Monocrystalline Si solar panels have so many advantages that it's hard to get interested in anything else for home or business construction. Lifetime is measured in decades, not years; efficiency is approaching 25% while prices are dropping (only expensive multi-junction III-V types are better, currently limited to satellite power systems); and for variable surfaces, they can be manufactured as small shingles as well as the standard size panel.
Unfortunately the USA, due to decades of minimal R&D funding, is well behind the technology curve in this area:
> "Some Chinese companies are defying the “more efficient = more expensive” rule in 2022. High efficiency solar panels are entering the market from companies like LonGi, Canadian Solar, and Trina Solar that surpass the 20 percent efficiency rating, but cost less per watt as opposed to SunPower, LG and Panasonic panels. Solar is cheaper than ever without sacrificing efficiency ratings, which begs the question if U.S manufacturers will be able to maintain their pricing premiums."
Of course a boom in solar PV installation in the USA would pull the rug out from under natural gas prices, which more-or-less explains government policy in this area.
Bear in mind that China has like, no oil[0] or gas[1] at all. Their investments into renewables is kind of a life of death situation, not just for the world, but the PLA specifically, who would likely monopolize domestic oil production in any military engagement.
Also worth mentioning that Beijing sits on one side of a mountain range, and the other side is arid desert. It's kind of a no brainer to drop solar panels there and tramsmit power to the nearby megatropolis.
> Of course a boom in solar PV installation in the USA would pull the rug out from under natural gas prices
Fracking already did this[2]. And solar doesn't make sense in many places in the US. You want somewhere dry and bright, which cuts off the pacific northwest, and most of the north*. You also want to supplement solar with something that will cool off your home in the evening, run your oven, and keep you warm at night. Which natural gas can actually do[3], so even proponents of solar should consider them at least temporary allies.
In contrast, wind seems to already be making 10 percent of the US demand[4], versus solars 2 percent. This is where the subsidies are going, and given how much reliable wind there is in tornado alley, will likely continue growing once subsidies expire. In the mean time, we can continue to import subsidized solar from china and focus on higher margin silicon applications. ^_^
"solar doesn't make sense in many places in the US. You want somewhere dry and bright, which cuts off the pacific northwest, and most of the north*"
Can you explain with numbers how you arrive at this conclusion? (Solar is extremely popular and viable in Northern Europe, so it surprises me to read it)
Most of the US is in fact better for solar than most of Europe (Iberia is fairly good).
However, energy prices in the US are considerably lower, so the bar for profitability is much higher.
The EU also has colossal subsidies for renewables, which obviously skew the market. In a purely market-driven world Europe would not be investing in solar.
In a purely market driven world oil would have been phased out decades ago because of all the negative externalities that the pure and perfect market would have priced in.
I understand your point, I just take issue with the phrasing that subsidies for renewables are skewing the market, since in fact they are rather correcting it. Secondly because the oil industry is subsidised as well.
> In a purely market driven world oil would have been phased out decades ago because of all the negative externalities that the pure and perfect market would have priced in.
People who say this don't seem to realize that it was only 70 years ago we were just stopping the use of horses and other beasts of burden to do the majority of farming, and of course, replacing them with tractors... or the impact this had on productivity and availability.
Yes.. oil has negative "externalities." It also had massive benefits and created opportunities for expansion that we might not have otherwise had. The purpose of a market isn't to achieve perfect tyranny in the use of all resources, it's to make the best compromise out of the available choices.
Finally, it may just be that we haven't exactly factored in all the negative external components of our new energy choices. The market, if anything, has shown that it is willing to brazenly lie to the entire world if it senses that there is massive profit to be made in it. I don't know why people would expect the elites of green energy to operate any differently than the elites of oil energy have in the past, particularly when the market has made no efforts to induce the kind of perfection you have imagined here.
You don't need to put "externalities" in quotes as though it's a suspect concept.
It's fine to be suspicious of any entity. But it's not easy to hide externalities. Your suspicion should lead pretty directly to evidence. As it does with fossil fuels. Those who profited from fossil fuels brazenly lied about their own knowledge of their externalities, but the rest of the world could see them in real time. They weren't trying to hide the externalities as much as they were mitigating their legal exposure and improving their propaganda.
I don’t imagine the market is perfect, quite the opposite.
Unless external entities like the government introduce a way for the market to take all available information (or as much as possible) into account, the decisions the market makes will be deeply flawed.
I do realise the enormous positive effects the ICE has had on growth, labour intensity and general wellbeing.
But it also has bad effects and we can move past the ICE now, and in fact we could and should have a lot sooner.
Most of the emissions come from electricity generation though, so no romanticising of the ICE will save us there.
The world panicked about nuclear power 30 years ago because of a Soviet screwup but that was a mistake. Nuclear and renewables should have been our focus all the time since.
And yes I absolutely realise there are negative externalities in cobolt extractions and whatever. That’s why we need the carbon taxes and similar regulations :)
> In a purely market-driven world Europe would not be investing in solar.
Well, maybe, but there's more to a market than buy and sell price. There is also the cost of external energy dependency, for example, or environmental degradation.
Yes, I just got a quote for a solar system here in the US, the price for the system was right around $40,000. Add in the cost of reinstallation when I need a roof replacement, and the break even is when the warranty expires.
Domestic rooftop solar no longer makes financial sense. Panels have gotten so cheap that installation costs now dominate. Utility scale solar can be built outright for the 30% subsidy offered on domestic solar.
So if you installed a 10kW residential system it might cost $29,400 which would make you eligible for a 30% federal tax credit at a cost to the government of $8,820.
However if the government instead spent that $8,820 on utility scale solar it could pay outright for the construction of 11.5kW of solar generation capacity.
> I have a ton of sunlight all throughout the year (almost). What do I do to harness it ?
So as an individual it might make sense for you to take advantage of the government subsidy and have them help pay for a residential system for you! It just makes no sense at a societal level to spend money on small expensive systems when we could instead be spending it on large cheap systems.
Panels cost 4 times as much when installed individually instead of at a community scale. I agree the economy of scale here is just too good to be wasted away like this.
As a consumer though, I see two practical choices (1) keep paying PG&E their increasing cost for electricity or (2) eat that initial high cost of solar install and keep outgoing cost constant for a decade.
And some impractical ones like convince a bunch of people to setup a grid at community scale or do a DIY solar install to keep the install cost low.
They're saying don't bother. The same panels can be installed more cheaply in a utility scale solar farm, and the sunlight hitting your roof is not itself a valuable commodity.
When panel costs dominate the difference in installation costs between residential and utility scale solar don’t matter as much. Those subsidies encouraged investment and helped drive down the cost of panels in the long run by expanding the market.
Now that panels are cheap the installation costs dominate. Residential installation is basically never going to get substantially cheaper so it no longer makes sense to subsidise such systems when the subsidy alone would pay for more efficiently installed utility scale solar.
It seems like we should shift the subsidy to expansion of grid connectivity as that now seems to be the blocker for projects.
The Pacific Northwest is near-desert just east of the Cascades, and transmission lines could carry power to Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver BC from the dry sunny parts.
The cascade rain shadow is helpful but the PNW is far enough north that you're not getting direct sunlight. And unfortunately the Pacific Northwest is also relatively low population. 4 million for the Seattle metro, 2.5 in Portland. Even if you built out enough solar for Washington and Oregon, we're only 3 percent of the US population. Plus these states have pretty good hydro already. While there are arguments about the ecological impacts of hydro, I think reasonable people will agree that those are now sunk costs and there's not much reason to retire them early.
There seems to be a better argument in the southwest, where we have less agriculture and the hydro power Lake Mead provides is now questionable. which is why there are already massive farms there. Though, without that water I'm not sure who would want to live in Vegas at all. The best place for solar seems to be California rooftops. Lots of population, far enough south to have closer to optimal solar incidence, and arid climate that wont interfere too much.
But all of this means that you shouldn't expect a unified, cohesive federal energy plan. I don't, at least. Instead we should expect different geographies to find different niches, and a much more diversified plan spread across many more forms: wind, solar, hydro, fission, fusion, geothermal, etc. Plus anyone complaining the US underinvests in R&D has to contend with the fact that this publication came from MIT, and was funded in part by the NSF.
> Solar is extremely popular and viable in Northern Europe
popular? yes.
viable? not as much. all of the contiguous US is further south than the UK. That means shorter winter days, but also incident angles are bad year round.
> In contrast, wind seems to already be making 10 percent of the US demand[4], versus solars 2 percent.
The numbers can be misleading; I'm not suggesting that jldugger doesn't understand this, just that I find the numbers and the way they are quoted a bit confusing. If we look at primary energy consumption by source from the US Energy Information Agency we see [1] that for 2021 the US used 98 quads of energy.
The breakdown into primary energy consumption by source for 2021 is
77 quads from fossil fuels
8 quads from nuclear
5 quads from biomass
3.3 quads from wind
2 quads from hydro
1.5 quads from solar
===========================
98 quads total
These number are rounded, see original for details (quad == Quadrillion BTU). It appears to me that wind plus solar are providing close to 5% of US consumption of energy.
investment into renewables is a life or death situation for every country
if your energy costs 7¢ per megajoule and you are being invaded by an opponent whose energy costs 0.7¢ per megajoule you are probably going to lose
i don't understand why the capacity factor for utility-scale pv in prc is so low but evidently they did not 'drop solar panels [in the desert] and tramsmit power to the nearby megatropolis'
> evidently they did not 'drop solar panels [in the desert] and tramsmit power to the nearby megatropolis'
I mean, I browsed the desert northeast of Beijing and found what looks like a solar installation, right next to some wind turbines. No idea how to estimate capacity from that, and without streetview to confirm it, I'm just making guesses based on how the pixels look.
Almost certainly fuckall. I found three of these just by browsing the area but I'm not convinced they're even solar and not just... random arid agriculture I don't understand. More likely these are demonstration installs.
The big ones seem to be more in the northwest[0], much further out. The land there is even less productive, but I don't understand how transmission losses don't eat them alive.
they've built all of the biggest hvdc systems in the world since 02010 and are building more all the time
prc has had 800 kilovolt uhvdc since 02010; 12 years later there still aren't any in europe, north america, africa, or australia, though a european company was the lead contractor on the 02010 project
but plausibly the answer is that transmission losses do eat them alive and they have to curtail pv output in the northwest because there isn't enough local demand
irrelevant if what you need the energy for is making methanol to run your tanks and missiles on
somewhat relevant, but not overwhelmingly, if what you need the energy for is running the tank and missile factories; solar intermittency just means you can only run the factories for one shift instead of three, so your capacity is three times as expensive
but historically many factories have only run one shift most of the time anyway so clearly this is not an overwhelming factor
being able to use processes that your competition would find outrageously inefficient because you can afford orders of magnitude more energy is a bigger advantage
think of victorian-era industrial-revolution britain against the zulus
Which is mostly ok, as Eastern Washington and central / eastern Oregon fit the bill both for these state as a whole, plus could be theoretically exporting their hydro / solar / wind generated power to other parts of the country. Problem is, the rural parts of these states feel ignored by the urban (read: politically powerful) parts of the states, leading to all sorts of pettiness around siting of new wind / solar deployments.
It's overstating the case to say that China has no oil or fossil gas. Yes, it imports a lot but there are oil fields both on-shore and off-shore. The largest field is Daqing, which, yes, produces less than a million barrels per day. Not nothing, though.
Do you know how that supply is making it to china? Almost all of the pipes go from Russian oil fields west to Europe. Even the pipelines that travel east have to contend with a reality that Nobody lives in the Gobi desert. Instead what is happening is oil is being shipped by boat to non-aligned parties like India and China. Supposedly using ship-to-ship transfers[1] to obscure origin, or because Russian ports can't support supertankers.
And all of the PLA's ambition is in the South China sea, which means even if you rely on Russia to supply you wartime energy, it has to ship through a battlefield. And anyone opposed to it has a pretty free hand to say "mine now" as the path meanders by Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, India, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka etc.
> Monocrystalline Si solar panels have so many advantages that it's hard to get interested in anything else for home or business construction.
I agree.
"Classical" is already cost effective in many areas of the world, and would be in even more if the electricity price accurately reflected the societal cost of releasing CO2 into the atmosphere.
These paper-thin solar elements would fill a different niche though. If it's cheap enough (and doesn't come with other downsides), you could plaster any surfaces with it that aren't suitable for panel installations (think car hoods, boats, whatever).
Is USA government policy actively antagonistic towards this specific technology? Or just doesn't have specific support/incentives for this specific kind of technology?
Is there any reason the market doesn't/can't support buying these panels here? Or are there weird tariffs against it?
IS there not already a boom in solar PV installation in the USA?
It looks like we're far from a watts-per-capita leader (15th in the world?), although we are ahead of China, for now.
The Republican party in the united states is so anti-green energy, they removed solar panels from the white house in the 80s, shortly after they were installed, just because they didn't like them. They also blamed wind turbines for the extreme grid failure in Texas last year, and it is a current talking point that "wind and solar can't ever work" and that wind turbines kill so many birds that we can't possibly ever use them large scale. They have pitched a fit any time the government attempts to hand a small subsidy out for green energy.
Meanwhile the Democrats have wonderful Manchin, who stops you from doing ANYTHING to help the country unless you include some stupid kickback to like five coal barons in west virginia, despite the entire coal industry employing fewer people than plenty of industries we don't give handouts to. Coal is dying a perfectly reasonable death because it's just not cost competitive with anything, even though we ignore the most expensive part of it, the pollution. Despite that, west virginia keeps a stranglehold on the nations energy policy because 60k absurdly entitled adults are convinced that what their daddy did for a job that killed him in his 60s should be a career forever with no changes and they shouldn't have to adapt in any way to the modern world that DOESN'T want to poison them. When hilary clinton said the country would pay for them to learn new skills and get new careers, they responded by pretty heavily voting for the guy that said they could just go back to digging dirty rocks out of the ground. The entire state is somehow (it's propaganda, literally, from local coal companies) convinced that the modern world is impossible without coal, as if it is still the 1800s, ignoring that most of the world hates coal, always hated using coal, and has always switched to less grimy fuel sources as soon as it became cost competitive, which it is.
And don't give me any of this "wah wah don't bring partisan politics into this" because green energy policy is 100% partisan, with no reason, in the united states, and ignoring that, or trying to "both sides same" this issue is simply delusional.
IMO, the US federal government should drop a trillion dollars on a federal run solar power company, who's only mandate is to buy as much damn solar generation as possible, and sell it to local consumers as cheaply as possible, and "but it might be cloudy some days" problems should be solved by buying 10x as much solar as "needed".
Texas is one of the reddest states yet produces significantly more wind+solar power than liberal California. Government policy is far less important than economic realities. People are self-absorbed and think their political opinions are important. The real world works more like a cowboy hat wearing power company executive saying, "Holy shucks, this solar/wind installation is going to save us more on NatGas than it costs to install. Get 'er done."
A (state) government policy that makes building anything at all hard will result in less of anything (including solar and wind farms) built, compared to a (state) government policy that's somehow less onerous.
Hence the difference between California and Texas.
Just because it gets distorted, not that it changes the message.
The solar panels installed on the White House during the Carter years were a solar hot water heater, not a photovoltaic system.
Here is part of his speech from the dedication ceremony in 1979: "In the year 2000 this solar water heater behind me, which is being dedicated today, will still be here supplying cheap, efficient energy…. A generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken or it can be just a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people."
Details are not readily available without clearance, but the roof of the White House is a limited commodity and there was probably an antimissile system installed there after the solar panels. They might have needed the space.
Here in 2022 we can see which road was chosen. We didn't get to 20% renewables by 2000, but we are up to 12%, so making progress, if somewhat more slowly.
The oil and gas lobby in the US is staggeringly powerful. Many US regulatory bodies (like FERC) have been captured by industry for years. It has been very difficult to do anything that might negatively impact the oil and gas industry.
So not so much anti-solar as anti-anything-threatening-fossil-fuels.
I remember seeing oil wells all over the area when I lived for a while in Oklahoma. Heck, there was even one in the middle of a mall parking lot. Very oil friendly area. But still, Oklahoma is the third in the nation for wind energy production. Texas is number 1. I think the oil and gas lobby must not be quite as powerful as you think.
Considering the possibility that fossil fuels can be exported to resource/land-poor states for a higher premium may explain the “Number 1” status that Texas has here. The more fuel you can free up for export, the richer the state becomes.
The United States is not actively antagonistic toward specific technology and is instead very pro-solar. There are a lot of support/incentives for solar, but not necessarily for this specific kind of technology.
A lot of areas in the US are great for solar, but for many of the urban areas, it sucks. Solar in and around LA or Denver? Great! Solar in and around Detroit or Chicago? Awful. I brought out an installer and he literally LOLed when he saw my house. Great trees, wonderful yard, compact house, but hardly any location for solar given the amount of sun we get where I live.
Not to mention the carbon costs of producing solar isn't great.
It’s ok if solar doesn't work everywhere, even in the places where it’s optimal it’s barely being used right now. There’s a lot of work to be done. Even if we just covered the country’s parking lots with solar awnings we’d be producing huge amounts of power.
Ideas such as spend $800k on parking lot shade structures and then attach $200k of solar are inferior compared to buying some pasture land for $4000 and installing $996k of solar panels. Are we trying to solve CO2 emissions or is it more important that you get to see the panels every time you shop at CostCo?
The problem with solar awnings is the cost. It's much more cost-effective to install solar on a field or an open area than a parking lot. Parking lot installations much more expensive because of the additional infrastructure needed.
As we phase out gasoline powered vehicles over the next... like forever, we will have less use for ethanol produced from corn syrup, nevermind we should be reducing corn syrup in food production as well. We should be paying midwestern corn farmers to replace their corn fields with solar panels.
People complain about so much when it comes to green energy. "Oh transmission losses will eat into it so we can't transmit it too far", well why can't we fill nevada with stupidly more solar than we need so we don't care about losses.
sure and we also have plenty of unused space to do so, my intention was to show that rooftop solar isn’t the end all be all - I don’t care where they go, we just need to start putting more out there
It was good for your installer to reject the installation. Around here (Boston area) I've seen multiple North-facing roofs with solar panels. I'm sure the installer still gets paid; it's just that the homeowner never recoups their investment.
there's other types of solar than just residential rooftop solar. large scale solar installations can be built hundreds of miles from the cities they serve.
> Of course a boom in solar PV installation in the USA would pull the rug out from under natural gas prices, which more-or-less explains government policy in this area.
I'm not convinced. Virtually everything is much cheaper to manufacture in China.
The United States is not behind in terms of R&D funding. I'm pretty sure the United States has spent more on solar R&D than any other nation and the United States has consistently led the world in solar technology. The United States is behind in solar manufacturing not solar R&D.
And no one who has paid attention to the Biden administration would say the Biden administration cares about natural gas prices being low as they consistently take actions that increase natural gas prices.
In Germany (and I think in the EU) you have a max. weight for cars of about 3.5T (~7716 pounds). You can drive cars that weight more than that but then your speed is limited to (I think 80-100km/h), you have to pay (more) toll and more importantly you have to get a special drivers license in most cases (cost + time).
Camper vans usually get very close to that limit. Even if the van has only 2 sleeping spots. Weight is definitely an issue there and most camper vans sold these days come with a solar installation on the roof.
With 100W of solar you can expect some additional autonomy as a camper. 200W is considered more than average solar for small camper vans in the EU.
A typical 200W solar panel weights in at around 10-13 kg + maybe 1-3 kg for the additional bracket.
11-16kg is something you would think about.
Thats also the reason why flexible panels are already used for some camper vans. They also have the advantage than you can put them on un-even surfaces.
The VW Grand California for example can be ordered with a flexible panel at the front side:
3500kg for the whole vehicle including interior + 100L of water + 100L of Diesel + 50 L of gray water + 2 Passengers + 1 shower + 1 bed + 1 kitchen + 2x11 l gas etc.
As I mentioned: A typical camper van is borderline at 3300 kg already so you have 200 kg for cloths, food, water to drink, bedding, etc. It even matters whether or not you gained 10kg during winter or lost 10kg.
16kg equates to about 2 lithium ion 100WH batteries
1-2 bikes for bike tours
1 grill + extra gas for a barbecue
etc.
So you can decide between those or a conventional solar panel or you just pick panels that weight less then you can have both.
No you are incorrect. There are 2 maximum masses: the one from the manufacturer and then the legal mass limit. Legal mass limit = MIN(3.5t, max mass according to manufacturer) or more precisely MIN(max_mass_you_are_certified_for, may_mass_according_to_manufacturer).
It is not about + or - 10 kg. But things definitely add up. 10kg here - 10kg there.
Solar panels is something that is under the control of whoever buys the vehicle. You have almost no influence of the vast majority of what makes up the van.
You also risk insurance issues when your car is over weight.
It happens all over the EU. Police will randomly select semis and camper vans and ask them to follow them to a weighting station. For example in Germany they are spread out along the Autobahn - same in France and NL.
The weight is usually determined by 4 scales (1 for each wheel).
Then they look at your papers which also includes information about max load at the front + back.
If you are over weight you have to get rid of the additional weight and if you can't they will seize the car. You get fined. It does happen.
It happened to me twice in Germany, once in Norway and once in France.
I'm pretty sure that in EU the limit is for the actual current weight, that you can get a huge ticket for an overweight vehicle and that the police use mobile and fixed vehicle scales to enforce that (I specifically remember Austria doing that a lot)
I read an article about it in Czech a while ago, so I don't have a link at hand, but you should be able to find it easily.
Those flexible panels you mentioned are around 17% efficient and 50-100W/kg. Cells bonded to a fiberglass structure you're making anyway go around 200W/kg
5% efficient cells only make sense if applying them is about the same cost as paint and in applications like highway barriers or walls.
The cost is longevity. Flexible panels don't last anywhere near as long as conventional rigid panels. But they're handy, for sure, if you want a simpler installation.
For a country like Germany. You will need way more panels to cover at least for semi-cloudy days. I don't think clouds will have much respect about your autonomy.
As they mention in the article though, there are lots of applications that aren't space-limited but are structurally-limited (warehouses) in that they can't support the weight of solar panels without more engineering.
I did think it was strange that they obfuscated the W/m^2 statistic by only presenting W/kg and kg/m^2. I suppose focusing on watts per kilogram better aligns with a breakthrough in installations with poor structural support for heavy panels.
In that case I suggest installing efficient panels in some large installation somewhere else. Like, a power company solar farm miles from your warehouse.
<digression>
It's such a strange magpie impulse folks have to want solar on their house. Look at my stuff! I'm doing things!
From a societal point of view the efficient installation is in bulk, serviceable, unobstructed. A rooftop is comically not these things.
</digression>
Sure, cut down a forest or buy ready land. Level the land, prepare drainage, and install racks to hold the films. Why do that when a warehouse roof is ready for solar to be deployed?
The efficiency is so low on these, good luck. Covering a corner of the parking lot with standard panels is going to be cheaper and easier than doing the roof using these.
Covering a parking lot with anything let alone solar panels that require lots of electrical connections is not a simple job. Think of all the supporting posts and beams, footings that will take up space, wind load considerations, etc.
Simpler than doing it on a (low load rating) roof, where you also have to deal with an inability to drive to where you are doing things, have low maximum weight limits, have to worry about water tightness, etc.
Even better, if the contractor screws it up, it doesn’t burn the building down or cause massive water damage. Worst case some cars catch on fire. Much cheaper!
Great in a sparsely populated country like the US, not so much in Belgium, Netherlands, South East England where such installations end up either on agricultural land or in places where housing is needed.
The advantage of solar on roofs is that solar doesn't need to be serviced often, and the solar panels actually protect the roof under it and will lower electricity use in the summer by keeping sun off the roof.
And pierce the supposedly waterproof roof (the entire point of a roof). And mounted at whatever angle the roof is built, instead of an optimal angle. And are in the most difficult place for maintenance and cleaning, so those things will be neglected.
You could run cables down the roof and the outside outside of the wall which not particularly rare. Actually that's the case for one of the aerials on my roof. And piercing roofs isn't exactly uncommon. Aircon vents, chimneys, mountings for aerials etc.
The thing with something like this is that it doesn't have to be an optimal solution which instantly solves all our problems, which is what a lot of people seem to demand when it comes to anything which is even vaguely green, it just needs to be cheap and easy and move us away from our reliance on fossil fuels. This, along with traditional solar, hydro, onshore and offshore wind, nuclear etc. all have their place.
It’s not the holes for the cables that are the problem. It’s the anchor screws that mount the panels to the roof. If you’ve ever installed shingles on a roof you would know that you have to be careful to cover all of the nail heads with the next row of shingles and preferably use roofing tar as well to get a good seal. The anchor screws for solar are supposed to only go into the rafters below the roofing but anyone can tell you that is hard to do 100% of the time on an existing roof even if you are being meticulous and judging from the installs I’ve seen most solar installers aren’t.
ressources are not infinite and framing the problem as one of good being the enemy of perfect is disingenuous. Rooftop solar is a terrible idea when compared to the alternative - utility scale solar, installed at the right location, in the right way, with economies of scale; all while achieving everything you mentioned.
Rooftop solar has numerous problems, starting with structural considerations, scale, shading, imperfect angles, local grid congestion and so on. Why have everyone waste money on this when we could just install solar farms?
Because we're not installing solar farms and are installing rooftop solar in many locations because land is limited and expensive and roofs aren't? Not everywhere has large amounts of empty land waiting to be built on
To bring it back: Governmental policy vs individual choice? If I, a consumer of electricity want to reduce my GHG impact, I can only lobby the source of my electricity so much. Rooftop solar might be less efficient than gridscale for the system, but it's something the individual can do.
> And are in the most difficult place for maintenance and cleaning, so those things will be neglected.
They don't need much service. And it's not like you need a helicopter to get there
> And you need to replace the roof? Now what?
That's one in 50 years event
Like yeah, if you have good amount of space that is otherwise unused go ahead, but realistically someone will want that space for a house or business, not a bunch of glassy squares, those can go on roof.
On the other hand, 100g/m² is too low for “simply unroll it on a roof”. A carpet so light will blow away in a storm, worst-case taking (part of) the roof with it (roofs often are fairly weak when pulled upwards or sidewards. That’s why solar panels on roofs sometimes are weighed down: it keeps the net force on the roof more or less downwards, even if the wind exerts an upwards force)
What would you use to attach these, and what would that weigh?
I see these end up on cars, sailing boats, etc, where I think weight and flexibility matter more, before ending up in high-volume applications.
On the plus side, the article doesn’t mention it, but I would guess recyclability for these would be higher because they don’t glue cells to glass.
Since it is fabric presumably you could just stick them down the same way you do with a felted roof. I guess you could even incorporate it into a felt roll.
Key item here: “These cells as they are could last one or two years without packaging,” Bulović says. “With packaging, we could extend that to five to 10 years. And that’s plenty.”
As with existing thin film cells, degradation in real-world outdoor conditions is significant and limits usefulness.
this suggests it might be useful in temporary deployments, to judge how much solar input actual sites get for a typical period — then replaced with a more permanent solution.
Either method would you get accurate enough readings in a few minutes (if you're onsite) or seconds (if you just use the software method). The earth's orbit and tilt is relatively predictable so really you just have to do the math (or let the software do it) to figure out how local obstructions (trees, other buildings, hills on the horizon, etc.) influence your shading.
>>The fabric modules had a power density of 370 watts per kilogram and weighed 0.1 kilogram per square meter. Commercial residential silicon solar panels, by contrast, have a power density of 20 W/kg and weigh 10.7 kg/m2
So, the fabric modules have an areal power density of 37 W/m^2 vs. commercial residential panels at 214 W/m^2. So, fantastic for weight, but on a per-area basis, about 5.8 area units are needed for every unit of std panels.
This also means that a 370 W/kg vs 20 W/kg, the thin film has an 18.5X power / weight advantage. And that does not even count the further advantage of not needing the extensive support structures of current panels.
I also wonder about how they would tolerate regular rolling and unrolling, such as stowing them for bad weather; would that be a net longevity benefit?
>> “These cells as they are could last one or two years without packaging,” Bulović says. “With packaging, we could extend that to five to 10 years. And that’s plenty.”
That all depends on cost. If they are cheap enough, 2 years might be fine, as long as they can be recycled and don't just create a landfill problem (but even then, the 1:18.5 weight advantage drastically reduces any landfill problem).
This is fantastic, if they get even close to the cost/watt.
If they can be rolled and unrolled repeatedly this would be great for RVs since you could use them instead of the canopy material for shade. Fabric covered buildings would be another application if they can be made durable enough.
It is all about the sustainability of the "base" energy supply, the part about what is the bare minimum power output needed for power generators to be running before kicking in extra power generators.
If the baseline base power supply is not maintained, then no amount of cyclic power supply can help out there.
Solar and wind power generators are never considered as a base power supply unless they run 100% 24/7/365. Only Antarctica science bases can boast the steadiest wind supply but is more prone to mechanical failures. And solar power is keyed only to daylight hours.
Why does the Active-Surfaces website explicitly call out that it’s unavailable in the USA? That’s the site for the startup developing this tech, linked from the article.
Active-Surfaces.com
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The Active Surfaces® brand is not available for import, purchase or distribution in the United States of America and territories.
Any and all product claims and descriptions contained on this website or in other sales or promotional materials regarding the Active Surfaces® brand, including claims and descriptions of its public health benefits and antimicrobial or antibacterial effects, are not applicable in the US states and territories.
I think they linked the wrong company. Then one talked about is based in Massachusetts and the one linked is Italian. One founded last year the other like a decade ago
"One hundredth the weight of conventional solar cells, 18 times the energy output per kilogram" this translates to 18% of the output per surface area, which, for solar panels, is the more important metric. The second most important metric is cost, I wofner what the cost per watt output is on these. This of course can go down with scale, and the output can go up with more development.
It's cool, lightweight solar is a pretty great thing.
Area can be cheap depending on where you go. Cost breaks down into a few components: manufacturing, transport, and installation. All three are impacted by weight.
They weigh less, so there are less raw materials involved. So you would expect that to impact production cost. Also, with flexible materials like this, they likely get produced on rolls. So machines might be a bit different and maybe run a little faster/efficient and use less energy and other resources.
As for transporting, moving something around that weighs a lot less is obviously going to be cheaper. And this sounds like it is also a lot less fragile so you can go easier on the packaging too.
Finally, for installation, not having to move around panels that weigh tens of kilos is going to be easier and quicker and also require less in terms of mounting infrastructure, roof preparation, etc. I could see this shave off some hours.
And of course the usable area improves too if you reduce weight. You could probably install this on walls even. And there are plenty of nice empty walls in most places.
Titles are tricky, especially when you’re an editor who got Peter Principled out of writing.
I have surfaces, Greg. Could you make me photovoltaic?
> We now do, Bulović says. He envisions one day being able to buy a large carpet of solar cells “and simply unroll it on a roof.”
So I addition to hail we can now add “a stiff breeze” to the list of things that can destroy your solar array. You can’t just lay a thin film on a surface and expect it to stay there. I’d expect better from a materials scientist. If this makes it to commercialization, it will be laminated onto hard surfaces, not simply rolled out on “any surface”.
Unfortunately the USA, due to decades of minimal R&D funding, is well behind the technology curve in this area:
> "Some Chinese companies are defying the “more efficient = more expensive” rule in 2022. High efficiency solar panels are entering the market from companies like LonGi, Canadian Solar, and Trina Solar that surpass the 20 percent efficiency rating, but cost less per watt as opposed to SunPower, LG and Panasonic panels. Solar is cheaper than ever without sacrificing efficiency ratings, which begs the question if U.S manufacturers will be able to maintain their pricing premiums."
https://news.energysage.com/what-are-the-most-efficient-sola...
Of course a boom in solar PV installation in the USA would pull the rug out from under natural gas prices, which more-or-less explains government policy in this area.