Oh, wait a second, I think I see what Shawn was getting at --
actual PV output 10 percent of rated peak output.
The original article said:
The company will spend about $515 million to establish 80
megawatts of generating power by 2013 -- half from the
pole-mounted panels and half from larger arrays that it will
establish at some of its properties. In all, the project will
produce enough power for about 80,000 homes. The project will
raise rates by 10 cents per month, per customer.
So I guess the question boils down to whether the 80 megawatts was
peak output or average output. If the latter, the number of
households makes sense, if not, not....
Jon
Jon Bosak wrote:
Michael Brown wrote:
OK, so a quick clarification on the topic of kilowatts vs
kilowatt-hrs (and just a bit on solar stuff, too)...
Thanks for the tutorial, but I think that most of the people
involved in this discussion are clear on the difference between
kilowatts and kilowatt-hours.
What I'm not getting is Shawn's reference to a "10% capacity
factor." His figure of 2600 kWh per capita per annum works out to
7.12 kWh per person per day, which would be an average continuous
demand of 0.3 kW (7.12 kilowatt-hours divided by 24 hours). My
figure from the DOE was an average American household use of 936
kWh/month, which is 31.2 kWh/day (936 divided by 30). Put the two
together and you get an average household size of 4.4 people,
which shows that the two sets of figures are in reasonable
alignment.
Using Shawn's figures, if you assume as Shawn does that the
average household has 2-3 people, then that household is using
14.24 to 21.36 kWh/day, or an average continuous load of 0.59 to
0.89 kW. This is even less than I was getting from the DOE
number.
So... I still don't see where the 4-6 kW average household use is
coming from. That would be 96-144 kWh a day, which is high even
for Americans. At our place we average about 19 a day, and that's
in a pretty normal 1950s ranch house with a lot of electric
appliances.
Jon
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