Comment on Hooooooooooooooooooot

• angrystego@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  The nonchalant poetry of your reply made me look up and appreciate your username.

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• FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  These numbers change every year, but: solar panels on roofs don’t track so they’d be lucky to get 20%, average closer to 12%, efficiency and slowly degrade over a few years. Sun tracking panels can reach a maximum of around 40%, theoretically, but on average more like . You have to subtract the negative impact of creating and assembling the materials from it’s lifetime effectiveness, in Germany I believe Hydrogen Steel exists which is much greener than other types of smelting, or otherwise Aluminum is the higher grade material used for such things, and Photovoltaic Panels have a very specialized Glass in most cases that has to be exceptionally clear and strong. If the capacitance of the system is not enough to hold the produced power then an electrical failure will occur, so you must also include large commercial and industrial batteries.

  Meanwhile, a Heliostat (a Collection Tower and Mirror Array) out in the desert has a theoretical efficiency just below 70%. Furthermore, if the capacity of the grid fills up then the array can be disable by adjusting the mirrors and excess power can be stored for extremely long periods of time by utilizing molten salt beneath the tower.

  These efficiency numbers refer to how much of the heat energy from full spectrum light hitting the array is converted into electricity. Home panels are nice because you can put them on your home

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  • Turun@feddit.de ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Yeah, but PV is dirt cheap nowadays. Also

    degrade over a few years.

    If by “few” you mean like 30-50 then sure, they degrade. But it certainly beats anything with a spinning turbine. Or anything with moving parts really. PV is purely solid state physics, you can’t get more longevity than that.

    If the capacitance of the system is not enough to hold the produced power then an electrical failure will occur, so you must also include large commercial and industrial batteries

    That’s not true. You can also simply turn PV off. The inverters only run when they sense 50 Hz on their output terminals, it’s easy to have them turn off when it’s 50.2 instead. Basically all big powerplants follow that rule already, ordered by things like shutoff time etc.

    a Heliostat (a Collection Tower and Mirror Array) out in the desert

    Funny that you specified in the desert. The appeal of PV is not only that it’s cheap and easy, it also scales down to small investments and local power generation. If base load actually becomes a problem concentrated solar power will be relevant. But for now, slapping a few solar panels on your roof just makes sense.

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    • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      lmao your consumer grade photovoltaic panels will not last 50 years.

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      • Turun@feddit.de ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        The solar panels I just bought have a manufacturer warranty for 87% power output after 30 years.

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      • Heliumfart@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        My dad is still using the first 60w panel he bought in 1986, for 600$. Obvs added many more to his system, and who knows how efficient it is, but it does work, haven’t put a ampmeter on it though.

        Mind you it was made in the USA, probably better materials than nowadays my

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• skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  it’s both, but i’m not sure if these large solar concentrators (ivanpah or these things in spain) are more efficient than current pv panels

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  • agressivelyPassive@feddit.de ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I mean, if they’re dramatically cheaper, they don’t have to be efficient.

    That being said, solar cells get around 20% efficiency, steam generators maybe 50% on a good day, subtract the reflection, collection and storage inefficiencies and you might get roughly in the same ballpark as solar cells.

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    • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Non-tracking solar panels are closer to 12% actual efficiency, 20% would be a theoretical efficiency. I only mention this because you used an actual efficiency estimate for the steam generator but not the solar panel.

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      • agressivelyPassive@feddit.de ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        That’s because I’m so smart I completely ignored that the sun moves around during the day.

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