Solar cells down to details...

[Chris Smith]

You left out many things here because you didn’t work at any chrome plant. <p>Maintenance of 14 acres, filtration, water purifiers, Water treatment plant [in the millions] water De-Ion-izer plants and equipment, corrosion to all the equipment and replacement costs, million gallon water usage a month, steam boilers, DC generators, SCR banks, several miles of steam pipes and erosion, [replaced weekly by the furlong], several miles of assembly lines, staff, Titanium parts to resist corrosion and contamination, tens of thousands of gallons of Acids and speciality chemmicals, R&D department, fifty plastic injection molding machines, and Im sure Id run out of paper listing all the components needed, But glass, even pure glass, in high production is the same as anything else, dirt cheap to produce.

[Will]

The prime quality of this thread is it's entertainment value. One of the amusing parts of it is the way various people seem to use the terms Watts and Watt-hours interchangeably. The extension of that is an incomprehensible unit of Watts per hour. If I read that some value is 10 Watts/hour then I would expect it to be 10 Watts after one Hour, 20 Watts after two hours, 30 Watts after three hours etc etc - clearly impracticable. In fact a Watt is a unit of power and power is the RATE of doing/consuming/generating work/ENERGY.
A Watt-hour is a unit of energy i.e. 3.6 kilo-Joules. It is easy to see that you could charge someone for a Watt-hopur or a kilo.Watt.hour but how could you charge them for a Watt per hour ?. One way you could charge someone per Watt would, of course be the capital cost of a generating unit per Watt. So Chris outlines what seems to me (Without any detailed knowledge of solar energy practice) a reasonable
proposition of 40 cents per Watt - Which I assume to mean capital cost of a generating facility. $40 cents/Watt is $400/kW. Financed at 7% for 10 years would cost $57/year. If the unit produced 1.0 kW (Power)8 hours per day for one year that would be 2920 kWh (Energy) per year thus the add-on cost per kWh 57/2920 = $0.01952 - close to 2.0 Cents/kWh on a 10 year payback (Or 5.2 Cents/kWh on a three year payback) I don't see too much wrong with that. Coal fired power plant cost the order of $500/kW, Nuc Plants $2,500/kWh so $400/kW doesn't seem to far out to me !
Chris's foreign critic, who, buy his reference to our president, has the odor of a Clinton fan, reads his 40 cents/kW as 40 cents/kWh and goes to town on him. Keep up the good work guys.

[ian]

Will, it seems you've done about as much research as Chris does, which is close to 0. I'm not going to go over it again for another fool.

[ian]

Ok Will, here's a better plan just for the idiots like you and Chris that do no research at all. <p>Install a 10kWH system at .40 per kW for a total of $4,000. Get the New York state rebate of $4.00
per watt for a total of $40,000. Pay off the system and invest the $36,000 surplus in your retirement plan.<p>How's that for idiot research?

[Will]

I really didn't want to get into to this but now that I've been described as both a fool and an idiot, perhaps it's worth a little more effort - not to educate you but to amuse my contemporaries. You seem to think you are big on research - unfortunately you seem not to be in possession of either the English to describe it, nor the engineering knowledge to evaluate it. What the hell is a 10kWH generator ? Do you mean one which generates 10kWh per hour ? i.e. a 10 kW generator ? You don't even seem to be able to write kWH correctly - the 'h' is not capitalised - it's written as kWh. Let's just suppose that you are describing a 10 kW generator - At $0.40 per kW I'll take as many as you can build - so I imagine would Chris - his costs one thousand times as much as yours. At $0.40 per kW the cost of the 10 kW genny is $4.00 not $4,000 - If I could then get the $40,000 rebate from the NY govt I could put $40,000 minus $4.00 = $39,996.00 in my pocket. I could become a billionaire in a cuople of months. As might be indicated by your English and engineering knowledge, your math seems to be suspect as well !
You get full marks for your English in your description of your effort i.e. 'Idiot's Research'
Your latter contribution brings to mind the para-phrased words of the Scottish bard, Robert Burns who posed the question " Is it better to remain silent and be thought a fool ? - Or to speak up and dispel all doubt ? "

[ian]

Will, THAT'S YOUR BEST EFFORT???????
Quit while you're ahead.
Both you and Chris are mixing up kWH and kW, not I!
A solar installation is in the range of $8.00 per watt, not .40 per watt, hence the $4.00 per watt rebate from NY.
With the additional info I've already supplied numerous times, which you haven't read, of the kWH generated over a year which is far less than your retarded estimate. Please read the other thread on estimates based on the angles of the sun and the "peak" values of a solar panel.<p>You end up with .40 per kWH.<p>There I go again, doing research for idiots who won't do it themselves.
I'll debate with you if you put together a better argument than Chris, but if you use idiotic numbers(which have been refuted numerous times) be prepared for more (well deserved)insults.

[Chris Smith]

And the infighting and myths continue. <p>Prices, excuses, reasons for not stepping up to the plate, etc etc, etc. <p>No focus on how to get started?<p>Solar, and the production of solar power frees up the need to import oil, to start wars for oil, or listen to politicians lie about energy. <p>The fact that so many drop the ball here, just to focus on chicken little, is the real story behind why we are paying three dollars per gallon, and are expected to pay even more in the future. <p>Heads lost in a dark orifice? <p>Cat fights, should remain in the girls locker room, not in science or physics debates.<p>And my “no research” in the last 30 years, accounts for more than all your myths presented here in the last weeks combined. <p>I wish half of you took the time to get you degree before you talked out your back side here,... as if a quick goggle search could possibly compare to a actual college degree.<p>[ May 12, 2005: Message edited by: Chris Smith ]</p>