Solar Harvest

15 responses to “Solar Harvest”

1. 

   Varanos

   Jul 18, 2009 at 5:54 am

   I love seeing renewable energy being used. There are currently two wind turbines going up near me and it has been rather amazing seeing them get slowly built.

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2. 

   angry shock

   Jul 18, 2009 at 6:03 am

   He who seeds solar panels shall harvest the sun.
   -Venter 5.5

   !?

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3. 

   @ayn

   Jul 18, 2009 at 8:15 am

   WOW!

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4. 

   ChrisRudge

   Jul 18, 2009 at 8:16 am

   thats incredible for a residential array.. Can he feed back to the grid like we can here in Europe?.. I would have thought so!.

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5. 

   P^2 – Paul

   Jul 18, 2009 at 2:02 pm

   Impressive array, yes, but that’s about a factor of ten too small to produce a megawatt. A megawatt-hour maybe?

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6. 

   jurvetson

   Jul 18, 2009 at 3:46 pm

   Exactly what I thought, counting panels and assuming they are 200W Sanyos, so I asked. MWh peak.

   ChrisRudge: exactly. and they tend to help the grid when it needs it most. So here in California, we can get on a time of day rate plan where the energy we contribute to the grid is about 3x the price of the energy we consume at night (charging electric cars =)

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7. 

   ChrisRudge

   Jul 18, 2009 at 9:23 pm

   Good to hear. The government have just announced a similar scheme in the UK, where renewables feeding into the grid get around 3 times ther normal rate.. Starts April 2010

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8. 

   sbove

   Jul 19, 2009 at 1:14 am

   At some point, maybe not too far off, people are going to get very litigious over who owns the "sun rights" to the "air" just south of their solar arrays. Imagine someone moving in south of your gigawatt solar farm and putting up "sun-bleachers" to catch all your rays. "Array shadow" may become a dirty word. It’s a high class problem for our society to have, but a problem nonetheless.

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9. 

   amitp

   Jul 19, 2009 at 3:16 am

   I’d really like to outsource my solar panels to some company that just keeps them in the desert instead of on my house. That way they can centrally maintain them, have them follow the sun, and use thermal solar instead of regular photovoltaic. The business model could be fractional ownership, like timeshares and jets, or it could be leasing, or it could simply be buying power at above-market rates.

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10. 

    TEG2

    Jul 21, 2009 at 4:48 am

    Some other large personal solar installs:

    http://www.solarwarrior.com/
    Total Production so far: 333,000kWh

    houseofpulp.com/dallas-star-larry-hagman-has-largest-resi…
    "Larry Hagman has the largest residential solar-power system in the United States — a 102.7KW array that produces 150,000 kilowatt-hours per year!"
    (Since that article he has apparently added two more arrays)

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11. 

    TEG2

    Jul 21, 2009 at 4:50 am

    sbove, it has already been happening. Someone does a "good deed" and plants a tree in their yard, but then it grows tall and blocks the neighbor’s solar panels. Green vs Green…
    podcast.prx.org/showcase/?p=173

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12. 

    jurvetson

    Jul 23, 2009 at 1:00 am

    This one is newer than the Hagman article. Barry’s rings in at 180kW

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13. 

    marlies222

    Apr 7, 2010 at 6:59 am

    Hi, I used your beautiful photo for my solar blog. Thanks so much.

    solarpowerrocks.com/uncategorized/is-solar-finally-afford…

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14. 

    ClimateTimes

    Jul 2, 2010 at 6:20 pm

    Great photo!

    We used it here: climatetimes.com/article/energy-and-global-warming-news-j…

    Thanks for sharing.

    Ed

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15. 

    jurvetson

    Sep 18, 2012 at 5:16 pm

    Nice update from the WSJ

    

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