At 07:52 AM 9/21/2000 , you wrote:
>Then there is cost. I'll bet a fuel cell based power system
>can not compete with a solar system. Just look at the manufacturing
>and ongoing costs. A solar system does not need the natural gas
>connection, it is reliable, has almost no maintenance, and has
>a theoretical life of more than 50 years. You can expand and
>modify solar power systems as needed and overall they are much
>better for the environment. The cost of solar systems are still
>going down and are expected to get much lower. Plus, it has
>become a large industry with lots of manufactures.
What is the current payback for the cells? That is how much energy do they
have to produce to equal the amount of energy needed to make them in the
first place. This embedded energy is a value that is never
considered. For example a new car will require more energy to build and
deliver than it will use in a 150,000 mile lifetime.
So far a fuel cell cannot be considered much more than an energy storage
system and I do not know if solar cells are much better. As for grid
connection, it does save the cost of a battery storage bank which is one of
the most expensive components of an AE system in terms of initial cost and
maintaince.
I am looking for a mail list that will cover these issues in technical
terms rather than emotional. So much of the AE hype is tied to emotions
"The sun shines for free", "Buy new fuel efficient cars", and so forth.
Don Bowen [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Valley Center, CA Senior Software Engineer
Internet development and software engineering
http://members.cts.com/crash/d/donb
http://www.oldengine.org/members/ihc14
http://www.oldengine.org/members/ferguson/
http://www.corvair.org/chapters/chapter920/
