cheap solar power
Why aren’t solar power panels cheaper?
I live in Tucson,AZ. Where it’s sunny 300 days of the year if not more. I would like to build my own home, completely off the grid.
Solar cells are made either with single crystal silicon or polycrystalline silicon, with the latter being much cheaper & most common.
The single crystal material is used for all standard chips, so large quantities have been used for a long time. It is still quite expensive because it is very difficult to make. The impurities are in the parts per billion level or less. Also, the enormous single crystals must be made very slowly in a furnace.
The polycrystalline stuff eliminates the slow crystal growing stage. Also, Dow chemical has a new material & process developed to dramatically reduce the cost of the polycrystalline material. I think they blend a lower quality & cost silicon feedstock with a higher quality one, & still get it to work OK.
Finally, I don’t know of any solar cell that is 40% efficient that is in production. The current champ is the Sunpower cell at about 17% efficient.
Cheap solar power from MIT
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Food Pantry Hanging Dehydrator / Dryer - Five Tray Non Electric Fruit, Vegetable, Jerky Dehydration - Food Pantrie
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A Complete Guide to the Installation of Off-Grid PV Solar Power Systems
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New Trent iCruiser IMP1000 11000mAh External Battery Pack and Charger for The new iPad the 3rd Gen ipad, iPad2, iPhone 4S 4 3Gs 3G, iPod Touch (1G to 5G), Android (Samsung Galaxy Note S S2, HTC Sensation EVO Thunderbolt, LG Optimus V), Blackberry (Bold curve Torch), Droid(Motorola Razr), Plus Major Tablet PCs with 5V input (Samsung, Blackberry, HTC) etc
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Logitech Wireless Solar Keyboard K750
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Logitech Wireless Solar Keyboard K750 for Mac - Silver (920-003472)
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