Forgive me for I'm the youngest one here and don't know as much of electrical theory as everyone else? but 100watt AC solar system ? I didn't know they made solar panels (or systems?) that ran on A/C.....<br>Have you considered using panels to a peak power tracker and batteries to an inverter? that solution would cost anywhere from $800 to $1,500 for about two 400 watt (400 watts of course noon peak output) panels and a decently sized inverter and some batteries, peak power tracker prices range all over the place. Keep this discussion updated!
<br><br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 2/20/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Dustin Laurence</b> <<a href="mailto:dustin@laurences.net">dustin@laurences.net</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
On Tue, Feb 20, 2007 at 12:25:05AM -0800, David Lawyer wrote:<br>><br>> Are you sure that it actually saves energy? It takes a lot of energy<br>> to make solar-voltaics and no one knows how much. That's partly
<br>> because we don't know how to account for human energy. I don't mean<br>> just metabolic energy but all the fuel energy to provide food,<br>> clothing, shelter, education, and recreation to workers and enable
<br>> them to reproduce. It all needs to be sustainable.<br><br>Why do I even reply to these things? I don't know.<br><br>I've said this before, but one more time--this obsession of yours with<br>human energetic costs is nonsense for the purpose it is applied to,
<br>energetic costs of goods (this time) or means of transportation (last<br>time). The quantity being calculated is not relevant to that desired.<br>Your idea amounts to the assumption that new people are manufactured to
<br>create solar cells, and therefore must be debited to that account.<br>"Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in<br>barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more
<br>valuable than they?"<br><br>In fact the people exist, will work at other jobs if not making solar<br>cells, will consume roughly the same amount of food no matter which job<br>they are in (most of it is to maintain body temperature and feed glucose
<br>to an energetically ravenous brain). None of that changes based on<br>whether or not someone uses solar cells. "The Sabbath was made for man,<br>and not man for the Sabbath." In fact solar cells are made for people,
<br>people are not made for solar cells.<br><br>In fact people have an energetic cost and an environmental impact--but<br>it has to be credited to a different account. It is the cost of<br>population, independent of what they are doing. Given the same
<br>lifestyle, their impact is roughly the same no matter what they do--it<br>is their *existence* and lifestyle that cost. If you count the inherent<br>cost of the population, then counting it as part of labor is<br>double-counting. If you do not count the cost of labor, then you are
<br>fallaciously counting their cost of maintaining body temperature,<br>structure maintance and repair, and brain activity as part of the goods<br>they produce. By that logic people who do not work do not impact the<br>
environment (because the energetic cost of their existence isn't being<br>counted toward any good or service).<br><br>Since you like to miss the point and get lost in details, I will note<br>explicitly that all of the above is true to the accuracy that can be
<br>achieved in such calculations, and assumes jobs typical of the<br>overwhelming majority of the population. It would not be true of highly<br>trained professional athletes, who *can* consume significantly more than<br>
they would if they were not employed as athletes. And notice that this<br>cost can't be attributed to any good which they produce, as they produce<br>no goods (but could be said to provide a service). It still would not
<br>apply to amateur athletes as any additional energetic cost is properly<br>part of their *lifestyle*, not their job.<br><br>For an amusing reductio ad absurdum consider a teenage boy during his<br>growth spurt who is part of a paid study on how various TV shows appeal
<br>to varioud demographics. He has, in effect, a Saturday job watching<br>television. Your logic would debit the enormous cost of feeding a<br>growing teenage to watching television, which is in point of fact just<br>about the least energetically costly thing anyone can do.
<br><br>> It would take many more paragraphs to explain all this and I'm still<br>> not sure about some aspects. Anyone willing to read over my article<br>> on this when I get it done?<br><br>Absolutely not, unless it says "the energetic costs of human labor are
<br>not significant for evaluating the environmental impact of goods."<br><br>Dustin<br><br>--<br>The small binary attachment on every message I send is my PGP digital<br>signature, not a virus. If you don't know what that is, you can ignore it.
<br>If you do, my keyserver is <a href="http://pgp.mit.edu">pgp.mit.edu</a>.<br><br></blockquote></div><br>