"Badasses" probably won't be too pleased to see how the K-12 CS education revolution is shaping up, fueled by a deep-pocketed alliance of Gates, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and others"

So a group of rich nerds who freely admit their companies consist almost solely of overworked white males with no life and have absolutely no background in education are going to pay their way to changing the education system they don't understand?

What could possibly go wrong?

If they did this to congress we'd call it special interest group lobbying, or bribery, and would be printing stories about how money buys everything and how bad that is.

But when it comes to education, we happily accept this bribery because we all have an astonishingly low opinion of the school system, which, it should be obvious, created the country that made these people rich in the first place.

I guess if you're a moron you might actually believe that a company who's primary product is metal elephants is capable of building a transformative system.

Like the thorium laser car.

> 8 x 250 x 0.80 = $1600
> 27 x 75 x 0.25 = $506.25

You are space limited, it's a roof. If you have room for 27 panels you have room for 27 panels, so you install 27 of the 250's:

27 x 250 x 0.80 = $5400
+ $2200 for inverter
+ 27 x 4 x 3.37 = $363.96 for pressure treated 2x4 racking
+ $15 for permitting
+ $50 + (27 x $10 = $320 for wiring
+ $50 for wiring final inspection
+ $0 for install
= $8078, or 1.19 per Watt.

I win again.

" Because one only needs to look at Ontario(once the primary GDP producer of Canada) to see what high energy prices, and poor government decision making do."

Indeed, everyone should try that. Some of the best test scores on the planet, one of the highest percentages of post-secondary education, billions and billions in biomed research every year, and a long, healthy life span.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Maybe if you took off the crap coloured glasses you might not thing everything stinks so much.

Well, there is the winter...

> And the performance degrades over time. These calculators don't seem to take that into account.

Depends on the calculator. But it's a small effect anyway, about 10% over 25 years. BTW, the panels are expected to last 50 years, I don't know where you got 20 from.

http://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2012/05/21/green-apples/

> Upstate NY has access to power from Hydro Quebec

You know who else does? Quebec. And a idled factory economy that looks much like NYs. And a 10% exchange rate in his favour.

There's a reason phinergy chose Quebec for their battery show-and-tell, and I'm surprised they've been so passive attracting similar endeavours. Simply put, anyone with a product where the energy input cost isn't a rounding error should be there. They generate at 1.1 cents/kWh.

"At $.25/W, that is a price of $50/m^2.
This is in the range where it's sort-of-comparable with other roof claddings."

A solar panel is essentially a single-pane skylight, or screen door. Wholesale prices should on on par with them, and you shouldn't expect it to depress much below that. Shingles are unlikely to ever be on par.

> The cost of construction of PV panels is going up

No it's not. Raw material usage is going down continually. Intermediate steps and input chemicals is likewise decreasing, and being replaced by lower cost substitutes. The total material content and input stream in both materials and energy continues to decrease, and shows no sign of stopping.

> When that levels out, the cost of PVs will continue to increase.

Unless any one of the kerfless systems comes into production, at which point material use on the cell side goes down another 25 to 40%.

And yes, I've actually worked in a solar panel factory. I don't think you have done the same or I don't think you'd be making these statements.

"That said, I think the big manufacturers have really missed an opportunity in exactly the opposite direction of that you suggest - I don't give a damn about efficiency or how much space it takes up, I care about price per watt."

Which is all they concentrate on. Panel prices from the factory gate have fallen from $2 to 50 cents/W in the last four years. Efficiency has crept up from 14 to maybe 16 to 17%. They are doing precisely what you ask, and you're complaining?

"Sell me 10-20KW of 5% efficient panels for 25 cents per watt, and you'd have a very happy customer."

You are forgetting that panels aren't the only things in the system. If you care to run the numbers, I think you'll find that you're almost certainly wrong.

For instance, let's say you have enough room for 8 panels, like my new garage.. To be *able* to install the panels, I'll need to run DC wire from the roof to a point near the 240V pony panel (assuming you have one, if not...), put an inverter at that point, add a 30A breaker to the panel and connect the inverter to it, get a building permit, and then put the racking on the roof.

Racking is normally about 25 cents a watt, when measured against a typical 250 watt panel. So for a 2kW system we might expect to pay $500 for that kit. Inverters scale downward very poorly - a 2500W inverter is around 60 cents/W, while a 5000W one is around 40 cents/watt. That's because most of the parts are the same (the case, displays, controller, wiring, etc). An SMA 2500 is about $1500, while a 5k is 2200. The cabling and wiring needs to be done by an electrician and might take 1/2 a day, so let's say $750. The building permit, if you need engineering, is about $750 total. Total install time is about 2 man-days, so let's add $500 flat. Ok with that?

OK, so using 250W panels at 80 cents:

8 x 250 x 80 = $1600
+ $1500 for inverter
+ $500 for racking
+ $750 for permitting etc
+ $750 for wiring
+ $750 for install
= $5400

So that's $2.70 a watt. Ok, now let's do the same with your cheap panel:

8 x 75 x 25 = $150
+ $1500 for inverter
+ $500 for racking
+ $750 for permitting etc
+ $750 for wiring
+ $750 for install
= $2950

But now you only have 600W, so that's $6.60 a Watt. What a deal!

Yes, you can save some on the inverter, yes, you can DIY it and get rid of X and Y and Z. But I absolutely 100% assure you, the numbers end up in the same place every time, for small installs, higher wattage panels are almost *always* the way to go. If you don't believe me DO THE MATH YOURSELF.

> solar is not viable in terms of cost and this is unlikely to change anytime soon

You can do the math yourself:

http://wp.me/py8qF-4i

If you're paying more than 15 cents, PV is at least worth looking at.

> PV panels are also far less efficient than parabolic reflectors.

That is a non-sequitur.

Are you talking about using parabolic reflectors to heat a working fluid? If so, your statement is only true for very well lit, cloudless areas.

Further, in terms of *cost effectiveness* it's definitely *not* true. That's why PV is the fastest growing power source in the world and parabolics aren't.

Finally, you can't mount a parabolic system on your roof (easily anyway!).

Yes, they have their roles, but they are relatively limited.

> Right now a typical installation (complete, by a contractor, not DIY) is $7/watt for residential

I was doing residential installs three years ago for $5/W in Toronto. When I left the industry last year the going price for a 10k system was $26,000, fully installed and spinning the meter. It's even lower than that in Europe.

http://emp.lbl.gov/sites/all/files/german-us-pv-price-ppt.pdf

Look for the graph. It's based on 2011 numbers. Note the factory-gate price for panels at the bottom. They fell from 1.80 to 1.35 during a single year from 2010 to 2011. I know that they are down around 50 cents today, and you can easily buy a skid of panels at 80 to 90 cents. So if you just follow that red line three years into the future, you come to today's pricing at around $2/W.

> Most (if not all) solar panels depend on other rare earth materials that may be in short supply tho.

Not even remotely true. A very small subset of panels use some rare earths, and their percentage of the market is constantly falling. Those are, specifically, the CIGS and CdTe designs. The former was supposed to replace silicon by now, but got caught on the wrong side of the investment curve. Now it is a niche player, used where flexibility is required. The later was a major player for a very short period, and represented as much as 45% of the market in the late 2000's, but the main player, FirstSolar, is also a niche player today.

A normal solar panel consists of, approximately by weight:

glass (which includes the cells)
aluminum (frame and back-side cell contacts)
copper (wiring)
plastic (wire insulation, junction box, backsheet)
silver (solder and frontside wiring)
sili*cone* (glue on the frame)
more glue (special clear heat-spreading stuff)

> A bit like Tesla's batteries are depending on Lithium.

There's plenty of lithium for all our cars too. Supply is a problem, however, but that's political, not mechanical. In fact, almost all of what we need is sitting in a salt pan in Bolivia where you can just scoop it up with a bulldozer. But they won't let you.

Also, note that all of these materials, with the exception of the plastic, are HIGHLY recyclable. Panels and batteries can be something like 99% recycled with ease and at low cost.

There is essentially an infinite supply of all of these materials. That is, we could power EVERYTHING on the planet using these panels and still not make a dent in the existing markets for them.

Did you actually READ the article you linked to? It's a lithium battery. Look at the diagram. Sheesh,

There are, however, interesting side-solutions:

http://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2014/06/06/phinergys-battery-energy-storage-problem-solved/

"If the actual numbers work out when their quota sales guy arrives? Then you buy their SolarCity system, which you cannot modify or upgrade."

As someone that worked in the industry, not SC, I can't tell you that they do this for VERY good reasons. We found that offering any sort of option simply confused people, and led to drawn discussions that always ended up close to the original array anyway. Customers have all sorts of ideas about hanging panels over their windows or under the eaves and so forth. If someone wants to serve that market, go for it, but there's no money it in, least of all for the customer.

"There are better options, and cells with better efficiency"

Which is why he's buying this company. An average good panel today has cells in the 18 to 20% efficiency range, giving you total areal efficiency around 16% (wires, reflection from the glass, whitespace, etc). These guys make cells in the 22% range. For large arrays this has no real effect, but for small systems the costs are dominated by installation, so if you want the numbers to work out you have to get every watt you can. Given the small and fixed area of your roof, that means using the highest power panels you can find. In spite of any higher costs, this always wins in the end.

That said...

"Silevo claims that its panels have achieved a 22 percent efficiency and are well on their way to achieving 24 percent efficiency."

No, it claims their *cells* have done this. Their web page clearly states their panels are around 18%.

"It suggests that 10 cents per watt is saved for every point of efficiency gained."

That is a vague statement, 10 cents on the panel, or ten cents on the total system? You do get a bit of savings downstream because you're installing less panels, but racking is about20 to 25 cents/W, so improving the panel by 1% might get you a penny or two (maybe), not 10 cents. I am skeptical of this number.

Still, I wish I could buy them. I have a hole on my new garage that's just right for an eight panel array.