Solar panels take more energy than they make than they ever will generate in their lifetimes.
"In other words, an electrical supply system based on today?s PV technologies cannot be termed an energy source, but rather a non-sustainable energy sink or a non-sustainable NET ENERGY LOSS."
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Cheers, T i m
Sory but harry can't manage to read that as a %20 is missing.
Not that harry will bother reading it.
Also we already know that all solar panels do is transfer the waste to china and use up their carbon credits. It doesn't help with reducing global CO2 at all.
I'm guessing that you needed (like me) to paste the last bit of that URL into your address bar. Your error message indicates that you didn't include a space between 'Energy' and 'Invested'.
new shorter URL
I did. You would have though he could have posted a shortened URL eh. ;-(
I didn't, well spotted, cheers. ;-)
I have always carried the thought that 'Solar panels generally don't generate the energy they took to produce in the first place' (suggesting they were a net loss from a worldly energy POV) but I see how they can be of use where you wouldn't normally have any power or to fleece other electricity consumers via FIT thefts as a form of personal income. ;-(
One of my neighbours (on the whole a 'good egg') who was talked into fitting a 4kW Solar PV system and when he first told me he had done so it was very obvious from his change of tone that he didn't realise who was paying for it for him. I'm not sure he would have gone ahead had he known.
Cheers, T i m
In article , T i m writes
+1
You are missing the point... they are not intended to generate energy, they are supposed to generate revenue from subsidies!
Not according to the watermelons.
They are really really gonna save the world!
I sometimes think the idea is to subsidise the early adopters in the hope that the technology will get better; but surely there's only so much energy to be had from photons?
If the technology ever gets good enough, ie cheap enough, every roof could be a pv generator, and that's a lot of photons. But I don't see what paying for existing technology really gets us nearer that point. If things were c lose it would, but it's far far away.
NT
Doesn't mean it would be cost effective. You might be able to get closer to the theoretical limit with exotic materials, but that would likely be expensive. And whatever you do, you get nothing at night, not a lot in winter, and sod-all in bad weather.
So it needs backup. Which means that, as usual, you will be building two power stations to get the output of one.
Build nuclear and stop pissing about.
I believe the same is true of a coal fired power station. By the time they take in demolition costs, pollution and health.
And as they still don't know how to decommission a nuclear power station and dispose of the waste, no estimation can be made.
Decommissioning costs are always handily overlooked. Nobodies ever done it. They just store the "hot" bits away and forget about them.
Coal is a finite (and polluting) fuel. Sunlight is forever, can't be cut off and is non-polluting.
that works
Harvesting it is polluting. The equipment isn't made from thin air, and a vast amount would be needed to replace coal, plus more vast amounts of environmental damage to store the power overnight. There's no free lunch.
NT
Belief is not the same as knowledge.
Nonsense. They are already decommissioning.
But tons of it still around plus the Americans have so much gas they're even prepared to export it. Tons of uranium and thorium too
And when the sun isn't shining? Oh yes along comes the battery fairy and saves all the daylight.
Have you any evidence to back up that belief?
How much energy do each of those consume?
Repeating an untruth won't make it any more true.
That is the great thing about nuclear waste, if you store it, it will, over time, decommission itself.
Harvesting the sunlight is potentially very polluting. Making PV cells involves the use of toxic chemicals and a very potent greenhouse gas. The biggest manufacturer of PV cells is China and they do not have a good record of pollution control in their manufacture.
There is one of the problems - for the type of panels currently being used we are already at 80% of the theoretical maximum efficiency... so there is not much more fruit to be had from that tree.
Then to make the collected energy actually truly useful, you need to factor in storage of it as well. Its a safe under estimate that would more than double the cost (in both energy input and financial terms).
True of the sunlight, but not of the solar panels.
It may be obvious but not to an NHS energy expert it isn't.
Harry doesn't have a clue about nuclear as he constantly shows. However he knows more about nuclear than anything else.
Combine slow glass with PV?
More seriously, if the PV material were a substitute for other roofing material, you might at least save the cost (and energy and material input) of the slates/tiles/zinc/whatever else would otherwise be used.
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