PV Gap

Anita Said:

Smartest features for a house?

We Answered:

Ground source heat pump hooked up to your water heater. You get efficient heating and cooling and most of your hot water will be free.

Catherine Said:

What do you think is the most creative idea for an Alliterative Fuel Vehicle?

We Answered:

Electric cars are getting better when it comes to mileage per hour of recharging. But they still require energy, namely electric energy. Which begs the question "what do you think is the best idea for alternative production of electricity?" Maybe solar generation will be made more efficient over the next decade if both business and government invest enough in the technology.

Hybrids are a good stepping stone. It's still some gasoline, but at least you get superb mileage and consume less petro.

Hydrogen is a rather stupid idea since it is not only dangerously explosive, but takes more energy to initially produce than it releases when burned. I'm not saying there is no role for hydrogen fuel, just that it can never be a major energy staple.

I think biofuel, especially cellulose ethanol, is the most practical long-term solution to our fuel energy issues. Critics will insist that ethanol doesn't work, that its production consumes more oil energy than the bio energy we get out of it. But that is only because we use mediocre biofuel crops (such as corn) and we produce it by more primitive means.

Brazil, which uses the "old production" method still gets a strong net energy gain on its sugarcane ethanol, mainly because sugarcane is a better crop for producing "old" ethanol than corn. But the "new" way of producing alcohol from fiber rather than sugar could increase gallons-per-acre yield more than twofold from Brazil's sugarcane and make ethanol a truly feasible fuel. In temperate climates with distinct winter seasons, switchgrass and hempstalk would be excellent "new" ethanol crops since sugarcane isn't hardy and the new method produces far more fuel anyway.

Even with alternative fuel we still have to cut down on the total miles that society drives by encouraging more carpooling, mass transit, and opportunities to work/shop closer to home.

Gerald Said:

Why do liberals want to charge people for costly green projects during the recession?

We Answered:

Ever seen the EPA guidelines for handling the new and improved so called Green Light Bulbs ? Its about 5 pages long and contains such passages as if a bulb should accidentally break , immediately air out the premises by opening adjacent doors and outside windows . After 15 minutes the area should be considered safe enough to return for disposal . -------------Sounds like a radiation leak exercise to me.

Lucy Said:

please give me some advice?

We Answered:

While I wish you well in your experiment, I am afraid there are some small problems in its design.

1. Depending on the shape of the solar panel, you should choose the shape of the mirror such that the total panel is illuminated. No need to experiment with different shapes.

2. A tracking mirror (which rotates over a wide angle so that the sunlight is always falling on the panel during the day) will be the best bet so that you need not bother about some fixed angles.

3. You may consider using a plane mirror and a concave mirror (which focusses the light) and see which gives you the better results.

4. You can measure the intensity of the sunlight at a particular setting at the same time every day and if that reading is same, you can quicky change the set up and measure the voltage and current in a different set up.

Wish you success.