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New Material for More Efficient Solar Cells
PunkerTFC writes "Space.com has an article on a new material that could create relatively cheap solar cells which are up to 50% efficient. This is much better than the 25% efficient silicon solar cells (most common) or the 36% efficient multi-junction solar cells (very expensive). The material was created by "forcing oxygen into a zinc-manganese-tellurium crystal" creating more band gaps, which allow the cell to create electrical energy with three seperate frequencies of light. This could lead to cheap, high-output solar cells in the future, but it will take at least 3 years to assess the feasibility of the new technology, according to the researchers."
Stop using reflective material!
Solar cell technology seems to be getting more and more advanced. When will the time come when we are able to use it to effectively power a complete house?
...and I have some beach front property I can sell you on mars.
Now I can overclock my cheap solar-powered calculator!
This has been released very recently - it's based on PbSe crystals instead - at Los Alamos but also through University of California.
Solar panels could really be the next generation power-source, if it can be developed a cheap and efective way of using solar energy. Have you seen that short-film on Discovery Channel about the guy who built a car that runs on solar power alone? You can walk faster than it, but hey, you could walk faster than the first steam-locomotives as well. But i'd still say that hydro-plants are the way to go, if the terrain allows it.
this is probably the most boring sig in the world
It would be awesome to have a car that was able to "refuel" itself while it sat idle most of the time. Cars have so much surface area that is exposed to the sun, it just seems like this would be a great fit, although the sun obviously couldn't be the sole source of power.
Now I can use it to power my computer without having to pay electric bills!
Wait...what happens when it is cloudy?
Of course, we all know the electric companies are going to call this "stealing energy" and patent the sun...
...but until it progresses to the point where we don't need a surface of cells an order of magnitude larger than the structure they will power to use them, they're still impracticle for primary energy needs.
I don't think we'll ever see solar cells as primary terestrial energy sources though. Cloud cover and night ruins their feasibility, but I'd wager money on them being used to augment other alternative energy sources in the future. Maybe power will go the way of Intel's new chips, multiple sources at lower power instead of one giant one at greater.
Anyone? How is the Mars rovers solar panel different?
...how's it going to help me use my calculator at night?
Oil reserves appear to be running out (looking at the recent problems Shell had with its overstated reserves, and seeing how some of the other large oil companies make even larger estimates than Shell's old ones). The future of energy production is going to be nuclear, wind, and solar. So it's very timely news.
Personally I think the collapse of the oil supply within the next 15-20 years will be the most traumatic event in recent human history.
Solar cells will help a lot in some ways but they won't be enough to stitch together a modern society built on the motor car and cheap fuel.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
It will take to three years to assess the technical feasibility of the multiband solar cell, according to the researchers.
Which means that we won't see anything for at least 3 years in the form of commercial products.
You have false notions about the feasability of solar. You would be speaking of cheap solar whereas (as it is now) there ISsolar technology that:
A) Doesn't have to cover the entire structure - but really is mute point - if you want solar - why not maximize its production - installation and deployment is 1/4 the cost - once it's being installed, install as much as possible - your goal is to "overproduce" if possible - did you know that your local energy untility has to BUY BACK power that you could place onto the grid if you overproduced?
B) The GM solar race car is a marvel of engineering, is as fast as most street legal cars and it looks cool too!
C) Cloud cover and night are of no consequence. Cloud cover only reduces production - besides power IS STORED in batteries anyway - it doesn't go straight from the sun to your light bulb or TV.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
This was already covered by /. a few weeks ago, but this new space.com article does seems tohave more details.
Just after I invest $6K in a small solar plant to run the servers here...
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http://jsl.com/solar
The solar constant (see for example here is about 1.somethin kW per Square meter.
That simply means you need quite some substantial area irradiated by bright sunlight to obtain a given amount of energy.
I think this is a limiting factor for many interesting ideas out there..
perl -e 'printf("%x!\n",49153)'
One alternate plan is to use cheap titanium dioxide to make less efficient solar cells that are significantly less expensive. Titanium dioxide is used to tint paint white and is available cheaply in bulk. While researchers are working on increasing the efficiency through nano particle techniques, do it yourselfers have made progress.
Why don't they start articles with three year disclaimer?
One nitpcik, it would be a *moot* point...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I can safely tell you to expect a huge advancement from the research labs (UCLA specifically) by the beginning of next year, January 2005. Expect MUCH more power per volume compared to our current lithium ion batteries, and my friends at the lab have reduced production costs by nearly 66%.
Expect an formal announcement of the January date sometime early this summer (I was told June or July).
Background: 28/M/Bi-Sexual; Owner of a Linux company; MBA Harvard 2003; B.S. Comp Sci MIT 2000
but really is mute point
The point may be moot, but it is never "mute."
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
...to study technology feasibility. Hmmm. More like, 3 years to quietly let this technology get stuffed into the same warehouse along with the 60 mpg carburator and the Ark of the Covenant.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
Game over. It's there, it's called PEAK OIL.
Now brace yourself for the OLDUVAI CLIFF. The road back to stone age.
This is highly location-dependant, and not guaranteed to stay true even where it currently is true.
Cloud cover and night are of no consequence.
It's not of no consequence. Average available sunlight varies by regional and local conditions. That makes a difference about when solar cells become economically feasible for someone considering them. And even living in sunny southern California won't do me much direct good if I live in a rented first-floor north-facing apartment.
It's actually ~ 1kWh/m^2, notice the time. Assuming you have ~ 6 m^2 of panels, that's 6 kWh. How many kWhs do you spend per day?
-Matt
Solar sales are up 30-40% every year, and have been growing at such a steady pace for a long time.
Naturally, this is a positive feedback loop. Lower prices mean it's affordable for more niches, which means more people buy, which in turn scales larger. At this point, it's pretty much unstoppable. It is useful in too many niches, especially where customers aren't connected to a power grid.
There are now many countries that have more cell-phones than landline phones. It's likely that in 10 years, some countries will have more customers getting electricity from solar than from a central grid. Naysayers will say it's not ready... but then again, 15 years ago cell phones weren't either. What matters is not the absolute numbers, but the growth rate of the industry and the evolution of the technology.
Of course, as the market matures, more people are doing R&D to find cheaper ways to build PV systems, which is only going to accelerate this momentum.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
Instead of responding to your grammar, I'll instead respond to your comment. :)
local energy untility has to BUY BACK power
At wholesale energy prices. So you pay them full retail price for power you use, and they pay you a lot less for the power you sell back to them.
Cloud cover and night are of no consequence. Cloud cover only reduces production - besides power IS STORED in batteries anywa
I wouldn't say no consequence. A couple overcast days pretty much mean you will have to use grid power to charge your batteries, unless you have a huge bank, or very small energy consumption.
Most off-grid people use very little eletricity, even to the point of unplugging wall warts when not in use, because they draw a few watts even when you aren't using what they are connected to.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Tellurium is about $14/lb. Gallium, by comparison, is about $1000/lb, which is why gallium-arsenide photocells, which can reach 30% efficiency, aren't widely used.
World production of tellurium is only about 100 metric tons. Gold production is 25 times larger. Tellurium is cheap because it is produced as a byproduct of copper smelting. Nobody mines tellurium directly at present. So there may be a supply problem if demand increases substantially.
I am so glad to hear this next we need to have solar panels in decorative tiles for everyones roof.
All new houses would get them and think of all the jobs installing them would create =)
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
The only way to have a perfect standardized test for high schoolers would be to have standardized students. (Which would be funny if that didn't seem to be exactly the goal of some schools, one way or another ...)
Hydro power is now on the way out as a major power source. Many dams have been removed in Western countries because they lead to salinization of cropland, destruction of hatcheries, and they just cost so bloody much. More dams have been destroyed than built in the last 20 years. On the other hand, wind and tidal power are becomming more viable because they do not munch the ecosystem in quite the same way. Besides, wind turbines will cool the atmosphere by some tiny amount to offset global warming.
50% efficiencies are quite spectacular. If they could make these things cheaply in high volumes, solar power could be supplying the majority of energy needs in the future.
Those who research semiconductors these days are exploring ever new clever ways to engineer these materials. Mechanisms for tailoring the bandgaps (by introducing materials that strain the crystal lattice) are becoming more widely used. The three different bandgaps allow photons over a wider range of frequencies to be captured and turned into electricty.
There have been "it's just around the corner!" reports exactly like this one about solar cell tech for more than two decades. Probably even longer, but that's when I started to be interested in solar cells.
Yet, solar cells are still a minor technology, not commonly used. Wake me up when the reports are finally true and buy solar cell powered houses and cars are sold at prices an average consumer can afford and at specifications that an average consumer is interested in.
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You may like my a cappella music
It's been some time since something more efficient come along. Cant wait to hook one of those cells to my home made projects.
It's not Solar Cell. It's Photovoltaic cell. This is slashdot for god's sake. Should I just call the computer the box on the side next to the TV?
Tim Smith - Ramblings from Nerd Land
From the Mineral Information Institute:
Uses
Half of the tellurium consumed each year is used to improve the machinability of special iron and steel products. It is alloyed with copper to make copper more ductile (that is, easier to stretch into wires), and with lead to prevent corrosion. These, and other nonferrous tellurium alloys, account for approximately 10% of tellurium use.
Tellurium is also used to make catalysts and chemicals. Some of these chemicals are used in the petroleum industry and in making rubber. Tellurium is added to selenium-based photoreceptors to broaden the spectral range of copiers. Tellurium is also used in other electronic applications, and in the production of blasting caps for explosives.
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
Why are solar cells normally reflective? Wouldn't they be more effecient if they absorbed all light? Or are they functioning on a different spectrum?
From almost a month ago: "A Step Closer To The Optimum Solar Cell" is also about Walukiewicz and company's research.
Yeah! Look at all of the Trees it kills each year!
It's possible now, but (in the UK) it costs twenty to thirty grand to put a system in. It'll recoup it's cost in maybe 25 years.
The cells you can buy in the stores are more likely to be 15-18% rather than 25% efficient. The 25% ones are fucking expensive and the 35% ones are like rocking horse shit.
Course, energy storage is still a problem for those cloudy days. Batteries are heavy, expensive, made of heavy metals or have to be replaced regularly which isn't exactly "green".
Compressed air energy storage may be feasable on a small scale with the use of a compressed air powered generator, some utilities already use compressed air to store energy on a huge scale. Use solar power to compress air to several hundred atmospheres during the day and run a generator from it during the night and during cloudy periods.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
The article mentions a different fuller version of the story.
If anyone knows where to find it; a link would be appreciated. I would really like to read that version.
George II -- Spreading Freedom and American values, one bomb at a time.
Telluride is used also in other optoelectronic materials such as CdHgTe for IR detectors, and if there ever was a nasty material to work with this is it. I would not be surprised if this new one is bad too. In fact "forcing" oxygen atoms into this crystal has to distort the lattice making epitaxiality a nightmare.
So it might be nice and efficient once (or if) optimised) but also it might be horrifically expensive.
Seems to me like the best way to go is some sort of thick concrete wall structure that stays cool in the summer. Then use the latest in lighting technology [are white LEDs feasible for indoor use?] and generally minimize electronics within--find a high efficiency fridge, low power computer, etc. I think you could have made it work if you had planned the building from the ground up and made some lifestyle changes. Maybe line-dry clothes rather than with a machine, if it is feasible in your area.
Of course I'm speculating heavily.
Hydro power is now on the way out as a major power source. Many dams have been removed in Western countries because they lead to salinization of cropland, destruction of hatcheries, and they just cost so bloody much.
Salinization isn't caused by dams, it's caused by irrigation. Cost isn't the issue, it costs more to tear them down. While they are there, their operation profits cover expenses. The problem is the destruction of natural habitats. I'll admit that a thorough environmental analysis needs to be done before building a dam, but I have to wonder how many habitats are restored by a dam's destruction. You don't just drain the reservoir, blow up the damn and everything magically returns.
Besides, wind turbines will cool the atmosphere by some tiny amount to offset global warming.
Oh, I'm sorry, that wasn't meant to be a joke??? Wind turbines kill birds. A significant number, hard to say. I haven't seen any serious studies. Tidal power requires changing the shoreline. What effect is that going to have? Ever wonder why Florida is building artificial reefs? It's because development in one area is causing beach scouring in another.
How about geothermal? Iceland has had a lot of success with that.
It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. -- Harry Truman
So we get 400 megawatts annually worldwide. What is the typical consumption of the US at any given time? Half a million megawatts? Four hundred megawatts is nothing in the grand scheme of things.
I also spelled utility "untility" and left out punctuation - sorry - but your point is moot and just wasted typing (offtopic)
local energy untility has to BUY BACK power
At wholesale energy prices. So you pay them full retail price for power you use, and they pay you a lot less for the power you sell back to them.
Don't oversize your system. This isn't a money making adventure. Unless you have time and date metering, they are just checking your meter once a month. If it moves forward, you pay. Backwards, they do. The wholesale/retail problem would only come into effect when you're trying to carry over from month to month.
Most off-grid people use very little eletricity, even to the point of unplugging wall warts when not in use, because they draw a few watts even when you aren't using what they are connected to.
Also, unplug all of your vampire appliances. These are appliances that use power even when turned off. A lot of times, off does not mean off. Every manufacturer wants to install clocks and LEDs. For instance, my Apex DVD has a power switch and you can turn it off with the remote. The remote just suspends parts of the system, the LED stays lit, the circuitry is live to listen for commands from the remote. A lot of stereos are like that too. My AudioTron has that annoying problem too. The power switch on the front causes it to hibernate, the true power switch is inaccessibly on the back.
It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. -- Harry Truman
let's hope these make it to market soon, and that they are cheap when they get here. this is a huge leap in efficiency, and if the price is right, it could be quite competitive with other forms of energy. this would reduce our dependence on foreign oil and could stimulate our semiconductor industry if production really took off.
they need to figure out a way to make solar cells in more complex shapes. It even with current solar cells, the efficiency is great enough to make a decent commuter car, so long as it's covered with cells. It's not like it won't be spending most of the day in a parking lot somewhere. But a car covered with PV cells can be pretty ugly- if high efficiency PV's could be formed into body panels, particularly if combined with something like BP Solar's Laser Grooved Buried Grid (LGBG) process which hides the bus bars and allows for different colors, a normal-looking solar-powered car could be possible.
A triple junction cell would only reach its maximum efficiency when the currents generated at each junction matched. That means a fixed sprectrum ... and that implies these high efficiencies are produced only at a) a fixed time-of-day AND b) a specific cloud cover, AND c) at a specified latitude.
They may ne useful in space cells, but not at the surface of the Earth.
When these get to market it will really hurt the utilitiy companies. Revenge is fun. The amount of power that could be produced in southern NM alone is huge. Less than 8 inches of rain a year and a min of 250 cloudless days/year? Wow. But not till more efficient cells are available. I hope the get another 50% better by the time they get to market.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
If I can store power efficiently, then my solar cells need to generate 18 kWh per day, in about 10 hours of nice, bright sunlight. That's 1800 watts at any given time. At $2/watt, that's $3600 for the array (ignore the storage costs for now).
My electric bill for that month was $55.74, so I get payback in a little more than 5 years.
The problem is, I've seen different numbers for panels. Modules for consumers cost $5.85 per watt, these days. And at that rate, my scenerio costs $10,500, and the payoff time is now 15 years. If I invest that money, and get a 7% rate of return on it, I make more money by PAYING my electric bill ($61.25 per month income, $55.74 payout). It's more profitable for me NOT to install the cells.
The numbers quoted in the previous post for cost drop by growth indicate that (I'd love to see how the math for this is done, properly, but my aproximation follows) those $2 cells will cost $.75 in 2010. Excellent!
But the cost of panels is not all CELLS, and has stayed pretty darn stable. In the past three years, panel cost has only come down a few percent. It went UP some months, too. So we can expect the panels to be cheaper, but not by NEARLY that much.
And in the above I've ignored storage inefficiencies, and support hardware and battery costs.
In other words, I don't think the picture is so rosey.
> Wind turbines kill birds
Yeah, like anything tall kills birds.
Not that this is not something we already know. The high mortality at the Altamont was due bad placement and technology.
According to the NWCC 0.01%-0.02% of the deaths due to collisions are due to winplants.
> How about geothermal? Iceland has had a lot of success with that.
Well, maybe because it is a small island directly placed above a contintental rift. I don't know for how many regions that would work.
But why not all of the above? And then scrap the methods, which have the worst impact.
It's not like we need a silver bullet.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
A solar panel doesn't have to power a house to be useful. 99% of the solar panels I see are on calculators. Replacing batteries on portable devices--what a great use! Presumably, a better solar device, (however you measure better, be it cheap/efficient/durable) will allow a battery-less device to have more smarts.
Cheap solar devices could be educational and communications tools for poor, illiterate areas of the world.
Are we all such good consumer robots that all we can think about is how many gadgets we can power with the roofs of our big suburban houses? This is why someone makes a hot tun with a plasma screen built-in!
There is a lot more oil to be removed from the ground than we have even taken out of it. A lot of it is locked up in materials not normally drilled or in areas with environmental worries.
There are oil fields in parts of the former Soviet Union that only need a pipeline and investment to make them worthwhile, these fields alone last for more than 20 years.. and that is just the reserves they know of. Right now Japan and China are both negotiating for a pipeline from those areas so that they can reduce their reliance on M.E. oil.
You tell me which would happen first...
World collapses because no one will drill in areas where the environmental protesters will go crazy or they drill anyway?
Besides, if their like most protest groups they get the land donated to them and then they drill on it!
Oh, quit parroting the environmental wacko crew... its been 10-20 years of soon to run out of oil for HOW LONG now? I don't know who is worse, them or the Fusion guys.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
originally designed for this scenario
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
http://earth-policy.org/Updates/Update24.htm
June 25, 2003-4
Wind Power Set to Become World's Leading Energy Source
Lester R. Brown
In 1991, a national wind resource inventory taken by the U.S. Department of Energy startled the world when it reported that the three most wind-rich states--North Dakota, Kansas, and Texas--had enough harnessable wind energy to satisfy national electricity needs. Now a new study by a team of engineers at Stanford reports that the wind energy potential is actually substantially greater than that estimated in 1991.
Advances in wind turbine design since 1991 allow turbines to operate at lower wind speeds, to harness more of the wind's energy, and to harvest it at greater heights--dramatically expanding the harnessable wind resource. Add to this the recent bullish assessments of offshore wind potential, and the enormity of the wind resource becomes apparent. Wind power can meet not only all U.S. electricity needs, but all U.S. energy needs.
In a joint assessment of global wind resources called Wind Force 12, the European Wind Energy Association and Greenpeace concluded that the world's wind-generating potential--assuming that only 10 percent of the earth's land area would be available for development--is double the projected world electricity demand in 2020. A far larger share of the land area could be used for wind generation in sparsely populated, wind-rich regions, such as the Great Plains of North America, northwest China, eastern Siberia, and the Patagonian region of Argentina. If the huge offshore potential is added to this, it seems likely that wind power could satisfy not only world electricity needs but perhaps even total energy needs. (See data.)
Over the last decade wind has been the world's fastest-growing energy source. Rising from 4,800 megawatts of generating capacity in 1995 to 31,100 megawatts in 2002, it increased a staggering sixfold. Worldwide, wind turbines now supply enough electricity to satisfy the residential needs of 40 million Europeans.
Wind is popular because it is abundant, cheap, inexhaustible, widely distributed, climate-benign, and clean--attributes that no other energy source can match. The cost of wind-generated electricity has dropped from 38 a kilowatt-hour in the early 1980s to roughly 4 a kilowatt-hour today on prime wind sites. Some recently signed U.S. and U.K. long-term supply contracts are providing electricity at 3 a kilowatt-hour. Wind Force 12 projected that the average cost per kilowatt hour of wind-generated electricity will drop to 2.6 by 2010 and to 2.1 by 2020. U.S. energy consultant Harry Braun says that if wind turbines are mass-produced on assembly lines like automobiles, the cost of wind-generated electricity could drop to 1-2 per kilowatt hour.
Although wind-generated electricity is already cheap, its cost continues to fall. In contrast with oil, there is no OPEC to set prices for wind. And in contrast to natural gas prices, which are highly volatile and can double in a matter of months, wind prices are declining.
Another great appeal of wind is its wide distribution. In the United States, for example, some 28 states now have utility-scale wind farms feeding electricity into the local grid. While a small handful of countries controls the world's oil, nearly all countries can tap wind energy.
Denmark leads the world in the share of its electricity from wind--20 percent. In terms of sheer generating capacity, Germany leads with 12,000 megawatts. By the end of 2003, it will have already surpassed its 2010 goal of 12,500 megawatts of generating capacity. For Germany, this rapid growth in wind power is central to reaching its goal of reducing carbon emissions 40 percent by 2020.
Rapid worldwide growth is projected to continue as more countries turn to wind. In addition to the early leaders--Denmark, Germany, Spain, and the United States--many other countries have ambitious plans, including the United Kingdom, France, Brazil, and China.
In dens
What you really want is for minimum ecological impact is a "pumped storage" hydro plant. Build a man-made reservoir at the top of the hill, and a basin at the bottom of the hill. Fill the top reservoir with water. During the day, you let the water flow with gravity downhill through a set of turbines to generate electricity. At night, power the turbines to flow in reverse, and pump the water back up to the reservoir, basically "refuelling" itself.
But, you say, what's the sense in doing that? Conservation of energy says motors use more energy than they can generate in reverse, so aren't you wasting electricity just moving water about? You'll go out of business!
The key is not the volume of water, but WHEN you're generating. In deregulated energy markets like in most of the USA, there is also an ebb and flow to the price of electricity along the day... at night, when people are sleeping, there's too much online supply and not enough people using it, so the price drops... and during the day, when everyone is awake and watching TV and cooking and cleaning and working and computing, the demand for electricity is much higher, therefore the price of energy is higher.
So, generate electricity during the day and have people buy from you at higher rates, and run your pumps at night purchasing electricity from someone else for lower rates. Net, you're making money, keeping your average costs low. Not only that, you avoid erosion and killing fish like you do with conventional run-of-river dams. For an impressive beast of a plant, check out Bath County Station in Virginia.
> How about geothermal? Iceland has had a lot of success with that.
Well, maybe because it is a small island directly placed above a contintental rift. I don't know for how many regions that would work.
Technically, ground sourced heat pumps are geothermal too. Just at a lesser degree. That is available anywhere.
It's not like we need a silver bullet.
My original point was that wind and tidal power aren't silver bullets. The original poster was pointing to wind and tidal power as the solution to those evil dams. But they have drawbacks too. It's going to have to be a balance of several technologies.
It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. -- Harry Truman
Green self-sufficient (sum) heating is becoming quite common here in northern Europe. Now we need a personal dc grid for appliances because converting solar to ac and then heating all these ac-dc bricks all around the house seems quite wasteful.
... get real! Some things are just energy wasters.
I think standardizing on something like FireWire 800 wallsockets to universally replace the ac-dc bricks. Most appliances can live on the current allowed by the FireWire standard.
The grid itself would have thicker copper cables to supply multiple FireWire sockets in paralel with enough current to allow each socket to supply the full specified current of 12 Watt.
Most home appliances can make do with 12 watt if you design them that way many waste most of their energy on the power brick:
60 Watt lightbulb = 9 Watt energy saving bulb
75 Watt lightbulb = 11 Watt energy saving bulb
1200 Watt vacuum cleaner = 12 Watt vacuum robot which takes days instead of hours but you don't have to push it around those hours.
1000 Watt dishwasher = 2 Watt dishwasher if it can get water heated with the sunheater next to your solar panels.
2500 Watt washer / dryer
--
Dennis SCP
http://britneyspears.ac/lasers.htm
enjoy!
You can do the vast amount of work yourself, save thousands, literally thousands. shop around for the various components. it is no way any harder than building your own peecee, just much larger. You have panels, their mounts, some simple wiring, a charge controller, then usually an inverter/charger for adding grid juice into the mis, and a battery bank. You run the output to your panel box you already have, or just pick a few circuits to power. You can hire an electrician to look it over one day and do the last install to the panel, that's really the only person you need to hire. You *might* need a permit, that varies locale to locale, same as any other home construction action. It's just not that hard if you can use a few normal tools and first sit down and plan out what you need and the steps to take.
As to the batteries, look into a local forklift dealer, look at their traction battery banks for the electric forklifts. Significantly cheaper per amp-hour than deep cells with "solar" printed on them. they come into 12VDC to 48VDC configs, pick out what ya need, it'll probalby run at least 50% under "solar" batteries for the same amp hours.
And look into the new "desulphator" devices to keep batteries and battery banks clean (they run 100-150$ or so), they will keep batteries working MUCH longer than batteries without them, and are very cheap for what they do. I have some deep storage batts I use (some cheap 6 volt golf cart batts, wired in series, then parallel to give me 12 volt dc circuitry) that are still fine,and are already a few years past when they were supposed to go bad according to the literature for them, I got a desulphator and it cleaned them up just spiffy within a few weeks.
The way to deal with alternate energy is work both ends towards the middle, reduce consumption (better apliances, saner useage, better built home with more insulation, better natural lighting, etc), then add in your production, at some point you'll hit a sweet spot where those two personal supply/demand lines cross and you are independent and it becomes very affordable.
And it IS a concern with the politics involved with electricity, and here's something else to consider, with solar (any alternative energy scheme really), you can get an upfront, bottom-line price. With grid supplied, you have zero guarantees on the price a year from now, 5 years, ten years, etc. You are going on a price comparison for looking at years in the future which has no basis in any contract you have, because it doesn't exist. Various areas in the US have had doublings of rates in as little as a one year time span, and it RARELY ever goes down, does it? As far as I know, no utility out there gives a homeowner even a chance at a set carved in stone price/contract for KWH for 10 years from now. You have NO idea what it might cost in the future, nor will you know if it will be even available like it is now, we live in an uncertain world, yes?; and "energy" is sure a politically connected product, so you never know what might happen......
The second consideration is, why do you have to jump to whole house? Just use it as a daily adjunct (for your home office and boxes, it's a great UPS system for example), and as a backup to have *some* power if/when the grid goes down. You might not have enough to run the AC if it's a heatwave and the grid borks, but you can still run some fans, for an example, along with some small appliances, your boxes, a radio maybe, etc. it's a backup for a critical thing for most geeks,, ain't a one of us here DON'T not-like electricity, if I am allowed that double negative. We dig JUICE, so having at least some of your own juice you can control is *slickerissimo*. No law says you have to have either/or, you can have both, just be smart about the first install and scale the components (notably the inverter/charger/controler parts) so you can add to the PV array and the battery banks as you can afford it and have more interest in it. So instead of dropping 20 grand, try 5 with some on site stora
This should do wonders for solar flight, like the ESA's solar plane, and the research into cheaper-than-satellite technologies for signal rebroadcasting, like here.
"It is a solemn thought: dead, the noblest man's meat is inferior to pork."
also note: Shell Oil just got busted heavy for over reporting what they swore up and down was their reserve, and I bet some of the other companies do it too. You just are not going to get any truth or action out of the big power/energy monopolies, and you have no control over how/when/why and what it will cost in the future to stay dependent on those companies for all your energy needs. It IS a valid consideration. You CAN mitigate future events personally though, by taking action yourself. To me, waiting for this "other guy" to do it, or big government/big business to "do" something is not practical, when I can "do" my own right now, at least to some extent, and to a practical extent. And "energy" doesn't exist in a vacuum all by itself,like "just oil/gas" or whatever, it's interconnected, all the various forms, and price increases on one side tend to make the others go up as well, broadly speaking. Like how many people know that the huge demand coming up on the north american natural gas supply by 1500 new natgas powered electric peaker plants will directly cause much higher food prices? That's because fertiliser is made from that stuff. It's a direct hidden energy cost everyone will be paying,because we all eat, but most people won't know they "why" part of it, and won't consider it as part of their monthly "utility" bill. Same as middle eastern oil is never all completely priced at the pump or in your fuel oil bill or in your electric rate, a big part over the years has gone into HUGE military expenditures related to our continued involvement in the middle east(oil is the major reason of course), and that comes out of your income tax, but you don't see it as an "energy bill".
Anyway, glad someone else has seen the dieoff.org site and read the olduvai gorge paper, it's pretty good, as is the rest of the site. Several evenings sobering reading there.
and tellurium oxides in graduate school. It is just about the most toxic metal there is from a purely chemical standpoint (ignoring radioactive elements). I was much more relaxed when working with selenium than tellurium.
"The average American ecological footprint (the amount of land required to produce all the goods & services that the average american consumes) is
roughly 5 hectares. If the rest of the population is to have this standard of living we will require two further Earths"
That is badly fucked up.
The issue of energy supply is intrinsically bound up with economic consumption. Obviously so, it takes energy to make something.
Currently the governments of the world are buying into the 'American Way', and as the above quote quite clearly shows is that this is a totally unsustainable path. So what we have here, is a 'Demand Side' problem. People are (eventually)going to have to make do with less, which is going to get ugly.
From an aesthetic point of view, things already are ugly cause last I heard America was the fattest country in the world.
Cartman's taking over.
Actually from what I have seen some places used mirrors to focus the suns energy on a smaller numble of solar pannels.
Note to Mods: When I post mirrors, it's a best guess. I don't know for certain whether or not the site will go down!
Conservation is BY FAR cheaper than coming up with new energy sources. Every dollar spent on conservation stays in America while every dollar spent on oil leaves.
Having said the above however, there is a place for photovoltaic. In the late 'seventies, I installed systems that paid for themselves in months; above the arctic circle! Look around, there are lots of places where it is cheaper to use a solar panel than to run wires to the grid. All the local parking tag dispensers are solar powered for instance.
My best hope is for the guys converting turkey guts to oil. www.changingworldtech.com This technology solves several problems including waste disposal.
The bottom line is that the decreasing supply of oil is more of an opportunity than a threat. We started to address the problem in the seventies but then the price of oil went down. This time it isn't going down and people are getting really serious about alternate energy. We are at the point now where solar, wind and biomass are economical under the right circumstances. Expect more of this kind of story.
"Yeah, for example a solar system to generate enough power for the average home would cost anywhere from $20k to $30k."
;)
That's incredible! An entire solar system for only $30K? I call dibs on Alpha Centauri.
We must have pretty different definitions of "average" though if this can only power a single house...
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
... that's just not true. It is quite easy to make 99.999 whatever percent of cars run on something like ethanol or methanol. A lot of race cars run on methanol, doesn't seem to slow them down any or present any huge problems. Henry ford DESIGNED the model T to run on ethanol, he thought petroleum stuff was way too dirty, and would gunk up the engines (which it does, bad, that's one of the reasons your crankcase lubrication oil gets so dirty) They would burn cleaner, too,much less air pollution, and not even need as much of that expensive computer controlledc crap they put on cars now to make petroleum products burn clean, and your engine would last much longer as well. You could run them on methane, another huge untapped energy source just going begging, using similar pressurised carbs as the quite common propane powered generators use that are installed on farms by the hundreds of thousands now all over the place. A lot of RVs now are dual fuel, propane and gasoline, it's quite common.
If you want to just speak in general terms,
"alternate energy" became practical years ago, the big energy monopolies, and their paid off shills in government, do everything they can to keep people faked out so they can keep getting a check out of you every month forever and ever. Just mandating a doubling of insulation in new homes and buildings via the "building codes" laws they already think up would make energy demand drop severely, but they don't want that, they want your money by the bucketful. I've helped build two super insulated houses, and several heavily modified houses, the energy savings are nothing short of incredible, and the comfort level goes up immediately, and the "payback" is a few years starting with the first months utility bills. You see, "alternate energy" along with it's corrolay "sane useage" and "saner appliances" is greatly suited (in a lot of ways) to smaller independent set ups run by the owners, not some giant public 'service" corporation with their for-profits giant "suppliers", and THOSE guys being filtered through hordes of "commodity traders" who skim off even more mega billions nation wide for doing basically nothing. The REAL problem with alternate energy is joe bigco hasn't figured out how to charge you for "alternate energy" forever like they do with the current "energy" market, because you can actually pay-off your personal production, and they certainly don't want that, they want "vendor lock in" and for you to pay their "subscription",to basically stay as a renter, with no long term price negotiations allowed, rather than an owner with some sort of fixed price, totally in their favor, for perpetuity.
This varies from state to state. Some states excess power moves the meter back, other states you have a seperate meter for sold power. Some states the power companies don't have to pay you anything.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
"I have been wondering how difficult it will be to get by without all the cheap plastics that we have today."
Hemp can be used for plastic. In fact hemp can be used for pretty much everything oil can be, including a cleaner burning, renewable fuel source. It's also great for paper, fabrics, and thousands of other uses. Popular Mechanics estimated 25,000 product uses for it back in 1938.
Banning hemp because of marijuana is as stupid as banning barley and oats during prohibition would've been. It's precisely because hemp is so useful (and threatens the profits of powerful people.. like oil and timber barons) that it was unfairly demonized and outlawed (with precisely zero medical or scientific basis) in the 30's, right after a means to mass-process it was developed. The resource barons killed the hemp industry in its infancy. Thankfully, it appears to coming back in some places, although certain powerful people whose family is in bed with oil interests don't want it to...
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
Now, everybody register to vote... because, the moment there's enough solar hookups for it to make any difference, you can bet the energy companies will be having those "return to grid" laws repealed.
One of the first groups Arnie Schwarzenegger, Gov of California, consulted with was the exact same folks responsible for screwing over California in the energy scam.
The key is storage: always have a power surplus adequate to cover you during those periods without sufficient sun or wind. Since you're generally drawing on the batteries, not the solar cells, that's critical. You don't really need all that many PV panels to keep a large battery array maintained.
Fortunately for us, when the weather is so bad that we get no sun during the day, it's usually pretty windy! And of course it's nice to know that there's a back-up genset if it ever comes to that.
Current estimates of world oil reserves (total)
is around 2 trillion barrels.
The energy stored in a gram of oil (on average)
is 44000 Joules/gram, at a SG =0.9.
1 barrel (oil) = 42 gallons = 0.159 m^3
So 1 barrel has the following energy content,
44 x 10^6 Joules/kg * 998 kg/m^3 * 0.159 m^3/barrel * 0.9
= 6.3 x 10^9 Joules/barrel (6 gigaJoules/bbl)
So all the energy stored in the worlds
oil reserves is,
2.0x10^12 barrel * 6.3*10^9 Joules/bbl =
1.3x10^22 Joules of oil energy.
(2.0x10^12 is a very optimistic value, P=0.1)
Ok, so you think this is a big number ?
The total power radiated from the sun is approx,
4x10^26 watts or 4x10^26 Joules/sec.
The sun radiates the equivalent of all the energy
stored in oil on the earth in,
1.3x10^22/4x10^26 = 32.5 microseconds
The entire oil based world economy (150 years of work)
is only a 32 microsecond job for the sun.
By necessity "we" will become much smarter on how
to capture solar power.
BTW the current world rate of oil consumption
is approximately 80x10^6 barrels/day, at
this rate the remaining 1.5x10^12 barrels
will be gone in, 51 years. The growing South
Asian market will probably help cut this to 30
years, but shifting demand will probably help
keep complete cut off at 50 years.
The point may be moot, but it is never "mute."
Have you ever heard a point speak? I think they're all pretty much mute.
Besides, the way it's used, that's an uncapitalized proper noun. He's talking about Mute Point, which overlooks Mute Valley. Being a mountain peak, it's a great place to put a bank of solar cells because you get plenty of sunlight.
Actually, although using a clothes line is best overall, people can still dry some clothes indoors. I usually dry some items by laying them over my bed. When I'm about to dry on my bed, I make sure that my bed is made & keep that part clean so that I can lay out clean clothes. @ night, if they aren't dry, you just gather them up & dump them in a pile on a clean surface. Another option is to just go to sleep & leave them there. I don't think there ever was a time when the bed was so wet that I couldn't use it. I'm not even sure that it was damp.
Warning: it all depends on how thick your clothes are, how thick your bed spreads are, & how well your machine spin dries the clothes.
As for slacks & dress shirts, I usually dry them by putting them on hangers & leaving them out in the open. Other shirts & pants go in the dryer, because they tend to get difficult to dry indoors.
I think that drying dress shirts on clothes hangers is the best because for many of them, you won't need to iron them later on.
I tried drying a pair of jeans on a hanger, & it worked out pretty well.
All of you might be surprised @ how much time you save. All the stuff that needs to go on hangers are going to have to go on hangers, so you might as well hang them to dry, & skip the ironing altogether.
testing out my trending skills
Because this technology is still at infancy while old proven things like synthetic fuel from coal is known for a long time. Germany used synthetic fuel during WWII almost everywhere because all real oil went to Kriegsmarine. Last synthetic fuel factory in Germany was closed in sixties because it could not compete with extremely cheap oil from Middle East. And you don't need to change car engines, nor fuel infrastructure.
Don't be such an ass. Sometimes when things don't make sense, it's because you didn't understand the post, not because the post was wrong.
I was going to mod you up, but decided to reply instead. The world would be a better place if everyone would understand this little fact. (sorry to be offtopic, but this is a pet peeve)
The system stores 24 KWHr, using two 120V strings of 100 A-Hr valve-regulated lead acid batteries.
If you limit the discharge to 50% (12 KWHr), the battery should deliver about 1000 charge-discharge cycles before replacement. (You'd get about 300 cycles at 100% discharge using a 12 KWHr battery, so the larger battery is less costly in the long run).
Thus total energy over battery life is 12000 KWHr.
The battery cost is about $100 for each 12V 100 Ahr "block" (retail cost, new batteries). Replacing the string will cost $2000.
The recurring cost for batteries alone is $2000/12000 KWHr = $0.167/KWHr, at 100% inverter efficiency. At 95% inverter efficiency (high, but achievable) it's $0.175/KWHr.
Thus, even if the solar panels, inverters, etc. were free and lasted forever, the cost of storing the power for later reuse is likely to exceed the cost of power from a public utility. That's why a utility-interactive system (where you sell surplus power back to PG&E, or whoever) makes for a more affordable system.
Just keep your solar cells in a shady grove under some nice trees. This will shield them from harmful effects of the sun.
... got away with most anything, UNTIL he announced he was going to charge euros or gold for whatever oil he was allowed to sell, and not accept US federal reserve notes. He got invaded then. That was the real tipping overpoint for the oil administration. Your observations are right on, no one cared about massacres and despotism uganda or whatever,they don't care much about the sudan now, no oil there of note. BUT, iraq, iran, REAL interesting places to the oil guys. What-a-coincidence.
The rest of the muslim world will be gradually changing over to the gold dinar for their internal balance of trade payments with themselves,(they started already and it's a pretty good success so far) and eventually they will most likely (that is my belief at this time) only accept gold or manufactured goods for their oil. Of course, we will be in full bore ww3 by then, because we want it, europe wants it, china wants it, india is gonna want it, and so on, and there's only enough for ONE of those groups or places worth of oil exisiting in total.
whoops!
Not only are petroleum's days numbered, but the US fiat artifical dollar's days are numbered, too. The rest of the planet sees no need to keep subsisidising the US, especially as we don't really have anything they want that they can't get elsewhere for cheaper. They will take our JOBS, that's our real biggest export now, that and our future debt. Foreigners own most of our government paper and most of our mortgages.
Our "leaders" are really greedy, insane ignoramuses. But, they call the shots, so we will be the nation to go down in history as eventually turning the most war-like, because it's what we have left, and everyone wants the oil.
And THAT'S why we have been forcefully turned into an expansionist looter nation, because that's what we still have, military power primarily, so that's all we can use. When we still manufactured everything, all our oil dollars got re-spent back inside the US primarily, so that helped our economy, but now... nope. It's totally different. And when our economy was booming, I mean really ripping along with true produced wealth, oil was 2-5$ a barrel. Heck, I've paid as little as 12 cents a gallon before. I also paid one time 10$ a gallon for 2 gallons max, during the OPEC embargo.
Stuff can sure change fast, people forget it seems. Too bad we didn't learn our lesson back then in the 70s.
Ain't that cheap now. Never gonna be that cheap ever again.
That's why I think it's critically important that we just "do it", put the rust belt back to work, open up hundreds of factories,and start pumping out wind gennys, solar panels, you name it, throw everything we got at it before oil gets so expensive in terms of dollars and BTU's needed to get it and refine it that we CAN'T switch to alternatives. We have a short window, relatively speaking, of affordable oil left, and if we use it all on giant cars and big screen TVs and ski boats and whatnot, well...none of them things makes any energy. They just cost energy, and there never *can be* a payback with them, but the oil they represent is gone anyway.
When people say to me "what's the payback?" on alternate energy I can say "sometime", because the alternative is doing it their way, the way we are "officialy" doing it now, which consists of "studying it" and waiting forever for the back yard Mr. Fusion Unit. That method means "never", it's not going to happen any time soon, if ever. That's the only two choices we have now, just "do it", and make it get better, or ignore it until we can't do it.
I'm doing my part, some solar, and a small wind genny, and I'm going to do more. If everyone did similar, depending on their locale and circumstances and budget, etc, we'd get "there", to a better and more safe and energy rich future, a lot sooner.
I have thought of a possible solution, though I don't know if it will work. I would love for someone to try this possible solution, and let me know their results.
Basically, I am thinking of using a piece of alluminum plate/sheet for the back electrode, painting the alluminum plate with copper-oxide containing anti-fouling paint (used to keep barnacles and other things off boats and ships - must have a very high percentage of copper oxide for this to have a chance in hell of working), then, while the paint is tacky, pressing a piece of copper mesh onto it (to form the front electrode) - hook up wires, sandwitch between some clear acrylic, and...profit?
Would this work? Would this be a cheap way of building solar cells? Would it be cheaper than silicon-based cells? Cheaper than used cells (likely not)?
Actually, I know of a way to get real cheap solar panels, which I am currently exploring - hopefully, something good will come out of it...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
The entire world used less than 14 trillion kWh of electricity in 2003 (http://www.photius.com/rankings/electricity_consu mption_0.html, based on CIA world fact book).
The world has a land area of about 150,000,000 square km (again, CIA world fact book), or 150 trillion m^2.
A 25% efficient 1m x 1m solar panel can generate about 1.5kWh over the course of a day, or 550 kWh over the course of a year.
Accordingly, it would take less than 0.02% of the earth's land surface to generate all of our electricity from solar cells.
For comparison, about 5% of the US's land surface is covered with roads, so 0.02% is a trivial amount to devote to energy production.
To the more general point of how much of the earth's energy comes from the sun: nearly all of it. There's a little from gravitational collapse and motion-friction with the sun and moon; there's a little nuclear fission; there may be some chemical energy in petroleum that isn't from the sun (depending upon whose theory you believe.) Everything else is solar energy, either immediate or stored.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Don't oversize your system. This isn't a money making adventure.
That's a fair point, but the guy I was responding to said "your goal is to overproduce if possible", which as you and others pointed out, isn't a very good idea from a cost/benefit point of view.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Yes, but there's a limit to this. Solar cells are generally less efficient when they're hot, and concentrating the sun heats them up quickly. Adding a cooling mechanism adds cost.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
And, as a bonus, there is a continuing supply of dead birds at the base that you can eat for dinner.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
My nitpick is that your nitpcik should be a nitpick.
Infuriate left and right
Well.......
The power company IS required to buy back your excess solar/wind generated electricity, however (And here is the kicker) They are only required to pay wholesale prices, not retail. This means the power you sell back is only about 1/3 of the value of the power they are charging you to use. Almost makes "Gorilla Solar" sound like a better choice.
Just my $0.02
No, Mexico's reserves are around 20th internationally; not very much.
There is a very clear online recent lecture on this topic by Nathan Lewis, a chem professor at Caltech who is active in this field. It is titled "The Future of Power and Energy in the World" You an find it with many slides at http://online.itp.ucsb.edu/online/colloq/lewis1/ The summary is roughly that we need to make photovoltaics about 10 fold cheaper than they are today(about $4/watt ->$.40/watt), on the way to making them as as cheap as housepaint. There is no theoretical obstacle to doing this, and several promising lines of research. If (really when) we can do this ($.40/watt), solar electric energy will be cheap enough to electrolytically reduce CO2 to methanol (CH3OH) which is a fine fuel for transportation, etc., and is already nicely interfaced to out current energy distribution and use systems. At this low cost, we can even pull CO2 out of the atmosphere directly, directly reversing the CO2 greenhouse effect. Furthermore, this is by far the best option, e.g. 5000 new fission reactors would be needed to supply the growth in energy needs contemplated in the next 50 years (construction of 2/wk for 50 yrs.) This seems much too dangerous. Since this is the best apparent practical way out, since we are really talking about a major determinant of the fate of the earth, and timing is critical, one might wonder why the funding is so low (about $10M/yr in the US maybe).
Wind power is doing better all the time; it is already producing much more electricity than solar, less expensively than natural gas, nuclear, and most hydroelectric. Some time in the next three years, wind power will become less expensive than coal, which is presently the least expensive form of electricity generation by a margin of about 0.7 cents/kwh. When that happens, many places will convert all at once.
When I was a kid, I did some experimentation with electolysis.
I placed two inverted test tubes over the two electrodes, and was thus able to collect the oxygen and hydrogen separately.
I don't see any reason why this can't be done on a larger scale.
The compressor needed to store the hydrogen can also be driven by solar power.
(Oxygen doesn't need to be stored, as it can be obtained from the atmosphere (at least, on this planet at the current time).)
Given the current cost of solar cells, my guess is that a compressor and hydrogen storage tank are not that expensive reatively.
The main additional expense would be the fuel cells.
I don't know how fuel cells compare with solar cells in $/kwh, so I can't say whether the energy storage system and power recovery system (fuel cells) would cost more than the solar cell part of the system.
I do agree with your main point, that an effective energy storage system is important, and must be considered when determining the cost of the entire solar-powered system.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
dead birds at the base that you can eat for dinner.
I believe the post you borrowed from came to the opposite conclusion.
Ain't gonna happen for the very simple fact there just isn't enough solar radiation hitting the surface of the planet.
I call bullshit. Average solar irradiation is in the range of 2-5 kWh/m2 per year in Europe, which happens to roughly equal a typical household's electricity consumption. This means that at, say, 10% overall efficiency (including storage losses) just 7 m2 of south-facing roof surface (including a sqrt(2) factor for roof slant) supply a household's worth of electricity. Replacing fossil fuels might triple the surface required, but still in all but the densest urban areas photovoltaic roof tiles alone could cover local energy needs.
And this is for Europe - in much of the U.S. solar irradiation is much higher and population/habitation density much lower, so your claim is absolutely ludicrous. Kindly refrain from misrepresenting your unfounded prejudices as fact.
We step outside and think: Man, that sun is hot, I'll bet there's a lot of energy there if we could just harness it.
Well and guess what, we're right. On a sunny summer day we get about 1 kW/m2 of solar irradiation, enough to power a hair dryer. Just how do you think sand, rocks, etc. can get too hot to walk on in the midday sun? The only real problems with photovoltaics are energy storage and the cost/efficiency tradeoff, and a low-cost high-efficiency solar cell would eliminate the latter.
Be faithful to your obsessions. Identify them and be faithful to them, let them guide you like a sleepwalker. JG Ballard
faster than walking speed
I'll say. At the last World Solar Challenge, the winner's *average* speed was close to 100 km/h (over 60 mph for imperialists), over a distance of 3000 km (183'732 furlongs).
Be faithful to your obsessions. Identify them and be faithful to them, let them guide you like a sleepwalker. JG Ballard
Correct, but misleading. This is a semiconductor technology. It has the potential to obey Moore's Law. Power has been relatively cheap because we're fuelishly burning hydrocarbon reserves, so there has not been the same market incentive for solar cells that we've had for memory and processors. But an exponential growth rate still applies.
Well, it won't be /. news then, will it?
The market ensures that this technology will happen in large scale at the consumer level, barring some new centralized power source such as nuclear fusion. If we were smart, we'd be investing a lot of money in alternative power technologies, (solar, fusion and others), instead of the government being the lackeys of the oil industry and spending a lot of tax dollars to protect a continued supply of oil. Research into alternative energy sources benefits all taxpayers. Protecting foreign oil assets uses tax dollars to benefit only a few energy company executives and sheiks, and even that benefit only exists for the very near future. It's an unfair and unwise use of tax dollars. As a technogeek, the inefficiency and short sightedness of the US energy policy offends me. The previous success of the US economy was based on free market driven technological innovation, not special interest enforcement of the status quo. The US will either look to the future and lead, or cling to the past and follow as others step up to the technological challenges.
>> My ultraviolent Linux switch video.
- Cloud cover -- there are plenty of arid regions where there isn't significant cloud cover where this isn't a limitation
- Night -- a properly designed solar system either does not need power at times when the sun isn't shining, or has enough storage capacity to ride out the interuption
- Structures -- some buildings are short and wide, rather than tall and skinny. And not all solar power is necessarily on a structure.
I'm not saying that solar power is right for everyone, but the limitations you mention aren't as much a problem as you're suggesting.I personally think that we need to work of getting more power efficient devices to replace current hogs. Better designed buildings can reduce the load on an HVAC system.
I do agree that bigger is not necessarily better -- if for no other reason than by having smaller power production facilities, you lesson the distribution distance required, which reduces loss. I don't know how economies of scale work out with power production, however.
My assumption is that as other power sources become more expensive to maintain [increased security cost for nuclear; increased fuel cost for oil, etc], then those sources which were considered to not be cost effective will be given new consideration.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
>Of course, we all know the electric companies are going to call this "stealing energy" and patent the sun...
s /2 003.04/20030408-3.html
Sadly, something akin to this almost happened! California didn't want companies skipping out on the state's $6B energy deficit, and proposed what amounted to a tax on use of solar energy:
http://www.californiasolarcenter.org/solareclip
(Thanks to a major public and corporate outcry, they backed off.)
This was rather ironic, given that CA had been subsidizing as much as 50% of the cost of photovoltaic installations. Along with CA's high sun exposure, this makes it one of the few places where solar power is truly cost-effective.
I do hope that advances like in the parent article can bring the cost down someday. But even then, the biggest part of the solution to our energy woes will be the same as it is now: CONSERVATION. There are many simple, un-glamorous things you can do NOW to cut enery usage in half or less, such as switching to compact flourescent light bulbs, and unplugging all those wall warts, er, AC adapters when the devices aren't being used.
It's even theoretically possible to turn off your computer sometimes. (And use a switched power strip if you do -- even when a PC is off, it's still using some power for 'standby' mode, waiting for Wake-on-LAN or something else to turn it back on.)
In general, every $1 you spend on conservation efforts is worth about $4 in renewable energy production.
Just about anything you might want to know about alternative power systems can be found here: http://www.homepower.com
Regards,
=bitrot=
testing out my trending skills
Right, you have $12 in hand, in the first scenerio and $55 in hand in the other... That makes sense.
So in 15 years (just banking, not investing) you have the solar cells (still returning $55) AND the $10.5K, which is worth $67/month.
Right on! Thanks for setting me straight!
You're welcome.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Everything you say there looks correct enough. Too many people tho are brainwashed into thinking electricity & electrical generation on a per home basis is hard. People have forgotten the simple magneto that started us down the road decades ago. Making electricity isn't a Chore; it is our Right. The right to choose to make what we need. Doing so isn't slavery; it's Freedom. Perhaps Tom Edison was right in the long run, that DC WAS the correct answer, but DC generated at each home! We have brushed Edison aside and think ourselves real smart, but Edison's children weren't choking on pollution like we have. We HAVE to get each home on it's own generation, and then give it to the Chinese BEFORE they start choking the planet in earnest. I have a tentative system that will do all of that, and I believe I can make it into a kit for shipping at or near $3,000.00 per home. But I only have this disability check, and none of the people here on Slashdot will accept my challenge. As far as your assertion about having to use batteries for storage, there are other ways to store potential energy. One way for instance would be to run a weight up a shaft like a fireman's pole. In times of little sun and/or wind the weight would slip down and turn the generator as needed. Not a single battery required. We have been brain washed by the power companies, and they know they have come toward the end of what they thought at one time was an unlimited resource: the American Public. I don't expect everyone or even anyone to agree with me, but the "per home" solution is the best shot we have. Last week a Malaysian professor was quoted in this /. website, that he has made a working per home answer. But in the article quoted he said his system is REAL LOUD and still needs work. Mine is going to be so quiet it can run inside the home or apartment. I'm completing my drawings today and tomorrow and will be seeking some funding, but I think it's a shame you guys and no one visiting my website couldn't drop a few pennies into the PayPal there and give me a shot. All those who do so are guaranteed to get the first kits I produce. There you have it. No takers? Fine. I guess we're hooked on talking and have forgotten how-to actually throw Tea off a boat eh?