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Cheap solar (merged)

For discussions of events and conditions not necessarily related to Peak Oil.

Cheap solar (merged)

Unread postby Barbara » Thu 03 Mar 2005, 13:32:07

Good news from the leading italian newspaper La Repubblica: Repubblica

China approved a law in a rush, stating they MUST run to get 10% of their energy from renewables (solar, wind, geothermal). All industries are FORCED to switch into renewables (ah, the wonders of tyranny! :lol: ). Gas station will be forced to offer biodiesel. Govt is going to finance something to help. Everything must start next year 8O . Of course, the newspaper sell the story as an environment-related.

Guess what? We'll get a lot of solar panels at the local mall for just few euros/dollars! :P
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Unread postby maverickdoc » Thu 03 Mar 2005, 13:39:52

Thanks Barbara. you think they know something we don't?
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Unread postby maverickdoc » Thu 03 Mar 2005, 13:41:23

you might have been right about Chinese officials visiting PO.com as "guests"
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Unread postby Kingcoal » Thu 03 Mar 2005, 13:44:30

I'm convinced that conventional oil has peaked, perhaps a couple years ago. What we are seeing unfolding around us now is the reaction to that.
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Re: Solar made cheap!

Unread postby eric_b » Thu 03 Mar 2005, 15:33:10

Wow. If that's true it's just another bit of evidence confirming
that PO is almost upon us. The Chinese have generally been a
bit better about planning long term.

-Eric
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Unread postby BabyPeanut » Thu 03 Mar 2005, 17:24:25

maverickdoc wrote:Thanks Barbara. you think they know something we don't?

How could we not know when our president said it on TV in 1977?
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Unread postby BabyPeanut » Thu 03 Mar 2005, 17:31:02

What makes you think it's going to be solar?
Wind is a more proven, available technology.
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Unread postby ECM » Thu 03 Mar 2005, 17:52:42

Ultimately the cost of goods coming to Europe or North America from Asia will rise considerably after Peak Oil price shocks set in. It will be cheaper in the long run to just make panels locally. Globalization is possible due to cheap energy. I imagine it will be reduced significantly after Peak Oil.

This is my take on globalization. The primary benefit is derived from a significantly reduced cost of labor. Shipping offsets a part of this savings. As materials and shipping costs rise the effect of labor on the final cost of the delivered item is reduced. After a period of steady increases in costs the additional energy related costs will outstrip the labor savings.
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Unread postby Barbara » Thu 03 Mar 2005, 17:55:20

They estabilished a 10% renewables for the moment. I hope we can buy those panels before PO hits. Chineses are fast when it's needed.
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Unread postby FoxV » Thu 03 Mar 2005, 18:00:07

provided chaos does not reign supreme in the next few years, there are several new advancements in solar that make it the best bet (which is good because I have no wind in my area)

A toronto physicist came up with 30% efficient cheap plastic solar cells (I've also read someone has 80% efficient cells, but no word on whether they're cheap or not)

There is an american company that is producing plastic cells for $1/W (in large quantities, current price of cells are about $6/W)

and ST micro electronics is working towords a $0.20/W cell

These could easily allow you to cost effectively generate enough power to become self-sufficient (provided you switch to electric cars). The only problem is that they all seem to talk about 5+ years before they have a product ready for home use

(sorry for not posting links, I don't have time to find them right now )
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Unread postby Dezakin » Thu 03 Mar 2005, 18:28:37

Guess what? We'll get a lot of solar panels at the local mall for just few euros/dollars!


No you won't. The price of solar cells today is held artificially low by the waste silicon from the semiconductor industry. If China starts maxing out production, the supply of cheap high grade silicon dries up.

You might see cheap solar concentrators. I know a guy that is trying to make very cheap concentrators from mylar and styrofoam with vertical multijunction cells. He might be a crackpot, and he might be pulling a fast one with statistics I can't check, but I haven't been able to find fault with his numbers:

http://www.mokindustries.com

You can look up his posts on usenet under 'William Mook'
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Unread postby Barbara » Thu 03 Mar 2005, 18:39:12

The University of Catania (Sicily) is implementing a solar paint, to use it to paint a home and then get energy. Dunno how it works.
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Cheap solar power poised to undercut oil and gas by half

Unread postby lardlad » Tue 20 Feb 2007, 12:29:54

Telegraph.co.uk wrote:Monday view: Cheap solar power poised to undercut oil and gas by half

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Last Updated: 11:31pm GMT 18/02/2007

Within five years, solar power will be cheap enough to compete with carbon-generated electricity, even in Britain, Scandinavia or upper Siberia. In a decade, the cost may have fallen so dramatically that solar cells could undercut oil, gas, coal and nuclear power by up to half. Technology is leaping ahead of a stale political debate about fossil fuels.

Anil Sethi, the chief executive of the Swiss start-up company Flisom, says he looks forward to the day - not so far off - when entire cities in America and Europe generate their heating, lighting and air-conditioning needs from solar films on buildings with enough left over to feed a surplus back into the grid.

The secret? Mr Sethi lovingly cradles a piece of dark polymer foil, as thin a sheet of paper. It is 200 times lighter than the normal glass-based solar materials, which require expensive substrates and roof support. Indeed, it is so light it can be stuck to the sides of buildings


More here.
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Re: Cheap solar power poised to undercut oil and gas by half

Unread postby aahala » Tue 20 Feb 2007, 12:42:13

"In a decade, the cost may have fallen so dramatically that solar cells could undercut oil, gas, coal and nuclear power by up to half"

Since the above statement is about the future and doesn't seem
to violate any known physical laws, then the word "may" I suppose
is appropriate.

Otherwise, Ambrose has flipped his lid. Electrical generation
from solar cells is presently about 10 times as costly as coal
in the US.
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Re: Cheap solar power poised to undercut oil and gas by half

Unread postby lardlad » Tue 20 Feb 2007, 12:44:42

Why not read the whole article instead of rushing to post a doomer knee jerk response?

:x
Last edited by lardlad on Tue 20 Feb 2007, 12:47:31, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Cheap solar power poised to undercut oil and gas by half

Unread postby Revi » Tue 20 Feb 2007, 12:46:47

I love it. I'm particularly happy to hear that the oil and electricity companies are worried about it. Power to the people! We're using the power of the sun to heat our water and for electricity for the past few years, and I've found it to be a very liberating experience. Why not coat every building? It's free, and the installation cost would be a lot cheaper with this new product.


From the article:

Mike Splinter, chief executive of the US semiconductor group Applied Materials, told me his company is two years away from a solar product that reaches the magic level of $1 a watt.

Cell conversion efficiency and economies of scale are galloping ahead so fast that the cost will be down to 70 US cents by 2010, with a target of 30 or 40 cents in a decade.

"We think solar power can provide 20pc of all the incremental energy needed worldwide by 2040," he said.

"This is a very powerful technology and we're seeing dramatic improvements all the time. It can be used across the entire range from small houses to big buildings and power plants," he said.

"The beauty of this is that you can use it in rural areas of India without having to lay down power lines or truck in fuel."

Villages across Asia and Africa that have never seen electricity may soon leapfrog directly into the solar age, replicating the jump to mobile phones seen in countries that never had a network of fixed lines. As a by-product, India's rural poor will stop blanketing the subcontinent with soot from tens of millions of open stoves.

Applied Materials is betting on both of the two rival solar technologies: thin film panels best used where there is plenty of room and the traditional crystalline (c-Si) wafer-based cells, which are not as cheap but produce a higher yield - better for tight spaces.

Needless to say, electricity utilities are watching the solar revolution with horror. Companies in Japan and Germany have already seen an erosion of profits because of an effect known "peak shaving". In essence, the peak wattage of solar cells overlaps with hours of peak demand and peak prices for electricity in the middle of the day, crunching margins.

As for the oil companies, they are still treating solar power as a fringe curiosity. "There is no silver bullet," said Jeroen Van der Veer, Shell's chief executive.

"We have invested a bit in all forms of renewable energy ourselves and maybe we'll find a winner one day. But the reality is that in twenty years time we'll still be using more oil than now," he said.

Might he be wrong?
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Re: Cheap solar power poised to undercut oil and gas by half

Unread postby lardlad » Tue 20 Feb 2007, 12:52:33

I'm planning to build a house in Australia using this tech in 5-10 years.

Hopefully the remaining oil/gas in the world can be used for the production of fertilizers and running of farm machinery to keep the food supply high and avoid die-off, while this sort of tech handles power requirements.
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Re: Cheap solar power poised to undercut oil and gas by half

Unread postby nth » Tue 20 Feb 2007, 14:19:44

Some US utilities are switching business strategies with help from regulators, so that they no longer profit from selling electricity, but profit from providing power including conservation. We are still in the early stages and the kinks still need to be worked out, but right now, incentives are given to PG&E to get people to conserve. They are making just as much money from people to use less electricity than to provide more electricity.

This type of paradigm shift need to occur world wide or at least in developed countries.

As for fertilizer requirements, we just need electricity to keep fertilizer production up. We don't specifically need oil/gas. With that said, most people equate peak oil to peak energy, so that means peak fertilizer, too. If this solar is cheap enough to prevent peak energy, then we won't hit peak energy. Of course, I am assuming EROEI is above 1 for this.
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Re: Cheap solar power poised to undercut oil and gas by half

Unread postby reds37win » Tue 20 Feb 2007, 14:35:49

I'm in a bit of a quandry.

I'd like to move to a PV system for my home, but after reading the article, I'm less inclined to do so, if waiting five years provides a much cheaper and realistic solution.
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Re: Cheap solar power poised to undercut oil and gas by half

Unread postby maximumpower » Tue 20 Feb 2007, 14:45:01

The Holy Grail of photovoltaics is and has always been price parity with conventional (utility provided) electricity.

$Billions invested in R&D of the 'cheap solar cell' has continued unabated for 3 decades +, with not one truly big (10:1 or more) breakthrough in manufacturing cost.

Progress, yes. Price reductions capable of restructuring from whom and how base-level electricity is generated: no.

We're all on a titanic global flywheel fueled by fossilized energy, with its source of torque about to begin winding down. Slowly if not suddenly, our RPM's are going to drop. Micro amounts of new sources of torque (eg photovoltaics) have essentially zero impact upon the rate of reduction in this flywheel's speed. It's mass is many orders of magnitude greater than that which could/would be effected by relative microwatts of power, from any source.

Better to focus upon how best to get used to a high speed planet inexorably slowing down, down, down.

And go where or change how you're living so that microwatts of your own power can sustain your own flywheel of life.
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