28
January
2010
January
2010
Why is solar power not used everywhere as it is the cheapest in the world?
what are the problems of solar power as we keep talking about solar but not using it?
Everywhere people talk about solar but not used much why?
Everywhere = only sunny place.
and not all the part of the world.
In some places, the electric companies charge a very low rate, and it is more economical to simply use that rather than invest large sums up front.
In other areas, it would be more economical in the long run to use solar panels, but in this economy, companies simply don’t have the capital to invest.
As a homeowner, would you rather pay $10,000-20,000 up front for solar energy, or would you rather pay $80/month??
It’s not sunny everywhere, and putting up solar panels is time consuming
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The instruments use to convert solar energy into electrical energy or other usable energy , is very costly, every one can afford it.
another reason is, the amount of energy we need for our daily work is very high, so it will not easy to make such huge amount of energy from solar system avialable.
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Greed. Im sure the electricity companies would mind going out of business. Most of the poverty in this world is caused by greed…
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The problem is the atmosphere that we breath and that protects us against radiation damage also blocks the rays from the sun that produce power from solar cells. If you were to place the same cells in orbit in a space station they would produce 100 times the power they do when they are on your roof. Because of this the cost of space based solar is about 1% the cost of ground based solar but the owner of one of the worlds largest oil companies scrapped the space based solar program back in the 70s when he put his pet politician in as president of the USA and got the space based solar program scrapped. Bill Clinton and our current joke Obama are also servants of Exxon and so against the space based solar program that could power the world at a price even cheaper than nuclear which he is also against because he makes his money off of oil and coal!
http://www.nss.org/settlement/ColoniesInSpace/index.html
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It’s not cheap, the Equipment needed is new, expensive and low efficiency.
it takes a lot of area to generate a house’s worth of electricity.
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it is not always sunny and it also takes alot of time. I heard that they are preety expensive too. They also take up alot of room and if you live in a tiny house you will have no where to put it.
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As it is not cheap, time consuming, and more space consuming.
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Greed is the right answer. It’s possible to make a solar oven for a $1. I’ve been using an old 9′ diameter satellite dish covered in aluminum foil as a heating assist to my home for 3 years while the weather is cool here in northern Michigan and use it to bar-b-que in the warm months. It can also be used as a heat source for driven chemical reactions such as the destructive distillation of wood waste or to drive the iron/steam reaction to produce hydrogen gas. I picked the dish up free and the glue and aluminum foil were less than $10. My heating bills dropped $30/month.
Practical applications using the sun’s heat can be found in:
‘Solar Heat - It’s Practical Applications’ by Charles H. Pope copyrighted 1903
Some hands on inexpensive experiments can be found in:
‘Sunshine to Dollars’ by Steven E. Harris copyright 2005
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It doesn’t always work!
San Diego’s schools consumed MORE power after installing solar.
http://legacy.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080416/news_1n16solar.html
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Unfortunately it is not the cheapest. See some sources.
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http://www.uraniumsa.org/esd/energy_comparison_table.pdf
http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/levelizedelec.png
Power is actually free.
But main problem is reliability. This is true any where, even in places like desert.
The initial cost of equipment 4 time the other options in some places. Also total amount of Energy may not be enough to run a large home, without very large system.
You do need back up systems or are willing to do without it from time to time.
Types of use:
Solar to heat:
There are cookers available or you can make one to cook the food, lots of info on the internet. But if the cloud rolls in you can spoil the dinner, or —-
Just making hot water.
Now the other uses:
Converting it to electrical energy:
DC only using Thermopile. Needs large area to collect small amounts of power. One small town in Rajasthan, India has achieved it, with no help from government or aid fron places like UN. This remote town had almost nothing so little improvement is God sent, they have deem light at night on demand if they use it care fully.
For AC you would need battery and then run a generator using the battery.
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It is true that there is apparently no charge for the sunlight that falls on the Earth´s surface.1 Some refer to it as "insolation.¨ http://www.apricus.com/html/solar_collector_insolation.htm It varies around the world depending upon the location. The site also links to give you some general levels at different locations. In the NY the average is 3.53 KW/square meter per day. Collectors have an efficiency that will reduce this amount.
Thermal collectors are more efficient than photovoltaic collectors. Large power installations tend to favor thermal collectors that may be hybridized into existing gas turbine power plant design. Cloud cover including stormy weather will also reduce this amount.
Solar energy tends to be diffuse. First it must be collected and then the energy has to be concentrated. All this takes equipment and so far this technology is more costly than the (admittedly subsidized) energy sources of the cheapest alternative: a coal fired thermal power plant.
The price will come down both as technology advances and as manufacturing gears up to accommodate solar technologies. But currently those who make price decisions are going to favor the cheaper alternatives. Reducing existing subsidies and including current externalities (like pollution) will help to make solar applications competitive with conventional power plants.
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1. it may be a little too easy to say it is "free" as the implication is that we don’t have to consider any costs. However there may be some cost associated with just our thinking of something as "free."
No one charges us to throw garbage our our car windows but this is not "free." There is a clean up cost that we are not paying. Sometimes a thing that is "free" on a small scale reveals formerly hidden costs when done on a massive scale. So I am presently comfortable with the fact that sunlight "appears," at this time, to be "free."
Actually solar energy is free of cost but the cost of installing solar panels that convert solar energy to electrical energy is quite costly and the storage batteries are also costly and not eco-friendly and moreover the intensity of solar energy varies from place to place(away from equator) and time to time(winters or monsoons) and from day to day(cloudy days) so its not yet very reliable.
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soalr power has 2 dsadvantages -
1- its expensive compared to normal electricity
2- its function depends on the sun’s availability (which is a major issue)
we dont use it everywhere because of these two reasons, but each year, the prices keep falling. maybe in a decade or two, we’ll all start using it
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http://nature-log.blogspot.com/2009/12/what-is-solar-power-and-how-does-it.html
because it is not cheaper. It’s cheaper because of taxes paid by others to subsidize it.
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solar cookers,solar gysers,solar heaters etc have been in the market for quite some time…
but common man finds them to be unaffordable and unreliable for daily use.
However,the solar powered devices which convert solar energy into electricity are much promising than the solar devices mentioned above(as they can be used to power almost every device).
Some paople may assume that solar power is abundant and hence very cheap but the following factors make solar powered devices out of common man’s reach.
1)Although ’silicon’ is found in abundance accross the world , solar panels are very expensive because of their low efficiencies and other coslty materials involved in its fabrication.
2)Moreover it is not possible to use solar power directly for operating appliances at night.example lights,fans etc therfeore ,apart from solar panels we also need batteries to store power.These batteries require a lot of maintaince and are very costly and bulky.
3)solar powered devices work better on dc.For ac appliances additional converters are required which further adds to the cost of the solar powered system.
4)solar power is not very reliable(on cloudy days,rainy days..etc)
solar power is only cheap when it is used for drying clothes !!
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Solar electricity does not save money in every place, and even where it does, there is a large up-front investment involved. Only a first-world country has the financial vehicles (such as loans) to make that happen.
Solar cooking would make sense to a lot of the world, except the poorest of the poor cannot even afford a few dollars to make or buy a solar oven. And in such areas, even aluminum foil and glass would be aggressively recycled - it’s not like the USA where people just throw stuff away on the curb. In places where the population density is very high, an individual or family may not actually own an area exposed to the sun, even if the country is sunny in general. But what about people who do have the money? In such places, time and human effort are more expensive than dollars. Someone in southern California could save 15 cents on electricity by cooking dinner via solar, but then they would have to walk outside to do it.
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its applications are limited to only few products.we cannot completely rely on this sorce because of climatic changes
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for making 1 watt of energy by solar energy we need an investment of 1$ amount of money.
For running a fan in india we need 60watt of energy and to run a fan who is going to invest Rs 3000.00.
and think about the way we use the appliances in home and the amounts u can imagine. it will go up as huge as lakhs of rupees.
only one we need to think to produce the solars cells from organic materials then the cost will reduce automatically.
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There are free energy source everywhere, solar, wind and water(dam).
But reliability and cost are important factors.
Recently, I read news where doctors are operating on patient when the power went off.
You don’t want that kind of things to happen to you.
Solar panel is costly and required maintenance, not everyone can afford them.
You also need a very large solar panel in order to generate the same amount of energy from fuels.
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It’s far from being the cheapest way to make electricity not only do you have to buy solar cell, but you need to store it and maintain it. It’s the expense that keeps people from using more of it.
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In some places, the electric companies charge a very low rate, and it is more economical to simply use that rather than invest large sums up front.
In other areas, it would be more economical in the long run to use solar panels, but in this economy, companies simply don’t have the capital to invest.
As a homeowner, would you rather pay $10,000-20,000 up front for solar energy, or would you rather pay $80/month??
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http://www.solar-powered-products.com/
the solar cells are very costly and are time consuming.many areas are no that suitable to give sufficient amount of energy .a second reason is people are selfish the dont want to conserve energy they feel its not there responsibility.they also dont want to spend money
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Well, it is not cheap everywhere. there is a huge initial cost involved in buying solar panels and installing them. Although the benifits and cost recovery seem to come in some years later and its a long term solution but generally people dont spend heavily in the starting.
For cheap solar panels in India, you can checkout http://www.solarpanelsindia.com
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