Bob F wrote:
Certainly, if every house were roofed with collectors, it would eliminate
the need for new generation capability. Grid tied systems eliminate the
need for batteries. When it's sunny where you are, the surplus can be
sent elsewhere and vise-versa. In hot areas, the time of highest demand
is the time of greatest production.

When they figure out how to mass produce cells cheaply, they will get
very popular. That's the only thing holding them back. It will happen.

Bob

That is exactly the problem. Until someone figures out how to get the
cost down, they make no economic sense. Here in the socialist state
of NJ, they put a tax on every electric users bill to raise money to
fund solar. So, last time I checked, you can get a medium sytem of
about 6KW, which actually costs $50K, for about 20K, because the other
poor saps are paying the rest. Then promoters of this crap, like BP,
proceed to do some more bogus math to justify it. They claim you can
save another $500 a year or so, because the interest to finance it is
tax deductible, if secured by a mortgage. But they completely ignore
the fact even if the mortgage interest is tax deductible, it only
reduces the cost of borrowing the money, which they never factor in.

And after all this, they tell you it will reduce your electric bill by
50%. Big deal. If you had to actually incur the true cost of paying
for this, which of course, in the end the citizens as a whole do, it
would make no sense at all. If you borrowed $50K at 7% interest, it
would cost $3500 a year. And if you had a $300 a month electric bill,
which is pretty damn high, it would save you a whopping, $1800 a year.
In other words, the system would never pay for itself, without even
factoring in how long it would last, what it might cost to repair, etc.

And of course we just had a big scandel with the $100Mil that is
sitting in a public fund that was raised to support this. Turns out
there were no financial controls on it, no control over who could spend
the money, or tracking what it went for. And it appears some of it
went to pay former employees of the state BPU, who became "consultants"
to work on special projects.








"Proctologically Violated©®" wrote in
message ...
Industy can't be run on solar, but houses sure can.
I think it's more like 900 W at the earths surface. At 50% conversion,
for
a 30' x 40' house, that's about 250 Amp service!!
Yeah, weather dependent, but dats why God invented batteries and, more
recently, inverters.
Clearly will need backup, but the sun provides incredible juice.
You can do the math and show that a relatively narrow belt of solar cells
around the globe could supply several times the whole world's supply of
juice.
A strip of solar panels 1 meter wide encircling the equator would provide
about 6 million KW. A strip 1 mile wide would yield 10 billion KW. etc.
At any given time.
More or less.
--
------
Mr. P.V.'d (formerly Droll Troll), Yonkers, NY

Stop Corruption in Congress & Send the Ultimate Message:
Absolutely Vote, but NOT for a Democrat or a Republican.
Ending Corruption in Congress is the *Single Best Way*
to Materially Improve Your Family's Life.
The Solution is so simple--and inexpensive!

entropic3.14decay at optonline2.718 dot net; remove pi and e to reply--ie,
all d'numbuhs

"HeyBub" wrote in message
...

"---MIKE---" wrote in message
...
During the congressional debates there was a lot of talk about
alternative energy sources. They discussed wind power and roof mounted
solar panels. Where I live, the roof is covered with a foot (or more)
of snow during most of the winter. Solar panels would be useless.


First, we can't run this country (or much of anything) off of sunbeams.
There are 745 watts/sq meter of solar energy that falls on the earth's
surface. At noon. At the equator. With no clouds. The only way to
increase
that number is to move the orbit of the earth closer to the sun.

Assuming 50% conversion efficiency, it would take a solar collector the
size of the Los Angeles basin (about 1200 sq miles) to provide
electricity
just for California. Then, too, there is the initial cost and on-going
maintenance. Plus Angelinos would be living in the dark.

That said, solar collectors for modest projects - such as water
heating -
MAY be cost effective. Solar water heaters are cheap and easy to
construct. Their only drawback is a 55-gallon drum sitting atop your
house.