Myrrdin’s experience is not atypical for alternative energy system customers. Too many of the AE system companies have “true believers” as their founders and promoters, and nowhere near enough actual engineers.
This is why so many of us engineers hold these alternative energy schemes in contempt. I’ve seen so many schemes and had so many pitched at me by “true believers” (most all of whom had liberal arts degrees and a big passion for alternative energy) that I now have a stock response/speech I give to these people, and a well-rehearsed checklist of things they must prove before I will waste five minutes evaluating their wonderful new system(s). The first item I require some of these people answer is “Does your system depend on a deliberate or unspoken violation of the second law of thermodynamics?”
If they come back with “What’s that?!” the conversation is over.
I’ve worked on PV systems for people, and while the PV systems I worked on were the only power option (short of a diesel genset) for remote ranches in Nevada, the people selling these systems always seemed to over-promise and under-deliver, and their installation of the systems always seemed to come up short on reliability and shorter yet on economics.
#1 issue I have with most PV shops: they get the system cost down by using “deep cycle truck batteries.” What a false economy. The only viable storage cells I still see out there are the old, beastly L-16 batteries, and only the most competent PV shops seem to convince people of the long-term economy of these units.
Good points, both of you.
NVDave, like you said, it’s a problem with “true believers.” I have a liberal relative that is really into alternative energy, and when I started sharing my experiments/research with her she was excited and asked if she could designate me as her researcher for solar projects. And I’m not even an engineer! LOL. Nothing against her—not everyone can be a science/engineering nerd but it points up the essential problem: too many people seeing it as a political issue and not an engineering/technology issue.
Photovoltaics are a neat and useful technology, but there are definite problems with them, and I would have to disagree with anyone who thinks they are “clean and green”, between the manufacturing of the things and the chemical soup of batteries. When someone figures out how to grow them from a plant and store the energy in a lemon then maybe. :)
I ran a maintenance shop where we had to keep batteries on hand for starting gensets, running golf carts and traction trucks, forklifts, mowing equipment, ag tractors, utility trucks (Cushman), and a few for automotive use.
The only way to guarantee reliability was by using an annual changeout schedule.
We threw away a lot of good batteries but could not afford a failure - large hospital campus operation.
The forklift batteries were an exception since they could be rebuilt.
Reality sets in only after the sale of grand ideas.
Oh, come on... solar is GREAT for heating/pre-heating the water. (Especially out here in NM).
And as others have said, these things need to be thought of during construction. (There’s a building in Phoenix that cut cooling costs by having it’s roof extend a little extra to provide a hat-like bill to block out the noon-time sun.)