solar energy, 2.4 cents per kWh

On a sunny day (30 Jun 2019 13:43:48 -0700) it happened Winfield Hill wrote in :

In the year .... a big asteroid hit earth causing mass volcanism with smoke that darkened the sky for a thousand years.. causing the extinction of the humming-beans species probably because those depended too much on electrickety alone.

point is about 19 trillion KWH.

I calculate about a 10-year payback time for the plant. What does natural gas have to do with it?

ven

I believe the actual cost of a kWh of conventionally produced electricity i s significantly below 7 cents. I am billed separately for generation and d istribution with the generation part being around 4 cents per kWh. Another bill charges separately for generation, transmission and distribution, but they don't publish the separate rates and I haven't calculated them. I ca lled to ask about that and the guy basically told me to get stuffed.

Traditional power plants may be more efficient as huge, concentrated facilities. In the case of solar power, I'd think it would make better sense to distribute the system.

Jeroen Belleman

-even

Photovoltaic cell systems do work well as distributed generators.

Thermal solar plants - with a wide area of moveable mirrors focussing sunli ght on a central tower, where it is used to heat up a steady stream of circ ulating molten salt to about 550C - do need to be big. Thier unique selling point is that it's cheap to add big insulated tanks to keep the molten sal t hot overnight so that you can keep on generating solar power while the su n is down.

There are a couple of prototype systems around to test the technology (whic h does seem to work) but I don't think that anybody has built a commercial system.

Right! The article does not, in fact, state what kind of installation this is. So much for journalism. I carelessly assumed it was photovoltaic, and a bit of searching shows that indeed it is.

Jeroen Belleman

It is easier to arrange the cleaning and maintenance of a centralized system.

With distributed production with panels on each house, who will do the cleaning and maintenance ? How many home owners will fall from their roofs trying to clean the panel or trying to cut tree branches casting shadows on the panel ?

Strange, my three-year-old system needs no maintenance. Thanks to the rain and wind, it's kept clean.

One nice thing about a large centralized solar farm, just one big step-up transformer and transmission line outa there.

PVs work reasonably well even in partly cloudy environment. With 4/8 cloudiness, you could still expect about half the nominal power.

CSP requires cloud free (0/8) skies. For this reason, in Europe, most have been built in Spain (10-20 MW class).

I don't think it is a huge problem, but I don't think cleaning is something to ignore. Heck, I see what collects on my car. Even my house windows get filthy if not cleaned sometimes. Why would a solar panel not get dirty?

Two reasons, they're glass, and at a significant angle. How dirty does your front windshield get?

The level of stuff on your windows that makes you want to clean them, barely diminishes solar output. Must be under 5%, and we wait for the next rain. Our neighborhood has a few dozen paneled roofs, and I haven't heard of anybody getting up on the roof. OK, exception, one neighbor with a poor installation had multiple panels stop, and got a service visit.

Just Sunday it was so dirty I had to use the washers in order to drive to t he car wash. It had set for four days. Imagine how dirty it would have go tten after weeks and months.

I don't know what your neighborhood is like, but I am in the boonies which is where most solar farms are. Lots of dust, pollen and BIRDS!

windows get filthy if not cleaned

I haven't taken any measurements so I can't say what the attenuation is. M y point is it is not realistic to assume there is no cleaning required ever . I've seen old cars that sit a long time. The windshields get very dirty indeed so much so that it would have noticeable attenuation.

What solar cell installation has ever said that it was costed on the basis of "no cleaning required ever".

Win seems to get enough rain that he doesn't seem to need to wash his, but anything bigger will presuambly get scheduled wash-downs and with provision to cope with occasional dust-storms or bird flocks.

It's not a high tech problem.

Soalr cells are making money, rather than just sitting. They'll get more attention.

Closer to home solar + storage:

Too bad it's too late.