Why cant we use Solar Technology?

If they could make the space station, satellites, mars land rover, challenger and other space stuff soler powered why cant we make a soler powered car that goes faster then 30 miles an hour? And could i make my house soler powered so i dont have to pay the electric bill?

you can you just have to find teh materials and they are really expenisve. i can buy small solar pannels that run about 8 volts for about 10 dollars thats expensive. thats why we dont have it wide spread and thats why only specality programs use it like desert civlizations that dont have use for all the power genreated by large power plants so they set up 3 or 4 solar pannels for the local water supply, tv, raido etc

solar tech is expensive

They are very expensive, and you'd need a lot of roof or ground space to make enough energy...

The entire world might use solar power for energy 2080, I was reading an article on alternative power sources, in the article it proposed that huge solar panels that are something like 5 miles long 3 miles wide and 1/4 mile heigh they described how they would provide power, by putting a ring of them in a permanent eqiutorial orbit so there would be half gathhering power all the time, the way in which we got the power was from beam stations, the energy is turned into a microwave beam shot down and captured at a beam plant where its turned back in to energy.
I'll try and find the article.

Because the oil barons don�t want to..this will cause a war, if oil will "sawed off" and solar energy take charge instead.

think about that--

Yes, it is expensive, because there is such a little demand on this type of technology,
a highly compentitive market operates only with supply and demand.

depends on which solar tech you put your favor.

solar cells on the roof on clothing or on cars ect.

solar heating confersion

solar like Fusion..

there many more forms.

but I put my favor for the solar like fusion tech. under development all over the world and now with ITER project were we might get or 1 or 2 reactors which depends on which site they select if they select japan Europe will go on and build one of there own so then we will have two big ones.

You can get them now, but it will take awhile (15 or so) for them to pay them selves off, if ever. You can either get the big clunky panels that go on your roof, or the small thin lightweight ones that look just like normal shingles, but or course those one's are less efficient.

Heres the panels, which are more efficient


Heres the newer better looking but less efficient


Oh, BTW, I think you have been "out of the loop" in solar tech, its progressing fairly quickley, here is the current fastest solar powered car, its top speed is 105mph.


If you really like gadgets but they always go dead and your not by an out let you can just charge them from your back pack, but they take over twice as long to charge then a normal in the wall one.


Hell, you can even buy an Apple Ipod Solar Charger if ya want.

The average American household is much too wasteful of energy to be run off of current alternitive energy technology easily, or to run "off the grid". Not only will it require the technology ($20,000+ for a decent setup depending on location and available resources) but it will also require that people rethink their energy usage habits and learn to be smarter about how we do things.

Produce all the nice Tech you want. Unless there are some major breakthroughs, or until people change how they use energy, it won't be enough to make the switch to renewable resources.

Ambient Sound, the switch is happenening already, as you know solar tech is developing on a curve similiar to Moores Law, allthough not quite as fast(efficiency doubles every 6-8 years instead of 18-24 months). I have already pegged the % where I am gonna start converting over(around 20% the highest ive seen is aroudn 13% pls correct me if there is anything higher than this).

EDIT: Edited out erronous statement as pointed out by Off_The_Street


[edit on 28-11-2004 by sardion2000]

sardion says:

"for a 1200 watt unit in early 2004 it woulda cost me around 600 USD Now the price 431.95 at PowerFilm..."

PowerFilm� Rollable R15-1200 20 Watt Solar Battery Charger

Sardion, that is not a 1200-Watt panel but a 20-Watt one! You have the product number confused with the power output.

A 1200-Watt system (just the PV modules themselves) cost today around
$US 8,000, based on the cost of 100-Wartt modules @ US$ 660 picked at random from www.nextstepenergy.com...

And, since the BOS (balance of systems) cost, which inclueds batteries, support structures, voltage conditioning systems, wiring, etc. typically double the overall cost, a complete 1200 Watt system could cost you about $16,000 US.

"as you know solar tech is developing on a curve similiar to Moores Law, allthough not quite as fast(efficiency doubles every 6-8 years instead of 18-24 months)."

I wish. When I was working at Solavolt International in the late 1980s, our polycrystalline modules typically had about 10% efficiency; the latest Mitsubishis boast about 13% -- and that's about 16 years worth of "advancement".

Remember, the theoretical maximum amount of power available on Earth is about 1kW/m^2. So even if you had 100% efficient PV modules, covering the south side of a typical large suburban house (say 100m^2) would provide you with 100kW, only half of which you could use at once (because the other half would be busy charging your batteries for use at night when the array isn't working). And the cost would bump your house value up by, say, a quarter-million dollars. Figure an additional $2000/month on a 30-year fixed mortgage.

You can buy a lot of electricity from the grid for $2000 a month.

Off_The_Street Thanks very much for pointing out my error! I was very tired when I wrote that reply and I will now correct it

I read of a Canadian company a couple of months ago that was producing a thin film solar cell. The effieciencies are about half that of silicon wafer, convnetional solar, about 5%, but the cost are about a third of the conventional systems. The company was "Circular" or something like that. I can't rember the name. Does this ring a bell with anyone else?

It is vedy vedy expunsive. 30 mph? Why would I want to buy a car that only tops 30? I need something that can at least do 60 and then some. Just Imagine what would happen on the days that the sunshine is poor do to cloud interference.

Our national commitment is to leave magnetism alone.

The industries that fund our election and legislative systems profit off oil, gas and nuclear physics--not magnetics.

Somehow, they've left magnetics--which are fundamentally FREE--alone. It's as if they never discovered the value of lodestones.

Hmmm. Wonder why they overlooked such a basic resource.

You wanna wonder with me? See the Dulce Book.

We had a recent post (news item) showing that wave technology that harnesses power from the oceans may be a much better idea. However, again, this tech is best used only in some areas and it seems to do best when you have an area with extremely forceful waves.

When I was in Palm Springs, CA this summer, I saw their wind energy farm which supplies electricity for much of the area. It was an impressive thing, however, it's not suitable for everywhere and there may be some issues with that.

For those in position to do so, investing in the stocks of companies that are doing this kind of tech is a good idea. I have invested in a couple of them, myself.

We are starting to make better use of solar technology though. Check out this link

www.enviromission.com.au...#

They are planning to make a solar energy tower. It seems pretty useful and it has many uses. I can't wait to see this thing get done being built.

Originally posted by cloudx
We are starting to make better use of solar technology though. Check out this link

www.enviromission.com.au...#

They are planning to make a solar energy tower. It seems pretty useful and it has many uses. I can't wait to see this thing get done being built.

Construction is starting in January 05 I believe. Only gonna cost about 1 billion for a 200 mgwatt solar convection genorator. How does that compare to Nuclear?

Sardion and cloudx, that is one of the neatest concepts I have ever imagined. At the arboretum where my wife and I volunteer, we have a cooling tower that does pretty much the same thing without the turbine.

I watched the movie twice, but was not able to back out the capabilities of the tower except that it averaged 30kW. That may not sound like much, but it's a good start.

There are a lot of engineering questions that the Australians are probably answering now, and I'd love to visit them. For example, wind power increases as the cube of the velocity, and a turbine, given its inherent size and weight, as well as cut-in and cut-out speeds, has to be matched to the optimum wind conditions.

This means that, as you scale up your tower and thus the mass and velocity of the wind, you will have to re-design your turbine to closely match it. I suppose the atltitude of the land is key too, because you'd probably have to make adjustments from the baseline density of 1.225 kg/m^2 of air or whatever it is. That stuff's easy to figure out, though, if you're an engineer. I'm sure they're running sims right now with 6th and 7th degree polynomials and should have it right down to a gnat's nostril.

but what really makes this stuff neat (especially for folks in places like Australia and Arizona) is that it traps ambient moisture and allows it to be exploited for irrigating crops.

Indeed, I could see the water on the underside of the plastic sheeting being gravity-fed to a shaded area outside the actual collection area where you would have bot slightly cooler and moisture-laden air, along with drip irrigation of plants such as vegetables.

Talk about a great synergy!

I'm definitely going to stay on top of this technology. Many thanks for bringing it up!

The most efficient way to harness solar energy isn't through photovoltaics, but through steam. I don't understand why a flash boiler and a small steam engine aren't used instead, really. After all, they'd last longer, albeit with maintenance.

shbaz, you're right in that a flash boiler would do the trick. But perhaps the one reason such a boiler isn't as popular with a lot of solar people is that it's not a good choice for do-it-yourselfers (think high pressure and superheated steam) and it might not be cost-effective for large commercial sites because of unforseen pressure/temperatur drops if the sky gets cloudy.


Nonetheless, if you have a trough mirror that's parabloic in cross-section, and then a thick copper pipe with a couple of one-way valves running along the parabola's focus, you should get quite a bang (hopefully not literally) for your buck!