Do Still Believe That Solar Energy Will Never Work?
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GE has announced plans to spend $600 million on a new solar factory
located in the Denver suburb of Aurora, Colorado. The factory, which
begins operations in 2012, will be capable of producing enough solar
panels per year to generate 400 megawatts of power, or enough energy to
power 80,000 homes. When completed, the factory will be bigger than 11
football fields – soon to be the largest factory of its kind in the U.S.
The business will also bring 355 jobs to Colorado plus 100 more positions at GE’s research facility in upstate New York.
The company is retrofitting and expanding an existing 200,000 sq.
foot former L’Oreal Worldwide warehouse, a project which will require a
$300 million investment. Over the next two years, GE will double the
building’s size.
Colorado is already the manufacturing site for GE Energy’s thin film solar pilot line,
a joint technology development between GE’s Global Research Center and
PrimeStar Solar, a company GE acquired in April. The new factory is
located near this smaller, 30 MW facility and a GE solar research
center. GE says the location will enable an accelerated start-up
schedule with production equipment installation beginning in January
2012.
The new factory will produce thin film solar panels made from cadium
telluride, which are cheaper than traditional crystalline silicon
panels. It’s the same technology as produced by First Solar, the largest
solar company in the world by market cap.
The panels are lighter, which helps ease installation. They’re also
large, which helps to lower the total system cost by reducing the amount
of racking and electrical components required. Shipments to
utilities and commercial customers will start in early 2013, according
to the annoucement.
GE’s plan for solar is similar to the one for its wind business,
a space the company entered in 2002 – that is, it plans to grow through
both technology and scale. GE now has more than 27 gigawatts of wind
and solar resources installed around the world.
GE believes in Solar Energy enough to invest in expanding their Factory. Soon
the Denver International Airport will be completely Solar. There are Solar cars
being made. Schools. Homes, Businesses, & Channel 7 (CBS) are already
in Colorado. There are a lot of these Solar Energy places in other states too.
Solar Energy and Wind Energy are already in use and they will become
the Energy Sources in the near future.
Next question is how long for the rest of the country to be able to get in on this? The thing you must realize it will be decades before we will no longer need oil as an energy source.......
What I have heard and read is the problems with relying on solar energy as the major source of energy for society's needs.
Solar energy on a small scale -- for individual homes, for small office buildings, and such -- has been around for a long time. In the 1960s, my family's businesses were building commercial buildings that used primarily solar heating. Some of those buildings are still in use today, but the solar factor is only one small part of the energy consumption in them. On my neighbor's farm, solar energy is just one of many energy sources being used.
The limitations of solar energy are
1.the need for huge, reliable means of saving that energy for use during non-productive times -- i.e, storage batteries, and the delivery of that power
2. the need for rare earth minerals to make the solar panels and the myriad objections to mining those minerals,
3. the costs of manufacturing
4. the costs to retrofit existing housing and other buildings for solar
5. the costs of building and orientation for new buildings that use solar energy efficiently
6. the ability of the power consumer to pay the increased costs of solar energy
7. the huge power requirements of manufacturers of other goods and the inability of solar providers to meet those requirements efficiently and affordably from solar energy.
etc.
Look into Nocera energy
- http://www.americanenergyinde...
I WANT CHEAP ENERGY NOW
I believe in Solar Energy and I am ready for cleaner energy sources.... and in this order. Contrary to what the Government is telling us, we have the largest oil and gas deposits in the World it is senseless not to be using them, because of their cost and the Government regulations that control their damage to our environment.
Solar and wind energy source technology is still in it's infancy, it is ugly, takes too much space and is not efficient enough to replace oil, gas and nuclear energy sources at this time. Should we continue to develope them? Yes, but by using the private sector without government subsidies.
While batteries have made significant gains, they still involve dangerous pollutants and often lead to more greenhouse gasses being produced than the final product saves.
Wake up and smell the coffee. Hydrocarbons won't disappear over night, but our energy requirements will not disappear at all. Just because a thing is possible, doesn't make it cost effective. The all electric solution means more conductive metals must be smelted. The environmental impact of mining and smelting is far more destructive than hydrocarbons. Tunnel vision in the early stages of development tends to ignore viable option prematurely.
Ben Franklin would simply say "Haste makes waste" in Poor Richards Almanac. Sage advice then. Sage advice, now.
PV's main problems are inefficiency in technology and less-than-ideal battery storage systems, thus PV is not price-competitive with the grid. Thus Government seeks to drive up the price for grid-power so far that it will render PV competitive. That's back assward, like all government "solutions".
My development also included passive solar for heating and cooling shown on
http://zelltree.net/solarsense/
Just joking for the most part of course. But part of the reason why it's not moving ahead as quickly as it could is because the industry to develop and produce solar energy would only be able to make money off it from the sale or maintenance of what converts the solar energy to a USABLE power source.
We are going to be oil based for at least another 40 yrs. In the meantime, drill baby drill.
There are new innovations in biofuels too; the only question being who will own these secrets and take them to market. And there are real secrets out there.
Some people tend to be miserable on this subject because of a hand full of high profile failures, but if people take a serious look at new ideas in this field and provide it serious backing, nothing will be able to stop it from taking off.
One problem I see is that the latest knowledge and the best solutions seem to always get sidelined for slightly older ideas and technology with more money backing them. I guess the big players don't want to pay for the new technology, they would rather capitalize on what they have to offer right now, then buy the new tech guys later for a 2nd round of sales and "we are the innovators" slogan brand advertising.
The main problem is that our government is bought and paid for.
Good government could foster the movement of these new innovations to market or develop it themselves (if urgent enough), but they owe favors to all the businessmen trying to sell off their ugly step daughter first before they pull out the beauty queens.