hi! i’m from the philippines, and i’ve been looking for solar panels for our house. however, the ones i’ve found cost PHP80,000 (that’s around $1,800) per eight-square foot panel that’s capable of producing 80 watts. the engineer of the company selling it said that it’s only strong enough to power three flourescent bulbs for a couple of hours. even if i bought a whole bunch of panels, it still won’t be enough to power our entire house considering we have a ref.
is this the normal capacity and cost of solar cells? would i really have to spend so much for solar energy?
note: the same engineer suggested we go for a hybrid solar and wind system because it’s cheaper and more efficient, but the wind where we live isn’t strong enough for a turbine.
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That cost does seem high.
Here in San Jose, California in the United States I have several colleagues that have purchased solar photovoltaic systems for their homes.
The systems are advertised as capable of producing up to 3,000 watts under ideal conditions. However they actually produce substantially less than that.
My colleagues experience is that annual production has been running approximately 4,000 kilowatt hours per year.
That is not enough electricity to run a home.
The system is designed to feed electricity back into the grid if the system is producing more electricity than the home is using, which seems to be a rather rare occasion.
The cost of these systems installed in San Jose, California is approximately $30,000 dollars U.S.
If you finance the installation with a 6% loan, the annual interest cost of the system is $1,800 dollars U.S.
At 4,000 kilowatt hours of electricity per year that is a cost of 45 cents per kilowatt hour which is rather expensive for electricity.
If you purchase one of these systems to provide electricity for off the grid applications, then you also need to buy a large number of batteries to store the electical energy which is an additional cost.
Solar photovoltaic cells are fascinating the way they produce electricity from sunlight. Unfortunatelly they are a very expensive way to produce electricity.
Its a pity that the semiconductor and microelectronics industry don’t devote more research into bringing down the cost of PV cells like they did and do for computers, RAM and microprocessors.
People like to rag on Big Oil for everything wrong, but if Big Silicon would spend THEIR profits on something besides cramming more songs into an iPod or putting more buttons and functions into cell phones, then everyone could put PV cells on their roof as a means of poweringthe PC and TV sitting in each room below.
Very good question and some very good answers. I am so glad to see more people learning the hard facts about Solar Power. Some “Environmentalists” along with the uninformed media have duped most into believing we can just “Go Solar”.
I am an engineer and was in the energy production field for over 40 years. Many Billions have been spent on research and development all over the world. If Solar was cost effective it would be everywhere. Unfortunately, it is only cost effective in very few applications.
The problem you have is where you live. It cost a lot to ship to the Philippines. And then there is such a great chance of getting ripped off for my money and products that I don’t ship outside the 48 states. It is a big risk so it has a high cost.
However, You have to understand you do not get your money back in the first year after the install. It takes years but will pay back twice to 4 times it’s worth back to you.
If you install solar on your home the first 10 years you are paying more for payments then you would have paying the Electric Grid. But after that it starts turning around.. The cost of your electric bill will never go down it will only go up and over the past few years has increased by 6.5% per year.. Add that up over the 30 life of a solar electric system.
By renting your power from the Electric Co in thirty years you will end up paying over $210,000 USD and have nothing to show for it.. However if you install solar the value of the system never drops so you can sell it for more or the same as you paid for it to start with. After it has been installed on a home it is worth 120% what it cost to install it.
So after 5 years you sell your home you get 120% of the cost plus you got the last 5 years of Electric FREE because you got the money back that you paid on the system if you got 120% of the install back on the sale of the home.
Just set back and think it over.. You will see what I am talking about.
Check out this page and some of the links on it if you are wanting to know more.
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