Spiritofireland.org - suggests energy independence in five years and much more

[fiannafailure]

It's like banging my head against a brick wall. I've laid out the economics, I've laid out the physics, I've laid out the available resource in Ireland.

If the Irish really want to be at the cutting edge then here it is. But the Irish idea of the cutting edge is to arrive 10 years later than everyone else - like say Denmark - and then try to copy them when it seems safe and congratulate themselves on their grand imaginations. The Danes are already making their money because they battered on ahead more than a decade ago.

Reminds me of the boardwalk down the side of the Liffey. When it was opened it was launched with a flourish of aldermanly mutual self-congratulaion as if it was the greatest act of engineering since the Fourth Bridge.
I remember once being beside a canal in Amsterdam where a couple of hundred metres of roadworks were going on. The Dutch answer to this block to their traffic flow was to build a temporary structure out along the side of the wall of the canal and over the water which was capable of taking cars and trucks. When the roadworks were to finish after a couple of months they would take it down and carry on as before.

Still I know of at least one team in Kevin Street working at the cutting edge of solar, so there's something.

And I have explained the energy economics to you, I also explained the practical difficulties of wiring them all together and further explained the instantaneous demand problems.

Raising the efficiency of solar cells is only part of the solution, lets see some research on their practical installation and use.

[Civic_critic2]

You have explained that wiring a lot of panels together is in your view very difficult and that there'd somehow be an unmanageable amount of wires involved. You have explained this as if solar PV hasn't been around for 60 years and as if it hasn't been put together in large scale arrays of many MW, which it has.

You are speaking as if it isn't the case as we speak that one company can produce printed solar panels for $0.50 a watt, which at efficiencies of 10% works out at the equivalent of $90 per square metre for a 20% panel - that's 64 euros, this year. It is clear that with the incredible advances currently being made and with the refinement and synthesis of the best of these advances that solar is going to blow away everything over the coming 20 years. You don't seriously think wind is going to challenge it in terms of price, deployability, reliability and ease of use, especially given that every 1000 metres that way and thousand metres another way contain 250MW of capturable energy the length and breadth of the country.

This is the cutting edge. By all means investigate wind and it may indeed have a very good use to some extent but the real cutting edge, with the opportunities and the spoils which go with that, are in solar. And especially in the northern climes precisely because of its perceived lack of application, a perception that doesn't in fact hold up under scrutiny.

[Húrin]

Solar panels to date are far more expensive watt for watt than wind. Their manufacture requires more energy, and more rare metals. They cannot be made by individuals and small groups independently in the way that turbines can. Manufacturing must be centralised.

Said individuals cannot service many of the problems they may encounter. Thus it requires more specialisation, more expensive spare parts and thus it is not as sustainable as small/medium wind turbines.

I'm not against them but they aren't the only solution.

[fiannafailure]

You have explained that wiring a lot of panels together is in your view very difficult and that there'd somehow be an unmanageable amount of wires involved. You have explained this as if solar PV hasn't been around for 60 years and as if it hasn't been put together in large scale arrays of many MW, which it has.

And yet there are no new panel arrays being built or planned in the foreseeable future, all utility scale solar projects use vastly different technologies with effiencies many times that of PV panels, some of these systems intrinsically possess some storage capacity so they continue to produce electricity after the sun goes down.

And Ireland just does not have a solar resource big enough to take advantage of PV at its present stage of development, small low current uses such as signs and parking meters yes, houses and factories not yet and not for some time.

[fiannafailure]

Civic_Critic

I do not mean to be harsh, PV technology will play its part in the renewable mix, and the tech will develop into high power devices, just as transistor technology can now after nearly 80 years of development, do the high power work which up to recently still had to be done by valves in high power applications like TV transmitters and HVDC to AC converters, but it will take time and PV tech was in hibernation since the late 1970's.

Because the US government halted large scale research when OPEC had achieved the price increases they extorted and resumed supply.

[sparkey321]

Not sure where you're getting 1000 per watt from - you mean 1000 euros per watt? A number of thin film solar manufacturers are producing panels at around $0.85 per watt and one company has announced it can produce for $0.50 a watt and will be selling their panels at $1 a watt within a year.

A $1000 per watt was mentioned in one of your earlier posts and also in a number of the links you posted.

I usually think of these things in square metres - a 1 square metre panel costs anywhere from $150 to $500 or more depending on where you get them. This will be rated at around 160 watts. The retail price of solar PV is now between 3 and 4 dollars a watt, thin film PV is cheaper at around $1.70, soon to be $1. Wholesale price or buying the cells themselves directly from the manufacturers to construct your own panel is cheaper again.

On the ground at the equator a 1 square metre panel will, in ideal conditions, receive 1000 watts and will generally be rated at 160-180 watts, reflecting its 16%-18% efficiency.. In Ireland the average over the course of a year is 250 watts per square metre. Still plenty of energy - 250MW per square kilometre.

Lets pick an average of shall we say $300 per square meter.

1 square kilometer will generate in Ireland (according to your figures) on average 250Mw.

1 square kilometer = 1,000,000 square meters

so $300,000,000 for 250 Mw output or $1,200,000 per MW output which will only be available on an intermittent basis and in winter for a few hours a day.

Not thats a supply only price so you need to add installed costs, transformation costs etc.

At first glance it would not be mucvh more epencive that wind.

However

Wind though intermittent measures its load factor across 24 hours so its efficiency is averaged across a full 24 hour period. So when you say an area has a load factor of 30% then you will get across 12 months 0.3Mw output from each MW installed

Solar on the other hand is different.

Lets for one second abandon reality and assume that we can get 30% efficiency. BUT and its a big but this efficiency is only available when the sun in shining which in winter is approx 8 hours a day and in summer approx 17 hours (say an average of 12)

So the efficacy is 30% but only over 50% of the time so the efficiently is actually halved to 15%.

Now you are talking about 18% efficiencies so in really world 9% efficiencies. That's bad enough but in a country where we have only 25% of the energy potential that is available in equatorial climes its economic lunacy.

It's like banging my head against a brick wall. I've laid out the economics, I've laid out the physics, I've laid out the available resource in Ireland.

And I thank you for that but none of it added up.

You did however get me interested so I made a few calls to people who know a hell of allot more about solar than I do. Indeed a number of them work for manufacturers and they all told me the same thing. Large scale solar in Ireland is not going to happen not now and not for the foreseeable future. It make no economic sense.

They also told me that solar technology is moving so fast that it would be lunacy for any country to invest billions on large infrastructure that will be obsolete in 12 months.

Solar is still very much a developing technology and if we were to spend money it would be far far better spend in research rather than large scale installations.

[Civic_critic2]

I'm not talking about 2nd generation panels for $300 per square metre, I'm talking about 3rd generation panels for 10 - 30 euros per square metre. I'm not talking about today, I'm talking about the next 10 - 20 years. I'm not talking mainly about large scale infrastructural projects, I'm talking about what will be achieved by individuals and businesses, galvanised by public policy and law if we really want to accelerate this. Individuals and businesses can cover an area of 20 - 50 square kilometres in 5 years. That is every bit as realistic as a nation of 4 million building 90,000 houses in one year, and a lot more sensible.

I'm also talking about the area of research and development. This is the cutting edge. If the paddys want to be at the cutting edge, here it is. It doesn't require a lot of money comparatively to get on board this train and become a leader in some aspects of it. Harney spent 3 million on a website that never appeared on the web, 50 million on election machines that were never used, O'Donoghue spent the same amount of money in one day on a car as would employ a research student for a month. This is a great opportunity and the paddys are going to doze their way through it while following what everyone else is doing and congratulating themselves on their farsightedness (sic).

In short I'm talking about what's coming down the pipe and people should be aware of it.

[fiannafailure]

Spirit of Ireland as an organisation is one year old today, Happy Birthday to us.

Civic_critic, this may interest you, http://www.engineersireland.ie/secto...I_Students.pdf, your pet subject gets a mention.

[wombat]

Spirit of Ireland as an organisation is one year old today, Happy Birthday to us.
.

Happy birthday, any sign of a concrete proposal?
Regarding solar power, I was in Oz for Christmas where they have 12 hrs clear sunshine. I can't see solar being suitable for large scale use in Ireland. Wind we have, sunshine we lack.

[fiannafailure]

Happy birthday, any sign of a concrete proposal?
Regarding solar power, I was in Oz for Christmas where they have 12 hrs clear sunshine. I can't see solar being suitable for large scale use in Ireland. Wind we have, sunshine we lack.

wombat

Pay attention to the planning application column's from April or May onwards, the first clue's will be there.

First birthday, a lot done, a hell of a lot more to do.