Lew Hodgett wrote:
"Morris Dovey" wrote:

Cut me a little slack, Lew. I've been working for a little over six
years to help make it happen - first with solar heating panels to
keep people warm up here in "cold country", then with direct
solar-powered (non-electrical) stationary engines for pumping and
(if I can get the @!%# pump running the way I think it should),
direct solar-powered air-conditioning to keep people cool in "hot
country". I'd have taken on more but my resources were a bit on the
thin side.

The government and industry don't appear to be interested in any
technology that doesn't produce ongoing revenues capable of
providing mega-salaries to top execs and hundreds of millions of
dollars worth of campaign contributions.

Taking on a project as committee of one is like pushing on a rope.

It's a tough process.

Tell me about it! Still, I've managed to push a couple of pieces of this
rope farther than I expected when I started.

Have you tried to seek out R&D funds from private foundations or
gov't research grants?

Private foundations - no. Government grants - yes, until it was made
clear that I'd need to spend more than half of my time providing proof
that I was sticking to a well-defined action/budget plan that had to be
nailed down before the funds would be made available - and until I
learned that any deviation (for example, shifting resources from an
activity that needed less to complete than budgeted to another that
needed more than budgeted) from that plan could land me in prison. Two
other items that couldn't be covered by the grant were construction
(necessary for testing) and advertising (essential to
commercialization). I said thanks and backed away.

Lots of digging req'd, but funds are out there.

I don't have a lot of time available for digging, but I'm sure you're
right. So far, the sources I've found have all had an associated
overhead that would slow, rather than accelerate, the work to be done. I
figure I'm already going slow enough.

--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/