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/Notes in this color and between two / are from the operator of the German mirror site and translator/.
Copyright Dr. Ing. Jan Pająk
Practicality of domestic generation of solar electricity
Introduction:
We live in a time when a lot is said and written about the generation of electricity from energy of sunlight. We have, after all, well mastered technologies and equipment to generate solar electricity and supposedly available in stores are already major components required to build a home systems for such a solar generation. For various reasons, which I describe in more detail in item #R1 of this web page, I have tried for many years to complete a practical experiment of a personal building for myself a simple and a cheap system for just such generation of electricity from solar energy. The results of this experiment, I intended to share with the readers of this web page. Unfortunately, for a long time the completion of this experiment turned out to be impossible for the simple reason that I was unable to find a shop in New Zealand (where I live) that would sell me the main components necessary to build such a solar system. The only thing that I was able to found, were offers from a wide variety of solar companies, that professionally were building such systems - only that the cost of building by these companies of the cheapest amongst such systems, e.g. in October 2014 were at the level of around NZ$ 20,000 (however, I am unable to afford the spending of such a large sum on solar energy). In addition, neither these companies, nor their customers, seem to understand, that every human action and decision can be implemented either in accordance with the criteria of morality, or in an immoral manner. Thus, these companies are building for their customers almost exclusively "immoral solar systems" that do NOT contain components capable of accumulating the generated electricity, e.g. these systems do NOT contains batteries, systems of capacitors, Oscillatory Chamber etc. On the other hand, in items #B5. and #F3. of this web page I am trying to explain to the reader why such "battery-deprived" kinds of solar systems are the immoral systems which in the long-term work are to inflict to people more harm than good. After all, for example, instead of lessening the dependence of their owners from the power generation plants and from the electricity grid, they actually turn their owners into a kind of "grid slaves"that are exploited by companies selling electricity. They also actively strengthen the role of electricity generation plants and the electricity supply grid - and this in spite that our civilization has already experienced how much damage to people and to the nature are causing power stations and electricity grids (e.g. consider the damages caused by the melting down of the reactor in the nuclear power plant from Fukushima, Japan, described in item #M1. from my web page Telekinetics).
Of course, for many different reasons, for example, to NOT create a competition, because of the relationship with companies which sell electricity, confusion of current laws, complications of a non-commercial sale by a non-trading company, my lack of a formal certificate of an electrician (in spite of that, among others, I lectured electrical engineering at the university level), the lack of clarity about responsibility, the issues of guarantees etc., these companies also would NOT be willing to sell me the components that would be required if I build such a system. Only in mid-October 2014, I found a shop that had the necessary components for sale. On 16 October 2014 I purchased the most necessary parts, and thus I initiated the experiment described here - the course and results of which I share now with the reader on this web page. This my experiment will have several stages.
The first of these stages, already completed, was to "obtain the cheapest and the simplest backup solar system for anti-cataclysmic electricity generation" - i.e. to provide a system which assures the generation of electricity in sufficient quantities to supply: (a) good lighting in one room, (b) the operation of a television set, (c) the operation of a computer "laptop", (d) the supply of an electric shaver, etc. (In other words, to build a system capable of helping me in a relatively comfortable survival of any disaster which would cut off the access to electricity supply from the grid - e.g. a pandemic of Ebola.)
Until 31 October 2014 I developed this system up to the point that it started to supply the electricity to all my home devices of a small electric power consumption. A pleasant surprise was for me the empirical finding that so far (i.e. during the NZ summer) only a single solar panel of 120 Watts is enough for me to satisfy all my electricity consumption of domestic appliances that require below 360 Watt of power - for details see item #M1 from this web page. After all, the propaganda spread in the internet by companies building such systems makes the impression that in order to get some noticeable use of solar energy, one needs enough solar panels to cover with them almost the entire roof of a house. Meanwhile, for me, only one panel of a power of 120 Watt suffices during this summer to illuminate in almost every evening my living room with 4 fluorescent lamps of a power of 35 Watts each - also I do NOT have to save on the light because I have free electricity, plus it also suffices to cover every evening my electricity consumption by a large, 42-inch TV, and during a large part of the days it supplies into electricity my laptop computer, while all the time (i.e. both in evenings and during the day) it allows me to use free solar electricity to power small household appliances such as my electric shaver, my small batteries charging device, my groomer for trimming of hair, etc., etc. - for descriptions of powers of my household appliances see item #H2 from this web page.
In addition, the entire my solar system cost me much less than one-tenth of the published online in October 2014 the cheapest price of a solar system built by a specialist company (or more precisely, about 7% of the price of such a cheapest system - for the set of my purchases and for their prices see "Table #E1" from this web page). In subsequent stages of my plans for the solar energy I would like to gradually expand this my system, benefiting from the experience gained during the first stage. The intended target product of that further expansion would be the almost complete elimination of costs of electricity purchases and reassuring the energy self-sufficiency for my flat - although the success in this expansion will depend on the availability in NZ shops the required solar components that work on the voltage of 24 Volt. (Until now in stores of NZ the most important of 24 Volt solar components still are NOT available, while the currently offered 12 Volt components are NOT suitable for the construction of a system able to supply high-power appliances such as e.g. refrigerator, washing machine, high-speed electric kettle, electric cooker, hot-water cylinder, hair dryer, etc.) Since I am a scientist who treats everything that he does as a kind of scientific experiment that open new paths, on this web page I am to continue the providing of reader with reports on my efforts regarding this gradual change of my flat into the energy self-sufficiency based on the generation of my own electricity from sunlight. I do hope that these experiences and descriptions will be able to help other readers to also follow in my footsteps.
Notice, that only the selected (i.e. the most vital) parts of this web page are already translated into English. With the translation of other, less vital, parts of this web page I am awaiting until the time when the testing of my solar system is finished. This is to save me the repeating twice of the same work of translation.