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Dawn of Solar Age Declared as PV Beats All Other Forms of Power (bloomberg.com)
Solar power blossomed faster than for any other fuel for the first time in 2016, the International Energy Agency said in a report suggesting the technology will dominate renewables in the years ahead. From a report: The institution established after the first major oil crisis in 1973 said 165 gigawatts of renewables were completed last year, which was two-thirds of the net expansion in electricity supply. Solar grew by 50 percent, with almost half new plants built in China. "What we are witnessing is the birth of a new era in solar PV," Fatih Birol, executive director of the IEA, said in a statement accompanying the report published on Wednesday in Paris. "We expect that solar PV capacity growth will be higher than any other renewable technology through 2022." This marks the sixth consecutive year that clean energy has set records for installations. Mass manufacturing and a switch by governments away from fixed payments for renewables forced down the cost of wind and solar technology. The IEA expects about 1,000 gigawatts of renewables will be installed in the next five years, a milestone that coal only accomplished after 80 years. That quantity of electricity surpasses what's consumed in China, India and Germany combined.
Always a bad thing to assume people know your 2-letter acronyms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Photovoltaics (PV) is a term which covers the conversion of light into electricity using semiconducting materials that exhibit the photovoltaic effect, a phenomenon studied in physics, photochemistry, and electrochemistry. A typical photovoltaic system employs solar panels, each comprising a number of solar cells, which generate electrical power. PV installations may be ground-mounted, rooftop mounted or wall mounted. The mount may be fixed, or use a solar tracker to follow the sun across the sky.
- Vincit qui patitur.
Maybe it will kick-start companies to do more battery research. Better batteries will fundamentally change a lot of items, especially transportation. Get a battery to 1/10 the energy density per volume as gasoline, and you won't need internal combustion engines anymore. Get battery tech cheaper, and Tesla Powerwall like whole-house UPS systems become common, which can allow battery banks to charge when it is cheapest, as well as provide a couple hours of power if the grid drops.
That's already figured into the cost. Still comes out ahead. And once we start using photovoltaic energy to make photovoltaics, we take fossil fuels out of the picture entirely.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I have seen a few reports that they are lasting quite a bit longer than expected and still performing, in some cases 10 years past their estimated 20 year functional lifespan. If we have to make a lined pit in the ground and throw them all in it every 30 years, that will be fine.
They have no moving parts (unless you use trackers) and they take advantage of "free" energy that will be here as long as the earth is habitable. It is inevitable that they will take over energy production.
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In 25 years solar "panels" will be as cheap and flexible as plastic sheeting. Energy will be nearly free and we'll be struggling with who should be allowed to have children and deciding which grossly overpopulated areas need to "purged".
Gosh, if only Solar arrays were like coal, gas, and nuclear plants that require absolutely no maintenance, part replacement or waste disposal.
Oh wait.
Seriously, in 20 years, they can expand their system to cover increased demand, and if these cells fail, they can recycle the valuable metals and purchase new ones. You might as well be complaining that the sun could go out, or that the cleaner air they breathe lets them go outside so much they get skin cancer.
Falling off is not the same thing as not working at all. In some installations, where you have space restrictions and power requirements; this will matter. In other locations (rural/solar farms?) where space is less critical; it won't matter so much. Why get rid of the old panels when you can add a single (newer/cheaper) panel and end up with more total capacity then before? Even users with space restrictions are likely to be able to sell their reduced output panels to someone who doesn't have that restriction. There are airplanes built in the 60s still being used commercially because people still get value out of them. While I doubt that panels will remain viable after 60 years, they might do 30 or 40. The last user might have even bought them at the cost of shipping/handling just so the previous owner didn't have to dispose of toxic materials. Eventually, it will be time to scrap them; but that may well be far removed from the original purchaser and we will have plenty of time to make that as easy as getting rid of used motor oil.
The largely overpopulated areas will be the same like today: ... feel free to add your selection.
Beijing, Mexico City, Tokyo, Sao Paulo, Los Angeles, New Dheli
Population growth on the planet will probbaly stop in 30 - 50 years, so no worries there.
Energy will never be free. The production might be close to free, perhaps you pay 1cent per kWh, however transport, gridstability, balancing power, reserve power, and simple things as metering snd billing: will always have significant costs.
So when we are close to free energy, the prices will drop by half, but not go doown to 1cent or less.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
No they are not projected to last 50 years at full or even majority output.
http://www.engineering.com/ElectronicsDesign/ElectronicsDesignArticles/ArticleID/7475/What-Is-the-Lifespan-of-a-Solar-Panel.aspx
http://energyinformative.org/lifespan-solar-panels/
Nuclear plants are magical. Hell, Fukushima's been closed since 2011 and it's still producing energy in the form of radiation.
http://www.pnas.org/content/ea...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Personal anecdote, but I have a former neighbor who still has PV panels up that he threw in his backyard back in the 1980s, and they are still running at their rated wattage, if not a little bit above it.
The nice thing about solar panels is the fact that once set up, assuming no active tracking system, you don't have to do much upkeep. No moving parts, everything is solid state, and if one has an on-grid system, there are no batteries to have to keep watered or replaced.
I really can't think of anything wrong with solar, other than the obvious... it only works a part of the day.
Is is it true that it still takes more energy to fab the silicon, make the frames, and deploy the panels than they ever get back in their operational lifetime?
Although I'm sure Exxon would like that misinformation to stay popular, that question was put to rest long ago, both in terms of the panels themselves and the PV industry as a whole. And that's reaching back to pay for panel development when production was inefficient.
Video if you don't like reading.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Nothing. A well-made solar panel will last 40 years (there are some 40 year old solar panels still operating fine) and will probably last over 70 years: https://us.sunpower.com/sites/...
And nuclear plants have absolutely no expense involved in maintenance or refurbishment.
Most people have purchased solar through power purchase agreements that are typically 15 to 20 years long. At the end of that time, they can either buy the cheaper solar panels themselves or resign another PPL. Typically, the solar provider charges a set price -- today $500 -- to remove old panels. So, no. Consumers won't get sticker shock in 20 years. In fact, solar panels are becoming more efficient, so in 20 years, you'll need fewer panels to produce the same energy and they'll be cheaper to manufacture.
Actually wind and solar are over 5% of average power supply now and growing exponentially, with large double digit year-on-year percentages. And wind is already well over 10% of power in Europe.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Silicon is a *metal*. Sand is a silicate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon
There's an OSHA limit for silicon particle exposure at the end of the article but it doesn't seem particularly toxic.
The manufacturing process for panels reportedly uses chemicals that are quite toxic, however.
Sorry, are you referring to solar or current power plants? Because everything you said can apply to either.
As a society, we already see drops in performance when parts aren't replaced or maintained. We already deal with sticker shock when we need to repair or replace everything from turbine blades to scrubbers to pistons that can fail for any number of different mechanical or chemical reasons. We already have to dispose of filters and other parts that are contaminated with toxic materials. None of this is new.
What is new, however, are the rapidly falling prices for solar installs, zero emissions during operation, less frequent maintenance, and the fact that it's looking like 15-20 years may have been a conservative estimate, since we're already seeing them lasting far longer than originally expected. Which isn't to say that they solve all of our problems, nor that they come with no new ones, but suggesting that we shouldn't use solar until we deal with the issues you listed—issues which we already face—is like saying that we shouldn't allow a drug that cures 50% of patients suffering from an otherwise terminal disease, because it doesn't save 100% of them.
'I winter in Germany, solar output is almost non-existant.'
Get a brush until climate change takes care of the snow.
"Do solar panels work in the winter?
A common myth is that solar panels do not work during winter, but in contrary, the cold temperature will typically improve solar panel output. The white snow can also reflect light and help improve PV performance. Winter will only hurt solar production if the panels are covered with snow."
http://news.energysage.com/sol...
Looks like both charts project majority output in 50 years.
100%-(.05%*50)=75%
or 100%-(20%*2)=60%
Your point is stronger if you use words like "dramatic reduction" or "just over half of the output remaining" or you don't link to things that contradict what you say as support.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
The two references you provide indicate that a reasonable , even conservative estimate is about 0.5% degradation per year. After 50 years that leaves 78% of initial output. Pretty good I'd say!
SB
Depends where you life.
In europe household battery storages are more and more connected into so called 'virtual power plants'.
They are used for balancing power snd reserve power.
That earns the owners money.
Going disconnected would make them lose that money.
In other words in the center of a city it makes no sense to go disconnected.
In a hut in a forrest up the mountains, perhaps it does.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
They have no moving parts (unless you use trackers) and they take advantage of "free" energy that will be here as long as the earth is habitable.
I'm always amused that engineers miss the giant fusion reactor in the sky.
I'm still waiting for quantum tunneling junctions. These are solid-state devices which are currently researcher voodoo: you can make one, but most of its surface is useless. Boeng has confirmed they work, just that you make one the size of a quarter and you get a few square micrometers of useful area.
A quantum tunneling junction has something like 55% carnot efficiency for any given temperature drop at any absolute temperature which doesn't physically damage the material. It's similar to a peltier junction, which has 8% efficiency. Essentially, a peltier junction has electrons shifting more or less easily across a junction when a voltage potential is applied, which may cause them to release or absorb heat. A quantum tunneling junction has electrons crossing a dielectric when a voltage potential exists across two plates; the electrons have higher probability of crossing if they have higher energy, so "hot" electrons (absorb photons, i.e. thermal energy) move more-frequently, cooling one side and heating the other.
Cute. What can we do with it?
Ever filled a scuba tank?
When you compress a gas, it releases heat. release the gas elsewhere and it absorbs heat (gets cold). In fact, if you chill the tank enough and open it, you won't get any pressure: you freeze N2 into liquid N2 and now the N2 doesn't contain enough energy to produce force, thus pressure. Boiling is just molecules moving so forcefully they shove fluid out of the way and escape the vessel (buoyancy in a boiling liquid only occurs because the molecules in the bubble have enough energy to push the liquid away, making a low-density region that happens to be in the gas phase; add gravity and the low-density region is pushed to the surface by the heavy liquid).
So set up two compression chambers. Feed from a pump run off an engine; power the engine off this chamber. Use electricity from a battery (charged from an alternator off the engine) to run a quantum tunneling junction and pull heat emitted and from the atmosphere into the compressed air vessel.
Engineers like to point out here that you can't run a heat engine off a heat pump that shares its reservoir. They're talking about the atmosphere being the heat reservoir.
It's not an ideal reservoir.
You're emitting cold air into the atmosphere: the engine expands the air, which absorbs heat and spits out expanded (cooled) air. That air exits at a lower temperature than the air being pulled into the compression vessel, as well as the air from which the quantum tunneling junction is driving heat into the vessel. You're not injecting the cold output (engine exhaust) into the reservoir from which the heat pump (QTJ) is drawing--that is: the temperature of the exhaust isn't averaged with the atmosphere at point of contact with the heat pump.
Second, the atmosphere is heated by the sun.
Not only is the atmosphere big and capable of absorbing a huge amount of cold exhaust before your heat-engine-slash-heat-pump consumes the energy in its shared vessel and finally runs dry, but it's being fed energy from an external power source.
That external energy prevents the atmosphere from averaging its temperature out (in which case, it would already be at a temperature by which you can't run this machine). The heat from the sun is changing the entropy in the atmosphere, essentially playing the part of Maxwell's Demon--a thought experiment about exactly what I describe, with the mistake of not accounting for the work that the little cretin sitting on the gate expended to sort out hot particles from cold particles. The "demon" is being fed from the sun.
I've described nothing more than a Rube Goldberg machine that achieves solar power generation.
Whether you can build one is another matter; but the theory isn't totally-unsound, at least not for the reasons most engineers immediately cite.
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We have no winters in Germany anymore anyway. ... another week later. Does it snow? Sometimes. The last 30 years I perhaps had to clean the pavement 10 times. ... since decades. ... snow up to a meter. The army was sent out to clear streets in the 1970s (with tanks!!). Several years in a row! ... I had school free for weeks because the ferry to my school did not go/could not go.
If there is frost, it is for a week
Average winter temperature, even at night, is significantly above freezing point
As a child we had -30 degrees C
We had absurd high water marks (floodings) in spring, ships could not travel for months
Actually you could not even reach it as most of the road to the ferry was a dam: closed for cars because of fear of damage to the dam.
Now we rarely have a high water, because there is not enough snow in the mountains to cause it in spring.
The days with highest *percentage* of solar contribution are actually winter holidays with clear skies, like 1st of January. Of course the reason is: it is a holiday, peak demand is only 60% of a work day. But it looks amazing when you see around 12:00, 50% of your power comes from solar alone.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
It's like that in texas too. We used to have 6 good weeks of winter with regular periods longer than a week where there was ice on the ground while I walked to school.
Now, we get a few hours at night of freezing temperatures. But (on topic) we did get 8 weeks of overcast a couple years ago. That would have been a bad case for solar.
That said...
https://cleantechnica.com/2017...
Germany has gotten 85% of their total power generation from solar some days this year and projects that such days will become increasingly common going forward. By 2030, they project year round coverage (which means during sunny months they will have power to spare.).
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Right. That's why system operators like California ISO aren't counting each and every megawatt generated by renewables.
http://www.caiso.com/outlook/o...
http://www.caiso.com/informed/...
http://www.caiso.com/informed/...
Also, SoCal Edison has been bringing online some incredible advances in energy storage technology. Systems like these will begin taking hold across the country over the course of the next decade, changing the dynamics of solar energy availability and reliability.
https://www.edison.com/home/in...
It ain't your grandpa's solar panel anymore. The system is evolving.
Beware of the Leopard.
All great points, and you're right. Storage is definitely the next hurdle and one that will be difficult to overcome. But we have to start somewhere. It wasn't all that long ago when driving ~250 miles on a battery was considered impossible -- or cost prohibitive at best. It's not acceptable to just throw our collective arms in the air and keep doing what we're doing just because the numbers don't work out today. What SCE and other utilities are doing in this area is important, even if the overall impact seems insignificant right now.
Beware of the Leopard.