Project Illuminated - XtremeSystems Tribute

[xaxis]

i understand you man. my pace has been pretty slowed down by reality/work/personal life as well. but i try to get some work done on the project, even if a few minutes.

sorry, to ot. but i couldn't help noticing your avatar. is that your own backyard with solar panels? if so, how much power does that generate?

Oh don't worry about going ot... usually I end up doing that more than anyone else in my own threads i think... har.

Anyway, yes that is my own backyard, it's a 16KW solar array and powers every last gadget I own. In fact the power meter is always spinning backwards, even on cloudy winter days. The electric company in the area of California where my house is has had an extremely solid incentive program for people, paying them back half the cost of their installations... And when we're talking $140,000 installs, $70,000 is a lot more appealing price tag.

A lot of people simply can't imagine spending that much money on an array and say things like "it will take years to pay for itself", stuff like that... I tell them that's not true, because the money you're now spending monthly to pay off your solar array will be about the same as what you were paying for monthly electricity anyway, accept this way your're:
1) Increasing the value of your property.
2) Increasing your own security when it comes to things like natural disaster when the electric grid goes down. In my situation I have a well, without power to pump the water out I wouldn't be able to get any water, that sort of thing.
3) You're literally reducing your carbon footprint by tons a month and thus helping the environment by reducing your carbon footprint.

I list number 3 last when speaking to people because it's usually the last thing on their minds, especially during "hard times" such as some/many are experiencing right now. Anyhow, I was fortunate enough to be able to pay for it all out right, this is obviously is the better choice so you don't have to pay interest on a loan of any kind. Regardless, in my opinion if you have the ability, investing in alternative energy sources such as PV arrays is as good as gold.

I'm working on some software in my spare spare time right now that will allow me to post statistics concerning my own array to the web for live monitoring, provide data like "how many tons of carbon has been offset, how many trees it would take to plant to do the same thing, how many miles of driving time have been nullified by having an array"... stuff like that.

A little while back I spent an evening making a small javascript app that you may find interesting/scary: You can have a look at that at www.carbonmeter.info (I've only tested it in firefox and am guessing it may have trouble in IE... I hate programming web apps for IE... EDIT: Just checked IE8 using winxp pro 64-bit, surprisingly seems to work.)

How's that for going OT? harhar.