Dave

I’ve done my shopping, and found 6×6″ cells for $2 a peace, LiFePo4 cells for $20, Scooter motors for $76, and more. You just have to look, and you’ll find bargains on the internet. Even 1000 w invertors for $75. You can’t do this stuff all at once. You do it 1000 watts at a time, and make sure to stay in your buget. I got my first panel worth of solar sells for $44 from http://www.solarwindusa.com, try going to http://www.scootercatalog.com/xtreme-x400-electric-motor.html for the scooter motors for the wind generators, and http://stores.headway-headquarters.com/-strse-2/lifepo4-Headway-batteries,-EV,/Detail.bok for your batteries. The expencive thing about the head way cells is they need a bms which monitors your pack to make sure you don’t over discharge your cell. A 24 v 8 cell unit costs $88.99. So yes your battery pack will be pretty price if you want to go new but the magic is you can put it together a cell at a time if you want to. Meantime you can run your panels, and turbines, which are much cheaper than commercial modules, through what ever you’ve got.

The batteries are power storage, so as you build up your storage you can all ready by benefiting from you system wired directly to the invertor just don’t run too many generators of you’ll fry some of your appliances, there is no buffer without a battery pack.

If you’re looking at heating your house, and water with these generator or cooking with them don’t count on it. The author of power 4 home recommends going tank less if your going the heat water, and as far as cooking, and heating are concerned there are really cheap hydroxy generator build out there like the water4gas system that can be altered to turn 3Amps dump charge into enough fuel to run a furnace, and stove off. the appliances have to be altered, the burner ports have to be replaced with perforated cast iron pipe wrapped in steal wool, but the alteration is pennies, and you can do it all little by little .

Only a fool would call this system a scam.

I haven’t bought the offer, and won’t. I justed it for the sake of seeing how scammy it is. Are people with a 3rd grade education expected to be able to handle the soldering of the solar cells on their own, or is there some other way to connect them up with much less hassle?

I know that the technology to do this exists, but when he started talking about only spending $197 at the hardware store is about the time I had had enough, as anyone who has any knowledge of what is really required knows that that is a ridiculous claim, you cannot equip your home with a solar power system that will power your house and put electricity back into the system for $200.

Let’s forget about the cost of the actual solar cells for a minute, which generate the 12 volts DC. That has to be converted to 120 volts a/c with an inverter. I have a 400 watt inverter in my van I use every day to power a small fan and a boombox, with luck, I could probably power a small LCD television with it too, 400 watts does not go a long way, and these are going on fleabay for around $40 to $50 bucks. You would probably want at least 4,000 watts to do anything usable, so do the math, and you’re already at $400.00 for an inverter(s) before you’ve even looked at a solar panel. As for storage batteries, yes, that’s fairly innovative to have you going around asking golf courses for their used storage batteries, I’ve actually gone into auto parts stores with dead batteries and a volt meter in hand and with a little wheeling and dealing exchanged my dead batteries for ‘cores’ that still had about 12 volts on them. So there are creative ways to deal with that if you’re willing to roll up your sleeves.

Now, as for the grid ties, which is what you need to put your electricity you’ve generated back into the system, plan on about $100 per 1000 watts. Do the math on what it would take for a very minimal 4000 watt system, remember we haven’t even bought single solar panel yet. Also, it’s entirely possible you may need to pull a city permit, which means the work would have to be done by a licensed electrician, followed by an inspection by a city inspector, although I have seen grid ties that can plug into a single GFCI outlet on a 20 amp circuit. If you don’t understand, and have not worked with electricity, it’s not something you should do yourself.

In short, it’s not hard to see you’re going to get very far with $200 in the way of powering your home with solar energy. The number I picked, 4000 watts was just kind of arbitrary, multiplying 400 watts by 10, and with 4000 watts your not going to be powering whole house air conditioners, that’s for sure, maybe with 8,000 watts you could run a small room air conditioner or two.

Again, the above peripheral equipment doesn’t even include one single solar panel.

It’s not my intention to denegrade his product or website, I think we live in an exciting time where we should all using solar, wind, and other alternative sources of power. The more people do this, and the more mainstream it becomes, the sooner it will be more cost effective, and in this day and age of the internet there is a lot of free, and good information to anyone willing to take the time and effort to research it. There is nothing wrong with spending your money on an informational DVD either, if that is what you choose to do. Caveat Emptor!!!