The inverters are just part of the total Solar Panel install. They are the solid state devices that convert the Solar Panel’s DC power to a steady sync’d up 60hz AC to work with the grid.
In 2003 or so they were still fairly expensive. They have dropped a lot over this brief time and increase capabilities and bells and whistles. Someone mentioned them above and I was just pointing out their cost at least in now nearing insignificance.
A 75% efficiency wouldn’t go against any fundamental physical laws, but I still wouldn’t believe it.
I’m guessing that what they mean is that they get 3 or 4 times as much energy per area of actual photocells, but that’s not really relevant, since the whole panel structure is still just as big. Technology like this might plausibly make a panel cheaper, but you’re still not getting any more energy out of it. And as a general rule, when a company doesn’t understand its own product well enough to get the hype right, I don’t trust them to do anything else right about it, either.
One other practical point: They’re making the optics out of acrylic? Acrylic is really, really good at building up static charges, and semiconductor technology is, as a general rule, vulnerable to static shock. I wouldn’t be surprised if these things burn out at the drop of a hat.
Yeah, the problem with solar isn’t just cell efficiency. We can live with inefficient cells if the cost is right.
And by ‘cost’, I mean the installed cost of an entire system. That includes installation, maintenance, storage, hardware to connect it to the grid, and all the rest. An ‘efficient’ cell that requires complex sensors and mechanical devices to keep it aligned with the sun may not lower overall system cost at all.
What we really need is a robust photovoltaic material that can be embedded in roof shingles, applied to the surface of buildings and cars, or even made part of a road bed. Give me a material like carbon fiber that is strong, light, and can be molded into whatever shape I want to mold it into. Give me photovoltaic fibers that can be spun into cloth or mixed with an aggregate to make shingles.
I don’t see solar power ever getting to the point where it’s providing power on an industrial scale from a big plant and providing any more than a tiny fraction of our power needs in that way. But I can see a ‘solar shell’ car slowly recharging its own batteries any time it’s in sunlight, lowering its cost of energy by 10%. I can see people choosing to solar shingle their houses when the solar shingles cost $500 more than regular shingles and generate $200 in electricity every year. I can see high rises voluntarily using solar shading for all the windows if it adds $5,000 to the cost of all the windows but powers fans that cut the cost of air conditioning the building on summer days and reduces building energy cost by $1,000 per year. I can see a solar road bed material of very low efficiency but also very low cost, generating enough power during the day to power the traffic lights and LED low intensity lighting at night. This would be especially useful for remote roads - highways where the curves are illuminated by low-intensity LED lighting, for example.
Little increments, spread across large amounts of surface area because the cost is low. Over time, we could find huge amounts of surface area have actually been covered with solar materials and we generate a significant portion of our power needs from it. But we would also develop new uses for power that’s widely available off the grid, like the road lighting.
Duh. :smack:
My lame excuse-- note that my posting time was waaaay past my usual bedtime.
How much of the world has the correct location/prevailing conditions for it to work very well year-round? Sunlight is so weak that people who live at latitudes above 35 degrees north can’t even make vitamin D from sun exposure November to March…
I can see people being very resistant to investing tax money into the development of the necessary grid infrastructure considering that if it was like current power distribution they wouldn’t be getting much benefit from it if they lived far from where it works (in the US solar would probably work best in California, who power only intersects with 1/3rd of the country at the moment, something that wouldn’t change if solar became more feasable).
Currently, the biggest strains on our power generation system in the US are hot summer days in the southern part of the country, when everyone’s running their AC. So even if solar only works well in the summer, during daytime, in the South, it’s still going where it can do the most good.
This. It’s only an improvement if it produces the power for less money than it did before.
From xenophon’s 2009 link:
Will they deliver on his expectation and will it perform as promised? I won’t hold my breath but what if? FirstSolar has claimed the $1 per watt too and other thin film makers are targeting lower. And as that WSJ discussed they are all just trying to make it through the year.
A clever system but it does not seem to be a game changer, at least not at this point.
I should point out that the US Department of Energy had a goal of getting the cost of solar cells down to a 50 cents(?)-a-watt by 1990. I have to assume that was for 10kW array, but it never was clear to me what the quantities and price breaks were. Did they reach that goal?
In 1986, one instructor teaching PV technology said that ARCO Solar was offering an economy-of-scale of a $1.00/watt if you decided to install a megaWatts worth of panels.
Acknowledged in the very quote you wrote this to. Yes, it won’t work everywhere, at all times, but that doesn’t automatically make it worthless.
This is true, but misses the fact that much of the Northern US, especially the NE US(most dense population-wise), doesn’t use electricity for heating. Heating is done with oil or natural gas. We may still be tied to older energy sources for that purpose. Grid usage isn’t a clean mapping to energy demand.
Still, highly efficient solar panels might make terrestrial solar practical instead of space-based solar, which has been the best bet in the past. I’d welcome that change.
Enjoy,
Steven
True, but I fail to see the relevance.
I’d guess that the relevance is that you’d not only have the capital costs of putting in even a highly efficient solar system but the additional costs of putting in a whole new heating system as well. Heating oil and natural gas require a furnace…which wouldn’t use electricity and so would have to be replaced.
-XT
Why? Did you throw away all your energizer batteries after they started putting lithium ion packs in your cell phone? Solar does not need to meet 100% of the energy requirement of the country. It only has to be useful sometimes, in some places, during some conditions in order to be viable.
This is what it is. From HyperSolar’s FAQ:
(bolding mine) and
So, bottom line:
(a) don’t believe press articles on anything vaguely scientificky, and
(b) the thread title should be: Company thinks that maybe they can reduce the amount of silicon in a solar sell by 50%. Game changer?
They were talking about heating. If my house is heated with a furnace then going to solar isn’t going to help at all with that, since it doesn’t use much if any electricity.
As for the rest of what you are saying, it has to be cost effective and give a good ROI. I don’t think that solar will ever get even close to meeting 100% (or even 50%) of the countries energy needs. It’s more a niche power supplier. However, it will certainly be part of the energy mix in the future (I’d LOVE to see solar just do 10% of our total energy needs). But I’m with Der Trihs on this one…if we REALLY want to go green and reduce CO2 emissions then we need to really start developing nuclear. It should be our main focus right now and we should be building nuclear plants like crazy. That and focusing on clean coal.
Don’t get me wrong, I have solar panels on my own house, and if they make them more efficient with less ROI I’d be more than happy to buy new ones. Of course, I live in a place that gets a lot of sunlight every year (and I also have an all electric refrigerated air and heat pump unit).
-XT
I don’t know what Mtgman was talking about, of course, but I wasn’t talking about heating, I was talking about cooling. Which is, so far as I know, essentially all done electrically.
Sorry then…my bad.
-XT
That’s true, but the standard for the question in the OP wasn’t “viable” it was “game changer.” I guess it depends on what the OP meant by “game changer.” If they meant the whole energy usage of the US, then no, this is too small a drop in too large a bucket. The energy needs don’t map cleanly to the electrical grid, as evidenced by the widespread use of non-electric energy in places like the Northeast for heating. If they were just talking about current electrical usage(which will almost certainly change in ways we don’t yet foresee) then it could make a substantial difference, but I wouldn’t consider it a game changer. I can already choose to buy green power from my electric company. To be a real game changer you have to do more than just take on current uses of the electric grid.
Enjoy,
Steven
On the other hand, you could look at it in terms of the solar power game, rather than all of electrical generation as a whole. Right now, solar power is practical only in a few small niches. A big jump in efficiency and/or a big drop in price could make it practical for many applications in many places. That’d be a change in the solar game.