The local potato merchant will sell me a 25kg bag for =A36. I reckon in
1 m^2 you would get at the best 12 plants, so that works out at 5kg per plant. I think not. Your selling is about as imaginative as the PV panel man.Rob
All right. Make it asparagus then. Or something that carries a higher price than tatties. :-)
Plant in row spacing of 12" and 24" between rows to get a decent yield gives about 6 plants/sq m.
Presumably the OP is also using retail supermarket prices of about =A31.25/kg for his =A315 of spuds. 2kg/plant is good but not exceptional= .
Personally I don't think photo voltaics are worth it, very capital intensive and ineffecient at converting the available energy into useable energy. Even with two supplies and selling everything produced to the grid at 40p/unit and buying back at 10p is only =A3100/year "profit", assuming that, on average, the panels can generate 1 unit/day.
Potato-solar is surely better
NT
I thought the problem with invertors was that they were unobtainable.
They are, IIRC, about 100 times more efficient than plants. Farming, eh? Even less efficeient than PV. And PV at least gives you 'leccy straight off the bat.
#Paul
20 times.
which isn't a lot of use when you wanted diesel:-)
Thanks guys.
All comments noted and passed on
tim
'leccy is difficult to store in any meaningful quantity. Oh and how much CO2 is released and energy consumed to make PV cells? Are they actually energy positive in the UK?
The energy return is really a red herring. Money return is what counts, its not as if we're short of energy.
NT
Probably about as much as the bloody windmills ... :-)
Arfa
We wouldn't be if they built some more nuclear generation plants, but as long as we are generating electricity from gas and oil and coal, we're gonna keep getting shorter of it, aren't we ? I don't happen to believe that all of these alternative power generation technologies are worth a jot in the grand scheme of things. And ones for the home are more for green conscience salving. I can just about live with benefits from using the heat energy of the sun. Given time, you might actually be able to win a few quid with a reduction in fuel costs for heating your water, but generating a few watts of electricity when you least need it, at a huge capital outlay, with complex electronic engineering involved - the manufacturing and shipping around the world of which all has its own energy budget - seems to me to make no sense, except to be able to tell people that you are doing your bit to 'save the planet' ...
Arfa
Of course, heat pumps depend on large amounts of (grid provided) electricity. I seem to recall something like 1/4 to 1/3 of the total overall heat energy produced by a heat pump needs to be provided with electricity to power it.
Given the state of our generating infrastructure in this country I would not want to be dependent on relatively cheap (and available!) electricity for my heating in the medium and long term.
Over all users the middle of the day is not when it is least needed, that comment only applies to domestic users.
Large scale solar generation for commercial use makes sense in terms of it being generated at the time that it is actually needed, though of course its viability depends upon the costs involved (which I suspect will come down eventually).
tim
Piers Finlayson wibbled on Monday 05 July 2010 09:02
I was talking to an air-con engineer last Saturday. He was saying that, according to the contact he's had with manufacturers and various seminars, that the big push is to get air source pumps into a viable state as it is well recognised that ground source is too expensive and/or difficult for the majority to adopt.
Apparently, they have air source producing useful output at air temperatures slightly below freezing and producing useful temperatures on the output side, so as always the effort is to make it viable commercially.
It sounded potentially quite promising. Not sure if it's going to be a matter of years or a decade, but watch this space...
Given that air source heat pumps are routinely installed in the USA, I don't really understand what the issue is.
Huge wibbled on Monday 05 July 2010 10:32
Which bits of the USA though? Cold northern areas or generally warmer southern climes?
Good point. I only have direct experience of my Mother's house, which was (she now lives in a retirement community) in Pennsylvania. Much colder than the UK in the winter and much, much hotter in the summer. The heat pump ran both the heating and air-con. All the houses on the estate she lived on had them - the only energy source was electricity. When it was substantially below freezing, she had to switch to pure resistive heating, since the heat pump would ice up.
They are not, not in this country anyway.
Nuclear is the only sane option at the moment.
Solar has a lot to offer in hot desert places.
Just as geothernmal and hydrolelectric work well where Natuer favours them.
Totally agree.
You cant actually. The UK as a whole ceased to be cost effectively able to support its population on pure solar radiation 400 years ago. At a population of 2-5 million, its possible.
At a population of 60M+ its not
This is correct. 99% of the eco greenwash stuff is predicated on the assumption that we HAVE to use sunlight in some form to generate power. Not that we have to get rid of carbon pollution.
If you take the latter view, what ,makes sense is nuclear, nuclear, nuclear.
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