I think owens Corning has solar shingles on the market. I recall looking at them from somebody when I had to redo my roof and was thinking it was them. Would have been something like $20K instead of $5K for a new roof though so I passed.
Its not zero pollution, not even close. Production of solar panels is in fact extremely damaging to the environment. When they get the kinds worked out of the new organic solar panels they are working on then we can talk about it being actually better for the environment but standard solar panels are horrendous especially when it comes to water pollution.
Go off grid. Costs a bit to set up, and photo voltaics are not very green to produce (as noted above), but it is very liberating. It's also good to know that once the initial environmental cost is incurred in the panels, you're no longer adding to it by buying ongoing 'dirty' power.
Because we are still paying for Shoreham nuke plant that was built and never went online! 6 billion dollars later the residents of Long Island, NY are on the hook for it all: http://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/13/n...reham-nuclear-plant-is-completed.html?mcubz=1
Yes, switching power supplies and inverters depend on high-power transistors. You also have to regulate how much incoming power is used, or how much produced power is fed back to the line. That is all done with solid state devices - transisors, IGBTs [isolated gate bipolar transistors], SCRs [silicon controlled rectifiers] and triacs. Not that long ago, the smart grid wouldn't have been practical. When I first designed one of these devicers -a flyback-boost transformer and then a switching power load - 10 amp FETs [Field Effect Transistors] were pretty much the cutting edge for devices of this class. Now they are doing 200 amps on a bipolar transistor. Again, that is shocking! I knew guys who used synchronous motors to do this. It was cheaper to run a motor-generator and match that to the line, than to do this with electronics.
At one point I seriously investigated putting hydro power on my property. I had about a 5000 watt creek. Just the safety switch to prevent accidentally back feeding the line was over $10,000. Just a switch!
These Cheap, Invisible Solar Cells Can Be Spray-Painted On Anything The solar cells can be rolled up like wallpaper and then unrolled onto any surface https://www.fastcompany.com/3039981...-solar-cells-can-be-spray-painted-on-anything Researchers Think They're Getting Closer to Making Spray-On Solar Cells a Reality Imagine a future when solar cells can be sprayed or printed onto the windows of skyscrapers or atop sports utility vehicles -- and at prices potentially far cheaper than today’s silicon-based panels. It’s not as far-fetched it seems. Solar researchers and company executives think there’s a good chance the economics of the $42 billion industry will soon be disrupted by something called perovskites, a range of materials that can be used to harvest light when turned into a crystalline structure. The hope is that perovskites, which can be mixed into liquid solutions and deposited on a range of surfaces, could play a crucial role in the expansion of solar energy applications with cells as efficient as those currently made with silicon. One British company aims to have a thin-film perovskite solar cell commercially available by the end of 2018. “This is the front-runner of low-cost solar cell technologies,” said Hiroshi Segawa, a professor at the University of Tokyo who’s leading a five-year project funded by the Japanese government that groups together universities and companies such as Panasonic Corp. and Fujifilm Corp. to develop perovskite technology... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...-that-may-make-spray-on-solar-cells-a-reality
According to the Shockley–Queisser limit, the majority of a cell's theoretical efficiency is due to the difference in energy between the bandgap and solar photon. Any photon with more energy than the bandgap can cause photoexcitation, but any energy above the bandgap energy is lost. Consider the solar spectrum; only a small portion of the light reaching the ground is blue, but those photons have three times the energy of red light. Silicon's bandgap is 1.1 eV, about that of red light, so in this case blue light's energy is lost in a silicon cell. If the bandgap is tuned higher, say to blue, that energy is now captured, but only at the cost of rejecting lower energy photons. It is possible to greatly improve on a single-junction cell by stacking thin layers of material with varying bandgaps on top of each other – the "tandem cell" or "multi-junction" approach. Traditional silicon preparation methods do not lend themselves to this approach. Thin-films of amorphous silicon have been employed instead, notably Uni-Solar's products, but other issues have prevented these from matching the performance of traditional cells. Most tandem-cell structures are based on higher performance semiconductors, notably gallium arsenide (GaAs). Three-layer GaAs cells achieved 41.6% efficiency for experimental examples.[8] In September 2013, a four layer cell reached 44.7 percent efficiency.[9] Numerical analysis shows that the "perfect" single-layer solar cell should have a bandgap of 1.13 eV, almost exactly that of silicon. Such a cell can have a maximum theoretical power conversion efficiency of 33.7% – the solar power below red (in the infrared) is lost, and the extra energy of the higher colors is also lost. For a two layer cell, one layer should be tuned to 1.64 eV and the other at 0.94 eV, with a theoretical performance of 44%. A three-layer cell should be tuned to 1.83, 1.16 and 0.71 eV, with an efficiency of 48%. A theoretical "infinity-layer" cell would have a theoretical efficiency of 68.2% for diffuse light.[10] While the new solar technologies that have been discovered center around nanotechnology, there are several different material methods currently used. The third generation label encompasses multiple technologies, though it includes non-semiconductor technologies (including polymers and biomimetics), quantum dot, tandem/multi-junction cells, intermediate band solar cell,[11] hot-carrier cells, photon upconversion and downconversion technologies, and solar thermal technologies, such as thermophotonics, which is one technology identified by Green as being third generation.[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-generation_photovoltaic_cell
When they have a cost-effective "asphalt" shingle solution, I'm going to go for it. It's coming, and hopefully it will be before my roof needs replacing (have about ten more years on this roof if all goes well). Costs are getting pretty close to being a winning situation for solar.
It's what you have to pay for the insurance of having power at night or on cloudy days, and to use the electricity. My guess is that's close to the wholesale price of electricity.
But the power company at night is selling back that electricity to you at 16 cents Kw/h that they paid you 6 cents for during the day time. Nothing wrong with going solar. Big advances in solar panels over the past decade. But going solar is still expensive. If you bought the panels out right in the beginning, with in how many years before the panels are paid off and you actually start getting free electricity ?
Do they evaluate this annually and then adjust your monthly payments? So if you produce an extra 10 KWHs during the day, and draw 15 KWHs that night, you only pay 16 cents for 5 KWHs for the power used during the night? [that is how it works out at the end of the year?] In other words, the 16 cents only applies to the net total line power used, at the end of the year?
I installed passive solar hot water panels and they will be paid off in 5 to 6 years at current prices and even sooner if the cost of electricity rises. Since I live in a place with plenty of sun and wind I am looking for a hybrid system for my electricity. By my current estimates that should pay itself off in 10 to 12 years depending on the configuration and yes, even sooner if prices rise.
I'm a little unclear on this. Based on the month, you are paying 11 cents/KWH for all of the electricity it makes. If you need more power, you pay 16 cents/kwh for it. If you overproduce, you still pay11 cents/kwh, but you get back 6 cents/kwh for overproduction. So overproduction costs you 5 cents/kwh? Was there any overhead to this? Did you have to put money down? Also, what happens if you sell the house? Is the new owner still stuck with it?
My understanding would be that for the overage he pays 16 cents/kwh for the extra 5 kwh. However, he's paying 11 cents/kwh for the 10 kwhs. Is that correct?
All that actually happened, once I thought this over for a bit more time.... is you tried to quit the normal PUC power grid system and allowed a private firm to produce electricity and you supplied them the site to sell it to you. They collect all payments from the Feds and in some states, them too. So, your roof us now a profit center for some power company composed of individual customers roofs. However, to save your hide, you still can pay charges to your PUC grid system.
You still minimize your payments when need-solar production = 0 --> need = solar production. Yes. But the way I understood it originally, he pays 5 cents for selling power. So I am trying to figure out how the bank works. VVet, do you essentially pay 5 cents [11 cents to produce the power - 6 cents payback from the power company] and get it back for free? In other words, is it fair to say you pay 5 cents per KWH to "bank" the power? Or more specifically, do you pay 5 cents per KWH total for "banked" power? In that event you are getting your power at about 50% of the cost [5 cents as opposed to 11 cents] for letting the power company use your power until later. It sounds great but honestly, that sounds a little too good to be true. I would expect you to pay a fee for banking your power. But it sounds like you get a 50+% reduction in your price for power banked.
Zero money down. You have it correct. New owner is stuck if I sell. Not sure what you mean by overhead - there is no maintenance. In less than 3 full days, I've generated over 65 kWh - my last bill for May 11 - June 13 was for 754 kWh - but these are probably the three most productive days (longest sunlight) - not sure about angle of sun vs slope of my roof as year goes on.
The "banking" - "depositing" power and "withdrawing" power is not tallied on an ongoing basis. It is totaled over a full year, then either I write a check to the power company, or I get a credit. I pay the solar company monthly. That clear it up?
Another clarification. Right now I am overproducing - I am "depositing" power to the power company, running the meter backwards. I expect it to be that way for at least this month, but the power company will not do anything except keep track of my energy "balance". At the end of a year, if my balance is negative (I used more power than the solar produced) I pay the power company 16 cents/kWh. If my balance is positive (I produced more power than I used) - I get 6 cents/kWh credit. For all the solar power produced (whether I used it or sent it to the power co.) I pay the solar company 11 cents/kWh.
