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FunCouple5280 -> RE: The realities of renewable energy. (5/7/2013 7:42:47 AM)
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FR~
Sam- You keep bringing up sunpower on this thread and others..They are what they say they are but at more than 2x the price per Watt of most 16% efficient panels on the market, so they make your payback curve even more long term. The 40% efficient stuff are gallium arsenide panels aka space grade solar. A regular PV system would cost 100x per watt out of those, so no payback there. However, you will point out you that you can put a small chip of it into a concentrator and get systems that are nearly the same cost per Watt. However, there is a problem, when you go to concentrators, you have to track the sun. You have to do it accurately within 1-2 degrees. This means you can't just stick crap on a roof, you add the limited reliability of a mechanical tracking system, you get no power generation with even light cloud cover, and you need land to accommodate a moving system.
The name of the game is $/Watt. Conventional PV has all the techy stuff whipped. It is all improving and will continue to do so. Conventional PV 5 years ago was usually at module efficiencies of 14% and cost several $ a watt. Today they are less than a$/watt and regularly get 16% or higher in efficiency. Sunpower is also incompatible with all other equipment on the market other than their own proprietary crap because they positive grounded. They live off gov contracts and do not compete well in the marketplace. Plus they are assholes, for years we tried to work with them on developing some off-grid products and they just refused....Who refuses to work with someone who can get you a premium on your product????
JLF~
It is not in its infancy, its past being a toddler. The reality is it the cost is much closer to parity and continues to fall. FFs are finite resources that continue to get more costly. Even if AEs stop getting cheaper, the inflation of FF will eventually pass them in cost. Remember FFs are a limited resource, AEs are a technology based energy system.
What you have completely wrong isn't the land issues its this notion of putting a square peg in a round hole. We are obsessed with making AEs fit into our current grid without re-imagining the grid. AEs are intermittent power sources. The wind doesn't always blow and the sun sets everyday. To make them completely viable we need power storage built into the grid. That is the first hurdle. The second is that AEs don't do well as big centrally located generators like coal plants. It is far better to cover every roof, parking garage, parking lot, and even build things up and over our road ways. The issue with centrally located AEs is that it costs a fortune to build massive power transmission lines. Distributing that power near its consumers makes the most sense. In western cities there is more than enough land and sun to power them that way. But you need to build in distributed power storage, and a smart grid. If you distribute you lose much of the transmission losses we have today. This actually reduces the need for power the city has.
Finally, every state needs to do what we did here in CO. We passed a constitutional amendment prohibiting anyone from interfering with your right to access free power. In much of the country, people struggle with HOAs and utility companies when trying to implement person AE systems. With that amendment, no hoa can say we think they are ugly, the utility company has to allow you to connect that system to the grid and no county can deny you a permit. Although you have to follow code and comply with the hoa if they say you have to use black solar panels not white ones, they can't outright deny you. We need to knock down the road blocks. Despite all the green-press there are a lot of people pushing back and preventing its spread and acceptance.
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