Could solar panels ever be feasible?

[GreyICE]

Well the reality, according to the WSJ in 2005, was that solar panel installations were growing -- so I would have to assume that at least some home owners found it worthwhile. The same article also mentioned net metering in 39 of the 50 states -- so, presumably at least some utility companies installed the hardware to allow for microgeneration of electricity to be shared in the grid.

Sure, and the market for homeopathics is doing pretty well too. Standards of evidence are standards of evidence.

The fact that it IS working in this case, documented fact, means that the onus is on them to either demonstrate why this is a special case (an exception to a general principle) or demonstrate that this case, although not special, is small scale and will not scale to universal application.

In some cases, the question is more along the lines of "Whose buttocks did you pull those numbers from" of course

 

[linusrichard]

Interesting. Sort of like during the 1960s when Ma Bell owned the telephones in your home and charge you a monthly rent for them.

Sort of like this, yes, but sort of in reverse. Half in reverse, maybe. The way I imagine it is that the agreement between the utility and the homeowner gives the utility the right to put its panels on the homeowner's roof, and then the utility is responsible for the homeowner's roof maintenance. No money would actually change hands. The electricity generated belongs to the utility, and the utility would sell it the same way it already does. This would be done city-wide or state-wide, wherever it's sunny enough to be at all efficient. Which, as technology develops, may well be everywhere.

I don't really see why this wouldn't work really well.

One thing I like about this idea is that the utility can do it gradually, as its budget permits. If one year it has enough in its budget for 10 panels, it can do 10. If the next year it can do 20, that's fine, or 1, that's fine too. Every little bit adds more green energy to the grid, reducing the demand for energy from non-renewable and dirty sources.

 

[Confuseling]

Arguably the problem there is that if the panels are cheap enough for the companies to not mind having their investment spread over millions of people's roofs, then they aren't the thing holding up the installation in the first place.

Perhaps better to just offer so called feed-in-tariffs, or government subsidised energy prices for the the micro scale producer selling to the utility, to push people into investing into semi-mature technology, then looking after it themselves.

 

[quarky]

The 'selling back to the grid' fantasy is mostly fantasy. A modern home in New jersey couldn't hope to get all their power needs from a roof covered in pv panels.

(maybe if it was south facing roof. and a passive solar dwelling)

Its not that hard to do the math on this question.
We simply can't afford teenage girls hair fetish.

 

[mhaze]

Perhaps better to just offer so called feed-in-tariffs, or government subsidised energy prices for the the micro scale producer selling to the utility, to push people into investing into semi-mature technology, then looking after it themselves.

You mean Share the Cost of Bad Ideas?

 

[Confuseling]

The 'selling back to the grid' fantasy is mostly fantasy. A modern home in New jersey couldn't hope to get all their power needs from a roof covered in pv panels.

(maybe if it was south facing roof. and a passive solar dwelling)

Its not that hard to do the math on this question.
We simply can't afford teenage girls hair fetish.

Probably true, in a sense - it isn't economical to sell PV electricity, at the moment, against that generated by large centralised production. But that doesn't mean that microgeneration doesn't have a place, and that we can't encourage its uptake by market distorting subsidies until economies of scale or advancing production techniques take hold, and it can be left more to fend for itself.

Unfortunately, conventional solar cells use many heavy metals to create, and are very hard to dispose of too. They are probably an environmental detriment in almost all circumstances, just like early electric vehicles; cradle to grave producing more pollution than oil. Their purpose is as technology development field-work.

Mhaze - there isn't anyone insane enough to have believed purely and solely in market forces since before the Great Depression. So if your argument is against photovoltaics... erm... you're going to have to actually present it. I think basically you just don't like anything or anyone that suggests you can't go around burning fossil fuels forever. It's boring.

 

[Mitchell314]

To be fair though, there are an awful lot of variables. And it's true to say that the present power grid is designed more or less as a 'hub and spoke' system of centralised production and trunk distribution, where microgeneration would be distributed, and look almost totally different. Patching microgeneration into the present system can be awkward, because the infrastructure is far from ideal - but the plus side is that means if we're serious about it, there are probably major efficiency gains to be made.

On the matter of The Electric Grid (US at least), there is much to be wanted any any situation (centralized, decentralized, or a mix of the two).

 

[Mitchell314]

I think one big problem with these kind of discussions is that far too many people see this as a dichotomy. What we actually need is both. Distributed generation has some advantages and is a great idea for some purposes, but there are other things that really need large, centralised generation as well. And it's not just users who may find distributed generation less than ideal, there are many ways of generating power that benefit greatly from economies of scale, and are often not even possible on a small scale. Nuclear, geothermal and tidal power, for example, all need large, central facitilities, and are likely to be three of the major contributors to power in the future. Covering buildings in solar panels and wind turbines is a nice idea, but even if it turns out to be practical, it will never be the whole answer.

We would have to go through both if we even tried to reach non central solutions. So I'd say we'd settle on a compromise, if we choose such a route.

 

[Kaylee]

Sure, and the market for homeopathics is doing pretty well too.

Ouch, that hurts!

Standards of evidence are standards of evidence.

True of course.

The fact that it IS working in this case, documented fact, means that the onus is on them to either demonstrate why this is a special case (an exception to a general principle) or demonstrate that this case, although not special, is small scale and will not scale to universal application.

In some cases, the question is more along the lines of "Whose buttocks did you pull those numbers from" of course

I was assuming that the utility companies, and the state and federal govts were making prudent decisions (as described in the WSJ) based upon what made sense financially – but maybe they didn’t.

 

[Kaylee]

Sort of like this, yes, but sort of in reverse. Half in reverse, maybe. The way I imagine it is that the agreement between the utility and the homeowner gives the utility the right to put its panels on the homeowner's roof, and then the utility is responsible for the homeowner's roof maintenance. No money would actually change hands. The electricity generated belongs to the utility, and the utility would sell it the same way it already does. This would be done city-wide or state-wide, wherever it's sunny enough to be at all efficient. Which, as technology develops, may well be everywhere.

I don't really see why this wouldn't work really well.

One thing I like about this idea is that the utility can do it gradually, as its budget permits. If one year it has enough in its budget for 10 panels, it can do 10. If the next year it can do 20, that's fine, or 1, that's fine too. Every little bit adds more green energy to the grid, reducing the demand for energy from non-renewable and dirty sources.

Well usually most renters don’t take care of any type of property as well as most owners. I think the fact that AT&T use to own all the telephones that were installed in people’s homes in the ‘60s and that the system still worked OK was an aberration.

Aside from that I see no reason why microgeneration wouldn’t work well either.

I just think it would work better if the home owners were financially responsible for the equpment on their property though -- perhaps with the exception of the meters!

Keep in mind that I could never be an engineer even if my life depended upon it.

 

[Furcifer]

The other way in which solar technology could easily achieve parity is if it meets other requirements. Say we never get any better with efficiency or per-unit cost, but we make them robust and flexible enough to serve as roofing material -- waterproof, insulating, fire-resistant, etc. It'd become standard practice overnight.

No good engineer misses an opportunity to satisfy multiple requirements. When this will occur for solar, however, I can't guess, but I believe it will happen.

Products like this already exist:http://www.oksolar.com/roof/
They're really just cost prohibitive right now, at least in new homes.

 

[arthwollipot]

I think one big problem with these kind of discussions is that far too many people see this as a dichotomy. What we actually need is both. Distributed generation has some advantages and is a great idea for some purposes, but there are other things that really need large, centralised generation as well. And it's not just users who may find distributed generation less than ideal, there are many ways of generating power that benefit greatly from economies of scale, and are often not even possible on a small scale. Nuclear, geothermal and tidal power, for example, all need large, central facitilities, and are likely to be three of the major contributors to power in the future. Covering buildings in solar panels and wind turbines is a nice idea, but even if it turns out to be practical, it will never be the whole answer.

You make a persuasive argument, and I concede the point.

 

[The Atheist]

...For common everyday electricity use (say, at least 30-40% homes) to contribute significantly (at least 40% of energy demand) to society?

Dunno about 40%, but significant? Yes.

And not too far away. (He says, being the owner of Solar Power Ltd in NZ)

I'd love to put solar panels of some sort on the house. But it seems perhaps the investment would be better spent on other ways?

Alas, to be honest, just now, there are lots of better options. We were hoping oil was going to $200, but it looks like that's going to take a while longer yet.

Still, most of the sales come from people who want to be doing something positive rather than for cost-effectiveness reasons.

But the next few years may see a huge expansion of the cheap variety. Technologies such as organic (or thin film) photovoltaics are heralding a new era in which you can print sheets and sheets of the stuff, and stick it all over buildings. How quickly this will happen is anyone's guess, but absent some major new power source rendering it unnecessary, it's probably a fair assumption that costs will decline massively and it will become commonplace.

I think the parallels with all other types of consumer appliances will ultimately apply to solar cells - early models expensive and useless; technical hitches gradually ironed out; finally mass-produced and cheap. I think we're at the end of stage II of that process and hopefully stage III is just around the corner!

We have the technology today to start doing things like this. Why aren't we?

As noted, simply $$.

The 'selling back to the grid' fantasy is mostly fantasy. A modern home in New jersey couldn't hope to get all their power needs from a roof covered in pv panels.

(maybe if it was south facing roof. and a passive solar dwelling)

Its not that hard to do the math on this question.
We simply can't afford teenage girls hair fetish.

There are several advances which do make it possible to sell back to the grid, but climate is important. With moving cells following the sun, lots of houses generate enough power to re-sell it to the grid.

Most of Aussie could do it, and some places in Canada do, so I'm guessing NJ is pretty cloudy?

(I can always afford fetishes with teenage girls in them.)

 

[Kaylee]

Most of Aussie could do it, and some places in Canada do, so I'm guessing NJ is pretty cloudy?

Actually no, I probably should have said NJ isn't known for being warm most of the year (instead of sunny). But I've been doing some more reading about pv, and it looks like that isn't important?

ETA -- I must have hit an odd button, I can't get rid of the green arrow now.

 

[Cuddles]

This seems to contradict Mr. Corradi's results as quoted above where his solar panels produce enough electricity to cover all of his home electrical needs AND give him a monthly income of $113.00 (170*4/6).

The explanation is quite simple really. The entire cost of solar panels occurs right at the start, while the benefits are spread over the whole lifetime of the panels. If you can't afford the initial cost, it doesn't matter how much money you can make later. It's the same with many other things. A mortgage is usually cheaper over your whole life than renting, but if you can't afford the deposit, it doesn't matter how much money you'd make later. This is essentially Sam Vimes' theory of boots (cf. Terry Pratchett), which points out that while a rich person can spend $50 on a pair of boots which keep their feet warm and dry for 10 years, a poor person who can only afford cheaper boots will spend $10 every year, and still have wet feet. I'm sure there's some kind of real economic theory that says the same thing. This is why there's so much fuss about cheaper solar cells at the moment rather than more efficient ones. It doesn't matter how efficient solar panels are if most people still can't afford to buy them, but if you can make them cheap to install, then even if they only have a very small benefit they'll become much more popular.

The other problem is the question of whether you actually make money at all. $100 per month sound great, but if you had to pay $20,000 at the start and the panels only last 5 years, it's still not worth it. If you look at the numbers in the article you linked, he paid out $50,000 and has an effective income of $250 ($110 actual income, $140 saved in bills). This means it will take just under 17 years for him to break even. Lifespans are generally estimated to be around 20-25 years (which I have to admit was longer than I thought), so he will make some profit towards the end, but not anywhere near as much as implied. Of course, a lot of the costs were paid by grants and incentives but those won't be an option for a lot of people, and I suspect a lot of it will be loans that have to be paid back. In any case, the whole point is to get solar power able to stand on its own - anything can turn a profit if you subsidise it enough.

 

[Confuseling]

I suspect it's even worse than that; an economist would compare that return to "normal profits", or what you should be able to expect to gain on $50k over twenty years. The fact is if you put it into a government bond or something, and factored in inflation, you'd still probably end up richer without installing solar panels.

We really need subsidies, and we need to harass our politicians to do something about it.

[Re: an actual economic law describing boots - closest I can think of is "The banks will only lend you money if you can prove you don't need it." Or perhaps "The meek shall inherit the Earth. But not its mineral rights." ]

 

[quarky]

People lie a lot concerning their grooviness. And popular magazines pick up on it. I used to write for several.

A house that was designed for it, in New Jersey, for instance, might be able to supply their power consumption with PV. This would likely not include transportation.

And it would likely include a lot of maintenance and fiddling. Its not economicly sound, where alternative energy sources, like fossil fuels are available...at least, in my case.
(Much as I love the technology)

I agree that incentives are required, beyond the hype.
The other fuel sources we've come to know and love are also highly subsudized.

Solar power doesn't have a chance, unless it designed in, from top to bottom.

(Teenage girl's hair-do maintenance is enough to queer the deal)

 

[Confuseling]

We do have to be slightly careful about how we phrase this; it isn't economically sound if you ignore the amount of environmental destruction reaped by continuing to burn fossil fuels. Factor environmental preservation in as a global public good, and it becomes economically sound, but a market will fail to make the decision correctly.

Won't make money != not economically sound.

 

[Mitchell314]

Another factor is equivalent daylight hour per day, which varies by location. With places that don't have high values (a high value being above 6), I was thinking a cheap way to increase daily energy income is by using reflectors to focus light to a plane, where the panels should be conveniently located. Somebody more knowledgeable should correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that more light head on = more power until it's clipped at some maximum value. So, if you look at the power output of a panel over a day, it should graph to some downward pointing parabola (that I use in the loosest terms), with the top truncated. Add in the reflectors (IDK, aluminum on some cardboard contraption?), and the parabola should naturally be shifted "up." However, the top is still shaved, so in reality the main effect is more "operation" time, where the effect is more pronounced in cloudier, higher latitude places. Probably not as effective in terms of power per area utilized, but it would be cheaper to extend AFAIK.

 

[The Atheist]

Another factor is equivalent daylight hour per day, which varies by location.

That's why they need to turn to face the sun. Even a small deviation from 90^o makes a big difference.

Your reflectors will have the same problem and be messy as hell.

....a cheap way to increase daily energy income is by using reflectors to focus light to a plane, ....

You want a solar-powered plane already?

Jesus, it's hard enough finding ones to put on houses.

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One other point is that houses aren't the best use of solar cells - as noted earlier, unless they're built for the purpose - while commercial buildings, warehouses and the like with reasonably flat roofs are ideal. (but most of them need strengthening)