Quote:
Originally Posted by wifi
Not to throw a damper, but bring some reality is a few facts, which I suspect will be instantly argued with, but none the less.
I will make the logical assumption that this will not include batteries, so this is a solar "assistance" to power generation during sunny daytime, otherwise we would need to include the cost of batteries. We can argue this later, if one wants to, but batteries have a low lifetime relative to the solar cells...
Solar cells have a lifetime of 20-30 years, estimates, because few of the modern day cells have been around that long. So, lets take the expanded guess of 30 years, that means every 30 years all the $5M cells will need to be replaced. Anyone want to guess the economy here ? It is great if the government will pay for it (cheers from the liberals today), but lets think of what this really means, feel good ?
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Why would this installation need to have batteries? You just tie it to the grid and it adds power when the sun shines and does not when the sun does not shine. There is no need to go off the grid to use a system like this; you just need to offset the energy you use with the energy you produce, over time, not necessarily at any specific instant in time.
Solar panel costs have dropped dramatically over the last 10 years. Those $5 million panels may only cost $1 million 30 years from now. They were at least $10 million, 10 years ago.
With the incentive to make panels cheaper and more powerful, I predict that the advances in power output and reductions in cost will be astounding when we look back on it 20 years from now.