There are a surprising number of solar energy facts that many people don’t consider when pondering over the possibility of installing some sort of solar capturing system. The long term benefits seem to be put to the wayside or forgotten over the short term financial considerations. At present in December of 2010 the cost to implement a system of electrical capture is in and around 6 dollars per watt. The average home in North America uses approximately 10,000 watts per day. Solar panels typically produce 200 watts for a rough square area of 36 inches by 48 inches. These are the roof solar panels you see on a home. So for a typical home the cost is well above what most people would pay to put a system in. As of today in North America an electrical solar panel system costs approximately 80,000 dollars to put together. This also assumes you have enough space to put up a 10kw system.
As for collecting solar energy heat instead of electrical energy it has its own challenges with liquid heat transferences and using a liquid that won’t freeze in winter. The collection of heat energy for use in home heating is more cost effective than electrical collection for the moment. But as time progresses technological advancements in solar cell designs verses efficiencies should prevail. We are at a time in the evolution of solar energy that is similar to what the computer age went through over about 30 years. From very basic computers that were large, bulky, and costly, to very powerful computers, compact and affordable.
When considering the implementation of an electrical system think about the overall impact of what the system will create. The displacement of some other more polluting method of energy is removed from your use. Doing this on a large scale will have enormously positive impact on the environment for many generations. Allowing the cost of implementation to influence your decision to install solar equipment is a short term view. Governments around the world are realizing this fact and are implementing some sort of grant or incentive to help their citizens make the right decisions. For electrical energy there is the microfit program. A great example of this is the Ontario Solar microfit program which is extremely successful thus far.
Solar energy is of course reliant on the sun. This fact alone means the source is not going to disappear any time soon. It can be concluded that solar energy is very reliable as a source to choose to capture, unlike oil or other forms of depleting sources. Solar capturing systems are also fairly reliable. In particular the electrical solar cell has an indefinite life span because it is a semiconductor. Presently the solar cell of today is about 14 % efficient. This efficiency will rise over time and be the main area that will bring down the cost of putting a system together. So far the economy of scale to produce these cells is beginning to have a greater impact by bringing down the price of a solar panel from over 50 dollars per watt to 6 dollars per watt.
At some point in the near future it will become more cost effective over time to implement photovoltaic systems verses the capture of heat. When this occurs the world will be in for a huge shift if energy implementation and those that are on top of the change will make large sums of money. Oil stocks will drop substantially as we shift to electric vehicles and electrical solar producing homes.
I find the opening paragraph somewhat misleading. The average US house may well use 10,000 Watt hours per day, or 10KWh. But you don’t need a 10KW system to make up that power usage unless you only intend to run it for one hour per day. A 4KW system on an unshaded south or west facing roof is perfectly capable of averaging more than 10KWH per day over the course of a year throughout most of the US. While Watts and Watt-hours are related, they are not interchangeable, and confusing them leads to poor decisions about system sizing and cost.
Certainly you are right as long as you employ batteries to store up the power. Point well taken. The idea at the writing of the article was to provide pricing for a full blown 10kw system which is the max for a microfit program in Ontario Canada. Up here because of the solar incentive program and feeding all generated power into the grid, we like to get the maximum number of solar panels we can on the roof up to 10kw. At 82 cents per kilowatt hour paid by the government it makes it well worth the effort.