The Inconvenient Truth About Electric Vehicles

[rhino]

Exhaustive List of Legitimate Reasons to Implement Photovoltaics:

1. Because you want to.
2. Because there are no other options in a remote area or you want an emergency backup to reliable sources of electrical power.
3. Because your application is outside of our atmosphere and will reliably receive significant incident solar radiation (or radiation from another star).

 

[SheepDog4Life]

Exhaustive List of Legitimate Reasons to Implement Photovoltaics:

1. Because you want to.
2. Because there are no other options in a remote area or you want an emergency backup to reliable sources of electrical power.
3. Because your application is outside of our atmosphere and will reliably receive significant incident solar radiation (or radiation from another star).

It can also be a lucrative investment under the right conditions: high utility costs, net metering and decent average sunlight.

 

[Baditude]

Just a quick note. I am no expert by any means but when I went to Hawaii many of the residents are off grid because of the volcanic soil is near impossible to run utilities and electricity is from burning oil. That said most we talked to collected rain water, grow their own fruits / vegetables and have solar panels - all the lights in their house were LED. Weather was perfect though, constant slight breeze and temps around low to mid 80s so no AC or furnace was necessary. So my question is if you want out all your lighting etc for DC components is is still not affordable with Solar? Curious is all

 

[NKBJ]

It does matter, and it's not free.
If you state the sunshine is free, then you must also state that the fossil fuels are free.
The problem lies, in collection and distribution.
So, if I'm going to spend 3 times more on solar, than on the fossil fuels, it does matter.

That's nonsense. The case in point being discussed was an air powered car with solar panels on the roof to pump up a little air tank to get you home. So, oil doesn't land on the surface of the Earth unless you're Jed Clampett. We have a successful start-up on a dependable fusion power plant and nobody bothers to deploy collectors for the output. Shouldn't we have massive collector production to drive down the unit cost?

As concerns collection and distribution for large scale photo-voltaic (PV) power systems, the problem is basically that in order to dump PV derived into the existing grid then you pretty well dump all beneficial costs restructuring. To make PV work for you it needs to be local to you. That means decentralized power production and you know just how long that will be tolerated. Another matter of PV power is that it suffers from the same manufacturing restriction as hydrogen; the infrastructure is not there yet and the buggy whip manufacturers have lots of money and are lobbying to save their companies.

If we survive long enough as a species PV and hydrogen will be normal.
At present the financial arm twisting is being exerted by lobbyists to deprive you of the benefits.

 

[actaeon277]

That's nonsense. Oil doesn't land on the surface of the Earth unless you're Jed Clampett.
The case in point being discussed was an air powered car with solar panels on the roof to pump up a little air tank to get you home.

As concerns collection and distribution for large scale photo-voltaic (PV) power systems, the problem is basically that in order to dump PV derived into the existing grid then you pretty well dump all beneficial costs restructuring. To make PV work for you it needs to be local to you. That means decentralized power production and you know just how long that will be tolerated. Another matter of PV power is that it suffers from the same manufacturing restriction as hydrogen; the infrastructure is not there yet and the buggy whip manufacturers have lots of money and are lobbying to same their companies.

If we survive long enough as a species PV and hydrogen will be normal.

"Oil doesn't land..." doesn't matter. It is there. It is free. You have to collect/distribute it.
Sun/wind is there. It is free. You have to collect/distribute it.

There are times wind/solar makes sense.
But for the bulk of energy in this country, if you remove the government subsidies (from both), fossil fuels are cheaper.


I was responding earlier to "can use free sun shine".
Except it's not free. It is in the sense that it's shining.
But you still have to collect/distribute it.
Therefore... it... is... not... free.