effectiveness of solar & wind

[PBzeer]

But, but ..... I thought that was what the wheel went roundy round on.

[tigerregis]

Agreed, it has been a merry-go-round. It was about 500 posts ago that I thought that this was a very informative thread. Although, in retrospect, it has been.

[sailingdog]

I find it interesting that Brian, the maker of the SolarStik, even though he knows about this thread, hasn't made an appearance in it. What does he have to fear?

[tigerregis]

Sixteen hour days in Kuwait. Proponents of his system(unpaid, of course) and the thoughts? of a bunch of sailors, who by the look of it were all from Missouri.

[hellosailor]

Cam-
"HS...well actually STC test conditions call for 1000 watts/meter squared of solar irradiance and 1300 w/m2 or so is what is available at the top of the atmosphere in space so I don't see any way to do what you are suggesting ..."
I don't understand, what do you think I'm suggesting? I'm saying that the ratings are based on the maximum amount of sunlight that's to be had at sea level, under this thick atmosphere. I know that won't get any brighter...unless they're going to install SolarStiks on Mt. Everest?

"Rather the claim is that with the rotating of the panels about 4x a day and with the use of the blue sky controller the input amps into your bateries will be the quivilent of 250 watts of fixed panels using a conventional regulator."
Yeah, but we can remove the BS controller from the equation completely, because all IT does is ensure that the wattage from the panel is optimized for amps-vs-volts. The BS controller has no effect on the wattage that is available from the panel, at all.
Which leaves only the question abouti rotating the panels. And since the rated power output is based on perfect alignment of the panel--pointing it directly at the sun--there is no way that aligning the panel from time to time is going to exceed the output from a perfectly aligned panel. Yes, you will get more effective power by aligning the panels from time to time, than you would from a flat panel. But you still won't exceed the panel's ratings, you can only meet them.
And once the sunlight weakens--you won't meet the ratings for the panel at all. Something just doesn't add up, perhaps SolarStik just needs to hire "Bill Nye The Science Guy" to do a show-and-tell for those of us who are mathematically impaired.

[tomaz_423]

So, I am going to install one SolarStik on top of Mt. Everest (for less atmosphere) and another in Kuwait desert (for long days). My boat is moored in Antigua.
1) What size of cables you would recommend for this set-up to avoid voltage to drop too much ?
2) Do I need any permit to pull the cables across several countries?
3) Does someone have 40.000 miles of cable to sell?

[xort]

The solar stik thread was removed from SBO. Before it was, the owner of solar stik was stating, from what I understood, that the panels he is using are putting out more than they are rated for. Which could account for the discrepancies between what many here are stating and what Solar Stik is claiming in real world experience. He also stated these were not on the list of panels tested by California.
So I guess the 50 watt panels are actually much higher wattage than labeled?


It would have been nice if that had been brought up a long time back instead of hurling insults by shills.

[Sailormann]

Much more fun to hurl - well insults anyway - hurling after 112 margaritas is not much fun, mind you it is better than hurling after too much beer...there was a time in the navy when we did the too much beer thing (actually several, no make that numerous, times - aw heck, it was actually flat-out for four years, but I digress) and we were in a little town in Norway, north of the Arctic Circle in June so of course it just won't get dark, and there is nothing that makes you feel like more of a loser than to go to a bar at 14:00, spend a good 12 hours throwing them back, and then come staggering out into bright sunlight - it's just wrong...anyway, there we were, swaying back and forth because we had just gotten in from a lengthy time at sea and hadn't gotten our land legs back, and we were trying to find our way back to the ship, and all of a sudden it was like we all knew that within about 5 seconds we were going to return that rented beer, so what else could we do, we kinda ran, kinda hopped over to the fountain in the town square and hurled in there, and well, let me tell you , it was not appreciated, and there were some nosy local witness who wasted no time ratting on us. Major sh*t with the Captain who sent us back out there in bright sun (so cruel) with bad, bad hangovers and guts that were still churning, to clean the friggin' fountain. And let me tell you it was nasty. I don't know what Bellamy had for breakfsast that morning but it had already started to rot, so we did what anyone would do, caught one whiff of that evil odour and started right up hurling again...good the fountain was there...anyway, took about five hours to carry the sewage out of the fountain and throw it in the ocean, bucket by bucket, but finally we finished and were allowed to go back to the ship and the sleep we were aching for. Make no mistake, we certainly weren't proud of what we'd done, we felt quite bad about it, and so, just to make sure that fountain was squeaky, squeaky clean, we went back there a couple of hours before we sailed and dumped a bucket of T-Pol (the soap we used to clean the decks) into the fountain, then scooted off back to the mothership. Sailed about an hour later, with warm hearts, secure in the knowledge that the people of Tromso (it was either Tromso or Narvik - I know it wassn't Bergen cause that's where we had the other issue..) were certainly going to have the most hygenic fountain in the country

[camaraderie]

Xort...who removed the thread? It just disappeared with no comment at all.
Actually the claim that the panels were somehow putting out more wattage on a regular basis than rated for was an early claim. Unfortunately how much extra power has never been stated nor has any proof for the claim been offered. The state of California tested over 60 different BP panels and found no such excess output even though they did not test the 50 watters used by SS. They did test a number of panels in the same series and of the same construction as the ones SS is using. In fairness, their test conditions are different than the mfr. STC test conditions but one might expect the panels to perform better than most other similar panels tested if they indeed are capable of regular higher output than their STC rating. Absent other data, I guess we'll have to wait till summer and the PS article to resolve the issue.

BTW...STC test conditions are in full direct overhead sunlight (i.e. with the panels pointed directly at the sun)... at sea level with a slight breeze blowing and an operating surface temperature of 77 degrees...a happy coincidence of near perfect conditions. This prompted California to set their own rating procedure which they feel is more real world and typically results in power ratings that are reduced on average by about 10% from manufacturer STC ratings.

[PBzeer]

I think I've finally figured out the "secret" of the solar stik. It is obviously the product of "modern math". 1+1=2, not 3 or 4 or anything else. Since the solar stik is in all actuality, just a mounting device, the most it can do is give the ability to place the solar panels in the optimum position for generating output. Key word here is "give". It doesn't put the panels in position, only gives a diligent, some might say, obsessive, user the chance, hope, prayer, of putting the panels in postition to generate their full output. If said solar panel has the ability to generate x amount of output, it doesn't matter what position it is in, that is the most it is going to generate. How effective that is translated into battery charging capability is NOT the function of the mounting system. And the WHOLE purpose of having a passive charging system is to CHARGE the batteries.

Unless you have a totally mobilized solar array, that completely and absolutely tracks the maximum angle of efficency of the available sunlight, no mounting system will charge your batteries any better than any other. (Of course, you'd probably use up the gain in power loss to the array, but what the hey) Whether it is Solar Stik, or Rube Goldberg, it's still dependent on the operator, not the mounting system.