Another one of those “drawing hand on whiteboard” videos that seem so popular.
It’s not the best one I’ve seen, but has some really good information on what is coming in the rooftop solar sector. That is – technological earthquake on the scale of the internet.
Ready or not.
I’d say that California is leading this revolution and it’s past time that it caught on in the USA.
Southerner James Earl Carter saw the light 35 yrs ago but Northerner Ronald Wilson Reagan didn’t think to look up when pondering America’s energy woes despite 2 terms as governor of the most progressive state in the Union.
This is, undoubtedly, a ‘good news’ story. However, one question remains. The manufacture of solar panels is highly dependent on oil. How are we going to divert our dwindling amounts of oil away from heating and transport and ensure that we build the millions of panels we will need?
Sent from my iPhone
Great message, but that hand jittering around just drove me nuts and made it unwatchable – suggest the producer make another without any annoying gimmicks…
Muting the jittery music helps.
Yes! Huge surplus of PV Solar panels and the price of them has crashed, so it should now be economic for a massive increase in rooftop solar.
In the UK we are suddenly seeing large scale ‘solar farms’ being proposed – sadly on greenfield sites including good agricultural land or great wildlife areas which will be damaged. This seems stupid – why not shift the same investment to lots of small scale projects on rooftops? Possibly it is the large utility companies wanting to keep control of power generation, desperately afraid of consumers generating their own.
Could PV panels be incorporated into roof-tiles? Would make it very easy to incorporate into new-build.
I’ve long thought one simple move could be to make it mandatory for all roofing tiles to be solar power collectors. Of course that idea would never fly because it conflicts with this ‘free market’ thing (you know, the one that pretends that oil and other resources are infinite).
Actually Peter, 3D printing is the Next Big Thing on the scale of the Net, in parallel with renewables of course…
In fact, you won’t need installers… just raw materials – just program a swarm of drones to 3D print or place and link lots of small panels on the roof, automatically tailored to the roof – they can be gathering, assembling, resting, recharging, in syncrony until done… That would be progress!
On the path of cheaper generation the next challenge is economical storage.
I export about half the electricity my PV’s generate to the grid and I am paid 8 cents for each kwh generated. I can’t use it all when the sun shines. Those who use my excess generated power pay 42 cents per kwh during the peak period after 2 pm. I pay this during peak periods when the panels aren’t generating. I’d rather keep my excess power for my use when the sun goes down.
Call me selfish!
Must be so damned satisfying.
That’s like driving a car and watching the fuel gauge go from E to F.
What nutter wouldn’t like that?
no, don’t tell me!
Storage? Talking to the tradies doing the measuring and quoting to replace my 1970ish kitchen it occurred to me that there are heaps of opportunities for small scale storage for non-daylight use. (While I was surveying all the small appliances that need accommodating.)
The biggest issue of course is solar hot water. I really miss my neverending supply of totally free hot water at my previous house – the tank was big enough to store a whole day or more’s worth of hot water.
I’m very tempted by the idea of “inefficient” hot water tanks being used as a form of battery. I’ve seen a couple of versions online of converters being used to supply power from domestic sized hot water tanks. I reckon that’s the first step, and if we were able to retrofit such systems to existing tanks we’d be well on the way. It would certainly buy some time while we come up with more sophisticated and/or efficient storage systems.
Now I’ve got rooftop solar for power, all I need is to replace the hotwater service with solar when the time comes and we’ll be laughing. It’ll be a much more viable proposition to go off grid in the suburbs with such a system – and a great boon in rural and remote regions.
Peter,
I love your terrifying work on climate change – and debunking the myths of fake skeptics. They should be gone by now, but they are not.
I also know that we have to switch from fossil fuels to something less unsustainable. I also know that you would have not one argument against dramatic decline in energy consumption.
But still, advocating “renewable energy revolution” is misleading at best, and giving false hope people at worst. Renewable energy yes, but it has to be always said that the world with renewable energy is a VERY different from the world, we know today. Electric cars or not.
Cheers,
Alex
Teckies,
What say you? Does GE have the product of the future here with this Graphene Super Capacitor? Or is this another curious lab experiment that won’t find a route to successful manufacturing?
http://tinyurl.com/alp5xvv
That’s very interesting and after the EEstor fiasco, it gives me hope.
But, I also grew up expecting to have a fusion-powered flying car 10 years ago so I’ve learned to be cautious about the Next Big Thing.
The best thing about this is what looks to be ease of manufacturing.
Make a SuperCap on your PC?? How cool is that!