Home power generation products?

[skids]

I'm wondering what factors would have to come together to get streetprices to carry information for home power gadgets and components (PV panels, solar thermal panels, thermoelectrics, etc) I notice a few such products have made it into the churn, but not many as compared to what is out there.

Is that something that would be pushed from the industry side -- say with a campaign to get vendors to sign up their products, or, is it the case that when streetprices looks to extend its reach (I remember the days when this site pretty much sold only PC componens) there is an internal push by streetprices staff?

I'm just wondering because there is, as far as I can find, no good price tracking service for these types of products anywhere (and the market is full of price gougers so it is badly needed.)

[erin]

Thank you for your input on an interesting product area. Generally speaking, products that appear on our search engine are a result of merchants deciding to list the items they sell on our webpage. Once a certain number of merchants are selling products by the same manufacturer, customers can go beyond searching for an item and compare merchants and prices for the same product.

As more merchants carry items in a particular product area, we expand the directories and focus on how best to organize the items in question. Listing products such as these is driven by merchant interest in advertising on our website. If you are aware of a list of merchants who might like to advertise their products on the StreetPrices website, we would be happy to review it and check with those sellers to see if they would like to list their products with us.

You do bring up a good point that this is an untapped area for price comparison. Now that it has been brought to our attention, we are more likely to focus our efforts on finding new merchants to list these types of products in the future.

Regards,
Erin
StreetPrices.com

[skids]

One is that Costco carries a small inventory of such products:

http://www.costco.com/Common/Search.aspx?whse=&topnav=&search=solar
http://www.costco.com/Common/Search.aspx?whse=&topnav=&search=generator
http://www.costco.com/Common/Search.aspx?whse=&topnav=&search=Xantrex

The other is to suggest a dovetail industry. Although their use in home power generation has yet to pick up, manufacturers of PC thermoelectric cooler systems often have a secondary portfolio of thermoelectric generator modules. The generators are usually pretty raw components, not consumer-ready as compared to the PC chip coolers, which are available in easily usable form for overclockers.

http://tellurex.com/ is a leading supplier. Some others are listed here:
http://www.benchtest.com/clinks.html (see peltier vendors section on this page)

Many of these vendors either have yet to make their generator modules available inside the U.S. or they sell them but don't price them on the webpage, unlike the coolers.

[erin]

Great, thank you for your list of potential merchants for this product area who might like to list their products with us. We'll put them on the list and hopefully add this area of products to the listings at StreetPrices!

Regards,
Erin
StreetPrices.com

[autumn]

Hi skids,

Thanks again for the suggestion!

We now have an alternative energy section at StreetPrices that includes generators, solar panels, etc:

http://www.streetprices.com/Alternative_Energy/

I'd be interested to know what you think.