Solar Panels Reach $1 a Watt 381
ZosX writes "An article over at Popular Mechanics announces that, for the first time, solar cells have been manufactured for the much sought-after figure of $1/Watt. They also talk about a new study of the cost of the particular raw materials used in different manufacturing processes. The conclusion is that the company that just achieved the $1/W milestone, using cadmium telluride technology, may not prove to be the long-term winner capable of meeting demand when it rises into the terawatt range."
Wow (Score:5, Interesting)
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[CITATION NEEDED]
Re:Wow (Score:4, Informative)
[2] I'm an EE
[3] I've tried it.
Of course, the first thing you have to do is take it apart and make sure it's a SMPS and not a traditional 60Hz transformer.
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Actually, don't do this. It might be dangerous. Fire! Destruction! Loss of well-being! Don't do this, ok?
Re:Wow (Score:4, Funny)
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you're confused, the 120VAC means the same power is delivered as 120V DC. Anyway, as others have pointed out, must AC devices will not only not work with DC equivalent power, but will just "make heat". Which I find somewhat of an understatement, as you'll get explosion with fireball
Re:Wow (Score:4, Informative)
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Air conditioning can require a lot of energy.
Also, I think winter is the cold, short-day season in both hemispheres, they just happen six months apart.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
It doesn't matter what your peak load is. If you're in an area that's on the grid, then you want a grid-tied system, and therefore any power you can't generate on your own will come from the grid. At other times, when you have extra (e.g., a hot sunny day when you're out hiking), the power company buys it from you. There is typically a very strong economic incentive to buy a system that matches your yearly consumption, not your peak load. If it's providing less than your yearly consumption, then you aren't getting the best deal, because you still had to pay for a day's labor by the crew with the crane, etc., and you still had to pay for an inverter. The converse is also true: you probably don't want an oversized system. I have photovoltaics on my roof, and in my area, if I produce more than I use over a 12-month period, the electric company won't pay me for the excess. They'll just say, "Gosh, thanks for all that surplus power."
It's typically very, very difficult to make a realistic calculation of how long it will take a residential PV system to pay for itself. People always ask me how long mine will take to pay for itself, and I always tell them honestly that I have absolutely no idea. The problem is that energy prices are extremely volatile -- that's why they exclude them from the CPI. Remember just recently when gas was $4 a gallon? Historically, the price of electric power has always tended to go up, but we don't know how much it will go up over the 25-year design lifetime of our system.
What you can do is to consider all your local factors: latitude, amount of sunny weather, whether you have a south-facing roof, whether there is any shade on your roof, and current local prices for electricity. Every time this topic comes up on slashdot, people will make blanked statements about whether PV is economically viable. That's just nonsense. It depends on all those factors. If it was an utter economic no-go, the industry wouldn't exist. If it was 100% clear that it was economically favorable for everyone in, say, LA, then you'd see PV systems on the roof of every house in LA whose owners had sufficient capital to pay for the system. The fact that the industry exists, but is still fairly small, tells you that there's a lot of uncertainty about it. You're welcome to invest your money in the stock market instead, but it won't help with global warming.
Ain't gonna happen. Network effects are one reason. Another reason is that different devices naturally want to work from different voltages, but you can't step voltage up or down if it's DC.
No money upfront, save money on solar from Day 1 (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
The 7805 isn't a switch-mode power supply, it's a simple series regulator. The voltage that appears across it x the current through it equals its power dissipation, i.e. the power it is merely wasting as heat in order to drop the voltage to 5V. That can be quite considerable - if it's handling 1A and dropping from 12V, it's wasting 12-5 X 1 = 7W, while delivering only 5 X 1 = 5W to the load. That's only 41% efficient. You don't want that sort of figure when your power source is solar.
A true SMPS will do much better, but unfortunately is more complicated than one three-legged IC and a few caps.
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Answer: Nope.
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Well, I'll give you a clue. GrahamCox is right.
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Your peak load is irrelevant, unless you're planning to try to do this without a battery system. You really just need to meet your average load, and have enough storage capacity to last the rest of the day.
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Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
It also won't help if your phone is disconnected or your house catches fire - what's your point?
The question was whether it makes economic sense, not if it's better than the power grid.
Re:Wow (Score:4, Interesting)
Most(and I mean MOST), grid-tie systems shut off when the grid power goes out. This is to protect the system and line workers.
For an extra $1k or so you can have a system that works more like an automatic transfer switch, when the main power goes out, the system will automatically power circuits depending on priority and available power. IE put the dryer last, the computer first. ;)
http://www.oasismontana.com/Xantrex-xw-inverter.html [oasismontana.com] - but I'd want to read the documentation carefully before getting one. It's listed as working in either mode, but not both at the same time, or being able to switch automatically.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Interesting)
Found a better one, lists that capability as standard:
http://www.infinigi.com/beacon-power-m5-inverter-5-kw-gridtied-battery-backup-p-104.html?ref=100 [infinigi.com]
Only 5kw though. At $5k, it'd take 4 years of eliminating my electric bill to pay for the inverter alone, much less solar cells, wind turbine, or install.
By my back of hand figuring on the basis of using ~1000kwh a month, I'd need a 4-5kw inverter anyways.
1000kwh/month = 33kwh/day, 1.4 kwh/hour, 1400 watts average load. Times 3 for rough guess on usable/production periods vs max, 4.2kw minimum load needed. BTW, my water heater/stove/dryer are all electric, but heat is propane. I pay ~.10 cents per kwh, decreasing if I use a lot.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Interesting)
To plug into the grid you need a Synchronous Inverter.
You are not suppose to dump square wave on the grid either.
Some guerilla solar ppl who do not understand this do it anyways.
The grid uses generators that generate sinewave power.
To connect cleanly and correctly you need a Sinewave based
Synchronous Inverter and that is not cheap.
Also if you live in a heavy lightning storm area then you run
the risk of your huge investment going up in smoke by being
attached to the grid.
Your best bet is to get off the grid.
Some ppl do it a little at a time by converting all their lights
to LED lighting and have wind and or solar charging some used
forklift batteries that are stored outside in a fireproof box.
forklift batteries are not the best, but used ones are cheaper
by a huge amount than the very best made new for this purpose.
Over time as they get more of their own power made they can
move circuits over to the off grid system.
The killers are central heat and air, electric dryer, fridge,
hair dryers, vacuums, electric ovens, and microwaves.
Re:Wow (Score:4, Informative)
CFLs have similar efficiency ratings to LEDs, and a significantly cheaper. The Philips Tornado CFL above me has 75lm/W stamped on it, only the best Cree LEDs exceed this and are rated ~100lm/W when run at below their max power.
I guess you need a slightly more expensive inverter for a CFL system, but it will probably still work out cheaper with CFLs over LEDs.
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Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
First Solar has a 25 year warranty on the power output of their panels. As far as I've seen this is pretty common for panels intended for large installations.
Here's a couple random links to back that up:
https://energy.wesrch.com/User_images/Pdf/L02_1221963706.pdf [wesrch.com]
http://www.evergreensolar.com/upload/pdf/us/Warranty_Cedar_Spruce_v1.5-060329_US.pdf [evergreensolar.com]
TCO (Score:5, Interesting)
So, their goal is to get the cost of manufacturing down to about 60-70 cents a watt, and the cost of installation down to $1 a watt. I didn't realize the hidden cost of installation was so high.
Re:TCO (Score:5, Informative)
It does not take that long to put in the "grid" part. My system was wired (the part requiring an electrician) in a couple of hours. The large cost component besides the panels is the inverter for a DIY. The magical box converts the DC from the panels to a sync'ed grid AC. The DC from the panels is extracted in such a way as to maximize the power, by constantly adjusting the voltage of the panel output. Its a cool little box with all sorts of protection to make sure the power company and your line doesn't crackle.
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Re:TCO (Score:4, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC#Advantages_of_HVDC_over_AC_transmission [wikipedia.org]
Advantages and disadvantages of DC vs AC current.
That's because DC doesn't travel very well along long wires.
For transporting large amounts of electricity point to point over large distances ("along long wires") DC is the better option.
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Damn straight. do you know how heavy all those politicians in DC are? Do you know how hard it is to get them to do anything, let alone transporting them. Heck some even require their own planes.
Oh wrong kind of DC.
I still agree with you though.
Re:TCO (Score:5, Informative)
I'm preparing to install solar on my roof. It isn't that hard. I've completed almost all of the paperwork for the CSI grant and local permits. Mounting the panels to the roof is simple as is figuring out which way to point them. The wiring is brain dead simple. I have a local electrician lined up to come out and hook it into the actual panel for me. Total cost for his time is about $300. I'm saving $10k by doing this myself! Total out the door cost is about $23,500 for 4.6 Kw.
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Crime Scene Investigators involved even before you start work?
Re:TCO (Score:5, Funny)
thats... ::puts on sunglasses:: ...shocking.
waaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiilllllllllll!!!!!!
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Well it is getting to be a DIY field, with controllers and isolators being available off the shelf as well as hundreds of how-to sites springing up all over the web concerning wind, micro-hydro and solar augmentation.
But its no surprise that installation costs more than the pieces, that's sort of true about just about anything other than plug-it-in-turn-it-on appliances.
Still there is no reason to assume that the basic modules coming out of FirstSolar's plant are anywhere near ready for Joe Sixpack, and TFA
Re:TCO (Score:5, Informative)
That may be true, but for TCO, we're talking set up costs vs. money saved over the expected life span of the panels. We put some up at work, enough to cover about 50 - 70% of our energy needs depending on the time of year. (we ran out of roof space to cover 100% of our energy needs) Now we viewed that as a sunk cost on the part of the business. Last year we all couldn't take anymore money home without getting bumped up into higher tax brackets. So we decided to reinvest the profits to help improve cash flow. Which it has. It freed up enough to hire a jr. developer.
Total time to ROI is about 7 - 9 years by the absolute numbers in terms of savings on our utility bills. But the extra developer allowed us to put a product on the market this quarter instead of late Q2 or even Q3 of this year. Already it is earning enough to cover 40% of his salary and should be profitable by the end of the year. The product could make enough by this time next year to pay for the solar panels. If not next year, certainly within 24 months. If the solar panels last us 15 years, we're looking at recovering a good long term ROI even figuring in the replacement of certain parts at least once during that period.
I would like to see more people putting these on their homes where it makes sense. Obviously places like Seattle aren't ideal candidates, but if you could turn every house and flat roof into a power producer instead of consumer. I'm sure the power companies don't want that. And I'm not sure if the current government would like that since it would empower people to take individual action to meet their energy needs instead of relying on the government. Even if every home/business just produced 20% of the power they used, it would reduce the load on the power grid by that much. And it would make life easier for places that are already having brown outs etc.. (California)
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IAAE (I am an electrician) and I can tell you that the major cost consideration of a on-grid PV system (after the panels themselves) is the grid tie inverter. They are SERIOUSLY expensive. The off grid equivalent would be a battery bank which is just as expensive and a potential environmental disaster in the making.
If you want to save money, energy and the environment then I would suggest a vacuum solar hot water system any day of the week. Much cheaper, much more efficient and still does some dam useful wo
Re:TCO including disposing of toxic cadmium (Score:2)
Those panels aren't going to last forever, and unlike silicon panels which may involve some toxics during manufacturing but aren't bad once they're finished, cadmium's a nasty toxic material, so cadmium-telluride panels aren't going to be something you can send to the dump for free; I don't think anybody knows what the disposal costs will be.
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Tellurium (Score:4, Interesting)
Volume production will outstrip the world Tellurium supply in the near future so this isn't going to be a cost effective technology for long.
Re:Tellurium (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Tellurium (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod parent up - the mining industry typically just isn't wandering around prospecting for new ore veins unless they a) don't have enough reserves to meet projected demand or b) the price is high enough to justify opening new mines. When the price gets high enough or the reserves get low enough, they go looking and they usually find something. Most of these alarmist "we're out of element X" projections are based on proved reserve numbers, which are just what the mining companies know about *right now* and can extract.
It won't last forever, but there's a lot of ground out there to be dug up yet. I can't promise it'll be as economical to extract as current reserves and prices may fluctuate accordingly, but there *IS MORE OUT THERE*.
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Lets not forget the obvious, once we figure out how to do it with one material successfully we starting looking at cheaper and more common materials that could do the same thing. Especially true when a market has become successful rather than a pure research project.
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You apparently understimate the rising costs of energy [what-is-what.com] of _all_ types. It is a feedback market, as one type of energy chages price, the others change along with it to keep within a natural price ratio. That ratio changes in the short term, but in the long term non-renewables become more expensive and renewables become cheaper. Are you arguing that solar energy is a non-renewable energy resource because of the tellurium supply? You do realize that there are tellurium supplies that are not currently being min
Cadmium toxicity's a real problem too (Score:2)
Cadmium's a really nasty material - even if it's available in significant enough quantities to transform the electric industry, it's not the kind of stuff you want to have getting into the water system.
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Well, so is tellurium. Individuals exposed to tellurium even at very low concentrations develop "tellurium breath," a foul garlic-like odor. As an undergrad in chemistry in college, I was informed only half-jokingly by a professor that was an occupational hazard that had restricted our knowledge of the element.
However, from a production standpoint its scarcity is troubling; Wikipedia states its presence is lower in the crust than that of platinum, making it the rarest stable element by concentration. 500
Cadmium Telluride? How green (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Cadmium Telluride? How green (Score:5, Insightful)
This sounds like the classic solar is not a renewable energy source [what-is-what.com] tale because of the non-renewable materials in solar cells. You do realize that once the cells are built, that they continue to work until damaged or otherwise decommissioned, and that the nonrenewables are not consumed in the process? Also, there are alternative materials to use, and alternative places to mine what there is.
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and, once they are damaged or destroyed, the materials can be reused ...
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Nonsense. All the edges have been rubbed off the atoms, they'll never work as well again.
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and, once they are damaged or destroyed, the materials can be reused ...
Tellurium is extremely rare... the best "ore" source for it would likely be .... used solar panels. Instead of meth addicts stealing the copper power lines, they'll start stealing panels for tellurium recycling. Weird but true. Wait till all the meth heads figure out automotive catalytic converters contain precious metals, and not just the high functioning ones know.
Re:Cadmium Telluride? How green (Score:4, Insightful)
I hate to break it to you, but nearly everything is toxic at some level. The ugly truth is that we're not going to get to a green utopia without some exotic materials that'll probably kill you if you look at them funny. Coal and oil are very safe, non-toxic materials - as is any reasonable concentration of CO2 - but the reality is that they're not green overall. The "green-ness" of a material is in its overall impact, not in its intrinsic properties. We can engineer around the fact that handling them is toxic - it's just a process and plant design question.
We aren't going to build a completely renewable energy infrastucture out of rainbows and ponies. It's going to take some very strange stuff, much of it not good for you. We just have to manage it well.
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Relative to other power sources... (Score:2)
How does this compare? My gut reaction is that, government subsidies aside, per kilowatt-hour, I'm sure just about ANYTHING is cheaper than solar at this point.
When will we finally start building cheap, efficient, and above all clean nuclear plants again instead of wasting our time with this solar and wind crap?
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cheap
HAHAHAHAH ! nuclear is NOT cheap. It is being subsidized MORE than wind or solar.
Don't forget it's peak power (Score:2)
One shouldn't forget that the watts in all these price per watt numbers are peak power. From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
In many parts of the world it's even less.
Why $1 per watt is important (Score:3, Interesting)
The reason why $1 per watt is important, which isn't mentioned in the summary, is not just that it's a nice round number, but the capital cost of electricity for most major industrialized nations averages about a buck a watt. Some more, some less, depends on the cost of land and the economic conditions when the plants were built, technology level, pollution controls, etc, but your local electrical power company happily pays about a buck a watt to build a traditional non-solar plant.
Solar only works half the day, but probably much lower maintenance, slower depreciation, and no fuel costs at all.
So, it now costs "about the same" to build a 1 GW coal, a 1 GW natgas, a 1 GW nuke, OR A 1 GW SOLAR ... Which brings solar into the corporate boardroom.
Re:Why $1 per watt is important (Score:4, Interesting)
You mentioned that solar only works half the time, but you seemed to dismiss it as irrelevant.
Total capacity is a very misleading metric to measure power stations by, and is meaningless without information about it's utilization.
Obviously solar panels only generate when the sun is shining, just like wind plants only generate when the wind is blowing. A very good wind farm will get 40% utilization. A very good solar farm will get maybe 25% utilization.
And that's not the whole story either. It's also interesting to look at the demand weighted generation. This is a way of accounting for generation being more useful when demand is higher. In general, solar panels have a higher DWG in hot climates (air-con when sun is shining), and a lower DWG in cold climates (heating when sun isn't).
Current installed prices are about $5/Wp, and I'd be suprised to see %1/Wp before 2015.
First time $1 a Watt? (Score:2)
An article over at Popular Mechanics announces that, for the first time, solar cells have been manufactured for the much sought-after figure of $1/Watt.
What about this time? [slashdot.org] That was over a year ago.
Solar Thermal (Score:3, Informative)
There is an interesting link on Solar Thermal power at the bottom of the article. I think it is worth reading in relation to photovoltaic power options.
Solar Thermal [popularmechanics.com]
Blog Post [blogspot.com] on the articles.
Thermal Solar (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a lot going on in Thermal Solar right now as it has the greatest potential to meet base load power needs when coupled with molten salt storage. [wikipedia.org]
Beats $3.89:W (Score:3, Informative)
The current lowest price per PV watt [solarbuzz.com] is $3.89. Anything anywhere as cheap as $1:W would revolutionize the current photovoltaic solar industry, which is already just becoming a good priced alternative to getting power from the "city grid".
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What happens when we line the world's deserts with endless fields of solar panels
Well, the first thing you would need to do is figure out a cost effecitve way for the sand in desert not to chip away at the solar panals rendering the useless after the first couple of strong winds / sand storms blow by. This has always been one of the major disadvantages of building a solar power generating station in a desert. In fact before this $1/Watt was made possible, the cost to build and maintain one of these solar generating stations was mute compared to the power savings the grid would save if they were to take that money and use it to install solar panels the individuals homes for who that plant would primarly serve.
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one of these solar generating stations was mute
Mute? I didn't know power stations could talk..
Re:Chilling effects. (Score:4, Informative)
What are the desert sands but another form of solar collector?
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For those who might take the parent seriously:
Global cooling would only follow if we just stored all of the energy collected by the panels. Assuming we used it, or otherwise released it, which we would probably have to, this would create an amount of thermal energy equal to the initial loss. In the end, only the local energy density on Earth has changed.
Generally, global warming/cooling effects will need to involve changing the rate at which energy enters or exits the Earth. For example, carbon diox
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"Where's your God now?"
In R'lyeh, sleeping. Why do you ask?
Re:$1 per Watt or per kW? (Score:4, Informative)
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Definitely not kW/h, a really very meaningless unit. (It'd be joules / (1000*(second^2)) - what exactly are you going to measure with that?) kWh would make a lot more sense, but not in this context, as the OP was confused and not realizing this is about panels, not power.
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> what exactly are you going to measure with that?
You could measure the panel's degradation over time, assuming it's linear. Although kW/year might be more useful for that...
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I think you mean that 1 kWh costs 0.20 euros. Consumers pay for energy, not power.
1 kW can produce 1 kWh in an hour. So if a 1 kW panel costs $1000 (around 800 euros), it will generate enough energy to pay for itself in 4000 hours, i.e. about half a year.
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I keep looking at your figures, and they don't really make sense to me.
Ah - now I see. 800E, a 1kW panel producing a full 1kwh each hour. 4000 * .2 = 800
But you're forgetting about nighttime. In which case, that panel is going to take at least twice as long to produce enough power to pay itself off - on the order of a year, assuming you ultimately obtain a 50% capacity factor. 30-40% for a noticeably more sunny location than Germany.
And that doesn't include install, wiring, or inverter.
Note to developer
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Better call it a whole year unless your solar installation migrates around the globe fast enough to keep up with the sun. :-)
(And realistically, It's probably more like 3 years).
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So if a 1 kW panel costs $1000 (around 800 euros), it will generate enough energy to pay for itself in 4000 hours, i.e. about half a year.
Those must be metric days in Euro-land... On average you only get about 4320 hours of daytime per year, minus some storms and clouds, so its more like it'll pay for itself in one full year. Even if it's pitch black cloudy half the time, thats still only two years to payoff.
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In this case, they're talking about the cost to manufacture a solar cell of a given instantaneous power output.
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I'm sightly confused.
In germany 1 liter of beer costs around 4 euros ... that is the consumer price, not production cost.
So I don't really get what this article is about.
Oh, wait, I think I get it! You're mixing unrelated units with each other!
BlackPignouf
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better insulation seriously reduces the need for airco or heating. investments in insulation are said to have a pyback time of 1 to 2 years. (this means 50% to 100% return of investment per year)
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The article says the price per watt went to 98 cents. But it didn't mention anything about the watt density.
Without knowing this, you really can't assume you can get 5KW on a typical house roof.
Don't get me wrong, I think its a good idea, along as rack systems and electronics were as standardized as everything else that goes into house construction. That has not yet really happened and many systems the DIY crowd is bolting onto their roofs are systems for which parts will not be available in 3 to 5 years.
M
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We just put in solar panels last october. Our building and roof is angled to the south. Our electric bill has been cut by more than half except when it gets into the single digits and we have to crank the heat up. (Ceramic tile floors get most of that morning sun and helps keep the place fairly warm through out the day.)
But solar is not the ideal for all climates. Even in the winter time we still get about 10 hours of day light on the shortest days. If we were much further north or in a place like Seat
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This site is news for nerds, no 'news for consumers'.
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I voraciously read all that, and I don't own anything Apple, or buy that many games, etc.
The fact that they sell the technology doesn't mean that the technology is not interesting per se.
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Because everything is always about you?
Some of us are interested in how the rest of the world is going.
Re:thats nice (Score:5, Informative)
Well as long as they're using rare earth metals, they will never become available. Their supply is much too limited.
Cadmium may not be that expensive, and not that super-rare (though calling the supply abundant would be a stretch), there is barely any tellurium supply.
From the wikipedia page :
Tellurium is extremely rare, one of the nine rarest metallic elements on Earth. It is in the same chemical family as oxygen, sulfur, selenium, and polonium (the chalcogens).
And the reality is ... of all the atoms in the universe (and "more or less" on earth) you have the following relation, for every ton of gold in existence (on earth), there's about 100 grams of Tellurium available.
It's not expensive, because no-one's using it. But if you start mass-producing anything with tellurium in it that cheapness will disappear sooner than you can say "exhausted supply".
It would probably be a very good investment to buy (right now) a ton or so of tellurium and put in your basement. Perhaps a bit unorthodox an investment, but before 20 years pass it will be many times more valuable than gold or platinum. Right now it costs between $70 and $100 per pound. You can reasonably expect that to become at least several thousand within the next ten years.
Re:thats nice (Score:5, Insightful)
None of the elements being discussed are rare earth elements (which are indeed all metals). Cadmium and tellurium are not, and neither are copper, indium, gallium or selenium. This is too bad actually, since despite their name none of the rare earths, except of course for promethium, is very rare.
Tellurium is fairly common for an element of its atomic weight in the Universe. On Earth it is quite rare, but instead of 1/10,000 as common as gold as you would have it, tellurium has about one fourth the abundance of gold in the Earth's crust. See this abundance table [wikipedia.org].
Re:thats nice (Score:4, Funny)
What do you mean - Promethium very rare? Wikipedia says: [wikipedia.org] "It was calculated that the equilibrium mass of promethium in the earth's crust is about 560 g due to uranium fission and about 12 g due to the recently observed alpha decay of europium-151"
So, not only is there a pound of that stuff in the earth, but it is ALWAYS there. As soon as you take it away - BAM - another pound.
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Wow, one pound on the whole Earth?
That's pretty much not existent.
That's the irony (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow, one pound on the whole Earth?
That's pretty much not existent.
It doesn't matter if you can make juice at a buck a watt if your panels are made of unobtainium.
Re:thats nice (Score:4, Funny)
Re:thats nice (Score:5, Informative)
What you are implying is that promethium is the result of a process subject to equilibrium processes. Radioactive decay is not an equilibrium process.
I have no idea the natural abundance of promethium, but if you take away a pound of promethium, there is no "BAM - another pound".
Re:thats nice (Score:5, Funny)
Re:thats nice (Score:5, Informative)
It's not too much of a worry. Concentrating solar power costs have been falling quickly as well, and they require nothing more exotic than reflective surfaces and mineral oil.
Also from the Wikipedia page: "Recently, researchers have added an unusual twist - astrophysicists identify tellurium as the most abundant element in the universe with an atomic number over 40." Which disagrees with the thrust of your objections, but hey, it's Wikipedia. Who knows if it's thinking straight today. The tellurium page also says that cosmic abundance is far higher than terrestrial.
Another thing to keep in mind: one of the reasons so little tellurium is mined is because nobody has had much use for it before. Also, if tellurium becomes a limiting factor, we should be able to get more energy out of each ton by using concentrating reflectors.
As for the "put a ton in your basement" strategy, it may be sound. But Wikipedia advises that it is mildly toxic and should be handled with care.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Dang, I had the same idea... now the price is gonna shoot up overnight as all the slashdotters rush to fill their basements with tellurium!
Actually, a little googling came up with this tidbit of info:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/55959-the-tellurium-supernova [seekingalpha.com]
Looks like the price already did its little "massive production price increase"... partially due to its use in solar panels by First Solar, starting in 2005. (surprise!)
Interestingly, tellurium is most commonly produced as a by-product of electro-refi
Re:thats nice (Score:4, Interesting)
Tellurium is extremely rare, one of the nine rarest metallic elements on Earth. It is in the same chemical family as oxygen, sulfur, selenium, and polonium (the chalcogens).
In a previous life I worked as a Metallurgist for a copper refinery. One project I worked on was refining / recovery of Tellurium from our anode slimes. From a technical point of view it wasn't difficult to recover. I was able to easily get > 99.96% purity in the lab.
At the time we had around 10 Tonnes / year of Tellurium in our slimes. Considering that the total world production is < 40 Tonnes, that was significant.
Even at > $100,000 / tonne, it just wasn't worth our while to go to the trouble of recovering it.
In the end we sold our slimes 'raw' and took the price hit for the impurities (included Copper and Tellurium)
It's not expensive, because no-one's using it. But if you start mass-producing anything with tellurium in it that cheapness will disappear sooner than you can say "exhausted supply".
It would probably be a very good investment to buy (right now) a ton or so of tellurium and put in your basement. Perhaps a bit unorthodox an investment, but before 20 years pass it will be many times more valuable than gold or platinum. Right now it costs between $70 and $100 per pound. You can reasonably expect that to become at least several thousand within the next ten years.
That price is still > $200,000 / Tonne
If the demand (and then price) really do go up, many of the refineries (or the precious metals companies that purchase their slimes) may be induced to actually recover their Tellurium, thus increasing supply.
NB. The major use of Tellurium is currently as a free machining agent in steel (it makes it easier to drill / machine)