Most amusing: wire loss depends on insulation color

Unless, like in most countries in Europe, the power company is forced by law to buy the solar or wind electricity at 5 times the price it sells electricity to consumers for at least 5 years. In this case, you have no interest in using your solar energy the first

5 years but after those years you have a working system that can help you save on the bill and which installation cost was compensated by the bonus mentioned above. Local regulations do have a big impact on market evolution ;-)

Pi equals 3.

company.

depends

Most countries? Do you have a list or a source for that?

they used earth wire because their supplier had it in a larger size than the blue and red wires.

not even that.

I reversed the battery in my morris-minor to get a negative earth for a new radio and it had no noticeable effect on the operation of the car at all.

starter, ignition, fuel gauge, generator, solenoid operated turn signals, they all still worked.

They works for old cars that are strictly electro-mechanical. Don't try it on any modern versions.

...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
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 I love to cook with wine     Sometimes I even put it in the food

Well if it's remotely modern, it's not going to be positive-earth in the first place.

Is it even called "Earth" on an automobile?

Chassis Ground sounds much more appropriate.

The front ends of car brain boxes, etc. likely have a rectifier pair in the front end input. Transducers are a different story. Frazizzle.

yeah that trick is not compatible with semiconductors,

yes, AFAIK it's even called "earth" in aircraft!

Earth is the whole planet, ground is the bit you stand on. "earth" seems the more common term in auto electrics.

The Morris had one transducer, the brake-line pressure switch for the brake light, oil pressure was a hydraulic needle guage.

You sure this isn't a Euro thing? You know, like green wire with the yellow stripe (which I like, BTW).

not certain. google seems to agree with you 3:1

is

company.

depends

I'll take that as a no then...

And using fuses to protect against spikes and surges.

Damn - all that money wasted on surge arrestors.

Sylvia.

When this was posted I thought it was a new project and checked back to see if they had started to publish results. I then noticed the article was from

2007.

It seems they didn't run the experiment long enough wear out anything.

I searched for any information on what performance the system achieved and found almost nothing. A topic in their forums linked to the article has a few posts which stop in November 2007.

A topic linking to the live results has one posts which begins

"Appears the "Do-It-Yourself Solar-Powered PC: Live Test" is not doing so hot. Watching it the past couple of days with battery levels at 1% and barely 600 watt-hours generated in the past 3 or so days compared to a

1.6Kwh rating of a single perfect day. "

It seems they didn't have the guts.