Cinnabar, how very flattering.Check out posts by Solarfeen on...

Cinnabar, how very flattering.

Check out posts by Solarfeen on Hot Copper as he/she knows their onions and solars.

The best website for comparing system designs, installs, outputs and costs is http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum/138?g=223, look for posts by Hippiesparx and kaju. There are several threads reporting system outputs, orientations and so on.

The internationally used pv output prediction system http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/calculators/PVWATTS/version1/ takes satellite recorded real insolation data, matches to latitude and longitude with panel orientation and a few other parameters to calculate panel outputs (monthly/yearly) and also gross returns for given costs.

As for graphite storage? That is the Rockefeller question. For many years I backed the UNSW vanadium flow battery through Pinnacle and then Vantech until those companies went broke and sold to the Chinese. Every university physics department and backyard Edison seems to have 'the' winning MegaWatt+ energy storage solution.

Lithium batteries are the current rage for small-medium storage, sodium-sulphur batteries and vanadium flow batteries for larger systems, along with pumped hydro, compressed air, heated graphite, heated salt, heavy weights and on and on. When you pick a winner let the rest of the world know.

Heat storage systems suffer from the efficiency loss going from the primary solar capture (if PV about 14%, if solar concentrated maybe 40%), its conversion into hot graphite and then its recovery into electricity from the graphite remembering that heat recovery from the hot gasses from burning coald into electricity is about 45% in the most efficient, modern, huge super critical thermal coal power plants.

Storage is, to me, a mystery wrapped in wraiths of hype.

CBD is, in my opinion, a good punt on the new energy future through its punts on PV and wind and storage and at residential and industrial scale. Others such as SOO and AIR seem attractive to me for when I want diversification even though, or because, they focus on the currently proven residential scale PV installations.

All new power technologies depend on political patronage through subsidies and policies, and are at risk of technical or public opinion limitations (see CXY). Be aware.

All the above is my speculation. Don't trust it, don't act on it. Do your own speculating.