This is a wild thought to stimulate discussion. I was listening to a podcast from extremetech.com and one of the PC Mag editors was talking about installing solar panels in his home for domestic use. This got me thinking about power supply and whether alternative power sources such as solar will be able to give us the purest form of power supply and not having to rely on the local electricity grid and its related problems on our hifi.

So if we install solar panels at home, is it feasible to drive a modestly powered system e.g. less than 500w in total power requirements? I found this on the website for a 700w solar power supply system. I do not have experience in this but I presume one can always add more panels to increase the power supply.

Will this give us the best and cleanest power to our audiophile components? Can MaggieLurva finally be freed from looking for the ultimate power conditioner?

What do you think? Do you have experiences in this that you can share with us?

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes as a matter of fact I do!!

I am involve in part of the pilot project by the govement to see the feasibility of using such device.

I have a 50 k worth of solar panels up my roof and the excess use actually goes back to the national grid..


The solar panels are made by Mitsubishi and on most days they provide more than adequate supply for my house{in Bangsar]

There is one caveat though,the goverment will not allow big scale solar panels at this point of time.There are only 4 other houses at the moment that are specially licenced

Anonymous said...

jack Johnson used Solar panels powered sytudio to record his latest album.

I thought it was quite commendable and the sonic results are more than respectable

GadgetBuzzer said...

hish

how much power does your panels supply and how do you distribute this at home? Sounds like it might not be isolated from the national grid though... is it?

any sonic improvement on your hifi system through the solar power?

Anonymous said...

Solar panel is just the tranducer to conver solar to electrical energy, you may need a charger and a battery bank to complete the system.

I think company like Holfi already explore the idea of using battery as a power source to provide pure DC to their equipment. Does it produce good result? I hv no idea.

Sometime I wonder whether Solar really provide green energy, because you may need to replace your battery bank after sometime and dispose battery is not environmental friendly. I am not sure there is a way to use a solar system without the need of a battery bank...

maggielurva 愛美姬 said...

hi gadget,

you hit the nail of the head - this is exactly what i have been thinking of late!

hish,
can i have your contact? i want to explore the feasibility ;-)

Anonymous said...

Gadgetbuzzer and maggie,

Nope, no improvement whatsoever because you are still connected to the national grid and you still use your own original wiring for the house.

the price I paid is actually a heavily discounted,because It is a pilot project that was started about 5 years ago and only got rolling late last year because of some...ehem...political involvement{In fact I am the only "neutral"person out of the 5 given,the other 4 are "you know who'....

At present it is still not economical Iand I did it[got involved]purely out of trying to do my part to save the environment;unrelated to Hi-Fi at all.

The other problem is that the solar panels are not very aesthetically appealing,and you need to have a special room ,"control" room they call it where all the solar energy are stored or redelivered.

Let me see whether I could get the Mitsubishi people to contact you and let them perharps explain the technical part of it.

If you take a drive around bangsar,you will not miss my house ;a banglow with an ugly set of shiny roof...

Anonymous said...

Follow Iron Man and you'll get the best power supply ever! :)

GadgetBuzzer said...

Hish

Actually i was thinking of using this to only power the hifi system, not the entire house. Sorry, I am not a Green man quite yet.

So it should only have one direct connection to the hifi system, not linked to the national grid in any way (which I suspect is the reason why it needs to be licensed by the govt in case one screws up the national grid... not that it's not screwed up already!) and might have to be connected to a reserve storage unit (batteries?) for listening at night.