[extropy-chat] Solar math (was: Nuke 'em)

Dirk Bruere dirk.bruere at gmail.com
Thu Oct 27 18:29:59 UTC 2005


On 10/27/05, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Oct 26, 2005 at 02:43:33PM -0700, Damien Sullivan wrote:
>
> > Last I saw, which was a few years ago, solar was $4/watt, vs. $1/watt
> for
> > conventional power plants, lasting 30 years. So, 250 gigawatts. Keep on
>
> Residential electricity is e.g. 0.155 EUR/kWh where I sit.
> http://zebu.uoregon.edu/1998/ph162/l7.html
> claims 0.25-0.50$/kWh for solar electricity.
> http://www.solarbuzz.com/StatsCosts.htm
> claims around 0.30$/kWh, or 2-5 times residential electricity tarifs.
>
> > spending for 30 years and you'd buy 1.5 terawatts, half of what the US
> needs
> > in terms of total energy. OTOH, providing heating through PV electricity
> is
> > definitely the expensive way of doing it. Also, my estimate is that the
> US
>
> Right. http://www.solarserver.de/berechnen/index.html tells me that a
> 2-person
> household with 70 l/day (60 C) needs 3.6 m^2 and a 200 l insulate tank to
> achieve >80% coverage during 6 months of the year and 10%-60% the rest of
> the
> year. Another good investment is insulation, heat exchangers in
> ventilation
> and winter gardens.
>
> > spends at least $250 billion a year on electricity, so this model is
> actually
> > underspending. If we accepted spending twice as much as we do now then
> it all
> > works out. If solar has gotten cheaper then all the better.
>
> Price crossover will happen quite soon, especially if the
> polymer/semiconductor
> spin-coat cells are stable and cheap. It's still a major investment, and
> most
> of the U.S. is deep in debt.
>
>
Then better to piss away money on something useful rather than a bloated
military whose only justification is fighting oil wars because the cash
isn't invested in other energy resources.

Dirk
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