Solar cell panel prices to drop soon..
 

Here's a bit of good news.
Technology Review: A Price Drop for Solar Panels

I would be really nice to see prices get down around $2 a watt.. :D

it's nice to know that although a price jump of ten fold of silicon can raise the price of a finished panel by 20%, that a increase in silicon production 9 times what we currently have will drop the price to less then half of what it is, of course they are not saying what that increase in production will cost, because the current slump in production of silicon is not due to a lack of money.
and the solar cell it's self is only about 60% of the cost of a panel, you have the aluminum frame, the tempered glass, the safety glass adhesive that glues it together, the silver solder and wire, the copper wire, the stainless steel fasteners, I mean, these things are made to last 100 years, and it should stay that way, I plan to keep using my solar panels for the rest of my life.

Hi,

Solar PV shingles or metal roofing made from thin film will also lower the price a lot. NanoSolar "prints" a coating on metal films -- they do not use silicon wafers at all! And, they do not use frames, or glass, and they do not have the same uplift and dead load problems that panels have. So in the end, they are a LOT less expensive!

I have heard the $1/watt number mentioned, for these types of PV.

If you go just by the press releases then $1 per watt solar should be here any minute now, if you talk to people who work in the industry and have reviewed their test data, you will hear that you shouldn't get your hopes up about $1 per watt solar, even at $5 per watt it's still a good investment, better then money in the bank.
I wish I would have bought more pv's when they were cheaper, about 5-7 years ago.

I'll believe it when I see it. Lower prices have been promised for 20 years, back when I paid $5 in 1990. Not much has changed since then.

I'm still waiting for a payback of much less than 25 years including incentives. With the western Washington insolation rate we have to significantly upsize our array compared to much of the country, also we still pay about .09.

Not long ago, with the incentives in California it moved the pay back to 5 years or less. I think they are still in effect. That's a no-brainer to me, seems like they should've been sprouting up everywhere.

It is a no-brainer, unfortunately too many people have no brain. I think the initial investment is too much for many, lots of people are struggling just to keep their house. But overall at least half the houses should have panels on them in CA.

Better than money in the bank? I just ran numbers on $1 per watt and it looks like a 30 year payoff for me. So at $5 per watt, it is a 150 year payoff. I'd rather have money in the bank. I know electricity prices are going up and will continue to go up, but that doesn't sound like a sure bet to me.

At $1 per watt, on the other hand, sign me up ASAP.

I don't really understand this statement

Electric here is $0.11 per kwhr
$1 per watt means $1000 per kwhr capable panel 1000watt an hr =1kwhr
$1000/$.11 = 9090.90 hrs to payoff

9090.9090 / 8 hrs of light a day / 365 = 3.09 years to payoff

Obviously assuming there is no inverter, battery packs, ect.

What am I missing?

Except for the price of electricity from utilities. ;)

Local prices for whole systems seem to range from ~$6.40/W w/o rebates/tax breaks to $3.60/W w/ 'em.

When you are buying solar panels, a 1 kw system does not generate 1 kwh/hour. It generates 1 kwh/day. At $1 per watt, 1 kw costs $1000 and generates 365.25 kwh/year. Electricity costs 9 cents here, so the $1000 system generates $32.87 worth per year. That's a 30.42 year payoff.

Where you live, it is a 9090.9 DAY payoff, not hour. So 24.89 years.

But keep in mind how much it may add to the value of your home. Green home building is just starting to really take off. So if you build/remodel a home to Leed/energy specs and add a solar system this could potentialy add more value to your home than you spend on the system.

I know nothing about panels, but i know my watts... and that statement makes no sense. Producing 1 watt for 1 hour is 1Wh. Producing 1000W for 1hr is 1kWh.

I assume that panels are at peak efficiency when perpendicular to the sun... so you won't produce peak power for the entire daylight time.... 8hrs is probably a good estimate, if that's what you were doing (unless you only get 8hrs of sunlight due to living in a valley)

lets just say you are both wrong, one watt of pv will produce one watt in full sunlight, in my part of Wisconsin we average 4 sun hours per day, allowing 1 watt of pv to produce 4 watt hours on average per day, yesterday was cloudy so we didn't get alot of power from the sun but today was clear and bright so our 1.5kw of pv has put out 7.7kwh of power today and still counting.

Subscribed:

Hi,

Are you leaving off the "hour"? If a 1,000watt panel produces full power for 1 complete hour, then it is putting out 1kwh, right?

So for your 1.5kw array: if it works at 100% for 8 hours, that would be 12kwh. If it works at ~50% output for 3 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the evening, that would add 3.75kwh; making the total for the day 15.75kwh.

Around here (in New England) we pay ~19 cents per kwh, so this would be worth just shy of $3 per day; or ~$1,000 per year.

Drat, I'll have to go back to the guy who described it to me and rethink my whole numbers on this issue. He's a serious fan of solar power, but he hasn't actually bought some yet like you have.

Axaday -

Try this calculator :

My Solar Estimator
http://www.findsolar.com/index.php?page=rightforme

If you put in your zipcode, it figures out the solar potential for your location. For instance, here's mine in sunny LA :

CarloSW2

okay, to all of you quoting numbers you really need get your Watts and Watt-hours straight. You can't say "I produced 7.7 watts today"... watt is a rate, watt-hours is a quantity. Its like saying I drove 100km/h today to describe how far i went. km/h * h = km, which is how far. W*h = Wh, Wh is your measurable, quantifiable, cash-related amount of eletricity produced.

Sorry for the rant, i'm trying to learn here and this thread is very confusing.

Question: does everyone install a fixed-mount system, or are there systems that track the sun for optimal exposure? Are they worth it?

thanks for catching that for me, it's corrected now.


as for fixed mounts compared to trackers, a fixed mount is simple and will never brake down unless a bolt or weld brakes, where trackers have have moving parts, and they need to have some way to know where the sun is, sensors can get pooped on by birds, blocked by snow or dirt, damaged by lightening, motors wear out, pivots are a weak point as well, with our system we figured that our output per dollar spent would be the same if we got a tracker or a few more pv, and that the pv is going to last longer then a tracker, oldest pv we have are 25 years old and still working perfectly.

Ryland -

The Zomeworks tracker doesn't have a motor :

Introduction — Zomeworks Passive Solar Products
But I agree that a tracker has a much greater cost, so the much longer payback makes it hard to justify.

CarloSW2

I believe that the justification would be shorter paybacks... you're forgetting that you aren't just following the sun for the sheer fun of it, you are doing so to increase your system efficiency. The idea is to make sure that you increase in cost is paid for by your increase in efficiency before the payback period is up for a non-tracking system... if not, then don't track.

Subscribed, and very interested in adding solar charging to the Rolling Lemon. :thumbup:

There was an article in the omaha paper today that said that the omaha public power district (or OPPD for short) had to renegotiate their coal prices. They had a 5 year contract that expires at the end of this year. However because of the increase in diesel prices, the cost of coal, and the increase in the ammount that it costs to get said coal out of the ground, their new contract cost will increase by 150% per year.
The article said that it will only be about $8 a month extra for all 300,000 customers. However I have a feeling that this will just be for a while and then it will jump alot more.

OPPD has a nuclear plant that is old but still puts out a good portion of the power for the district.
They also have one wind turbine that I think I read isn't super powerfull but it was primarily setup as a an experimental project to see if it would be a good option for the future.

Solar power is looking better and better every day.

the zomeworks trackers are nice and work well for a while, but we have one of those as well that is around 20 years old with a few of our oldest panels on it and it doesn't always rest in the morning and that is a common problem it still has a dampener and pivots that need attention.

And Watts are power, whereas Watt hours are energy(power used over a period of time).
JJ

A Watt is actually a Watt-second.

A watt is a measure of actual current flow (at a certain voltage) or work done.

1 Watt=1 volt x 1 amp for 1 second of time. P=IxE

If you look at your amp meter and see 10A and your Volt meter says 12V,
during each second, you are using 120 Watts of power.

If you only left the switch on of 1/2 a second, only 60 watts was used..

If you kept the switch on for an hour, you will have used 120 watt hours.
After about 9 hours, you would have used one KWH.

[QUOTE=Xringer;61117]A Watt is actually a Watt-second.

A watt is a measure of actual current flow (at a certain voltage) or work done.

1 Watt=1 volt x 1 amp for 1 second of time. P=IxE QUOTE]


!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!


NO NO NO NO NO---there is no time involved.

Did they change it??
 

[QUOTE=WisJim;61680]Back in the 70s when I taught electricity and electronics (for 10+ years), the watt always referred to the amount of current x the voltage used over time.

An Ampere being one coulomb. (A coulomb is equal to exactly 6.24150962915265 ×10 to the 18th elementary charges.).
Or, a whole big bunch of electrons!!

Here ya go!
Watt - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The watt (symbol: W) is the SI derived unit of power, equal to one joule of energy per second. It measures a rate of energy use or production.

Hi Rich,

I dunno -- that doesn't sound right. Volts X Amps = Watts is what I was taught.

[QUOTE=Xringer;61712]Wikipedia is correct, you just didn't read the rest of it.

to quote Wikipedia:
"Confusion of watts and watt-hours

Power and energy are frequently confused in the general media. Power is the rate at which energy is used (or generated). A watt is one joule of energy per second. For example, if a 100 watt light bulb is turned on for one hour, the energy used is 100 watt-hours or 0.1 kilowatt-hour, or 360,000 joules. This same quantity of energy would light a 40-watt bulb for 2.5 hours. A power station would be rated in watts, but its annual energy sales would be in watt-hours (or kilowatt-hours or megawatt-hours). A kilowatt-hour is the amount of energy equivalent to a steady power of 1 kilowatt running for 1 hour, or 3.6 megajoules."
And the definition of Joule:

joule (jūl, joul) pronunciation
n. (Abbr. J or j)

1. The International System unit of electrical, mechanical, and thermal energy.
2.
1. A unit of electrical energy equal to the work done when a current of one ampere is passed through a resistance of one ohm for one second.
2. A unit of energy equal to the work done when a force of one newton acts through a distance of one meter.


So if you read both of them it becomes very clear that a Watt is not a watt second, because then a watt hour would be a watt/second/hour, and that would be kind of like giving speed in miles per second per hour...

Time is on my side, yes it is...
 

That's right.

A volt is a potential. It's kinda like air pressure in a tire.
It's at 44 PSI, but it's not doing any work, it's just sitting there.

An Amp is not the same thing. It's the amount (count) of electrons that flow past a point(like an Amp Meter) in a circuit for one second.

Like water flowing in a hose.. The Amp meter is like the GPM meter on a fire engine. Only, it's coulombs per second.


If you have a 12V battery and 6 ohm soldering iron, that iron is going to draw 2 Amps off the battery. V/R=A or (I=E/R)
The iron will heat up and output 24 watts of heat, every single second. (current squared times the resistance in ohms).
If you only turned on the iron for 1/2 a second, it would dissipate 12 watts (as heat).

If you sat there flipping the switch off 1 sec and back on 1 sec repeatedly,
the average wattage(over time) used by the iron would be 12W.

[QUOTE=Ryland;61723]


Does "a watt" mean 1 watt?? (Like if you say, "a pound", you mean 1.0 lbs.).?.

"The watt (symbol: W) is the SI derived unit of power, equal to one joule of energy per second. It measures a rate of energy use or production."

As in E x I=P..

I'm not sure that anyone here is confused about the KWH on their electric bills.
And I have no clue as to why someone added that extraneous info to the definition of the Watt.

Maybe I should go delete that part out.?.:D