Posted by Geddes on Wednesday, 21 February 2007 20:13:27

I like the idea of what Germany is doing about forcing companies to buy the surplus energy. It forces them either to lower prices or change their attitude.

Posted by canvas on Wednesday, 21 February 2007 20:14:25

I like what Australia is doing with lightbulbs!! So simple yet so effective.

Posted by davetheslave on Wednesday, 21 February 2007 20:21:24

@Davegould

As in most cases, don't believe what you read in the Torygraph. These CIGS cells certainly look promising, and will probably undercut the current silicon-based technologies, but the price will be limited by the need for ultra-pure metals to form the semiconductor nanoparticles needed. I doubt they will become cheap enough to be truly mass-market. The same applies to the other 2nd generation (bulk-heterojunction & Grätzel) cells which are in development. All of them need expensive dyes. The real breakthrough will come when organic-based solar cells can be made with decent efficiency (>10%). These should be dirt-cheap and in theory, just about anything could be covered, making them very practical. However, the development is still in the early stages, so don't hold your breath.

As the Torygraph article sneaks in a bit later:
"We think solar power can provide 20pc of all the incremental energy needed worldwide by 2040".
If it was going to be so cheap, so soon, do you think it would only account for 20% by 2040?

Posted by davetheslave on Wednesday, 21 February 2007 20:29:56

I agree that what Australia is doing is fantastic. Hopefully this will increase demand for low-energy bulbs to such an extent that it will have a knock-on effect on development and lower prices in other markets. It's something that is easy to ignore because it doesn't have the glamour of novelty, but we could make a far larger impact on reducing CO2 emissions by making sure our homes were properly insulated than by sticking a fancy (but pointless) wind turbine in our garden. There is a German design standard called Passivhaus (passive-house) that aims at making the house completely self-heating. Think of the impact if it was required that all new houses were built to the passivhaus standard!

Posted by providor on Wednesday, 21 February 2007 22:34:32

davetheslave - the PassivHaus standard doesn't actually specify zero heating, I believe it says a maximum of 15kWh per square metre per annum for space heating. Whilst most (but not all) PassivHaus designs don't have any radiators or underfloor heating, they do have a heater (usually electric) in their ventilation system. Nevertheless a PassivHaus is a hell of a lot more energy efficient than most houses in the UK and we could do a lot worse than adopt a similar standard as the basis for our Building Regulations. The main problem would be getting our prehistoric building industry to take on board the necessary radical changes in construction methods and apply the very strict attention to detail needed to achieve the required levels of insulation and airtightness.

Posted by physics911comfan on Thursday, 22 February 2007 02:38:37

The man on my roof said these big 5 mw wind turbines cost £2,000,000
Thats beyond alot of small communities
alot of interesting comments
offshore wind turbines cost £1.5 to £4 million
http://www.saveoursound.org/files/97_FeasibilityFloating.pdf
:-)

 

Comment edited by physics911comfan on Thursday, 22 February 2007 16:39:25