We can get a pretty large install base before storage becomes a big issue. When you do net metering, solar displaces peak load generation,
often natural gas and has the effect of bringing electricity costs down since those expensive sources are not used so much. Going up to
about 20% of the grid supply is not a big problem. It is when you start getting close to covering 50% of demand at peak that things get dicey.
Then the base load power supply is shutting down and this is not what it was built to do. So, you'd like to shunt the renewable power that is
"extra" into power storage to handle night time variable demand. But, at that point, you might not want to use PV, so there is a bit of a dilemma http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/04/smelling-salts .html. But, by that time, if batteries for cars are getting broad deployment, they might
be used as storage along with PV, getting a charge at work, then covering some nighttime use at home if employers are willing to supply charging
facilities.
It is hard to find panels that cheap because the raw material supply is tight just now. As this clears up in the next couple years $3/Watt should
be pretty common (delivered not installed). The other thing that has kept prices high is lack of industrial scale. You can look at page 20 of this
report http://www.redrok.com/pvreport.pdf to see that a 500 MW production plant reduces costs by a factor of 4. One of at least two plants
of this size going into the US this year is described here: http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/stor y?id=47621. As these crank up,
you should see prices drop even farther. If you want to signup for renting panels from the other plant follow the links at http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html.
A typical home needs about a 5 kW peak system to cover its annual power use. At the surface of the Earth you get about a kW (peak) per square
meter so at 15% efficiency you need about 33 square meters of panels. That's a little under 6 meters on a side. Granted, 5 kW does not cover
your peak draw, but in 41 states and DC you can do net metering http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/03/net-metering.h tml. So, having a really
big yard is not needed unless you want to become a commercial power generator.
It is a very simple thing to get people to do evil. Simply set up a system where no one person is really responsible but rather all effort
is bent towards the common goal. Your idea of a coporation to make money will do just as well as any other. You can easily convince them that
their duty to their shareholders is much more important than their duty to their employees, customers of the poeple of their town or city and thus
induce them to perfrom the most unspeakable acts. Poisoning the whole city with choking deadly gas for example producing a scene that will remind you of my summer house.
But, you will not generally get the result we really desire, recruits to our cause. This is because they will regret the harm they have done eventually
once they see that harm is done rather than finding it more and more seductive. Those dreadful ministers or activists groups will some times be able
to get them to change their ways. Most of all, they may be kind to one another, helpful if one of them is sick and devoted to their families.
While you may dabble with these constructs, remember that you will do much more for our cause by leading just one of them into betrayal or corruption. Let them feel pride at their cleverness in deceiving those that trust them and you will be well on you way.
Apple came in for it because they were not responding while others were. They were not singled out.
Think what this will accomplish: all this junk is going to get recycled. That is going to save you taxes since
you won't need a new landfill so soon. And, your landfill won't need extra staff to handle that stuff.
Hey, everyone who owes their life to seatbelts say: THANKS RALPH!
"Greenpeace has responded already, demanding more action, specifically, the products being green from the outset."
If you read your link, they say they want worldwide recycling, not just US recycling. This is not a new request, it was part of
the original, and all manufacturers are asked the same. --
Clean Solar Power fits in your current budget: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
You're exactly right. Greenpeace has been asking for information and Apple has been refusing to provide it. Now, apparently Apple will provide information on what it is doing and what it plans to do. That was co-operative. At this point Apple can be ranked and its progress monitored so long
as they keep to their new policy. -- Get Solar Power with no installation cost: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
The immediacy of the blog entry is part of its poignency, but losing it only closes that avenue of communication. Soldiers come home and
speak to their friends about how they feel. The issue of lack of readiness, annoyance at the "not die in vein" rhetoric, and worries that
the people there can't accept our help come up pretty often.
These face-to-face encounters carry even more weight as one senses the deep deep concern so directly.
I can certainly understand why public indications of low morale would be a problem since it is the object of the resistance
to induce this and providing them with measures of their success might be useful to them. But, to me this is water under the
bridge and should go into the lessons-to-be-relearned file. The main effect on morale is reduced support for the war at home
and this is a result of obvious incompetence. Secretary of Defence Gates now has an even weaker hand to play as the President
chooses divisive politics over unity that could boost morale and so we see this kind of panic response that can only lead to
worse problems.
Further to this, the author of TFA is the junkscience guy for FOX. Here is the wiki on him http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Milloy which
basically says he's a professional liar.
I do use a drop cloth when painting but have not had a lot of trouble changing light bulbs. Thanks for the complement, but I doubt my insight is the
most penetrating.
I got 6 for $10 at Lowes and these turned out a little brighter than the last batch I bought. Seems to me a drop cloth would be a reasonable precaution if working over carpet. People from California have posted that CFLs are recycled there. Is that happening elsewhere? --
Light up your life with solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
I sent in a bug report a while back that I could vote for my own submission on the firehose. This appears to have been fixed in a strange way:
In my most recent submission (yesterday on fascism, digg it;-) the submission turned up in the firehose as already voted. Don't know if it was voted up or
down though.
--
Vote with your roof: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
This project seems to be aiming at low efficiency-low cost thin film cells which do (relatively) better in the absence of direct sunlight compared
to silicon. Yes, winter occurs both because of shorter days and the lower angle of the Sun. You get to compensate for the latter effect (somewhat) by tilting
the solar panels. Usually the best (fixed) angle for maximum annual production will be shaded towards the direction of the Sun at noon on the longest day (road construction solstice).
The whole Earth sees the same amount of sunlight over a year. The poles get 6 months of daylight and six months of dark while the equator gets
pretty even day-night intervals. So, in principle you get just as much power anywhere just by tilting your solar panel towards the Sun. In practice,
even with clear skies, there is a reduction owing to the higher airmass at higher latitude, and with the same amount of cloudiness, there is a higher
chance of having a cloud in the way at higher latitude. Also, you need more land area at higher latitude in a compact configuration, such as the planned project, to avoid self-shadowing. For roof mounted systems, further north, the roof pitch tends to be steeper owing to snow so this happens to work out well since
you also want solar panels to be mounted at a higher angle.
Winter in Minnesota lasts all year while never having Christmas owing to the rule of and evil queen;-)
Forty-three cents (Canadian) per kWh is what is on offer to pay rather than what was on offer to sell. And you'll see that it is a fixed duration
contract so the power must be bought. You can't really compete with that even if you are cheaper solar.
This is why I'm writing the blog, to try to get my mind around the changes that abundant renewable energy brings. I think you are correct that price
will be a factor, but some aspects of the way renewable energy works now would go against that. For net metering http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/03/net-metering.h tml systems, the utility basically has to accept the power, if they don't then they are penalizing
the customer and net metering laws don't allow that. At some point that also means that the utility will have to sell the power rather than just buying
less from the commercial sources on the grid. I think that by then time of use rates will be pretty common and I'd expect they'll cut rates by a lot to
keep from going broke. That is: charging less for retail than for wholesale whenever net metering systems are covering more than the utility's customers
are using. Their non-net metering customers will get very low retail rates (during that period) but the utility will only have to pay that much as well so they'll
cover costs with their wholesale transactions. Since they control what the net metering systems get paid, they'll be able to undercut any other price on the wholesale market.
Now, with an energy glut, commercial wind and solar will certainly be cutting prices and perhaps nuclear will follow, but as soon as this leads to deferred maintenance, (hopefully) the NRC will be all over them. The NTSB and FAA watch for the effects of price wars on aviation safety to some extent, as an example. So, nuclear power has a hard time cutting prices to compete.
The point is, renewable energy really is free to produce once the investment is made while non-renewable energy has fuel costs and thus operating
costs. You have to pay highly trained people to keep them going. A wind farm in bankruptcy may lose a few turbines in a year but the recievers will
insist it keep producing with what's left. A nuclear plant in bankruptcy will cut payroll and shut down.
All of this is modulo power storage, which is another market for extra renewable energy, but once you have this, you'll have covered what used to be
called base load. But base load is what nuclear plants are for. I think that most likely, the decommissioning of nuclear plants will happen before
base load is fully replaced by energy storage though.
I'm OK with you up to the 4 kWp number but I think you need to say "month" or something in there to get to what I think is 1400 kWh since you convert this to
price. There you'd be assuming 8 hour days rather than 12 hour days though.
The reason it is a little hard to fit this on the roofs of the houses that it would power is because they are going with lower efficiency panels (which
should also be cheaper, I suspect a contract with Nanosolar). The key here is that they've got the land so spreading out a bit is fine. I also notice
that they are unwilling to say what their cost is. I'd expect $0.10/kWh (Canadian) or maybe less. They are taking advantage of the high rate that is
being payed but I'd guess they could do it for less and still make money, just not great big gleaming piles of money. In NC, small producers are getting (US$0.2 per kWh and liking it a lot http://www.ncgreenpower.org/about/producers.html. -- Matching your utility with
solar power (7 cents/kWh and up): http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
The power absorbed ends up as heat. You could be either increasing or decreasing albedo when you install a solar panel. If you do it on a white
roof, then less energy will be reflected to space, on a black roof, more energy will be reflected to space, but both what is absorbed in the panel and
what is converted to electricity turn to heat. -- Solar power with in installation fee: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
Slashdot Mirror
Thank them: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/65431047 0?ltl=1178165301.
I got interested in ammonia as a power storage medium after learning of a new (solar) process to produce it. See what you think: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/04/smelling-salts .html.
We can get a pretty large install base before storage becomes a big issue. When you do net metering, solar displaces peak load generation, often natural gas and has the effect of bringing electricity costs down since those expensive sources are not used so much. Going up to about 20% of the grid supply is not a big problem. It is when you start getting close to covering 50% of demand at peak that things get dicey. Then the base load power supply is shutting down and this is not what it was built to do. So, you'd like to shunt the renewable power that is "extra" into power storage to handle night time variable demand. But, at that point, you might not want to use PV, so there is a bit of a dilemma http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/04/smelling-salts .html. But, by that time, if batteries for cars are getting broad deployment, they might
be used as storage along with PV, getting a charge at work, then covering some nighttime use at home if employers are willing to supply charging
facilities.
It is hard to find panels that cheap because the raw material supply is tight just now. As this clears up in the next couple years $3/Watt should be pretty common (delivered not installed). The other thing that has kept prices high is lack of industrial scale. You can look at page 20 of this report http://www.redrok.com/pvreport.pdf to see that a 500 MW production plant reduces costs by a factor of 4. One of at least two plants of this size going into the US this year is described here: http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/stor y?id=47621. As these crank up,
you should see prices drop even farther. If you want to signup for renting panels from the other plant follow the links at http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html.
Seantor Menendez of NJ has introduced legislation that would deal with the HOA situation with solar power http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/partner/s tory?id=47928. It has also been introduced in the house
by Reps. Cardoza (CA) and Ferguson (NJ). Some states already have this kind of legislation so you might want to
check to see if you are already covered.s -selling-solar.html
--
Rent solar power with no installation cost http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
A typical home needs about a 5 kW peak system to cover its annual power use. At the surface of the Earth you get about a kW (peak) per square meter so at 15% efficiency you need about 33 square meters of panels. That's a little under 6 meters on a side. Granted, 5 kW does not cover your peak draw, but in 41 states and DC you can do net metering http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/03/net-metering.h tml. So, having a really
big yard is not needed unless you want to become a commercial power generator.
s -selling-solar.html
I kind of understand the attraction of space, but you can get ground based solar now for what you are already paying for electricity just by renting it so there is not any need to wait http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
My Dear Wormwood,
It is a very simple thing to get people to do evil. Simply set up a system where no one person is really responsible but rather all effort is bent towards the common goal. Your idea of a coporation to make money will do just as well as any other. You can easily convince them that their duty to their shareholders is much more important than their duty to their employees, customers of the poeple of their town or city and thus induce them to perfrom the most unspeakable acts. Poisoning the whole city with choking deadly gas for example producing a scene that will remind you of my summer house.
But, you will not generally get the result we really desire, recruits to our cause. This is because they will regret the harm they have done eventually once they see that harm is done rather than finding it more and more seductive. Those dreadful ministers or activists groups will some times be able to get them to change their ways. Most of all, they may be kind to one another, helpful if one of them is sick and devoted to their families.
While you may dabble with these constructs, remember that you will do much more for our cause by leading just one of them into betrayal or corruption. Let them feel pride at their cleverness in deceiving those that trust them and you will be well on you way.
--Screwtape
Apple came in for it because they were not responding while others were. They were not singled out.
Think what this will accomplish: all this junk is going to get recycled. That is going to save you taxes since you won't need a new landfill so soon. And, your landfill won't need extra staff to handle that stuff.
Hey, everyone who owes their life to seatbelts say: THANKS RALPH!
"Greenpeace has responded already, demanding more action, specifically, the products being green from the outset."
s -selling-solar.html
If you read your link, they say they want worldwide recycling, not just US recycling. This is not a new request, it was part of the original, and all manufacturers are asked the same.
--
Clean Solar Power fits in your current budget: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
You're exactly right. Greenpeace has been asking for information and Apple has been refusing to provide it. Now, apparently Apple will provide information on what it is doing and what it plans to do. That was co-operative. At this point Apple can be ranked and its progress monitored so long as they keep to their new policy.s -selling-solar.html
--
Get Solar Power with no installation cost: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
The immediacy of the blog entry is part of its poignency, but losing it only closes that avenue of communication. Soldiers come home and speak to their friends about how they feel. The issue of lack of readiness, annoyance at the "not die in vein" rhetoric, and worries that the people there can't accept our help come up pretty often.
These face-to-face encounters carry even more weight as one senses the deep deep concern so directly.
That is quite an entry.
I can certainly understand why public indications of low morale would be a problem since it is the object of the resistance to induce this and providing them with measures of their success might be useful to them. But, to me this is water under the bridge and should go into the lessons-to-be-relearned file. The main effect on morale is reduced support for the war at home and this is a result of obvious incompetence. Secretary of Defence Gates now has an even weaker hand to play as the President chooses divisive politics over unity that could boost morale and so we see this kind of panic response that can only lead to worse problems.
Further to this, the author of TFA is the junkscience guy for FOX. Here is the wiki on him http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Milloy which basically says he's a professional liar.
This is one of the reports I was thinking of: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=223334 &cid=18084338. Might not be accurate given what you say.
Thermometers are included. The article is basically a troll so I don't blame you for not reading it.
I do use a drop cloth when painting but have not had a lot of trouble changing light bulbs. Thanks for the complement, but I doubt my insight is the most penetrating.
I got 6 for $10 at Lowes and these turned out a little brighter than the last batch I bought. Seems to me a drop cloth would be a reasonable precaution if working over carpet. People from California have posted that CFLs are recycled there. Is that happening elsewhere?s -selling-solar.html
--
Light up your life with solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
I sent in a bug report a while back that I could vote for my own submission on the firehose. This appears to have been fixed in a strange way: ;-) the submission turned up in the firehose as already voted. Don't know if it was voted up or
down though.
s -selling-solar.html
In my most recent submission (yesterday on fascism, digg it
--
Vote with your roof: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
This project seems to be aiming at low efficiency-low cost thin film cells which do (relatively) better in the absence of direct sunlight compared to silicon. Yes, winter occurs both because of shorter days and the lower angle of the Sun. You get to compensate for the latter effect (somewhat) by tilting the solar panels. Usually the best (fixed) angle for maximum annual production will be shaded towards the direction of the Sun at noon on the longest day (road construction solstice).
The whole Earth sees the same amount of sunlight over a year. The poles get 6 months of daylight and six months of dark while the equator gets pretty even day-night intervals. So, in principle you get just as much power anywhere just by tilting your solar panel towards the Sun. In practice, even with clear skies, there is a reduction owing to the higher airmass at higher latitude, and with the same amount of cloudiness, there is a higher chance of having a cloud in the way at higher latitude. Also, you need more land area at higher latitude in a compact configuration, such as the planned project, to avoid self-shadowing. For roof mounted systems, further north, the roof pitch tends to be steeper owing to snow so this happens to work out well since you also want solar panels to be mounted at a higher angle.
;-)
Winter in Minnesota lasts all year while never having Christmas owing to the rule of and evil queen
Forty-three cents (Canadian) per kWh is what is on offer to pay rather than what was on offer to sell. And you'll see that it is a fixed duration contract so the power must be bought. You can't really compete with that even if you are cheaper solar.
h tml systems, the utility basically has to accept the power, if they don't then they are penalizing
the customer and net metering laws don't allow that. At some point that also means that the utility will have to sell the power rather than just buying
less from the commercial sources on the grid. I think that by then time of use rates will be pretty common and I'd expect they'll cut rates by a lot to
keep from going broke. That is: charging less for retail than for wholesale whenever net metering systems are covering more than the utility's customers
are using. Their non-net metering customers will get very low retail rates (during that period) but the utility will only have to pay that much as well so they'll
cover costs with their wholesale transactions. Since they control what the net metering systems get paid, they'll be able to undercut any other price on the wholesale market.
This is why I'm writing the blog, to try to get my mind around the changes that abundant renewable energy brings. I think you are correct that price will be a factor, but some aspects of the way renewable energy works now would go against that. For net metering http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/03/net-metering.
Now, with an energy glut, commercial wind and solar will certainly be cutting prices and perhaps nuclear will follow, but as soon as this leads to deferred maintenance, (hopefully) the NRC will be all over them. The NTSB and FAA watch for the effects of price wars on aviation safety to some extent, as an example. So, nuclear power has a hard time cutting prices to compete.
The point is, renewable energy really is free to produce once the investment is made while non-renewable energy has fuel costs and thus operating costs. You have to pay highly trained people to keep them going. A wind farm in bankruptcy may lose a few turbines in a year but the recievers will insist it keep producing with what's left. A nuclear plant in bankruptcy will cut payroll and shut down. All of this is modulo power storage, which is another market for extra renewable energy, but once you have this, you'll have covered what used to be called base load. But base load is what nuclear plants are for. I think that most likely, the decommissioning of nuclear plants will happen before base load is fully replaced by energy storage though.
Fission uses neutrons which do have a finite life time so I suppose that with a very big plant and some magnets you could extract a current when they decay. The gamma radiation might be converted to a current as well since Compton scattering (by definition) transfers momentum to electrons. I kind of suspect you'll get more of what you want with coal http://www.sri.com/news/releases/11-11-05.html. That said, I feel that renewable energy kind of closes down options for nuclear power generation http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/why-renewables -displace-nukes-first.html.s -selling-solar.html
--
Get solar! http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
I'm OK with you up to the 4 kWp number but I think you need to say "month" or something in there to get to what I think is 1400 kWh since you convert this to price. There you'd be assuming 8 hour days rather than 12 hour days though.
s -selling-solar.html
The reason it is a little hard to fit this on the roofs of the houses that it would power is because they are going with lower efficiency panels (which should also be cheaper, I suspect a contract with Nanosolar). The key here is that they've got the land so spreading out a bit is fine. I also notice that they are unwilling to say what their cost is. I'd expect $0.10/kWh (Canadian) or maybe less. They are taking advantage of the high rate that is being payed but I'd guess they could do it for less and still make money, just not great big gleaming piles of money. In NC, small producers are getting (US$0.2 per kWh and liking it a lot http://www.ncgreenpower.org/about/producers.html.
--
Matching your utility with solar power (7 cents/kWh and up): http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
The power absorbed ends up as heat. You could be either increasing or decreasing albedo when you install a solar panel. If you do it on a white roof, then less energy will be reflected to space, on a black roof, more energy will be reflected to space, but both what is absorbed in the panel and what is converted to electricity turn to heat.s -selling-solar.html
--
Solar power with in installation fee: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
This map is for winter time. Summers have longer days in Canada.s -selling-solar.html
--
Rent solar power for what you already pay your utility: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user