Slashdot Mirror
Solar Panels Reach $1 a Watt
ZosX writes "An article over at Popular Mechanics announces that, for the first time, solar cells have been manufactured for the much sought-after figure of $1/Watt. They also talk about a new study of the cost of the particular raw materials used in different manufacturing processes. The conclusion is that the company that just achieved the $1/W milestone, using cadmium telluride technology, may not prove to be the long-term winner capable of meeting demand when it rises into the terawatt range."
get back to me when a individual can buy them for $1/watt.
I'm not sure what my peak load is at home, but at $1/Watt I imagine I could generate all my own electricity for less than $10,000. Assuming my roof has sufficient room for it, that's really awesome. My current electric bill is around $65/mo. which means that in 153 months this would be paying for itself, or about 12 years. Of course, figuring in things like maintenance, repairs, and so forth makes this harder to gauge, but that's pretty good. Now the consumer electronics industry just needs to convert everything over to run on DC and I'm all set. How soon can I put in an order?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Here's something for you, that I didn't realize: apparently it costs MORE to install and set up a set of solar panels on your home than it does to manufacture them. It made me think, "wow, I'm going to install those myself for half the price!" but attaching stuff like that to the power grid is probably not a DIY project. And it isn't just a day labor job either. It's going to take a trained electrician, at $30-$60 an hour putting that stuff in.
So, their goal is to get the cost of manufacturing down to about 60-70 cents a watt, and the cost of installation down to $1 a watt. I didn't realize the hidden cost of installation was so high.
Qxe4
What happens when we line the world's deserts with endless fields of solar panels and tip past the breaking point of global cooling? Where's your God now?
1) The cost can go down if they found a cheaper source to get the material. It is not always advances in science that cause cost to go down.
2) The cost of a watt could have been $1.01 for the past few years. Reaching a nice round number (maybe even due to inflation) is meaningless. It's big jumps that are important.
That said, I did not RTFA.
Even if we make the materials cheap, I question how long they'll last before needing replaced. But, even so, solar power has advantages other forms of generating electricity don't have.
Imagine if new houses were required, by law, to be built with at least 5 kilowatts worth of solar panels (or pay a fee to the state government). If enough houses get solar panels, then they'd be generating some electricity. Even if they don't bring down their power bill significantly, they'd still be contributing to the available power, especially in summer, when air conditioners are on, and especially in winter, when some people need more electricity-based heat. What I'm saying is that hopefully this will eliminate rolling blackouts in some areas.
Volume production will outstrip the world Tellurium supply in the near future so this isn't going to be a cost effective technology for long.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Unless you can give me a link/phone number where i could immediately, as in NOW, purchase solar power at $1/W, this is a useless announcement. Additionally, the areticle says manufacturing costs are past $1/W, which is not the same as the cost to the end user.
I'm sightly confused.
In germany 1 kW (note the lower case letter "k") solar power costs about 20 cent (Euro cent) ... that is the consumer price, not production cost.
So I don't really get what this article is about.
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Not only is Tellurium extremely rare, Cadmium Telluride is toxic and I wouldn't want to work in a factory that handles the stuff. (although rendered harmless when build into solar cells). There is nothing to celebrate here. As long as we are not able to create energy (or most other high tech) without using up the rarest of earth's elements at an alarming pace, this is a dead end.
How does this compare? My gut reaction is that, government subsidies aside, per kilowatt-hour, I'm sure just about ANYTHING is cheaper than solar at this point.
When will we finally start building cheap, efficient, and above all clean nuclear plants again instead of wasting our time with this solar and wind crap?
Cadmium's a really nasty material - even if it's available in significant enough quantities to transform the electric industry, it's not the kind of stuff you want to have getting into the water system.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The power companies aren't stupid.
As more and more systems are installed, the first thing which will happen is the implemetation of time of use metering on residential customers.
Once time of use metering is implemented, two things will happen: Either you will be forced to sell your PV produced power at a wholesale rate
(a fraction of retail), or the power companies will move peak rates to nighttime, or both.
Your investment in a grid tied system will then be rendered practically worthless.
This goes with the assumption that the main benefit of use would go to users installing them as sources of power for a whole household.
While that might eventually be the case, I'd imagine that the first step might be more in the integration of solar energy. Imagine if all A/C units came without a plug and instead had integrated solar panel(s). After market-penetration reached a high-enough level, there could be a huge reduction on grid-usage during the summer (after all, if it's sunny enough to be hot, it's sunny enough to provide power).
Those panels aren't going to last forever, and unlike silicon panels which may involve some toxics during manufacturing but aren't bad once they're finished, cadmium's a nasty toxic material, so cadmium-telluride panels aren't going to be something you can send to the dump for free; I don't think anybody knows what the disposal costs will be.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
One shouldn't forget that the watts in all these price per watt numbers are peak power. From Wikipedia:
In many parts of the world it's even less.
The reason why $1 per watt is important, which isn't mentioned in the summary, is not just that it's a nice round number, but the capital cost of electricity for most major industrialized nations averages about a buck a watt. Some more, some less, depends on the cost of land and the economic conditions when the plants were built, technology level, pollution controls, etc, but your local electrical power company happily pays about a buck a watt to build a traditional non-solar plant.
Solar only works half the day, but probably much lower maintenance, slower depreciation, and no fuel costs at all.
So, it now costs "about the same" to build a 1 GW coal, a 1 GW natgas, a 1 GW nuke, OR A 1 GW SOLAR ... Which brings solar into the corporate boardroom.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
What, did solar just rise in cost, or should the article have said "Solar Panels reach 1W a $"?
May I ask where you're purchasing your panels from? I'm kicking around the idea of setting up solar for my house as well, but I have no idea where to start looking.
What about nanosolar? They have the capacity to produce cells at $.30 per watt. However, they aren't open to consumers as of yet. They are filled with large powerplant orders at the moment.
(citation) http://www.naturalnews.com/023389.html
An article over at Popular Mechanics announces that, for the first time, solar cells have been manufactured for the much sought-after figure of $1/Watt.
What about this time? That was over a year ago.
Having worked in the industry for a US based solar manufacturer, there are a couple of misconceptions that are extremely common. Thin-film amorphous Silicon modules are much less expensive to produce because they use a gas based deposition process rather than traditional (blue looking) crystalline modules. Crystalline must compete for silicon ingots with the semiconductor industry resulting in increased cost of materials. Thin-film however are not what you would put on the roof of your residence since they require more square footage to provide the same amount of kilowatt hours. In other words, the effort required to place either a single crystalline module or a single thin-film module is exactly the same, so if labor is the biggest cost in your installation you're better off paying more for a more energy dense panel and putting up less of them. The main reason thin-film is good for commercial applications is because they generate more kilowatt hours of energy per year per kilowatt installed. Crystalline modules "switch off" sooner and "turn on" later because they require more direct sunlight to function. Because of this, thin-film modules have a quicker energy payback. In summary, if you install 100kW of crystalline you will use less space (good thing), generate less power, and cost more money than thin-film panels. Even though you need more structures when you install thin-film, if you're putting up a megawatt you can take advantage of economy of scale and incur a proportionally lower installation cost per kW. That said, the inexpensive manufacturing cost of thin-film modules for commercial sized installations (the roof of Wal-Mart for instance, or a large desert install) makes sense in those quantities. If you're putting them on the roof of your house, use more expensive and more energy dense crystalline. Eventually thin-film technology will catch up to crystalline on efficiency, but keep in mind what commercial-scale installations need is the cheapest way to generate massive amounts of kilowatt hours per year while taking advantage of all the tax write-offs and solar credits.
If the article is right, cadmium and telluride will become much sought-after as raw materials. You might get paid for the old panels.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Much like a backup generator installation that uses an automatic transfer switch, you'll also need an automatic disconnect switch to remove point of use generated power from the utility lines coming into your house if the power fails.
The last thing you want to do is electrocute a utility worker when they are servicing your power lines.
-ted
$1 a watt sounds good. Until you think about it a bit. A one meter-square panel generates about 150 watts, so that would be $150. But the ancillary costs are many times that. First figure on the cost of a support frame and a glass cover. Then to get the 150 watts for more than an hour during the day you need a sun-tracking mount. For this all to last ten years it all has to be mighty sturdy to handle the anticipated peak winds during the interval. You're now up to at least $600 just in parts. Assuming the usual markups and installation the retail price is going to be upwards of $1000. So even if this miracle cell technology could be driven down to ZERO cost, you're only lowering the total system cost by 15 percent.
Blazing sunshine at midday at the top of a mountain on the equator? On a moonless night? Or could it even be 1W/$ averaged over a year under typical working conditions at, say, a latitude of 45 degrees?
The difference between maximum and average output could be huge. Direct sunlight can be more than 100x stronger than the light on an overcast day. Given the wild claims we keep hearing from pseudo-green con-men, I'd like to see some more data.
I guess that's why they still sell them to Joe Public at $10 per Watt.
Well it is a DIY job for 80% of the effort. And frankly a sizable percentage of the Slashdot readership is probably geeky enough to do it all. If you aren't an electrical geek then you will need an electrician to wire up the inverter and connect to the power grid. Really it not much more complicated than correctly wiring up a generator to your house for use during those weather related power outages. (Pretty common where I am; we get both hurricanes and winter ice storms.)
Think Deeply.
Try hooking things up to 170 VDC and watch the smoke signals begin.
120 VAC is the equivalent power to VDC. Regular incan bulbs would be fine with 120 VDC and might last awhile at 170, but not for long. CFL's won't be okay at all. Computers won't work at all either.
One could explain why, but short of it is this incorrect info by someone who doesn't understand what is going on here.
This is very good advice, and said better than I could have said it. All too often people think of PV systems and think it's a way to be off the grid. That's pretty silly and wasteful.
I don't know if it's true everywhere, but I've heard several times that a PV system will cause your electric meter to run backwards. So your electric bill at the end of the month is based on power consumed - power produced. As you point out that creates a strong incentive to match your PV system with your consumption.
Some power companies are forced by law to buy the power back from you, but the rates are low compared to what you buy the same power for. (Actually it'd be very cool if you could sell the power to ANYONE at a market rate rather than the crappy rate the electric company will buy it for).
AccountKiller
The article seems to have a shallow understanding of the physics involved here... it presumes that extraction costs are the limiting factor:
Almost certainly, the reason CdTe has won this particular race is that it's one of the compound semi-conductors, all of which are direct band-gap materials [1], and Silicon is an indirect band-gap material. With an "indirect" band-gap, for a photon of the right energy to be absorbed it has to hit the lattice at the same time as a phonon, but for a "direct" band-gap, the photon alone is enough -- this tends to limit the efficiency of photo cells made of the much simpler, more abundant Silicon... and unfortunately the compound semi-conductors are all composed of much rarer and more poisonous elements.
Since this is slashdot, I will hazard an uninformed guess that there may be some tricks out there to get Silicon to act as efficiently as a direct-band gap material (e.g. an odd, nanoscale surface texture) -- but these tricks will up the cost of manufacture, and won't achieve wide-spread use. There's no free lunch, and the name of the game in ground-based solar power is to gather an extremely diffuse source of energy -- it's just not an easy problem (despite the repeated, proud announcements of Breakthroughs from it's enthusiasts).
[1] When last I looked -- which was some time ago -- no one really knew why the compound semi-conductors were all direct band-gap materials, and the elemental ones were indirect.
There is an interesting link on Solar Thermal power at the bottom of the article. I think it is worth reading in relation to photovoltaic power options.
Solar Thermal
Blog Post on the articles.
Think Deeply.
There is a lot going on in Thermal Solar right now as it has the greatest potential to meet base load power needs when coupled with molten salt storage.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I hate to break it to you, but unless the costing includes factoring in all the external costs then the OP is correct to be suspicious of whether or not this is a reasonable technology. The "completely renewable energy infrastructure" is just high tech Rainbow Ponyism unless such complete audits are produced. There is absolutely no record of anyone "managing [our environmental impact] well" and plenty of history to suggest we'll do the opposite. Don't be so quick to sneer at people that are skeptical of the next "Green" boondoggle for industry.
With any luck, a manufacturer will want to buy them...
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Assuming, of course, that the warranting company is still around to provide the replacements, and at least partially that the problem isn't systematic, thus driving the company out of business when serious replacement requests start to hit. Or that they're counting on most people to simply not notice.
Still, I'm more concerned about the occasional hail storm taking panels out than them degrading.
I don't read AC A human right
[A re-post of a comment from a few months ago] Guys -- you all seem to be neglecting the recent developments in solar financing. (Disclaimer -- I do work for SolarCity http://solarcity.com/ [solarcity.com] [solarcity.com], a leading installer of residential solar arrays in the SF Bay Area and beyond. We do use First Solar panels, in fact we're the only company using them for residential-scale projects in the US. I won't make a totally shameless plug here, I'm trying to be fair to the other good and clever solar companies out there. A rising tide lifts all boats!) By bringing in a 3rd party commercial owner via an Operating Lease or Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) structure, the customer can save money from solar on Day 1. The 3rd party (an investment fund, or perhaps the solar company themselves) owns the system and claim the full range of available incentives. Commercial owners can take accelerated depreciation on the system, and can utilize the full 30% federal tax credit , and they also get whatever state/local/utility incentives are available as per usual. The customer would have ZERO down-payment, and makes monthly payments over a period of ~15-18 years. There is no lien on the house. The tax investor receives a reasonable return on their investment over time, the installer makes reasonable margins on the installation, and the customers can save money from Day 1. Everybody wins! So to use the parent submitter's house as an example of what we can do -- For a $400/month average bill in Sunnyvale, CA, we might recommend a 7.7 kW DC system. Assuming the customer had decent credit (720 FICO), we would require no down payment, and then charge monthly lease payments of $216/mo, for 15 years. The monthly payments do go up at ~3-4% per year (we could alternatively have 0% escalation, but of course that would require a higher starting payment and so it's harder to show savings right away... there are many possible variations here. Also remember that local PG&E utility rates are increasing at >5% per year on average). With this 7.7kW system, they might expect their average monthly bill to go from $400 to $99 per month. Add the $216/month payment, and their new average monthly electricity cost is (216 + 99) = $315/month, for immediate savings of ~$85/mo!! [As a point of information, virtually all residential solar systems are grid-tied, so that when the panels are active during the daytime, the meter is often "spinning" backwards. This is how the utility-bill-savings part works.] The installers offering these plans usually include full service/maintenance for the life of the lease, including replacement of the DC/AC inverter if necessary. The customer is given the opportunity to purchase the system after years 6/10/15, or if they have to move or sell their house. The panels are warranted by the manufacturers to last 25+ years at 80-90%+ kWh output, so a long-term buy-and-hold strategy is solid. Or, if the customer looks around in 15 years and sees a better/cheaper technology, or just doesn't wish to renew or buy out), they are free to end the lease and we'll remove the panels at our cost. The customer who understands Net Present Value (NPV) calculations can easily demonstrate that this offers far superior savings compared to either a) doing nothing, or b) purchasing the system for cash. So before you all roll your eyes about solar being a poor investment with a many-year paybacks, please consider such alternative financing approaches.
There's something I find really sad to read. At the begining they are talking about fighting global warming. Nice.
And then, you have this :
"First Solar is great, as long as we're talking
megawatts or gigawatts," he says. "But as soon
as they have to start rolling out terawatts,
that's where I believe they will reach some
limitations."
Well, another solution could be to promote a lifestyle that doesn't make you count in terawatts.
But no, we won't do that because we are too lazy, and some technology will solve ... the sideeffects of another technology.
Of course I'm not saying solar panels or technology sucks, it's more about the way it is used. It reminds me of this prank made by the "Yes Men" to a french politician, tricking him into believing that boeing was planing to drop huge ice cube on the north pole to fight the polar ice melting.
It amazes me the lengths propagandists will go to to obfuscate simple questions of economics. The electric company charges me per Killowatt Hour. How much will the solar people charge me?
The day I see them CHARGE a competitive rate (rather than SPECULATE what it will cost, or avoid stating the KwH cost) will be the day I understand solar to be competitive.
<
If it works economically today, it will be a better deal next year.
In other words, for people with reasonable electric bills, there isn't any reason to rush (especially if you aren't installing enough batteries to give you some independence from the grid (that's a nice feature...))
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
and a german ultility bought up every cell nanosolar will make for the next two years for a solar power plant.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The current supply is what limits the near-term viability of the product; it means that it simply cannot become a large-scale product within the next year or two. If it started catching on and prices for tellurium went up significantly, that might spur mining companies to look for more. But now you're talking a 2-5-year lead time for prospecting and significant new mines to come online, by which point the technology will probably have been surpassed by others. So it might actually never catch on at all, if its popularity is nipped in the bud by restricted current supply. And knowing that, the mining companies may not even invest in new tellurium mines at all, since they aren't confident that demand isn't fleeting.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
As for the nuclear lobby, they should have to do things the same way as everyone else and work on a decent design before money is comitted to building stuff - in the USA the only nuclear power option is incredibly expensive 1960s plants painted green.
There are several reasons for this. Research into developing nuclear power effectively halted years ago which is a very sad state of affairs especially considering the vast amount of money spent on PR, advertising and more direct lobbying. The second is the "not invented here" option - there is no way Chinese, Indian, German or South African technology which is about twenty years ahead of what Westinghouse could do will be adopted - this is becuase it is not in the interest of those lobbying - they don't want the US government to buy just any nukes they want them to buy US made nukes. The third is that none of the more effective new designs can be used to produce weapons materials (makes sense since the dual use plants are a compromise and you can get better output if you focus), so you can't go hiding costs in military budgets anymore and have to be more open to the taxpayer. You need the goverment to put up the money since while you can have a lot of reasons to build a nuclear power plant (eg. resource poor Japan having something in case of blockade) making money is most definitely not one of them - otherwise you would see fully private nuclear power plants all over the place instead of taxpayer supported or military operations. If the government is going to buy anything down the road it is going to buy american, and it's pretty difficult to justify any of the options available there, and completely impossible with the current economic conditions.
In an ideal world there would be far less bullshit spread by the lobbyists which is mostly counterproductive anyway, and there would be some money spent on R&D instead of pretending the problems that need to be solved don't exist - or even just optimising things to get that much closer to being cost effective enough for private enterprise to touch it. Westinghouse etc just see it as a way to fleece the taypayer - we need to get pretty well the entire nuclear lobby out of the picture before there will be any way to make progress or take advantage of the progress made elsewhere.
Now as for the "clean" in bold print, while I understand it was one of the things pushed by huge amounts of PR it is absolute bullshit when applied to any industrial process and pretty well irrelevant to everything apart from washing powder. I used to ridicule people that used that word in the context of nuclear power as thinking it runs on magic beans and not an involved mining and processing proceedure that produces a lot of toxic waste (just like a lot of other things, only they don't pretend to be clean). Now I think people have used it so much that they simply don't have a clue what they are saying (and no - don't bring the coal strawman in here, we are talking about solar and nuclear).
The final answer as to when all these nuclear plants will be built is that they will be done when your government decides it will do it. Nobody else is going to do it. The capital cost, long construction time and low return of even the best projections of what pebble bed will do means that nobody else will put in the money or the time.
Cost per KWhr at $0.98 cost per Watt ~ $0.098 installed. See below. Calculate KWhrs: Stated Efficiency = 10.8% (panels guaranteed to produce 80% of this value after 25 years of use, linear degradation with respect to time, see latest quarterly statement). Tested impinging irradiance energy = 1000Watts/Meter good yearly average value at solar noon across the latitudes spanning continental US. (USGS has irradiance values for different locals, NREL uses this value). Panel size = 2' X 4' minus edge effects = 23" x 46" = 0.683 Meters square. peak useable energy ~ 73 Watts per panel. Assume solar energy is positive sinusoidal (clipped at 0). Average day length = 12 hours. 12 hours * RMS factor * Watts per panel * ave degradation factor = .525 KWhr per day (12hours * 0.667RMS * 73Watts * 0.9aveDegradation). Assume 80% of solar energy available (due to cloudy days, diffuse light etc.). By the way, CdTe panels are much better at capturing diffuse light than Si panels. Because of this they don't need tracking devices. Panel guaranteed to produce 3835 KWhrs over 25 years (guaranteed panel lifetime (will produce 80% of initial power rating after 25 years)) given the assumptions. (25years * 365.25days * 0.8EnergyAvai l* 0.525KWh/day) Assume current cost of installation per Watt is ~2.5 times cost per Watt(includes cost of scaffolding, inverters, labor, connection to grid at source, does not include cost of land, cost of transmission (it's usually a separate item in your electric bill)). As a note, the cost per Watt includes the cost to collect, recycle and reuse the panels (CdTe is recovered and reused, glass recovered and reused, copper recovered and reused). So at $0.98 per Watt to make, we have $3.43 to make and install per Watt. Operating margin (See FSLR quarterly report ~50%) and assume the same for installers --> total cost = $5.15 per Watt --> 9.8 cents per KWhr; (($5.15 * 73Watt)/3835KWhr). Maintenance cost is minimal (no moving parts, don't have to wash the panels, etc.). A highly inflated cost would be 10% of cost per Watt --> $5.66 --> 10.8 cents per KWhr. As a note regarding Te availability check out FSLR SEC statements and see where they've been investing some of their money... With respect to CdTe toxicity, check out the studies about amount of Cd released when panels exposed to 1100C fires... If you check out their website and you believe the numbers, if they get to $1 Watt (sold so includes margin) to make and $2 Watt installed (sold so includes margin) then the cost per KWhr drops to 6.3 cents per KWhr by 2012.
The current lowest price per PV watt is $3.89. Anything anywhere as cheap as $1:W would revolutionize the current photovoltaic solar industry, which is already just becoming a good priced alternative to getting power from the "city grid".
--
make install -not war
So if a 1 kW panel costs $1000 (around 800 euros), it will generate enough energy to pay for itself in 4000 hours, i.e. about half a year.
It doesn't generate anything at night, and it generates less closer to dawn and dusk. So your 1000 W panel might generate 250 W on average (or less?), ending up closer to 2 year payoff.
Wow, one pound on the whole Earth?
That's pretty much not existent.
It doesn't matter if you can make juice at a buck a watt if your panels are made of unobtainium.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Which is still nearly triple what we pay in Canada from our publicly owned hydroelectric companies. 3.5cents! (Manitoba Hydro Corporation)
Make magazine had an article a few issues back about how to install solar panels on your house and do it according to code. It looked like a complicated process.
You might want to look at this Google tech talk, as well.
Looks good, but you should do a NPV calculation for the value of the electricity. OTOH, the price of electricity will likely go up in real terms, so I think the interest rate for the NPV calculation should be the long term borrowing rate minus the expected rate of electricity price increases, which will be close to a wash, at least within the margin of error.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
Most wall-warts use a switch-mode power supply. You can tell these apart from the old fashioned ones by weight and size. Lumpy, heavy: old transformer type. Light and small: new SMPS.
Also, if your wall-wart says it auto ranges from 70V to 240V AC, there is a pretty good chance they run on DC as well.
Not that I would like the grid to switch to DC, for a myriad of reasons.
Good point. I looked up cost of production vs. total revenues ( http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat8p3.html ) and to have comparable returns, the cost of production is about 1/2 of the revenues. I think that implies that at the current price point, the total end consumer retail price (including transmission) would be 19.6 cents per kilowatt hour. This is about two times the cost of yearly average conventional generation in the areas most likely to adopt solar. If the US goes the route of Europe and charges for CO2 emissions, then this will drop in the price multiplier.
Don't tell me about 1$ per watt until it is actually sitting at the walmart and anyone can go in and buy what they need for making their home kit a finished one. There ia always a 5 year delay or so....
for new technology to be mainstream....this isn't mainstream yet, although I am quite happy it will be shortly.
Sorry guys, but the guy with a median income of $45 a year and one or two children can't afford this, even if they lived in a house instead of an apartment (Solar isn't much good without roof space). So all this twirling and whirling about solar power is a bunch of hooey until it either becomes a large, government-funded project that supplements existing power, or the costs per home come down to the $1000-$2000 level. Until then, the solar geeks are wasting our time.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Okay so I use 40 kilowatts per day. That works out to about $5 per day. So I'd have to have a $40,000 solar system which works out to about 21 years to pay it off. Unless I'm missing something, this make no sense at all. Probably why it's only economically feasible for the individual with massive government subsidy. Such was the case in the 70s. Once the subsidy evaporated, so did the solar industry.
Am I the only one who notices a strange knee-jerk antipathy to solar power amongst some people? Any time a solar power story comes out, you have people rushing to explain why solar sucks, has sucked, and will continue to suck. I'm guessing they just don't want the damn hippies to be right.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Disadvantages
The disadvantages of HVDC are in conversion, switching and control.
The required static inverters are expensive and have limited overload capacity. At smaller transmission distances the losses in the static inverters may be bigger than in an AC transmission line. The cost of the inverters may not be offset by reductions in line construction cost and lower line loss. With two exceptions, all former mercury rectifiers worldwide have been dismantled or replaced by thyristor units.
In contrast to AC systems, realizing multiterminal systems is complex, as is expanding existing schemes to multiterminal systems. Controlling power flow in a multiterminal DC system requires good communication between all the terminals; power flow must be actively regulated by the control system instead of by the inherent properties of the transmission line. High voltage DC circuit breakers are difficult to build because some mechanism must be included in the circuit breaker to force current to zero, otherwise arcing and contact wear would be too great to allow reliable switching. Multi-terminal lines are rare. One is in operation at the Hydro Québec - New England transmission from Radisson to Sandy Pond.[12] Another example is the Sardinia-mainland Italy link which was modified in 1989 to also provide power to the island of Corsica.
from the same wiki page
Nope, I've noticed it too, and I don't get it either.
Here we've got a massive, natural, clean nuclear fusion generator converting about 4 million metric tons of matter into energy every second and bombarding half the earth's entire surface with a portion of that 24/7, a generator which will last for another 5 billion years, yet people keep despairing of solar cell technology as though it's just a passing fad.
Solar tech is sorely lagging behind where it *should* be, I'll admit - much like battery tech - but all we need is that breakthrough to find cheaper, more plentiful and efficient materials, and the payoff is unimaginable. On a related note, this weekend in the paper was a story about solar ovens being used now in Africa, these things are extremely low tech, and yet they're saving lives in Africa and India and boosting income for families as well.
It doesn't make sense not to use such a powerful natural resource. We've got the greatest energy generator we'll probably ever encounter, hanging right in the sky, showering us in the whole EM spectrum. I see more potential in that than practically anything else.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
I'm sure you guys looked into this but... most state governments have a lot of incentives, both tax breaks and grants, for using alternative energy.
There are a lot of sites on it:
http://www.dsireusa.org/
http://www.solarpowerrocks.com/
Some even go so far as to eliminate 100% of property tax for businesses abiding by environmental regulations. They also have pretty big grants for the initial installation.
I'm pretty confident the electric companies also want you to produce power and put it back on the grid. They still make money and don't have to produce as much power.
I agree though, I hope power goes more distributed over the next few decades. Not only government and power companies making renewable sources, but individuals taking on the responsibility. I think it'll happen as it becomes more and more cost effective.
Actually grid-tie systems are REQUIRED to disconnect if the grid loses power.
There's a difference between disconnecting from grid power and shutting off when it comes to local power generation - whether green or traditional.
Conventional grid-tie systems shut off - IE if you lose grid power, there's no power to the house, even if you have plenty of power coming in from the solar panels or wind turbine to power everything. While safe for line workers, it's annoying for the home owner. Cheaper and easier to install though. All you need is to run the power into the breaker box.
What I'm talking about is a system that combines the features of a grid-tie inverter with an automatic transfer switch. There's a disconnect in there, it's just not dependent on shutting the house down, so the workers are still safe(and you aren't trying to power the neighborhood). It works pretty much identical to standby generators, just optimized for 'green' power. For even more money, you can get a system that can power/depower circuits based on actual power availability and demand. Even the option for a(presumably smaller) battery bank 'just in case'.
By keeping the grid tie even if you have batteries, you can avoid charge/discharge cycles and increase the longevity of the batteries. Not to mention system efficiency - you don't get as much power back from discharging batteries as you put in, but floating a charge is relatively cheap and the meter runs backwards at the same speed as forwards(100% effective charging efficiency).
As a consequence, you need to install the inverter/ATS in between the grid connection and any circuits you want to power during offline operation. More expensive/complicated install, but if the power goes out when it's sunny you still have electricity.
To keep it cheaper, you might set it up so that you need grid power to run the AC or washer, but not for the lights/refridgerator/computer/radio, assuming there's enough power.
I don't read AC A human right
You're not one to talk about being "good at heart" at all, especially due to the statement you made in the url below:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1147437&cid=27056793
* The End of Days * you're a loser that admitted to using multiple registered accounts to mod himself up and to make it appear that you had multiple supporters via said accounts (as well as his using anonymous coward posts to do so in addition on the latter, creating "illusory supporters").
And you have the sheer nerve to say others commit bogus acts to serve their own ends? Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!