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Solar Panels so expensive
- Thread starter toc
- Start date
'Like I said, you come up with the plan to transfer my energy needs completely to solar, and show me a payback period of 5 years and I'm in.'
Today I checked with one solar water heater company and found that end of the deal I might have to give away $5K just for the 300 Litre Solar Water Heater along with installation costs. The costs are too high for average household to get into energy conversion and choose the solar mode.
It might really help to have LED lights at $60 a bulb to run at 5W and provide 75W lighting. These can last upto 10+ years. Once the LEDs cost comes down, it will be very beneficial to have them.
Today I checked with one solar water heater company and found that end of the deal I might have to give away $5K just for the 300 Litre Solar Water Heater along with installation costs. The costs are too high for average household to get into energy conversion and choose the solar mode.
It might really help to have LED lights at $60 a bulb to run at 5W and provide 75W lighting. These can last upto 10+ years. Once the LEDs cost comes down, it will be very beneficial to have them.
The point is currently some nations are enjoying the high prices of oil and they do not want any other energy source to prop up. Good, profit parties should and have to go around the world in different countries and cultures. I cannot imagine powers like Russia and Middle Eastern nations deprived of their oil earnings/profits. There is little to speak of otherwise in these regions. Russia might have some commodities but they cannot replace the earnings from oil. Other than commodities, does Russia have any other industry to boast of or rely upon. These are the times, Russians should plan and efficiently implement some project that would help them earn well even when commodity boom is not there.
However, my main fear is that the the higher oil prices might keep going high if no substaintial alternative source is found and the end result will be Global Depression and more so when US$ is badly threatened with correction and China is predicted to crash in the stock markets.
If US goes into recession, China will surely crash and so will the US$ and these and such events can lead to global economic crisis. If we look at things from accounting point of view, then we find that US is long ago gone bankrupt and the state is rapidly worsening. Dollar devaluation is only way to bring its balance sheet into some sort of sense and reduce the everyday economic and social pressure on itself.
However, my main fear is that the the higher oil prices might keep going high if no substaintial alternative source is found and the end result will be Global Depression and more so when US$ is badly threatened with correction and China is predicted to crash in the stock markets.
If US goes into recession, China will surely crash and so will the US$ and these and such events can lead to global economic crisis. If we look at things from accounting point of view, then we find that US is long ago gone bankrupt and the state is rapidly worsening. Dollar devaluation is only way to bring its balance sheet into some sort of sense and reduce the everyday economic and social pressure on itself.
I recently read an article on geo thermal heating and cooling. From what the article described it seemed like a fair alternative for those who aren't in prime solar spots, and for those who are in the high solar markets. One catch was the cost as always, and unlike solar it doesn't get as much of a tax credit, or rebates or other stuff thrown out there for those who try alternatives.
Quote from toc:
Can anybody with engineering or science background explain as to why the solar panels are so expensive like in thousands just for the water heater.
To answer the original posters question - photovoltaic cells - which I assume are the ones you mean - are expensive because of the current processes used to make them.
Silicon is fairly inexpensive in and of itself. When you want to make a PV cell, you need to have very pure Si to start with and then "dope" it with another element (like Galium) so it can work like a battery. It's expensive to make very pure silicon - which is required in the more efficient PV cells - and then dope it "flawlessly".
When you scale up from the little tiny cells like on a calculator, to the bigger cells you run into materials engineering problems; stressing, microfractures - the bigger the sheet, the more pronounced the problems, and harder to overcome.
One of the problems with actually using silicon based solar cells, is that they require sunlight to work. As the temperature of the Si cell increases, it's internal electrical resistance also increases and lowers its efficiency.
There are PV solar cells other than silicon based - such as organic dyes which operate in a manner somewhat similar to photosynthesis. I'm somewhat surprised that they haven't become more common than they are, but here in the US we aren't very friendly to energy sources which don't involve a company making continuous profits from end to end...
-Au
Quote from Hydroblunt:
It takes less than 10 years, sometimes less than 5 years to pay back on PV, depending on where you live. Don't worry, with electricity deregulation, you soon will wish you bought them early. Solar panel price is actually decent, it can potentially go even higher. You have to be realistic, it is warrantied for 20-25 years and their potential life is projected to 40 years, if not longer. Just based on electricity you can justify a big chunk of the price, but then there are the other dynamics.
As for pumping water in a water tower, via Hydroelectric style, just not efficient. The numbers do not really work out. Does not make sense on large scale generation either. The water tower technique is the least favorable out of the "old" techniques of preparing for peak loads.
Best schematic created so far is PV with Fuel Cell. Only problem is the fuel cell and the lack of promise for mass fuel cell usage. Other than that, the most logical step is grid connected distributed solar, which helps out during key peak loads, hence decreasing reliance on gas/coal/oil.
Looks like you might have assumed a tax credit on the solar to get the payback, or maybe the costs have come down, or maybe competing rates are higher now.
As for the hydro to convert solar to baseload, no its not very efficient, but its cheap, especially compared to fuel cells, I'd think.
Using solar to feed the grid is great where they have laws forcing utilities to pay lots for it.
Quote from thriftybob:
Looks like you might have assumed a tax credit on the solar to get the payback, or maybe the costs have come down, or maybe competing rates are higher now.
No I did not assume anything, the tax credit & the tax incentives are there and very real. They have been utilized in some very interesting ways by those who are clever enough to think outside the box instead of limiting yourself to the notion of how solar is too expensive. If you were in early, you could have worked out a solar system almost for free.
Now if you really want to get technical, do some projections of electric rates. Fact is that in deregulated states, it will rise above inflation. When you really plug in the numbers, you will get a different picture.
Just based on electric rates, the payback of a solar system is not under 10 years. But there is more to it than just electricity. That's why the market price for solar is what it is, because the demand is there from the nations & states where it makes sense.
Solar is not the answer either, just a piece of the puzzle. It is more versatile than wind however, and has lower maintenance costs. Actually it has the lowest maintenance costs of any technology.
As for converting solar to hydro, you confirmed, it's not efficient. So it's not really cheap, because you are using more energy to store less. Which means you have to put up significantly more capacity than needed, because you are spending so much energy to store it for peak loads. Same issue as with storing it through batteries.
I liked the fuel cell & solar combination, some guy out in NJ did a pilot project for his house. It's just not scalable and pretty expensive because of the fuel cells.
Personally I think solar is here for the technically minded people who want to go to the trouble. You can build solar air heating chambers on the south side of buildings and circulate the warm air, you can heat water with solar, you can capture wind energy, you can completely cool a house, even in the Mojave Desert without a swamp cooler or central air, you can build trellises and grow vines over your house to shade it, you can do it all at low expense for the most part.
I was in a house in the Mojave Desert that was built to be energy efficient. The guy borrowed ideas from the middle east about blocking the sun coming into the south facing rooms in the summer to cool the house and opening the shutters in the winter to warm the house. He built it on a thick concrete slab which had air passages built into it. At night he ran a squirrel cage fan to cool the slab. The house was framed with 2x6's so that more insulation could be put inside the walls than if framed with 2x4's so it maintained it's internal temperature very well. His house temperature was very well controlled. It was cool in there on a day when it was so hot out that car door handles burned your hand. It was quiet in there too, no fricking central air noise. He did that with technology that was available for the last what, 150 years? Before that you would have to hire a guy to run the squirrel cage fan at night with a bicycle or something.
It costs $500/month to cool the same size house with central air and $200 to heat it with gas. So what have they been building for the last 30 years in the Mojave Desert since that fuel efficient and quiet house was built? Stupid f^^^ing 2x4 framed houses with central air, what would you expect?? They don't even circulate air from the attic to warm the house in the winter. Meanwhile people are concerned about the cost of fuel and the pollution.
There is no science involved in decisions in the US. The building industry does not give a rat's posterior about the environment or fuel costs apparently, or about the homeowners overall costs so they resist changes. Did Al Gore do anything about this situation all his 8 years in office? Hell no, he allowed the forests to be burned up reducing the carbon sink and spewing millions of tons of pollution, maybe billiions for all I know, into the air and now he is selling carbon credits.
I wonder if a fuel efficient house would even sell if it's initial cost was higher? Do people think that far ahead or do they even understand the basic idea of fuel efficiency regarding their dwelling? Industrial buildings in the Mojave Desert are no better, you might expect industry to make better decisions but apparently they don't get it either.
Whatever.
I was in a house in the Mojave Desert that was built to be energy efficient. The guy borrowed ideas from the middle east about blocking the sun coming into the south facing rooms in the summer to cool the house and opening the shutters in the winter to warm the house. He built it on a thick concrete slab which had air passages built into it. At night he ran a squirrel cage fan to cool the slab. The house was framed with 2x6's so that more insulation could be put inside the walls than if framed with 2x4's so it maintained it's internal temperature very well. His house temperature was very well controlled. It was cool in there on a day when it was so hot out that car door handles burned your hand. It was quiet in there too, no fricking central air noise. He did that with technology that was available for the last what, 150 years? Before that you would have to hire a guy to run the squirrel cage fan at night with a bicycle or something.
It costs $500/month to cool the same size house with central air and $200 to heat it with gas. So what have they been building for the last 30 years in the Mojave Desert since that fuel efficient and quiet house was built? Stupid f^^^ing 2x4 framed houses with central air, what would you expect?? They don't even circulate air from the attic to warm the house in the winter. Meanwhile people are concerned about the cost of fuel and the pollution.
There is no science involved in decisions in the US. The building industry does not give a rat's posterior about the environment or fuel costs apparently, or about the homeowners overall costs so they resist changes. Did Al Gore do anything about this situation all his 8 years in office? Hell no, he allowed the forests to be burned up reducing the carbon sink and spewing millions of tons of pollution, maybe billiions for all I know, into the air and now he is selling carbon credits.
I wonder if a fuel efficient house would even sell if it's initial cost was higher? Do people think that far ahead or do they even understand the basic idea of fuel efficiency regarding their dwelling? Industrial buildings in the Mojave Desert are no better, you might expect industry to make better decisions but apparently they don't get it either.
Whatever.
Quote from toc:
It might really help to have LED lights at $60 a bulb to run at 5W and provide 75W lighting. These can last upto 10+ years. Once the LEDs cost comes down, it will be very beneficial to have them.
Don't know about this. Several yrs ago people predicted that LED bulbs would become more popular by now, but I still don't see them for sale except at specialty online stores. You can't get them at the hardware store. They're 60 times as expensive as a compact fluorescent but only 4x as energy efficient, that's probably why they won't catch on for many decades.