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Just want to post a reminder that solar cells are already efficient enough and cheap enough to be cost effective for power generation in many regions of the wor
by jartelt 8y ago
Just want to post a reminder that solar cells are already efficient enough and cheap enough to be cost effective for power generation in many regions of the world. I am all for continued research to improve efficiency or decrease cost, but sometimes articles like this one lead people to believe that solar cells are not yet cost effective. They already are!
- nihil75 8y agoDo keep in mind that while they are "cost effective" - it takes a few years to recoup the initial investment. A more efficient panel will repay its value sooner, or will require lower initial investment. Second, the possible applications - Low efficiency cells will support low power appliances, Or you'll need more of them / storage for more power hungry applications. A more efficient cell enables new applications where weight is an issue.
- polskibus 8y agoIs there a calculator that can take into consideration the weather over entire year?
- ip26 8y agoHave you examined PVWatts?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- DoctorOetker 8y agoI'd also like to know where I can find decent insolation maps
- FlyMoreRockets 8y agohttps://www.nrel.gov/gis/solar.html https://www.nrel.gov/gis/solar.html
- Retric 8y agoIn terms of power / weight solar can already beat many IC engines. The only thing more efficient solar brings is less packaging and use in extremely confined spaces like the roof of a car. PS: The car thing should start taking off in a few years. A Tesla model 3 is 4.6 meters long 1.85 meters wide so 8.7 meters square. At 40% your talking about around 30kwh per day which could really extend the range and for less used cars minimize recharging.
- gpm 8y agoWoah, 30kwh =~ 210 km... that could eliminate charging on even moderately used cars.
- microcolonel 8y ago> In terms of power / weight solar can already beat many IC engines. What? That is an extremely strange oranges-to-bananas comparison but rolling with it: a Honda B16A7 (not considered a particularly weight-efficient, or weight-inefficient IC engine) weighs ~183kg and produces 118,000W continuously in the standard configuration. A Talesun TP660P-235 (a reasonably efficient, reasonably light solar panel) produces maybe 212W intermittently under reasonable conditions, and weighs 20kg. So, charitably, 212W / 20kg = 10.6W/kg, and 118,000W / 183kg = 645W/kg. For a newer Toyota 2AR engine, it's something like 133,000W / 150kg = 887W/kg Again, I have no idea how you thought of this comparison, but a common IC engine produces around 60x more power per kilogram than a solar panel.
- rightbyte 8y agoWhy is weight an issue when we are talking power plants for housing? Here's a 8.3 kW diesel generator (6.3 kW generator) from Home Depo: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Boss-Precision-Products-Inc-Portable-Generator-2-Speed-12-HP-120-240-Volt-Diesel-Motor-with-Single-Cylinder-Vertical-4-Stroke-Air-Cooled-DY8500LN-D/306061038 https://www.homedepot.com/p/Boss-Precision-Products-Inc-Port... 3900 USD. 367 lbs + fuel = 180 kg + fuel http://www.nordensolar.se/produktdetaljer/solceller-luxor-solar-265w-poly/ http://www.nordensolar.se/produktdetaljer/solceller-luxor-so... One random 265W solar panel, you need 31 off them, one is 18,6 kg gives 582 kg of solar panels to get to 8.3 kW (obviously you wont get 8.3 kW cont. from them). Not counting inverters, mounting rackets etc. So for equal weight and way more power you have one 8,3 kW diesel generator and 402 kg of diesel. 1 kg diesel is ca 12 kWh energy. Lets guess 30% efficiency gives 1447 kWh electricty for the same weigth. That's about as much as the solar panels will produce in 2,4 months assuming 129 kWh/m2/year. According to this site it's 3,14 USD per watt solar panel installation for consumers. https://news.energysage.com/10kw-solar-systems-compare-prices-installers/ https://news.energysage.com/10kw-solar-systems-compare-price... 8300 * 3,14 = 26 000 USD. So, you can buy a generator and 22 000 USD of diesel (about 22 000 litres or 22 000 litres * 10kWh * 0,3 efficiency = 66 000 kWh electricty) for about the same price. Or about what the same dollar in solar panels will produce in 8 years with way lower peak power.
- vezycash 8y agoYou are right. But let's humor the pitch. What happens if solar gets to 60% efficiency and costs - 20cents per watt?
- nihil75 8y agoThat solar-powered plane that circled the globe can carry three times as many people ;)
- nihil75 8y agoBut seriously - The energy density of sunlight is around 1KW/m2 at sea level. So at 60% efficiency you get 600 watt - almost 1 horsepower (~750watt). That's enough to power a scooter, and with no batteries!
- pipnasti 8y agoDo you realize how big a square meter is?
- petra 8y agoGiven that often, cars park outside most of the day, could they charge enough , enabling cars with much smaller batteries(for going to work for ex.) sold meaningfully cheaper - without needing creation of a charger network, which is a huge barrier?
- gregknicholson 8y agoIf Sono Motors' Sion lives up to its description, it's approaching usable for commuting using only solar power. https://sonomotors.com/sion.html/#st-viSono https://sonomotors.com/sion.html/#st-viSono Edit: Ah, this car is mentioned in the article. Good!
- SideburnsOfDoom 8y agoFrom that site: > This in turn means that up to 30 kilometers’ additional range can be generated per day in Germany through solar energy I suppose that 30km does cover a lot of commutes (15km each way), although "up to" is a notorious weasel word.
- simion314 8y agoStill could be good if the surface area available is limited.
- brownbat 8y agoJust to footstomp this, there are other costs that are already beginning to dominate the analysis for solar, like customer acquisition costs. Convincing someone to attach something to their house has significant costs. Like, "over $2000 per install" significant.[0] Other soft costs, like land acquisition and taxes, still play dominant roles in many projects.[1] The naive assumption is that solar succeeds when there's lots of sun and it's all just physics. But these other factors, like, say opportunity costs (the cost of available substitutes), are why you're often better off installing solar in Alaska than Florida.[2] Theoretical physics are great, but at this point I'd be far more excited about big ideas to deal with the messy economics side of solar generation. An announcement that some sort of "solar council" was going to pursue a national marketing campaign to drive solar adoption would be huge news. Or Elon deciding that strip malls were his new target, to drive installation of solar on every commercially leased roof, which would reap huge efficiencies of scale in local installation costs over residential. Or, the cheesy TED talk clincher would be: the next big solution isn't always about electrons, sometimes it's about people. [0] https://www.solarreviews.com/solar-leads/customer-acquisition-costs-in-the-solar-industry-2017/ https://www.solarreviews.com/solar-leads/customer-acquisitio... [1] https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy17osti/68925.pdf https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy17osti/68925.pdf [2] https://solarpowerrocks.com/solar-basics/how-much-electricity-does-a-solar-panel-produce/ https://solarpowerrocks.com/solar-basics/how-much-electricit...
- onetimemanytime 8y agoOK, can you just buy a solar heating panel? You and your best friend can install it...depending on location you can easily get hot water for 6-10 months a year. That's quite a savings. You don't have to solve everything today ;)
- lstodd 8y agoSolar heating panel? A bunch of wooden/plywood boxes, some glazing for them (can actually reuse thrown-away window panels), a bit of plumbing with PP pipe (ridiculously lego-like easy), some kind of top tank (a common steel drum?). And some making sure the roof/attic floor doesn't collapse, which usually is not a problem. This can be _build_from_scratch_ in a couple of weekends with a best friend. But for the construction codes. And unions. It's so low-tech, so I wonder why I haven't heard of 19th century installations. Me, I actuially built two in places where construction codes are not an issue. And have seen functioning installs dating from 1950s. I don't think it even makes any sense to mass-produce heat boxes the way the solar-electric panels have to be. It all can be either made on site or included into the house design from start. That's maybe why you can't buy solar heating off the shelf.
- baron816 8y agoThe real breaking point will be when solar is so cheap that it costs less to replace a coal or natural gas plant than it would be to continue running it.
- ams6110 8y agoWell you also need to solve the storage problem. Your solar plant will not replace the coal or natural gas plant at night or on cloudy days.
- atupis 8y agoJust convert electricity to hydrogen.
- Brakenshire 8y agoYes, actually it already is cheaper to build new solar or wind than run existing plants, at least in some situations. As you say intermittency and time of day is the issue. Although I think we should just reflect lower costs in time of day tariffs. I suspect there are a lot of use-cases where people would happily shift demand to save money. For instance if you could just put your clothes in a washer dryer, and leave it to handle the cheapest time. Or air conditioning which creates ice earlier in the day then uses the cache later. Provide the tariffs, open the market opportunity, and see what technologies emerge.
- Godel_unicode 8y agoSo you agree with GP that the storage problem is currently a problem and needs to be solved.
- PuffinBlue 8y agoControversial statement alert: The storage 'problem' doesn't really exist. Do we 'store' electricity currently? No, we just generate it all the time and it's 'used' straight away. Well, what we do technically now 'store' will continue to be stored if using wind/solar (e.g. pumped hydro 'Electric Mountain' in the UK). Shall we also pedantically say we current 'store' electricity in the form or chemical energy in gas/fossil fuels or whatever? We can use that definition I suppose. Even with that definition no leap to any new 'storage' method actually needed if we look at the functional output required to keep the system operating the same way it does now. You just need need to have enough renewable over-capacity to generate enough electricity to meet the 24h cycle. Which is functionally what we do now. The "it's always windy/sunny/tidal somewhere" solution is the same as what we do currently, we just put our hands over our eyes and ignore the 'energy security' implications of not producing enough oil/gas to meet our own needs so it feels like somehow what we have now is more certain. That's not to say it wouldn't be more efficient to store electricity and release it as needed. But just like now what would solve the problem is over capacity with enough resilience to feed the 24 hour cycle. Can that be done with 'just' wind and solar? I don't know,I guess not. Nuclear would seem a good addition to the mix, and tidal or wave power. But it seems like we should at least approach the problem openly without hamstringing ourselves worrying about 'storing' electricity being something we absolutely must 'solve' before renewables can be relied upon.
- agumonkey 8y agoI only wish we'd have less ~toxic PV cells production. So far silicon requires CO2 and chlor- compounds. Anyone with 20%~ efficiency and a clean manufacturing process is rich for the next millenium.
- smaddox 8y agoYou do realize that table salt is a "chlor- compound", right? Yes, refining silicon requires the use of dangerous chemicals. No, that does not make it "dirty" in the way that burning coal is dirty, i.e. expelling carcinogens into the air.
- agumonkey 8y agoI know but still.
- ben_w 8y agoNo, not “but still”. Water is one oxygen atom from being bleach. Chlorine is metabolically essential. Chemistry doesn’t care about buzzwords. If you don’t specify what exactly is bad about the industrial handling of whichever chemicals actually are toxic in this case, you’re just flag-waving, not helping.
- agumonkey 8y agowhat buzzword, the cleaner the process the easier it is to produce anywhere, the easier it is to use solar instead of fossile fuel. I just forgot the actual name: tetrachlorosilane when I typed my first comment To avoid this http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/08/AR2008030802595.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03...
- bsder 8y agoUm, you do realize that silicon fab lines generally recycle practically everything in terms of waste materials? It used to be that the waste material from processing was more pure than the actual industrial infeed material. So, the first thing that semiconductor fab lines would do would be to take their "new" industrial material and feed it into their "used" line for reprocessing. I think this has changed as the industrial sources have gotten better, but I suspect that recapture is still almost perfect.
- sfifs 8y agoThis misses the investment context which leads to companies choosing coal oil and gas over solar. The limiting factor on deployments continues to be "what to do when the sun doesn't shine bright". Night for starters and in a lot of the world, you have whole seasons where the skies are overcast nearly all day (monsoons). If you anyway have to couple solar with something else to make up for the variability in power generation (largely fuel based because Hydro and nuclear are massive government led projects) and you have to invest in expensive and bulky power storage to handle even the nights, why not pay a little more incremental money and get a slightly bigger fuel based power plant.
- jamesrcole 8y agoIt's also important to realise that, in any given situation 'cost effective' doesn't necessarily mean 'affordable' (or affordable-enough to lead to the people installing them). The people need to have the available funds, etc. It may save momey but that's not an immediate payoff. Any increase in efficiency vs costs will help with that equation.
- kumarvvr 8y agoImproving efficiency means lower footprint per kW of installed capacity. People are now viewing solar in terms of area of installation, contract with power company, etc. Even in rural India, the idea that solar is cheap has crept in. Farmers are buying solar power pumps across many states.
- zmix 8y agoIt's not just about costs. It's about size! The higher the efficiency, the less solar cells you need. This has impacts on environment (solar cell farms), adds possibilities for miniaturization (what, if a vehicles rooftop could feed all the energy needs of said vehicle or, at least, constantly refuel it?), mobile device chargers (could be even become the outer hull of a battery, so you just need to place the battery in light to charge it), small cells, that produce high energy, could be made part of clothing (must not be this tech, I am thinking about miniaturization in general). Possibilities seem endless...