Photo: Flickr/TheImpulsiveBuy

Everyone’s been emailing me about the recent 60 minutes report about Bloom Energy’s little silver box that will power a home for 3,000 bucks  in “5 to 10 years” and thus ruin the solar industry. Not quite. In fact, the two technologies go together like Beer and peanuts. I’ll explain why below, but first,  if you didn’t catch it on 60 Minutes, here it is:

So do fuel cells like Bloom Energy mean that solar is soon to be a dinosaur technology like coal powered plants? Not at all, and here’s a bunch of reasons why:

• First of all, as you’ll note in this brief report, a little Bloom box does not work by itself. It needs an outside fuel source. That fuel source can be fossil fuels like dirty coal or cleaner natural gas, or, as stated in this report at about 8 minutes in, renewable energy such as solar.
• Second, as noted in this report, the Bloom Box is still in its experimental phase. There are still kinks to be worked out, and there’s long term history to show that it will last 25 years. Solar has been around since the 1950’s and has a great, reliable track record.
• Solar is ready now, today. According this 60 minutes report, even if all the kinks were worked out, you’re still not going to see a Bloom box in your house for 5 to 10 years. Maybe longer.
• Solar, you can have tomorrow. Then, when and if the Bloom Energy box becomes available for your home or business, you can use your solar panels as the fuel source.
• Finally, if you wait for the Bloom Box, you’re going to continue polluting, as well as losing money to the ever rising utility rates. And what if 5 to 10 years from now, all of the Bloom boxes go bust for some unexpected reason, and they never develop a residential system? You’ve waited for nothing. You’ve lost 5 to 10 years of energy savings for well meaning, but failed device. Because there’s no question the solar will be there. The Bloom box…not so certain.

Honest, we want Bloom to succeed because it’s good for the planet, plus solar can be its fuel source. So, it’s a win-win. But as I said, solar is ready and available now. It’s also clean and affordable now, thanks to local and federal rebates.

Find out if solar is right for you now, then check out Bloom Energy later.

Click here to view the embedded video.

While it may appear as though Dave has fallen asleep recharging himself, he’s actually got a sexy new piece of solar equipment in his arms. The slim metal box is called an Enphase “micro-inverter”. No, a micro-inverter is not akin to a kickflip, ollie, or other skateboard trick.

If you’re just getting familiar with solar electric technology, you probably know at this point that there are two major components necessary to produce usable electricity from the sun. Simply slapping panels up on your roof and running wire down to your home won’t do a whole lot of good unless you plan on vaporizing your spouse.

To convert that direct current from the panels into usable electricity, what is required is a pretty bulky box called an inverter. So, you might imagine that a “micro-inverter” would simply be a smaller version of this box, right? Kinda like a “micro-chip” or a “micro-machine” or “micro-economics” (ugh)? The short answer is, “uh-huh”. In sum, this micro-technology is a hell of a lot better for many reasons. To understand why though, let’s get a little more familiar with “regular” inverters and how they work with solar panels.

Pretend for a minute or two that you are newly named foreman of a very unique Peruvian diamond mine. Diamonds from this mine sparkle with a luminescence unlike any other diamonds. However, to create these special gems, the raw diamond material must be polished minutes after it is extracted from the earth to attain this luster.

The previous foreman (let’s call him Hector), only trusted one person (let’s call him Jose) to polish the rough unfinished diamonds into highly desirable, glittery diamonds. Of note, Jose has recently called off work with illness more than usual, is nearing retirement age, and you sense he’s becoming a little disgruntled. The rest of Hector’s miners (Juan, Domingo, and Maria) extract raw diamond material from the mine but are highly interdependent on one another to get their rough diamonds to Jose before they lose their ability to be special and glittery. Meaning, if Domingo decides to take a break, Juan and Maria have to stop what they are doing to wait for him to get back to work before they can pass more diamond material along the line for Jose to polish.

Consequently, a lot of valuable diamond material gets wasted. Hector was fired because the daily yields from his mines were, well… lackluster. To alleviate this problem and get more special sparkly diamonds out of the mine, what do you do? Hold that thought.

In a conventional solar power system, interdependent strings of panels are placed on roofs and operate in much the same fashion as Hector’s miners. Panel A, Panel B, and Panel C are a lot like Juan, Domingo, and Maria. If one panel gets obstructed even by just a little bit by a big leaf, bird poop, or lovely tree shade, the entire string of solar panels suffers, sending significantly less or even no raw power down the line.

Each panel needs to work with other panels in the string to get raw power to the inverter. The regular inverter is a lot like Jose, taking the direct, rough, unfinished current from the combined panels and converting it into sparkly, glittery alternating current you can use in your home. So, when shading or obstructions impact one of the panels (a lot like Juan, Domingo, or Maria taking a breather), the inverter (Jose) has a lot less raw material or current to work with. Let’s go back to the mine.

What if you placed small robots alongside Juan, Domingo, and Maria to monitor their performance and carefully polish raw diamond material into finished diamonds? Then, even if Domingo is unable to find any raw diamond material to extract, Maria can still be extracting, polishing, and producing.

In addition to teaching your employees new skills (which by the way has been related to lower turnover), you are now a lot less reliant on a disgruntled employee (Jose), you can increase your diamond harvest, and you are able to eliminate a point of failure along your production line. Your only concern is that your workers get along well with their new micromanaging robot companions.

This is precisely the reasoning which led Enphase Energy engineers to create micro-inverters. Micro-inverters are attached to every single solar panel in the system and each one is capable of converting direct current from its solar panel into usable electricity – independent of other panels on the string. This means that even if one panel gets shaded a little bit by dust, bird poop, or a tree, the other panels are still capable of feeding usable electricity into your home or business.

Moreover, you are no longer reliant on the regular inverter, a bulky eyesore of a box that has a lifespan of 10-20 years. Currently, if you have a massive solar installation on your commercial plant, when your inverter fails, you need to purchase all of your electricity from the grid until it gets replaced. That can represent a sizable chunk of unplanned cash out of pocket.

In addition to more uptime, micro-inverters allow system owners to monitor the energy output of each individual panel, alerting them if one is underperforming (Each micro-inverter can send a signal through your internet connection so that you can see how well each one is doing).

What’s more, you can now combine different types of panels together and place them at different orientations to the sun and still expect good production out of them – unheard of before. 

Finally, micro-inverters allow your solar system to be scalable – meaning you can purchase a few panels to start out with, then add onto your system without additional engineering outlays. Lab tests indicate these micro-inverters will have a lifespan of about 120 years.

Leave it to the Swiss to come up with some incredible new challenge. A few weeks ago there was a guy that strapped wings and rockets to himself and actually flew around pretty fast without killing himself. Now, there are people that are coming close to realizing the close to impossible. Direct from solarimpulse:

In a world depending on fossil energies, the Solar Impulse project is a paradox, almost a provocation: it aims to have an airplane take off and fly autonomously, day and night, propelled uniquely by solar energy, right round the world without fuel or pollution. An unachievable goal without pushing back the current technological limits in all fields…

A few months ago, I calculated the extent to which we could secure our energy independence with $68B that President Bush requested for Iraq. And yes, with that money we could have built enough solar power plants to indefinitely satiate the combined energy demands of Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago. And guess what? That calculation really bothered some of you enough to share the page with thousands of other people:

The video above describes how one of the 20 concentrating solar power plants I budgeted for actually works. The technology is here, it’s real. And now, it’s all about you to create even more of a buzz so state legislatures start to more seriously consider this clean, feasible, renewable resource. And nuclear? Really bigwigs. Why even consider a plan requiring construction of a nuclear waste dump when you can harness all of this lovely energy from the sun?!

So, what is the difference between “True South” and “Magnetic South,” anyway? Well, if you imagine the axis that the earth rotates around, the point at which that pokes out of the earth in the middle of Antarctica, that’s true south. But when you hold up a compass you aren’t really finding “true” north or south, you can only find “magnetic south,” which is the direction towards the south pole of our earth’s geomagnetic field. Believe it or not, this point actually moves a few miles each year because the molten metal in the earth sloshes around.

YOU: “Dave, I think I know south is the best way to orient my solar panels (or north if you happen to live in the southern hemisphere), but do I want to face them magnetic south or true south??”

DAVE: TRUE SOUTH. We’re not concerned with the magnetic poles, just where the sun is.

YOU: “Well that’s great and all Dave, but my compass only shows me magnetic south, how the hell am I supposed to find True South? ”

DAVE: Settle down, it’s gonna be ok. There are a few ways, but the most accurate is to find the magnetic declination in your area. (Australia, Canada, US, World). For example, I can tell from these sites that in San Francisco my current magnetic declination is (14° 33′ E). Since that number is positive, I add about 14 degrees to get true south. So if my compass points to south at 180 degrees, TRUE SOUTH is about 194 degrees. Point your panels in that direction!

TIPS: Don’t have a compass? Here’s a simple old school way. When the sun is at its highest point in the sky “solar noon,” any shadow cast by a telephone pole or some other perfectly vertical object will run perfect TRUE north-south.

When taking a compass reading, never hold the compass near metal, as it will throw off your reading. Watch out for your belt buckle!

There are plenty of goodies out there to be had, but for those of you that work from home, here’s a nifty gadget bag that will allow you to work indefinitely from a majestic area like the one above.

Some nerds over at Voltaic Systems have made that prospect a reality with this nifty solar laptop charging bag. Granted, you could purchase multiple laptop batteries and haul them around with you for the $599 retail price, though that would add some extra weight, and you’d no longer be the tech savvy dork in your hiking trip, you’d be the douche that overpacked. Couple this bag with a GSM modem, or some new WiMax and you’re good to go. Better yet, when it’s dark outside, your computer will sap energy from the battery in the bag which was charged during the day. Nice going nerds!

Available in a few months here from Voltaic Systems

A few years ago, Mark Bent and his wife lived in Africa. They would bring hot meals to children who scavaged dump sites all hours of the day. Recently, the couple went back to that African village and and were compelled to make a real difference. There was no light for those villagers. Sure, during the day, but at night – only the light afforded by a rare hunter’s moon.

So, Mark quit his job and designed a solar powered flashlight. How might a flashlight make a real difference? Huge difference! Night light helps keep people safer and gives them opportunities to read, study, and develop their minds at night. For instance, think back to when you were in grade school. Trail walking? Getting home safe on a really dark night? Surely you have memories of reading at night? Mysteries? Comic books? Short stories? How much of your own imagination developed over that time?

Mark now has a great business model to back up delivery of this product around the world. Specifically, if you buy a flashlight for yourself, he’ll give another one to a village without lights or to troops in Iraq. Hence, the name BoGo (buy one, give one). In this way, reading at night no longer has to be an economic decision or burden. You’ll also cut out the need for batteries and will be doing a small part to save the planet from wasteful consumption. So check out that link above, buy one, and help Mark light up the lives of others around the world.

Solar Cynergy is putting solar to use in a new way.  Street lighting.  Connecting a series of in-street lighting or address marker lighting to a grid is a pain.  Dig, dig, dig… annoy, annoy, annoy.  So Solar Cynergy has done the obvious.  Charge up those lights during the day when you don’t need them, and have them throw off solid LED light at night.  Here’s to people putting solar to use in creative ways.

Cheers

So you probably saw our posting about the makeshift solar powered Prius and also the guy who stretched his prius into a limo that Dan wrote a few days ago. Well this post is about the company that is now offering kits to turn any new production Toyota Prius into a solar powered car. This post goes over what we like most…. Does it make dollar sense?

The company is SolarElectricalVehicles.com. I requested a quote for my new prius (that I’m seriously thinking of getting). Here was their response:

“Thank you for the interest in the solar charging system developed by Solar Electric Vehicles (www.solarelectricalvehicles.com). Our solar charging system is unique to the market because its one of few aftermarket upgrades that actually pays for itself over time. We are currently only offering the kit for the 2004 to 2007 Toyota Prius. At this point, we are also planning to adapt the solar roof to other vehicles. We are taking reservations for a production toward the end of the year. (Production will commence once 30 pre-orders are received each with a $500 deposit). If you are interested in proceeding, please contact Greg Johanson directly (805-497-9808 x102) to place the order and inquire as to program specifics.

The solar charging system (patent pending) was developed to enable the Toyota Prius with hybrid synergy drive (HSD) to drive for extended miles in the “EV mode”. The stock Prius has up to 2 miles of EV mode driving but the cars equipped with our solar charging system have up to 20 miles of EV mode driving range per day. This extended EV mode driving range translates to an increase in average fuel economy of up to 70 miles per gallon.

In order to provide additional information on the system and its benefits, please let me know what you are looking for (system specifications, ROI, etc…). The system starts at $4500, which includes the solar modules, electronics, and a 2.3 sealed lead acid battery. The 120 VAC plug-in is an additional $1000. We do not install the kits at this point in time, but recommend that you consult your local mechanic. Installation should take about one to two days.

For more information about our research & development data, statistics, and module composition, please read the “white article” found on our website.

http://www.solarelectricalvehicles.com/articles/prius-white-paper.shtml

Also, a streaming video clip from KTLA news can be found on youtube if you search solar powered prius…

You can also purchase additional batteries at EDrive in Pasadena, CA through Greg Hansen. They can provide a plug-in to home system as well. http://www.edrivesystems.com/

If you live out of state/country, F.O.B. (freight on board), Westlake Village, CA charges and sales tax will be additional. DVD and installation manual to be included with roof shipment.

Your TOTAL SOLAR SOLUTION is a residential or commercial solar electrical system coupled with a plug-in electric of hybrid vehicle. The solar system provides clean, renewable solar energy for your home or office, and allows you to use that same solar energy to charge your vehicle at night. New utility time-of-use electric rates magnify your savings, because you get the most credit for the solar energy you feed back into the grid during peak middle-of-day use hours. When you charge your vehicle at night, you pay the lowest electric rates and charge your car with your solar system’s credits. Adding one kilowatt to your solar electrical system will provide you with enough additional energy for 30 solar powered mile per day for your EV car or plug-in hybrid.

Your TOTAL SOLAR SOLUTION can qualify for significant tax incentives that reduce the cost up to 80%. Call Solar Electrical Systems today and ask about the Total Solar Solution!

So bottom line, it’s $4.5 K and $5.5K if you want to be able to plug it in. Plus they don’t do the install themselves, so let’s add another $1K for install. I don’t need to work out the math specifics…. but you’re not going to recoup $6500 over the life of the car unless oil jumps from $80 to $400 a barrel. HOWEVER, we haven’t looked at our favorite things yet…. Solar Incentives, Tax Credits, and Rebates!. So let’s have a peak…