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There is no gas shortage

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shmokes:

--- Quote from: pinballjim on April 06, 2008, 12:41:55 pm ---
Because there's a break even point on solar cell efficiency before it becomes economically feasible.  And it hasn't been reached.  Once we get there, we can figure out the manufacturing.


--- End quote ---

That's not true.  Solar requires a substantial initial investment, but after that the power is free (actually the power company will pay you for any energy you feed back to the grid).  It's only a matter of time before investment costs are recouped and it becomes money in your pocket.

Also, big things are happening in solar research these days, especially thanks to nano tech.

Flexible, cheap solar panels already cost less than coal energy, but expected to be a small fraction of coal as they become mass produced on a larger scale.
Paint-on solar panels
Making solar panels on the cheap
Solar panels disguised as typical roofing tiles, so you're house can go solar while simultaneously not looking retarded.
Solar panels that can harvest wind power as well
Who needs solar panels when a giant magnifying glass has been able to harness the power of the sun since we were kids?
Solar power plant in Spain generates 20 Mw. of electricity and $28 million in annual income.
Research on theoretical solar panels with physical properties similar to plastic wrap.
Scientist develops darkest material known to man -- it absorbs nearly all light.  Perhaps useful for solar panel tech?
Google going all-green to power its server farms.

ChadTower:

--- Quote from: patrickl on April 06, 2008, 11:15:52 am ---Electric cars would mostly charge at night, so then they wouldn't add so much to the maximum strain on the grid (which occurs during the day).

--- End quote ---

That's not true here.  Over the summer almost all of the strain is at night when people are at home and turn on their TV, AC, computers, etc.  There is far less power grid traffic during the day when people are at work.  Companies don't turn things off at night anymore the way they used to.

shmokes, that home solar grid is great in theory but it doesn't work in practice.  Not yet and probably not for quite a while.  The panels are not reliable enough - many people who try give up inside of a year because they either spend too much time maintaining the "once and done" hardware or they spend too much money paying someone else to maintain it.  It isn't a whole lot better now than it was during the last energy crisis.  There are still plenty of houses here with a solar array on the roof from 30 years ago - arrays that never came close to breaking even then and were so expensive to even dispose of that they are still sitting there.  The technology is better now but still not nearly good enough to be the positive sum equation the hype claims.

patrickl:

--- Quote from: ChadTower on April 07, 2008, 08:55:37 am ---
--- Quote from: patrickl on April 06, 2008, 11:15:52 am ---Electric cars would mostly charge at night, so then they wouldn't add so much to the maximum strain on the grid (which occurs during the day).

--- End quote ---

That's not true here.  Over the summer almost all of the strain is at night when people are at home and turn on their TV, AC, computers, etc.  There is far less power grid traffic during the day when people are at work.  Companies don't turn things off at night anymore the way they used to.
--- End quote ---
There are always peak and off-peak hours. Obviously the load will be lower when during the night most of the TV's, computers, lights and AC's go off (Or don't work as hard because it's the right temperature anyway). My company makes and runs a website for an energy news agency. We report the Dutch wholesale purchase prices for electric power. We show both the peak and off-peak price index. Peak is between 8AM and 11PM.

I checked some hourly average load charts for the US and they look pretty similar. Obviously in the hotter parts of the US the summer peak is a lot higher (with the highest peak between 2PM and 6PM), but still the load charts show that the load around 22:00 is about 30% to 50% lower than the maximum load and stays low till 8 or 9AM.

patrickl:

--- Quote from: pinballjim on April 07, 2008, 10:17:31 am ---
--- Quote from: shmokes on April 06, 2008, 01:27:17 pm ---Also, big things are happening in solar research these days, especially thanks to nano tech.

--- End quote ---

Dude, you really gotta get off my back lately.

Yes, interesting things are happening, but, so far, nobody's figured out how to do large scale manufacturing of anything that's economically worthwhile.  There's been "promising" things developing for 30+ years, wake us up when there's something tangible.

--- End quote ---
Dude you are really asking for it.

The argument put forth by Danny and myself was that research money is not used towards finding cheap and mass produceable solar cells.

You claim that this is not true because they are working on higher yield and willmakes those cheaper later.

I say that the current cells will never be made cheap (because of limited resources and corresponding high costs of these resources) and Shmokes demonstrates that there are lots of other venues open to research (for cheaper more mass produceable cells).

Then you claim that there are no results shown for those suggested technologies.

Seriously! That's just the point we were making  ::)

patrickl:

--- Quote from: pinballjim on April 07, 2008, 10:44:46 am ---
--- Quote from: patrickl on April 07, 2008, 10:32:31 am ---Seriously! That's just the point we were making  ::)

--- End quote ---

The point you're making is that nobody is researching solar cells but that people are researching solar cells?

 :dizzy:


--- End quote ---
That they are not researching solar cells outside of military and space applications

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