> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I'd personally like to see more wide-
>> spread research/development/use of solar power, especially for things
>> like heating our homes in the winter. Oops, I forgot to include the
>> mantra from the petroleum industry on this: "Solar power is not
>> practical nor efficient." PAT]
> For what it's worth, many estimates are that it takes more energy to
> fuse silica to make solar panels than will be output by those panels
> as electricity over their expected service lifetimes, at sea level in
> most temperate climes.
Your estimates are both inaccurate and obsolete..
The amount of energy consumed in glass production is a small fraction of overall energy input ... ref page 3 of ...
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Next, lookup your area's climate/solar radiation data.
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I suggest starting out by changing two of the defaults: "2. Select a month" set to "Annual" "3. Select an instrument orientation" set to "Flat Plate Tilted South at Latitude"
From the map produced, one will see that most of the continental US, falls into 4 to 7 kWh/M^2/day categories. The number increases substantially if one uses some tracking technology.
As for payback ...
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"What is the Energy Payback for PV?"
(Note: Payback calc uses ~4.6kWh/m^2/day as a reference).
Additional links ...
EPT drops with mass production.
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"Energy payback time (EPT) = Eo/Eg"
However, what that analysis does ignore is that you cannot get more
> local -- that is, less transmission loss -- than the energy generation
> and consumption from the panels in the typical intertie solar setup.
> So, if the energy to make the panels is generated in, at least, a not
> terribly dirty way, and the panels aren't made far from where that
> power is generated, due to transmission losses solar panels in many
> locations are a serious net win.
In the future, please distribute more accurate information.
The world doesn't need more people adding to streams of dis-information being advertised as facts.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, ex----cuse me, won't you please? I am
_not_ in a position to validate everything which is submitted by readers here. Anyway, I always thought the main purpose of the internet was to spread dis-information. PAT]