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From: amirza@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (anmar mirza)
Newsgroups: sci.energy,sci.electronics,sci.physics
Subject: Re: solar cells
Message-ID: <1991Jan1.200107.14744@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Date: 1 Jan 91 20:01:07 GMT
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In article <1990Dec31.220520.27738@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
>In article <1990Dec31.171413.18138@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> amirza@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (anmar mirza) writes:

>Better the devil we don't know than the one we do?  Sorry, I do not agree.
>We need to take a careful and rational look at the *costs* of both approaches
>before deciding.  We know enough about the economics and side effects of
>solar power, including *its* deleterious effects, to make rational decisions
>about it... and right now, the answer tends to be "uneconomical except in
>special circumstances", although it is showing steady improvement and is
>worth watching for the future.
It's kinda interesting that passive solar systems have been with us
for many millenia, the first thing you do when you build a dwelling if
you don't have central heat is to build it so that it makes full use
of available sun. I don't think that photovoltaics will ever become
viable on a large scale, but it is *very* good for small scale
installations. Solar steam generation, such as the La Luz plants, make
very efficient use of solar, and is a fast growing technology. It does
need to be backed up with a fossil fuel, as does most solar
installations need to have a back up for when the sun don't shine for
long periods, but at least you have taken a significant percent out of
the total hydrocarbons needed, just as a passive solar collector on
your house can take a chunk out of your heating bill. As far as I
know, the bad effects of solar steam generation plants are small
compared to those of a coal fired plant, or a nuclear plant, or even
those of a hydroelectric plant. What is more, we can act to counteract
the effects of a solar steam generation station than we can with a
coal fired plant. I live in an area where we burn a lot of coal, and
we mine a lot of our own, and I think I would rather see the area used
for a strip mine and power plant used for a solar plant. It is very
area intensive, but so is strip mining. It changes the amount of
sunlight reflected, but so does the strip mine, and the exhaust of a
coal fired plant. It changes the local ecology of the area used, but
again, so does a strip mine, and the coal plant. The solar steam
plant, however, if we find that there is a global warming or cooling
problem due to reflected or absorbed sunlight, we can counteract that
by having our reflectors reradiate more, or absorb more, a lot easier
than we can scrub CO2 out of the atmosphere. If we find that the plant
is interferring with global CO2 by limiting available sunlight for
plants and trees, we can counteract easier than we can when we
liberate carbon that has been locked up for several million years.
And finally, barring a major increase in population over the next 1000
years, our solar plant will keep working long after the coal and oil
is used up. Maybe it'll teach us to live within a solar economy.


What I find really important about photovoltaics is that *I* can do
it. Me. One person. I don't even have to lay out a huge amount of
cash, or be very rich to do it. I can tell our utility where they can
put their lines, or in the case of my property where it'll cost a
little under 10,000 to run power out to it, I can buy a lot of panels
for that ten thou. *I* don't have to depend on a utility to provide me
with electricity. *I* can do it. And unlike wind or water, I can even
do it in town on my rooftop. Imagine that! I can live in the middle of
a town and not have to buy power from the utility.
*That* is where photovoltaics comes into importance.
Dollar for dollar photovoltaics are *not* now cost effective when you
add in batteries, inverters, control circuitry, and maintenance, but
they give me freedom. And they *are* cost effective when the utility
wants ten thousand to run power lines out to my property, then will
charge me a higher rate than you get in the city.


>The post I was responding to was typical of the attitudes of many of the
>"true believers", who enthusiastically promote their cherished beliefs
>while ignoring known costs and problems.  Choices this important should
>be based on rational calculation, not "gee, this sounds nifty".
Ok, I can buy that. I hope I don't come across as one of those types. 
All my opinions of it are formed by my working with it and others that
I interact with who work with it. I get tired of listening to the
'experts' who have never even done any work with it who condemn it to
death. I don't think that right now it is cost effective on a straight
dollar to dollar basis, but when you factor in social costs I believe
it comes out ahead. Unfortunately, I lack the resources to do in depth
studies on the subject of social costs. I do think that barring a
discovery of some cheap form of power, solar will be our cheapest
alternative in our future, on a dollar to dollar basis. I also am
willing to be one of those many people who work to make any new
technology feasable on an economic scale. If it fizzles, then it
fizzled, but not because I didn't try.
 
One final note on this long post.
I don't think *any* form of power we come up with is going to be
effective unless we stop our population growth. Just think, if there
were only a billion people on this planet, we all could live the
lifestyle of the 'rich American'.





--
Anmar Mirza   # If a product is good, # I speak only my   # Space, humans next
EMT-A         # they will stop making # opinions on these # goal in the race 
N9ISY (tech)  # it. Unless it is      # subjects, IU has  # for immortality.
Networks Tech.# designed to kill.     # it's own.         # --- me