The latest solar power 'big thing'

[Chmee]

As a Niven fan, I couldn't help but link you to something that combines solar power with 'sunflowers' (Ringworld readers will know whereof I speak):

The Dotcom King and the Rooftop Solar Revolution

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

As a Niven fan, I couldn't help but link you to something that combines solar power with 'sunflowers' (Ringworld readers will know whereof I speak):

The Dotcom King and the Rooftop Solar Revolution

Hey, it's the Solar Death Ray put to constructive use!

[DrkHelmet]

\
Hey, it's the Solar Death Ray put to constructive use!

I personally like the solar ray of death better. That would be more fun to play with than a silly power generating facility . That link is going in my forums.

[aerius]

From the article:

The overhead assembly also holds four high-efficiency PV wafers that convert more than 20 percent of incoming light into electricity - half again more than standard panels - for a peak output of 1 kilowatt-hour per sunny Los Angeles day.

1 kilowatt-hour a day. That is a truly piffling amount of energy, it'll keep a 100W lightbulb lit for 10 hours or the stove for about 10-20 minutes depending on whether I have 1 or 2 burners going.

I don't know how much this thing costs, but it's gonna take decades to break even, if ever. One kWh/day at 10 cents per, that's $36.50 a year in saved electricity, assuming that every single day is nice & sunny. More realistically you're looking at 10-20 bucks a year. Feasibility of this is laughable.

[Chmee]

From the article:

The overhead assembly also holds four high-efficiency PV wafers that convert more than 20 percent of incoming light into electricity - half again more than standard panels - for a peak output of 1 kilowatt-hour per sunny Los Angeles day.

1 kilowatt-hour a day. That is a truly piffling amount of energy, it'll keep a 100W lightbulb lit for 10 hours or the stove for about 10-20 minutes depending on whether I have 1 or 2 burners going.

I don't know how much this thing costs, but it's gonna take decades to break even, if ever. One kWh/day at 10 cents per, that's $36.50 a year in saved electricity, assuming that every single day is nice & sunny. More realistically you're looking at 10-20 bucks a year. Feasibility of this is laughable.

Yeah, I found that number highly suspect in comparison to some of the other numbers tossed around in the article ... but remember that output is per sunflower, and the number of sunflowers you can deploy at a site is simply a function of how much unused roof space you have. Their example of 750 units on top of a 35,000 sq. ft. light-manufacturing rooftop to produce 90% of its electrical needs for an investment of a quarter-million dollars (paying back their investment in 4-5 years at current electricity prices) seemed much more salient.

[aerius]

Their numbers are really not adding up.

Some buildings offer as much as 800,000 square feet, big enough for 20,000 Sunflowers, or half a megawatt of peak generating capacity

Which would imply that each unit generates a staggering 25 watts! Given say, 10 hours of peak sunshine (highly optimistic & unrealistic) that's a mere 0.25kWh/day.

Then you go back to the costs, and it works out to a bit over $300 per unit, let's call it 300. At 10 cents/kWh, that's 2.5 cents/unit/day, or $9.13/unit/year. So breakeven in a unrealistic best case scenerio is almost 33 years. Realistically, I'd say 50 years.

Gets worse & worse the more I look at the numbers.

[Chmee]

Their numbers are really not adding up.

Some buildings offer as much as 800,000 square feet, big enough for 20,000 Sunflowers, or half a megawatt of peak generating capacity

Which would imply that each unit generates a staggering 25 watts! Given say, 10 hours of peak sunshine (highly optimistic & unrealistic) that's a mere 0.25kWh/day.

Then you go back to the costs, and it works out to a bit over $300 per unit, let's call it 300. At 10 cents/kWh, that's 2.5 cents/unit/day, or $9.13/unit/year. So breakeven in a unrealistic best case scenerio is almost 33 years. Realistically, I'd say 50 years.

Gets worse & worse the more I look at the numbers.

Like I said, the numbers cited in the article aren't internally consistent (imagine that, in science reporting, what a shock ... not) so I'm not taking any of them too seriously, just looking at the concept as another interesting alternative being pursued for commercial development and to keep an eye on.