Hey Cinilak, you've got some good advice here. Roderick is right on the money, if you can find someone that has even a single solar panel on their house, or their property, I'd be quite surprised if they didn't want to spend the entire afternoon talking about it. The best advice you'll find in this technology is from someone who has first hand experience. That being said, we had a similar problem 12 years ago, and instead of buying or renting a solar pathfinder, we decided to install one 50 watt panel and a couple golf cart batteries and start making some of our own electricity instead. The idea was after a couple years of measuring how much our little panel generated, and comparing it to our utility companies monthly statements, it would be simple math to design exactly the system we would need. Well it worked like a charm, and as a bonus, we still have the little system making 12 volt DC power for led lighting, small electronics, a radio and night lights in our home. It still offsets about 5% of our homes usage, and provides us with a small backup source of lighting. You could find a 50 watt panel and some batteries for just a few hundred pounds. Home Power Magazine liked our idea so much they ran an article on it about 10 years ago. The magazine is worth subscribing to, and if you do, you can use their websites search engine to read the article right online, complete with wiring diagrams and so forth. Just look for, "Small System First," at their website. Grandad mentioned feed in tariffs. If you are planning on a larger system that ties directly to the grid, this is important. It determines how much your solar power is worth to the utility company if they buy it back from you. Any place that sells panels in your area should have information on this, it would be in their interest to be up to date, but they'll at least know where to send you if they can't answer the questions directly. Go get a sub to Home Power, do some more reading, and check out the sources below before deciding what to do. The device your were originally searching for is called a solar pathfinder, and there are ads for it in Home Power as well. It stands on a small tripod and measures solar "insolation" for several weeks or even longer to give you the data you are looking for. For the money, I still think we were better off just buying a panel and batteries, plus a few small instruments. Good luck Cinilak, and take care, Rudydoo

For solar thermal, its fairly easy. Build a flat metal box. (about 3" - 6" deep) I would reccommend a 5' - 6' minimum length (measured by how far your water will flow within the panel, in order to allow for enough heat gain when your water is flowing. Paint the surface of the interior of your box a flat black. At the top of the box install a tube to bring water into the box. Put small spay nozzles to evenly distribute water accross the surface at the top . Make a colleciton basin at teh bottom of your box to coeect the water being sprayed at the top. Get a clear glass panel to cover your box and seal it as best as you can. Mount your solar thermal box at an appropriate angle facing the morning sun. Best panel orientation depend on your geographjical location. You can search this for panel facing and elevation angle. For best efficiencies you will have to tinker some. If your water flow is too high you will not get the heat gain you desire. If you want a high volume flow you will need to gang multiple panels and trickle your flow across each panel. The collective flow on all panels will get you your desired flow rate. If this is for a swimming pool then you are done. If this is for your home you now need a thermal storage, like a hot water tank. You could pipe all input water for you traditional water heater thorugh the arrangement detailed above. The heater can then provide supplimental heat as needed during the night or cloudy days. Thgis will also give you a good thermally insulated storage. You can also add recirculation to keep the water in your hot water heater circulating thorugh the solar panel. This will help keep your water sotrage at your desired temperature. You can put a simple solar cell control on your circulating pump to only run it when the sun is up. A light sensor like those the street lights use... Last to help improve efficiency and reliability in your panel you can channel the water in your panel. for a trickle of water this could be done sy a simple brush application of thicker base paints whne you paint the interior of your box. The brush strokes will create distributed chanels helping to stop your water from aggregating and spread it out helpingwith the heat transfer. Remember to only brush up and down. Going side ot side will screw it up... Many other design options are avialable bu this, in my opinion, is the easiest to accomplish on your own. I hope you find this useful. I've seen these work very well...

sounds cool

Tell them it will make the earth cleaner and just an over all better place to live you'll be saving money and lives. Shoot you can even sell the cans to a recycling company near you for some extra cash. :)

If you have a diesel car, you can buy a vegetable oil conversion kit for about $1,200. Finding a mechanic experienced at these conversions is a little harder but technically it isn't difficult. With a car modified like this, you would filter the oil into an extra fuel tank, often the spare tire well would be modified to hold the tank in the center of the spare wheel. There would be a heater in the tank and when the engine and vegetable oil are warm enough, a control system can switch to the oil. Then when you approach your destination, you select a purge mode which switches back to diesel to purge the engine of vegetable oil before shutting off so the engine and injectors don't get clogged. You can also transesterfy the oil into biodiesel so it can be used directly instead of diesel but the process produces a lot of glycerin wastes. If you pour the oil into a drain, the sewers will clog. It's the most common cause of clogged sewers and requires that the sewer be dug up and replaced. To nature, it's just more food for the micro-organisms so it's not as bad a water pollutant as you're thinking. The appropriate method of disposal is to pour it into a container, perhaps a used milk carton and dispose of it in the trash. If you have a really really hot compost pile ( a big one that's well turned ), you can pour it into the compost. Of course composting releases all the carbon as CO2 in a couple of years so it only benefits the environment when used instead of chemical fertilizers. Throwing carbon into a landfill sequesters the carbon so a landfill is actually good for the environment from a global warming perspective.

Simple , your solar energy gets converted to electricity by some solar panels , they then charge up a battery than can then power an electric motor.

"Only solar power is the guaranteed clean,affordable ,low prices alternative option." Clean? How are they manufactured? Affordable? Why don't we all have them? Placed above the clouds? Hmmmm.....would this increase the cost? Does it get dark above the clouds at night? Keep thinking! Check your facts, Mr. 357. Listen to "Dark Side of the Moon" by Pink Floyd. Especially the very end.

Not to offend you.but what really works well is simple solutions. it is a carpet cleaner that you get in pet stores like petsmart, it works really good and it takes the smell out. its even safe to us on clothes and furniture.