Re: Profitable Solar Power - A suggestion
- From: "Andy" <andysharpe@xxxxxxxx>
- Date: 26 Aug 2005 14:49:35 -0700
Andy replies to Goedin:
Good post. I would like to add to it.
I think you are being conservative. In Dallas , Texas, there is a
daily
average of only 5 1/2 hours of "full sun" per day. And Dallas is a LOT
better off than most places. Possibly the Arizona desert has more
sunlight.
Your point is well made, however.
If one wants to determine what the tradeoff is, the following
steps
will do:
1 Determine, from your electric bill, how much power you need to
maintain your current lifestyle. Typically about a 1000 kwh
per month, for me.
( For me, at 0.10 per kwh, this is $100 a month, or $1200
a year )
2 Determine the cost to generate that from sunlight. that occurs
5 1/2 hours
per day (or wherever you live ---- the data is on the
internet).
You need solar cells, batteries, inverters , solar batter
regulator, infrastructure
wiring, maintenance, and plan on a 20 year life.
( For instance , 1000 kwh per month at 5 1/2 hours per day
results in
a requirement for a solar array of 6000 peak watts . It
will put out
peak power for 165 hours a month and store it in a
battery set.
At $6 per watt for a typical solar array, this is a
$36K investment
in the solar cells alone. Then you add bigass
batteries and
inverters..... The investment can easily exceed $50K,
but you
will only believe it if you go thru the numbers
themselves. )
3 Now, take that cost and put it in a CD at 5% interest and see
how much
you would realize.
( If it was $50K, your interest income would be $2500 ,
for instance)
4 One finds therefore there is twice as much interest
generated on the CD to pay
one's grid power bill from step one. Which means that
all the trouble
one went to in step 2 did not save a damn cent.....
AND, at the end
of 20 years, one still has one's original CD investment.
And that is even after paying income tax on the
interest......
Does it benefit society as a whole ?
Finally, consider the gasoline that had to be burned to melt the
silicon to
make the cells, burned to heat the factory, burned in the cars of the
engineers
to get to work, burned in the truck to deliver the panel, burned in
the smelter to
make the metal for the panel, burned to air condition the smelter,
etc,etc,etc.
All that energy is CHEAP because it is gasoline. But it takes a hell
of a lot more
energy to make all the tools to provide solar electricity than the
lifetime of the
solar array can generate...
Solar electricity is GREAT for applications where you can't plug into
a cheap
grid ---- remote cabins, sailboats, etc. I have had panels for 20
years and
used them a lot for the first 4 or 5, until I became aware, FIRST
HAND, that it
was just a toy...... But I still enjoy my toy...... I would cost
over a thousand dollars
to run grid power to my boat dock. But a 22 watt panel and a boat
battery allow
me to run a TV and radio there continuously and have a light for a few
hours
every night. Very convenient...
The solution, REDUCE power useage. There ain't no silver bullet.
Andy in Corsicana, Texas
(retired EE, registered
PE, etc. )
.
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