Comment Re:Skepticism (Score 1) 53
I'm not an electrical engineer, but I think you aren't making any sense here. Everything you said argues for AC power.
DC power is only good for long-distance transmission at crazy high voltages. DC is also okay for low-power, short-distance tasks. For all medium to long distance power transmission at non-crazy voltages, AC is the best choice. It's the whole reason why AC won over DC for our power infrastructure.
https://blog.ucsusa.org/mark-specht/the-current-war-why-did-westinghouse-ac-beat-edison-dc/
Ya, because 12 foot diameter copper cables are cost effective.
Obvious hyperbole is obvious.
Enphase microinverters make 240 Volts. I looked it up, and with ordinary Romex wiring 240 Volts can be run 1000 feet with a voltage drop of under 6 Volts. It seems likely that the canal setup could have a distribution system that would work; it might involve step-up transformers, I wouldn't know because I'm not an expert on this stuff.
I presume you aren't literally claiming that 12 foot diameter is needed. Please feel free to use your knowledge of Ohm's Law to compute actual wiring sizes needed and show the problems with using 240 Volt microinverters.
Enphase microinverters double the price of your panels as they cost as much as the panels themselves, and are paired one to one.
I just checked prices and found that microinverters were around $180, and there are definitely some solar panels that cost more than $180. Also a few that cost less than that.
I checked prices on string inverters, and found some as low as $200 and some $1000 to $1500. I don't know enough to know whether the $200 one is cheap junk or the $1500 is overpriced or what.
But I stand by what I said: if the patents are finished, and companies can manufacture microinverters without the overhead of paying royalties, I expect mass-produced microinverters to be adopted as best practice generally.
There's a reason why transmission level power lines are over 100,000 volts.
According to answers on Quora, neighborhood power lines are from 4 kiloVolts to "tens of" kiloVolts. 100,000 kV would only be necessary for long-distance power transmission.
All modern panels have bypass diodes to stop a single panel, or group of cells in the panel, from dragging down the whole chain.
I hadn't heard of this. I looked it up:
https://www.electronics-tutorials.ws/diode/bypass-diodes.html
If I'm understanding correctly, low-performing panels are cut out of the circuit so they can't bring down the output from other panels, and also so that current can't flow from the high-performing panels and fry the low-performing panels. This sounds like a good idea, but doesn't sound as good as microinverters, which let all the panels contribute as much as they can make with nothing pulling anything else down.
If you have a better web site for explaining bypass diodes, please share it.