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Solar panels are fairly set and forget. No moving parts. For wind curious what kind of maintenance is needed
by bushbaba 4y ago
Solar panels are fairly set and forget. No moving parts. For wind curious what kind of maintenance is needed
- ilyt 4y agoI'd imagine once per year or two, any consumables (grease, maybe occasional bearing replacement) would be cheap so you really would be mostly paying for time of someone proficient to do it.
- dont__panic 4y agoWhere I live, I wonder how they'd interact with heavy wind, ice, and snow. I imagine during the winter months you'd have to de-ice them, and potentially clear away wet, heavy snow. Whenever a Noreaster or similar strong wind comes through, I wonder what the chance of damage is -- presumably they automatically shut off if the wind becomes too strong?
- mywittyname 4y agoI'm surprised to hear that these don't have built in heaters for de-icing. If you drive through the great plains states, you'll pass hundreds of these going far as the eye can see. They can't require that much ongoing maintenance, because it would be untenable to do so at that scale. I get that these are different designs, but the fundamental constraint of being low maintenance has to be a design requirement.
- jansan 4y agoTo be fair, those weather conditions are not optimal for solar power, either. Regarding strong wind, some wind energy technologies are self limiting, like the savonius rotor. I have no idea how the approach mentionen in the article handles strong winds.
- tantalor 4y agoFrom the article: > Aeromine said... the patented system is motionless and virtually silent Edit: This is just a quote from the article! I'm only trying to provide context from the article to the above comment. There's no need to signal your disagreement with this quote by voting on it.
- wongarsu 4y agoJudging by the 30 second clip they show it's motionless in the same sense as dyson's fans are bladeless. The motion and blades are less in-your-face, but still present.
- zardo 4y agoBy motionless they mean something other than "no moving parts" as it has a turbine connected to a generator.
- bushbaba 4y agoIt has motion. The cylinder rotates. All boils down to how long that mechanical part will last prior to needing to be replaced.
- readthenotes1 4y agoImagine if it had no motion! It would appear to fly off at supersonic speeds as it ignored -earth's rotation -earth's movement around sun -solar system's movement around the galaxy -galaxy's drift through the universe (Sorry "no motion" is like a claim out of a Dilbert cartoon)
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y agoWe are obviously operating with the planet as our reference frame.
- throwaway894345 4y agoI mean, solar panels degrade with time. I've heard "30 years" bandied about, but I've also heard that a lot of Chinese-manufactured solar panels rated for 30 years only last 5-10 years (that may have been specific to Australia, I don't recall).
- photochemsyn 4y agoChinese-made monocrystalline silicon panels are expected to have extremely long lifetimes (25+ years with no degradation) relative to thin film types (Cd-Te, etc.) However, another main issue is quality encapsulation of the panels; if done shoddily this greatly shortens the lifetime of the panels. Practically, look for manufacturers who have the longest guarantees. https://solaranalytica.com/solar-panel-encapsulation/ https://solaranalytica.com/solar-panel-encapsulation/
- Tangurena2 4y agoWhen I lived in Denver, our data center would sometimes have HVAC trouble because cottonwood tree seeds would clog up the fins of the roof-top heat exchangers. They look like white fluff and some years would cover lawns looking like a light dusting of snow. The worst year, the fins were covered (on one side) with a solid white felt that clogged the fins enough to cause the HVAC to blow circuit breakers and shut down our data center (which was mostly a DR site for other branches of the corporation).
- hinkley 4y agoThe moving parts of solar panels are the dust and the cleaning equipment needed to remove it.
- dahfizz 4y agoWhere is this true? Rain would be more than enough to clean solar panels.
- hinkley 4y agoApparently not. You’re supposed to clean them. Pollution tends to be sticky, and I’m sure etching the glass probably doesn’t help either.
- bushbaba 4y agoImpact of not cleaning is minimal. Maybe 10% at worst. There’s been multiple studies that show the cost of cleaning is greater than improved efficiency for home owners.
- hinkley 4y agoThere are studies that can say anything. A lot of green power on the West Coast. Do you have a study that looks at the effects of soot particles accumulating on solar panels? Or pollen for that matter? I've washed my car more in the last three years than in the entire rest of my adult life.
- pencilguin 4y agoPanels laid out in deserts accumulate dust that can cut production by 50%. This mainly just means the desert is a dumb place to put a solar farm. But ignorant investors love the idea of desert solar farms, so there is plenty of money being wasted building desert solar farms.