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THE Solar Cell Thread Pt. 4 (merged)

Discussions of conventional and alternative energy production technologies.

Re: THE Solar Cell Thread Pt. 4 (merged)

Unread postby Newfie » Tue 19 Jun 2018, 12:51:33

Diesel is 38kWh/gallon and about $3/gallon. Or roughly 13kWh/$.

Solar panels are about $1/watt. On a “typical” day you might get 15% out of them. That’s making a LOT of assumptions: latitude, cloud cover, maintenance, etc. so it is invariably pulled outa my kazoo. If someone has a better number we can use it. But using this we get
1 watt x .15 x 24 = 3.6wH/ day.
1300wH/3.6wH = 361 days.

Now you need to include the installation and ancilliarly devices and maintenance costs. I’m gonna swag that they about double the cost of solar so the equivalency is closer to 720 days.

Lots of ways to argue about these numbers but gives some kind of gut check.

Solar can prove in, but it takes a while.
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Re: THE Solar Cell Thread Pt. 4 (merged)

Unread postby Newfie » Tue 19 Jun 2018, 13:05:22

Adam,
You have a point on a personal basis. However when you look at the larger economy and realize that very few have switched to such green resources you realize that his statements are historically correct. It may not be what he wanted to happen, but he is. It reporting on desires, he is reporting on a historical fact.
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Re: THE Solar Cell Thread Pt. 4 (merged)

Unread postby Outcast_Searcher » Tue 19 Jun 2018, 15:46:52

onlooker wrote:No, its a question of who you wish to believe. You refuse to concede that alot of info out there is intentionally false and/or misleading or deceptive.

Look in the mirror. The kind of misleading financial blogs you love to quote random doomer "news" from, like zerohedge are about as misleading and deceptive as it gets.

Especially if you do a sanity check over time re their accuracy. But I know, the fast crash doomer community isn't interested in accuracy as much as FUD.

Hint: all "info" isn't of equal value in objective terms.
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.
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Re: THE Solar Cell Thread Pt. 4 (merged)

Unread postby dohboi » Thu 21 Jun 2018, 23:49:39

$2.5 billion in solar projects canceled or frozen after Trump solar panel tariffs

Renewable energy companies have decided to cancel or freeze $2.5 billion in investments on large solar panel projects following President Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on imported panels, Reuters reported Thursday.

That number is more than twice the $1 billion that firms said they were planning to spend in the U.S. solar panel industry following Trump’s decision in January, according to Reuters.

Cypress Creek Renewables LLC told Reuters that it has cancelled or frozen $1.5 billion in projects in response to the tariffs because the tariffs had increased its costs. Another company, Southern Current, also said that it put $1 billion worth of projects on hold.


http://thehill.com/policy/energy-enviro ... rump-solar
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Re: THE Solar Cell Thread Pt. 4 (merged)

Unread postby Tanada » Fri 22 Jun 2018, 07:14:43

Good, they were a stupid waste of resources.
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
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Re: THE Solar Cell Thread Pt. 4 (merged)

Unread postby kublikhan » Fri 22 Jun 2018, 16:06:59

Outcast_Searcher wrote:
onlooker wrote:No, its a question of who you wish to believe. You refuse to concede that alot of info out there is intentionally false and/or misleading or deceptive.
Look in the mirror. The kind of misleading financial blogs you love to quote random doomer "news" from, like zerohedge are about as misleading and deceptive as it gets.

Especially if you do a sanity check over time re their accuracy. But I know, the fast crash doomer community isn't interested in accuracy as much as FUD.

Hint: all "info" isn't of equal value in objective terms.
Exactly. Onlooker, there is plenty of misleading information out there. However that doesn't mean you can latch onto anyone spewing random BS and claim it has just as much validity as credible sources. There are ways to wade through the BS without throwing your arms in the air and saying: "There is so much BS out there! From now on, I am just going to parrot those who say what I want to hear." A good first step would be The CRAP Test. Another would be to review any counter arguments and use your own brain to decide which argument is more sound. Admittedly this is more work than reading a headline from a blog and trumpeting "See! The end really is nigh!" But it sure can be helpful in stopping you from being draw into BS.

Why do people so easily believe false things? There are probably as many answers to this question as there are people who have ever believed falsehoods. Nonetheless, psychologists have shown that a relatively small set of cognitive biases or mental shortcuts can explain a lot about how false notions take root. One of the most agreed-upon ideas in the field of psychology is that people routinely use mental shortcuts to understand what happens around them. All kinds of things occur in the world around us, and we don't always have the time or energy to sit down and carefully examine all of them. So, we tend to use quick and largely unconscious rules-of-thumb to determine what we should believe—and these shortcuts sometimes steer us in the wrong direction. Here are some of the culprits:

The Availability Heuristic
Which job is more dangerous—working as a police officer or a fisherman? If you guessed police officer, you’re wrong. According to figures from the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, fishing workers are ten times more likely than police to be killed on the job. This doesn't make police work any less important, of course, though it does mean that many of us have underestimated how dangerous other jobs are in comparison. The reason most of us believe that police officers are more likely to die at work is because of the availability heuristic, a mental shortcut that can lead us to overestimate the frequency of an event when that event is more “available” or vivid in our memory. When a police officer is killed in the line of duty, it’s rightly widely reported in the news and sticks with us in memory, so we tend to believe it must be more common than deaths in other professions. The availability heuristic is also the reason why doctors sometimes believe that diseases are more widespread than they really are—their jobs naturally fill their memories with vivid examples. In fact, when any of us read or watch a news story about an instance of terrorism, voter fraud, or other crime, we’re likely to overestimate how common such events are. Unless we’re careful, the vivid nature of the news story in our memory can unconsciously bias our estimate of how often these events actually happen. So, how common are things like voter fraud and crime? We can’t necessarily trust our hunches. It’s best to consult the statistics.

Emotional Reasoning
Whether we like it or not, all of us can be powerfully swayed by emotions. We'd like to think that our feelings are driven by logic and reason, particularly when it comes to our political beliefs. Unfortunately, this relationship is often reversed. Sometimes we end up using our reasoning ability to justify or defend a conclusion that we’ve already drawn based on our emotions. This phenomenon, called emotional reasoning, can lead us astray without our ever knowing. Psychiatrist Aaron T. Beck first noticed this in depressed patients. He observed that many patients drew obviously untrue conclusions about themselves based on how they felt, rather than the actual facts. "If I feel depressed,” one of his patients might say, "then there must be something objectively wrong with my job, my marriage, my children, or other parts of my life." But feelings are just feelings, even when they're powerful, and they can sometimes lie to us. Even in those of us who aren’t depressed, this tendency can affect our beliefs about virtually any emotionally charged topic, whether we’re talking about sexuality, religion, money, crime, or war. When we feel scared, angry, anxious, or even just uneasy about a topic, we can easily jump to the conclusion that the topic is somehow objectively bad or dangerous. Next time a topic makes you feel uncomfortable, that’s probably reason to keep an open mind, not to draw a conclusion.

Confirmation Bias
Once we have a belief, we tend to cling to it, even when it’s untrue. The confirmation bias is the tendency to seek out information that supports what we already believe. We do this in two important ways. First, we tend to surround ourselves with messages that confirm our pre-existing opinions. This is why, in the United States, conservatives tend to get their news from sources like Fox, whereas liberals tune into MSNBC. Second, we tend to ignore or discount messages that disprove our beliefs. If we’re sure that climate change is a hoax and someone shows us a research study disputing this belief, we might dismiss the study’s findings by saying that the researcher is obviously biased or corrupt. This protects us from having to change our beliefs. When our ideas are true, this probably isn’t such a bad thing. Unfortunately, it also can keep us firmly believing things are false.

While it’s clear that some people lie out of expedience or spite, most of us value the truth. We genuinely desire to accurately understand the facts and help others to do the same. As flawed human beings, however, none of us is a perfect barometer of the truth. Despite our best intensions, it’s easy to unconsciously buy into beliefs that feel right, even though they’re not. But it’s precisely when we’re sure that we’ve cornered the truth that we should take a step back, breath deeply, and open our minds as far as we can. If we were all able to take this basic truth about human nature to heart, perhaps this would allow us to more effectively come together during times of political strife.
Why Do People Believe Things that Aren’t True?

This guy fell into the trap of believing what he wanted to believe too. However just to try and be balanced, he looked at dissenting voices as well. What he found shocked him. He did a complete 180 on his position after he found out the sweet words he was hearing at first were all BS.

Dear Editor,

I run Macrotrends, a financial newsletter that's doing quite well here in Belgium and the Netherlands, and I am always curious about the next big thing.

I discovered the story about Andrea Rossi's Energy Catalzyer about a year ago, and I thought this might just be the thing for the energy sector. I wrote a small article about it in August 2011, and I promised to give an update after the E-Cat tests that were to be announced in late October 2011. The tests weren't convincing so I waited, all the while following the information published on ecatnews.com and some other sources.

Then, finally, last month I decided to do a follow-up because there seemed to have been some important developments: claims of the involvement of NASA, SIEMENS, National Instruments, production of the units, the Defkalion story, etc. It all made me very excited about the E-Cat.

After making preparations for an article about Rossi's apparatus for a day and a half, I decided to look for some skeptical voices to try and cross-check my story and make it more balanced. That is how I found the New Energy Times Web site. Your writing style struck me as very reasonable yet critical, and the thoroughness of your arguments and the level of documentation entirely swayed my position.

It hurt, because I had to let go of a dream I'd fallen in love with. I had to admit that I had not found the extraordinary evidence that is required to back up the extraordinary claims put forward by Rossi and his team. Quite the contrary: There are many things I’ve discovered that seem to suggest the E-Cat is, in reality, a fraudulent scheme.
European Financial Editor Says No to Energy Catalyzer
The oil barrel is half-full.
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Re: THE Solar Cell Thread Pt. 4 (merged)

Unread postby GHung » Fri 22 Jun 2018, 16:20:52

Tanada wrote:Good, they were a stupid waste of resources.


Two words:

PLANT VOGTLE
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Re: THE Solar Cell Thread Pt. 4 (merged)

Unread postby Zarquon » Tue 14 Aug 2018, 22:46:21

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features ... lean-mines

Worth a read, if only for the pictures.
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Peer-to-peer solar power sharing

Unread postby Zarquon » Mon 11 Feb 2019, 18:01:31

https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/02/artic ... -in-japan/

"A peer-to-peer energy sharing programme that trades solar power, via smart meters between apartment buildings and businesses, is being tested in Japan

Although blockchain has numerous applications, the majority, up until now, have been associated with Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.

Energy is one of the more mainstream industrial sectors that is being increasingly associated with blockchain and now an Australian company has been using the technology to enable solar power sharing. The company’s latest peer-to-peer trading initiative is working to expand the renewable energy market in Japan.

This week Perth-based Power Ledger announced a partnership with Japan’s Sharing Energy Company. Power Ledger provides a blockchain-based tokenized energy trading platform while Sharing Energy is a provider of solar installations and equipment. The partnership’s initial pilot project will track renewable energy consumption from the solar panels of 100 individuals across the Kansai, Chubu and Kyushu regions.

According to a Power Ledger company blog, the project is expected to expand to around 55,000 Japanese rooftops by the end of next year.

In recent months, Power Ledger has also expanded into southeast Asia with the aim of revolutionizing renewable energy distribution systems while also reducing carbon footprints. Chairman and co-founder of Power Ledger, Dr Jemma Green, said the company is “proud of the work we are doing in Japan, and the strides we are making in democratizing energy across the globe.”

Green added that the partnership “is an exciting example of how our blockchain technology can make visions of implementing scalable, renewable energy solutions a reality for partners and communities worldwide.”

Post-Fukushima, Japan has said it will make renewable sources central to its energy supply mix. Power Ledger is already working with the country’s biggest privately-owned electricity retailer, Kansai Electric Power Company (KEPCO), on a Virtual Power Plant project that aims to assess and then redirect excess solar energy.

For the recently announced project, Sharing Energy will be receiving real time data from Power Ledger to facilitate peer-to-peer energy trading, between “social systems like apartment buildings or businesses” via existing smart meters. The pilot study will verify the feasibility and scalability of peer-to-peer energy trading in Japan and, says Sharing Energy, allow it to then go on to conduct research on energy transactions via Power Ledger’s blockchain-powered platform."

If I understand it correctly (and I don't say that I do get the whole idea), the idea is to use blockchain algorithms to help automatically settle transactions between people with too much solar kwh on their hands and people who want to buy them. Apparently while cutting out the traditional middleman (the power company).
If I had time to read up on this, maybe I'd understand how they want to go from 100 to "55,000 Japanese rooftops by the end of next year".

Edit: here' some more info:
https://medium.com/power-ledger/power-l ... 683c60b57d

"Sharing Energy is a Japanese company. I AND C-Cruise Co.Ltd., is one of the Sharing’s shareholders, which operates several comparison web services for PV systems, house reforms and household gas which have achieved over 200,000 users in Japan. The other one is Energy and Environment Investment Inc., which is Japan’s only VC fund focussed on energy and environment.

Currently, Sharing Energy offers customers free installation of its solar PV. Sharing intentionally installs excess capacity and in return customers receive free solar energy for their homes. Sharing Energy takes the excess energy generated by the solar PV via a feed-in tariff. Once the feed-in tariff ends in Japan, Sharing plans to sell the excess energy to interested third parties."

The most interesting part would of course be to know how they provide an economic benefit to their customers. Getting the roofs for free sounds like a good idea, though.
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Re: THE Solar Cell Thread Pt. 4 (merged)

Unread postby dohboi » Wed 05 Feb 2020, 23:28:12

Coronavirus is hitting solar cell production (and much else):

...solar prices are expected to rise with the cost of PV modules increasing, all as a result of the virus outbreak. This is due to a shortage in module glass and wafers needed to create these systems.

Areas that are known for generating these systems – including Jiangsu, Guangdong, Anhui and Zhejiang – have extended the New Year holiday to deal with the impacts.
Shutdowns cause a decrease in production

China’s National Health Commission noted that transport had been significantly impacted across a number of regions, directly affecting manufacturing across the board. Local governments are continuing to extend the holiday period in order to avoid spreading the virus even further.

So what does this all mean for solar?

Essentially, production rates for much-needed materials have come to a halt, or at least, significantly decreased. Those residing in affected areas are now under quarantine orders for 14 days, resulting in factory usage plummeting.

Primary solar manufacturers in China told PV Magazine (remaining anonymous) that coronavirus has caused significant strain on their factories. They noted that they will be operating at ‘very low rates’ and will not return to a ‘normal production [rate] in the immediate future’.


https://www.energymatters.com.au/renewa ... l-pricing/
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Re: THE Solar Cell Thread Pt. 4 (merged)

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Thu 06 Feb 2020, 06:20:31

Nobody is going to die if they don't get a solar panel tomorrow so this can all be made up for after the pandemic passes which it will. Effects on their food and drug industries are much more critical.
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Re: THE Solar Cell Thread Pt. 4 (merged)

Unread postby asg70 » Thu 06 Feb 2020, 12:28:26

vtsnowedin wrote:Nobody is going to die if they don't get a solar panel tomorrow so this can all be made up for after the pandemic passes which it will. Effects on their food and drug industries are much more critical.


Solar panels are also made in the US, like at Gigafactory 2.

https://www.tesla.com/gigafactory2

BOLD PREDICTIONS
-Billions are on the verge of starvation as the lockdown continues. (yoshua, 5/20/20)

HALL OF SHAME:
-Short welched on a bet and should be shunned.
-Frequent-flyers should not cry crocodile-tears over climate-change.
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Re: THE Solar Cell Thread Pt. 4 (merged)

Unread postby evilgenius » Thu 15 Apr 2021, 16:02:12

I have a question concerning solar. I wonder if people really do need to invest in solar panels on their houses? I mean, why can't they buy panel space in a panel farm? Then, the panel farm could produce all kinds of electricity for them. Their houses could just be hooked up to the grid. That way, people wouldn't need to pay for all of the extras that everyone is always complaining that solar comes with. You don't need batteries. You don't need to cover your roof. You just need a reliable grid that can do the accounting. It should be cheaper.

Of course, people would also need to accept that the solar panel farm only produces whatever percentage of their consumption. They would have to face the music, still, about their habits. But they wouldn't have to go through the matriculation to get there. Unless you believe in having physical panels, it should still be better. I get that having them can introduce a comfort level that would make the whole experience more palatable.
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Re: THE Solar Cell Thread Pt. 4 (merged)

Unread postby Simon_R » Fri 16 Apr 2021, 03:33:13

Hi Evil

I guess there are a couple of reasons this has not been tried
[list=]
1) You would not get a reduction on your bills, but a taxable profit
2) The subsidised retail rate of a domestic Solar farm is less than a commercial solar farm
[/list]

On the other hand, if the gov. were happy with the concept and you threw in a battery storage plant to make it dispatchable now you are talking

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Re: THE Solar Cell Thread Pt. 4 (merged)

Unread postby mousepad » Fri 16 Apr 2021, 08:26:36

evilgenius wrote: I mean, why can't they buy panel space in a panel farm?


That's the much better choice in my opinion, if land is available.
I have both, solar on my roof and also panels in a farm.
I would not put panels on my roof anymore, if I could go back in time.
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Re: THE Solar Cell Thread Pt. 4 (merged)

Unread postby theluckycountry » Thu 22 Jul 2021, 07:10:54

evilgenius wrote:I have a question concerning solar. I wonder if people really do need to invest in solar panels on their houses? I mean, why can't they buy panel space in a panel farm?

At the moment that may make sense, a centralized system. Here in Australia we have lots of panels on roofs, I have 12kVA myself and two 5kVA inverters that feed the grid. But that grid is very expensive to maintain and power losses have been cited as high as 80% depending on how far you are from the generating plant.

In the future rooftop solar subsidies like free panels from the government and the high feed-in tariffs offered by utilities that we now enjoy will likely disappear. Power companies are already struggling to make a profit and solar has been a disaster for their models of business. What makes it especially profitable for households is that the power we generate we use first, for free so to speak when we run our aircons and ovens and hotwater systems in daylight hours. This using power produced on site eliminates transmission losses and is the model for the future I think. It also removes taxes, and interest charges that are typically attached to big centralized systems.

As for your question, "I wonder if people really do need to invest in solar panels on their houses?" No they don't. But I did and I get a check every 6 months for around $800 for what I sell back to the grid. That's in my pocket because I am the electricity generator. This would not be the case in the system you envisage.
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Re: THE Solar Cell Thread Pt. 4 (merged)

Unread postby mustang19 » Thu 22 Jul 2021, 14:32:46

theluckycountry wrote:
evilgenius wrote:I have a question concerning solar. I wonder if people really do need to invest in solar panels on their houses? I mean, why can't they buy panel space in a panel farm?

At the moment that may make sense, a centralized system. Here in Australia we have lots of panels on roofs, I have 12kVA myself and two 5kVA inverters that feed the grid. But that grid is very expensive to maintain and power losses have been cited as high as 80% depending on how far you are from the generating plant.

In the future rooftop solar subsidies like free panels from the government and the high feed-in tariffs offered by utilities that we now enjoy will likely disappear. Power companies are already struggling to make a profit and solar has been a disaster for their models of business. What makes it especially profitable for households is that the power we generate we use first, for free so to speak when we run our aircons and ovens and hotwater systems in daylight hours. This using power produced on site eliminates transmission losses and is the model for the future I think. It also removes taxes, and interest charges that are typically attached to big centralized systems.

As for your question, "I wonder if people really do need to invest in solar panels on their houses?" No they don't. But I did and I get a check every 6 months for around $800 for what I sell back to the grid. That's in my pocket because I am the electricity generator. This would not be the case in the system you envisage.


Solar is largely useless in eroi terms as is wind as I proved.

The mods are straight up deleting my posts at this point, I will let them turn this forum into yet another blog where people can't do physics. https://physics.stackexchange.com/quest ... of-rm-co-2
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Re: THE Solar Cell Thread Pt. 4 (merged)

Unread postby AdamB » Thu 22 Jul 2021, 15:07:36

mustang19 wrote:Solar is largely useless in eroi terms as is wind as I proved.


Claiming is not proving. As you have been told before.

mustang19 wrote:The mods are straight up deleting my posts at this point, I will let them turn this forum into yet another blog where people can't do physics.


So start posting as Short again. And then we can talk about how YOU can't do physics. Or logic. Or math. Or sequentially number charts. Amusing, someone who can't number charts in order pretending it is OTHERS who don't know stuff.
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Re: THE Solar Cell Thread Pt. 4 (merged)

Unread postby GHung » Fri 23 Jul 2021, 15:37:56

Pretty sure mustang is the same troll gumming up the works over at PeakOilBarrel, posting there as ingrahammark7.
https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-n ... y-17-2021/
If not, the two should get together and off each other. Must suck being so utterly useless. 8O
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