God bless.
Sursum Corda
Myrrdin’s experience is not atypical for alternative energy system customers. Too many of the AE system companies have “true believers” as their founders and promoters, and nowhere near enough actual engineers.
This is why so many of us engineers hold these alternative energy schemes in contempt. I’ve seen so many schemes and had so many pitched at me by “true believers” (most all of whom had liberal arts degrees and a big passion for alternative energy) that I now have a stock response/speech I give to these people, and a well-rehearsed checklist of things they must prove before I will waste five minutes evaluating their wonderful new system(s). The first item I require some of these people answer is “Does your system depend on a deliberate or unspoken violation of the second law of thermodynamics?”
If they come back with “What’s that?!” the conversation is over.
I’ve worked on PV systems for people, and while the PV systems I worked on were the only power option (short of a diesel genset) for remote ranches in Nevada, the people selling these systems always seemed to over-promise and under-deliver, and their installation of the systems always seemed to come up short on reliability and shorter yet on economics.
#1 issue I have with most PV shops: they get the system cost down by using “deep cycle truck batteries.” What a false economy. The only viable storage cells I still see out there are the old, beastly L-16 batteries, and only the most competent PV shops seem to convince people of the long-term economy of these units.