I have a stupid question about solar energy.

[SmileyRose]

Wouldn't it be cheaper for developers to build all new developments with each house having it's own solar power plant for all it's own needs rather than having to pay to run power lines and hook up to the public grid?

You'd think if every new house and new strip mall and new church and new school and new whatever were outfitted with solar roofing tiles from the get go then the price for the tile would nosedive and it would be cost neutral rather than paying to string electric lines everywhere (which quite frankly are butt ass ugly anyway).

Or is it that they get stuck pulling in phone and cable lines anyway, either above or below ground, and since they have to do that it's cheaper to just pull in the power too?

Somebody help edumacate me here. Picking through google has been fruitless.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

1. If you do both you can feed unused power back into the grid. nt

(I know my answer is a little off the mark.)

[SmileyRose]

10. That part I get.

It's going to take decade upon decade to retrofit existing buildings with solar tiles anyway - and it won't be practical for some historic buildings anyway. So being able to put solar buildings and neighbors on the grid can be extremely beneficial.

I understand at this point equipping buildings with solar and selling the excess to the power grid is still at a financial loss - saving on buying the power and the revenue from selling the power just takes way too long for the solar panels or tiles to pay for themselves in many cases.

I guess I'm just trying to think outside the box - if every single building, parking lot and street light etc could be energy self sufficient and no power grid were even necessary at some point in the future.

[CreekDog]

2. solar power is not 24/7, the cells only store so much energy

also when power is produced in its greatest amounts is often when it's not needed. so the connection to the grid is useful so that the meter can spin backwards and the power can be delivered from the solar cells back to the grid.

[SmileyRose]

6. So the problem is storage?

Is this the same problem they are having getting a fully electric car to have any kind of long distance ability that would make them appealing in the mass market?

[Jackpine Radical]

8. Yes, sotage is one of the main bottlenecks in green energy in general.

The sun doesn't always shine, and the wind doesn't always blow when you want it. Therefore you have to time-shift things.

[SmileyRose]

14. So basically

if we can figure out some nifty way to store vast amounts of energy - or even work in that direction - that will solve a lot of the problems with getting off fossil fuels forever?

[Jackpine Radical]

28. Yes, most certainly.

And there are rumors of suppressed technologies, etc.

[Jackpine Radical]

27. Ack. Typo. Storage, not sotage (whatever that is).

[cbayer]

13. Sorry to post this twice, but we charge up 12 volt batteries using the solar panels

and use these at night. Your idea is a good one, and there are many people (including myself) living off the grid.

:hi:

[SmileyRose]

15. You live on a boat??

Yes I peaked at your profile wondering where you live. :) :) :)

My husband and I have talked more than once about chucking it all and buying a van based motor home and have it converted to running on used veggie oil. We found out the conversion is cost prohibitive and the infrustructure to "gas" it up is hard to figure out.

But if and when he come home from the hospital and if and when he recovers fully, we probably will re-assess our lifestyle.

[cbayer]

20. Yep. We make our own electricity and water.

It makes you really pay attention to how you use things.

I had some friends who tired the van idea for a couple of years, but they had trouble finding readily available veggie oil for fuel and ditched it.

Some people live in small cabins off the grid. You can use your panels to make most, if not all, of your electricity, but need large battery banks for storage. We also have a small generator for periods when there is not sufficient sunlight for an extended period of time. Refrigeration is by far the biggest consumer.

Look around the web. There are some great sites out there.

And you are asking some really great questions!

:hi:

[Jackpine Radical]

30. My neighbor runs his diesel truck & heats his house with

processed waste veggie oil. He says it's getting harder to come by the veggie oil because more people are getting into using it. Restaurants used to give it away after frying stuff in it, but now they're starting to sell it.


Also, for anyone interested, look up the Midwest Renewable Energy Association. They hold a convention in central WI every year around the summer solstice. www.the-mrea.org I think.

[tangent90]

19. You are a VERY rare energy-frugal bird. I doubt that 1 out of 100 consumers could do that,

even if they have the resources to invest in alternate energy sources. I do salute you, though.
:D

[cbayer]

22. I am always amazed when I visit otherwise progressive friends. They generally

have scores of lights, appliances, etc, running for no apparent reason. And when they open their faucets just to run a bunch of water down the drain, I literally cringe.

People will not learn how to conserve power and water and be responsible about the waste they produce until they are personally responsible for generating and disposing of it. It radically changes your POV, but provides an amazing level of freedom.

:hi:

[tangent90]

24. Not an excuse but by way of explanation, I grew up in the era of cheap and plentiful

water, energy and opportunity...not rich by the standards of the day but moreso than now it seems.

[dtotire]

3. Solar panels don't generate power at night.

A good idea though--owners would save quite a bit on power bills

[cbayer]

12. No, but it can be "stored".

We charge up our 12 volt battery banks and use these at night.
:hi:

[roody]

4. When electricity travels, it loses efficiency.

Every building should have some kind of PV to augment the grid power. Or extremely local PV plants.
P.S. I have 9 panels on my house.

[lapfog_1]

5. You would still have to run power lines

unless you install enough solar AND storage capacity (in the form of ultra capacitors, batteries, or other storage systems) to ride through the longest expected period of little to no sunlight.

And since you are installing water, sewer, communication wires, etc to each house, power isn't a big incremental.

But yes, every new home should have solar roofing tiles and, possibly, solar hot water systems installed.

[tangent90]

7. It's not a stupid question at all. The obstacle to that idea is energy density.

"high quality" solar insolation (means little or no clouds and good sun angle) will yield from 120 to 180 watts per square meter.
If your house is 'typical' it can easily consume 2 or 3 kilowatts on average (much more if air conditioning is in use) so even with realistically - like 80%- efficient solar cells, you're looking at something like several hundred square feet (like 50 x 50 feet) which is a very expensive and real-estate consuming enterprise.

[SmileyRose]

11. I'm missing something.

I keep reading these stats that say even on a rainy day enough solar energy reaches the earth in 1 hour to power our need for one year. I don't have links, I just remember reading that kind of thing repeatedly and hearing it on Green TV or Discovery over and over.

So if a solar panel is 80% efficient then wouldn't it collect enough energy to power a house for a year in an hour and 15 minutes?

I'm sorry, I know these are idiotic questions, but I have no science brain at all. Edit to add that my understanding of electricity is so small that no matter how hard people try, they can't make me understand why if the big honkin power lines leaks enough electricity to cause an electrical field that gives people nearby cancer - then hows come the plug at my house isn't leaking electricity?

[BlooInBloo]

16. One thing to be clear on: There is NO energy-conversion system anywhere NEAR 80%

efficiency.

Either the poster you replied to is simply mistaken, or else the thingamabob he's talking about is only a small piece of the total sunlight-to-usable-electricity puzzle.

I think they're around 20-30% energy-conversion-efficiency for solar at the moment, and probably not gonna go all that much higher in a cost-effective manner.

(Note that "cost-effective" is not the same thing as "efficiency", though there are relationships between the two concepts. Splitting atoms is a more energy-efficient energy producer than burning gasoline, for example, but gasoline is nevertheless much more cost-efficient.)

[tangent90]

18. I typed way too fast and wrote "realistically" instead of what I really meant,

"optimistically".

You're right of course, I simply wanted to point out that no matter how good the thingamabob is, it can't possibly produce (convert) more energy than falls from the sky to begin with.

[tangent90]

17. Yes, an enormous amount of sun energy reaches the earth, nearly all of it hits

oceans and land where nobody has a house. But it makes plants grow which is pretty important. :D

There's plenty of energy coming from the sun but a house just isn't big enough to -collect- enough of it to be self sufficient
(although by adding a wind turbine it can be very nearly so. You can order solar panels from any of a jillion places...a typical one that makes a few watts, like 15 or 20, is the size of a card table. To run a coffee pot, for instance, would take about 50 of them.

The stories of power lines causing cancer are just tinfoil crap coming from uneducated morons...pay no attention to them.

[HillbillyBob]

31. Actually a 175 watt panel is about 36x48.

We use too much power as a country we waste far more than we use.
We have a 2,000 square foot modular home total electric.
The previous owners used about 4,000 kilo watt hours of electric per month.
We have been here 2 full years going into our third.
The first winter we used 3200 kwhrs for Dec/Jan/Feb equalling 350 to 400$
Last winter we used about 2300-2800.
This winter we have been using 1200-1300 kwhrs for this Dec/Jan/Feb 166 to 169$ month
We did a lot of little things that make the place much more efficient.
We have spent about 2500$ all told so far for improvements.
Sealing up air leaks, changed light bulbs to cfls, yesterday I swapped 12 of those out for LEDs that I got a very good deal on.
We are warmer in winter and cooler in summer.
We replaced the dishwasher and clothes washer, added insulated curtain liners ( i work them to make use of solar gain on cold days and exclude direct sun on hot summer days) Open windows when temperate also adjust windows to keep temperature comfortable. I cook in covered pots at low heat, use a toaster oven for small meals. We have a well so use water frugally, wrapped the water heater in a double insulation, plus added stryo panels in the closet the water heater is in.
We use LCD flat screens which us 40 watts instead of the 200 the old CRTs did.
Turn off lights, use plug strips to turn off cellphone chargers, microwaves etc when not using them. I have to admit I don't remember every time, but I try.

We want to install solar water heater this summer, swap the old fridge for one that is not 10 years old, and the range for induction cooktop and a convection oven with rotisserie to save even more power.
We want to put the well pump on solar panels and the solar water heater will have solar panels to recirc the water so that we don't run 4 gallons down the sink to get hot water, the bathrooms and kitchen are far away from the domestic water heater. We also put low flow shower heads that have a cutoff so I wet down soap up and rinse, and we don't take 2 minute showers, since both of us have back problems it takes some hot water to get going in the morning, but we do cut back the flow, same with sinks, only turning the water on part the way to get whatever job done, instead of running faucets at full blast, shut off the water while brushing teeth.
We plan on solar electric/ wind hybrid when we get the power use down.
We have been adapting, adding or changing a habit then picking something else to change. It has been pretty painless and the cut in the cost of the electric bill has helped.
As we go we will be insulating pipes, adding insulation to the attic, painting the roof white to hold it over till we can afford a metal roof same with the siding, insulation in the craw space over the dirt floor (moisture makes the ac work harder) and the walls of the craw space and radiant floor heating (40% savings) There are other things, recycle all we can including the old tvs when they die off and replace with projector 190 watts instead of 300.
If we all did a bit to make our homes more efficient, we can be more comfortable and save some bucks toward that solar /wind /backup battery system and we would not need any where near that 5,000 someone here quoted..thats a lot of power wasted. Not to mention the disaster of coal mining..don't get me started on 'clean coal' or he destruction of vast areas of WV and other Appalachian areas.

[conscious evolution]

25. Enough reaches the edge of the earths atmosphere

in an hour.
By the time it gets through the atmosphere to the ground the amount of energy goes way down.All of the moisture,dust particles,pollution and anything else found in the atmosphere acts as a filter and absorbs the majority of the energy.
Boo is a little off the mark in regards to panel efficciency.The vast majority of panels only have a efficientcy of around 15-20%.But that number is going up as newer panel technologies come out.

Here is a little peice of useless trivia for you-Solar panels produce a lot more power in outerspace.A panel that produces 100 watts on earth will produce >1000 watts in space.There is two reasons for this.One is that there is no atmosphere to filter out the full energy coming from the sun.The second is due to the extreme cold in outer space.Extreme cold cuts down on electrical resistance so that electrons flow more freely.
Remember those two robots we sent to Mars? When they were first sent it was thought that they would only last a few months.Instead they are still going strong.IMO,the increase lifespan is partly due to the solar panels.The extreme cold and lack of atmosphere has allowed them to produce more than enough electrical power to remain operating.

[Massacure]

21. Solar panels are not 80% efficient.

On the commercial market you will be hard pressed to find anything more efficient than 17 or 18%.

[tangent90]

23. My bad, I know better, typed the wrong word...see my #18

sorry

[Ian David]

9. If you sell a man a fish, he eats for a day.

If you sell a man his own fishing rod, you're not going to sell him any more fish.

At least, not during daylight hours, when the fish aren't sleeping.

[Juche]

26. Especially now

Now that we have new solar technologies that can be sold for $1 a watt, down from about $5/watt for silicon. not only that but some new groups predict they could get the price down to $0.10-.50 a watt within a decade due to mass production. A house supposedly needs about 5000 watts of panels to power itself. However you still have to pay for inverters and installation, which adds thousands more.

I read an article a few years ago that did addres your question, and how when homeowners were told of the savings and higher resale value of their homes, many preferred the solar option.

Even though solar doesn't work at night, people don't use much electric at night. people use peak electric during midday because that is when all the appliancs are on. And that is the same time that solar works best.

[JerseygirlCT]

29. I imagine that would depend on the climate, for one thing

and on how well storage has developed.

Where I am, and the way my particular house is situated, I imagine in the summer we could gather a fair amount of energy. My front door is often too hot to touch by mid-afternoon in summertime.

OTOH, winter is long and grey, and the sun is weak. Don't know how much we'd be pulling in then, you know?

Now, I have no scientific or mechanical expertise here, so someone with better knowledge and skills might have better to say. But this is what has always occurred to me.