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Breakthrough in solar photovoltaics
An anonymous reader writes "The Holy Grail of researchers in the field of solar photovoltaic (SPV) electricity is to generate it at a lower cost than that of grid electricity. The goal now seems to be within reach.
A Palo Alto (California ) start-up, named Nanosolar Inc., founded in 2002, claims that it has developed a commercial scale technology that can deliver solar electricity at 5 cents per kilowatt-hour. " As always, take these claims with a dose of salt the size of the Hope Diamond.
What about the cells themselves, the life duration ?
Could we "coat" a laptop with these in order to enhance its battery life duration ?
Trolling using another account since 2005.
The flagship product, Nanosolar SolarPly, is a 14 feet x 10 feet solar electricity module delivering 120 watts per square inch at 110V.
Something seems fishy about this. Isn't the amount of sunlight hitting the earth only about a KW per sq. M?
on google news. This is setting off the crackpot alarm big-time, as much as I want to believe.
Everyone feels the same way about this - quite doubtful (but still somewhat optimistic inside). Wouldn't it be great to be able to charge your cell phone by exposing it to some sunlight? Solar energy has a lot of 'potential'. Even with its current state, it does have some uses. Eventually, one of these 'breakthroughs' might have some merit, and give the technology the push it needs to become more mainstream.
I store my recipes online (the way nature intended)
The semiconductor paint can be applied to a flexible substrate , such as a polymer sheet , through a simple web printing process, to create an array of ultra-thin solar cells.
Does this mean I can turn my roof into one huge solar panel by "painting" solar panel on it?
"You mortals are so obtuse." -Q
"The breakthrough has come through the application of nanotechnology to create components via molecular self-assembly, including quantum dots (10nm large nanoparticles) as well as nanotemplates with structural order extending through all three dimensions." Even more exciting, the raw material used in this process is snake oil.....
From what I read on the website: nanostructured materials, estimated lifetime of 25 years, made of "nontoxic semiconductor paint" suggests that it is about dye-sensitized solar cells. These are based on small TiO2 particles, the same that is used as a pigment in white paint. These do not absorb visible light by themselves, but can catch and transport electrons from certain light-absorbing dyes. These solar cells were invented around 15 years ago; the necessary components of such a solar cell, TiO2, dye, solvents, sandwiched between two glass plates, are relatively cheap, but the yield is still below 10% (sunlight power to electrical power).
Apparently, this company has found a way to mass-produce cells based on this principle using plastic films instead of glass. The glass was the most expensive component; the problem with plastic films is that it is hard to make them last a long time while still being impermeable to oxygen and the liquid solvent inside the cell.
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
I'd belive 120 watts all told, which I believe would actually be a pretty good output; as stated it's ludicrous. Sadly, their website doesn't say; it hasn't been updated since November.
The article is reasonably well written, though I'm not used to getting major engineering announcements from The Hindu. (Presumably an Indian paper is reporting on events in Palo Alto because of the number of Indians working on the project.) Maybe they just botched the rewrite of the press release. Odd that I can't find the original press release on the web site, though. Fishy, as you say. Maybe they're better solar engineers than they are web site managers.
Their management team looks top-notch (ex-Intel, NIST, etc.); their partners include Sandia, Stanford, and Berkeley; and their investors include Stanford and Sergey Brin and Larry Page.
I think these guys are for real.
I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!
Look, I haven't even RTFA, but isn't it the case that having a the best (i.e., cheapest, most efficient) technology doesn't guarantee you squat? (At least in the U.S.) Even if it's easy to implement, won't existing energy concerns have it in their best interests to block its adoption?
Before anyone questions the unimpeachable reputation of "The Hindu" - "Online Edition of India's National Newspaper", please keep in mind that they've brought significant news to us in the past.
How many of us would not be alive today had they not warned us about mysterious monkeymen?
I'm a big tall mofo.
However if it is indeed true, it should not be a huge surprise. The cost of solar has been falling in recent years.
I did speak to a solar firm about putting in enough to run my house ( 69 kwh/month ) the cost to install was going to be around 75,000 dollars, and in my area electricity is still to cheap to justify the cost.
However if I can install at this super low 5 cents/kwh, I just might bite the bullet. That is roughly 2 cents/kwh cheaper than my utility sells juice for!
Good article!
Not too good with reverse-logic, are we?
The reference is to a grain of salt because, with just a grain of salt, one wouldn't eat much of what's being served.
To take something with a dose of salt "the size of the Hope Diamond", well, one could conceivably eat the whole thing -- wait for it... -- hook, line and sinker.
This isn't snake oil. They have pictures up here.
Philip
Signatures are broken
http://www.nanosolar.com/articles.htm
They've got government contracts, funding out the wazoo, etc. They're not just a garage shop with fancy website.
Actually, i don't think that the glass was the most expensive. Most of the cells used ruthenium dyes for their light absorbing dyes. Ruthenium is not exactly cheap. Moreover, it is not even all that plentiful. I remember hearing once at a conference that the amount of ruthenium expected to be in the earth's crust is only enough to make enough solar cells to cover the state of north dakota or something like that.
I think this is the main problem with solar cells. Until someone comes up with an effecient dye based on a more abundant metal there is no possible way that solar cells can become ubiquitous.
Though it is unclear from the site what sort of dyes this company is using -- perhaps they have found a new one. Though i suspect if they had it would be all over their site. I gather, rather, that they are just using the "nano" buzzword to make their stuff sound new and cool. Oh well.
OH, by the way i am not a solar cell scientist -- but i do work down the hall from a few. Cool.
Actually, I *am* a fan of nuclear energy; the economic case is only poor because the clean-up requirements are absurdly expensive - considering that coal-fired plants spew an order of magnitude more radioactive fallout across the countryside.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Even at five cents per kWh, it's more than 40% more than the target cost for other methods, which is around 3.5 cents per kWh. That's the range where gas, coal, and oil plants live, and where nuclear is striving to be (Westinghouse's 1000MW AP1000 reactor design is the only approved one that may reach that, and it came about because the AP600 wasn't efficient enough).
Anything much more than that without ample tax incentives (and maybe not even then) just isn't going to happen on a large scale.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
http://www.nanosolar.com/pr2.htm
No, that's correct - it is 120 watts per square inch. What they don't tell you is that you have to install a 300 foot diameter magnifying glass over your house.
If this cost # is true, then the cost of this solar panel is approximately the same as the cost of ashphalt shingles. And if *that* is true, there would be no reason to put any sort of roof on a house except for a roof made of this stuff...
Also, the AG has written the binding opinion that anyone trying to exploit technology supposed developed by NanoSolar, Inc. would be open to physical coersion up to and probably including limb removal that would not legally be considered to be torture.
Go about your business. Nothing to see here.
If you check out their site you'll see immediately that they are seeking finantial backers. I'm sure their intention is to create some buzz to attract more investers. Unfortunately for them, making outlandish claims may have a reverse effect.
The 3.5 cents/kwh you see for a modern power plant is for the cost at the plant, not to the customer. You have to add in the costs of supporting the network, billing, and transmission losses.
Solar power at your house for 5 cents/kwh is a lot cheaper than 3.5 cents/kwh a hundred miles away (which ends up being about three times that to the customer).
Hmm. The abundance of ruthenium is about 1 ppb in the crust, so that would be about 10^14 kg. IIRC, you need only a few mg of pure Ru per square meter, so I don't think this is the issue. Of course, it might be hard to extract that kind of amounts from the crust, but that is a different story. My old 1986 edition of the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics lists a price of US$4 per gram.
I agree that the dye is expensive, but I think that that has more to do with the fact that it is a complicated organic molecule that surrounds the ruthenium atom.
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
This is awesome, and I know I may be late in replying to this story, but at the rate we're having breakthroughs in solar energy, in a few years the power will be too cheap to meter!!
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
I'm designing a solar vehicle as we speak (actually, my multimeter is measuring a mere .3mA @ 3.4v on a small 2' x 4' solar cell, in sunny Cambrdige, MA) and one caveat is that the measurements of different solar cells vary WIDELY, despite what the MFGR says.
My question is, has anyone done some outside comparison research on the efficiency of solar cells, beyond what the MFGRs claim to generate?
Absolutely not, and I would mod you up if I could.
I wonder if this is part of the "most Slashdotters are Trekkies" effect which presumes that all power in THE FUTURE is generated by antimatter reactors, and so if we haven't found a power source that can replace everything, it must not be any good.
Morons.
+++ATH0
It's a bit unfair the company is now being criticized for an error in the article in the Hindu Times. Clearly, the claim of 120 watts per square inch is bogus. But then again, I couldn't find this claim on their website, so it could simply mean the reporter made an error here. If I understood correctly, it's the output they claim from one whole panel. Which isn't that impressive, but would still be interesting if the price is right.
"Money is a sign of poverty." - Iain Banks
It doesn't make it better to continue to post both crap and legitimate articles and to put "take it with a grain of salt" at the end. Whether or not Slashdot science links are snake oil or legit news seems to be random. Basically, not enough of the editors can tell the difference. Slashdot needs a qualified science editors!
Their website lacks simple details. If you look at other sites that sell BP solar panels, they say "You can expact this many KwHr from a 20 2'x4' panels." They show pictures of the 14x10 array, but it doesn't actually commit the output of it. It says the per square inch figure. The commercial page mentions installations of 1Kw or more... 1Kw would be 10 square inches of their product. Very odd. If normal solar panels were less expensive I'd be all for it. If every house had a 2Kw array, it would definitly help reduce load during peak times in the summers, and reduce overall consumption. I did some research, and if I were to pay $60,000+ (new price) for a solar array, after 30 years I could expect to have saved $30,000. Groan.
Southeastern Virginia REPRESENT!
I've heard it stated that the amount of energy in sunlight on Earth's surface is between 1 and 6 KW per square meter, probably being closer to 1 KW per square meter.
.65 Watts per square inch, with 12% efficiency would be about .08 watts per square inch made by these solar panels.
There are 1550 square inches in 1 square meter. Even if there was (optimistic) 6 KW/sq meter of sunlight hitting the Earth, you'd only have 3.9 watts per square inch.
So their claim of over 100+ Watts per square inch is obviously an error. I don't think they'd even claim that since it doesn't even come close.
They also claim that their panels are 12% efficient, so a more realistic figure would be 1 KW of sunlight per square meter, equalling about
But far be it from me to give a Slashdot staffer any credit for correct use of the English language.
OK, since this is a solar photovoltaics post:
Someone is going to claim that solar will never be practical, because it is 10 - 15% efficient, while internal combustion, etc. is 30%+. Please, consider that you have to *buy the energy* that goes into that 30% efficienct machine, while the 15% efficient solar panel gets it all free - then run the numbers. The only cost that matters is the dollars per Watt capital cost of the cells upfront (which is still too high, but coming down.)
Someone is going to claim that solar panels produce less energy over their lives than it takes to manufacture them. This has not been true for about 40 years.
Someone is going to claim that solar panels are a toxic danger to human health. Please consider that they are manufactured using identical processes to microprocessors, are easier to disassemble for recycling, and last 20 - 30 years plus, as compared to the five year or so length for most consumer electronics.
Someone is going to claim that solar only makes sense in certain parts of the United States. Keep in mind that, for instance, Albany, NY gets 80% of the solar radiation of Reno, NV. Since you pay twice as much for electricity in Albany, solar panels actually make more sense there. (Remember, most solar panels go on rooftops and spin meters backwards - you get retail price ($.08 - $.15 / kWh,) not wholesale ($.02-$.04) like a power plant.
Someone is going to claim you would have to blanket the desert with solar panels to make a workable power plant. Is this what you do with a distributed, smart, resource, that can occupy unused roof space anywhere? Did we take all of our microchips and assemble them into one giant supercomputer in the desert? Solar panels belong in a distributed network of generators - at the end of the wire, and putting them there is cheap and practical.
Someone is going to claim the solar industry can never meet real-world power demands. Check any industry publication for an interesting statistic - in 1996, 100 megawatts of solar were manufactured. Jan - Dec. 2004 saw about 1100 MW (about $ 6 billion worth) manufactured. Still pretty small, but an amazing growth rate.
What does solar cost now? About 1/20 what it did in the 1970s, but still about twice as much as grid electricity. Once you buy the panels, and finance them with, say, a home equity loan, you're looking at $.18 - $.25 /kWh. Getting closer every year, but still not quite there.
Finally, a comment on the article. Yeah, Nanosolar is pretty neat, but I think that Konarka is quite a bit further along - and doesn't share nanosolar's tendency to overpromise. Here's what needs to happen. Their efficiency is fine, don't care - a 5% or 10% efficient cell, as long as it's less than $1.50 / Watt, the world will beat a path to your door. However, their longevity is not there. A normal silicon solar panel lasts at least 20 years, these things last more like 5 right now. Hence their strategy of putting them in consumer electronics that have about that lifetime anyway.To be a real power generation source, they need to get that lifetime up by a factor of 4 - doable with the right encapsulants, some chemistry, getting rid of liquid electrolytes, etc. I bet one of these poeple will be at $.10 / kWh in five years - but the conventional silicon cells can probably get there in about 8, with manufacturing and scale improvements. So it's a real race...we'll see who pulls it out.
Their investors are well-known and have funded or founded some very "real" companies. They include Benchmark Capital (who funded eBay), USVP (who provided initial funding for Sun), and the founders of Google (Brin and Page).
First, by "manufactured by printing", they don't mean a roll to roll process like a printing press. They propose to deposit materials with an inkjet-like mechanism.
Second, what they call "nanotechnology" is surface chemistry. There are ways to make semi-regular structures by bulk chemical means, and that's what they're doing. They did throw a reference to "bioengineered self-assembly" in, but that's not how they do it. The processing looks much more like processes you'd do in a wafer fab. There are common fab processes like electrodeposition, chemical removal of support substrates, and heating in an inert atmosphere.
The basic idea is to address the reasons that solar cells are inefficient. In bulk materials like silicon, only a small fraction of the photons do anything useful. Most of the photons are at the wrong wavelength. And many of the photon interactions that do occur don't result in an electron being delivered to the output. They're trying to fix both of those problems.
Their policy seems to be to shut up until it works. It might work, or it might not. They're not selling stock, and they're not issuing press releases. They have VC funding and some money from DARPA.
Actually, I'm not certain that that's where the expression comes from at all. To be taken with a grain of salt comes from the latin "cum grano salis", and was used by Pliney in describing Pompey's discovery of an antidote for poison that had to be taken with a small amount of salt to work. Since in Roman times, they believed that salt was linked to intelligence, the phrase "cum grano salis" was adopted and came to mean "(take) with a little common sense", which is similar to the "be skeptical" meaning of todays idiom. The other modern day explanation generally given is that a small amount of salt can make something unpallatable taste better. It's been common practice to raise the amount of salt by how dubious you believe the story to be for quite a while.
- then where exactly are you going to get your solar power? From glow-in-the-dark stickers left on your ceiling? I don't think so! Or maybe you'll just burn lots of dead plants to make light... still not very efficient....
I'm all for alternative energies, but the problem is rather the unrealistic views some (especially the greens) have of it.
It's not as much a question of *IF* it helps when their is alternative energy available, but rather the amount it can replace - at least, when you are diosmantling (as happens in my country) nuclear powerplants that provide about 60% of the total power. This was due thanks to the pressure of the greens. No-one seemed to have wondered at that time, where that energy should come from in the future - apart from some nonsensical crap about windmills and the lot.
Ofcourse, it's plainly obvious that those won't do by a long stretch, so then it DOES become important to know how much it can replace. Solar can't do it, not even a tenth of the required energy. Neither can wind. Or hydro. Or geothermal. Or biofuel. And all taken together, they STILL wouldn't replace more then half of what is needed today, let alone in 5 years, when nuclear powerplants are shut down.
In fact, from your entire list, only two CAN have a reasonable chance of providing enough energy now and in the future; and those are nuclear and/or coal.
I think that's what ppl mean, when they say alternative energies are not real options as yet. Sure, anything that helps is welcome, but in any realistic viepoint, ALL of the above mentionned energysources - apart from nuclear and fossile fuels - even combined together will NOT be make more then a drop in the ever power-hungry ocean, at least in large parts of the western world.
I think the only real solution is fusion. But untill that because viable, the use of coal will rise, alternative energies will remain largely a fringe activity (at least on large scale demand) and closing down nuclear reactions without providing real alternatives remain political idiocies without equal in a socio-economic sense.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
As always, take these claims with a dose of salt the size of the Hope Diamond.
Slashdot
Hearsay for nerds. Stuff that never happens.
New Rule:
(which congress should pass but never will)
Oil companies should not be permitted to buy this
company, or the patents.
Guess who owns nickel-metal hydride battery patents? Yup. Exxon-Mobil. No electric cars here, move along, nothing to see.
If there is a threat to their business model, energy companies will buy out the corporation which developed the tech and drown it in the nearest toilet.
This sounds like the kind of mistake made by somebody who's used to working with the metric system writing down the wrong name for unfamiliar foreign antique measurement systes, rather like most of us tend to misread things measured in pecks per square furlong or whatever.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I know its popular to bash oil companies, but its also disingenuous, especially when you lie.
The patent for NiMH batteries is held by ECD Ovonics, which is owned by Texaco and Mobil.
The question a thinking individual might ask is why are oil companies interested in developing better, more efficient batteries when it would mean less oil being consumed to keep them charged. The answer is simply this - oil companies dont' care about oil. Oil is just a highly profitable commodity. What oil companies care about is energy.
The vast majority of research being conducted into renewable and environmentally safe energy sources is being conducted by the oil companies, not by governments. The biggest advances in materials sciences are coming out of universities that are getting loads of cash from oil companies. And the biggest conservation and reclaimation efforts are being done by oil companies.
Please, please...stop swallowing the anti-capitalist rhetoric you're being spoonfed, do some research, and think for yourself.
Don't solar panels produce heat as a by-product?
So does the sun...
Required reading for internet skeptics
That's not necessarily true any longer. Most larger power coops will actually buy power from their customers. In the desert southwest, for instance, power companies have realized a cost savings from customers who use solar and dump their excess back into the grid. Since the power companies don't have to maintain residential solar power setups, and because they pay less than the going rate for consumer generated power, its become a real treat for them. The only thing slowing the adoption of solar in most areas is a) the expense (not just of solar cells, but large battery banks and inverting equipment) and b) less than favorable weather. This development alone may make it practical in the southwest (even to the point that power companies change their business models to just the distribution and brokering of customer generated power, with some backup of their own), and make make solar an option in less sunny climates.
Also, there are a few large coops (Progress Energy I believe is one) who in the past had advocated a distributed power distribution network based on new safe reactor designs.
One thing that should be factored into the cost of oil in the US is a major portion of the DOD budget. We have spent about $200B so far to conquer Iraq and hopefully, it is clear to everybody by now that was entirely about oil and had nothing to do with defense. We will quite likely spend another $200B before the Iraqi's ask us to leave. You can buy one heck of a lot of solar cells for $400B. You can also institute a heck of a lot of conservation measures. For example, in the US we could classify SUV's as cars (which they clearly are) for the purposes of CAFE. That would cost almost nothing,
We're talking about less than 1/2 of 1% of the total ocean area. Did anybody consider what would happen before we altered 25% or more of the total land area, or before we started harvesting 90% of the population of various ocean species? Why the sudden interest in side effects?
If the worst case global warming scenarios are correct and a lot of glaciers melt, the size of the oceans will be altered by much more than 0.5% anyway.
Here's my viewpoint: If you put collectors up over 0.5% of the ocean, you create side effects with that order of magnitude. If you release CO2, it continually accumulates in the atmosphere, and it hasn't been determined if natural processes will remove it in any reasonable amount of time. Some scientists predict that its level will double over pre-existing levels; that's a 100% increase in an important climactic variable. The side effects from our current activities will likely to be much greater than anything that would happen with solar collectors.
Will it not become a burden to the sea-routes and a danger to ships?
That's why it's good modern technology has brought us GPS, radar and RFID.
Who would be legally responsable? What if they are layed in international waters?
Some treaties would probably have to be created. Since they would involve something constructive, they would have a more positive tone than the proscriptive Kyoto treaty, and people would be more willing to participate. (We'll see if anybody actually abides by the Kyoto treaty when push comes to shove, or if it's all just talk.)
What is the cost of maintainance? How many will get wrecked by storms? Will it be economical viable?
Those are good questions. There are similar questions about fossil fuels, like would it be economically viable to dig thousands of wells from floating ocean platforms miles into the earth's crust. People did the hard work to find out, and the answer was yes. If people had given up just because the questions existed, we wouldn't have any energy supply today.
You mention wind power and wave power a lot. I agree that they won't ever add up to a large fraction of total energy supply, and that's because there is a limited supply of windy land area and shorelines. Solar collectors don't need to have that limitation. I'm all for fusion power too, but IMO its technical feasibility is currently even more questionable than my "crazy" proposal.
How is this any different that this:
1 /1 0/1832253&tid=126&tid=14
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/0
Ok I didn't RTFA, but it sounds the exact same. I am getting a bit jaded with all these "Anouncements", which I am learning are nothing more than advertisments, PR, and bs.
This seems to follow the video card buisness model where you make a paper card and you never see it.
Much like like the vaunted PS3 and the CELL processor... Can I buy one? No. I will believe it when I see it otherwise its all so much marketing bullshit.
No doubt whatever company released this information wants to go public or the researchers are trying to get money or whatever.
Nano mumbo jumbo paint saves the world! Weee!
When someone acutally produces it, and someone acutally buys it, and someone else actually applies it and see how it functions in the real world, then I will get excited.
A detailed plan for generating electricity in the Sahara already exists. The technology is called Concentrating Solar Power or CSP and has already proved itself on a large scale in the Mojave Desert. The details have been worked out by TREC, the Trans-Mediterranean Energy Cooperation. See http://www.trec-eumena.org/
The results of the EU ECOSTAR CSP program have just been released at a workshop held last thursday in Brussels. The 140-page report can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.dlr.de/ecostar. CSP power stations occupying an area the size of France in the Sahara, using available technology, can produce the current total energy consumption of the whole world.
Because the windiest areas are created by land featues.
But they do have that limitation.
I just got done explaining how they don't. Maybe you can provide some detail to back up your assertion.
Being less "questionable" doesn't make it realistic.
Ok, so we're doomed once fossil fuels run out. Do you have any better ideas?
You're probably mistaken about generator companies. There probably won't be all that many, unless they are maintaining the panels on the roofs of buildings and carports. If you put the generation right next to the points of use, you don't need any more transmission and distribution equipment and your capital costs go way, way down; the companies which sell power along with a contract to maintain a roof are going to beat the other guys, because they'll get their real-estate for free.
Note also that if the cost target can be hit (note that Nanosolar doesn't have any recent press releases, so take carefully) the cost minimum for electricity will not be late at night, but in the mid-morning when the panels hit their full output but demand for e.g. A/C hasn't come up yet. Expect new markets to come out of the opportunities for arbitrage.
And as long as morning juice is cheap, why not charge your car and replace some motor fuel?
Sustainability and energy independence essay
Any study which shows that solar cells take more energy to produce than they make in their lifetime must have been written in the 1960's because solar cells have been net efficient for a LONG time. The problem has been that they weren't COST efficient. With rising fuel prices and increased efficiency we have known for some time that the balance would tip in favor of solar. The problem is that solar has to be significantly CHEAPER than the utilities on a per unit basis because you have to make back both the cost of electricity AND the oportunity cost on capital. Btw central NJ is barely cold in the dead of winter, try Northern Ohio, Minnesota, or parts of Canada for cold. I'm not saying passive solar heating is bad, it's very good, but it won't supply enough BTU's for heating even a moderate sized home in colder climates.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I don't own a car, but there is probably not much ruthenium in my bikes. :)
Dyes in dye-sensitized semiconductor photovoltaics need to satisfy different requirements than those in paint. Most importantly, it should release an electron to the semiconductor when it absorbs a photon and should have a low probability of recapturing that electron from the semiconductor. How DSSC cells operate is very different from purely organic cells. The latter still have very low efficiencies and often a mediocre lifetime---they won't survive 25 years in full sunlight. Now 10 percent effiency, that is something to be skeptical about.
Indeed, at least if it had been a fully organic system. The first nanocrystalline DSSC cell ever made directly had an efficiency of 7%. Actually it is more disappointing than too good to be true that the efficiency has climbed so little in 15 years time.
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
In the early days of consumer self-generation, the electric meters on your house, recorded the power flow in both directions, so that a residential customer both bought and sold power at retail price, now however if the utility know your capable of self-generation you get a different electric meter so that you buy at retail price, but sell at wholesale price. Again either way the utility makes money and therefore no need for a conspiracy.
Actually, in most states at least for residential scale self generation the meter does run both ways. They don't switch to the other method until the generation exceeds a certain amoutn at which point they treat you like a power plant and buy it wholesale.
First off, despite what Enron did, the State of California dug itself into a hole because of NIMBY. There was little or no plant construction in California during the 1990s, a time when the population boomed. It was impossible to get permits for new plants and most new construction was tied up in courts over environmental issues. When the crunch did happen, Enron and others wrongly exploited California, but not at all in the way that has been oversimplified by the press or even the idiot Ralph Nader types.
California, because it had not built enough power plants, was importing power from other states.
In order to import power you have to have your own power system suitably balanced. It's not like you put electrons on trucks and wheel them in. To do this, you offer financial incentives to buy or sell power at various points on the grid. To this day, PJM does this on the east coast and you can actually check it out here PJM LMP pricing
Also, you have to adequate transmission rights to get the power in.
So what Enron did was rather clever. First, they had better software than the California ISO for determining grid imbalances and so they scheduled power deals to manipulate the grid. Import power in the north, export it in the south, boom there is an imbalance, and you can sell the power you exported back to the state for a lot of dough. Then, they would also go and buy up transmission rights into the state (which is actually pretty cheap), and then play games at peak times.
The amazing thing about the whole thing is that gaming California's stupid grid managers WAS LEGAL. That's right. Enron didn't do -anything- wrong by screwing the state of California. The state made its rules for its market place and Enron exploited them, but California should not have made those rules to begin with. To cap it all off, California deregulation stripped utilities of the ability to pass variable costs to consumers. So, if the price of electricity shot up, it should have shot up for consumers as well, and guess what, people turn their air conditioners down, and there is no power crisis. But oh no, California made it so that the utilities could not recover the costs and so they had to sell power at a loss, and all the utilities in California went bankrupt, and Enron made a mountain of money, legally.
The thing that got Enron into trouble was that they were lying on their financial statements, and for that, the company is now bankrupt, her executives are either on trial, and the accounting firm that certified those statements no longer exists.
This is my sig.
Guess what is by far the largest sources of domestic electricity consumption in cold areas?
/ index.ht m
Heating.
In hot areas... Cooling.
Neither of which require much electricity to accomplish. It's just easier and we're lazy and stupid.
My hot water tank has an 11kW element, the storage heaters in each room are 3kW each. I burn electricity to make heat.
On the other hand, solar thermal systems are far cheaper than photovoltaics, they're basically black pipes in a glass case. They are also far far more efficient, capturing around 80% of the energy incident on them.
They can produce decent amounts of heat even mid winter in the UK. Enough to heat up my hot water tank to scalding, a few more panels on the roof and I reckon a gas central heating boiler may not even be required. The result is a truly *huge* decrease in the amount of gas and electricity consumed in the home...
You still have a heating element in your water tank, and a gas boiler in your central heating but they spend most of their time inactive.
Big problem? Cost, even though thermal systems can be 80% efficient and are a small fraction of the cost of photovoltaics, the payback period is still 5-10 years.
Good intro:
http://www.galeforce.nireland.co.uk/solar
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
The article claims to deliver 120W per square inch, which is about 186KW per square meter. Considering insolation is less than 10KW per meter, where does all the "extra" power come from?
But they speak of scaled-up commercial installations, and in that case you or the original author has confused cost and price.
Utilities generate for less than $0.05 / kWH. They generate for about $0.02-$0.03 depending on the technology and the organization's efficiency.
Then they transmit to your home. That adds more cost. Then they add a bit of profit and some taxes. In Minnesota, they sell us juice for between $0.07 and $0.10 / kWH.
It's great if they can indeed get scaled-up commercial installation costs down to $0.05, but they still need to cut the price in half to compete with directly with coal.