Seems the price of solar panels are set to drop a lot

derry

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=cranking-out-pv-panels

I know Germany which is similar weather to lots of Ireland get useful amounts of power from solar panels but the payback period is like 5 to 10 years

These newer panels might make even cloudy Ireland a power house

In term of the overall power that comes from the sunlight every day that hits the whole planet earth means that in two days of sunshine that power equals all the known reserves of fossil fuel power in the planet. When you consider coal is good for 1000 years thats a lot of power that arrives here in every second

Its ball park 235wats for every square meter in the planet .nedles tosay at miday at the tropics its some 1200 watts per square meter
Expect Ireland at miday summer to be less than ~500 watts per square meter and a lot less in winter
Sunlight power is a lot less in summer in the polar regions and non existant in the winter

So world wide we humans only need to tap less then 0.01% of the suns power that hits the earth every day to have total independence from fossil fuels (coupled with some long power lines to transmit power from sunny places to less
sunny places )
So even with low effiency ~9% type panels like these at $1.25 a watt they are getting closer to matching fossil fuels costs
Future solar panels which cost $1 a watt could even be cheaper than fossil fuel power solutions so the target is creeping up

For Ireland often a sunny day good for solar power even in winter is when a high pressure is over Ireland .This often means low wind and less wind power so it could help fill the gap when the wind isn't blowing .Panels can go on lots of places like roofs of a house or in a field. For big farms of them subprime land like bogland or old depleted turf cut out like bord na mona has might suit thousands of panels which could export the power to the grid and not take up good agricultural land

Who knows maybe a sunny future really exists for Ireland

Now the problem is how to convince the kick back tackers regime in power to cut the drip feed from the energy companies like OIL /gas /coal who don't want to stop the
6 billion euros a year they earn being lost to cheaper sun power

Derry

probe

derry wrote: »

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=cranking-out-pv-panels

I know Germany which is similar weather to lots of Ireland get useful amounts of power from solar panels but the payback period is like 5 to 10 years

Most solar (to electricity) panels in Germany are located in the 7xxxx and 8xxxx postcodes - ie Southern Germany, where temperatures often reach 30C in the Summertime. While it gets cold in winter in many parts of Germany, far colder than in Ireland, cloud cover is far less in Germany than IRL.

The German and Irish climates are chalk and cheese. The Irish climate is humid, cloudy, and seldom gets extremes of temperature. The German climate (varies from North to South) is dryer (less humidity and less rain), less cloudy and gets hotter in Summer and colder in Winter compare with Ireland.

While I agree that the cost of solar is falling dramatically, and PV solar may be a good option in Ireland at some stage as prices fall, solar water heating is the only economic option for IRL at the moment.