[ExI] Inkjet printing could change the face of solar energy industry

[Emlyn]

On 3 July 2011 04:09, David Lubkin <lubkin at unreasonable.com> wrote:
> If batteries and inverters remain expensive but solar panels are
> very cheap, why not use the panels where it's not an issue?
>

Zackly. Inverters in the domestic market are mostly because we're set
up for a high voltage AC grid, which is good for power companies but
bad for users (my friendly neighborhood electronic engineers assure me
that end users pay for the conversion waste rather than the
providers).

And so of course all appliances now are built to work with AC, usually
by way of transformers (because they really want low voltage DC).

Solar, which gives you low voltage DC, is coming into a grid setup not
suited to it, and a commercial environment adjusted to that grid. So
you end up with silly crap like Solar Panel(DC) -> Inverter(AC) ->
Transformer(DC) -> appliance. Ridiculous. Lossy, and means installs
are more expensive than they should be.

Subsidies are helpful to bootstrap through this first phase of
irrational systems.

(Actually I think Inverters are commonly installed in Australia so
power can feed back onto the grid, which is a massively subsidised
thing. It might be a good example of subsidies warping the market
(selling too many inverters), but it is having the effect of
increasing solar takeup.)

Eventually you want to see low voltage DC sockets in your house, along
with some higher voltage AC for stuff that wants that (washing
machine, fridge?). AC could be done with an inverter, or just come out
of the grid as now, ignore the panels (so no inverter required). DC
could be panels, with fallback to grid + transformer where necessary
(night time). Obviously this is assuming a world where people begin
making appliances that natively use, say, 12 volt DC, no power pack.

No need for batteries, because there is still a grid. As far as
storage on the grid goes, you don't really need it. When output from
panels is high, it just means supply from power stations drops - those
guys are all over the ability to ramp down when the grid doesn't need
them. I think some of them can even "go in reverse", store a bit of
power from the grid when the price is really low (demand is low),
although I'm not sure what technology they use. That's something worth
investing in probably, might be on the up.

-- 
Emlyn

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