solar energy is now cheaper than coal.

http://www.solveclimate.com/blog/20071219/1-watt-itunes-solar-energy-has-arrived

Quote :

"A Silicon Valley start-up called Nanosolar shipped its first solar panels -- priced at $1 a watt. That's the price at which solar energy gets cheaper than coal. Curious that this story is not on every front page. Still, to commemorate the achievement, Nanosolar CEO Martin Roscheisen (pictured) is reserving the first three commercially-viable panels. One is staying on display at company HQ; one has been donated to San Jose's Tech Museum of Innovation. And the other is was on sale on e-bay. Starting price? 99 cents. 12/26 update: But then an officious nincompoop at the online auction company stopped the auction. So far, there have been 83 bids and the price has reached $10,300. The auction is over on December 27th at 17:13:10 PST. We know the heavy hitters won't even show up until 17:12:40. How did Nanosolar make this breakthrough? While other companies have been focusing their efforts on increasing the efficiency of solar panels, Nanosolar took a different approach. It focused on manufacturing. Here's what it says on the company's home page: Nanosolar has developed proprietary process technology that makes it possible to produce 100x thinner solar cells 100x faster. Essentially, they've figured out how to print solar cells on thin sheets of aluminum with a printing press. This could be a big nail in the dirty coal coffin. Remember a few weeks ago Google announced its RE * IBM's top manufacturing executive has joined Nanosolar * The company raised $100 million to build a factory, and has secured more than 600,000 feet of manufacturing space. * It already has orders for the first 18 months of manufacturing capacity For more details on what Nanosolar is calling The Third Wave of Solar Power, check out their web site and discussion of 7 areas of innovation they've mastered."

1/9/2008 1:47:11 AM

this would be an excellent investment

1/9/2008 1:54:47 AM

^ they're private bunch of companies are listed as having invested though

http://www.nanosolar.com/investors.htm

1/9/2008 1:57:13 AM

perhaps they will IPO or start trading on OTCBB

with that new technology, they could be prime for an early acquistion

thats a game changing technology



[Edited on January 9, 2008 at 2:03 AM. Reason : .]

1/9/2008 2:01:10 AM

Yup, it's only a matter of a decade or so before places like Saudi Arabia and Yemen are back to a point when rugs are their primary export to the US.

It's appalled me for quite some time that we still burn coal and oil for electricity when there are better, cleaner, and smarter ways to do it.

1/9/2008 2:33:11 AM

Oh that is FANTASTIC!

AWESOME!

How big are the panels? Anybody know? *goes to read the link and do research on these d00ds*

1/9/2008 3:45:21 AM

I like the sound of this.

1/9/2008 8:59:45 AM

I'd be on this in a heartbeat if they ever come to market. I've been following solar PV for 15 years, and could give a rat's butt about super-efficient panels for most applications. If this company can actually pull this off and become the Wal-mart of solar, more power to them.

1/9/2008 9:04:52 AM

Quote :

"more []power[/i] to them"

lol, was that pun intentional?


I don't really know much about power consumption, but at $1/watt, how much would it cost to replace all the power systems on your house with these solar panels?

1/9/2008 10:01:24 AM

Quote :

"perhaps they will IPO or start trading on OTCBB with that new technology, they could be prime for an early acquistion thats a game changing technology"

i was thinking the same thing

1/9/2008 10:13:05 AM

yay

a power source that wont power your lights when you need them

1/9/2008 10:35:17 AM

Sweet! I worked out the math on this once (when NOVA had their residential solar power show), and IIRC Solar cells were about $5/watt then, and would take about 20-30 years to pay for themselves. This should bring it down to 4-5 years to pay for themselves.

The nice thing is, if your home generates more power than it uses and ends up putting more power back onto the grid, the power company pays you at the same price it would have charged you, and you end up getting a cheque every month.

1/9/2008 10:39:00 AM

^^ don't be a fucking retard, this is the lounge.

Sounds great to me!

1/9/2008 11:00:36 AM

Also you can use that backfeed on the power during the day to even out your bill at night. In the end you may not make much, but you also shouldn't really owe anything from nighttime use either.

I wouldn't mind if it became this cheap to run. I just wasn't interested in dropping the price of my house on solar panels that would take as long as the house to pay off.

1/9/2008 11:07:59 AM

Quote :

"don't be a fucking retard, this is the lounge. Sounds great to me!"

its silly

nuclear is the way to go because solar will never have the efficiency and it is prone to weather and nighttime outages

you need a stable energy source

1/9/2008 11:12:29 AM

if anybody has problems with this advance in technology and discovery, they should be killed off and not allowed to breed.

solar power FTW. thanks for the article.


I plan on spending 5k - 10k on solar panels soon to power my house for the rest of my life.

1/9/2008 11:31:11 AM

how in the hell do they figure that printing solar cells at $1/watt somehow makes them cheaper than coal? The expensive part of hooking up a solar power generator is all the control equipment to connect it to the grid. Inverters, fault detection, aliasing and anti-aliasing schemes, etc. If you really think you're want to protect the environment, you'd be better off spending the $10,000 cost of a 1kw solar generator on compact flourescent bulbs and giving them away.

1/9/2008 11:39:50 AM

Quote :

"The nice thing is, if your home generates more power than it uses and ends up putting more power back onto the grid, the power company pays you at the same price it would have charged you, and you end up getting a cheque every month. "

if you continually put power back on their grid and unbalance their phases or compromise their protection schemes, they now have the right to deny you service.

1/9/2008 11:43:14 AM

I live in rural NC, so I doubt that my little towns going to worry about it.

And I agree, nuclear is the power supply of choice for the grid. It is practically impossible to power the entire grid 100% of the time with renewable power. Nuclear fission is the answer, at least until they ever figure out fusion. At that point, all other power sources will become obsolete anyways.

1/9/2008 12:34:15 PM

rural areas make this even more of an issue.

[Edited on January 9, 2008 at 12:47 PM. Reason : having a generator on a tap line fucks up the fuse coordination on the line.]

1/9/2008 12:46:15 PM

Quote :

"Yup, it's only a matter of a decade or so before places like Saudi Arabia and Yemen are back to a point when rugs are their primary export to the US."

b/c we only use oil for power....

we do need to get electricity from a different source though.... coal should be our huge stockpile backup, not our primary.

1/9/2008 12:49:13 PM

Well, considering the fact that Toyota is rolling out the first hydrogen powered vehicle to the public this year (in Japan only), yeah. I expect in a decade or two gas powered cars will be the exception in this country, not the norm. Continuing advances in solar, wind, tidal, and nuclear energy will reduce further reduce our dependency on fossil fuels for power, and then we really only have to worry about oil for manufacturing needs (plastics, etc.) and there is enough in the US for us to not import for that purpose.

It may be further off than I'm hoping, but within my lifetime I think we'll see the death of US dependency on OPEC. Now, the thing that will really help is if we share technology with China and India, because those two are really going to affect the environment in the next 50 years in ways the US never did.

1/9/2008 1:49:04 PM

Quote :

"Well, considering the fact that Toyota is rolling out the first hydrogen powered vehicle to the public this year"

Quote :

"HORRIBLE FUCKING IDEA"

or

Quote :

"NEGATIVE NET ENERGY"

1/9/2008 2:03:26 PM

Quote :

"The nice thing is, if your home generates more power than it uses and ends up putting more power back onto the grid, the power company pays you at the same price it would have charged you, and you end up getting a cheque every month."

ahahaha, maybe somewhere in Europe, but probably not.

Even in California, which has about the most liberal legislation on this won't ever pay you anything back from the power company. You can reduce your bill to zero and then anything more you feed back into the grid doesn't matter. HOWEVER, they have a pricing scheme where the first x % of your power bill will be at a higher rate than the last x % of your power bill, and then the solar panels are allowed to reduce the bill on the basis of the higher rate. So in essence, by the legislation, you can reduce your power bill with the panels and then reduce the rate you pay for what's left over. There are some decent google tech talks explaining this if you want more info.

That said
1. This is not sustainable and will fail if too many people do it and
2. Nothing CLOSE to this is available in North Carolina


Also, more directly to the first post:

For one, coal is very nearly $1 / watt instillation costs. Two, the $1 includes only the panel, not the instillation, not the rectifiers to feed AC back into the grid, and not any other costs. And finally, what watt is this? Capacity? Average power? I think not. Doesn't look too competitive as an intermittent source that averages 20% of capacity.

I'm just going to sit back and wait to hear why their claim doesn't work in the news.

1/9/2008 2:23:58 PM

Quote :

"its silly nuclear is the way to go because solar will never have the efficiency and it is prone to weather and nighttime outages you need a stable energy source"

Yeah, but dealing with nuclear waste is a much bigger problem than coming up with a battery system

1/9/2008 2:46:57 PM

yay for pessimism!!


idiots

1/9/2008 2:51:43 PM

i don't think it's so much the battery system than the oh...

40 cent per kWh prices
the complete inability to satisfy grid requirements

A few bucks into batteries would be preferable to nuclear waste sort of. But I think a failed economy and global warming are things that I'll take nuclear waste in lieu of.

1/9/2008 3:10:13 PM

Quote :

"Yeah, but dealing with nuclear waste is a much bigger problem than coming up with a battery system"

used batteries are just as bad as a problem as nuclear waste if they arent recycled, particularly lead-acid batteries

did you know that the federal government wont let us recycle nuclear material? if we did the amount of material that is hazardous drops 10 fold.

1/9/2008 3:12:31 PM

Quote :

"Nanosolar SolarPly™. Light-weight solar-electric cell foil which can be cut to any size. Non-fragile. No soldering required for electrical contact. Available wholesale to strategic partners. "

http://www.nanosolar.com/


One would hope that all sorts of things could be wrapped in this SolarPly. Roofing would be a great start for individual homes, although Progress energy might have something to say about the availability of such product.

1/9/2008 3:17:46 PM

^I've always thought a desirable energy system would be one in which solar power on roofs, etc., could be used to supply demand/peak power, and centralized power plants (nukes) are used to supply base residential power and commercial/industrial power.

The technology is fairly interesting. It sounds like they are printing the cells with a copper-indium-gallium-selenide nanoparticle ink. Printing helps to reduce cost, since vacuum deposition techniques are expensive. They must also have a cheap way to put on the conducting top layer. Based on the patents, it looks like a conducting polymer - wonder what the lifetime is.

The CIGS solar panels tend to have less efficiency than the Si based solar panels. They claim to deliver 5-10 times more current than "traditional thin film panels". Their claim could be a bit of semantics, if they consider traditional Si based solar panels to not be "thin film". Current and efficiency are not necessarily the same thing anyways. I couldn't find any efficiency comparisons in their website. "Cheap and works fairly well" may be better than "expensive and works really well" though.



[Edited on January 9, 2008 at 4:26 PM. Reason : Google patent search kicks ass]

1/9/2008 4:17:16 PM

Quote :

"Even in California, which has about the most liberal legislation on this won't ever pay you anything back from the power company"

FERC requires utilities to buy back any power generated under 25kVA single phase from customers unless they can prove that the generator source compromises the integrity of their power quality and protection schemes. If you can comply with IEEE 1547 and the other future IEEE standards for distributed generation, then you can connect your home generator to the grid.

Unfortunately, a lot of upstart companies offering these services didn't bother to make their systems compatible with the islanding and anti-islanding requirements of IEEE 1547. These companies tend to be run by salesmen looking for easy money, not engineers.

Quote :

"That said 1. This is not sustainable and will fail if too many people do it and 2. Nothing CLOSE to this is available in North Carolina "

there are dozens of 1 and 2kW home solar units installed on homes in the Hillsborough-Carrboro-Chapel Hill area. Most of them are fixed roof designs, but there are even a few mobile panel systems around this area.

Quote :

"HOWEVER, they have a pricing scheme where the first x % of your power bill will be at a higher rate than the last x % of your power bill, and then the solar panels are allowed to reduce the bill on the basis of the higher rate. So in essence, by the legislation, you can reduce your power bill with the panels and then reduce the rate you pay for what's left over."

Variable rate pricing schemes are an option you have to sign up for, and only a handful of utilities do it. Progress Energy has a program that involves variable rates based on the time of day you use power. Power during the middle of the day costs more, as this is during peak demand times. If you had a solar generator installed on your house that produced power during this higher cost period and also programmed your thermostat and hot water heater to cut back on energy consumption during this period, you could effectively eliminate your power bill even if you didn't generate as much power as you consumed. By pumping power into the grid during the more expensive peak load times and using it for your heating/AC/hot water and appliances during the cheaper off-peak hours, the difference in cost would offset the difference in usage.

Even still, we are a long way from these systems being economically justifiable. The equipment on these devices requires periodic maintenance after installation that most people don't take into consideration, and solar panels installed on fixed mounts such as roofs are very inefficient.

[Edited on January 9, 2008 at 4:28 PM. Reason : islanding]

1/9/2008 4:20:35 PM

I'm working in solar energy research here at state and this is great news.


Contrary to some of the posts here, Nuclear power will probably not be the choice of energy for the future of this country for several reasons, most easily to state is demand.


Nathan Lewis and Dan Nocera have both stated that to meet world energy demand by 2050 from Nuclear Power, we would need to build a new reactor about every 3 days. This totals up to about 3-4000 new reactors that need to be built, pronto.

That doesn't even begin to discuss waste management policy for nuclear power, which has no consistent guidelines for treating and storing waste.

In the 1950's, huge vats of nuclear waste was acidified by concentrated acid and buried deep in mines and shafts underground. To remove certain deadly toxins, you could spend years of research developing something that could be stable enough to handle both radiation and strong acid to remove certain ions like Cs and Ra.

Then, about 25 years later, they decided maybe it was better to put them in concentrated base instead of acid. Now an entirely new problem is at your hands.

Current Nuclear Energy policy in the US will most certainly guarantee that we will never see a fully nuclear run country in our lifetimes.


Solar energy, OTOH, has a much greater, and safer, potential.

In terms of just solar panels, you could meet current world energy demand by covering as little as 0.1% of the earth's surface with solar panels having only 10% efficiency. Many low-inhabited places on earth that are considered prime areas for peak wattage can achieve 20% with more efficient panels based on GaAs type solar cells.


but you have to think outside of the box to really use all the potential you can from solar panels.

For one, solar panels produce only electricity, which is difficult and expensive to store for those rough days of non-optimal sunlight. Transport over long distances is not feasible either, so a new way of storage is necessary

NaTaO3 is a metal oxide compound that, when immersed in water and exposed to UV light, produces H2 gas, which can then be stored and transported as an energy fuel source much easier than pure electricity. This method also produces no harmful greenhouse gases that could damage the environment like CO2. This compound is over 50% efficient in UV light.

Further research in these fields could potentially lead to a visible light active source that is equally efficient and also extremely low in cost to develop.


I did the calculations myself based on the efficiency of this compound, and, such a system scaled up to produce enough H2 to keep your car full (avg 1 tank/week range ~250mi) you would pay about $10,000. Seems a bit high now, but that's mostly due to the metal cost of tantalum oxide. Cheaper metals like Niobium Oxide could cut this cost in half. What's so great is that if you do this, you would never have to pay for gas again in your life. These compounds don't decompose or breakdown. As long as you add water you continue to produce H2 gas.


Solar Energy is definitely the energy source of the future.

It's the SUN. The damn thing has been keeping the earth warm for 4 billion years. We should learn to really harness its full potential

1/9/2008 5:04:51 PM

Quote :

"you could meet current world energy demand by covering as little as 0.1% of the earth's surface with solar panels"

Oh, only 197 thousand square miles eh?

So we would only have to cover the entire surface of Nevada and Arizona with solar panels?

3000 nuclear reactors is sounding a little less outlandish now.

1/9/2008 5:17:09 PM

^^High level nuclear waste is stored in solid form in casks. There is some talk of vitrification, though I don't know what, if any, plans there are for actually doing this. I don't know where you got the idea that high-level nuclear waste is currently dissolved to store it, but this is wrong. In the 50's there were molten-salt reactors that had uranium salts in sulfuric acid, I believe. Perhaps this is what you are confused with. Furthermore, there most certianly are guidelines for how to store nuclear waste. The EPA and NRC have waste disposal guidelines.

I agree that the country will probably not be nuclear-only. Nevertheless, it needs to be a major source of our energy if we are to reduce our dependance on foriegn oil.

I also think you are overstating the abilities of solar power. While it certianly can be an important source of power, key problems in efficiency and transport limit its usefulness. I think your power numbers are based on optimistic estimates, eg. using the peak solar power during the day at the equator rather than an average.

Since you are working on solar power, could you comment on the expected efficiency of these panels? It would be interesting to compare them to traditional solar panels on a cost/W cm^2 basis.



[Edited on January 9, 2008 at 5:22 PM. Reason : adsfd]

1/9/2008 5:20:45 PM

There's little reason not to utilize nature when possible to provide for our electrical needs. There is no reason (outside of current cost) not to be utilizing things like the tides, the wind, and the sun to produce electricity. We could easily throw down solar panels in places like Nevada, Utah, Arizona, etc. on land that is otherwise virtually uninhabitable and not arable. There's no good reason that places like Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, west Texas, etc. should not be chock full of wind farms. This is all fucking free energy folks.

Our electrical grid should not be largely dependent on burning things to boil water to make steam to turn a turbine. It boggles the mind that the technology is still basically unchanged since the inception of electrical generation.

Obviously we'll need to continue to develop the technology further until we reach the efficiency levels needed to eliminate the need for other sources. Until then we should be using nuclear, it's the least environmentally harmful.

[Edited on January 9, 2008 at 5:31 PM. Reason : adsf]

1/9/2008 5:28:35 PM

Quote :

"Nathan Lewis and Dan Nocera have both stated that to meet world energy demand by 2050 from Nuclear Power, we would need to build a new reactor about every 3 days. This totals up to about 3-4000 new reactors that need to be built, pronto. That doesn't even begin to discuss waste management policy for nuclear power, which has no consistent guidelines for treating and storing waste."

lol

at least we know how to build nuclear reactors...i already know the safety, efficiency and other requirements right now...solar is still in research

solar energy will not meet this world wide power demand either...your technology at best works 12 hours a day

what do you propose we do at night? campfires and sing kumbaya?

Quote :

"There's little reason not to utilize nature when possible to provide for our electrical needs. There is no reason (outside of current cost) not to be utilizing things like the tides, the wind, and the sun to produce electricity. We could easily throw down solar panels in places like Nevada, Utah, Arizona, etc. on land that is otherwise virtually uninhabitable and not arable. There's no good reason that places like Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, west Texas, etc. should not be chock full of wind farms. This is all fucking free energy folks. Our electrical grid should not be largely dependent on burning things to boil water to make steam to turn a turbine. It boggles the mind that the technology is still basically unchanged since the inception of electrical generation."

you should read about efficiencies and economics first

[Edited on January 9, 2008 at 5:30 PM. Reason : 

1/9/2008 5:29:26 PM

Quote :

"Nathan Lewis and Dan Nocera have both stated that to meet world energy demand by 2050 from Nuclear Power, we would need to build a new reactor about every 3 days."

Do you have a link to this? I'd like to know what sort of assumptions they are making. Thats an asston of reactors.

1/9/2008 5:29:32 PM

Quote :

"Our electrical grid should not be largely dependent on burning things to boil water to make steam to turn a turbine. It boggles the mind that the technology is still basically unchanged since the inception of electrical generation."

This technology is well known and reliable. Because of this it should be a major source of power. We can certianly use wind and solar in locations where they are most useful. For instance, another really good area for wind power is along the pacific coast and the Willamatte valley in Oregon.

1/9/2008 5:33:13 PM

Quote :

"Do you have a link to this? I'd like to know what sort of assumptions they are making. Thats an asston of reactors."

that would be 2000 MW(e) per reactor times 3000 reactors

6,000,000 MW(e)

6,000,000,000,000 W(e)

the world used about 10^20 J last year in 365*24*60*60 = 31,536,000 s

that is ~ 3*10^12 W(e) or about 1/2 the 6*10^12 W(e) up there (that extra gives you the ability to go down for refueling and maintenance)

you may trade less power for more reactors and realize that you would go 100% nuclear

[Edited on January 9, 2008 at 5:43 PM. Reason : 

1/9/2008 5:41:57 PM

^your calculations don't take into consideration the nuclear plants that are already in existance. some countries already get a large portion of their energy demands from existing nuclear plants.

A doubling of our current energy usage by 2050 sounds like a conservative estimate though.

1/9/2008 6:25:58 PM

The solar panels themselves still contribute a hefty portion ($5k - $10k for 1-2 kW - http://store.solar-electric.com/hiposopa.html) of the total system cost, generally $20-30k.

Replacing currently available panels with "revolutionary, new, cheap" panels is a worthy concept, it's just not all there is to it.

I thinks it's worthwhile to put the whole expense in perspective. Buying a house these days is expensive - you might pay $250k for what might have been $100k ten years ago, when the only thing to show for the difference is a ten year older house. Housing costs are generally only going to go up and solar PV costs are gradually going down. Bottom line: $20k for a PV system on a $200k house isn't as bad as $20k for a PV system on a $100k house, in terms of the time it takes to save $ for such house purchases.

1/9/2008 6:26:43 PM

Quote :

"$20k for a PV system on a $200k house isn't as bad as $20k for a PV system on a $100k house, in terms of the time it takes to save $ for such house purchases. "

you forget to mention that a $20k system will never generate anywhere near $20k worth of electricity, and you also have to pay for periodic inspections of the protection equipment by an electrician in order to fulfill the requirements of the utility you're connecting to.

You want to invest $20k in a house, then put in a groundwater reservoir system for the heating and air unit along with energy efficient appliances and extra insulation. The ONLY reason to do solar panels is because you think you're helping the environment.

1/9/2008 6:33:52 PM

is water not a factor in nuclear power as well? how would a drought prone location cope with more reactors that require a constant/dedicated water supply when there is no local(extra) water? even if nuclear power is more efficient, with global warming and/or drought it may become less effective if nuclear power plants have to use less water and use part of the energy to cool water through some quicker means

[Edited on January 9, 2008 at 7:56 PM. Reason : a]

1/9/2008 7:53:59 PM

Quote :

"your calculations don't take into consideration the nuclear plants that are already in existance. some countries already get a large portion of their energy demands from existing nuclear plants."

yeah it was just a quick and dirty calculation to get the right order of plants

Quote :

"is water not a factor in nuclear power as well? how would a drought prone location cope with more reactors that require a constant/dedicated water supply when there is no local(extra) water? even if nuclear power is more efficient, with global warming and/or drought it may become less effective if nuclear power plants have to use less water and use part of the energy to cool water through some quicker means"

cooling water is significant

there are ways to make fresh water not an issue. you can use giant water to air heat exchangers for dry environments. if the plant is built on the coast, titanium water to water heat exchangers just use ocean water (think middle east)

you have to have a supply on hand for emergencies, im not sure how much though

1/9/2008 9:14:43 PM

Quote :

"Do you have a link to this? I'd like to know what sort of assumptions they are making. Thats an asston of reactors."

You may feel free to look up many of their talks and papers using google. These two guys are extremely famous in their field.



NukeWolf,

The information I've gathered was told to me by Abraham Clearfield during the NASSC Conference in Texas A&M University last May. You may research his papers to see what he has to say about his work in nuclear waste treatment.


AndyMac. I was just pointing out the requirements for energy demand, I didn't say we should do it. And it would be more like 5000 nuclear reactors, my bad.


Aficionado. Electricity surplus can be stored in batteries to be used when their is little light. This is why your solar powered calculator will still turn on at night. To not know that probably makes you the dumbest of all the people I responded to. Thoughts and prayers to your unborn children

no single alternative source will be able to supply world energy demand.

The point I was trying to make was that sunlight provides the best route to this because it has the best potential to improve. Again, that's why i pointed out the issue with sodium tantalate and its photocatalytic capabilities.

[Edited on January 10, 2008 at 12:28 AM. Reason : asdf]

1/10/2008 12:25:40 AM

I've been telling you fucking people about NanoSolar for 2 years or more.

But more importantly, this is a breakthrough for business, not the home. Businesses are the ones for the forseeable future that will be making use of NanoSolar's technology. Hell, they won't even be selling their stuff in the US for another year or two (from what I heard one of the owners say a year ago) because the demand is absolutely insane in Japan and western Europe.

Yes its badass technology, and yes it WILL trickle down to the home in time.


^as for your arguments of solar vs nuclear. You are completely ignoring reprocessing. Which the US outlawed back in the 60's because some stupid fear of enriched material being lost to the russians. If you put reprocessing plants back in service ,it virtually eliminates the future waste problems. You can reprocess 95-99% of nuclear waste, leaving about a pebble per reactor, per year, of completely spent fuel.

Nuclear is also massively cheaper to operate and is currently the ONLY baseline power alternative to coal. Solar and Wind are not viable for baseline power for obvious reasons, and we do not have enough storage capacity in the world to carry the brunt of an on/off baseline system.

[Edited on January 10, 2008 at 1:27 AM. Reason : .]

1/10/2008 1:21:36 AM

Quote :

"Electricity surplus can be stored in batteries to be used when their is little light. This is why your solar powered calculator will still turn on at night. "

Do you not realize how infeasible it would be to store several million MWh for use when the sun isn't shining? If not, then you just proved yourself to be the dumbest person in this thread. What makes it even more comical is that you claim to work in solar energy research at NC State.

1/10/2008 9:40:11 AM

eleusis,

This was in my first post.

Quote :

"but you have to think outside of the box to really use all the potential you can from solar panels. For one, solar panels produce only electricity, which is difficult and expensive to store for those rough days of non-optimal sunlight. Transport over long distances is not feasible either, so a new way of storage is necessary"

I already made several comments about alternatives to using battery storage as an energy source. For one, hydrogen fuel.


Take time to read before you go on your internet tirade and show what a big e-man you are.

1/10/2008 10:22:04 AM

Quote :

"Aficionado. Electricity surplus can be stored in batteries to be used when their is little light. This is why your solar powered calculator will still turn on at night. To not know that probably makes you the dumbest of all the people I responded to. Thoughts and prayers to your unborn children"

lol

a solar calculator and the energy demand of the USA are two completely different leagues...batteries will never work for the order of energy that is required and they will be prohibitively expensive

to think that battery technology would supply 10^20 J and that it would be economically feasible you must be the dumbest person to whom i have responded...thoughts and prayers to your unborn children

you just keep living in fantasy land

[Edited on January 10, 2008 at 10:43 AM. Reason : 

1/10/2008 10:39:58 AM

does anybody ever read entire posts?

god i hate the internet

1/10/2008 10:55:33 AM