Your screwup = my profit

[franz]

A few years ago a brilliant NY Municipality contracted with the BRILLIANT Johnson Controls company for solar powered streetlights. All the engineers forgot the sun don't shine much in Buffalo in winter, and the project got scrapped out. OK, I knew I needed some of that brilliance, so I bought some at auction for far less than the municipal idiots paid.

So, what can be done with a bunch of Grote LED illuminators?

One thing that has always pissed me off is digging through the truck in the dark looking for tools. Since I'm putting together a new to me Astrovan I decided to throw 4 LED heads in the back end of the truck with a switch by the back and side doors.

Worked out rather nicely. The picture was taken in the dark, completely impossible to see anything in the truck. With the lights on totally different story, no shadow areas, and bright enough to work inside the van if I choose. The LEDs are set up on the second battery in the van so even if they are left on for a week they won't kill the truck battery. It's real nice schools change batteries out on a schedule, and I have a connection for the used batteries.

[markkw]

Don't even get me started on the government funded solar crap. Back in '93 I partnered with two other entrepeneurs to develop process water reclamation systems for mfg plants with high volume water use. A fairly complex system but, in short, the system would have allowed the process water to be filtered, treated without chemicals and returned to the plant for re-use rather than being dumped into the government-run sanitary sewer system that never worked right anyway. One self-annointed environmentalist with well entrenched political connections managed to gather about five supporters to get the project shut down without presenting a single shred of proof to back-up their utterly stupid claims that didn't even make sense. A few months later, again without presenting any scientific data or facts of any kind, she was given a $600k taxpayer-funded grant to "raise water quality level awareness". She went on to partner with Sierra Club, Nature Conservancy, Bioneers and Joyce Foundation and by the time she launched her opposition campaign agaist the use of high efficiency zero-emissions hydroelectric STGU's she was raking in several million per year in taxpayer money to do nothing but oppose proven effective technology. These are the same people who fought tooth & nail to oppose the construction of a privately owned solid waste bioprocessing facility yet fully supported the utterly worthless government-run coal gasification plant.

Yet again in 2000 they presented not a single truthful fact to oppose construction of a privately owned apartment complex utilizing on-site bio waste handing & recycling systems. It was learned that they funneled over $135k of taxpayer grant money to a fictional "science foundation". This alleged foundation existed only on paper and the clown who took credit for it was thrown out of college for criminal activity and defaulted on his government studen loans. When confronted with the gross inconsistencies and lack of evidence to support his writings, he admitted to fabricating the material and purjuring himself yet the politicians conducting the hearing saw fit not only to dismiss his admission of purjury but went on to cite his fictional writings as their basis to deny the construction permits. Interestingly enough, some months later it was learned that the liar worked on the campaign committee for one politician and had made the maximum individual contributions to the campaigns of two other politicians on the board.

None of this environmental movement crap has anything to do with the environment or saving consumers/taxpayers money, it all revolves around political corruption. Thus, it becomes easy to spot the frauds simply by checking thier connection to politicians or government agencies.

It's the same with solar, all those sucking up taxpayer money are in the game purely for the grant/contract taxpayer money ... if they actually used technology that works, they wouldn't keep getting the easy money. Read any of the current grant applications and contract proposals for solar and you'll find them constantly referencing technology that has been proven to be ineffective. Just look at the BS sales hype and the BS government ratings to go along with it ... Companies pushing flat panel solar hot water collectors claiming 95%+ efficiency and referencing the government testing data to allegedly "prove" the claims. Well, the claims are true but only to a point and the being the so-called efficiency rating is based on the heat transfer from the panel material to the water contained in it. Of couse, they don't say that, they present the "efficiency rating" as how much heat can be drawn from the sun.

Radiation from the sun under optimum conditions has the maximum potential of about 3400 BTU/M2, considering a typical decent quality flat-panel collector can achieve 50% efficiency the available optimum condition energy collection potential is 1700 BTU/M2. Ignoring all secondary concerns, the average total potential northern hemisphere winter exposure to solar radiation is 5.5 hrs/day of which a static flat panel array properly located will achieve its maximum efficiency potential for just 20 minutes out of the day. In reality, when considering cloud cover, atmospheric UV resistance and all the other real-world issues, typical flat-panel output efficiency ranges from 0-18% throughout the majority of the day and that discounting frost & snow cover. For the central US states the average optimum collection potential is rated to range at 320-1200 BTU/M2; northern states 225-1090 BTU/M2 depending on time of year.

When you look at solar electric, currently it costs more to operate the tracking solar collections system and maintain the batteries than can be recovered in electric utility costs. Example is a 1500 sq ft boublewide in FL (client's home) where the government approved solar contractor issued an installation quote of $49,000 of which they would get $19,000 in taxpayer money putting the consumer cost at $30,000. Average utility costs for that home are $160/mo or $1920/year. Assuming the solar system covered 100% of the energy needs, it would take 15 years and seven months to pay off the investment. The average storage battery life is 50 months which means the batteries would have to be replaced 4 times in that initial pay-off period adding another $26,000 in costs to be recovered and that doesn't even account for routine maintenance costs and tracking system repairs that can run as much as $20k over 15 years.

Thus, there is no savings to be had from attempting to operate on total solar electric. I've been in this for many years now and the only way to save money with solar is to utilize limited load non-critical systems. Going with the latest technology, one can install an effective solar electric lighting system for around $750 to $1200 depending on the size of the structure. Routine maintenance cost on the system is less than $5 per year and the average lifespan of the storage batteries is 72 months. Removing lighting slices 20-25% from the home utility costs which means the total cost of the solar lighting system is recovered in 25-32 months. Going further, accounting for replacement costs of the storage batteries, one will still obtain two years of totally free lighting out of the first six years of operation (battery life cycle). Since the installation, maintenance & battery replacement costs were covered in the first four years, the following 10 years produces a savings of $3600 to $4500 thus making solar lighting a profitable investment if done correctly.

I'm not one to jump into anything that isn't going to produce results that are worth the invesment and having researched at length the "solar pushers", I can assure you, it's not worth wasting your time because 99% of the on-line stuff is total BS! I happened on a website a few months ago that's pushing solar heating in yankee land ... what a flippin' crock of crap they're pushing! I don't care how much you spend on a solar system, at the very best you're going to get 10% of your annual heating from solar. Solar domestic hot water is a far better investment that will actually pay for itself in less than a year if done correctly but let me tell ya, if you're looking at the common systems that use pumps to push the water to the roof, you're wasting time and money because between the cost of operating and maintaining those systems far outweighs the potential savings.