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Old 01-01-2009, 11:40 PM   #8 (permalink)
Crash
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If you put solar panels on your roof, the power it collects in the time you're not charging is power back to the grid. Just because every watt of energy isn't generated through solar power doesn't mean that you're not offsetting the amount of energy transfered during the charging state.

Here in Los Angeles, if you have solar panels on your roof and you're generating more power than your using, your power meter spins backwards and feeds that energy back to the grid. If you charge 40KW to the car, unplug and do not charge again for a few days or even a week, you can easily have charged back 40KW back to the grid, thus making it possible to have still charged 40KW totally solar powered.

By the way, you seem to be pretty savvy here, have you seen the Sterling Engines? There's a company that is building them right now for So Cal Edison and they're generating enough power from one solar energy dish to power 7 homes (up to 10). Each dish uses a 37 ft mirror to collect solar energy and direct it into a sterling engine... Solar power through thermal energy, not photonic energy. They're getting efficiency as high as 65%. They're more efficient than troff-style solar power.

Imaging if we had 3-4 of these dishes setup per block!!! I can only imagine how cheap and clean electricity would be.
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