How many of you have emotional desires and attachments to small-scale solar?

[Old_Man]

Mine is two-fold: The Berkeley liberal in me wants to somehow be involved, in however minor a way
as has been shown to me, in alternative energy generation.

The other attachment for me, is solar's connection to to US space program. Solar has been generating
power for satellites for as long as I can remember. Now I can participate a little in this, and that
pleases me.

[SunEagle]

Mine is two-fold: The Berkeley liberal in me wants to someohow be involved, in however minor a way
as has been shown to me, in alternative energy generation.

The other attachment for me, is solar's connection to to US space program. Solar has been generating
power for satellites for as long as I can remember. Now I can participate a little in this, and that
pleases me.

All that sounds great.

I was at the U of D back in the early 70's and got with a solar research team where I did testing and wrote a paper on sheet resistivity and how it could affect the performance of our thin cells. We were playing in the 10% range while NASA was in the +20% range. Their cost was very high while we were trying to get the cost down for our cells. After a while we determined that thin film cells degrades very quickly due to heat so they pretty much gave it all up. Then NASA shut down for a while in the mid 70's so it made it hard to find a job concerning solid state electronics but I did ok and worked in the electric field for over 40 years. Now that I am retired I still diddle with solar but have a hard time justifying a complete system due to my very low electric rates.

[J.P.M.]

Probably too long and too boring a story for most, but starting in the mid 70's, I got the alternate energy bug and it changed my career and my life in fundamental ways.

[bcroe]

I started chasing electronics in the 50s, and a large part of the picture
was always the power system. 7 decades and a hundred kinds of
power systems later, I find myself collecting energy with solar,
trying to transmit and retain it the most efficient ways, and using it
with the latest heat pumps and other efficient means. Bruce Roe

[littleharbor2]

Sure wish I knew more about these cells. Apparently they are "Tecstar"? cells that were produced for satellite service. I ran across an old ad for them being sold as surplus stating they were originally sold for over $100 a cell. Clearly the radial traces are unique in the PV cell world. I have found two of these panels to date and the second one is labeled SOLAR POWER, Applied Solar Energy Corp.
Tecstar cells.JPGTecstar cells (2).JPG