Here’s something cool!

I ran across this one last night.  How about a plug-in solar panel!  Ok, not rocket science you might think but not so fast…  Here’s a quote from a recent CNN article on this:

“The company, Clarian Power, aims to be the first to bring a plug-in solar power system to the market, in 2011.

Clarian’s president, Chad Maglaque, says the company’s product is different from existing micro-inverters, which convert solar panels’ power into AC current. Maglaque says his system has built-in circuit protection, doesn’t require a dedicated electrical panel and plugs directly into a standard electrical outlet.”

What’s massively cool about this concept is the technology behind the micro-inverter.  Chad goes on to state that his product can be front-ended by any source.  So, replace the solar panel with say, a wind turbine or maybe a fuel cell.  The true coolness of this is that we homeowners will conceptually be able to plug in any source of green energy without fear of burning the house down.   More importantly, we’ll save a lot of money too by eliminating the expensive infrastructure traditionally required to adapt green power to grid power.  We can’t run those electrical meters backwards without it!

And lookey here… Clarian power is an American Startup too!  I’ll be keeping my eye on this one…