On Wed, 21 Nov 2007 17:39:17 GMT, Larry Dighera
wrote:

On Tue, 20 Nov 2007 20:50:55 -0500, "Roger (K8RI)"
wrote in
:

As has been publicized, we don't have the grid capacity to support
much in the way of all electric cars. The same is true for Hydrogen.
It's either produced from fossil fuels with a lot of polluting
byproducts or takes a whale of a lot of electrical energy to produce
from water.

When/if worldwide photovoltaic production ever meets consumer demand,
you are going to see an enormous increase in solar power
installations, not only in commercial buildings, but residences as
well. Today, the excess electricity generated by a home's
photovoltaic power generating system is used to turn the electric
utility meter backwards. As electrically powered vehicles become more
mainstream, that excess solar power could be used to directly charge
vehicle batteries or for hydro-electrolysis to generate hydrogen gas
for fuel.

This doesn't change the lack of grid capacity. Ask the State of
Wisconsin which has a large wind farm. The state agreed to purchase
any electricity the grid couldn't handle. It's costing them many
millions of dollars.

We don't have the economically viable technology for all electric
vehicles to have enough range. Generating H2 with the excess energy
sounds good, but how do you generate and store enough if you don't
live in the SW?


Side benefits of residential solar power generation are the peace of
mind inherent in the redundancy of distributed (as opposed to central)
power generation and the resulting robustness against massive power
outages due to a cascade of equipment outages triggered by a
single-source failure, the ability to "thumb the eye" of oil
robber-barons, the reduction in the production of pollutants,
insurance against the inevitable increases in the price of energy, and
virtue of abandoning 19th century technology for a more enlightened
solution.

It comes down to economics and geographic location. My daughter's
husband is a consultant in the business. We sat down and figured a
hybrid system of both active and passive solar would cost me close to
$50,000 up here and unlike California we receive no subsidies for
either active or passive solar panels.

Price photovoltaic panels per KWH. The price without a subside is
enough to scare most any one off.


Alcohol is an interim solution with the hybrid being by far the most
economical and quickest to implement of the interim solutions.

As for grid capacity we are rapidly coming to the point of real time
usage monitoring with remote setback of heating and air conditioning.
Here with peak rates of about 10 cents per KWH we wouldn't see the
savings of those fortunate souls paying 38 cents during peak demand
out in the Republik of Kalafornia.

OTOH solar panels don't do us much good either.

Why? Photovoltaic panels are able to convert infrared isolation even
on cloudy days.

But that ain't much power out. it's only a small fraction of what you
get in direct sunlight and solar panels are not all that efficient at
best. Also we're 43'37" N and the days are several hours shorter up
here than in say Georgia or even California. Also you can see the
power drop due to clouds, or just due to dust and dirt collecting if
you don't clean them every couple of weeks. They also age so it's not
a one time cost. Efficiency is going up, but electricity from solar
panels is still about 3 to 5 times the cost of that from the power
grid in areas where sunlight is plentiful and the atmosphere is seldom
cloudy. Here with 10 cents per KWH and we have about 3 days a month
without some clouds it's probably more like 5 to 7 times.

And even when they do get the cost down and I expect they will, the
power grid is still limited as to the amount they can buy back (or
handle) When that point is reached the payback for power into the grid
will drop and at times they may not even accept power. As I mentioned
the wind farm in Wisconsin and their problems.

There is a Silicon plant near here that is multiplying their capacity
several times over and they just finished doubling the size of the
plant. The amount of pure Silicon coming out of there is staggering.
Wafer size has gone from 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch when I started in the
industry to a current of 14 inches or there abouts. Still the waste
of making wafers from silicon rods is over 50%. Considering it used to
be on the order of 80 to 90% that's pretty good. Many years ago when
loss was much greater they developed some new sawing techniques that
cut the waste in half. it was still tremendous, but the increase in
yield almost caused several of the suppliers to go out of business.
One did.

We still have a long way to go before solar cells become economically
viable except in some select areas.

Roger (K8RI)