A Twitter contact recently asked us for any info on reliable voltaic solar cell use for the average home.
As our resident, solar pro, Dr. Ryan Wartena is naturally the most qualified to address this. Here is his response:
“Single, multi-crystalline and amorphous Silicon (a-Si) photovoltaics (PV = solar cell) will all have lifetimes over twenty years, some say the lifetimes are beyond 80 years. The most expensive is single crystal Si (and multi-junction PV) and multi-crystalline Silicon is less expensive and amorphous Silicon is even less expensive. The amount of power they produce is greatest for single crystal Silicon (and multi-junction PV) and multi-crystalline Silicon produces less power and amorphous Silicon even less power on a per area basis. Amorphous Silicon produces about 5 Watts/square foot.
Power has the units of ‘Watts’, power for a duration of time is energy and has the units of Watts x hour or Wh (a kWh is 1000 Watthours or Wh).
Installed costs for all types of PV is ~$5 to $8/Watt, so know how much power you and your application wants. The goal for next generation PV is to get the production cost down to $1/Watt.
Installation costs and racking have often been referred to as the obstacle to making the project economically beneficial because additional hardware is required for mounting and a professional electrical contractor should do the installation. This obstacle may be overcome by next generation PV technologies which will result in lower costs of PV. Sometimes, economics are based on capital costs ( i.e., $/W installed), but this is misleading because vision shows that the payback times on PV can be 1 to 2 years and the economics should be based on what the utility company charges per kWh (between 7 and 23 cents per kWh) and what the vision-based cost of point-of-generation PV is (between 15 and 25 cents per kWh).
Outline:
0. Learn about the different types of PV
1. Figure out how much power you need.
2. Figure out how much space you have to generate that power.
3. Use 1 and 2 to estimate the costs and to help determine the type of PV
4. Contact ryan@nanosolsystems.com for more information”
Hopefully this is an adequate overview for those interested in such information. Let us know whether you think it addresses the question from above adequately or not.
