[grabby]

1000 donkeys working for an hour is about a megawatt hour
that is about one barrel of oil.

[Revi]

I figure that alternatives are cheap insurance. I have a job now, and am able to do some of this stuff. I may not have it for long if peak oil really starts to bite. Putting this solar stuff on my roof is a way of:
1) learning about how pv solar and solar thermal works

2) demonstrating that it can be done

3) defraying the cost of the half hour showers my teenager likes to take.

4) getting a really fun toy that I can rationalize to my wife on the grounds that it will save energy and money.

5) allaying some of my peak oil worries.

6) saving money. The cost of the systems is adding value to my house, and it is saving over 10% of it's cost per year, so it's better than money in the bank.

7) amaze and stupefy my friends

the cool factor. Be the first kid on your block to have solar hot water.

9) The savings in greenhouse gas producing fossil fuels makes you feel like you may actually be doing something about the problem of global warming.

Check out the website below under www. Click on the pics for more info. Come visit our house October 1st, it'll be on the solar tour!

[asdar]

Maybe number 9 covers this, but I'd add the question about how much start up costs are.

I think there's quite a few technologies that work that will have trouble getting started because nobody is willing to risk the money.

[Revi]

The start up costs are eaten up by whatever you save over the following years. You can take out a home improvement loan and pay it back with savings in future years. We cleaned out our savings to do what we've done, but that's money we would have handed to the energy providers later otherwise. Check under www below for our energy saving projects. The best alternative energy project is efficiency and conservation. The biggest payback is insulating and caulking.

[LionKuntz]

This is circular. I answered this on my BBS,
http://BBS.h2-pv.us
then I post a copy answering the questions here where it started.

Answers to the Nine Critical Questions About H2-PV

Copied from PeakOil Forum:
http://www.peakoil.com/fortopic8127.html

... which references this website:
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/w ... tions.html


Nine Critical Questions to Ask About Alternative Energy

1. How Much Energy is Returned for the Energy Invested (EROEI)?
2. Have the claims been verified by an independent third party?
3. Can I see the alternative energy being used?
4. Can you trace it back to the original energy source?
5. Does the invention defy the Laws of Thermodynamics?
6. Does the inventor make extravagant claims?
7. Does the inventor claim zero pollution?
8. Can I see blueprints, schematics or a chemical analysis of how it works?
9. Infrastructure Requirements -- Does the energy source require a corporation to produce it? How will it be transported and used? Will it require new engines, pipelines, and filling stations? What will these cost? Who will pay for them and with what? How long will it take to build them?

How Does H2-PV, taken as a whole answer these questions?

1: Each acre of PV cell surfaces @ 13% efficiency generates 12/watts per square foot, 43,560 square feet per acre, (12 x 43560 = 522,720) 522 kWh per peak sunny hour. In vast swaths of 8 sunny southwest USA sunbelt states there are a daily average of 6 peak hours per day (more in long summer days, less in short winter or stormy days). That is DC output measured at the panel power taps. Subtract about 10% for inversion to AC, comes to 470 kWh/hr. Crystallization energy to operate an EMC furnace comes to 12 kWh/kg Si. 470/12 = 39 kilograms of PV SI crystallized per sunny hour. Each kilogram of Si crystal produces 1.2 meters squared (m^2) of PV cell surfaces after sawdust losses in slicing and nominal breakage in process by current industry standards. 46.8 m^2 of net crystal waferstocks are produced each peak sunny hour by one EMC furnace. It requires 86.5 sunny hours to crystallize one acre of PV cell surfaces. The energy payback of crystallization is 14 days of 6-hours per day peak sunny hours. The Si crystal stock represents 30% of the total costs of PV panels, and has a global value in the Si crystal ingot market -- it can be traded for everything else needed. Unless you believe in "energy fairies" giving free energy anyplace in the product chain, then the same cost of energy is embedded in every product or service bought to produce the final panels. Multiplying the energy of crystallization by 3.33 to determine the whole costs of energy including human energy and financial energy, comes to 47 days for 100% total energy payback time to create one acre of PV from one acre PV breeder operation.

The math doesn't lie, but people do for a lot of various reasons. Trust the math and distrust the people who say different.

2: Si made by the EMC process is the largest segment of the PV market by far. It has 20 years proven demonstrations and PV panels made with it have warranties up to 25 years long.

3: You can see samples working everywhere. Chances are you own a small or larger PV solar cell gadget of some kind. Battery operated lawn lights recharged by PV are cheap and commonplace.

4: You can trace back to Einsteins Nobel Prize, or trace to the sun. The USA PV Patent is # 4572812, and you can look it up in the US Patent and Trademark Office website by that number. It is expired, open-source, public-domain technology invented at US taxpayer expense and you own it -- no royalties to pay anybody.

5: The invention is completely within known thermodynamics. It has been proven first by 20 successful years application to casting aluminum and other metals, followed by another successful 20 years adapted to making PV crystal ingots.

6: The claims made are well substantiated -- they may seem extravagant to people whom have been deceived by competitor's propaganda badmouthing Solar PV.

7: There is zero pollution in using the PV for it's lifespan. There may be some waste disposal issues at end-of-life which are minor. The purification of SiO2 to Si for making the crystals are many different technologies, some are much more polluting than others, but none are as polluting as mainstream energy choices. Very low pollution-emission SiO2 purification technologies are open-source public domain and free for everybody to use.

8: All the required instructions are archived in the USPTO website and freely available to every person in the world with an internet connection.

9: State of the Art EMC furnaces are probably beyond the means of small-to-medium sized businesses. More modest furnaces can be built in machine shops in any town or city of the USA, usually without needing out-of-state parts. More than one furnace can be under one roof, and in fact, that is the normal situation. A small to medium sized business can begin with one furnace and scale up. Raw materials purification to solar-grade Si are also public domain open-sourced royalty-free in the USPTO. One acre of PV cell surfaces is 4047 m^2, produced by 3369 kilograms of Si crystal. The density of Si crystal is 2.33 grams/cc, thus there are 52 cubic feet of Si crystal required to make one acre of PV cell surfaces (including normal wastes in production). 2 cubic yards of Si crystals can be made from no more than 7 cubic yards of sand input materials, costing $200 delivered by the local concrete plant or landscaper supply. None of the materials are strategically scarce or vulnerable to choke-points by cartels manipulating the marketplace. The sands are acid-processed in polypropylene 55 gallon barrels commonly available used steam-cleaned at cheap prices. Some safety equipment and a few other items and a business is ready to turn $200 of sand into 43,560 square feet of waferstocks.

H2-PV using the EMC furnaces is a licence to print money. Each square foot of PV wafer the thickness of a business card at $1/watt is a $12 bill spendable over most of the planet.

A whole integrated PV plant today costs roughly $2 million to build, and takes 2 years from groundbreaking to having salable products. Five friends can put a 2nd mortgage on their houses and be in the business. That's BEFORE the EMC open-source method of making Model-T EMC furnaces. The H2-PV project is to assemble all the necessary technologies of open-source public domain "good enough" processes, methods and machines so as to guarantee that 60,000 entrepreneurs can rapidly begin each making a square mile of PV to supply all the energy required by America from sunlight alone within ten years time. Since everything will be open, public and royalty-free there are no entry barriers other than sufficient gumption and business sense.

[smiley]

I think there should be a tenth critical question

10) Does the energy source deliver energy at the time that this is needed? If not does the energy source allow storage of the energy until useage, and if so what are the energy losses that are associated with this storage.

If you take solar as an example:

Solar energy is nice, but solar panels have a output which depends on the availability of sunlight. When the sky is overcast they produce less, when it is night they produce nothing, In winter they produce less than in summer due to the angle of the sun.

There are two systems available. One which physically stores the energy in batteries. However in this case the storage losses have to be acounted for.

A second system is one where your house ditches excess energy on the net and draws from the net when there is not enough light. When too many people start using these systems, the network becomes unstable. A period of sun will cause a power surge trough the network and cause it to shut down.

[Revi]

Then there's solar hot water that stores hot water for your use. It's been 20 below, farinheit here at night, but our water was heated to almost 100 degrees today. Our little PV solar backup light system is charged up and ready to go. Any time the sun shines we get something. It's bonus energy. Otherwise we'd be using fossil fuels or electricity for the same services. Anyone who doesn't have solar working for them is missing out. The big question is why isn't everyone doing it? We could save millions of gallons of fuel if everyone had a solar water heater. We could live better lives on less energy. Here's a link to what we've done:

http://www.msad54.org/sahs/appliedarts/ ... /index.htm

[LionKuntz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('smiley', 'I') think there should be a tenth critical question

10) Does the energy source deliver energy at the time that this is needed? If not does the energy source allow storage of the energy until useage, and if so what are the energy losses that are associated with this storage.

If you take solar as an example:

Solar energy is nice, but solar panels have a output which depends on the availability of sunlight. When the sky is overcast they produce less, when it is night they produce nothing, In winter they produce less than in summer due to the angle of the sun.

[MonteQuest]

Let's save the personal attacks and flames for the Hall of Flames.

Read our Code of Conduct.

[Revi]

Solar energy is scalable. Nobody imagined that rock oil, or petroleum would be powering the world back in the 1800's. It will take a leap of imagination to see a solar powered world, but it is possible. It may not support as many of us, but it will make life a heck of a lot better for a lot of people who have it. I'd rather be taking hot showers and reading with pv light than sitting in the dark stinking.

[smiley]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('lionkunz', 'I')t so happens the human species is diurnal and spends most of it's active hours during daylight.

[Revi]

Renewables could make the grid more robust, in my opinion. All those users are producers, not just consumers. Their own local micro-grids are much less likely to go down than the larger grid. Every house with a PV system and a battery bank will stay on. Get a Sunny Island system and you're all set if the lights go out to the larger grid. It'll wait a few seconds and you are back on. The problem is that it is decentralized, and can't be controlled.

I say power to the people! This may be the solution to the energy crisis. I read Vijay Vaiteeswaran's new book, called Power to the People and enjoyed it's look at what's going to happen. The grid will break into micro-grids which will be receiving power from many small producers, like our household, a hydro plant, a solar plant, a wind farm, etc. The users won't be using as much, but will buy what they need from the power company (or cooperative). Places in Sweden have town wind farms. What's the problem?

[smiley]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'P')laces in Sweden have town wind farms. What's the problem?

[Chemo]

I'm in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and the climate here is warm in comparison to that of most of Europe and North America. Solar hot water systems are pretty common in Australia but the manufacturers will not sell into the ACT market because of fear of product liability claims. Despite the comparatively warm climate, winter temperatures here can drop to -8C or about 19F overnight. Perhaps one day a year temperatures stay about freezing. Solar collector tubes freeze, burst and then irrigate the house below on thawing. The alternative is a heat pump system with a roof-top collector using a non-freezing liquid but the cost is far higher. And the pump needs power to run.

I'm far from convinced about photo-voltaics. Yes you can run a house on them but the initial outlay suffers from price sticker shock. Colleague here built a new house a few years ago but confessed that though he wanted double glazing, it put the cost just beyond his pocket. How much more would an option of an inbuilt photo-voltaic array? I've seen people delete washbasins in bathrooms to get the cost of new construction down.

Doly made a good point early in the thread. Fact is there are a lot of people around the world who do not have the option of adjusting their energy sources or even improving their insulation or windows (renters) or the orientation of their 40 year old houses (homeowners like me), though at least I can push more fibreglass batts into the ceiling and put in decent curtains (seen the price of good curtain fabric lately?)

The site listing the nine questions seems to fall into the "what am I going to drive my car on?" bucket. The answer remains petroleum, maybe supplemented with vege oil derivatives. That is if you still have a car.

Smiley's point about grid instability remains unanswered. This will be important in the medium term if there is a large take-up of solar or wind power.

[willie92708]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('smiley', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('lionkunz', 'I')t so happens the human species is diurnal and spends most of it's active hours during daylight.

[GoIllini]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('willie92708', '
')
If you look at a "typical" USA power grid like:
http://www.caiso.com/outlook/SystemStatus.html
you will see there is plenty of demand during the middle of the day, and much less in the wee hours of the night. If you look at this graph now, you are seeing a winter demand curve. The big peak at 6PM is all the outside lights coming online after the sun sets. In the summer the curve looks more like a sine wave where the peak (last summer) was 55 GigaWatts, happening about 2PM to 3PM, when the sun is 2 hours past peak. This summer curve dwarfs the 33 GW winter curve so much you do not even notice when the outdoor lighting comes online. So, I do not agree with the above statement. Solar PV certainly can provide power when it's needed.

I have a 3.5 KW PV solar system on my house and it produces peak grid injected power of 2800 watts between 11AM and 2 PM in the summer totaling as much as 20 KWH per day. In the winter (now) it varies from 5 KWH on an overcast day, to 15 KWH on a sunny day. I'm now producing as much electricity as I use throughout the year, except during the summer heat waves when the A/C runs often.

Willie in Sunny SoCal

[Revi]

I agree completely, build a better battery and we can start to have a different grid. Every house a consumer and a producer. Batteries of different kinds or small distribution centers. We have put a lot of time and money into the existing grid, but that doesn't mean we can't improve it. We'd be a lot more secure if we all had some kind of solar on our houses, and used half of our current consumption. We could do this and live better than we do now. We may even have some extra for electric transportation like this:

www.sunnev.com

[GoIllini]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Revi', 'I') agree completely, build a better battery and we can start to have a different grid. Every house a consumer and a producer. Batteries of different kinds or small distribution centers. We have put a lot of time and money into the existing grid, but that doesn't mean we can't improve it. We'd be a lot more secure if we all had some kind of solar on our houses, and used half of our current consumption. We could do this and live better than we do now. We may even have some extra for electric transportation like this:

www.sunnev.com

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('GoIllini', ' ')In reality, though, we'll probably have a nuclear baseload in the first place. Despite Monte's claims that we'll run out of U-235 in 20 years, there are plenty of ways to find new sources of fissile materials or make them ourselves.

[Revi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('GoIllini', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Revi', 'I') agree completely, build a better battery and we can start to have a different grid. Every house a consumer and a producer. Batteries of different kinds or small distribution centers. We have put a lot of time and money into the existing grid, but that doesn't mean we can't improve it. We'd be a lot more secure if we all had some kind of solar on our houses, and used half of our current consumption. We could do this and live better than we do now. We may even have some extra for electric transportation like this:

www.sunnev.com