admin answers:

You are asking a big question so I advise you to do some research. I will offer some of what I’ve learned.

Solar is getting cheaper at a rapid rate. The solar industry was one of the hotter sectors in the stock market in the last year. Prices are expected to reach grid parity over the next ten years, depending on where you live.
Grid parity means solar is competitive in price without subsidies. Till then we have subsidies.
Some photovoltaic panel makers are saying they may be at grid parity in two to five years.

In sunny areas like California, which also have high electricity prices, prices are already competitive.
In California, the three power companies have already signed on for solar power plants totaling 3 gigawatts. One gigawatt would power San Francisco, for comparison.
These are both photovoltaic and solar thermal power plants.
They are hundreds of megawatts each, and plants as big as 900 megawatts have been proposed. That’s 9/10 of a gigawatt.

Solar thermal power plants use the heat from the sun to generate electricity, usually by boiling water to drive a steam turbine generator. The heat from these plants can be stored and electricity generated at night. Solar thermal plants also won’t fade when a cloud goes over them.
They are fairly competitive now, with claims of 8-12 cents per kilowatt hour.

There is also concentrating solar photovoltaic power plants.
Both these and solar thermal plants, use parabolic mirrors, mirrors that track the sun, or fresnel lenses to concentrate sunlight up to 1000 fold onto a receiver, either thermal, or photovoltaic.

Using less than 1% of our southwest desert lands, solar power plants could power the whole country. This is an area 92 miles by 92 miles, an area which is less than the land now used for coal mining. The January 08 issue of Scientific American featured an article called “A Solar Grand Plan”, a proposal, which you can read online, to do just that.
It proposes building solar thermal and concentrating photovoltaic power plants and a network of high voltage DC transmission lines to distribute the power to other parts of the country. This HVDC distribution system is the same thing that T Boone Pickens is recommending to move wind generated power from Texas to the rest of the country. This will have the added benefit of beefing up the grid, something that is needed anyway.
There is no shortage of good ideas out there. At setamericafree.org, you will find another plan called “A Blueprint for U.S. Energy Security”. This plan shows how we can achieve energy security and meet the goals of reducing the threat of global warming, using current technology. It calls for plug in hybrid cars, which would achieve an overall 100 mpg for the average driver. Once the grid is clean energy, it can power much of our transportation as well.
At that point, electric cars will make perfect sense and will have had more time to perfect the technology.
If you study these two plans and that of T Boone Pickens, you will see they have much in common. By combining the best ideas of these and other similar plans, we can get the job done. For instance, Pickens wants to use natural gas as a cleaner alternative to gasoline in cars. How about plug in hybrid natural gas powered cars? Plug in Partners website has good information on plug in hybrids.
Pickins’ argument for natural gas for cars is a good one, it’s cheap, it’s abundant, it’s cleaner than gasoline, and it’s ours.
And he’s right about something else, we can’t drill our way out of it, and oil is killing our economy.

Those in power want you to believe that these solutions will be too expensive. Nothing could be further from the truth. For example, the solar proposal published by SciAm calls for spending about $400 billion in public money, over a period of about 40 years. This is less public money, than we spent to build the high speed information highway over the last 35 years. And that is about how much we give to oil companies, in the form of tax credits and subsidies, every five years. So by spending about 1/8 of what we now give away to oil companies, we could power the entire nation with solar energy in the southwest.

Add to this solar panels on rooftops, large scale arrays on the ground and such all over the country, and you have both distributed energy and centralized energy, all from solar.

Wind has huge potential too and is cheap.
Both wind and solar large projects are quicker to get up and running than nuclear or coal plants. Cheaper too!

Http://greenwombat.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/
Green Wombat has lots of articles on related issues, with several stories about solar power plants in the southwest.

One thing that is helping is power purchase agreements and other financing designed so that a homeowner, for instance, could install solar panels with no money down. This is also being done in larger commercial installations and utility scale installations.
Berkeley California just voted to finance solar for homeowners. They will sell bonds to finance solar panels for any homeowner that wants them, with no money down. Each year, along with your property tax, you will pay down part of the loan. If you sell your house you can pass on the solar and the debt. It’s a win win.

It no longer will take 20 years to pay off a solar system as someone else said.

There is much dis information out there. Big powers are trying to convince us that renewable energy can’t power the country. It is not true.
All we lack is the political will.

admin answers:

Let me start off by saying we (my family and I) live completely, 100% “off of the grid and are completely self sufficient”

The house is built utilizing natures natural elements, in the shape of an octagon with 8ft wide arch doors on every wall to catch every angle of wind (typical 4 sided homes have half the chance as one with 8 sides. A circle being the most efficient design). Woodburning stoves, solar chimney, solar AC, solar heating, solar water heating (pool and home), solar stove, solar power, wind power, hydrogen powered back up generator, hydrogen back up water heater, hydrogen stove, 2 hydrogen powered trucks, 1 EV (electric vehicle) and satellite internet.

There are no utility lines, no water lines, no roads, tv, cell service, etc. On our ranch. EVERYTHING needed is produced here. All electricity comes from 27 solar panels, 2 main wind gens and a back hydrogen generator if needed (typically we can last 9 days with all luxuries of sunless windless weather, hasn’t happened yet). Water is caught and storaged from the rain. Hot water is made with solar batch water heaters with an on-demand hydrogen hot water heater as backup. Even our vehicles use alternative energy (2 hydrogen trucks, 1 EV electric vehicle converted). Because of this we have no bills, no debt and no mortgage.

The fallowing steps were taking directly out of a DIY guide I offer to those who would like to run their homes on solar power safely, reducing their monthly utility bills or even selling power back the the electrical companies. The entire guide is available at www agua-luna com. Its pretty simple but if you have any problems feel free to contact me directly I can walk you threw the process.

Materials you will need
A sheet of copper flashing from the hardware store. This normally costs about $5.00 per square foot. We will need about half a square foot.
Two alligator clip leads.
A sensitive micro-ammeter that can read currents between 10 and 50 microamperes. Radio Shack sells small LCD multimeters that will do, but I used a small surplus meter with a needle.
An electric stove. My kitchen stove is gas, so I bought a small one-burner electric hotplate for about $25. The little 700 watt burners probably won’t work — mine is 1100 watts, so the burner gets red hot.
A large clear plastic bottle off of which you can cut the top. I used a 2 liter spring water bottle. A large mouth glass jar will also work.
Table salt. We will want a couple tablespoons of salt.
Tap water.
Sand paper or a wire brush on an electric drill.
Sheet metal shears for cutting the copper sheet.

The first step is to cut a piece of the copper sheeting that is about the size of the burner on the stove. Wash your hands so they don’t have any grease or oil on them. Then wash the copper sheet with soap or cleanser to get any oil or grease off of it. Use the sandpaper or wire brush to thoroughly clean the copper sheeting, so that any sulphide or other light corrosion is removed.
Next, place the cleaned and dried copper sheet on the burner and turn the burner to its highest setting.
As the copper starts to heat up, you will see beautiful oxidation patterns begin to form. Oranges, purples, and reds will cover the copper.
As the copper gets hotter, the colors are replaced with a black coating of cupric oxide. This is not the oxide we want, but it will flake off later, showing the reds, oranges, pinks, and purples of the cuprous oxide layer underneath.
The last bits of color disappear as the burner starts to glow red.
When the burner is glowing red-hot, the sheet of copper will be coated with a black cupric oxide coat. Let it cook for a half an hour, so the black coating will be thick. This is important, since a thick coating will flake off nicely, while a thin coat will stay stuck to the copper.
After the half hour of cooking, turn off the burner. Leave the hot copper on the burner to cool slowly. If you cool it too quickly, the black oxide will stay stuck to the copper.
As the copper cools, it shrinks. The black cupric oxide also shrinks. But they shrink at different rates, which makes the black cupric oxide flake off.
The little black flakes pop off the copper with enough force to make them fly a few inches. This means a little more cleaning effort around the stove, but it is fun to watch.
When the copper has cooled to room temperature (this takes about 20 minutes), most of the black oxide will be gone. A light scrubbing with your hands under running water will remove most of the small bits. Resist the temptation to remove all of the black spots by hard scrubbing or by flexing the soft copper. This might damage the delicate red cuprous oxide layer we need to make to solar cell work.
Cut another sheet of copper about the same size as the first one. Bend both pieces gently, so they will fit into the plastic bottle or jar without touching one another. The cuprous oxide coating that was facing up on the burner is usually the best side to face outwards in the jar, because it has the smoothest, cleanest surface.
Attach the two alligator clip leads, one to the new copper plate, and one to the cuprous oxide coated plate. Connect the lead from the clean copper plate to the positive terminal of the meter. Connect the lead from the cuprous oxide plate to the negative terminal of the meter.
Now mix a couple tablespoons of salt into some hot tap water. Stir the saltwater until all the salt is dissolved. Then carefully pour the saltwater into the jar, being careful not to get the clip leads wet. The saltwater should not completely cover the plates — you should leave about an inch of plate above the water, so you can move the solar cell around without getting the clip leads wet.
Now place in the sun with the magnefied on top.
The solar cell is a battery, even in the dark, and will usually show a few microamps of current.
That’s it it’s that simple. If you’d a more detailed process and some pics (ouldn’t put them here) it’s available along with some other DIY alternative energy projects at www agua-luna com

Hope this helped, feel free to contact me personally if you have any questions if you’d like assistance in making your first self sufficient steps, I’m willing to walk you step by step threw the process. I’ve written several how-to DIY guides available at www agua-luna com on the subject. I also offer online and on-site workshops, seminars and internships to help others help the environment.

Dan Martin
Alterative Energy / Sustainable Consultant, Living 100% on Alternative & Author of How One Simple Yet Incredibly Powerful Resource Is Transforming The Lives of Regular People From All Over The World… Instantly Elevating Their Income & Lowering Their Debt, While Saving The Environment by Using FREE ENERGY… All With Just One Click of A Mouse…For more info Visit:

www AGUA-LUNA com
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