Showtalk said...

It would destroy the existing roof.  It happened to neighbors. You can see patches all over it now.

I guess it depends on the construction of the roof and the contractors who mount it on the roof.

Why would patches be required? The ones I have installed on my roof have rails bolted to the roof and panels mounted to the rails.

So if I were to remove the panels, the rails will still be remaining. And if I unbolt the rails and remove them, all I have to do is screw the bolts back in and no patchwork required what so ever.

FWIW

They damaged the existing roof when they installed it. Rather than reroof, they patched it. The old roofing materials changed color from the sun.  It doesn’t matter if the pitch of the roof is such that you can’t see it from the street, but if you can, it looks bad.

Showtalk said:

But isn’t the point of using wind turbines to save the environment? Aren't those dead birds part of the environment ecosystem?

Of course.

The problem from a pure environmental ecosystem standpoint is, the existence of civilization with 7 billion on the planet, is going to have quite a footprint.

Now once "they" kill off the numbers to a manageable population density, then we can get back into some kind of balance with nature, into a sort of equilibrium and harmonious part of the natural world.

of course that sounds like a bunch of new age mumbo jumbo from one angle, and a basic lesson in thermodynamics from another.

Showtalk said...

They damaged the existing roof when they installed it. Rather than reroof, they patched it. The old roofing materials changed color from the sun.  It doesn’t matter if the pitch of the roof is such that you can’t see it from the street, but if you can, it looks bad.

Sounds like bad construction crews if you ask me.

That's why I went with the solar panels that the company who built my house recommended as most compatible with my roof and they used regular construction crews who build homes like mine for a living. They know the roofs and how to install it properly.

I installed them in 2015 and they've already well over paid for themselves and continue to provide me with a good steady income of $120~$180 or more per month.

FWIW

$1,661.87 in cats (ROCKETMAN_S) said...

The problem from a pure environmental ecosystem standpoint is, the existence of civilization with 7 billion on the planet, is going to have quite a footprint.

Now once "they" kill off the numbers to a manageable population density, then we can get back into some kind of balance with nature, into a sort of equilibrium and harmonious part of the natural world.

And so they usher in vaccinations to help dense out the population? It sounds scarier than just conspiracy theory.

China already has 1.4 Billion people and they're finding it hard to get enough foodstuff to feed all of them without importing heavily. If that number were drastically reduced, it would be much easier on their country.

There is some kind of stone (what ever you call it) in Georgia that has writing on it about a world populace should not be more than (however many people) inscribed on it.

FWIW

Showtalk said:

I will wait for the more efficient models. Thank you for the excuse.

well, if one waits long enough, they'll never get it done. We have likely gotten to the point where the solar panels on houses are moving the needle as far as economic break-even and even economic gain.

I've put up some solar panels, with plans to eventually upgrade them gradually as efficiencies continue to rise. So while the panels going up today put out about 50 watts per square meter, which is about 5% efficient (sunlight striking the earth packs about a kilowatt per square meter), by the time I get, say, 20 square meters of panels up, there will be panels that can deliver 100 watts per square meter.

Then eventually, 150 watt per square meter panels become available. Swap out a row of 50 watt per square meter with 150 watt, and re-use the less efficient ones for separate projects such as remote electronics, while the more efficient units do the heavy lifting to run the air conditioner on a very hot day.

Even at 7% efficiency, a canopy of solar panels above the roof with good air circulation can be a game changer n the battle against desert blast furnace heat.

It is also possible to actively cool solar panels.

WALTER784 said:

China already has 1.4 Billion people and they're finding it hard to get enough foodstuff to feed all of them without importing heavily. If that number were drastically reduced, it would be much easier on their country. There is some kind of stone (what ever you call it) in Georgia that has writing on it about a world populace should not be more than (however many people) inscribed on it.

Well, at some point, nature will self-correct, although when that happens it usually is catastrophic for the species on the receiving end.

So when agriculture and the sheer number of mouths to feed wreck the ecosystem, it will lose the ability to produce enough food to feed them all.

In 1986 this happened with jackrabbits out here. They multiplied far faster than their food supply. When I drove down to Sanderson in early March 1986 to photograph Halley's Comet, there were probably 50 to 100 rabbits per mile on the highways. I think I likely ran over maybe 1% of those, and the countryside had at least a similar density.

By May they had stripped the bark off of the mesquites and anything else they might try eat in desperation as they had fully removed every possible green thing from the landscape.

Then we had a nearly bare summer. I planted a late garden, and there were no rabbits around to destroy the garden, while the stuff I planted in March was all dug up and eaten before it could even fully leaf out.

Walking out in a vacant section of land nearby revealed an occasional pile of tiny bones along various little paths, as the rabbits starved by the hundreds of millions.

This is what happens when any creature outbreeds its own food supply, or their numbers exceeds the ecosystem's ability to process their own waste.

I didn't see another jackrabbit in this part of Texas until sometime between Y2K and 9/11, about 14 to 15 years. And today they still have never come back to even a fraction of the numbers I saw in the early spring of 1986.

And now a full couple of decades later, I only see the occasional jackrabbit. I think a rabbit generation is about a year or less, and their lifespan is maybe about 5 years or so. Thus in rabbit years, their numbers have approached local extinction for several rabbit centuries.

No, it’s not bad constructional. It’s different here. Different roofing materials.  Also home shape matters. If they have to walk across the roof to get the installation spot it’s more problematic than lifting the panels to an edge of the roof and installing there,

Are yours on a roof or on a platform on the ground?

So far they are set on supports on the ground, but when I finish the awning / carport, there is a roughly 24x30 foot area to place them.

I am going to set them about 8 inches above the roof, and put a 12 inch walkway of space between the columns so they can be accessed easily for servicing. The roof is steel R-Panel already, so there are external fasteners with gaskets being used already. We just place rubber washers between the support skid and the R-panel, then re-install the self-drilling screws through the support skid. Then you bolt the panels onto the skids.

with the extra height, there is room for air circulation under and around the panels, and the skid structure acts like a cable tray to bring the power lines out.

the control circuitry goes in weatherproof boxes at the corners. These are phase parallel synchronizing inverters, which then add their outputs to provide more 120/240 volt power from the roughly 48 volt solar panel strings.

By using 48 volts, and multiple parallel circuits, you avoid the regulatory and safety issues of running 96 volt or 192 volt DC power from the panels, and it means you can easily take a group of only 4 panels off-line to service / repair things without having to shut down the entire array.

so far I only have a few hundred watts, ,so when the awning and carport stuff is done, this will go up to several kilowatts.

Pure grid-tied is a mistake that many people are making. You want to sell surplus power back to the grid, but when the grid goes down you want the system to disconnect from the grid and continue to feed power to the house.

So there has to be a positive disconnect where the system runs off-line and doesn't energize the utility lines in an outage, to protect utility line workers.

We use a 200 amp transfer switch for the generator. For the solar power, there is a slightly more complex grid tie switch arrangement involved, which favors off-grid operation.