In this time of searching for alternative energy sources, one that gets mentioned in virtually every case but never actually acted on is solar energy. This has been a source of frustration for me so after formulating some ideas of my own over the last few years, I wanted to take some time to present them here.
I live in the desert Southwest, metropolitan Phoenix, to be more specific. This region gets more days of uninterrupted sunlight than any other region in the US. At one point, solar engery was big for new residences here. It was hip. Now, it's almost non-existant. Thousands of homes are being built in my locale every year and yet few if any of them are equiped with solar energy systems.
One restraint on solar panels have been arbitrary rules laid down by HOAs. Many HOAs declare that they don't want to see solar panels on the street side of the house (that is, it can't be visible from the street) because "it's an eye sore." This means that a lot of homes can't mount solar panels in any position where they will receive more than perhaps 75% of the sunlight they should and most will get less. This means that they will never pay for themselves and will never be for the homeowner what they should be.
Another is the efficiency. Back in the early '80s, a good solar cell was perhaps 12% efficient. That means that it was able to convert only 12% of the solar radiation that struck it into usable electricity. These numbers have since risen to 25% and somewhat more. (Remember that the only reason we can see something is because light is reflected off it. A 100% solar cell will be "black hole" black and extremely cold to the touch. I doubt that it is physically possible to get beyond about 75% anyway.) Further, the older panels were pretty delicate items. These days, they're far more reliable and even modular, allowing an almost arbitrary number of panels to be linked together into a single grid (within certain engineering limits on the configuration.) There are panels out there that are extremely flexible and can be molded into almost any form. While these particular panels are not the most efficient of those in production today, they are still good. Some of these, you can even drill holes into at whatever point you choose and as long as you don't severe the wires connecting to the panel, they will still generate electricity with no more degredation to performance than the surface area lost to the holes.
Still another restraint is the cost of production. There has not been a push for solar energy and pitifully few and small tax breaks from various municipalities. That means that we have not been able to benefit from the economies of scale that come from increased production. The result of this is that the cost of installing solar panels is still quite high and only a small number of technicians are certified to do so.
A further constraint is that even though you can install panels onto your home capable of generating more capacity than you need (especially if you're away from home all day), most utilities will not allow you to feed that power back into the grid. The practical reason for this is that sources and loads on the grid must be carefully balanced and controlled or both the grid and your generating appliance can be damaged, possibly severely. This is not white smoke, there is a very real problem here but it is a problem that can be overcome. In fact, in some cases, there are utilities which do permit this. The other principle reason, as I see it, is purely economic. These companies want to sell you power, not buy it from you. So even though you generate more than you need, they will choose to ignore it.
The end result is that there is little demand for solar here and it has all but died off in residential use. The cost of installing a solar panel, when I last did a survey of my own usage, would not be offset by decreased energy expenditures in less than 20 years. This means that there is no individual economical incentive to bother. Therein lies the main problem.
In these days of oil at over $100/barrel, I think it's high time we revisit this. Lets also be clear: there are more ways to obtain benefits from solar energy than merely photovoltaics (directly generating electricity from light striking a panel); some collectors are used as solar ovens to heat water; some utilities use focused mirrors to heat pipes filled with oil, then use the oil to boil water to turn steam turbines (oil is used because it boils at a higher temperature than water and can therefore absorb more heat than the same quantity of water can.)
So I propose that we encourage our legislators, wether city, state, or federal, to revisit solar. Builders need to be encourage to include it. Governments need to be encouraged to give incentives for companies to produce them, engineers to design for them, home builders to utilize them, and homeowners to install them.
You may now ask, "What ways can solar really make a difference then?" Well, here are my ideas and I encourage the T. Boone Pickens people to pick up on these and include them firmly in their overall plan. In fact, thats a major problem I have with the Pickens plan, it focuses on wind and natural gas—another non-renewable energy supply, by the way—and virtually ignores other energy systems, including solar. There is no overarching solution to the problem Pickens is trying to address. The solution must come from multiple sources or his objectives of trying to ween us off foreign oil will never be realized. One such componenet, in my oppinion, must be solar. Solar energy is the most abundant energy supply we have. We simply have to learn how to make proper use of it. I should comment that I'm also an advocate of nuclear power considering that a new plant will probably be as efficient as and can be used to replace two plants made in the 50s and 60s, especially if onsite reprocessing were at last permitted instead of recklessly discarding high energy waste products.
There are three principle recommendations I would like to see made. First, as I stated, various government entities need to encourage their use. The only way they are going to become a fixture among residential installs is if it pays for itself. If more panels are produced by more companies, the cost of production will be brought down and there will be competitive pressure to push the boundries of physics and improve efficiency and performance. As more technicians are trained to install and maintain them, those costs will be brought down. As more citizens become familiar with them, there will be less hesitation to accept them and it will be easier for the average Joe to accept a home that has solar panels on it. Until these things happen, the government has to stimulate the growth of this undistry. This can only occur through tax breaks for consumers, builders, and producers. Naturally, for this to be of use, there have to be certain limits on it. In my area, it is not uncommon for a 3 bedroom house to have a summer electric bill of substantially over $400. Many homes are built to older energy efficiency standards and it takes a great deal of energy to cool them in the summer. So in order to really benefit from solar energy, you have to generate enough of it to substantially offset your daily needs. Therefore, mandating that these benefits are only available to purchasers of new homes with at least a 2.0kw array or those who equip them within 12 months of purchase, or those living in homes older than 12 months who equip them with at least a 3.5kw array should be eligible. (The idea being that older homes are less energy efficient and require more cooling and heating so older installs especially need to install larger capacity panels to be eligible for the credit. New homes should comply with this to be certain that what is installed covers their peak daily usage.) Recall that I have not mentioned batteries, merely daytime generation. Batteries and an inverter are usefull if you're not able to sell your power to the grid since you can then charge the batteries and use that power to suplement your nighttime usage. However, batteries come with their own problems. (Hazardous substances within them and periodic replacements needed.) Fortunately, batteries are one of the few things that are almost 100% recyclable.
As a side note, I will state that newer homes are not built to allow natural ventilation and so on and therefore, refrigeration systems are the only way to make the interrior confortable. First, I would suggest the incentives above be put through but second, I would like to see that allowances for "through flow" ventilation in all new single family dwellings and town homes needs to be mandated as a way to reduce the number of days cooling is required. (A little breeze goes a long way and also helps with indoor air quality, another issue that has gotten prevelance lately.)
Second, the peak demand for the Southwest is during the summer heat. These are times when the temperatures outside my own home can soar to over 115° F and all the kids are at home for summer break, trying to stay cool. Most schools here are single or two story buildings with very large footprints. These roofs necessarily house sattelite dishes, air conditioners, radio antennas, and other similar devices. Yet the majority of their surface area is not occupied. It seems to me that these make good spots to place large solar arrays. The shading provided by the install of these panels will in itself help to reduce the heat transfer indoors and serve to reduce the energy requirements of the building but also provide power for the vary air conditioning systems used to cool the building not to mention lights and so forth.
During the summer months (and on weekends), school is not in session apart from a few classrooms. So the requirement of these buildings is minimal while demand in the community is at its maximum. Wouldn't it make sense for the local utility companies to parterner with the public school system (which is government operated) to place arrays on the roofs of these buildings? New schools are being built around here all the time and older schools are undergoing renovation. With the utility company directly operating and maintaining the facility, the problems of backfeeding are controlled. Heck, the school doesn't even have to directly use the power, it can go straight into the grid in exchange for a metered discount on the power consumed.
How many other large government buildings such as warehouses and so forth could also make good homes for these arrays? What about shopping malls or big-box stores, what about manufacturing facilities such as those for Intel, Microchip, or the many Freescale semiconductor facilities around here (that is, locating facilities with large amounts of roof space that have an expected life of greater than 30 years)? It seems to me that they would be good candidates as well. Isn't it a shame that no one is taking advantage of this? All that needs to happen is to make sure that the building is either designed or retrofitted to support the weight of the equipment that would be placed atop it.
One of the biggest complaints against the so-called "solar farms" is the amount og land they would have to occupy. Well, if you distribute them among such facilities within the city limits, doesn't that solve that problem? Another complaint is "I don't want to see them in my backyard and have to always look out over that field of solar panels." Well, this seems to solve that too, yes? All you have to do is build a short parapet (which most building codes require for flat roofs anyway, not only as a visibility barrier but also for the safety of those working on these roofs.) So this, to me, seems to be a win/win and counter two principle arguments against large scale solar energy collection.
And third, let us take a moment to think about our daily routine. How many of us get up at fairly early hours just so we can get in our cars and sit in traffic for an hour on the way to work? When we get there, how many of us have to take precautions to make sure certain things such as CDs are carried inside because there is no covered parking at work and our cars become ovens, destroying all unprotected sensitive gadgets within? We then repeat the commute on the way home, sometimes after dark but not always. When we go shopping, we park outside in the sea of asphalt that the local mall calls a parking lot. Don't many of us also park our cars on a concrete slab in our driveways because either we don't have a garage or the garage is either our work room or simply too full to get anything into? How many of us have these experiences almost daily?
With the prevelance of hybrid cars using both gas or fuel cells and electric drive, there is another option to reduce our fuel consumption. Remember those flexible solar panels I mentioned at the start of this diatribe that people were able to drill holes into? How about placing them on the roofs of our cars? (Not necessarily the hood or the trunk, but the roof itself.) During the commute, this can help with power generation. During the stay at the office, what power was used can be replenished over the 8-10 hours we're there. While at home or at the mall, likewise. It is conceivable that you could reduce the fuel consumption of a hybrid gas-electric vehicle by a further 50-75% using such a system. Immagine a car getting litterally 85 miles to the gallon. You wouldn't need more than a 3 or 4 gallon tank since your gas is only used where the electric motor just isn't enough. This I think is the single most important idea of the 3, incorporating solar generation into vehicles directly. True, it doesn't do much for night time driving but if you run out of fuel on the side of the road and your battery runs dead, all you have to do is wait an hour or so and try again. As long as the motor can turn the wheels, no more tow truck. Let me also point out that there is more wear and tear on an internal combustion engine than there is an electric motor. So maintenance costs of the engine are higher. If you can avoid using it any more than you need to in order to merely keep things lubricated and sealed (like 1 hour a week), so much the better. The other thing about hybrids is that if you're careful, in a place like Phoenix, where the ground is pretty well flat for miles around, if you aren't carrying passengers or lots of weight and you are willing to make slower than normal starts, you can potentially avoid having to start the gas engine at all. As a result, the stated "mileage" for a hybrid car can vary considerably driver to driver with some able to push it above 100.
These 3 items, I think, in my area especially, can go a very long way to reduce energy needs. I have tried to promote these ideas around here but have only been met with very cool receptions. It is my intention, by publishing them here, to get these ideas greater exposer, that by enough people seeing them that the right people who can help make them happen will learn of them and we can move forward with this or some useful variation thereon. The best part about this is that each home that installs such systems receives the benefits immediately, not in 5 years but right now and right now, thats what we're after, isn't it?
Oh, be aware that solar energy can be used for heating as well as direct generation of electricity (think about the hot oil mentioned above.) If you take a home in a cold weather climate and install a hydronic heating system (hot water), a few clean solar collectors (arranged as effectively a solar oven) around the return line can preheat the water before it goes back into the boiler. Even if it's just a few degrees, thats less oil, propane, or natural gas you have to consume to heat the building. The problem is keeping the collectors clean. After a snowfall, it will be necessary to use electric heaters to get rid of some of the snow and ice and in fact it may be necessary to cover them at night and during certain weather conditions. The design of the collectors will naturally concentrate heat and they will always melt snow fast but they may also need some help and any broken glass or such needs to be replaced immediately. The cost of heating these for an hour or two after a snow fall should easily be recouped in only a day or two so I don't see it as a real disadvantage. These will also require annual service as with any heating or cooling system in order to ensure they operate correctly and efficiently. During the summer (and most of the year in my area), this can also be used to provide domestic hot water. So there is more than one way to utilize solar energy. In fact, during the day time in the winter here, only minimal heat is needed. Using such a hydronic system may have much greater benefits here.
Note that this page, as with all such documents of mine,
will be suject to revision in language and presentation over time as I
work to make it more coherent and easier to assimiliate.
The substance, however, will not change; merely the language used to
present it.