Solar Calculators

Posted by: Nicole Telidis

Energy

A free online solar calculator is a useful resource for anyone who wants to install a photovoltaic system.

The calculator by PVWATTS is the only one I could find which has international data. It tells you how much AC energy generation and money savings your solar installation will give you based on your location and system. It’s a useful, to the point calculator but chances are that if you want to draw any more conclusions, you’ll have to pull out your own calculator – solar powered or not.

A more comprehensive one, by Kyocera gives a good analysis of costs and savings as a result of your photovoltaic system, and also includes savings from incentives. However, it only applies to the U.S.

This google powered map by FirstLook gives you solar irradiation and wind data for any location in the U.S.

If anyone knows of any other neat solar calculators please post the link!

Cool Solar

Solar energy – using the sun to fight global warming. That’s just too awesome for words. Because solar energy is basically the awesomest (it’s a word) thing, here are some cool solar tidbits I found this week.

• That’s just classy – Kyocera Donates Solar Panels to Primary Schools in Tanzania- Good work guys.
• Pretty cool - Prius To Get Solar Panels.  Seems like a no brainer really.  I prefer to bike, but hey, it’s still cool.
• Two kinds of Awesome – Basically if you take the seventh coolest thing ever, solar power and combine it with the ninteenth coolest thing ever, blimps, you get 200 mph solar-powered flying turtles and Goodyear coming to the rescue during disasters.  Solar blimps are officially the third coolest thing ever and I want, nay demand, to live in a world where solar blimps are everywhere.
• And finally, the coolest thing this week – With oil over $140, GM realized that people aren’t quite so excited about their cars right now, so they decided to do something pretty freaking remarkable.  They’re installing the world’s biggest rooftop solar installation.  It’s not enough to make me want to buy a 2008 Hummer H2 SUV which gets a whopping 11 to 12 mpg.  Still, they make the biggest car, it seems logical they should install the biggest solar array – either way, it’s pretty damn cool.