Everybody talks and thinks solar power these days. That works as long as you live in an area with enough sunshine hours.
Our media is flooded with advertising directed at the lucrative California
But what happens if you are located in an area where there are no incentives or the financing is dependent on you being able to amortize a bank loan over 20 or 30 years.
This ability to repay a bank loan is dependent on having a regular job in a stable economy. Many people looking to go off grid are either retired on a low pension or just plain out of work. They seek off grid living as a way to reduce living costs because living in the city simply is not affordable. Think a bank is going to give them a $30,000 loan that will outlast their lifetime and possibly exceed their ability to repay it on a low pension. If you live in an area that does not have provision for a Feed-In tariff or if that tariff is only a couple of pennies per Kilowatt how long will it take to recoup any of the capital expenditures.
I just received data from someone in Belgium who quoted statistics indicating a typical California installation produces 1900 kW H per annum for each kilowatt installed.
He lives in northern latitude so his annual solar collection is cut to about 870 kilowatt hour or just under half the California
Other things being equal it supports my own estimate that up her in the north we can only expect half as much power from a given PV panel install as the specifications would indicate.
An additional factor has to do with panel mounting. At the equator the sun rises almost due east and sets due west of the observer. The further north you go the more skewed this becomes. I live at latitude 53.5 north. In summer the sun rises in the North east and sets to the North West
In other words for many hours the sunlight will not reach the PV panel and therefore not produce any power at all. During the period of time when sunlight does reach the front (and active) surface the output is not always full. It is only when the sunlight strikes at right angles you get maximum power production. Even so maximum power is not going to be as much as what you would see at the industry test lab in southern California
This does not even begin to talk about PV panel efficiencies. Scientists have calculated that the sunlight reaching the earth’s equator is equal to one kilowatt per square meter.
The best available panels on the market delivers just over 200 watt per square meter.
From other industry sources we are told PV panels are 20 – 24 % efficient and that agrees with the other way to express efficiency.
When buying in large quantity the best price currently being quoted is $3.50 per watt.
As a comparison go and price out the smaller panels sold in local stores. I did and found prices as high as $12.00 per watt. One popular panel is 5watts measures a square foot and cost $60.00 - $80.00. This much for only 5 watts?
In order to get the $3.50 price, you need to buy at least 1000 watts worth of panels. Add to that the price of controllers, batteries and inverters plus installation and you are looking at a $10 - $20 K price tag.
This is still only going to give you a system where strict energy conservation is called for. If you want or need more than the minimal energy it rapidly becomes much more expensive.
Surely there is a better way to do the job? And there is.
Wind, micro hydro, methane and wood gas production are options. Not all are equally good and not all of them are suited to your particular location. These are subjects for other blogs.
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