mdsolar writes "USA Today is running a pretty good article on solar power that gives an overview of the current state of the industry. Highlight include production costs of $1.19/Watt for First Solar, 40% annual cost reductions over the
last five years, revenues expected to triple in three years, and a prediction for 2014 as the year when solar photovoltaic power plants become cheaper than other forms of generation. From the piece: 'Like wind power, solar energy is spotty, working at full capacity an average 20% to 30% of the time. Solar's big advantage is that it supplies the most electricity midday, when demand peaks. And it can be located at homes and businesses, reducing the need to build pollution-belching power plants and unsightly transmission lines. In states such as California, with high electricity prices and government incentives, solar is already a bargain for some customers. Wal-Mart recently said it's putting solar panels on more than 20 of its stores in California and Hawaii. Google is blanketing its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters with 9,212 solar panels, enough to light 1,000 homes.'"
Solar's big advantage is that it supplies the most electricity midday, when demand peaks.
Solar's big advantages are that it is essentially pollution free, doesn't up CO2, reduces petroleum requirements which means more lubricants, plastics and so on at reasonable prices, reduction of political leverage of oil rich countries, increase in ability to operate independently at every level from national to individual, and over the long term, it costs less.
Combined with ultracaps, hopefully to be seen as practical power storage come this fall (via EEStor [google.com]), the power supply landscape may change significantly in the next decade or so.
Yeah, well said. But let me point out that increase in ability to operate independently at every level from national to individual, while a very real benefit (to society) of solar power is NOT seen as an advantage by the powers-that-be. The energy industry is still fixed on the big-central-plant-generation/regulated-utility-dis tribution model, and there is a lot of money and many careers that depend on the continuation of that model. Solar and other forms of small scale, distributed generation, not all of which is even renewable (e.g. cogeneration, aka. combined heat and power), are a very real threat to those vested interests. Which is one reason (of many) that adoption of these technologies has been so slow.
As it happens, I happen to know a fair bit about this, pal. I've done the numbers for myself, repeatedly, and no matter which way you slice and dice solar power is an economic loser at the moment, both for individuals and others seeking to reduce their carbon emissions, and the sooner more people grasp this the more progress we can actually make at tackling the issues.
As a quick illustration of the point, one of these systems [altenergystore.com] costs $22,610 before freight and installation, and (depending on where you live
Solar energy isn't polution free - it just doesn't add to the horrible high energy radiation coming from that great big fusion plant in the sky. Go and sit outside for a couple hours over midday and see what the sun does to you. If someone was to invent the sun today, he would be sued up the wazoo for causing cancer and other problems...
"Solar's big advantages are that it is essentially pollution free, doesn't up CO2, reduces petroleum requirements which means more lubricants, plastics and so on at reasonable prices, reduction of political leverage of oil rich countries, increase in ability to operate independently at every level from national to individual, and over the long term, it costs less."
Excellent points, but it's advantage is also it's disadvantage. Imagine trying to run a steel foundry on solar power. Now, imagine running a third world steel foundry on solar power. That's the gripe many developing nations have with Kyoto - how are they supposed to enter the 20th century if they can use coal fired power?
Imagine trying to run a steel foundry on solar power.
You mean, like these guys? [qesc.com] Electricity is nothing more than an energy source...
Now, imagine running a third world steel foundry on solar power.
Ok. Where are you going with this?
That's the gripe many developing nations have with Kyoto - how are they supposed to enter the 20th century if they can use coal fired power?
What is the gripe? Unless you're implying (unsaid) that coal is inherently better. Well, for right now, it's still cheaper. But the price of solar cells continues to drop nicely, which is the point of TFA. And, using solar energy means you don't have to invest in Megabux power grids or railroads for the tons of coal to be used.
Pollution free? have you ever seen the process of producing a solar cell? they are hellish toxic to produce. This is what gets me about greenies, they seem incapable of logical thought and of being critical of any process branded environmentally friendly.
"The environmental impact and the safety risk of solar cells are infinitesimally small compared to conventional sources of energy like coal, oil, gas or atomic energy. With the latter, the danger is global (emission of carbon-dioxide) and longterm (for example the problems of disposal of nuclear energy). This is regarding regular operation already. If we think about solar panels running for 30 years that don't produce any pollutants, the environmental damage is obviously kept very limited.
The process of production for solar cells is well developed and tested. From the chemical and toxin point of view, even a mass-production of solar cells will not implicate any significant environmental or health problems."
For a start, why don't you come up with a less biased source then GREENPEACE.ORG... i mean come on give me some bloody credit.
If we were to try to convert to solar now, would end up with exactly the same problems you have with oil production - toxic chemicals released into the environment. solar requires silicon, and that silicon has to be produced in refineries (just google to see the implications of large scale silicon production). once you have the silicon you have to make the cells, which requries cert
No one (even Greenpeace) is saying potentially toxic materials are not involved or other risks (including people falling off of roofs). It's just that they are orders of magnitude less than for running, say, a coal plant for thirty years to make the same amount of power. Here is a US government source which says essentially the same thing: http://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/man_pro_implicat ions.html [energy.gov] "Because manufacturers use a wide variety of processes to make PV cells, a wide range of chemicals--some of them toxic or hazardous--are employed in PV cell production. In terms of worker safety and health, simple protective and administrative measures can be used effectively to protect those who produce PV systems. In terms of the environment, the PV production process produces small amounts of waste materials, but this is minimal relative to the emissions from conventional energy sources.... Most of today's PV cells consist of crystalline or multicrystalline silicon. Silica particles can be released in the mining and refining stage, but these present a hazard only to workers--one that can easily be avoided. Silicon PV module production can include fluorine, chlorine, nitrates, isopropanol, sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide, silica particles, and solvents. According to a report from Utrecht University, "Estimated air emission is maximally 0.16 [kilograms of fluorine] and 430 [kilograms of chlorine] per [1000 megawatt-hours] of electricity supplied by PV modules, which is orders of magnitude smaller than the corresponding emissions of a coal plant."... Although crystalline silicon is the primary material used today to produce PV cells, a growing number of PV products are being produced from other materials.... "
And all this is without even a lot of effort invested (compared to the hundreds of billions spent annually on conventional solutions). Overall, limiting pollution will only get better per unit as production increases and new manufacturing ideas come along (like using vegetable dyes or plastics for PV panels and so on).
Who benefits from FUD being spread about solar power?
For a start, why don't you come up with a less biased source then GREENPEACE.ORG. Ad hominem at it's finest [fallacyfiles.org]. "This fallacy is often introduced by phrases such as: "Of course, that's what you'd expect him to say."
It's okay for percieved bias to cause suspicion, but then you have to follow up with that by investigating the source's information. Bias does not make their information wrong. You have to show how their information is wrong or how they're misrepresenting the facts. The rest of your post goes on abou
As production increases and technology improves, the northern limit of the area where it's economically viable to use solar cells, will expand more and more northward.
I am unclear whether we have the potential to expand facilities in those appropriate areas enough that they could power the entire country well into the future.
Yes, but we don't need a whole lot of solar plants placed everywhere. This map has just a handful of locations marked that if they had solar panels it would provide enough energy for the whole world: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Solar_land_area .png [wikipedia.org]
Granted, those locations are huge, but consider all the empty spaces in the deserts of the world that get tons of sunlight but are otherwise useless. I have seen updated maps with smaller locations that assume a higher efficiency solar cell, since this map only assumes 8% efficiency, and normal panels have about 15% with research being done in the 30-40% efficient range.
I think there's a misconception about deserts. (They generally are not simply dunes of sand. There's a *lot* of plant and animal life in the Sonoran ecosystem, for example). Anyway, where I live, according to my local power company we have up to 17% solar power in the summer. I have two solar cookers which work really well for making soups and sauces. Exactly like these: http://solarcooking.org/images/hflame1.jpg [solarcooking.org]
I also have a roof-mounted solar water heater, part of a hybrid system (I have a gas water heater but it does considerably less work when the solar heater is working, which is almost all the time.) Yes we have hot water at night. The rooftop heater looks like a skylight. Okay, so I live in a desert city with 300 days of sunshine a year. Love it.
They are desert regions - presumably they will have lots of boulders, stones and pebbles, so depending upon the position of the sun during the day, at least half the surface area will be in the shade at any time. Having an array of solar panels shouldn't make that much difference.
Desert areas tend to cool down rapidly at night as well, due to the lack of humidity, cloud cover and foliage.
For a desert area to turn green, it would also need a steady supply of water and minerals.
It's not simply rainfall that determines how lush an area is. Example: northern Australia gets tons of rain, but has very little plantlife. The soil is just too depleted. Rainy areas require a carefully balanced ecosystem (like you get in, say, the Amazon) to rapidly return nutrients from dead plants into the system, or the rainfall will wash them away.
Rainfall is certainly a major factor, but not the only one.
In the desert case, a lack of rainfall is one problem, but a parching sun is another. By putting up shade, you're eliminating the major factor that's drying out the soil from what rain does fall. You're reducing available light for photosynthesis, too, but the lack of moisure is a much greater limiting factor in a desert.
Overall, it'd be a pretty dramatic change. Of course, there's absolutely no reason to "panel the desert", so to speak. With a proper regulatory environment, you can "panel the cities". Perhaps the new slogan could be, "A plug-in hybrid in every garage and a photovoltaic system on every roof."
Of course, solar power only has advantages in certain environments. Almost no power source is universally producible. For instance, only some parts of America can provide significant natural gas resources. Only certain portions are capable of coal or oil. Likewise, there is a limitation on places that can provide significant resources for wind-power or solar-power.
This isn't to suggest that it isn't worth the effort, but I am unclear whether we have the potential to expand facilities in those appropriate ar
Solar's big advantage is that it supplies the most electricity midday, when demand peaks.
I like the advantage (over petrofuels) that its fuel is free, without forcing the US to kowtow to foreign tyrants who sometimes try to kill us, and sometimes need to get rescued from people trying to kill them, and nearly always are at the center of global warfare.
Fuel for solar power isn't free. It is very expensive to expensive to extract it from the center of the sun.
And don't even get me started on the inefficiency of it. More than 99.9% of the Sun's energy misses the Earth entirely! I don't think solar power will ever really take off until we develop giant space based mirrors to cut down on the needless waste of the Sun's irreplaceable hydrogen reserve.
Many people tout solar as the solution to the world's energy problems - yet most neglect the issue of its low energy density... it takes a lot of solar panels to match the power generation of even a small coal power plant let alone a nuclear power plant, etc.
Most people don't want to live in a place that's covered in solar panels and windmills far as the eye can see...
And on a related note, neither windmills nor solar panels are benign - they both have a subtle effect on the environment... there's always a tradeoff with energy generation.
With all that said, for personal / household use solar has much promise, assuming the price can be reduced further, such as panels on roofs, etc to help people augment their energy needs.
Most people don't want to live in a place that's covered in solar panels and windmills far as the eye can see...
As opposed to... suburban rooftops and utility poles as far as the eye can see? Are black shingles really that much more attractive than black solar panels? Are windmills so much more unsightly than utility poles and power lines running everywhere?
All the large-scale wind farms I've seen are in places where there's barely anyone living anyway. I really have to wonder who is complaining about it.
And on a related note, neither windmills nor solar panels are benign - they both have a subtle effect on the environment... there's always a tradeoff with energy generation.
The only one that springs to mind is the industrial processes to manufacture solar cells, and that's bad but seriously, industrial pollution is rampant and people who act like the production of solar cells/hybrid car batteries are a deal-breaker never seem to account for the processes involved in mining coal, building a car, or whatever the status quo is in addition to the pollution created by using said coal plant or ICE car.
Or did you mean something like the solar energy being turned into electricity instead of warming the environment? Because it's all going to be released as heat in the end anyway.
Wind power I'll admit has a subtle effect, as you're taking energy from the wind... Frankly I find it hard to imagine we could put up enough windmills to counter the effect of all the trees we've chopped down, but of course that's just speculation and we aren't putting windmills only where trees used to be.
With all that said, for personal / household use solar has much promise, assuming the price can be reduced further, such as panels on roofs, etc to help people augment their energy needs.
Depending on where you live, solar panels are already a good option if you can afford the up-front investment; they will more than pay for themselves by the time they need to be replaced. Lowering the price will certainly make them even more appealing, and also I think we need to come up with better small (as in household) scale energy storage so that you aren't as dependent on the weather that day. There are a lot of folks working on both problems; neither seems out of reach at this point. I'm very hopeful about the future of solar power.
... it takes a lot of solar panels to match the power generation of even a small coal power plant let alone a nuclear power plant, etc. Most people don't want to live in a place that's covered in solar panels and windmills far as the eye can see...
True, but you can stick them on roof tops. The average suburban roof top can easily hold a few kilowatts of solar panels. You need about 7 square meters per kilowatt (75 square feet) based on current 15% efficient solar panels. So a million homes (not includin
In fact, if you go to western Texas, wind turbines are going up almost as fast as weeds.:-)
But with developments in nanotechnology, we could see a drastic drop in the price of solar panels within the next ten years. A solar panel setup that costs US$30,000 now could cost as little as US$3,000, which would suddenly make home power generation very viable indeed. And with MIT and several private groups working on supercapacitor battery packs built from carbon nanotubes, that also makes it viable to store all that power generated in the daytime for use at night.
But there are a lot more hot, sunny places than cold, sunny places. Say your efficiency drops by 15%, but your daily insolation goes up by 30%... you still win out.
since the first serious calculations were done to determine the feasibility of orbital solar power plants. The results *then* indicated that it was the only economically feasible way to supply the world's future energy needs. Since then, both space and solar cell technology has improved dramatically. Meanwhile, billions of dollars is being sunk into fusion research and there's no expectation that a clean fusion reactor will be developed in the next 50 years.
Point is, for the billions of dollars they are being poured into fusion research, without even the promise of a commercial reactor in the next 50 years, we could have solar power plants running next year.
Meanwhile, while we waste ten times in dollars as the Iraqi oil we're trying to steal on a civil war that we have no reason to be involved in, the EU is on track to achieve 25 percent of their total energy supply from alternative energy.
If we were serious you'd be seeing increases of 1000 to 5000 percent every year.
You will see that solar panel prices bottomed out back in 2003 and have been rising ever since. Demand is exceeding supply thanks to ever more generous subsidies, especially in Germany, which have driven up worldwide price. The truth is that solar costs more today than it has for several years, and costs are still rising slowly. It is a myth that solar prices are constantly coming down.
There were 1.7 GW installed in 2006: http://www.solarbuzz.com/Marketbuzz2007-intro.htm [solarbuzz.com] bringing the world up to about 6 GW. At a typical 5 hours
per day equivilent peak generation that comes to 11 billion kWh per year. World net generation was 16,590.6 billion kWh per year in 2004: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/txt/ptb1116.html [doe.gov], so your fraction should be 0.07%, off by about 4 orders of magnitude. At 45% growth, how long would it take to replace world net generation? Somewhat less that 22 years since 1.45^22=3550 which would imply that more than half of the worlds net generation would be fabricated in the year 2028, with the rest fabricated prior to that year. Since panels last 25 years or longer there would have been
little need to replace existing solar PV capacity by that time. -- Rent residential solar power: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html [blogspot.com]
I think the variations you are seeing at the Watson house are seasonal: http://256.com/solar/graphs/kwh_prod_mon.gif [256.com]. Solar panels degrade over long periods mostly owing to cosmic ray induced defects. They can be recycled though. I expect panels built today to be in service 30 years from now and on slate or tile roofs much longer. When people reshingle though, I think there will be a good chance that they will put on new panels, just for peace of mind, and it will be a toss up if the old panels end up p
If you're buying from your electric company, you don't buy power at all. You buy energy (which would be Joules, Watt-Hours, or, typically, Kilowatt-Hours). If you're buying your own power generation source, then you're very likely buying based off of how much power can be delivered — which is measured in Watts.
Currently - the economic terms are based on how much oil we can pump out of the ground in a given time-frame.
When oil (fossil fuels) ceases to be the primary driver of economies - it looks like solar is poised to take over as the #1 technology (with wind/nuclear/geothermal coming in somewhere next); and solar will likely be a function of square-footage-of-sunlight-per-year. The more land a person owns, in a sunny energy-producing region, the more wealth, over time, that person can create. Simply by covering it with solar panels, the more efficient, the better, and praying for sun. Electricity will be a market, there will always be buyers. Locale will probably produce different market rates, because of transmission losses. People will eventually start floating solar farms at sea, and putting them into space (though those, apparently don't scale DOWN well, you need a certain MINIMUM to beam the power via microwaves, efficiently).
But you're right. The $/kw-h calculation looks quite silly when you have solar power. There was a lot of FUD about solar about 5-10 years ago, that solar cells had a reputation for "wearing out" after 10-15 years, or losing power over time. This caused some solar-opponents to create a $/kw-h calculation; how much power you could expect to get out of a solar cell over the lifetime of the cell. Some even claimed that they cost more energy to manufacture than they'd ever produce. This was dead wrong then, and it's dead wrong now: there were some specific kinds of solar cells made in the 1970's that had defects, with dyes that turned brown, etc. Other solar cells went "bad" when their glass enclosures cracked, or their solder joints failed, etc - all things that could be repaired, or engineered for better longevity. These are no longer issues in any modern solar technology. We don't know about these new nanotechnology or thin-film based solar panels. Only time will tell. But it's not likely that they're going to "wear out" like this. For all effective purposes - you manufacture a solar cell, and it produces electricity "forever".
Trojan 105's are a pretty favorite battery. Or, if your pocketbooks were enormous, you could go with submarine batteries. Single-cell, so 2.3V each, at 5000 or so amp-hours, and they're made to be maintained and kept going forever. Hook 24 of those up in series to your 48V inverter...
Actually unless they have changed Submarine batteries are not meant to keep going forever. The Guppy and Sargo cells had a service life of around two years. They where made for high performance not really super long life. Running light duty cycles they should last for a pretty long time.
Believe it or not, back in high school I built a fairly large battery bank out of (wait for it) kegs. We used salt water as the medium. Does it scale? Probably with some research, but we were able to drive a fairly big CO2 laser with it for 20 minutes.
In areas with the highest electricity costs and the highest rebates/incentives, ROI can happen in 5 years.
In tiered markets, where the higher usage of electricity costs you much more than the base usage, a properly-sized solar outfit can do it in 3 years.
As for taking a loan on your solar outfit, look at it this way: Pay money to some electric corp every month, or spend the same amount of money on your solar cells. In the first case, you'll pay forever. In the second, you'll pay for a while, then get to enjoy the benefits. It's like leasing vs. buying a car.
How many people even live in their houses for that long anymore?
Sure, if you're planning on moving in five years, then you're an idiot to do almost any work on your house. If in doubt, ask a realtor; I believe the investments that tend to help a lot with resale value are things like paint and landscaping, because they improve "curb appeal" a lot, and aren't expensive to do. Solar panels are no different from a kitchen remodeling job in this respect.
Sure, it may add some equity to your home, but not much, especially if the prices DO fall and/or the efficiency of the panels increases significantly during that 10 years. Imagine trying to include your 5 year old computer as part of your home's equity. You're risking a very similar situation with solar.
Apples and oranges. The USA Today article is overstating the rate at which the technology is improving. There's no Moore's Law at work here. It's not like the situation with a computer, where you're guaranteed that it will be obsolete in 5 years.
You're also betting that grid power won't get any cheaper, which may or may not be a good bet, depending on the fuel source of your local power plant.
Where I live (California), the historical trend has been steadily up, in real dollars.
If solar/microgeneration takes off, there could be an abundance of grid power, causing prices to plummet, especially if people start generating more power than they use -- unlikely, but certainly possible if panel efficiencies increase.
No way, not any time in the near future. The number of people who have residential photovoltaic systems installed is extremely small, way too small to lower the market price of power through supply and demand.
especially if people start generating more power than they use -- unlikely, but certainly possible if panel efficiencies increase.
Where I live, the way the deal works is that if you generate more power than you use over the course of 12 months, then you simply don't pay any money to the electric company, but they will never send you a check for the surplus. When you buy a residential PV system, they very carefully size it so that it will cover about 80% of your yearly use. If they sized it too big, it would risk wasting your money by overproducing, which you don't get paid for doing.
There's plenty of arsenic in coal ash. Probably orders of magnitude more than goes into making solar cells, but I'll admit to not having done the math.
Oh, that's right. one of the worst factories ever with regard to the environment; an Integrated Circuit Fab. I like it when hippies talk about how perfect solar is. Let's not forget that we need nasty chemicals like Arsenic to make solar cells.
I work in a wafer fab, specifically in Etch. Contrary to popular belief, it is NOT clean industry, but rather extremely dirty and toxic. Some of the chemicals used in my specific fab for etching alone (both wet and dry etch) include:
The question is, what happens to these nasty materials once they are used? Do they become part of the product and get shipped out the door? Do they get hosed off and recycled for the next batch? Perhaps they get neutralized somehow? Or are they just dumped into the local riv
The grid is actually remarkably efficient for an energy distribution system - it loses only 9% of its energy input. The vast majority of the electrical losses in this chart come from converting heat energy to mechanical energy to electric energy. Converting energy between its various forms is always expensive (those pesky laws of thermodynamics!!)
Lots of solar activity these last few years... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Lots of solar activity these last few years... (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Understatement (Score:5, Interesting)
Solar's big advantages are that it is essentially pollution free, doesn't up CO2, reduces petroleum requirements which means more lubricants, plastics and so on at reasonable prices, reduction of political leverage of oil rich countries, increase in ability to operate independently at every level from national to individual, and over the long term, it costs less.
Combined with ultracaps, hopefully to be seen as practical power storage come this fall (via EEStor [google.com]), the power supply landscape may change significantly in the next decade or so.
Re:Understatement (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
As a quick illustration of the point, one of these systems [altenergystore.com] costs $22,610 before freight and installation, and (depending on where you live
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It's carbon-neutral, unlike the coal or natural gas which probably powers your stove.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Understatement (Score:4, Interesting)
Excellent points, but it's advantage is also it's disadvantage. Imagine trying to run a steel foundry on solar power. Now, imagine running a third world steel foundry on solar power. That's the gripe many developing nations have with Kyoto - how are they supposed to enter the 20th century if they can use coal fired power?
Parent
Re:Understatement (Score:4, Informative)
You mean, like these guys? [qesc.com] Electricity is nothing more than an energy source...
Now, imagine running a third world steel foundry on solar power.
Ok. Where are you going with this?
That's the gripe many developing nations have with Kyoto - how are they supposed to enter the 20th century if they can use coal fired power?
What is the gripe? Unless you're implying (unsaid) that coal is inherently better. Well, for right now, it's still cheaper. But the price of solar cells continues to drop nicely, which is the point of TFA. And, using solar energy means you don't have to invest in Megabux power grids or railroads for the tons of coal to be used.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Understatement (Score:5, Informative)
"The environmental impact and the safety risk of solar cells are infinitesimally small compared to conventional sources of energy like coal, oil, gas or atomic energy. With the latter, the danger is global (emission of carbon-dioxide) and longterm (for example the problems of disposal of nuclear energy). This is regarding regular operation already. If we think about solar panels running for 30 years that don't produce any pollutants, the environmental damage is obviously kept very limited.
The process of production for solar cells is well developed and tested. From the chemical and toxin point of view, even a mass-production of solar cells will not implicate any significant environmental or health problems."
Where is your counter evidence?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If we were to try to convert to solar now, would end up with exactly the same problems you have with oil production - toxic chemicals released into the environment. solar requires silicon, and that silicon has to be produced in refineries (just google to see the implications of large scale silicon production). once you have the silicon you have to make the cells, which requries cert
Re:Understatement (Score:4, Informative)
Here is a US government source which says essentially the same thing:
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/man_pro_implica
"Because manufacturers use a wide variety of processes to make PV cells, a wide range of chemicals--some of them toxic or hazardous--are employed in PV cell production. In terms of worker safety and health, simple protective and administrative measures can be used effectively to protect those who produce PV systems. In terms of the environment, the PV production process produces small amounts of waste materials, but this is minimal relative to the emissions from conventional energy sources.
And all this is without even a lot of effort invested (compared to the hundreds of billions spent annually on conventional solutions). Overall, limiting pollution will only get better per unit as production increases and new manufacturing ideas come along (like using vegetable dyes or plastics for PV panels and so on).
Who benefits from FUD being spread about solar power?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Ad hominem at it's finest [fallacyfiles.org]. "This fallacy is often introduced by phrases such as: "Of course, that's what you'd expect him to say."
It's okay for percieved bias to cause suspicion, but then you have to follow up with that by investigating the source's information. Bias does not make their information wrong. You have to show how their information is wrong or how they're misrepresenting the facts. The rest of your post goes on abou
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Understatement (Score:5, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Solar_land_are
Granted, those locations are huge, but consider all the empty spaces in the deserts of the world that get tons of sunlight but are otherwise useless. I have seen updated maps with smaller locations that assume a higher efficiency solar cell, since this map only assumes 8% efficiency, and normal panels have about 15% with research being done in the 30-40% efficient range.
Parent
Relocation (Score:3)
Re:Understatement (Score:4, Insightful)
I also have a roof-mounted solar water heater, part of a hybrid system (I have a gas water heater but it does considerably less work when the solar heater is working, which is almost all the time.) Yes we have hot water at night. The rooftop heater looks like a skylight. Okay, so I live in a desert city with 300 days of sunshine a year. Love it.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Desert areas tend to cool down rapidly at night as well, due to the lack of humidity, cloud cover and foliage.
For a desert area to turn green, it would also need a steady supply of water and minerals.
Re:Understatement (Score:4, Interesting)
Rainfall is certainly a major factor, but not the only one.
In the desert case, a lack of rainfall is one problem, but a parching sun is another. By putting up shade, you're eliminating the major factor that's drying out the soil from what rain does fall. You're reducing available light for photosynthesis, too, but the lack of moisure is a much greater limiting factor in a desert.
Overall, it'd be a pretty dramatic change. Of course, there's absolutely no reason to "panel the desert", so to speak. With a proper regulatory environment, you can "panel the cities". Perhaps the new slogan could be, "A plug-in hybrid in every garage and a photovoltaic system on every roof."
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Political Power (Score:5, Insightful)
I like the advantage (over petrofuels) that its fuel is free, without forcing the US to kowtow to foreign tyrants who sometimes try to kill us, and sometimes need to get rescued from people trying to kill them, and nearly always are at the center of global warfare.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
And don't even get me started on the inefficiency of it. More than 99.9% of the Sun's energy misses the Earth entirely! I don't think solar power will ever really take off until we develop giant space based mirrors to cut down on the needless waste of the Sun's irreplaceable hydrogen reserve.
Solar is Limited due to its Low Energy Density (Score:3, Interesting)
Most people don't want to live in a place that's covered in solar panels and windmills far as the eye can see...
And on a related note, neither windmills nor solar panels are benign - they both have a subtle effect on the environment
With all that said, for personal / household use solar has much promise, assuming the price can be reduced further, such as panels on roofs, etc to help people augment their energy needs.
Ron
Re:Solar is Limited due to its Low Energy Density (Score:5, Insightful)
As opposed to... suburban rooftops and utility poles as far as the eye can see? Are black shingles really that much more attractive than black solar panels? Are windmills so much more unsightly than utility poles and power lines running everywhere?
All the large-scale wind farms I've seen are in places where there's barely anyone living anyway. I really have to wonder who is complaining about it.
And on a related note, neither windmills nor solar panels are benign - they both have a subtle effect on the environment
The only one that springs to mind is the industrial processes to manufacture solar cells, and that's bad but seriously, industrial pollution is rampant and people who act like the production of solar cells/hybrid car batteries are a deal-breaker never seem to account for the processes involved in mining coal, building a car, or whatever the status quo is in addition to the pollution created by using said coal plant or ICE car.
Or did you mean something like the solar energy being turned into electricity instead of warming the environment? Because it's all going to be released as heat in the end anyway.
Wind power I'll admit has a subtle effect, as you're taking energy from the wind... Frankly I find it hard to imagine we could put up enough windmills to counter the effect of all the trees we've chopped down, but of course that's just speculation and we aren't putting windmills only where trees used to be.
With all that said, for personal / household use solar has much promise, assuming the price can be reduced further, such as panels on roofs, etc to help people augment their energy needs.
Depending on where you live, solar panels are already a good option if you can afford the up-front investment; they will more than pay for themselves by the time they need to be replaced. Lowering the price will certainly make them even more appealing, and also I think we need to come up with better small (as in household) scale energy storage so that you aren't as dependent on the weather that day. There are a lot of folks working on both problems; neither seems out of reach at this point. I'm very hopeful about the future of solar power.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
True, but you can stick them on roof tops. The average suburban roof top can easily hold a few kilowatts of solar panels. You need about 7 square meters per kilowatt (75 square feet) based on current 15% efficient solar panels. So a million homes (not includin
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
--
Rent solar power and save: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html [blogspot.com]
Re:Solar is Limited due to its Low Energy Density (Score:4, Informative)
But with developments in nanotechnology, we could see a drastic drop in the price of solar panels within the next ten years. A solar panel setup that costs US$30,000 now could cost as little as US$3,000, which would suddenly make home power generation very viable indeed. And with MIT and several private groups working on supercapacitor battery packs built from carbon nanotubes, that also makes it viable to store all that power generated in the daytime for use at night.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
45% Annual Growth (Score:5, Funny)
I hope you bastards freeze in the dark.
It's been 30 years.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Seriously (Score:4, Funny)
Also, pigs soar above the frozen wasteland that was hell.
45 percent of 0.1 percent is not much (Score:3, Interesting)
If we were serious you'd be seeing increases of 1000 to 5000 percent every year.
B.S. about price dropping (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.solarbuzz.com/ [solarbuzz.com]
You will see that solar panel prices bottomed out back in 2003 and have been rising ever since. Demand is exceeding supply thanks to ever more generous subsidies, especially in Germany, which have driven up worldwide price. The truth is that solar costs more today than it has for several years, and costs are still rising slowly. It is a myth that solar prices are constantly coming down.
Dude, learn your math (Score:3, Funny)
No, silly, its gonna go up to 0.0000145%
22 years to replace net generation (Score:5, Informative)
--
Rent residential solar power: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:$/Watt (Score:4, Insightful)
It's how much it costs you to get a panel capable of producing electricity at a rate of 1 watt.
If your panel can produce 100 watts, and you spent $400 on it, that's $4/watt.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Doesn't the 24 hours of sunlight per day you get in Europe interfere with your sleep?
If you're buying from your electric company... (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:$/Watt (Score:5, Informative)
Or it WILL have a meaning.
Currently - the economic terms are based on how much oil we can pump out of the ground in a given time-frame.
When oil (fossil fuels) ceases to be the primary driver of economies - it looks like solar is poised to take over as the #1 technology (with wind/nuclear/geothermal coming in somewhere next); and solar will likely be a function of square-footage-of-sunlight-per-year. The more land a person owns, in a sunny energy-producing region, the more wealth, over time, that person can create. Simply by covering it with solar panels, the more efficient, the better, and praying for sun. Electricity will be a market, there will always be buyers. Locale will probably produce different market rates, because of transmission losses. People will eventually start floating solar farms at sea, and putting them into space (though those, apparently don't scale DOWN well, you need a certain MINIMUM to beam the power via microwaves, efficiently).
But you're right. The $/kw-h calculation looks quite silly when you have solar power. There was a lot of FUD about solar about 5-10 years ago, that solar cells had a reputation for "wearing out" after 10-15 years, or losing power over time. This caused some solar-opponents to create a $/kw-h calculation; how much power you could expect to get out of a solar cell over the lifetime of the cell. Some even claimed that they cost more energy to manufacture than they'd ever produce. This was dead wrong then, and it's dead wrong now: there were some specific kinds of solar cells made in the 1970's that had defects, with dyes that turned brown, etc. Other solar cells went "bad" when their glass enclosures cracked, or their solder joints failed, etc - all things that could be repaired, or engineered for better longevity. These are no longer issues in any modern solar technology. We don't know about these new nanotechnology or thin-film based solar panels. Only time will tell. But it's not likely that they're going to "wear out" like this. For all effective purposes - you manufacture a solar cell, and it produces electricity "forever".
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Trojan 105's are a pretty favorite battery. Or, if your pocketbooks were enormous, you could go with submarine batteries. Single-cell, so 2.3V each, at 5000 or so amp-hours, and they're made to be maintained and kept going forever. Hook 24 of those up in series to your 48V inverter...
Actually unless they have changed Submarine batteries are not meant to keep going forever. The Guppy and Sargo cells had a service life of around two years. They where made for high performance not really super long life.
Running light duty cycles they should last for a pretty long time.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not on my roof (Score:5, Interesting)
In tiered markets, where the higher usage of electricity costs you much more than the base usage, a properly-sized solar outfit can do it in 3 years.
As for taking a loan on your solar outfit, look at it this way: Pay money to some electric corp every month, or spend the same amount of money on your solar cells. In the first case, you'll pay forever. In the second, you'll pay for a while, then get to enjoy the benefits. It's like leasing vs. buying a car.
Parent
Re:Not on my roof (Score:5, Informative)
How many people even live in their houses for that long anymore?
Sure, if you're planning on moving in five years, then you're an idiot to do almost any work on your house. If in doubt, ask a realtor; I believe the investments that tend to help a lot with resale value are things like paint and landscaping, because they improve "curb appeal" a lot, and aren't expensive to do. Solar panels are no different from a kitchen remodeling job in this respect.
Sure, it may add some equity to your home, but not much, especially if the prices DO fall and/or the efficiency of the panels increases significantly during that 10 years. Imagine trying to include your 5 year old computer as part of your home's equity. You're risking a very similar situation with solar.
Apples and oranges. The USA Today article is overstating the rate at which the technology is improving. There's no Moore's Law at work here. It's not like the situation with a computer, where you're guaranteed that it will be obsolete in 5 years.
You're also betting that grid power won't get any cheaper, which may or may not be a good bet, depending on the fuel source of your local power plant.
Where I live (California), the historical trend has been steadily up, in real dollars.
If solar/microgeneration takes off, there could be an abundance of grid power, causing prices to plummet, especially if people start generating more power than they use -- unlikely, but certainly possible if panel efficiencies increase.
No way, not any time in the near future. The number of people who have residential photovoltaic systems installed is extremely small, way too small to lower the market price of power through supply and demand.
especially if people start generating more power than they use -- unlikely, but certainly possible if panel efficiencies increase.
Where I live, the way the deal works is that if you generate more power than you use over the course of 12 months, then you simply don't pay any money to the electric company, but they will never send you a check for the surplus. When you buy a residential PV system, they very carefully size it so that it will cover about 80% of your yearly use. If they sized it too big, it would risk wasting your money by overproducing, which you don't get paid for doing.
Parent
Re:Where are PV cells from? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Dude, you're 30 years behind. (Score:4, Informative)
*ahem ahem*
Berkeley Scientists Synthesize Cheap, Easy-to-Make Ultra-thin Photovoltaic Films [lbl.gov]
40% efficient solar cells to be used for solar electricity [physorg.com]
Titania nanotubes could boost solar cell efficiency [nanotechweb.org]
Pink solar cells provide green power on the cheap [engadget.com]
Carbon nanotubes could help make nanoparticle-based solar cells more efficient and practical. [technologyreview.com]
Quantum Dots Enables New Advances in Solar Cell Industry [evidenttech.com]
Green and cheap enough for ya?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The question is, what happens to these nasty materials once they are used? Do they become part of the product and get shipped out the door? Do they get hosed off and recycled for the next batch? Perhaps they get neutralized somehow? Or are they just dumped into the local riv
You misinterpret the chart (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent