The New York Times published an article yesterday titled "Silicon Valley Starts to Turn Its Face to the Sun":
"This is the biggest market Silicon Valley has ever looked at," says T. J. Rogers, the chief executive of Cypress Semiconductor, which is part-owner of the SunPower Corporation, a maker of solar cells in San Jose, Calif.
"The solar industry today is like the late 1970s when mainframe computers dominated, and then Steve Jobs and I.B.M. came out with personal computers," says R. Martin Roscheisen, the chief executive of Nanosolar, a solar company in San Jose, Calif.
Why all the excitement? You need only look at a few numbers and a graph to get the picture.
- Seventy-six percent of all electrical energy produced in this country is used to operate buildings.
- The average residence in the U.S. consumes approximately 42.7 KBtu/SF/YR of delivered energy and the average commercial building about 85 KBtu/SF/YR.
- Between 384 KBtu/SF/YR (Seattle) and 667 KBtu/SF/YR (Albuquerque) of solar energy is delivered free to every square foot of roof in the U.S. Between 365 KBtu/SF/YR (Seattle) and 520 KBtu/SF/YR (Albuquerque) of solar energy is delivered free to every unshaded south wall (south-facing surface) in the U.S. Or, to put it another way, between 749 KBtu/SF/YR and 1,187 KBtu/SF/YR of solar energy is delivered free to two surfaces of every building in the U.S.
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Comments
View as Flat
Jon Rynn Posted 4:43 am
19 Feb 2008
The rooftop area, and therefore potential space for PV in the United States, is very large. Two previous estimates of the total available roof space for PV in the United States are 6 and 10 billion square meters, even after eliminating 35% to 80% of the total roof space due to shading and inappropriate orientation [6,7]. The lower value also does not include certain industrial and agricultural buildings. While fairly rough estimates, these values provide some idea of the potential resource base. Assuming a typical PV system performance of 100 watts per square meter (W/m2) (equivalent to an average insolation of 1000 W/m2 and a 10% AC system efficiency), this rooftop area represents a potential installed capacity of 600 to 1000 GW. At an average capacity factor of 17%, this installed capacity could provide 900-1500 terawatt-hours (TWh) annually. This represents about 25% to 40% of the total U.S. electricity consumption in 2004.
6. Chaudhari, M., L. Frantzis, and T. Hoff, PV Grid Connected Market Potential under a Cost
Breakthrough Scenario, Navigant Consulting, Inc., 2004. Available at http://www.ef.org/documents/EFFinal-
Final2.pdf
7. Potential for Building Integrated Photovoltaics, International Energy Agency, 2001.
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sunflower Posted 4:51 am
19 Feb 2008
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Charles Barton Posted 4:54 am
19 Feb 2008
Eventually the limitation of PV will become obvious, and people will be disappointed, and PV will take a hard tumble. The bigger they are, the harder they fall.
Charles Barton
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Alex 77 Posted 5:23 am
19 Feb 2008
You are correct, however, in stating that solar is presently an immature technology. The massive benefits being reaped by its current deployment are nothing when compared to what the near future holds given decreasing manufacturing costs, silicon price reductions, and new technologies currently being commercialized.
I suggest you gain a better knowledge of solar technologies prior to writing such strong opinions in the future.
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Charles Barton Posted 5:38 am
19 Feb 2008
Alex what is the point of having solar electricity if you are going to get your electricity from the grid? I understand the Grid system. You are basically selling electricity to the power company at a low price, and then buying it back at a higher price. As for the source of my information about solar, can you suggest a better source than solar buzz?
Charles Barton
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leaperz Posted 6:31 am
19 Feb 2008
A massive switch from coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear power plants to solar power plants could supply 69 percent of the U.S.'s electricity and 35 percent of its total energy by 2050.
Unless you can cogently refute the analysis, you shouldn't be so quick to write off the technology. Full article at: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan
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Sam Wells Posted 10:48 am
19 Feb 2008
For about a thousand bucks I can make me a redneck solar water heater no problem, all depending if I want an expensive rainwater collection cistern or what I can clean-salvage.
So My point is that sure, lots of energy out there, lots of stuff you can buy, but can you afford it especially in a recession? Heck man, some of my brothers went back to burning wood up north it was so bad this winter. /sammie
Onward through the fog
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Jon Rynn Posted 12:22 pm
19 Feb 2008
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GreyFlcn Posted 1:47 pm
19 Feb 2008
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Biodiversivist Posted 2:00 am
20 Feb 2008
Try it. The caluculator automatically assumes you only want to replace 50% of your use so the default answer you get is only half of the cost.
The bottom line is that solar is very expensive and the cost varies greatly depending on where you live and how much sunshine you get. Replacing the energy consumption of today's 3000 square foot homes with solar will never be economically feasible.
We need admirable designs and examples of homes that are solar powered and affordable. We need to start thinking out of the box. I touched on this concept here:
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/1/21/112339/239
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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stopgreenpath Posted 4:01 am
20 Feb 2008
We need to INSIST that our legislators (Federal, State and Local) divert that money BACK TO US so we can build a safe, reliable, DECENTRALIZED generation system which does not destroy the environment like the Utility-Scale plants do.
100% buyback programs AT PEAK RATES (that's when we are producing, right?); Berkeley/San Fran style capital loans paid back through property taxes, combined with large subsidies from our government WOULD ONLY PUT US LEVEL WITH UTILITIES, who have been able to buy off our legislators so they can socialize all their costs and privatize all their profits.
Are you a stalinist sucker or do you believe in democracy? Call, write and email and demand these policies NOW or we will all find ourselves meeting the New Boss (Big "renewable" Energy), same as the old boss (Big Fossil Energy), and losing millions of acres of Federally-owned wilderness in the process...
the greenest energy is that which you needn't ever produce.
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