Posted on 11/19/2007 6:11:05 AM PST by Uncledave
Here's a slide show.
Please Freep Mail me if you'd like on/off
Down in Florida and elsewhere, people in retirement communities keep electric golf carts to get around and go to the stores. Having a solar panel on the roof of the cart to keep it charged for these short intermittent trips would mean these vehicles could be entirely solar powered
Looks like great stuff. Too bad it is privately held and you can’t buy stock in the company.
If it truly works, they will be under such pressure to grow that they will have to raise money to keep up with the demand.
That'll change before long.
This has potential to be a seriously revolutionary technology. Houses, schools, even vehicles could run from this -- and they will, since it's 1/3rd the cost of coal.
They already have some huge pockets behind them, like Google's founders. Although I am sure an IPO could raise some serious cash.
Cool stuff but that is still 3x the normal retail rate.
New power technology 30 cents a watt
independence from foriegn oil-—priceless!
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Cost has always been one of solars biggest problems.
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And what other problem with solar power is there besides cost? Cost is the ONLY problem.
In the entire history of solar power, I am not aware of a single technology that had a cost below the market cost of other power sources but that had other issues that caused the market to reject it.
The biggest challenge would be the size of the panel; a panel that would charge a golf cart in less than a week would be too big to mount on it. A panel covering the roof of an average house powering a charging station would probably charge it in a day’s time. A far more practical application would be for mobile electronic devices.
You're confusing price per watt and price per kilowatt hour.
The quoted price is $0.30 / watt. That means that it would have to run for 3000 hours to have an average price of $0.10 / kilowatt hour. To get 3000 hours you need 250 12-hour days of sunlight. You might not get that the first year, but even if it has a two year payoff I would be covering my roof with them.
There will be some additional costs for energy storage so you can turn on a light bulb at night and use power at a higher surge rate than the sun is providing.
Cool stuff.
They already DO "have panels on the market". They've been shipping test lots out to potential customers for a while now. This article is only referring to their "full-scale" production plant--they've had pilot and proto-scale production lines up and running for quite a while. I don't know about "reasonable $/Watt", as I've seen no direct pricing info. However, all the articles on their product quote prices of less than 1$/watt.
The figure I saw for a solar/wind installation for a home was roughly $10/watt which included the regulator and battery bank. This material would probably reduce that by a couple of dollars per watt and in some regions could out-compete wind turbines. In northern regions wind is still needed in the mix due to the reduced daylight.
Current retail cost for residential electricity if between 7 cents and 16 cents per kWh.
There is no practical way to compare these two numbers. Solar is spotty in its current draw verses an always on power plant.
Not so simple. A 747 cannot get its power from a solar cell. If we really wanted to be independent from foreign oil, we fully have the resources to do just that: the US has twice has much in hydrocarbons in the form of coal and oil shales as OPEC has in the form of crude oil. We could convert other organic waste materials such as sewage sludge. At this very moment, ConAgra Foods is converting the waste from processing Butterball turkeys into a marketable liquid biodiesel. Lastly, we have placed fully 85% of our continental shelf out of bounds from drilling for oil.
see:OSD Clean Fuels Initiative (US DOD PDF presentation):
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/femp/energy_expo/2005/pdfs/t_s4c.pdf
Anything Into Oil from DISCOVER Magazine:
http://discovermagazine.com/2006/apr/anything-oil
The other problem is geometry. The Sun will deliver 1.3 kW per square metre at noon, so at the efficiency level of today's technology (~15% IIRC) and the fact that the peak power is only collected for a few hours per day, a roof-sized panel will not be enough to power the home on which it is installed. That being said, if the cost can be brought down enough then it would pay for itself in savings on hydro bills and as a bonus it would reduce the load on the grid and potentially make the grid more resilient if the utility buys surplus power.
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