The Solex Agitator for The Man with the Golden Gun?
If so, be sure to keep your nifty float plane well clear of Scaramanga's toys...
Posted on 03/06/2014 10:46:00 AM PST by ckilmer
IBM and Your Changing Energy World BY Dana Blankenhorn |
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- If I had a technology that could cut the cost of solar energy production to as little as 10 cents per kilowatt-hour (KwH), I'd be dropping everything to get it to market.
But I'm not IBM (IBM_).
IBM announced last week it will spend a $2.4 million grant from Switzerland studying a solar energy technology called High Concentration PhotoVoltaic Thermal (HCPVT).
HCPVT combines the concentrated solar energy system used in the newly opened Ivanpah plant in California, where mirrors direct sunlight to a central point and produce heat, with conventional photovoltaics, the technology that turns sunlight directly into electricity on a rooftop near you.
HCPVT uses a parabolic dish of mirror facets and a sun tracking system to concentrate power on a collection of liquid-cooled photovoltaic chips. The system collects electricity through the chips and heat through the chip-cooling system. IBM's press release says it can produce energy for less than 10 cents per KwH.
That's the same price as coal. The efficiency is nearly twice that of a recently-announced solar cell produced by the Fraunhofer Institute.
How excited is IBM by this? Not much. A spokesman wrote that IBM hopes to partner with other companies to make the chips, partner with construction firms to develop the systems, but that "compared with the key IBM growth areas of Cloud, Big Data, Analytics, Security and Mobile, this technology is not at the same scale."
IBM corporate culture hasn’t changed much................
If it works, watch for it to become a target of the greenies.
Maybe 10 cents per watt, but certainly not per kWh
Heck if they can deliver solar at par or under the price of coal generated electricity...it doesn’t matter. They can be as IBM as they wanna be.
But likely if IBM can deliver these kinds of results, there’s other players in the solar community who are on track to deliver better results.
That’s the ticket. IBM knows that even if this works, within a year there will be Chinese copies on the market.................
Maybe 10 cents per watt, but certainly not per kWh
.............
You got me on the metrics. However, it makes intuitive sense that if you can harness both the thermal and the photovoltaic spectrum of light, you should be able to double the output of power from a given unit of light. And therefor cut in half the cost per unit of light.
We’ll see as to whether IBM can actually do what they say they can do and whether the they’ll be able to do so a price point on par with coal.
I’m not getting it. I’m paying .11 cents per KwH for the first X KwH, then I am charged .13 cents per KwH. That’s residential service. Business service is always cheaper and typically 1/2 to 3/4 of residential service.
What don’t you believe about KwH?
On the other hand 'Mother Earth Magazine' had a home-built design of this which generated around 1000*F....
I’m not sure that I buy that. However, if IBM is successful, then certainly the Chinese will try to copy them. But first things first.
So how much did IBM contribute to the Obama Campaign to shut down coal?
It's 0.10/kWh, which, in Germany, is price-competitive.
The moron author got each and every letter wrong there: it's kWh.
I know what you say...
But I have solar panels and they are priced per watt.
Currently I see pricing in the 0.75 to $1.00 range per watt for pv panels. So something at 0.10 per watt would revolutionize this market.
What you are saying for utility price is virtually impossible.
That's the same price as coal.
They spent $2.4 million on the project (grant money). This is not a good sales pitch for the technology. There is NO ROI, hence, it is not anywhere close to market value for demand.
Where? Is that a bulk price? What kind of PV cells, mono-crystalline, poly, or amorphous? I'm interested in expanding past 150 watt mono test panel. $1.45 about best I've seen in the past month.
read the link
The Solex Agitator for The Man with the Golden Gun?
If so, be sure to keep your nifty float plane well clear of Scaramanga's toys...
IBM's CEO Ginni Rometty is thrashing about
trying to find a way to make money to keep
IBM from bankruptcy.
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