As someone who studied solar panels for a class credit in highschool, i can say they've come a long way with solar panels, they can do well in cloudy weather.Originally Posted by Securitas
Also, solar panels are cheap as fuck because of china.
As someone who studied solar panels for a class credit in highschool, i can say they've come a long way with solar panels, they can do well in cloudy weather.
Also, solar panels are cheap as fuck because of china.
Seems Endie has the correct panels needed for his region (in as far as absorbing sunlight), so yea, if its cheap, subsidized, and gives them a reason to construct a shed... Why not?
Are they still a net loss? Last I heard they cost more energy to make than they could recoup during their lifecycle.
Can't say, when i worked on it is was 2 years ago and most of the research we did was more about how they worked. The solar panel industry (is that what we would call it?) has moved pretty fast relatively recently. Forgot the exact numbers and years, but its along the lines of America used to produce 50% of the worlds solar panels 10 years ago now it's 5% with china taking the lead.
Wouldn't be suprised if im wrong though, i don't really pay attention to those things anymore, just from what i hear on NPR v0v
As of 2004, energy payback was 3-3.5 years with a life expectancy of 30 years with technologies available at the time. When I studied energy production in college, payback had gotten down to less than two years for a reasonably temperate climate. I don't trust this source, save that it matches the data I remember seeing. It's actually cheaper to run solar than fossil fuels in a very wide swathe of the US, but it seems Americans don't know jack shit about investments. Energy loans from the government would be really helpful, but noooooo, subsidies for average Americans are SOCIALIST.
I actually do this stuff for a living and in the real world per KW it's about 3x as expensive as natural gas, that's why it hasn't taken off. People think all it would take are subsidies and tax breaks, but there are already heavy subsidies and tax breaks from the US government to do solar, and it just doesn't make sense, and cost is only part of that.
Nevertheless if Endie & fam run the numbers and figure the Scot govt is going to pay them for the panels, then more power (!) to them
You're assuming gas will have the same price and will be available in the same quantity in the future. I'm not saying that's wrong, just that possibly the governments are doing their job of thinking long-term for a change.
[I]I'm stupid. Unfortunate, but there it is. Living in a world of geniuses is so hard![/I]
One thing we have in abundance in Scotland is wind, granted I cant say for definate is the North East of the Country gets a great deal compared to the west, but I live about 6 Miles from the biggest Wind Farm in Europe. Pretty sure wind trumps Solar in all aspects.
This is rather unfair for two reasons. Firstly we have no money for energy subsidies (or much else for that matter) and China is breaking international trade agreements by over subsidizing their "private" solar panel companies.
There's nothing worse than having a good idea for a post not being good enough to pull it off :negative:
It was to take advantage of a govt guaranteed pay-in tariff which they (the government) have been desperately trying to kill since they took office. Basically you got a guaranteed amount for every unit you generate so long as you were connected by the end of the month (thus the rush). It even pays out for energy my parents use, which never reaches the grid.
On the projected ROI it should pay for itself in just under four years and the hardware has an expected service life of nearer twenty-eight or so. So unless there's a nuclear winter or something there should be c. four thousand quid a year profit.
Like Mpozoy says, that was suggested in the original statement.
My blog: http://endie.net Twitter: EndiePosts
If I forget thee, O Goonfleet dot com, let my right hand forget her typing.
To give an idea of the scale of the subsidy involved, it is 43 pence per KWh that they're receiving. The government will cut it to 20p per KWh and it would still have made some sense at that rate since the cost of the hardware has plummeted. So being locked in at the higher rate is pretty sweet.
My blog: http://endie.net Twitter: EndiePosts
If I forget thee, O Goonfleet dot com, let my right hand forget her typing.
I was talking today prices, long term projections tend to have all sorts of pie-in-the-sky "magic happens" factors added that never backtest, for all sources. Yes, govt subsidies / tariffs also muck up the math, but most politicians' "long-term" thinking is planning retirement by diverting government funds to companies their brothers are on the boards of; the amount of corruption in public "green" money is astonishing and the amount of good it does disgraceful (it's worse in EU than here.)
The state the US has gotten itself into makes me sick.
We're installing panels on our house in Australia atm, putting in a 4.2 KW system. Government is paying 41 cents for the power sold, i think an average 24 hrs we're selling over 50%. Payoff is in about 4 years (including savings), price is supposedly unable to be reduced until 2050, although that doesn't stop them from cranking the price of power consumed up.
A bloo bloo the US is so poor.
Its not a lack of money, its a poor choice of expenditure. You've got more money that everyone else combined.
There isn't a true private company in China. Everything research based is subsidised illegally(according to international trade regulations) by loans from the governement that actually don't need to be payed back. There is also no free market as western companies are not allowed to compete on the market without a chinese partner. In the mean time they are allowed to flood our market with cheap products. I guess we really like cheap stuff.
As an American I regret to confirm we have elected the former NC leadership to the highest positions in our government
A bloo bloo the US is so poor.
Its not a lack of money, its a poor choice of expenditure. You've got more money that everyone else combined.
Good thing you're not fighting the russians, then.
I'm not completely up on the Scottish Building Regulations (there are a few differences to the English rules), but as of last year, its getting close to impossible to build anything domestic without using some form of sustainable technology, thanks to the building industry being made to carry the bulk of our Kyoto obligations. Solar panels are pretty-much the most cost-effective at the moment (especially while the subsidies hold), as the payback is far sooner, and the initial outlay so much lower than ground-source heating.
Once sherrif arapio finishes proofing obama was born in kenya those liebrals will stop killing our country
Jafit: Managed to finish Xystence's terrible sig, I'm sorry in advance to everyone else on the forums.Cinomed Fostergut: I just had to say, Xystance has the baddest forum sig known to all of EVE, this is what happens when Insanity Wisdom and Talent meet and have a threesome.
They are even getting this into refurb work in Northern Ireland. I did allot of work recently helping a family member with a large extension and loft conversion (sorry no pictorial documentation). Building control and the planners were far more interested in sustainability than neighbours right to light and the stability of the founds given that it essentially built on a peat bog.
We went with solar too in the end. Wind is more plentiful around Slemish but the noise pollution from any affordable wind generation product is a big issue for you and your neighbours.
Wind generators are bloody stupid at the moment; if there's not enough wind they're switched off to conserve power, if there's too much wind they're switched off to stop them blowing up, one actually caught on fire due to 60mph winds I believe. The amount of concrete put in to keep the big ones stable usually negates the whole point of sustainability/environmental friendliness as well.
Plus the noise they generate.
The China thing doesn't really matter. It should be a lesson that exporting your dirty industries isn't really 'green' at all. But unit cost is only part of solar's problems.
Similar to wind, the nature of when and how much power is generated regardless of load plays all sorts of hell on the grid. Little installations like Endie's roof don't matter, but then again they're trivially small in terms of environmental return as well; anything big enough to care about is big enough to cause problems. You can work around some of this by pairing big installations with thermal batteries (grocery stores, server farms etc.), but this isn't very sexy, hasn't been pursued much, and still doesn't get you -that- much consumption. Or you can flap your hands and talk about 'smart' grids and ultracapacitors and all sorts of fantasy vaporware.
Fact is, if your goals are cleaner air, or reduced oil dependency, or lower energy cost, or long-term sustainability, there are far cheaper and easier approaches already available with existing technology and compatible with existing infrastructure. But if politicians really cared about any of those goals they wouldn't be constantly piling into fuel-guzzling chartered jets to woosh to exotic locales on the public dime to discuss 'solutions'.
Our installation is purely for cynical reasons of self-gain. If we wanted to cut carbon emissions I could just spend the same amount of time writing letters to China asking them to move at a far faster rate from outdated coal technology to a mixture of modern gas and experimental carbon capture technologies. Which they would politely laugh at.
My blog: http://endie.net Twitter: EndiePosts
If I forget thee, O Goonfleet dot com, let my right hand forget her typing.
Like fracking? This is one of my favorites over the last decade or so, the energy industry clamoring for this easy, safe and effective way to acquire more natural gas and oil in the shale. Of course, the longer term studies that are proving frightening environmental impacts that have only started coming out in the last couple years are being buried in noise about how we need fracking to assist in our energy independence. Can't wait to see the long-term environmental impacts on the water table in the U.S. mountain states (Colorado/Wyoming), based on what is cropping up in Pennsylvania and New York now.
Or "clean coal"?
This thread has reached the point of making me long for the sweet embrace of death.
Or a discussion on supercaps. Either/or.
[05:28:32] Damienwhat Solette > friend said, if only they didn't have those 2 falcons there, i said they have 3, and he said that just says they don't want to do anything fair, just want to be dicks about it like not normal dicks but big black huge cocks
Are you sure you wouldn't rather listen to Trebor laugh his ass off at Mittens' trolling?
I live on a boat and solar rules
*cough* Nuclear power *cough* that isn't fucking retarded postwar light water designs
Same here.
Also so i can run my a/c all day. Even when i'm not there.
Now there's an idea.
It's unfortunate nuclear power in Australia is a fucking politically toxic subject. We can't even decide whether we want to bury waste in the outback for fucks sake.
Never mind that australia (along with most western countries and Russia) has gigantic caches of chemical weapons just sort of laying around in abandoned cold war-era installations that likely no longer exist in any government records, no, chemically-inert nuclear waste in the middle of the desert is the problem...
EDIT: Jesus christ what a shameful waste of my thousandth post
The Last Bastion of True Green Chat
goonies
Babyruth?
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Hell I was just talking about stuff like optimizing traffic patterns so you don't waste gas sitting at lights with no one moving.
But yeah nuclear now nuclear tomorrow, nuclear is the only currently existing genuinely long-term option. I've personally rendered about 7 grams of matter to energy, doing my part to push the universe closer to heat death, it was p cool ~~
The closest I got to anything like that was a neutron capture experiment I did for my high school science fair that
A) Didn't work and
B) Almost got me arrested
Hahahahaha if I manage to convince a proffesor, and if he manages to convince the university that I'm worth the hassle, I -may- manage to play around with a positron tomography thingy.
Fucking. Positrons.
I'll be mapping fucking antimatter shooting out of someone's brain.
Chances of that happening are close to 0, tho'. I'll be stuck with EEG till then.
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"Every rifter counts friend" - VR
This is how we Icelanders are doing things. We are gonna take our spare energy and use that to make methanol from industrial CO2 sources.
I think we are the only ones doing this now, some Indian guy found this method of making fuel from CO2.Conventional productions of synthetic fuels are through high temperature and high pressure thermochemical processes. They are capital and fossil energy intensive. Mining coal and exploring for gases occur in remote areas which result in products being transported over long distances. Hence, conventional productions cause increase in carbon dioxide emissions. At small scale, these processes are not economical.
Carbon Recycling International has developed technology -Emission to Liquid (ETL)- which enables economical conversion of renewable energy to liquid fuel at small scale. Energy can be from any renewable sources such as geothermal, hydro, wind, or solar. ETL consists of a system of electrolytic cracking and catalytic synthesis, leading to a low pressure and low temperature electrochemical plant design.
Implementation of the CRI technology to produce Renewable Methanol can be done in phases and in a modular construction approach. The process is free of carbon dioxide emissions.
CRI's technology is practical for energy storage, fuel transport and carbon dioxide reduction.
http://www.carbonrecycling.is/
Hehe, napkins ideas, best ideas.
According to Benedict , CRI΄s plant in Svartsengi is innovation in its purest form. He says that the idea was created on a napkin six years ago. Since then it has been developed in a laboratory in Hφfπabakka, with the aid of a grant from Rannis. Last year, shareholders made the decision to build the plant. The plant now stands ready for full operation and will soon begin production.
Yeah but your water smells like farts.
Yes
Our hot water smells like rotten eggs because it gets heated by volcanoes. That is the sulfa and all kinds of shit it comes in contact with.
How much was the investment? 4k a year sounds pretty nice!
That's how the Nazis made methanol during WWII (it may predate them, dunno); it's basically running a methane fuel cell in reverse. The electrolysis of water and methanol formation are very energy-intensive, but luckily you have geothermal out the wazoo. You could just run the cars straight off the hydrogen (RX-8's for everyone!) or power electric cars off the geothermal but I guess this way you can modify existing vehicles more cheaply for a short-term solution.
You can also get the hydrogen as a byproduct of nuclear power if you don't live on a volcanic island, water-cooled and/or shielded reactors produce tons of it (as the Japs know too well)
A little under 16k, all told. Doesn't count the shed itself, but he needed a place for the tractor/spare timber etc. already. Since we did everything but pour the concrete screed for the floor (not worth the trouble) I would be utterly unsurprised if we built that bit for about 3k, all-in.
You can see why the government are ending the feed-in tarrif at that huge rate at the end of the month.
My blog: http://endie.net Twitter: EndiePosts
If I forget thee, O Goonfleet dot com, let my right hand forget her typing.
This technology is a decade old and has proven been that it is possible to produce methanol through the catalytic conversion of CO2 .It was not until recently that the technology was developed to convert CO2 to liquid methanol outside of a laboratory environment. says Benedikt. The factory will receive its power from the HS Orka power plant which is located nearby.ExportThe production capacity of the renewable methanol plant, is 2 million liters per year. It can be scaled up to 5 million liters a year. CRI has been in negotiations with Landsvirkjun to build an industrial scale plant in Krafla.Export
The production capacity of the plant in Krafla for export would be 50 million liters a year. The methanol will be added to gasoline. We are the first company in the world to produce renewable methanol out of hydrogen and CO2 says Benedikt, he adds according to the European Union regulations, a 3 % blend of methanol can be added to gasoline. Our goal is to produce a fuel that is compatible with all gasoline vehicles as they are today. Iceland has a long way to go to catch up to other countries when it comes to utilizing renewable fuel.How is methanol used?
Daily use: Methanol is essential in our lives every day. You can find Methanol in the silicone that goes into your shampoo, the PET which makes your plastic bottle of water. You can also find methanol in many of the components of the car and possibly the fuel you used in it. Fuel use: Methanol can be blended in to gasoline at low percentages as per EU regulations. Higher blends of methanol and gasoline were tested in California in 90's. It costs approximately 150-500 USD to convert an ordinary car to run on 85% methanol gasoline blend. Methanol can be used to produce biodiesel, a growing market in both North America and Europe
They say they are the first to use this exact method. I think its a nice way to store the excess energy our power plants can muster out during low consumption.
Pumping water uphill is used heavily for this where I live.
Stop gargling badly written and scientifically disproven articles from the NYT and Rolling Stone and trying to pass them off as fact. The wyoming samples the EPA took were from 1000 feet down, which I hate to break it to you, is salt water not drinkable by anyone (water tables are in generally in the 100-300 feet range), and are unique to the geology of Wyoming where shale is relatively close to the surface. Shale beds are generally down in the 8000 to 20000 feet range, which is nowhere near anyone's water (with multiple levels of impenetrable rock formations in between the shale and the surface).
You may be startled to discover this, but the oil industry STARTED in Pennsylvania with oil literally oozing to the surface in the original Beverly Hillbillies fashion. Oil, gas and other hydrocarbons have always been present in the water there, even before the recent surge in drilling. Sampling of water wells before and after the start of drilling has shown no evidence of contamination from fracturing fluid, in fact, the water wells which have been shut down have been almost entirely due to biological contaminants. Surprise surprise that rednecks drill shitty (sometimes literally, i hear septic systems near water wells are great ideas when the water well is very shallow!) water wells.
http://www.energyindepth.org/a-rolli...hers-no-facts/
Derp. Pretty bad when the authors own sources disavow him.
I know about Pennsylvania and oil.
And I don't get my information from Rolling Stone, or the NYT. I tend to listen to NPR, the only news organization in the U.S. that actually has a code of ethics for news reporting, and makes an effort to get both sites of a story:
EPA Report Links Fracking To Water Pollution : The Two-Way ...
How Fracking Wastewater Is Tied To Quakes
while you quote an obviously unbiased source, the Independent Petroleum Association of America.
I listened to the same NPR story which made the same disclaimers about "its not drinking water" and "its localized" that i made.
Actually the first comment on the story you linked sums it up perfectly. Thanks for helping make my point. Drinking from an aquifer that freely mixes with oil, natural gas, benzene and other hydrocarbons is probably a bad idea even before you introduce hydraulic fracturing. I know I prefer my water with a shiny film on top.
I'm a plant thriving off sunlight covering your man-made buildings and eventually destroying them, so I'm really getting a kick out of these replies.
BY THE POWER OF TEH QUANTUM ENERGY, what a savings
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