesting source of debate I have deleted the Article until a more "Solid" source of the claims are made available.

Kind Regards

Grant



www.worldofrenewables.com
www.renewableenergyjobs.net
www.energyefficiencysavings.com

Hi,
hopefully in the not to distant future we will be moving to Spain. As we will be looking for a country property i.e. minimum of 10000 square meters, I thought that I would start looking into Solar Energy..

One of the most informative sites that I have found is Red Rock Energy (www.redrok.com). (Don't buy from him though, I am currently in a dispute with him over non delivery of one of his solar trackers)

I think that I will go for a Compact Linear Fresnel Reflector Array (see http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/app/research/solar/clfr.html) powering a small steam engine (http://www.greensteamengine.com/) coupled to an alternator.

I have also discovered that satellite dish actuators work well at 12V and are cheap!

I am currently building a small array (only 1 Sq Meter) to check out the feasibility.
I tried building a 1 Sq Meter parabolic trough collector but finding suitable reflective material was a problem, also on a larger scale the collector tubes would have to have flexible/swivel couplers.

Personally, I think that PV cells have a long way to go before they become economically viable, and that solar collectors if you have the space and the climate is the way to go.

Rick..

Hi meyrickt

PV solar cells are in manny cases economical intressting in europe due to the tax exemtions and subsidies they give on it

also the posibility of selling the surplus of you energy to the net is an option in many europene countrys

without those stimulances I agree with you that PV is not realy competing with other forms of electricity creating

solar colectors are defenetly the smardest choice in spain and have I think the best efficiency of all renewable energy conversions

Robert-Jan

I think one of the reasons that PV systems are popular is that people want a fit-and-forget system, where they don't have to "mess around with it"

Unfortunately, I think that until off the shelf packages are commonly available and idiot proof systems are developed, PV systems will outsell other solar collector systems.

A solar collector system does indeed some maintainance but nothing more fancier than a conventional avarage water heating system

still than it's very beneficial to clean your PV panels every 3 monts from dirt, bird **** and build up of dust

in my opinion there is no system that doesn't need maintainance for optimal performance

the only differance is you have intensive maintanace systems and small maintainance systems

no maintainance will develop your repairing skills

Robert-Jan