Going Solar

I bought a solar panel on eBay last week with the intention of building a sun tracking device and mounting the panel on that. This would ensure that the solar panel was pointed directly at the sun all the way through the day raising its efficiency by 30% during summer.

I did a bit of research and solar tracking might be a waste of time as you could get a similar increase in power simply by purchasing another solar panel. Tracking devices can also break down and you would need to do maintenance on the mechanism.

It is far easier just to slap the solar panels on the roof and forget about them (other than having a lower electricity bill and washing them a couple of times a year). I have decided to devote my resources to build an omnidirectional wind turbine instead.

It is amazing to see all the solar panels going up through suburbia - it will not be long until every house has solar panels on their roof. Many of these people have spare capacity on their inverters so they can add additional solar panels in the future. It would not be hard to connect a wind turbine to these systems.