Globalization, Manufacturing, and Solar Technology

[nerdgirl 0]

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My impression is that this country has a lack of focus with this unless the general population feels threatened. Maybe it's my perspective that didn't really live through this first-hand, but it seems like the American drive to be the first and leaders in everything tech-related from WW2 through the cold war has dissipated somewhat.

That’s a neat observation. I think I concur. Last March I was speaking with a Senate staffer from the Armed Services Committee about long-term funding for defense-related projects in a non-energy area. His comment was essentially that we could not afford to invest in basic research because we were fighting two wars.

Otoh, there are some examples, e.g., which I wrote about in Jun 2008, in which the market is not providing/will not pursue that there is drive for. In many cases it’s largely driven by the need for lighter energy/power supply technologies because the combat loads being carried by the average soldier and Marine keep going up (70-100lbs or more). (Longer study, with primary data, from OEF) And it’s damaging bodies. Power is heavy. Since the market won’t drive it, one finds programs to develop products including but not limited to fuel cells, (another example), piezoelectrics (generating a field by mechanical compression), nano-structured materials, polymeric-based rechargeable batteries, and mixed photovoltaics.

A few of those are basic research programs or incorporating basic research funded 5 or 10 years ago. A number of them are trying to leverage “low hanging fruit” using commercial-off-the-shelf(COTS) items. As I was thinking about your comments, if found an intersection with the thread on vulnerabilities in the Remotely Operated Video Enhanced Receiver (ROVER) system due to unencrypted video.

It will be interesting to see if some of that earlier drive can be resurrected in ARPA-E – the Dept of Energy’s mimic to DARPA, which was initially funded in the FY2007 budget, iirc.

Whole lot to think about. Thanks for the reply – spurred a bunch of thoughts.
/Marg

Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters.
Tibetan Buddhist saying

[riddler 0]

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Let's take San Diego.

Cost of a 2.4kW DC STC system (enough for an efficient home) - $14,800
CA buydown: $3100
Federal tax credit: $3500
Total cost to homeowner: $8200

Let's take Denver.

Approximate cost of a solar system to power my house: $60,000
Approximate rebates from state, local government (based on percentages, with a cap): ~$30,000
Total cost to homeowner: ~$30,000

These were real (approximate) numbers that reduced my neighbors electricity bill from about $70/month to about $6/month. They chose to install solar, I did not.

Someone is marking up cost A LOT. Having China become a solar producer is about the best scenario I can think of for breaking up what I perceive as "green price gouging" (the competition wasn't offering any better price).

Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

[billvon 3,118]

From your post:

Assuming a cost of 10.72 cents/kwhr average, that gives your neighbor a usage of about 22kwhr/day, which is about the national average. So to generate 90% of that you'd have to do 20kwhr/day. Denver averages 4.5 hour direct sunlight a day throughout the year, so that's a 4.4kW AC system (call it a 5kW DC system.) From Real Goods/Carlson (big installer out here) that would run you around $30K out of pocket, You'd get about $7K tax credit from the feds; not sure what the local buydown/incentive is. So it would be $23K minus any local incentives.

That's not too bad. But before trying to install such a system it would make a lot of sense to minimize loads. Most people can get their energy usage down by about a factor of 2 without too much pain/effort. (New refrig, insulation, new lights, hot water heater, pumps etc) That brings it down to a $11,500 system before local incentives. In general every $1 spent making your house more power efficient will save $5 on the final solar system you install.