Are Solar Panels Sustainable On A Large Scale?

originally posted by: Vector99
a reply to: D8Tee

As to the storage solutions, you are correct, we are not there.

Google Tesla Powerwall and you will see we actually are.

A whole bunch of 18650 batteries, wow...

No, we are not there.

Nope, just crazy talk.

a reply to: D8Tee

Actually tesla products are in the 2170 category now, but that aside, please explain WHY they won't work? Why isn't it a viable storage solution?

solar power viability is influenced by many factors but the #1 =

location , location , location

this is why the saudis are investing billions in solar power - and the norweigans zero

you cannot just ask - is solar viable - the question has to be in context

is solar viable for " insert location "`

originally posted by: wdkirk

Nope, just crazy talk.

Haha, you've shown a picture of the Sarnia, Ontario Solar plant, part of the Ontario fiasco in green energy.

That plant makes 97 megawatts and occupies around 1100 acres. Supplies enough power for about 60,000 houses. Expensive power. 44.3 cents per kW·h
The Nanticoke Generating Station which was shut down made 3,964 MW of power, or 40 times as much. It supplied 2.5 million households. Inexpensive power. 9 cents per kW·h

So, you'd only need about 45,000 acres to replace that one coal fired generating station.
Thats around 70 square miles lol.
And don't forget that solar don't make nothing at nighttime.

originally posted by: Vector99
a reply to: D8Tee

Actually tesla products are in the 2170 category now, but that aside, please explain WHY they won't work? Why isn't it a viable storage solution?

It works. It's expensive. Get one if you can afford it, they are toys for the rich.

a reply to: D8Tee

Financing $3,500 is available to almost anyone in the US. Granted, this isn't an option country-wide, but the areas it is feasible for are also the largest energy consumers.

Solar and renewables are definitely a VERY viable and cost effective option for the southwest.

a reply to: Vector99
Each Powerwall 2 costs $5,550, and the average US home will need 2 or 3 to supply its power needs. A single Powerwall can provide limited backup power for critical appliances and lights, but not enough for the entire power usage of a typical house.

Thats without any solar cells, inverters or associated installation costs. Like I said, they are toys for the rich.

If you wanna run up your credit card having expensive power, go for it.

Personally if I was going to go off grid I'd use regular battery technology, it might be bigger and bulkier but it's cheaper and will last just as long.

a reply to: D8Tee

You are going by storage capacity alone. And you are correct, an individual would have to finance $5,500 instead of $3,500.

During the day the solar array would provide adequate power for household usage. The battery would be used primarily after sunset, therefore you wouldn't need an entire day's worth of kWh from the battery itself. That also happens to be when power usage is at it's lowest.

Solarcity is an option for people in the southwest still. They install, maintain, and repair all of the solar panels, but you are locked into a many year long contract. You save money though, so it's really not that bad of a deal, people are just afraid of contracts.

So to a typical homeowner, yes it is a lot cheaper to go solar depending on the region. There is a reason you don't see this being prevalent in places like Chicago and Seattle. Not enough sun.

a reply to: TheScale

Yea they are, Bubba.

One of my relations is a multi millionaire because of it and he is just letting them use his land. Lordy above knows how much they are making out of it?

Most of my close family use them on the roofs. They all have tiny grid electricity bills and in good Summers the utility company has to be pay them. They have big houses with big families and they pay a LOT less for their electric than I do living in my tiny cottage as a single person. The rich always pay less while the poor pay more. We have no opportunities to install these gizmos and nobody will do it for us. They want to keep making money out of us, blame us at the same time that we are contemptible for using dirty fuel and tax us heavily for it (carbon tax). Yep, another reason for them to look down on us great unwashed, lol.

Even in the very worst of UK grey weather they generate a tiny bit of electricity, but it is not enough to make any real use of. They are our "fair-weather friends", lol ( have had my fill of those in my time).

So they have to be used alongside tidal and wind generators. Between the 3 we have loads of electric. Yet it is still not enough, apparently. They can lessen but not eradicate nuclear and fossil generation dependence. We need even more new ideas.

a reply to: D8Tee

So, this isn't a large scale solar field?

What should a large scale solar array produce?


Or are you just complaining about how much power it generates vs. what it costs?

a reply to: TheScale

Used where they ought to be, just a tiny percentage of a given landmass need be covered in order to run a nations entire grid.

That is simply how it is. With battery technology already on stream to support it, not to mention improving all the time, the arguments against its taking over as the sole energy provision tactic for entire nations has been shot to ribbons and cast to the four winds. The ONLY reason it has not already been installed in place of all fossil burning and nuclear energy production, is that those other industries are very profitable for the minority of fantastically wealthy people, who own parliaments all over the world in real terms, by lobby power and by bribery.

originally posted by: pheonix358
Why not compare the solar industry to say the gas industry.

Start with the billions of dollars required for exploration oil rigs, then the cost of permanent oil rigs, the huge cost of the ships to take the product from here and deliver it to there. Don't forget the pipelines and the cleanup operations needed from time to time including the big ones and the damage they cause.

Now add oil refineries, the enormous fleet of trucks to deliver the product, add in the gas stations and you may have a glimpse of the true costs needed to do a comparison!

The detractors never want to discuss these costs because fuel is expensive to manufacture ... unless you can rape the Iraqi oil fields for over a decade and shift your ill gotten gains to your home country.

You need to look at both sides of the argument otherwise the numbers mean nothing.

In addition, could you offer a few links to where you are getting your current 'facts' from? Otherwise it is just hyperbole.

Look at countries that are doing solar and doing it so well! Start with Germany!

P

I work in the offshore oilfield and it is expensive to build the platforms and to run the pipelines to the beach. The oil companies also have to put aside money for clean up costs after the platform is removed and the site trawled to make sure everything is clean. I was on the Deepwater Horizon about 2 years before it went down and the day rate was 450K a day and a Derrick barge was about 180k a day. The rates have come down a lot since 40% of the industry has folded so labor is a lot cheaper all thanks to Obama.

originally posted by: Vector99
a reply to: TheScale

Where are you getting your info from? Also, you are using percentages that aren't relevant. How much power does a solar panel receive daily in a sunny region? You are using percentages that power companies would use. An average household in the US uses about 30 kWh per day, a single consumer grade square meter panel can produce between 2.5-6.6 kWh per day.

yes they are arbitrary numbers. the thing is it wasnt too long ago that the vast majority of solar panels never produced the amount of energy over their entire lifetime that it took to produce them. so when i use the 50% more ouput then it took to produce a panel im probly shooting quite high actually and i wouldnt be surprised to find out if thats far higher then the best panel we can produce today. id really like to know what panels there are that can produce anywhere near 6.6kwh in a square meter. most produce anywhere from 200-250 watts per square meter and thats if the sun is beating right on it. for referance my parents had a 30 panel system and all 30 panels would produce around 6.5kw per hour during the peak hours of the day. this is with 20% efficient panels. over the course of a full day in the summer theyd get around 45-60kwh of power generation and they live in an area that has alot of sun. but its not really about consumption. its more about how sustainable are solar panels on a large scale. cause even with a 100% efficient panel there is only so much power u can get from a square meter. so the scale of solar is massive to meet our energy demands. if u want to get completely off fossil fuels then solar needs to be able to produce enough power to replace the panels at the end of their service life along with provide for our energy demands. it quickly snowballs into needing really massive numbers of panels if they cant produce much more power over its lifetime then it takes to produce. otherwise your just building panels and using all their energy so u can maintain your panels.

originally posted by: TrueBrit
a reply to: TheScale

Used where they ought to be, just a tiny percentage of a given landmass need be covered in order to run a nations entire grid.

That is simply how it is. With battery technology already on stream to support it, not to mention improving all the time, the arguments against its taking over as the sole energy provision tactic for entire nations has been shot to ribbons and cast to the four winds. The ONLY reason it has not already been installed in place of all fossil burning and nuclear energy production, is that those other industries are very profitable for the minority of fantastically wealthy people, who own parliaments all over the world in real terms, by lobby power and by bribery.

whats tiny though? theres only so much power u can pull out of a square meter and id love for someone who isnt as lazy as i am to do the math and find out just how large of a landmass would need to be covered for solar panels to produce even 50% of our energy needs while at the same time providing the energy needed to replace those panels when they inevitably fail. add on top of that redundancy for bad weather and failures, the loss in transmission and storage with batteries and your talking some really massive numbers. you do realize that batteries and other methods of power storage are prohibitively expensive aswell as producing toxic waste to go on top of it and they also have a finite lifetime and will need replacing often. then u add in the cost of maintaining something that is going to span a vast amount of land and when u compare that to something like a coal plant that can be run by a handful of people u can imagine how the costs will spiral out of control. i just dont see how its feasible until a panel can produce 10x or more energy then it took to make the panel itself.

originally posted by: ignorant_ape
solar power viability is influenced by many factors but the #1 =

location , location , location

this is why the saudis are investing billions in solar power - and the norweigans zero

you cannot just ask - is solar viable - the question has to be in context

is solar viable for " insert location "`

actually i can if the technology itself is inherently flawed at this point in time. lets just say hypothetically that the panels will never have a cloud shroud their sunlight, if they still can only produce 50% more power over their lifetime, and im probly shooting high for our current tech with that number, then 66.6% of all panels you produce have to have all of their energy they produce go straight back into producing the replacement panels for when the first batch begin to fail. this means if u need to provide 10mw youd actually have to have a 30mw solar farm to sustain that solar farm. 2 thirds of everything goes straight back into sustaining the solar panels themselves. thats where i feel we have an issue with the techonology today cause the numbers quickly begin to snowball and the production of panels consumes large quantities of energy which is derived from fossil fuels today. it seems irresponsible to try and push them on a large scale until they become far more energy positive. also i find it interesting how the saudis are pushing for it. maybe cause they know that their fossil fuel is whats being consumed to provide the energy to produce the panels.

The problem with the U.S. application ( Like everything else) was everyone wanted to become billionaires off of the profits.
In-depth R&D was never a viable consideration.

I bought my first set in Israel in the early 90s for strictly water heating.
I was overwhelmed by the efficiency.
The 2nd generation I have now, heat all the water including the heavy demand needed by a washing machine.
As well, the over production goes back out to the grid.

In the area of mass production Israel is at least 20 years ahead of the rest of the world.
The real breakthrough was combining LNG with panels.
Sun by day and gas by night at the same generating complex.

You'll not see a viable application here in the U.S. for many years.
There is far to much corrupt competition.

Buck

P.S. Did you guys see the Westinghouse bankruptcy ??
Four nuclear plants half built.
Unbelievable, only in America

a reply to: TheScale

Well you went on a tangent there didn't you.

Solar power will never break the 20-25% efficiencyrate, but the kWh per panel will continue to increase as solar cells advance. The most efficient cell in ideal conditions right now will produce about 7kWh per day, and that's at a square meter ratio, meaning 3 feet by 3 feet. The average US consumer uses about 30kWh per day. Under ideal conditions you can have a 6x6 setup and produce all the power you need. It will require a home battery for night time use, but the battery will basically always be charged and last a long time. So will the panels.

This setup is only ideal for people that live in desert climates, who also tend to be the largest consumers of electrical power.

The video is pretty informative:


transcript at:
www.abc.net.au...

It talks about current home battery tech.


Also, I'm not sure of how true it is but some youtubers are talking about building their own "power walls" for about 100 bucks per kwh using old laptop batteries.

a reply to: TheScale

In total, it is thought that 10,000km2 would be required, in order to replace all current electricity production methods in the US. Thats ten k squared spread across the whole country. If you were to put it all in one place, it would be the teeniest, tiniest corner of a state in that country. That would yield 500GW, more than the 425GW current average upper level of usage over a year, unless my reading comprehension failed me months back when I read up on it last.