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Science Solar energy as an alternative source, ... Why not?

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bgeh
post Jun 7 2010, 12:34 PM

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QUOTE(jswong @ Jun 4 2010, 05:58 PM)
100kWh!!! Are you sure about that? If a solar panel was 100% efficient and could capture 100% of the sun's spectrum, and could track the sun through the sky so that it's always incident against the sun, it would take 100 square meters of these solar panels to produce that much power.

If it's a fixed installation that doesn't track the sun, you'll need 400 square meters to generate 100kWh.

But since polycrystalline solar cells can only capture 20% of the sun's spectrum, we'll actually need 2000 square meters to generate 100kWh on a totally sunny cloudless day.

RM90k is a bargain for 2000 square meters of polycrystalline solar cells! Is it a subsidized price? Such as the solar panels under that TNB's BIPV subsidy program?
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The efficiency rating for solar panels takes into account the spectrum IIRC. That was a mistake I used to make myself.

reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell#En...sion_efficiency , and standard test conditions are defined here http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/spectra/am1.5/ . So yeah, it's not going to be that bad.
bgeh
post Jun 8 2010, 07:38 PM

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QUOTE(BFGWong @ Jun 8 2010, 10:19 AM)
In Malaysia, a big barrier for us will be the still significant ROI.  With most Malaysians actually taking 7-9 years to pay off a car, on a similar price scale, it will not be feasible for most people without a good financing option to be able to afford that cash outlay.

Actually, wasn't there a global overcapacity of panels?  I was actually hoping for a price crash, followed by the surviving firms finally getting their acts together and put PV on the same price law as semiconductors (e.g. installed price per kW to be halved every 18-24 months)
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IIRC there was one. But PV panels do not follow the Moore's law, because power scales with area of panels, while Moore's Law talks about number of transistors, which gets smaller.

 

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