Solar power

[freebeard]

Roll-to-roll printing or spray-on coatings?

[redpoint5]

Whatever's cheap enough and durable enough with enough performance to justify doing it that way instead of silicon.

[oil pan 4]

Thin film cells cost something like 1/8 to 1/10 as much as mono but are less efficient and last about 2/3 as long.
Because of all the other stuff that goes along with building panels and installing them it's more cost effective to use mono cells.

[redpoint5]

I want a thin film that can replace asphalt shingles, killing two stones with one bird. If it were cheap enough, I'd have no problem replacing it every 20 years.

[freebeard]

cheap enough and durable enough with enough performance

Pick any two?

I'm in favor of just putting it in the window/sklight glazing. They need framing anyway.

[Piotrsko]

Gaf is selling that solar panel roofing right now but can only be installed by their certified people

[JSH]

It has been a year since my employer started their community solar project and I opted in to buy power from it. In that year I purchased 3,770 kWh from the project out of the 8,067 kWh our house and EV consumed. In that time I saved a modest $15.20 by purchasing solar power instead of relying only on PGE.

[freebeard]

My thinking the last few days is to store the solar energy as heat, in an insulated box of hot sand in a sub-basement, with a hot tub in the basement. The hot spot in the middle would warp thermoclines upward all around it, bringing earth-tempering to the first floor.

Electrical power could be tapped from that:

Thermoelectric generator
A thermoelectric generator, also called a Seebeck generator, is a solid state device that converts heat flux directly into electrical energy through a phenomenon called the Seebeck effect. Thermoelectric generators function like heat engines, but are less bulky and have no moving parts.Wikipedia

[oil pan 4]

Stupid people:
"we'Ll jUst puT SOlar pAnEls in tHe dEsErT".

The desert:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BwSts2...ature=youtu.be

Also the desert, but a few moments later:


That's why:
Solar panels belong on people's roof tops.
Whomever owns the solar panels or any green "fill in the blank tech" needs to care enough about it to be compelled to keep it working.

[freebeard]

Any idea where that was? Remember Shelley's Ozymandias?