harry wrote in
:

On Feb 13, 5:29*pm, Sjouke Burry s@b wrote:
harry wrote in
news:3c5379c8-51f5-4c8b-a3cf-
:









On Feb 13, 2:34 pm, Robert wrote:
On Feb 13, 4:16 am, Harry Johnson wrote:

Where I live, we are running out of fossil fuels.

Maybe we should capture free energy from the sun?

Not if it takes more fossil fuel to excavate, refine,
manufacture and distribute a solar panel than the
energy the panel can produce during it's working life.

It is a toy for people who can get government subsidies.

Here's a real world example:

A 25 watt panel costs about $125 . That is the cost
to produce the panel and get it into the hands of a
homeowner -- i.e. the selling price, typically.

Use Dallas as a location. 10 cents per kwh
and a yearly average of 5.5 hours of "full sun" per day.

OK $125 means 1,250,000 watt-hours of electricity

That means 1,250,000 / (5.5 x 25) = 9091 days of
power generation at full panel ability.

That means 9091/365 = 24.9 years to break even on
cost of generated power, assuming zero maintenance
and zero damage from rain and hail.

An unsustainable scenario.......

And if you figure in the cost of external infrastructure
that's needed --- batteries, wiring, power converter,
installation costs, maintenance on the infrastructure...

..... the business decision is a no-brainer....

Solar is a TOY, unless there is no other possible
way.......Even a gasoline generator is more
cost-effective...

Clearly you have never been to Germany.
Solar panels are cost effective *because they need no fuel to run
them. Their projected life is around 25 years. *And they produce no
pollution once manufactured.
You have to buy gasoline to run your generator. You have to
maintain it and it has a lifetime of a few thousand hours at best.
And the cost of fossil fuels will rise.
And fossil fuels are too valuable to burn.

And you have to buy a new Solar DC-AC convertor, when the old one
fails after a few years.
Want to estimate the cost, when your original supplier is out of
bizness? My guessimate comes out at 4 to 8000 dollars/euros.
Not to mention, what replacing one or two failing panels costs.
25 years without maintenance costs is quite impossible....
You need panels with the same properties.........

Well you must have pretty poor "grid tie inverters" (the correct term)
in the USA.
Or is this more republican propaganda?

Some have run for decades in Europe. There are no moving parts and if
they are in a cool dust free environment they run for a long long
time.
What maintenance do you imagine you to something with no moving parts
that is self cleaning when it rains?


I know many people with PV arrays. I don't know one that has failed.
They are deemed to loose 1% max. of output/year.

Prices of the equipment has been in near free fall of late in Europe
so any failures will be much cheaper to replace than I paid initially.
I imagine this is so in the USA too.



jabbut, this stuf is in the netherlands(or Holland maybe).