One day of sun can make a tremendous amount of energy. I have the Merlin 100W panel which I have discussed before. It can get roughly 570WH of solar power in one day. For 1 panel I think this is amazing.

I have seen people with thousands of KW of solar panels and I am very jealous. I can just imagine all that solar power going into their home and them not needing to pay for electricity for the most part. Most people who get solar panels say that they pay a nominal electrical fee, and some even report that they have enough extra that they get a small paycheck from the power company. What a life!

So what can 570W’s do? Quite a lot. It can power a 10Watt bulb for 57 hours. It can power a 100W device for 5 hours, it can power a 50W device for 10 hours. Now imagine if you have a battery attached to your solar generator. The Kilovault Res-Q that I ordered has the capacity to add external batteries. That means that I could easily double or more the run life of the system by adding batteries. Or I could add another solar generator and daisy chain it to the first one. Lots of interesting options when you have the hardware and time.

What is even more amazing about this is that these solar panels are only around 22% efficient. This means that if they were more efficient, you would be able to convert more power and store more power. Both energy density and solar panels are slowly improving and that is entirely reasonable in the near future. Already there are more efficient technologies but price is a problem for wide adoption. Fortunately there are many ways that solar power is going forward and all of this adds to the urgency of technology development in the solar arena.

As Timbuk 3 said “The future is so bright I have to wear shades.”