If it's not another Fleischman & Pons, that may be pretty damn important; ganking!
Of course, it's hard to know just what "<$1/W" means, because Watts don't really cost, but Joules do (for convenience, they're often expressed as kilowatt-hours (1 kWh = 3 600 000 J) or other such large units, of course). The total expected energy output of a solar cell is given by efficiency times area times average incident solar power density times average lifetime; the cost of the cell divided by this total energy is the actual energy cost, and I would like to know how it stacks up against what the power companies are charging right now, both at the supply end and at the load (i.e., customer) end.
Solar is very different from coal/hydro/nuclear in that it makes sense to produce it in a distributed, rather than a centralized, way. This means that energy production can be situated closer to loads, improving efficiency by eliminating distribution system losses, but some users (generally heavy industry) will still have to draw large amounts of energy from the grid. The need for distributed generation has been known for some time, and the cost of energy generation has been cited as one of the significant barriers to this (see page 16 of this paper by the Ontario Ministry of Energy from almost exactly 3 years ago), but it's not the only barrier. Hopefully, some of the other barriers will also be taken down; technology can't help us as much there, though.
Also it's natively low-voltage and Direct Current-- a house using this stuff would have a native DC power supply probably in the one to fifteen volt range, DC, as opposed to the current 120 volt AC we use today. DC can be readily converted to AC, but at great efficiency cost. A thrifty solar user would wire for DC and power laptops, printers, and anything else that has those "wall wart" converter boxes with the DC (note: without using the wall-warts!) before starting to meet the thermal guzzling AC needs of, for example, a vacuum cleaner.
The cost and efficiency of home-sized inverters has improved on both points dramatically in recent years. You can now get true sine wave inverters that max out at just under 90% (IIRC) efficiency. Modified sine wave models reach 95%.
That's good news! One would still save energy keeping native DC over converting to sinusoid then back, but despite how attractive the idea is from an aesthetic standpoint converting all those wall warts to a special "DC co-power" might actually prove expensive and confusing for most people.
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-22 03:36 pm (UTC)Of course, it's hard to know just what "<$1/W" means, because Watts don't really cost, but Joules do (for convenience, they're often expressed as kilowatt-hours (1 kWh = 3 600 000 J) or other such large units, of course). The total expected energy output of a solar cell is given by efficiency times area times average incident solar power density times average lifetime; the cost of the cell divided by this total energy is the actual energy cost, and I would like to know how it stacks up against what the power companies are charging right now, both at the supply end and at the load (i.e., customer) end.
Solar is very different from coal/hydro/nuclear in that it makes sense to produce it in a distributed, rather than a centralized, way. This means that energy production can be situated closer to loads, improving efficiency by eliminating distribution system losses, but some users (generally heavy industry) will still have to draw large amounts of energy from the grid. The need for distributed generation has been known for some time, and the cost of energy generation has been cited as one of the significant barriers to this (see page 16 of this paper by the Ontario Ministry of Energy from almost exactly 3 years ago), but it's not the only barrier. Hopefully, some of the other barriers will also be taken down; technology can't help us as much there, though.
ETA Fleischman & Pons link
(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-22 05:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-22 07:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-22 08:01 pm (UTC)