At least, if you’re talking about photovoltaic panels at every scale. On large scales, other technologies can be viable.
There can also be differences depending on what the limiting factors are. You can get more efficient panels, but they cost more. If you have lots of real estate, you’re probably better off going with cheap, low-efficiency panels, and just getting more of them, but if space is at a premium, you might want the more efficient ones.
And if your large scale “installation” is distributed over a very large geographic area, then you get a much smoother power curve, since it probably won’t be cloudy everywhere at once.
In principle, yes; in practice, not so much. Solar thermal could only ever be practical at large scale due to the costs of doing anything at thousands of degrees and the complication of multi-axis mirror trackers. So one could argue that there’s some scale where it makes sense. But the solar thermal plants that have been built haven’t been so great compared to photovoltaic. And they’re probably as good as they’re ever going to get, whereas photovoltaic can still drop in price.
At any rate, my point is that you can’t just build a hydroelectric dam that’s hundreds of feet tall like a normal one but 1 inch wide, which is what you’d need if you want it to scale properly. Instead, people end up with head heights of a few feet, which makes poor use of the water supply and capital equipment.
Yes. It was a whirlwind of a day, and we bought the system. Lot’s of information.
I think our grid tie in charge is $7 a month. Not going away, and it’s not gonna get cheaper. But that’s peanuts considering a 3700 sq. ft. house with air conditioning, a hot tub, and some day electric cars. Don’t really want the hot tub. We shall see…
I have seen a small scale hydro setup that appeared to be working well. I don’t have any numbers, but it was for an off-grid ranch in remote Idaho mountains. Water was piped from a spring on the hill high above. So plenty of height with no dam needed. Not a common case.
Yeah, trying to look at numbers for a system here, didn’t have enough height difference (head).
Friend of mine is in charge of a system for a small town. They pipe the water up to a reservoir when power costs are low, when power costs in early night go up, they let er rip.
Come to think of it, a pipe going up to a high reservoir is, for a lot of purposes, basically a 1-inch-wide dam… If you already have the high reservoir, of course, which you might but probably don’t.
Of course what you really need is a high reservoir that is filled from higher yet.
Yes, there is the concept of pumped storage. But comparing the efficiency of pumped storage to the efficiency of a naturally filled reservoir is like night and day.
But I totally agree w your point that a high reservoir & drop pipe is equivalent to a very narrow dam.
I believe that these types of systems are more commonly a “solar power array or system”. I’ve never heard of anyone getting their own solar system, which more commonly considered a group of celestial planetary bodies orbiting around a star.
Regardless of the nit-picking, and pedantry about my choice of words, I’m quite excited.
This is pretty much the best solution to help our planet (that’s where we all live for those that want to question that). Oh, I should say that EACH person can do. Or can try to do (for those that want to nit-pick).
It’s helps better than getting an electric car.
Working from home is also big. I’ve cut my miles down to less than half. No commute.
The fewer miles means that our infrastructure is much less in need of repair.
Instead of my driving 50 miles a day, wasting everyone’s time and money.
I’m getting in before Trump’s BBB takes the solar energy credits away (those are tax credits for those that want to nit-pick, we all get solar energy every day)
And sure, It’s gonna cost $ up front. But I’m a geek, I’ll enjoy seeing how much it’s saving. The new meter will allow me to see how many watts each panel is providing.
It’s an exciting adventure for my wife and I. In sort of a backwards way. Instead of the wilds of 11,200 feet in elevation, we are in a nice subdivision. Large yard, open space behind us.
A large reason we had to move is our age. My blood oxygen saturation was to the point where I need oxygen at the elevation we where at. Plus, the snow we had to deal with. It’s crazy. Now I just mow grass at my leisure.
This was not directed at anyone in particular, sorry redpoint5, but it looks like I responded to you.
This is great! I hope you end up loving the system
As someone who’s worked in the industry on and off over the years, a home PV system is something I’ve long wanted for myself… it’s just hard to do that without also being a homeowner. (There are ways, but they’re hassles and nowhere near as satisfying.)
If we ever buy a house, that’s gonna be one of the first things we add. The wattage efficiencies have improved soooo much in just the last decade; it’s quite incredible how much power they can put out (thank you, advanced Chinese manufacturing). And home batteries are an everyday reality now, available from many manufacturers and no longer just an exotic Tesla specialty. Exciting times
Heh, anecdotally, that was my very first job in the industry… arguing over what to even call those darned things! We were doing SEO (search engine optimization) for a solar company to try and figure out what most people would actually search for when they were looking for home solar. We spent months agonizing over dozens of variations of “solar panels”, “solar PV”, “home solar”, “photovoltaics”, “system” vs “array”, etc. and ran months’ and months’ worth of tests to pit the phrases against each other.
If I remember correctly, it basically boiled down to having some variation of “home/house” and “solar” together. Whatever you say after “solar” — whether it’s array or panels or module or system or PV or anything else — didn’t really matter much compared to just having the word “home” somewhere in there.
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Heh. When i started in GIS, it was called AM/FM. Automated Mapping and Facilities Management. Worst acronym in the world.- “So you’re in radio?” Sigh, here we go.
Trying to explain spatial anlysis is still hard for some to grasp. The easiest explanation is always - “I make maps on a computer.”
Good friend managed a warehouse storing PV panels, or arrays or whatever. He got a system put on his house 12 years ago. The panels I’m getting put out three times the energy. They work in our solar system. I am moving but not too far.
The grid gets used as a battery, at the expense of rate-payers who will pay more for electricity as dispatchable generation costs increase to accommodate non-dispatchable power.
Utilities love it because their profits are usually capped as a percentage of operational costs, so the only way to increase profit is to increase cost, plus they get to pretend they single-handedly saved the world.
*I have solar installed in my PNW location, afforded only due to 3 different subsidies. I’m under no delusions about how dumb this is with regard to “saving starship earth”.
Are completely isolated solar installations a thing? I’m thinking, say, of solar panels wired directly to an air conditioner, with neither panels nor AC wired to anything else. This would, of course, decrease the convenience, but it would also massively simplify the installation: You wouldn’t need to worry about storage or phase-matching or any of that, and usually when it’s too hot, it’s also sunny, so the AC would still work when you need it. Or maybe put in a big switch on the AC, so it could connect to the solar or to the mains power, but never to both at once, so even in the uncommon case where it’s hot but not sunny, you could still run the AC.
As I understand it, in some climates, AC is the dominant consumer of electricity, so even a simple system like this could have big advantages.
Well, off-grid systems are a thing. They use PV arrays and/or wind turbines to maintain a charge on a bank of batteries. This system, in turn, can power DC and AC loads. DC loads can connect directly to the batteries if the voltage matches, or through DC-to-DC converters (SMPSs) if the voltage needs to be changed. AC loads are powered through an inverter (which converts the DC battery voltage to AC).
Converters & inverters have losses, of course, which means some of the energy ends up as low-value heat. But the biggest drawback is the bank of electrochemical batteries. Batteries are big, heavy, expensive, and go bad after a while. And some of them need to be off-gassed.
