Are amorphous silicon cells competitive with other energy?

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Let's test the arithmetic on competitive amorphous silicon panels. The contractor bids 3 million dollars (delivered to building site) on 60,000 square meters of solar panels = 1000 houses. Thats $50 per square meter. About 1/4 usual retail price for one square meter. I suppose some factory will sell that cheap, if the contactor pays one million dollars now for delivery beginning in weekly instalments, September 2005 though Feburary 2007, with sizable penalties for late delivery of any instalments.
That comes to $3000 per house for the panels. Let's figure $5000 per house as labor cost will be considerably higher, until the laborers are trained and errors become rare. There is also considerable wiring to interconnect the panels and the inverter cost. The house design needs to be optimised for solar panels, perhaps $3000 including promotions to get buyers to pay a sizable premium for the houses, and a 20 year repair agreement on the solar electric system. That is $400 per year for 20 years for the home owner, paid up front. The interest on the upfront money may be offset by the higher price the home owner will likely get if he sells the house. Increased taxes and insurance will be about $100 per year. Did I miss anything other than a profit increase for the contractor? If not, it appears the home owner gets $1000 worth of free electricity per year, and it is competitive.
While there will be a sizable electricity surplus for nearby homes on a cloudless June 21 at 1 pm, there will a shortfall typically on December 21, and every day starting an hour or more before sunset when 60 square meters of solar panel produces less than 600 watts. The principle house redesign is the portion of the roof facing south or south-west should be tilted 20 to 30 degrees, which is much steeper than roofs are usually built in the subtropical zone.
The electric utility needs compensation, as the houses will deliver to the grid when the electricity is not needed and draw normal amounts of power from the grid during the daily peak demand period. None of the energy storage systems that I know of are competitive without large subsidies.
A small portion of the panel cost is offset by shingles the contractor does not have to buy, providing the solar panels don't start leaking rain water into the house before the 20 years is up. Sorry to bring up petty costs, but there may be lots of petty costs that add up to impractical. How costly will it be to replace a few panels damaged by wind or lightening strike? Will we run two wires though the roof boards from each 1/2 square meter = 240 wires (do we need 240 lightening arrestors?) or will this be like roll roofing? What will it cost to get local codes amended to allow roll roofing? Neil

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we get a sizable discount on our insurance for te lightning rods, so there is about a 7 year payback on a good lightning system.
Im more interested in the guts, what about a AC converters and power inverters for a low voltage lighting system (similar to RVs) I never understood why we dont use RV tech in the home.
when you look att it , there aare only a few critical house features thhat must use AC such as microwave, anything with a vacuum tube, rerig/freezers. All the rest can really be done by straight DC from the solar panels.
We have an 8X 24 (ft) series of Si/Ge solar panels on our RV and we can be hookup free (no power) almost indefinately. In fact, most of our hookup (camp) needs are defined by sewage and water and not power. Course our RV is, at most, 330 sq ft living space, and we an optimize its orientation at will.

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I agree, most everything can be designed to operate on 150 volts dc or some lower voltage dc which could come from a portion of the series batteries, except this would confuse the load controller, because of some cells being more charged than others. Perhaps better would be an independent system for each voltage used in the home. we might even consider 300 volts dc to run systems such as clothes dryer, the central heat pump, and recharge the electric car. A $50 inverter would run the low and medium power items that were not designed for dc.
The micro wave oven is about the only problem as it needs up to 1300 watts at about 1000 volts dc for the magnetron. Does anyone know of a reasonable alternative to the $10 magnetron?
Systems have been designed that do not use batteries for storage and voltage regulation, but they are less flexible and less efficient and perhaps more costly, I think. Neil

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when you think about it, a nuke is a very minimal use appliance. At most we use it to heat water for tea or to defrost stuff. Convection ovens do all that and brown too. They have no magnatrons that convert from elect to radar to heat

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Re: Are amorphous silicon cells competitive with other energ

neil wrote:

Let's test the arithmetic on competitive amorphous silicon panels. The contractor bids 3 million dollars (delivered to building site) on 60,000 square meters of solar panels = 1000 houses. Thats $50 per square meter. About 1/4 usual retail price for one square meter. I suppose some factory will sell that cheap, if the contactor pays one million dollars now for delivery beginning in weekly instalments, September 2005 though Feburary 2007, with sizable penalties for late delivery of any instalments.
That comes to $3000 per house for the panels. Let's figure $5000 per house as labor cost will be considerably higher, until the laborers are trained and errors become rare.

????????????????

60,000 sq/meters of panels divided by 1,000 houses is 6,000 sq meters per house (well over an acre and a half!). At $50 per sq/meter that's $300,000 per house. Not $3,000.

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Hi fishen: I likely made an error, but not that one, unless my alsheimers is more advanced than I thought. 60,000 divided by 1000 = 60 not 6000. Neil

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I was never a math whiz, but neil gets the cupie doll. Wink

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Niel's system may work great in southern California or Florida, but how are you going to get the snow off the roof (and the panels) in January in New England? solar panels as a domestic power supply has limited national application. I think conservation (as farmerman as pointed out) is a more reasonable goal, at least in the near term.

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Acquiunk, How about using solar panels for at least half the year while their is no snow, and save the resource for use during the winter where needed?

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That's not a bad idea but it raises the long term cost because you are only getting half the value because you are using it only half or three quarters of the year. There is a very positive attitude towards alternate energy supplies such as solar in New England, but much less application because of environmental considerations. I think in the near term you can get more results with conservation. First because it is something everyone can do. Secondly a lot of it involves technology that is available, cheap, and satisfies an American cultural need for gizmos. Thirdly it is the first step in changing a national mindset that regards energy as abundant and always available.

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neil wrote:

Hi fishen: I likely made an error, but not that one, unless my alsheimers is more advanced than I thought. 60,000 divided by 1000 = 60 not 6000. Neil

Must be my alzheimer's that iss acting up. Wink

I realized I had slipped the decimal the other day (thinking about this stuff while I was in the basement workjing on a project) but couldn't find the darn thread to correct myself. :p

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Conservation is a nice idea not very popular with American consumers, because our government doesn't set limits on energy use. As long as car manufacturers are allowed to build gas-guzzlers, and sold in the US, those with the money will continue to buy. Humvy anyone?

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Hey CI,

My good buddy and adopted ancester Adam Smith will take care of that problem when it becomes necessary Exclamation

Of course that may be somewhat later than when it becomes desirable Sad

.

If Adam cannot do it in a timely manner then Malthus will Crying or Very sad

In some forty years I never found my wife or daughters agreeing with me on what is is defined as necessary as opposed to desireable :wink: .

Consequently I don't expect a politician to be able to define those terms either, so I expect that Adam or Tom is gonna have to do it.

With government subsidies subsidizing lavish lifestyles (define lavish Very Happy

)
at the expense of the residents of undeveloped areas Watts, Sudan, West Virginia, The North Sea etc. Adam has a hard time Confused

The smart money is on Malthus. IMO Crying or Very sad

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Money doesn't need to be smart, just available. Wink

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Snow on the panels is a significant problem, but only about 100 days per year, even in Maine. The sun is close to the horizon Nov, Dec and January, so the power is down by more than half, even if you remove the snow every sunny day. Even worse sunny days are rare these months where I used to live, which was Jamestown, N.Y.
Fort St. James, BC. Canada, was cloudy most of December and January, besides the sun only getting about 20 degrees above the horizon at noon. Neil

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Why don't we talk about using solar cells to power powerintensive industries in ideal locations first? Like fertiliser production. If they can't compete doing that then forget about housing in rainy snowy areas far from the equator.

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Are amorphous silicon cells competitive with other energy?

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