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Solar Power Becoming More Affordable
prostoalex writes "With both startups and large companies such as Boeing working on solar power, the technology is becoming more affordable, MIT Technology Review says. Solar power concentrators are all in rage now: 'The thinking behind concentrated solar power is simple. Because energy from the sun, although abundant, is diffuse, generating one gigawatt of power (the size of a typical utility-scale plant) using traditional photovoltaics requires a four-square-mile area of silicon, says Jerry Olson, a research scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, in Golden, CO. A concentrator system, he says, would replace most of the silicon with plastic or glass lenses or metal reflectors, requiring only as much semiconductor material as it would take to cover an area the size of a typical backyard. And because decreasing the amount of semiconductor needed makes it affordable to use much more efficient types of solar cells, the total footprint of the plant, including the reflectors or lenses, would be only two to two-and-a-half square miles.'"
Why all the talk of centralized power generation?
:p) energy would a fraction of what it is now.
Solar panels are the way to put power generation into the hands of the people. When I look out at all the rooftops in the area - houses, office buildings, Super S-Marts and their enormous un-covered parking lots, all I can think of is if every one of those surfaces had a single solar panel our energy demands from centralized (corporate
Have we learned nothing from decentralized computing?
But when will it become truly affordable for the masses? That's what most of us want to know. Wake me when it's time to disconnect from the petroleum/nuclear fired grid.
It's already happening in California. This deal is huge. It's between 300 and 900 Megawatts. And what's even more remarkable is that there is no federal or state funding for this project - not even a subsidy or tax break!
The solar electricity is simply profitable. Watch this closely.
Another interesting run is the Solar Tower project in Australia. I'm really excited by this one! Once built, the operating costs drop to near ZERO.
What few people realize is how much the price of electricity varies. So go get your utility bill. Call the nearest solar energy installation guys. You may find that it's profitable RIGHT NOW to put solar cells on your roof!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Americans vote Democrats control of our government, and suddenly 3 days later solar power could be affordable. When they actually take power on 1/3/2007, will we finally get our goddamn flying cars?
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make install -not war
Your model (a heat engine) doesn't really work for solar cells, although you are certainly correct that 100% efficiencies are unobtainable.u ll-spectrum-solar-cell.html
In solar cells, the point is that photons excite valence electrons across a barrier, giving them enough energy to create a current. There isn't really a classical analogy for this effect.
There's a limited discussion of solar cell efficiencies here, although it doesn't talk much about the underlying physics:
http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/MSD-f
The upshot is, cells of a single type of material can only get up to about 30% efficiency, but we can stick several materials together to get past that barrier.
what's even more remarkable is that there is no federal or state funding for this project
The R&D was federally financed. I've done some work on it myself.
One of the advantages of this technology is that it is not solar. It's thermal. An external "combustion" engine is used to drive the generating turbine, thus any source of heat may be used.
One of the problems with solar power is that it is unreliable; innately. Some sort of storage/backuup system must be available to go online at all times. By using a heat engine to turn a generator instead of direct conversion to electricity, when the sun goes down you can just throw some buffalo chips (or whatever) in the firebox. There's no need for a completely redundant infrastructure.
KFG
Solar power is reliable as hell.
Dude, the whole impetus for developing an electric power infrastructure in the first place was the desire for lighting when it's dark out.
KFG