TheEEStory.com

trick wrote:

So if Cali gas remains static at ~$3 / gallon, if you had an ICE powered car that ran at 30 miles/gallon, you would have to drive ~115,000 miles before you have spent the cost of the install using Eenigma's prices (i.e. without a storage device for when the car's not charging).

Besides while we get fewer sunlight hours in the Northeast, we have much higher electric rates. In NYC, we pay over .25/kwh, so I think it still works out in spite of our fewer sun hours.

wasmaba wrote:

Eenigma wrote:

Another benifit is you are paying off a system. Adding a home refueling station will add how much to property value?

I actually know what that number is based upon what value a PV system adds at resale. Would pay a little extra on mortgage payment if you wouldn't have to buy gas for your car.

Not to mention the savings is after tax dollars and you can borrow against your home and get the tax right off too. PV is coming our way in a big way if we have cheap reliable storage.

Wasmaba brought up another great point. In the U.S. we deduct the interst portion of our mortgage payments.

With a PV system in home or mortgage loan you would be that much further ahead. When my wife or I fill up our vehicles now for personal use we get no such write off.

I would love to pull up to gas station, clean my windshield and flip off the sign that says $2.98.99 per gallon beacuse my roof top panels filled me up.

Consider the following scenario, in a few years EEStor is on market as advertised and also that thin film solar cells such as Nanosolar or First Solar drop to 50 cents per. watt.

A little calculation tells us installing 10,000 watts of solar cells costs 5,000$ add 2,000$ for an EEStor unit and add 2,000$ for grid tie system (allows you to sell electricity you don't use back to the utility company) now spend another 5,000$ to 7,000$ to convert your car to run on electricity from an EEStor unit, total cost, 14,000$ to 16,000$.

What are your savings? Assume 50$ per week fuel in vehicle, 2,600$ per year (California's experience with electric cars in the 90's indicated 90 percent less maintenance for electric vehicles) savings 300$ per. year?
Electrical savings for house 70$ per. month, savings 840$ per. year, selling excess generated power to grid 40$ per. month, 480$ per. year, total savings about 4,220$ per. year, payback, about three to five years depending on your actual costs.

With numbers like this, any bank should lend you the money for the system and soon millions of households will do the same, which good for banking, manufacturing and the economy.

Which begets the question, what are the ramifications, national security, economically, politically, etc.

As to national security, with millions of households generating electrical power, the grid becomes immune to sabotage or the kind of large scale blackouts we have experienced in the past.

Economically well, energy is a six trillion dollar a year global business, so not only will we not have to import oil but there will be a huge wealth transfer back to all
citizens.

However I suspect there will be a great deal of resistance from long established interests, coal, oil energy etc..

Scientia Non Domus
(Knowledge has No Home)

Antiguajohn

Eenigma wrote:

Generic, I don't believe Nano Carbons and nanosolar are one in the same.

I wasn't trying to make a connection between the two, just had a vague memory of Nanosolar's cheap solar tech, and it's relative scarcity.

trick wrote:

So if Cali gas remains static at ~$3 / gallon, if you had an ICE powered car that ran at 30 miles/gallon, you would have to drive ~115,000 miles before you have spent the cost of the install using Eenigma's prices (i.e. without a storage device for when the car's not charging).

Eenigma wrote:

wasmaba wrote:

Eenigma wrote:

Another benifit is you are paying off a system. Adding a home refueling station will add how much to property value?

I actually know what that number is based upon what value a PV system adds at resale. Would pay a little extra on mortgage payment if you wouldn't have to buy gas for your car.

Not to mention the savings is after tax dollars and you can borrow against your home and get the tax right off too. PV is coming our way in a big way if we have cheap reliable storage.

Wasmaba brought up another great point. In the U.S. we deduct the interst portion of our mortgage payments.

With a PV system in home or mortgage loan you would be that much further ahead. When my wife or I fill up our vehicles now for personal use we get no such write off.

I would love to pull up to gas station, clean my windshield and flip off the sign that says $2.98.99 per gallon beacuse my roof top panels filled me up.

antiguajohn wrote:

Consider the following scenario, in a few years EEStor is on market as advertised and also that thin film solar cells such as Nanosolar or First Solar drop to 50 cents per. watt.

A little calculation tells us installing 10,000 watts of solar cells costs 5,000$ add 2,000$ for an EEStor unit and add 2,000$ for grid tie system (allows you to sell electricity you don't use back to the utility company) now spend another 5,000$ to 7,000$ to convert your car to run on electricity from an EEStor unit, total cost, 14,000$ to 16,000$.

What are your savings? Assume 50$ per week fuel in vehicle, 2,600$ per year (California's experience with electric cars in the 90's indicated 90 percent less maintenance for electric vehicles) savings 300$ per. year?
Electrical savings for house 70$ per. month, savings 840$ per. year, selling excess generated power to grid 40$ per. month, 480$ per. year, total savings about 4,220$ per. year, payback, about three to five years depending on your actual costs.

With numbers like this, any bank should lend you the money for the system and soon millions of households will do the same, which good for banking, manufacturing and the economy.

Which begets the question, what are the ramifications, national security, economically, politically, etc.

As to national security, with millions of households generating electrical power, the grid becomes immune to sabotage or the kind of large scale blackouts we have experienced in the past.

Economically well, energy is a six trillion dollar a year global business, so not only will we not have to import oil but there will be a huge wealth transfer back to all
citizens.

However I suspect there will be a great deal of resistance from long established interests, coal, oil energy etc..

Scientia Non Domus
(Knowledge has No Home)

Antiguajohn

Any calculation that uses $2.50/gal for gasoline 5-10 years from now I think is sorely mistaken. Demand from emerging economies will put greater and greater pressure on gasoline supplies, this will tend to raise prices. On the other hand, once you purchase your solar system, the costs (in the form of loan payments) are fixed. The cost per kWh won't increase. Here's the rub though, if you spend $20k on a system this year, and 4 years from now, the same system could be installed for $12k. You've set your costs quite a bit higher than they need to be.

For those of us with roofs and garages, this type of solution makes too much sense to pass up once the cost per kWh drops some more. When Nanosolar and First Solar have increased capacity to match demand, I would expect 200+ Watt panels to sell for about $1/watt as opposed to the $3.85- $5.00/watt they typically sell for now. Now my guess is that this will happen within the next 3-5 years.

And for most people with a system like this installed, a vehicle like the GM Volt will allow you to take advantage of the system. But I'd much rather have an EESU powered EV for my daily commuting.

Did Nanocarbons really claim he is starting up a company with PVs that peak at 40% efficiency? I just read a New Scientist article that states a new company has achieved a record efficiency of 28.3% and that is with 500 times concentration of sun's rays. 40% would be unbelievable.

In regards to the OP. Companies like Nanosolar will eventually ramp up production enough to supply residential households with more affordable solar. They just added a 1GW per year capacity line recently but are still sold out for 12 months. First solar has said that they will be shipping to residential customers by the end of this year. That should bring the cost down. I would wait about 12 more months to buy. Things should be quite different by then.

Daniel R Plante wrote:

Eenigma wrote:

wasmaba wrote:

Eenigma wrote:

Another benifit is you are paying off a system. Adding a home refueling station will add how much to property value?

I actually know what that number is based upon what value a PV system adds at resale. Would pay a little extra on mortgage payment if you wouldn't have to buy gas for your car.

Not to mention the savings is after tax dollars and you can borrow against your home and get the tax right off too. PV is coming our way in a big way if we have cheap reliable storage.

Wasmaba brought up another great point. In the U.S. we deduct the interst portion of our mortgage payments.

With a PV system in home or mortgage loan you would be that much further ahead. When my wife or I fill up our vehicles now for personal use we get no such write off.

I would love to pull up to gas station, clean my windshield and flip off the sign that says $2.98.99 per gallon beacuse my roof top panels filled me up.

Yep, wasmaba should know, he's got a sweet setup. I'm jealous :)

Daniel,

Wasmaba told me his set up as well. I'm with you on the jealous aspect. Interesting he also has physical as well as extra inverter capacity to just "plug and play" enough panels for and EV. That makes his "filling station" costs very inexpensive. No permits or inverter.

CpctT@0R wrote:

Did Nanocarbons really claim he is starting up a company with PVs that peak at 40% efficiency? I just read a New Scientist article that states a new company has achieved a record efficiency of 28.3% and that is with 500 times concentration of sun's rays. 40% would be unbelievable.

In regards to the OP. Companies like Nanosolar will eventually ramp up production enough to supply residential households with more affordable solar. They just added a 1GW per year capacity line recently but are still sold out for 12 months. First solar has said that they will be shipping to residential customers by the end of this year. That should bring the cost down. I would wait about 12 more months to buy. Things should be quite different by then.

Yes I believe Nano Carbons had a number in that range and he got financial backing as well.

I had cause to speak to several product managers from the newer technology start up including Nano Solar. What you wrote about First Solar seems to be common amongst them.

Prices should drop but I would be surprised to seem them at a dollar a watt. The encapsulates and backing material that help attribute to 25 year warranties are not cheap even in quantity. Low iron content shock resistant glass also contributes to cost.

Stepping back from the newer technologies like Nana Solar will take you to "mono" crystalline, or "poly" crystalline.

In the case of solar panels mono crystalline are the most expensive and perform the best. Seems Eestor is also using a monocrsystal. "the best".

CpctT@0R wrote:

Did Nanocarbons really claim he is starting up a company with PVs that peak at 40% efficiency? I just read a New Scientist article that states a new company has achieved a record efficiency of 28.3% and that is with 500 times concentration of sun's rays. 40% would be unbelievable.

In regards to the OP. Companies like Nanosolar will eventually ramp up production enough to supply residential households with more affordable solar. They just added a 1GW per year capacity line recently but are still sold out for 12 months. First solar has said that they will be shipping to residential customers by the end of this year. That should bring the cost down. I would wait about 12 more months to buy. Things should be quite different by then.

Do you have the article? I think I saw an article about this, but they were talking single junction solar cells. Multi-gate ones have roughly 40% efficiency as per wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell#Multipl...). Perhaps he's about to manufacture multi-junction ones.

Research switched to multi-junction a few years back due to the higher theoretical efficiency of these.
See the same article just above:

They can exceed the theoretical solar conversion efficiency limit for a single energy threshold material, that was calculated in 1961 by Shockley and Queisser as 31% under 1 sun illumination and 40.8% under the maximal artificial concentration of sunlight (46,200 suns, which makes the latter limit more difficult to approach than the former).

Multi-junctions cells offer you the ability to capture solar energy over a greater part of the spectrum.

I've seen 3KW on-grid Wind Turbine systems for around $11,000 USD that include the generator, inverter and 10 meter tower. This wouldn't include instalation. You can also add 1.5KW of solar panels on the thing for extra cost.

I live in a condo development of townhouses so i doubt they would let me put up a 30 foot high wind tower. It might be the type of thing to install at a cottage. That way you could charge your Zenn at home, head out to the cottage for the summer and insure that you had the juice to get back to the city.

What type of capacity would a commercial charging station require? What would a good template be for a solar/wind powered charging station that could be installed every 200-300 km along major highways?

hador_nyc wrote:

CpctT@0R wrote:

Did Nanocarbons really claim he is starting up a company with PVs that peak at 40% efficiency? I just read a New Scientist article that states a new company has achieved a record efficiency of 28.3% and that is with 500 times concentration of sun's rays. 40% would be unbelievable.

In regards to the OP. Companies like Nanosolar will eventually ramp up production enough to supply residential households with more affordable solar. They just added a 1GW per year capacity line recently but are still sold out for 12 months. First solar has said that they will be shipping to residential customers by the end of this year. That should bring the cost down. I would wait about 12 more months to buy. Things should be quite different by then.

Do you have the article? I think I saw an article about this, but they were talking single junction solar cells. Multi-gate ones have roughly 40% efficiency as per wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell#Multipl...). Perhaps he's about to manufacture multi-junction ones.

Research switched to multi-junction a few years back due to the higher theoretical efficiency of these.
See the same article just above:

They can exceed the theoretical solar conversion efficiency limit for a single energy threshold material, that was calculated in 1961 by Shockley and Queisser as 31% under 1 sun illumination and 40.8% under the maximal artificial concentration of sunlight (46,200 suns, which makes the latter limit more difficult to approach than the former).

Multi-junctions cells offer you the ability to capture solar energy over a greater part of the spectrum.

Hador,

I just went through Nano's posts,

He is actually working on 30% efficiency but as you can see below he is aware of 42% which seems to validate the science. What Nano is doing even at 30% is truly awesome. When he writes if you knew more you would want he is correct.

Nano wrote

I am peripherally involved in a possible 'revolutionary' solar cell company that will use semiconductor 'printing' technology to achieve maybe 30% efficiency!

Folks, if you knew more you would want in. And my potential investment would be worth less.
Multiple band gaps have been achieved for years in so called multijunctions. World record is (disputedly) held by either Boeing, NREL, or Frauenhofer. All about 42% efficiency. Problem is, used in deep space missions because ridiculously expensive.

LXicon wrote:

I've seen 3KW on-grid Wind Turbine systems for around $11,000 USD that include the generator, inverter and 10 meter tower. This wouldn't include instalation. You can also add 1.5KW of solar panels on the thing for extra cost.

I live in a condo development of townhouses so i doubt they would let me put up a 30 foot high wind tower. It might be the type of thing to install at a cottage. That way you could charge your Zenn at home, head out to the cottage for the summer and insure that you had the juice to get back to the city.


What type of capacity would a commercial charging station require? What would a good template be for a solar/wind powered charging station that could be installed every 200-300 km along major highways?

LXicon
What type of capacity would a commercial charging station require? What would a good template be for a solar/wind powered charging station that could be installed every 200-300 km along major highways?

Good question:

500 EV's per day filled up from a dead empty 52Kwh energy storage unit in an area that has 4 hours of sunlight.

14 kw x 4 hours (sun hours) per vehicle (allows for some system loss) = 56kw for one vehicle

500 vehicles x 14kw = 7 mega watts.

You could build a 7 mega watt system using a combination of wind and solar.

The system would have to be grid tied for many reasons. (no wind/sun days) seasonal sun hours etc.

Assuming the vehicles bought a 1/2 tank on average you could run 1,000 through. Truck EV's bring up additional requirements.

I can't see any of this happening without high speed refill capability like that be claimed by Zenn/Eestor.

Last edited Thu, 02 Jul 2009, 6:38pm by Eenigma

Thanks Eenigma.

The idea would be to provide a fast-charging corridor along major highways. This is the type of infrastructure that would be required for mass adoption of EV cars by the public.

I did expect that the stations would be grid tied. Not only for issues of reliability, but for the option to sell wind/solar power back to the grid. The stations could make money even if no one charged up their cars :)

About electric vehicles and solar panels, it's back to the future, in 1959 International Rectifier fitted a single 26 sq. ft. solar panel on a 1908 Baker Electric car!

That's a over 100 year old car with a solar panel that was 50 year old technology!

They said 8 hrs. of sunlight gave 1 hr. run time.

There are pictures and articles on the web if you wish to verify the veracity of this.

After 50 yrs. we should be able to do much much better.

antiguajohn

antiguajohn wrote:

...After 50 yrs. we should be able to do much much better.

we can. 3000 miles on only solar power : http://www.wsc.org.au/

LXicon wrote:

antiguajohn wrote:

...After 50 yrs. we should be able to do much much better.

we can. 3000 miles on only solar power : http://www.wsc.org.au/

They tend to be one-man modified bicycles from what I've seen of entries to this race.

I don't think there are many PV covered solar cars in daily use in Oz or anywhere else.

I don't think there are many 1908 Baker Electric cars in daily use in Oz or anywhere else.

:)

I was responding to antiguajohn's post which was not about mass-adopted vehicles. I took it to be about the state of PV 50 years ago and today.

--edit--

a similar argument to antiguajohn's can be made for ICE vehicles:

1908 Model T - averaged 17 miles per gallon.

2007 F-150 - averages 16 miles per gallon.

or the Toyota Camry, averages 22 miles per gallon.

(and yes, i know that the power/work of modern vehicles is much greater than a Model T)

Last edited Fri, 03 Jul 2009, 11:18am by LXicon

antiguajohn wrote:

About electric vehicles and solar panels, it's back to the future, in 1959 International Rectifier fitted a single 26 sq. ft. solar panel on a 1908 Baker Electric car!

That's a over 100 year old car with a solar panel that was 50 year old technology!

They said 8 hrs. of sunlight gave 1 hr. run time.

There are pictures and articles on the web if you wish to verify the veracity of this.

After 50 yrs. we should be able to do much much better.

antiguajohn

Antigua John, .....After 50 yrs. we should be able to do much much better.

Yes you are correct, we have done much better at increasing wattage from the max energy of light.
6% was the original ration and the panel was made at Bell Labs. Interestingly enough it still works today.

Bell Labs engineer testing solar panel in 1954

In the early 1950s R.S. Ohl discovered that sunlight striking a wafer of silicon would produce unexpectedly large numbers of free electrons. In 1954, G.L. Pearson, C.S. Fuller, and D.M. Chapin created an array of several strips of silicon (each about the size of a razor blade), placed them in sunlight, captured the free electrons and turned them into electrical current. This was the first solar battery. It could convert only six percent of the sunlight into useful energy.

Fifty years ago, scientists at Bell Laboratories unveiled the first modern solar cell, using a silicon semiconductor to convert light into electricity.

Interesting side note:
Bell Lab researchers Willard Boyle and George Smith devised what would become the charge-coupled device (CCD) in a discussion of less than an hour in 1969.

Tec wrote:

LXicon wrote:

antiguajohn wrote:

...After 50 yrs. we should be able to do much much better.

we can. 3000 miles on only solar power : http://www.wsc.org.au/

They tend to be one-man modified bicycles from what I've seen of entries to this race.

I don't think there are many PV covered solar cars in daily use in Oz or anywhere else.

Tec, Ever hear of the Mars rovers?

Reality check:

The "SolarTaxi":

...which is a lightweight car towing a sizable trailer covered with solar cells, was only able to generate about half of the energy necessary to run it from its onboard solar cells. The other half has to be provided by plugging it into the grid at night. And of course, the trailer has *much* more surface area than the roof of the car. And the solar cells for the SolarTaxi were provided by the manufacturer, as a promotion. Translation: They'd be much too expensive for the average consumer to buy.

An hour's driving time for a *normal* car from eight hours sitting in the sun with a 25 square foot solar cell array? That sounds unlikely, even with today's technology.

Now if you want a one-seat bicycle with a plastic shell around it:

...then sure, you can run that so long as you've got direct sunlight shining on the vehicle. But very few people go shopping for that kind of "car".

As a wise man said: "The best place for solar cells to run your electric vehicle is on the roof... of your house."

Last edited Sat, 04 Jul 2009, 2:22am by Lensman

$16k is a huge sum of money, but I think it might be cheaper that that now, and the financing for the system doesn't necessarily have to land 100% by the owner of the house. There should be a way for a residential solar service business with a financing arm to evaluate the best customers for such a system. such companies exist today, as PPAs, power purchase agreements. solarcity, sunrun etc. must be lots of them popping up in different locations around the world. the issue is that they all deal with grid-tie and a locality of one place on the globe - only local weather variations get averaged. where as, with a decent deep-cycle device you could conceivably stay independent of the grid(s) if you chose to. once EVs are in place, there's a practical reason for the local storage - but possibly grid-tie makes more sense in most situations if you can negotiate the right buy back contract. however, the logic for such an internationally based PPA using deep-cycle storage to displace grid-electricity and tapping seasonal fluctuations in insolation (as well as local weather patterns) is underway as an open source project here:

http://www.solarnetwork.net/

where do people get a 7% loss figure from, that sounds low doesn't it - when you factor in the storage and the inverter? does anyone what is the supposed loss for the supposed eesu?

Lensman has some good points, but if you can live within the limitations of a low speed (in-city), vehicle it can work surprisingly well. For example:

600W of solar provides an annual average of 10 miles/day worth of recharge in my area, and the batteries provide roughly 20 miles total range. It can haul nearly a half ton of construction material (I've done it, looked kinda like an old time hay wagon, but it got the job done!)

About 9 months of the year I just drive it, as it gets towards winter I start needing to augment the solar by plugging it into the grid periodically...

solarnetwork wrote:

$16k is a huge sum of money, but I think it might be cheaper that that now, and the financing for the system doesn't necessarily have to land 100% by the owner of the house. There should be a way for a residential solar service business with a financing arm to evaluate the best customers for such a system. such companies exist today, as PPAs, power purchase agreements. solarcity, sunrun etc. must be lots of them popping up in different locations around the world. the issue is that they all deal with grid-tie and a locality of one place on the globe - only local weather variations get averaged. where as, with a decent deep-cycle device you could conceivably stay independent of the grid(s) if you chose to. once EVs are in place, there's a practical reason for the local storage - but possibly grid-tie makes more sense in most situations if you can negotiate the right buy back contract. however, the logic for such an internationally based PPA using deep-cycle storage to displace grid-electricity and tapping seasonal fluctuations in insolation (as well as local weather patterns) is underway as an open source project here:

http://www.solarnetwork.net/

where do people get a 7% loss figure from, that sounds low doesn't it - when you factor in the storage and the inverter? does anyone what is the supposed loss for the supposed eesu?

7% loss is correct as the original post says "grid tied". I suppose if you were looking at long run DC lines and a marginal inverter that number would move.

I don't want to turn this into an argument about the different type of solar PV contracts but from my considerable experience PPA (power purchase agreements) are one of the last options a residential customer should consider. I am intimately familiar with every conceivable option and personally I would never do it. PPA's for commercial and even government or OK but still not #1 on my list.

very interested in your opinion Eenigma - while residential PPAs are a new kind of entity, wouldn't you think they would increase the use of solar PV, due to the technically lower upfront costs? what do you see as the downsides for residential PPAs? thanks!