Whatever happened to Solar Power?

Factual Questions
81

>> sailor, where art thou?

Oh sorry, I was busy collecting money from my “buddies”.

Actually Robbespiere would do better to talk about things he might know something about (like decapitating people?) or at least try to read the thread and not just come in and parrot a few slogans. I am not even going to attempt to address his post directly as it has been well covered in this thread already.

For the rest of us who have a better idea of what we are talking about I will relate my personal experience with refrigerators. The one I have was in the house when I bought it. It is old and ugly and a pain that needs to be defrosted continually. Everybody was repeating to me “replace it and you’ll save money on energy” thing. Ok, I decided to do the math (this is where people stop reading and scatter):

I hooked up an electricity meter (yes, I am one of those people who, when he finds an electricity meter, thinks he has found a wonderful toy) and had the refrigerator plugged into it for over a couple of years. Results: The refrigerator has a 250w compressor which runs between 20% of the time in winter and 75% in summer for a total of about 1100 Kwh/year. At a cost of 5.267 cent/Kwh this represents about $57.67 /year in electricity.

Now, I looked at new refrigerators. No frost refrigerators would all use more electricity, not less. A similar refrigerator to mine might use 20% less electricity for a savings of $11.50 a year. The net present value of this amount for the next 10 years at 5% is about $78 which is about 1/10th the price of a new refrigerator. Heck, even if the new refrigerator used NO electricity (that would be neat, maybe it was SOLAR!) it would not be worth buying just to save money.

As Anthracite well points out, the electricity use of a refrigerator is a very small part of total household comsumption.

I will not talk about fluorescent as we have already covered them in previous posts (which Robespierre was too busy to bother reading). I wish the people who repeat all those slogans were not so illeterate at math. Maybe we could understand each other then. It is people like Robespierre who vote for politicians who will waste money on feel-good subsidies. I wish they could talk some facts instead.

82

WOW I wonder how I did that double post.
I was off line most of that time.
Anthracite
I kind of screwed up that post. It was supposed to start with your happy dance quote.
The REC gets its power from NE missouri power. A hydroelectric plant. The fear was that they would just shut down the plant and sell off its generating equipment for the capital and raise electric rates. I wish that electric plant supplied my power. It is a lot cheaper in town.The town next to ours also has its own generating equipment. They told REC NO.
Apparently my posts are being misunderstood. I am trying to bring up the point that solar may be worth the expense as an alternate source of heat.Something to use before you turn on the furnace.Something you use to increase the effiency of the furnace.
Passive solar is cheap after the initial installation.
As far as my comments go about sailor it is always a good bet to go with the big guy. You will almost always win.
He knows that there are no numbers that will prove him wrong.That doesn’t make him right however.Or me wrong.

83

>> Apparently my posts are being misunderstood. I am trying to bring up the point that solar may be worth the expense as an alternate source of heat.Something to use before you turn on the furnace.Something you use to increase the effiency of the furnace.
Passive solar is cheap after the initial installation.
Could you provide some numbers for an installation showing it is a good investment? You keep repeating the same generic statement over and over but you do not support it with anything concrete. It is just an expression of your wishes. I can tell you exactly how much solar heat collectors cost to install and maintain because I have such installation in my house. I have told you already the kind of problems it entails. You just ignore all my posts (as well as everybody else’s) and keep on saying “it should work”. OK, we are listening. Please present us your case.

As for your saying I am biased, well, I may be, aren’t you too to the other side? As I said before, this thread is not about me or about you, it is about the facts of solar energy. Do you have anything concrete to contribute on that topic? please!

84

I do not have numbers since the house we live in is not conducive to solar.It would be like blowing in the wind for me to collect numbers.I can tell you that my experiment worked. Simple as it was it worked.

Every sight is different.Solar is sight specific which is why your request for numbers is dumb.

Your numbers mean nothing to the person just down the road.

The system I put together cost as follows.IIRC
Solar glass panel 50. Insulated panel 8.
assorted parts $20.

total cost about $78.

amortize that.

Actually the master plan was to build 4 panels,hook them together and feed the output heat into a room which the cold air for the furnace was channeled.I never got around to finishing it.
At the time we were living in a two story farm house on a hill with no windbreaks. Our most expensive heat bill was $600.00.It was electric heat.The house was insulated with cellulose in the side walls and attic.
I’m not saying that 600.00 was typical just the one I remember. Our current electric bill figures .0748 per kwh.

85

justwannano wrote:

I would expect that if I waltz into any business that’s making money, and I show them a way to significantly reduce the cost of their raw materials, they would trip all over themselves to buy my product.

And another situation - let’s say that instead I show them how their customers can buy something that I’m working on, and their customers will no longer need their product! Would they listen? Some will, some won’t. The ones that don’t are doomed. The ones that listen and figure out how to be the provider of that product will survive.

That is, if the product I show them has any real savings. That’s the reason that solar hasn’t taken off.

86

justwannano, I was not asking for numbers of your particular experiment as that would not be representative. I was talking about large projects that would show the financial advantage of solar power (the thread started referring strictly to PV electricity but I guess we have enlarged it to cover heat collection). the numbers we have been looking at are of commercial installations.

Your experiment may have been very successful but it is hardly something you can extrapolate to large scale operations. Even small kits sold for home use would not be cost efficient.

People like you and me can experiment and tinker and that is one thing but you cannot extrapolate that as a commercial product. I can guarantee you that if you like to experiment and tinker, I do too (as you can see by my previous posts) and I would enjoy trading experiences. But let us be realistic and not think this can be extrapolated to commercial scale.

Even your little experiment which might have been instructive has not been shown to be cost effective. If this was a commercial thing you would have to consider the real commercial cost of materials, installation labor etc, and I can guarantee you by then it would not pay for itself. (I am talking in urban settings, it could be a different case in a cabin in the mountains)

Let’s see, your heat collector provides heat which is low quality energy (as opposed to electricity which is more valuable). I pay about 76 cents/therm for gas which is about 2.9 cent/Kwh. A high efficiency furnace would do better but let us assume 3.4 cents/net kwh (or $1/therm)

Just to recover the cost of materials your experiment needed to give you 78 therms (2300 Kwh) if you are heating with natural gas (or half that if you are heating with electricity). I do not know the surface so I cannot calculate the heat gain but off the top of my head I would say it was not cost efficient for you. If you figure that a similar thing installed commercially would cost the customer 4 or 5 times what it cost you, then you can see it just isn’t going to pay for itself.

A different thing is integrating designs into new construction which do not add cost and yet help with maintaining heat. In general this is a good approach while retrofitting generally does not make economic sense. I believe Anthracite already mentioned this.

By the way, solar panels for heating water are more efficient and are more effective as you heat water year round while you heat space only a few months. This means they yield much more energy.

One other thing is that the house was poorly designed to begin with because using electricity to heat a house is a very poor design. Oil, gas or any other combustible would be much cheaper.

Another problem I have mentioned with solar heating of air or water is the need to dump heat in the summer to avoid overheating damage to the installation.

That your heating bill was $600 or any other figure really makes no difference to our analysis. What we want to know is what heat we get from the installation.

As an example which can not be generalized I can tell you I ocasionally jury rig a stove which is a sheet metal drum which cost me $25. Well, of course this is fun for me and I have burnt a lot of wood and saved a few terms but let’s get real, this is not something you can estrapolate to te general population. In fact, it probably is against every section of the code and would be considered extremely dangerous. I can do it because I know what I’m doing but if aunt Flo wants a stove it’s gonna cost her many hundreds of dollars.

Anyway, I do enjoy discussing experiments and tinkering but I still think (and the experts seem to agree with me) that Solar energy is not ready for prime time yet. Heat collectors might become cost effective sooner or may already be cost effective where energy is expensive or unavailable but it is not cost effective today in urban America. As oil price goes up, solar panels will become more and more attractive.

PV electricity is much farther away from being cost effective and, again, would only make sense where grid electric power is unavailable (satelites, my boat etc)

I believe this is just the state of the art. If you believe this is the result of a conspiracy I believe you are mistaken and it would be impossible in practice for any such conspiracy to succeed.

But I am willing to look at any evidence you may supply to support your views.

87

Sailor
What I’ve been trying to get across to you is that I’m not talking about large commercial enterprises.
Solar will probably never be significant that way. It is site specific. There are too many things that have to be in place before you can get the maximum advantage from solar.My point all along has been that it can be used to increase the output of a furnace.I don’t know of anything else that does that.Even if there were something it would consume either fossil fuel or electricity. The solar panel used as I described costs nothing to operate.
As far as summertime goes it is only a 4x8 box and is extremely portable.You can put it in your garage.
BTW I still have that collector. It is leaning up against the corn crib. It is still transparent although discolored and in amazing shape since it is over 10 years old.

88

CurtC, of course you are right and that is true of every field, not just electricity. Market competition means the suppliers who give the best product at the lowest cost will prosper while those that don’t will fall behind. This is so simple you would think everybody would see it. And yet you can see plenty of threads where people express their beliefs in corporations having extraordinary powers to impose their products on the market, restrict competition etc. it goes against all evidence and yet people love to believe it.

I am always amazed about the generalization. How can you possibly believe all the upper management of all corporations are all greedy, evil people?

I know a guy who sincerely believes all jews are evil and he just does not realize how stupid he sounds when he is saying such generalities about millions of people who are so different from each other.

When people talk about corporations like that it sounds to me just as stupid and prejudiced. How can you possibly believe all jews (or CEOs) have the same goals, the same ideas and are all in a conspiracy to take advantage of the rest of the world. Only someone who is extremely prejudiced can believe that.

These things are not good whether they are directed against Jews or against CEOs or any other group. People are people and generally are doing what they think is right and should be judged individually. There are bad CEOs just as there are bad janitors.

By the way, this reminds me of something else. Some years ago I saw a study about European meat and illegal hormones. A lot of the effort of the EU has gone to helping small farmers who find it difficult to compete against large industrial farms. In Europe there is also this idea that small businesses are somehow better and more honest. But it turns out the study showed almost all illegal hormones and drugs were given by small farms. The family farmer could do such illegal things without much risk of being caught and he was the direct beneficiary of the action. But in big farms, the CEO is not going to sneak in at night to do it and the employees are not going to be cooperative because they do not have anything to gain and much to lose if they are caught. Doing illegal things in a big corporation requires the cooperation of more people and so is more difficult.

I would think this is true in most fields. The image of the small business as a model of honesty while the big business as crooked is just in plain contradiction with the facts. If i take my car to the small garage, the owner has an incentive to cheat me and knows he can easily get away with it. But if I take my car to the Nissan dealer, the employee has no incentive to cheat as he gets paid the same, and the owners who could benefit are not the ones who can do it.

This, of course is a generalization and a simplification but I think the stereotype of big business being bad is just plain wrong. As Anthracite has pointed out, they provide economies of scale and can pollute less etc. And yet, they still have the bad image because they are so distant from us.

Large car manufacturers can make cars better and cheaper than any small manufacturer can and this is true in almost every field including power generation.

There is nothing better for the consumer than free market competition. It is what has made America and Europe what they are today and we all benefit.

89

justwannano, yes i understand you are talking about small stuff but I am trying to show you they just do not pay for themselves in savings to the buyer. What may be a fun project for you is just not cost effective if done commercially for sale to homeowners.

hey, i will be happy to do some number crunching on this. tell me how much the complete kit would sell for, how much it would cost to install, how much heat it would supply and I will do the numbers. You have to understand you need to know these figures, you cannot just say blindly “it works” and expect the rest of the world to take your word for it.

By the way, you realize that you are talking of a project which can be built by a very small manufacturer and there’s no way big business could stop him. My guess is this is something that just does not sell. If it sold, someone would be making it and selling it.

90

It seems everybody got tired of this… except me :slight_smile:

OK, Since I have no real life to speak of, I did some calculations regarding the output of a 4x8 heat collector like justwannano’s.

Since nobody has really shown any interest in the math I am not going to include all the process here but, pretty much what I come to is this:

I would expect such a panel to contribute no more that 8.5 therm (250 Kwh) yearly during the 5 - 6 months of heating season.

In my case, the savings in gas would be $8.5 per year. In the case of electric heating at 7 cents/Kwh it would be like $17.5 (I am not even counting the energy used by fans etc).

If something like this sold commercially would cost $60 / year (a reasonable guess I would think) and produced 8.5 therms it would break even when the price per therm was $7 which is 7 times what it is now. Even then it would not make sense as it would require maintenance, cleaning, space etc. which other sources do not. So, the cost of natural gas would have to be ten times what it is now for something like that to make economic sense to me.

That is why they are not selling these things. You would lose money on them.

Justwannano, contrary to what you think, you probably never saved any money with your experiment. Even if you did, you realize it is not commercially viable.

91

For those who are interested, here’s a report on a recent advance in solar energy. In this case, it’s hydrogen gas produced by a solar power current generated at 18% efficiency. (I’d give a link to the abstract from the journal, but the on-line server for it wants you to pay for it.)

92

dtilque, that is still very low compared to using the sun for heat collection. I found an interesting page about energy conservation and calculations: http://www.ceere.org/iac/assessment%20tool/ARC2244.html

93

At this page http://rabi.phys.virginia.edu/HTW/ there is a question dated September 25, 1999 (they are arranged by dates) about a site, http://ucsofa.com/Free%20Electricity.htm , which promises free electricity and to free us from the monopoly of the grid. The response fron the university site is well worth reading and VERY applicable to what we are discussing. It is quite a bit longer and covers many issues but here is a snippet:

I recommend reading this response in its entirety but also visiting the site that promises free electricity. There is also more about it at http://rabi.phys.virginia.edu/HTW/contributions/free_electricity.html

If you believe in that maybe we do not need solar at all :slight_smile: