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Originally Posted by DSquared
My wife, who is no stranger to the desire to hug a random tree, has been looking into purchasing Solar Panels to reduce our energy consumption. I'm more of a cut the tree down and burn the wood to warm the house type.
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I remember talking to a guy who was doing his phd in solar energy a few years back and he told me that over the lifetime of a panel you can expect about 100-200% more electricity returned than the inputs in creating that panel. Oh, and the average life of a solar panel is 20 years so if you have to lease the product for 15 you're only free and clear for on average 5 years. Not a good deal.
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Originally Posted by Ozy_Flame
Didn't some smart Calgary teenager recently develop a solar-powered generator or something similar? That was like a few months ago the story came out. Maybe try looking up what she did for some inspiration or direction?
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Don't know where the kid is from but this one made a discovery about solar power while thinking about oak trees a short while ago.
http://www.care2.com/causes/oak-tree...lar-panel.html
You also need to consider when you're using energy in you home. If someone stays at home to work/raise kids etc, then you could get some good use out of a solar panel, but otherwise you'd need a pretty good sized battery to store all that energy accumulated while you were at work. It's been said a couple times in this thread that using solar to heat water is a pretty decent return on investment and I'd agree. At this point I don't really know what else to use it for.