The Swanson Effect

kabayiri

.string. wrote: »

One good thing, however, is that many houses would be amenable to their installation, providing personal power stations with very little transmission costs.

I'm not really up on this, but is there a big future in micro-generation?

I can see challenges with people trying to put surplus power back into the Grid.

kabayiri

.string. wrote: »

A word of caution on Solar Panels - their performance decays over time.
...

What about the project in Spain, where they use arrays of essentially mirrors to focus sunlight into a concentrated point, heating a fluid and turning this into electrical power ?

It might sound low tech, but it also sounds workable and robust?

Loughton_Monkey

onlyroz wrote: »

My parents' solar panels come with a 25-year guarantee - so presumably this would cover performance degradation?

With an average [I'm guessing] period of 2 years for any Solar Panel Sales outfit before going out of business due to being closed down by trading standards, or by their own pure fraud, I suspect a 25 year guarantee is not worth the paper it isn't written on.

Mind you, I've had a Chinese solar cell powered calculator on my desk for over 10 years, and it still works fine!

I'm told that being so convinced that the sun shone out of his own back side, Elton John' pacemaker is powered by a solar cell in his underpants.

kabayiri

onlyroz wrote: »

My parents' solar panels come with a 25-year guarantee - so presumably this would cover performance degradation?

I believe that the power inverter needed has a planned life of 10 years.

The panels will need maintenance investment I suspect.

purch

.string. wrote: »

In Space Engineering, the area in which I worked
.

Oh c'mon mate it's not Rocket Science.

Sorry

robmatic

kabayiri wrote: »

I'm not really up on this, but is there a big future in micro-generation?

I can see challenges with people trying to put surplus power back into the Grid.

Perhaps there will be a move away from dependency on the National Grid with some developments in battery or fuel cell technology. For example, if you have a wind turbine in your garden it might make more sense to store surplus energy generated yourself when there is a gale blowing rather than sell it to the grid and then buy some back again later in the week when there isn't a drop of wind.

kabayiri

robmatic wrote: »

Perhaps there will be a move away from dependency on the National Grid with some developments in battery or fuel cell technology. For example, if you have a wind turbine in your garden it might make more sense to store surplus energy generated yourself when there is a gale blowing rather than sell it to the grid and then buy some back again later in the week when there isn't a drop of wind.

This would suggest that efficient simple energy storage is the challenge.

Generali

kabayiri wrote: »

This would suggest that efficient simple energy storage is the challenge.

Yup. If you can only generate electricity part of the time you need to store it the rest of the time.

In places like Aus and CA it works rather better as peak output for panels and peak power usage is at the same time: mid-late afternoon on sunny days when people put the air con on. Solar works as a great supplement to the system as its output is highest when demand is highest.

stator

It doesn't matter how cheap they come, they'll never work in the winter evenings when we need power the most. Wasting money on subsidising solar panels only means we also have to subsidise the reliable energy production because they can't earn enough money during the day to keep the lights on at night.

michaels

stator wrote: »

It doesn't matter how cheap they come, they'll never work in the winter evenings when we need power the most. Wasting money on subsidising solar panels only means we also have to subsidise the reliable energy production because they can't earn enough money during the day to keep the lights on at night.

Or as I suggested import Norwegian hydro that can be turned off/on at the flick of a switch for periods when renewables are not producing and sell them back power when they are so they can keep the necessary water availble 'on tap'....