Is there money to be made in P.V.?
- Thread starter Free Electron
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Yes you can, and it is common to find a farm in the next county or in some cases in another state, the farms connect to the grid and can be monitored for metering and problems from a remote location, and the energy produced will be credited to your account, so let's say your monthly home bill is $150 and the farm had a $149 credit, your home net cost would be $1
If you are having a hard time selling solar, try to create your own farm, or build a co-op and get a group of investors to join the co-op and build a large farm, it is one way to create work with building the farm and maint work.
kbsparky
Senior Member
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- Delmarva, USA
K8MHZ
Senior Member
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- Electrician
I believe he might be thinking of insolation?
That would be the same as of thinking of irradiation. Remember, the ground rules are being made by engineers and that is reflected in the text. Beside insolation / irradiation we have compass / azimuth to make things as complex as possible.
Two chapters with 67 color photos with circles and arrows and a paragraph describing each one to tell us we need 88 new words to realize that the best place to put a solar panel is in direct sunlight.
Electric-Light
Senior Member
It doesn't, however it isn't like liquid fuel that can be stored and used conveniently.
Sunny days tend to increase demand for air conditioners, so the ability to supplement power during peak demand maybe a useful thing.
Japan just shut down another nuclear plant (60Hz one, so it isn't even on the same grid as the affected region that's on 50Hz) that wasn't affected by this earthquake due to susceptibility to quake damage and took out 2,300MW of capacity less than a month ago.
They're finding radioactive materials in snow near the affected plants and public opposition to restarting that unaffected nuclear power plant is very strong right now.
Electric-Light
Senior Member
Space and budget permitting, it can be done. Photovoltaics can be scaled way down, down to pocket calculator and watch power source, but larger scale power production can be implemented using traditional power plant design.
The traditional design basically uses a bunch of mirrors to create steam to drive turbines and they call it "thermal solar".
If you build it in out of nowhere with a lot of sunshine, the power can be brought out long distance using DC intertie. Practically, we currently have 1MV DC link spanning far north of Oregon to far South of California.
There's always engine driven technology. Natural gas usage is typically low during summer. Yanmar climate control division units and York Triathlon are some examples of engine driven A/C. Engines can be modulated like VFD very easily just like the ones we have in our cars. Since it will be open shaft design, there will be some refrigerant loss, but for commercial buildings, they could simply use something like propane or other hydrocarbon refrigerant to cool the chiller loop water.
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88 n?w words, you made me laugh, my interest in solar goes back to when I was a kid and searched Radio and TV shop trash bins looking for discarded Rectifiers, and when I made a good find, the work of removing the plates and soaking them in gasoline to remove the paint and expose the selenium, and then with care solder leads to both sides of the plate to complete my home brew solar cell.
My first solar array powered an old 9V pocket radio, so you can imagine the thrill when I worked in the space program and worked with the power design group.
Solar has a future and I am sure this great generation will advance it.
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