Solar ... In the news

penrhyn

Never said it was. Why are you hung up on people having their own systems?

ed110220

penrhyn wrote: »

Never said it was. Why are you hung up on people having their own systems?

I'm not (though I think in general it is a good idea), I was simply answering your question: "Why are they pratting about with solar, Shirley they have enough geothermal for all there needs?"

The average person cannot "pratt about" with geothermal or indeed most other renewable (or non-renewable) electricity but they can with solar... that's in the hands of the utility company/companies.

penrhyn

Reading a little it looks like Hawaii has has problems with H2S emissions from their current geothermal plants, I'd imagine they get them from the active volcanoes anyway.
I wonder if the hot rocks in Cornwall would yield water hot enough to make electricity. Plenty of holes in the ground there already so they have a head start.

Martyn1981

All interesting stuff. Just had a look at Hawaii's electric energy mix:

http://www.hawaiianelectric.com/heco/Clean-Energy/Latest-Clean-Energy-News/About-Our-Fuel-Mix

As the previous article said, mainly oil, which is expensive. I'm surprised at the relatively low levels of hydro and geo-thermal. I wonder if the lack of hydro is a reflection of the topography, as I was pondering if pumped hydro was am option going forward for storage, but perhaps not then.

Also interesting (to me) how the numbers differ from one island to the next.

Solar in 2012 only 0.1% of the mix, so plenty of options, especially considering they have sun, and expensive oil generation. Be interesting to see how things change(d), 2013 and onwards, given that "10% of residents have PV" statement by the BBC.

Mart.

mac2008

http://www.weatherenergy.co.uk/home looks potentially interesting although not sure of its relationship to pvgis. Thoughts?

rogerblack

http://silevosolar.com/category/product/triex-technology/efficiency/

have just been bought by Elon Musk (CEO of SpaceX and Tesla 's solar company for 350M)
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=5292263

They are targetting one gigawatt per year in the near term.

They are using conventional silicon, and getting 5% more or so than the rest of the pack.

rogerblack

mac2008 wrote: »

Nice. A bit steep at £15k plus vat though!

I have wondered what the legality is of getting a line of 4kWp panels placed on your roof, and going up next day to fix a line of mirrors to double insolation.

To get back on the topic of the above tracker - a little to the west of london, a normal 1kWp panel will get 975kWh/year.

2 axis tracker is 1240.
So, 250kWh/year better.
Over 20 years, 700 quid.

You're way, way, way better off (if you have the space) installing 8 or 12kW of conventional panels.

MFW_ASAP

ed110220 wrote: »

I'm not (though I think in general it is a good idea), I was simply answering your question: "Why are they pratting about with solar, Shirley they have enough geothermal for all there needs?"

The average person cannot "pratt about" with geothermal or indeed most other renewable (or non-renewable) electricity but they can with solar... that's in the hands of the utility company/companies.

Is it not the case that the average person cant afford to fit solar panels because the payback is too long without subsidies, especially given that the power is generated at the wrong part of the day/year compared with peak energy useage?

rogerblack

MFW_ASAP wrote: »

Is it not the case that the average person cant afford to fit solar panels because the payback is too long without subsidies

It depends on the amount of panels.

If you can fit them yourself on a shed, or roof, then the payback period in principle can be not too bad.

For small amounts, 250W at 300 pounds, say, in many cases, around half of this will be used most days and provide baseline electricity savings.

Martyn1981

rogerblack wrote: »

They are using conventional silicon, and getting 5% more or so than the rest of the pack.

Hiya Roger, I think their using the HIT technology, but are producing at lower costs than Panasonic, so good news either way.

That 5% increase, if it comes at little to no extra cost, is hugely significant, lifting generation by 33%(ish) from the same roof space. Hopefully this will open up the market even further, to more properties suffering from limited space/economics or even helping to make up for some unavoidable shading issues.

Personally I'm watching his battery Giga factory plans with interest. Hopefully by the time my ESE inverters start to die, there will be a semi cost effective storage option for me, but this is the extreme end of optimism ....... even for me!

Mart.