On Thu, 07 Apr 2011 09:23:02 +0100, Another Dave wrote:
On 07/04/2011 02:21, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Cos the FITS wont last very long, if what's happening all over Europe
and the world, is anything to go by


A bloke called Ridley was claiming in The Times the other day that it's
feasible to floodlight the PV array using off-peak electricity and still
turn a profit at 3am!

While it sounds like a nice idea, I call bull on that. The efficiency
of floodlights is quite low and the efficiency of solar panels is, too.
Even if the PV converted 25% of incident light into electricity, AND
you had lights that converted 25% of their power into usable light,
you still end up with 0.25 * 0.25 - 1/16 th of the power out that you
put in. PLUS, you'd need a lot of lights to fully illuminate a
decent sized array - a single 1KW job pointing at it would not do,
since a lot of the array would not be lit by it (unless the PV was
circular, and the light was far enough away).

Even if you get zero spill and don't have the neighbours complaining
(or grassing) and the cops don't assume you're growing pot, the conversion
losses still outweigh the FIT gain.