Replies to post #205492 on Zeev's Turnips Patch-No Politics (ZEEV)

[lee kramer]

You guys blow me away with your knowledge; so much so that I feel ike a dummy.

[occams_razor]

Zeev,

Thanks for the welcome. You propose some interesting thoughts. Here's an article that details the costs of producing 20% of our electric power from solar photovoltaics.

http://www.saintmarys.edu/~rtarara/ENERGY_PROJECT/2003/SOLAR.htm

The cost with the voltaics and maintainance accounted for is cheaper than we currently produce electricity, but not much

$0.074/ kWh vs. $0.10/ kWh. That was assuming 90% savings from present costs due to economies of scale.

I think solar has great potential to replace fossil fuel generated electricity, but I would guess the cost of turning that electricity into hydrogen and distributing it to be a big extra. Gasoline is about 4.5 cents kWh at $1.60 a gallon I think.

[James T Kirk]

What part of the spectrum do solar cells use? Just asking because the shorter wavelengths would lose intensity in Death Valley due to the thicker atmosphere (below sea level). Do solar cells use a particular part of the spectrum more than any other?

There was a proposal awhile ago about building giant solar collectors in space and beaming down the energy as microwaves. I guess one of problems is if the beams ever went off course some city would get fried.

[brainlessone]

i have used solar for many years now. if anyone mails me privately I can tell them my experince

watch out for konarka technologies.

current hybrid commerical panels cost about 5 dollars a kilowatt/hour in full sun at noon and have an efficiency of about 15 to 16%. if mounted on watt sun trackers you can get another 20% output per day just by facing the sun more exactly. the panels are rated at sun at noon in june more or less, so actual output tends to be less.

much much cheaper technologies are on the way: I have heard estimates of 1 dollar a kilowtt which is the japenese goal

In any calculation of solar you must add the costs of pollution to the cost of current production technigues, and use a more macro calculation. this reduces the real cost of solar.

solar only has about a 20 year lifetime: the panels degrade with environmental exposure. and temperature effects are massive: solar production decreases with heat so a collector in aspen in the winter will produce twice the output as one in the desert. this is a big design challenge now

for a big farm to work you just have to use super conducting cabling to the grid.

right now, it is cheaper for me to use electric heat than gas because during a sunny day, I am pumping kilowatts out to the grid