Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Americans basically live like energy is unlimited, free and has no side effects ..." Agreed - and guilty as charged which is why we're switching entirely to solar. (I will also note that my household "cheats" by living in California where we need relatively little heat and do not even own an air conditioner so our path is, perhaps, a bit easier) My main point is that whether you're a frugal EU council house or a pro…
It's good that your daily "30A dryer" usage will soon be solar powered. I have a solar-powered clothes dryer too — it's called a clothesline.
The future of solar doesn't track the sun
111–120 of 154 posts
Re: The future of solar doesn't track the sun
#112If you built a zigzag pattern into the panel, possibly with some ultra-cheap alternating cylindrical ground support, you could easily deploy them in this East-West configuration.
You will have to drive some pillars into the ground to secure them anyway, but it might be much faster and require little labor.
Re: The future of solar doesn't track the sun
#113How does using these the power from your panels to generate natural gas help solve climate change? Unlimited abundant natural gas sounds awful
Consider where that methane / natural gas is coming from. Their homepage says (with the world's most convoluted hyphen-omitting compound adjective, but basically see the last 6 words): > March 2024: Terraform completes the end to end demo, successfully producing fossil carbon free pipeline grade natural gas from sunlight and air. If you take carbon from the air, mix in energy from the sun to turn it into a fuel, then…
Re: The future of solar doesn't track the sun
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Demand isn't fixed in time either, though. Industrial processes that presently run at night to use cheap power will switch to daytime when it makes sense to do so. Summer mid-day also has the highest electricity demand all year in many places due to air conditioning, so arguably solar is addressing one of the biggest stress points.
"summer mid-day also has the highest electricity demand all year in many places due to air conditioning," Peak electric demand is 3-7pm in the summer. You might think you could then just set panels to to optimize for afternoon, but especially in winter, you get a big peak between 6-9am.
Re: The future of solar doesn't track the sun
#115Compelling analysis. But if hail damage is the primary concern, tracking seems like an X/Y solution. What about eg anti hail netting that can be rolled out when the weather forecast predicts hail? It seems to me like a middle ground might be automated deployment of hail protection, which by definition has lower aero loading than what amounts to a big semiconductor sail.
i used standard chain link fence on top of my small greenhouse and it works even with such big "holes", no mechanism, just manual labor but needs good forecast which can be issue.
Re: The future of solar doesn't track the sun
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Demand isn't fixed in time either, though. Industrial processes that presently run at night to use cheap power will switch to daytime when it makes sense to do so. Summer mid-day also has the highest electricity demand all year in many places due to air conditioning, so arguably solar is addressing one of the biggest stress points.
"summer mid-day also has the highest electricity demand all year in many places due to air conditioning," Peak electric demand is 3-7pm in the summer. You might think you could then just set panels to to optimize for afternoon, but especially in winter, you get a big peak between 6-9am.
Re: The future of solar doesn't track the sun
#117I've been in solar energy as my primary vocation since the 1990's. I've built solar cars, I've built solar panels, I've installed solar panels, I've designed solar trackers. I know this industry inside and out. I'd never heard of an east-west array before (though I did experiment with one-cell-wide "crinolations" at 60 degree angles, did not find any value to using them but it was a different application where low-an…
Re: The future of solar doesn't track the sun
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
but, 70% of MY! yearly households electricity consumption is literally into [PV!] hot water. Hot water tank is cheapest energy storage device on planet. and i do not have to worry to shower in noon, i can just charge my water tank during day, even when im not home. and use hot water in evening. for very little price - no need to use heat pump, resistive heater is super cheap. hot water tank can be made even DIY to lo…
I read, and appreciated, your entire comment - thank you. You describe a simple and elegant solution to some portions of these problems and what you are doing with your hot water "battery" is smart. I am forced, however, to ask: Where do you live and how large is your family ? My suspicion is that you do not live in the United States and your family is relatively small ... ? Modern, "first world" ("global north" ?) 2…
Re: The future of solar doesn't track the sun
#119We researched this thoroughly in the early 2000s and came to pretty much the same conclusion even back then. For us the main problem was the reliability of the mover. If enough panels face the wrong direction for long enough it is worse than facing the sun in a good enough fixed position all the time. Our angle was to use a simple motor that runs with constant speed and use a special patented gear (called VIAX) to tu…
I saw some guy in Britain that replaced his old fence with one made of solar panels because the cost difference between that and traditional was nil.
EDIT: The fence gets at least 4 hours of direct sun in the winter; up to 7 in the summer. I can easily install 10KW of panels. I don’t have any way to store the power. I suppose I could build a giant Tesla coil and zap the neighbor’s dog?
Re: The future of solar doesn't track the sun
#120We researched this thoroughly in the early 2000s and came to pretty much the same conclusion even back then. For us the main problem was the reliability of the mover. If enough panels face the wrong direction for long enough it is worse than facing the sun in a good enough fixed position all the time. Our angle was to use a simple motor that runs with constant speed and use a special patented gear (called VIAX) to tu…
I always thought that someone would invent a cheap, simple, reliable, and passive tracking system. No need for sensors or intelligent electronics. You have a simple motor that slowly tilts the array from facing East to facing West as power is being generated. The motor does not start until the panel is generating a certain amount of power. The motor runs at a fixed rate with a screw that takes about 7 hours to move t…
If you buy a bunch of commodity modules (panels) without moving parts, you generally don't have to maintain anything except maybe replace the inverters in a couple decades. And you can do that with any electrically compatible parts.
If you have a moving motor, suddenly you need to find all the specific parts for that particular motor, and hire a specialist crew to maintain and replace it, requiring a team with not just electrical knowhow but motor mechanics too.
That's largely incompatible with the US model of solar deployment we have now, which is largely "install and forget" using whatever equipment is currently cheap and available. It's very likely that the equipment manufacturer won't be around in a few years, and that installation company probably won't be for much longer. So any additional possible failure mode should be avoided.
At commercial or utility scale it might be different, but generally it's still more cost effective over time to just buy more modules to offset the less than optimal facing than to try to actively adjust their direction with moving parts. Modules keep getting cheaper. Motors, and more importantly, shipping and labor don't. Installing an overcapacity upfront is still cheaper than maintaining the trackers later.