I love solar cells! Solar power has always intrigued me, however, the thing that most do not understand, is that these cells only provide power during the day and there is NO feasible way to store multi-megawatts of electricity for use at night. During the night what will replace the shortage to the grid? The wind isn't dependable, so it is either hydro, nuclear, or fossil fuel. What it does provide during sunlight hours does cut back on fossil fuel use so a good thing in my book, but not a replacement. I seriously doubt that if the USA was on total solar during the day, that it would make any significant impact on changing anything on a global scale. Locally, I am against solar added to the grid because we have surplus hydropower that is being sold to California. Let California build its own solar farms!!!
What type and size battery bank do you have? We've been watching a young couple on YT for about 8 years now who lived in their RV then bought a sailboat, sometimes out to sea for month and they use solar.
I no longer have solar but when I did I used the nickel-iron batteries as they last 30 years. The lead-acid are far from being a good thing as 5 years is all they last and their production and recycling is far from environmentally friendly. The solar Frank is talking about is fed directly into the grid during daylight hours. Since solar cells produce DC current and the grid is AC, huge inverters are required. This reduces efficiency. The thing with RVs and things like sailboats is the appliances and lights are DC and the same voltage as the cell banks and batteries, so inverters can be eliminated. On a large scale, this is not feasible because low voltage and DC require much too large of a wire to be sent any distance. Even the inverted AC from a solar setup must be transformed up to 240 to be fed in the grid where it is again transformed to thousands of volts AC to be sent into the main lines and once again into 10 of thousands of volts to be sent over massive lines that sends it 100s or thousands of miles.
We bought a small system but have never even tsken it out of the faarady cages we stored it in.Of course not the panels they are stored in a open.Maybe tie to hook them up and see if they work.Hubby wants them on roof and I want them on a trailer. So there they sit. So we have them stored.
Hope your being sarcastic here . Alternative energy has its place but not the level the PTB are pushing for. Weather systems are erodng our crop soils while at the same time we are using good land for alternate enegry.
The main resource we are lacking is fresh water.We are losing it through pollution crowded cities and bottling companys from around th world mostly Swedens Nestles and US Coca Cola..Not to speak of the plastic bottles it is stored in.
Actually no. They will create a job for someone at an excessive salary. And they are eliminating that evil plant.
Well I'm not in the solar power selling biz and don't want to be but I would like to have alternative if I needed it. Of course I probably won't but who knows. And even if I did some band of gangs would posibly take it.Or one of my redneck nieghbors..
@Marie Mallery As we're discussing alternate power, limiting that to solar for now, it seems no one has touched on the foibles of battery power storage. Most of one's household heat sources containing resistance type heating elements like the kitchen electric range, bread toaster, water heater, convection oven, and the like, can use EITHER alternating or direct current (AC or DC). As such, they can run on battery-sourced power, the only "kicker" being available voltage. Anything containing AC circuitry such as microwave ovens, TVs, and electric motors of nearly all kinds, must have AC only fed to them. This emphasizes the basic drawback to alternate electrical energy sourced from solar: it is almost invariably DC. Add that to the fact that required DC voltages are in the neighborhood of over 100 volts, it takes a BIG armload of batteries connected in series to provide the voltage necessary. Enter modern technology. Solid state INVERTERS are now available which convert battery DC to household-type AC. For either type of electricity, the POWER delivered is called out in WATTS. A typical all-electric single family residence today will have an electric service capacity of 200 amperes, minimum, which equates to about 48,000 watts. A typical home's rooftop array of solar cells cannot provide much more than 5000 watts, give or take various factors. This means the gathered energy must be slowly accumulated in batteries, for use as needed later, or used to augment already available commercial power. Other factors of importance are limited sunlight, night-time need for power, unexpected overcast, etc. So, solar IS nice! Beyond a doubt, nice, but limited. DC output, limited wattage, sunlight-dependent, but valuable because no moving parts are incorporated; it's solid-state. Is wind-power comparable? Dependent on wind availability, good night and day, mechanical system requires occasional maintenance, generates DC OR AC, can provide voltage in range of household requirement, can even exceed household usage and put power back into the commercial grid, causing the electric meter to RUN BACKWARD, resulting in billing credit! Initial cost of wind generators is I believe considerably higher than solar, neglecting cost of batteries. Frank
I used to be just concerned with battery disposal systems but now I’m finding out a few things about the individual responsibility for paying for the new energy sources. Germany is going all out with their solar and wind power initiatives and come to find out, the average household in Germany pays twice the amount that the average household in the U.S. pays. All that said, no one has yet to come up with even a near perfect solution for the disposal of the batteries that are and will be thrown aside.
@Bobby Cole Is the cost mentioned for Germany for commercially-supplied power, or alternately-supplied? Batteries will eventually "wear out" requiring disposal. To what degree does battery disposal affect the environment? Disposing lead-acid, very bad. Other electro-chemical combinations possibly less so, maybe even BENEFICIAL. While fussing here over power generation, tomorrow's world, we are promised, will be FILLED with battery-operated vehicles, millions of them. What about THEIR batteries? Frank
Commercially supplied power. I have mentioned the battery thing in a couple of different threads here and admittedly, my major concern was over electric car batteries. Lather though in another thread I posted a YouTube video of 90 complete windmill towers that were being destroyed in N. Mexico and nothing was written nor said about the recycling nor disposal of the materials that went into them. I haven’t found the video again but here’s a article about it that does say a little about the disposal. https://www.silverdoctors.com/headl...n-to-pieces-the-myth-of-renewable-wind-power/ One thing you might know before I go check Frank. Does the energy produced by commercial wind and solar units go to a battery station or directly to a modulation unit for dispersal? I know the home units simply charge batteries but I’m not sure about the commercial jobs.
@Bobby Cole The newest and most controversial commercial solar plants use Heliostat technology to gather the sun's energy and concentrate it using mirrors upon a relatively small target, heating it to 6,000 degrees F. This enormous concentration of heat is used to generate electric power by conventional means: create steam to run turbines. This newest technique then adds the power produced directly into the commercial grid; no battery-type storage is used in any large-scale commercial solar project to my knowledge. The BIGGEST heliostat exists in the Mohave Desert region of California, the IVANPAH FACILITY. Solar towers of the Ivanpah facility, the world's largest solar thermal power station in the Mojave Desert, southeastern California "The plant has a gross capacity of 392 megawatts (MW).[8] It deploys 173,500 heliostats, each with two mirrors focusing solar energy on boilers located on three 459 ft (139.9 m) tall[9] solar power towers.[8] The first unit of the system was connected to the electrical grid in September 2013 for an initial synchronisation test.[10] The facility formally opened on February 13, 2014.[2] In 2014, it was the world's largest solar thermal power station.[11][12] The $2.2 billion facility was developed by BrightSource Energy and Bechtel.[13] The largest investor in the project was NRG Energy which contributed $300 million. Google contributed $168 million.[14] The United States government provided a $1.6 billion loan guarantee and the plant is built on public land.[15] In 2010, the project was scaled back from its original 440 MW design to avoid disturbing the habitat of the desert tortoise." Each mirror is about the size of a double overhead garage door, to get an idea of the immensity of this project. Claimed unintended consequences include the annual destruction of tens of thousands of birds unwittingly entering the high intensity light beams; plant supporters deny this. Private individuals have confirmed it. The exceedingly bright, dazzling light has confused airline pilots, initially, but this has been corrected by training. The mirrors must TRACK the sun, thus requiring mechanically driven means. Some heliostat plants STORE a portion of the heat energy generated underground, to be released and used to continue generation of power AT NIGHT; Ivanpah does not. The Ivanpah system IS efficient, IS expensive initially, and DOES work. However, as a concerned Professional, I cannot condone the serious environmental drawbacks and OPPOSE this type of solar power generation. Frank