Why doesn't every house have solar installed?

[lilhasselhoffer]

maybe someday we will paint houses side panels with this, and have solar roofs... interesting...

Mercedes is working on "solar paint" that could drastically reduce the need for charging

The company states that this groundbreaking solar paint is just five micrometers thick and weighs a mere 50 grams per square meter – practically weightless. Despite its...

www.techspot.com

isn't this just human stupidity though? we can predict hailstorms fairly easily 1-2 days in advance. therefore, when predicted, we should have "inflatable" protection domes erected in solar fields, like luxury cars have to protect from hailstorms.

work smarter not harder

You may not live in the United States. My experience with Germany was that after a year I had about a week of hot weather, and nothing required more than a fleece cold wise. On the other hand, in the states I've had days that start below freezing and get to balmy. For those in the Metric system, -10 to 19. Yes, that was actual temperature and not "feels like" temperature.

On a similar note, walk out onto a European street and you'll find everything occupied. Cars jammed in anywhere there's a few feet of space to park, and nowhere near enough covered parking. Imagine having to have a cover for all of those cars...and now imagine anything from a cubic centimeter to a baseball/softball. That's the kind of hail you can get in places like Texas. Now imagine not only having to carry thick enough protection that will prevent thousands of softballs being fast pitched at your cars, but also the hundreds of square feet covering your home...which might have 2-3 people in it. The logistics of this are basically akin to asking why we don't just build huge plastic domes around all of our cities, so that we can build one central efficient climate control and protection system to manage rainfall, temperature, and weather events. It's fundamentally saying it's trivial to design a rocket capable of bringing live passengers to Mars because humans have known about fire for thousands of years...


Regarding the predictions...maybe you don't get that either. Imagine a hailstorm that's capable of covering three nations in Europe, and you'll understand. This week a rush of arctic air, or polar vortex, is being sucked into the US. It's supposed to drop us well below seasonal temperatures in the Ohio river valley...400 miles south of any real Canadian town. In non-freedom units, that's a 650 km weather front that can easily spawn hail because cool dry air is meeting up with warm moist air, and the front itself will at one point stretch from Minnesota to Ohio. This is regularly what weather we get...whereas my year in Germany literally had three weather types. Cool and dry, cool and rainy, warm and sunny. The statement about requiring us to work smarter is...it's just stupid. Not malicious stupid, but stupid borne of an ignorance that doesn't understand the scale of thing.


Heck, let me have some fun with you. I live in the Eastern part of my county. City-county-state in ascending size, with state being about even with EU country. I drove from the east to almost the west, about 5 miles was at 30 mph, with the rest at about 55 mph. It took more than 2 hours. If you were to predict weather for the counties in my state you'd have 100, with 551 municipalities. I've traveled across my state on highways in about 13 total hours, northeast to western central. I've watched as some areas in the same city get hail, rain, and no precipitation at all... Your solution is then to basically bubble wrap everything nearly permanently...which will prevent generation of solar energy, in response to the mechanical issues with having large flat panels exposed to the sun...which I cannot wrap my head around. I'm simply brought back to my original response. Not every house is sensible to festoon in solar panels...and they have drawbacks. Just like electric cars, there absolutely are uses for them...but they are not a 100% solution for everyone everywhere. To pretend that is to fundamentally misunderstand that there are people in situations other than yours...and blanket statements are why people are angry with the green tech rhetoric. Green tech being sold as green guilt is pretty crappy.

 

[Space Lynx]

Cars jammed in anywhere there's a few feet of space to park, and nowhere near enough covered parking. Imagine having to have a cover for all of those cars...and now imagine anything from a cubic centimeter to a baseball/softball.

I specifically meant solar panel farms (my apologies for not making that clear with this particular comment) it would be very easy to logistically plan a covering for those in some way. Hell, you could technically even just take two giant tractors, drag a huge hard plastic "temporary garage" over the entire solar field.

How to protect the panels elsewhere, yeah I have no idea. I do know some Corvette cars have the bubble thingy though.

 

[Endymio]

no, the wheels would just be for the deployment process is what i meant.

they would be grounded / quick install procedure before inflation procedure

Do a quick cost analysis on the hundreds of people you would require to be continually on call to wheel-out and ground all these units at a moment's notice.

Hell, you could technically even just take two giant tractors, drag a huge hard plastic "temporary garage" over the entire solar field.

Again: calculate the strain of a gale-force wind on a structure this size. Plus, hail in the US can easily shatter a car windshield, so your "plastic garage" would need to be more than thin plastic. And in a crowded area -- where do you put it when it's not in use? A thin rolled-up tarp isn't going to be anywhere near enough protection.

People have thought about these issues for years. They're not being implemented because of practical reasons, not just sheer blind inattention.

 

[Space Lynx]

Do a quick cost analysis on the hundreds of people you would require to be continually on call to wheel-out and ground all these units at a moment's notice.

Again: calculate the strain of a gale-force wind on a structure this size. Plus, hail in the US can easily shatter a car windshield, so your "plastic garage" would need to be more than thin plastic. And in a crowded area -- where do you put it when it's not in use? A thin rolled-up tarp isn't going to be anywhere near enough protection.

People have thought about these issues for years. They're not being implemented because of practical reasons, not just sheer blind inattention.

I'm not saying my answer is the right one, but I bet money there are engineers and creative people out there that could figure out a cost effective way of protecting the solar panels, perhaps not even just in solar farms.

For example, another idea could be designing "snap on" thick hard plastic shields that will snap on to each panel, it would take lets say 15-45 seconds to snap on to each panel - depending how innovative the snap on design is, true you would need the labor, or just get a few friends together and buy them dinner eh

 

[lilhasselhoffer]

So...quick back of the hand math. Apple has 100 acre solar farms in North Carolina. An acre is 43560 square feet. If we assume that each of the rows is spaced regularly, and that the acreage is a big square, the footage would be 4356000 square feet. Let's say an individual solar panel is about 10 square feet of coverage. This is really rough math so it's easy, but you have 435600 panels. Calculate about 80% coverage...because I have to ballpark a figure for inefficient packing and infrastructure...so 348,480 panels to cover.

Holy crap...let's assume some magic and only need 30 seconds per panel to cover them. 348480*30 = 10454400 seconds = 2904 hours. The average work week is 40 hours...so with a 10 person team it'd only take 7.26 weeks of time to cover up every single panel. Assume leaving them on for a day, and then another 7.26 weeks to remove all of them. So...just shy of 2 months of warning would be needed to cover that one 10 acre farm. The math is...just mind boggling.


Now...the 7.26 weeks is unforgiveable, but what about the energy requirements. It's moving mass...so the amount of mass would be great to know. We start by approximating the square footage of panels, different from the area covered because the panels are not simply lain flat on the ground. 42 million kwh is what Apple claims, and google estimates that at 186,000,000 square feet of panel coverage. Let's assume that you use the equivalent of about 10 layers of corrugated plastic to minimize waste, but absorb enough kinetic energy from the hail. It's a gross estimate, but the goal is minimum weight and thick enough only to prevent catastrophic damage.
Plastic corrugated sheets are about 450 grams a square meter, or 0.092 pounds per square foot. 10 of those would be .92 pounds per square foot, or 171,120,000 total pounds of plastic. That's about 20,504,698 gallons of water equivalent....or about 19,450 elephants of plastic. Considering they have two fields in North Carolina, that's basically the mass of the remaining Asian elephants on the entire planet being wheeled out to cover a solar farm. Let's assume that it has a cost of about 100 cents per pound (which is insanely low), the cost of the protective covers is $171,120,000... If we estimate high and say that it's about $9 per square foot of panel, then to net save money the covering would have to prevent replacement of 19,013 square feet of solar panels. If you factor in the power losses from 7.4 weeks of down time average per panel, the astronomical cost of the protection, and what you have to save, this idea become unfathomably bad investments of resource.


FYI, this is the same argument I made earlier about personal protection. It's an extension of the apparent anti-green sentiment being more green overall, and why I recommend thought before adopting apparently good things. Green guilt is a real thing...but we have to be good enough to identify it and not fail our future generations by confusing the doing of what is right with actually doing what is best.

 

[Space Lynx]

So...quick back of the hand math. Apple has 100 acre solar farms in North Carolina. An acre is 43560 square feet. If we assume that each of the rows is spaced regularly, and that the acreage is a big square, the footage would be 4356000 square feet. Let's say an individual solar panel is about 10 square feet of coverage. This is really rough math so it's easy, but you have 435600 panels. Calculate about 80% coverage...because I have to ballpark a figure for inefficient packing and infrastructure...so 348,480 panels to cover.

Holy crap...let's assume some magic and only need 30 seconds per panel to cover them. 348480*30 = 10454400 seconds = 2904 hours. The average work week is 40 hours...so with a 10 person team it'd only take 7.26 weeks of time to cover up every single panel. Assume leaving them on for a day, and then another 7.26 weeks to remove all of them. So...just shy of 2 months of warning would be needed to cover that one 10 acre farm. The math is...just mind boggling.


Now...the 7.26 weeks is unforgiveable, but what about the energy requirements. It's moving mass...so the amount of mass would be great to know. We start by approximating the square footage of panels, different from the area covered because the panels are not simply lain flat on the ground. 42 million kwh is what Apple claims, and google estimates that at 186,000,000 square feet of panel coverage. Let's assume that you use the equivalent of about 10 layers of corrugated plastic to minimize waste, but absorb enough kinetic energy from the hail. It's a gross estimate, but the goal is minimum weight and thick enough only to prevent catastrophic damage.
Plastic corrugated sheets are about 450 grams a square meter, or 0.092 pounds per square foot. 10 of those would be .92 pounds per square foot, or 171,120,000 total pounds of plastic. That's about 20,504,698 gallons of water equivalent....or about 19,450 elephants of plastic. Considering they have two fields in North Carolina, that's basically the mass of the remaining Asian elephants on the entire planet being wheeled out to cover a solar farm. Let's assume that it has a cost of about 100 cents per pound (which is insanely low), the cost of the protective covers is $171,120,000... If we estimate high and say that it's about $9 per square foot of panel, then to net save money the covering would have to prevent replacement of 19,013 square feet of solar panels. If you factor in the power losses from 7.4 weeks of down time average per panel, the astronomical cost of the protection, and what you have to save, this idea become unfathomably bad investments of resource.


FYI, this is the same argument I made earlier about personal protection. It's an extension of the apparent anti-green sentiment being more green overall, and why I recommend thought before adopting apparently good things. Green guilt is a real thing...but we have to be good enough to identify it and not fail our future generations by confusing the doing of what is right with actually doing what is best.

I actually do appreciate you doing the math, but you are still taking my points out of context. A) it was just an idea B) more creative engineers could figure out something I am sure of it C) if you spent more time being positive instead of negative you might actually change the world because you do come across as very smart to me D) the snap on with hard plastic shields idea is still not a bad idea for smaller solar farms or individuals. Also, bigger solar farms are probably all laid out symmetrically, so you might be able to make bigger "snap on" shields that cover lets say 24 solar panels per snap, and Apple does have a crap ton of employees, perhaps they could make it mandatory training in rare storms that they are all trained to do the snap on - it would literally take 1 hour with the kind of manpower they have access to and can afford, or 0 dollars if they just add it to job descriptions of new hires, its literally not that hard of work to walk around and play lego snap on game.

 

[Shrek]

there are engineers and creative people out there that could figure out a cost effective way of protecting the solar panels

Would it not be enough to turn the arrays vertical (they are already steerable) so the hail glances?

 

[Dr. Dro]

Meanwhile in Brazil, one of the sunniest places in the world where solar could really take off:

Lei 14.300/2022

English translated by Google

The tl;dr is that this law, which I learned of very recently, is being called the "solar tax" because apparently people who supply their excess generated energy to the grid are to be considered freeloaders using the public distribution grid without paying their share. Yeah, that's what it's all about.

I'll just leave this here to avoid running afoul of the forum's rules regarding... idk, terrorism or something.

 

[Space Lynx]

Would it not be enough to turn the arrays vertical (they are already steerable) so the hail glances?

Probably still too much damage, especially since the hail will probably be blowing sideways and with gusts of wind change angle a lot, hence it is a storm. I like the idea though.

 

[R-T-B]

People have thought about these issues for years. They're not being implemented because of practical reasons, not just sheer blind inattention.

Yes, and its still estimated to be cheaper than the alternatives by a wide margin:

Solar is now ‘cheapest electricity in history’, confirms IEA

The world’s best solar power schemes now offer the “cheapest…electricity in history” with the technology cheaper than coal and gas in most major countries.

www.carbonbrief.org

biased publication yes but they are using the IEA as a source so...

The reason they "aren't being implemented" (they are globally but not as much in one particular country) is largely political.

it was just an idea

Honestly most cost analysis plans just assume replacement. The panels really aren't are a large or even high portion of the setup cost. They are small fish now.

 

[Space Lynx]

Yes, and its still estimated to be cheaper than the alternatives by a wide margin:

Solar is now ‘cheapest electricity in history’, confirms IEA

The world’s best solar power schemes now offer the “cheapest…electricity in history” with the technology cheaper than coal and gas in most major countries.

www.carbonbrief.org

biased publication yes but they are using the IEA as a source so...

The reason they "aren't being implemented" (they are globally but not as much in one particular country) is largely political.


Honestly most cost analysis plans just assume replacement. The panels really aren't are a large or even high portion of the setup cost. They are small fish now.

would clear hardened glass ruin the sun's conversion rate of energy on solar panels? like some advanced form of corning gorilla glass, could that be placed on solar panels i wonder to mitigate low/medium level hail storms? hmm

i feel like people should be more creative. but i don't know

 

[Icon Charlie]

One big hurdle is regulations.

If you want solar, you need to draw up plans, get a building permit, get an electrical permit, and get approval from your power company. You need UL certified devices with certified protections, and then the electrical company replaces your meter, does tests, and approves it. It takes months and it isn't a sure thing.

Don't want to do that? Tough! They can turn off your power.

You can do it yourself. I did. But often people end up giving up and just paying someone else. Then only big installations are cost-effective and the cost balloons like crazy.

If USA is going to have more homeowners install solar, they are going to have to relax regulations for small solar generators like Germany's balcony solar rules.

I installed just a small 1kW because it was cheap and effective for $2000ish. I only wanted to put a dent in my usage, not go all crazy and expensive.
I got a couple other estimates. Contractors would not install less than 4kW, and the price was around $16000, if I remember correctly.

This is pretty much spot on. But it also depends on what region you live in on the rules and regulations in getting solar.

Up Front costs can be a pain as well.

I'm thinking something similar as the poster mentioned. Something small for starters and not on the roof.