Quote:
Originally Posted by Ryland
I have no idea how long they will last under ideal conditions, it might be 100 years or it might 1,000 years, it's impossible to really say, but what we can say is that in real world testing PV panels have been in use without fail for 60+ years and that with most PV panels after 20 years you still have 5 years left on the warranty! (25 year warranty is industry standard) and I have personally seen PV panels that are 25+ years old that are still putting out over the rated output and that non of them that were bought at the same time have failed, at the time those panels only had a 15 year warranty and I'm sure I could find some that are older then that, but 25 years ago is when PV panels started to become affordable and easy to get and based off of the inspection of those panels that are 25+ years old, I see no reason that they will not last another 25 or even 50 years or more! they are not degrading and the new panels that are out there are being made with higher quality materials and in factories that have better control over their manufacturing environment.
But this thread is about EV's not PV's of course they are related and when you look at the long term cost you have to ask your self what is the payback on burning gasoline, coal or other fossil fuels, They are a net loss with a cost that keeps going up and you have little choice about where your gasoline comes from but you have a wide range of choices over where your electricity comes from, you can even make your own electricity easier then you can make your own gasoline.
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That is discounting the fact that things happen, hail, accidents etc...
As it is I am having a hard enough time convincing my wife to let me put some up when the current payback for our area is about 18 years. That is with us living in a nearly optimal location. I am however looking at other methods of getting them piecewise for less.
We use a lot of electricity in my house, (still reducing gradually) and we tend to not drive the average milleage. Switching to electric cars would double our electricity usage. Now yes that would be better for the environment, but if even a single digit percentage in my community switched over to electricric cars we would overload our local grid, and our local electric coop doesn't have the money to upgrade.
I do admit that we will be switching to electic cars and a large percentage of our power will come from renewable sources.
Time for some math to understand the magnitude of the problem.
In 2006 the US consumed 1,352,080,623,840 kwh of electricity
A 5kw pv system costs about $20,000 and will produce approx 11000kwh of electricity per year at an average of 6 hours per daythat comes out to about $2458328406981 thats $2.4 trillion just for current demand. Assuming that electric cars only double the power and using distributed generation (such as rooftop generation) Thats still $4.8T or about 1/3 of the total yearly US GDP. That doesn't include switching all of the cars over or installing charging equipment or any of the other little details that will have to be taken care of.