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Have spare land, want to feed the grid- please help me get started
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12
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Re: Have spare land, want to feed the grid-
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by GeorgeB71 on Mon Sep 8th, 2008 at 08:53:31 AM MST
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I'd look at concentrated solar power before photovoltaics. You can potentially get much more power from them than from a PV array for less money. In a nutshell, build a parabolic solar through collector, run a tube through its focus to heat oil, which in turn runs through a heat exchanger to heat water & make steam, which runs a turbine or steam engine, which turns an alternator. In reality, it's a tad more difficult than it sounds though. Look up "Kramer Junction SEGS plants" in Calfornia. I've been thinking of doing exactly this on sunny desert land in northern Cal. The problem is that the power company won't pay you much; only about a nickel per kilowatt-hour at best. You'd need a pretty big farm to make any real money.
You can also buy used windmills from the wind farms in Cal. 150kw machines are available for $17k, which is actially pretty resonable. That particular machine makes about $1000 per month at it's site. They're removing them to make way for larger machines. I thought about buying land in Wyoming, where it's cheap & windy, setting them up, & running them. Even though Wyoming would pay far less for the power than Cal., you could still get about $400 per month per machine. Of course you'd need a tractor trailer & a crane to transport & set them up, so the initial investment would still be substantial; say maybe $300k to set up 10 machines or so. Hope that helped.
- George
Have spare land, want to feed the grid- please help me get started
|
12
comments (12 topical, 0 editorial)
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