Solar Power May Just Have Grabbed the Brass Ring!

Distributed is definitely better... I doubt there's a single company competent to clean dust, bird poop, and lizards off 10,000 square miles of solar panels. You laugh, but it's a serious concern.

There is also a link to the source:
Image source: Idaho National Laboratory (PDF)

Looks like this sheet is not a usual solar cell but an array of antennas which gather invisible THz and low infrared radiation.

BTW: the paper is from 2008.

Yep, makes sense if these sheets can be produced fairly cheep.

Though I still doubt figures like "more than 90% efficiency".

Depends. The link mentions using waste heat from steel mills. These mills operate at 2300 K or above. High enough a temperature for operating conventional steam plants. But these temperatures are not what we are talking about here.

For lower temperatures, like below boiling point of water or room temperature, waste heat is nothing but waste. You can't get much (electric or mechanical) energy out of it, because it's not radiation but simple heat. The best bet here would be to use cogeneration and district heating. (combined heat and power, CHP).

As a minor point of order, in most places where solar panels are installed on peoples roofs, it doesn't actually make the risk from attack any less centralized. My parents had solar panels installed on their roof a couple of years ago and in some quarters have a power bill of $0 due to it.

However none of the power from their panels are directly used in their home. The panels are wired into the grid, and the power fed from them into the grid is then paid for by the power company. In the event of a blackout my parents home will go dark just like anyone else despite the panels on their roof.

That said, I had a friend in school whose family home in a rural area (10 years ago) was powered from a "solar studio" connected to the house totally disconnected from the grid.

Solar will never entirely replace other power sources, however I fully expect that it will eventually become so cheap to produce solar panels that almost any surface that receives solar radiation will be "painted" with solar panels. All cars will have their roof and hood painted with solar panel paint, and all household roofs will too.

Yeah, the roof thing is an obvious application. As soon as someone figures out an efficient, economical-to-produce solar "shingle", you'll start seeing them take off.

Are you sure you understand completely how selling your solar back to the utility works?

Around here you only "sell back" to the grid if you wind up generating more than your home consumes.

In other words, your house first uses whatever is generated by you, and the remainder (if any) is sold back to the grid.

The way you describe it is... puzzling to me.

Yeah the way he describes it makes no sense. Must be an Aussie thing.

I personally wouldn't bother unless it enabled me to live completely "off the grid" if I wanted. I do like the idea of nobody being able to turn off my power, even if I resorted to solar, wind and a diesel generator or two.

Dow is but 1 of a number of companies selling solar shingles.

Next on the list is battery upgrades.

Once they can figure out how to make super high storage capacity batteries that can power a house for days on end before needing recharging that will pretty much be the end of electrical companies.

Well, I'm sure that they'll also invent a way to secure them to the top of the house.

I just read the details from a solar panel supplier, and it seems my dad explained it to me slightly incorrectly. However it is correct that in the case of a blackout they will not have power despite having panels on the roof:

http://www.energymatters.com.au/ren...ower/grid-connected-systems/home-grid-faq.php

Gotcha. So, no batteries in his system?

Maybe you could do something with storage capacitors for a short-term outage, as an interim between generated power and batteries.

Nup. That would add a lot of cost, which isn't justified for a house connected to the power grid.

No way I would sign such a deal. If the power goes out at least my solar panels could power my house during the day.

Without some way of leveling it, though, you'd end up with wild fluctuations that might harm some of your electronics. Batteries, or a bank of capacitors. Something to keep the output steady while the input fluctuates.

The panels have a guaranteed lifetime of 20 years, and my parents predict to have made back their investment in 10 years. That was their main motivation for doing it, not so much a sell sufficiency aspect.

Nevada's nearly $1 billion solar plant.

That day may come sooner than you think.

More at the link.