I love technological synergy

[Yogimus]

http://themindunleashed.org/2014/08/ope ... conds.html

[Cobar]

Solar sounds great but it doesn't work half the time.

[randy]

That's why you have batteries.

[Greg]

This is really an end run around lack of infrastructure. Same way undeveloped countries are skipping straight to cell phones without ever having a working land line phone network.

Go solar to power your wireless gadgets because you don't *have* a working outlet to plug into.

It doesn't really scale (large scale solar is inferior and costs more than a conventional electrical infrastructure) but it's very liberating and empowering for individuals in crappy countries.

[PawPaw]

I know one guy locally who lives "off the grid", in that he isn't connected to our local electrical service provider, simply as a matter of taste and choice. He runs his house on a huge LPG generator, but only runs it when he's there and awake, about 6 hours per day. He's a curmudgeonly sort, a single guy, and built a small cottage on several acres of rural land, planned his house to be off the grid. Good insulation, well shaded lot, and he turns off everything when he goes to work in the morning, fires it up when he comes home in the evening, and shuts it off again when he goes to bed. He runs his pickup truck on LPG.

He's still dependent on infrastructure, in that he needs roads, bridges, and most importantly, that big truck that delivers him fuel monthly. He claims that he saves money, because the AC/Heat system doesn't run when he's not in the house, the home is well insulated so it holds temps good, and as long as he's not opening the fridge, things stay cold. He lives alone, and seems really happy with his choices. Of course, he isn't bothered by things like an electrical outage, because he's not hooked to the grid.

[Greg]

Yep. The target market here for these sorts of technologies will be off-grid types and backpackers. As in, people who are choosing to go without infrastructure. When you're doing that, something that let's you work around lack of infrastructure is a good thing.

[Termite]

Solar works great, depending on climate. It also requires a different way of thinking. Efficiency, conservation, and proper planning are musts.

[Yogimus]

cut the price of it by half, and it becomes a totally different beast.

[Greg]

Solar works great, depending on climate. It also requires a different way of thinking. Efficiency, conservation, and proper planning are musts.

Solar has its uses, but it doesn't scale because energy storage doesn't scale.

[Cobar]

Solar has its uses, but it doesn't scale because energy storage doesn't scale.

That was sort of the point of my sarcastic joke post earlier.

Whatever happened to those super capacitors I was hearing about a couple of years ago?