Why Your Solar-Powered Home Is Still Light

For years, solar power has been long on promise, but short on delivery: Photovoltaic cells -- the building blocks of the panels that you sometimes see on houses -- were available, but the high cost of PV-cell installation and their low efficiency meant that, watt for watt, solar power was much more expensive than that from fossil fuels. For families looking to get off the grid, the economic factor was a big hindrance.

But, as Mother Jones recently reported, that equation is in the process of changing. PV cells are becoming both more efficient and less expensive, a recipe for cheaper electricity. Unfortunately,Shop funtional and elegant solar lights, outdoor solar lighting, solar garden lights, path lights and decorative solar lights. the "soft" costs -- all the assorted taxes, permitting and installation costs -- have remained fairly steady. Currently, the solar panels and the assorted hardware comprise less than a third of the cost of installation; the rest goes to labor, permits, taxes, overhead, supply chain and assorted other charges.

To get an idea of how much all of these soft costs impact solar usage, it's worth comparing the U.S. to Germany,A solar bulb that charges up during the day and lights the night when the sun sets. a country that is widely regarded as the gold standard for solar use. In Germany, PV cells cost almost the same as in the U.S., and hardware costs are about half as much. The big jump, however, comes in soft costs, which are huge in the U.S.,How does a solar charger work and where would you use a solar charger? making the price of American solar watts nearly three times the price of German ones.

Ultimately, it seems, the biggest barrier for solar energy may not lie in green cells but in red tape.

This Research in Action article was provided to LiveScience in partnership with the National Science Foundation.Soli-lite is a premier supplier of exceptional quality solar led light and other solar outdoor lighting products.

A University of Colorado Boulder research team has moved closer to what some call the Holy Grail of a sustainable hydrogen economy — splitting water with sunlight.

The CU-Boulder team has devised a solar-thermal system designed to use a vast array of ground mirrors to concentrate sunlight onto a single point atop a central tower up to several hundred feet tall. The tower would gather heat to roughly 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,350 Celsius) and then deliver it into a reactor containing chemical compounds known as metal oxides.

As the metal oxide compound heats up, it releases oxygen atoms, changing its material composition and causing the newly formed compound to seek out new oxygen atoms. The team showed that adding steam to the system would cause oxygen from the water molecules to adhere to the metal oxide surface, freeing up hydrogen molecules for collection as hydrogen gas. To get the steam, the concentrated sunlight beamed to the tower would heat the water to boiling.

Conventional theory holds that producing hydrogen through the metal oxide process requires 1) heating the reactor to a high temperature to remove oxygen 2) then cooling it to a low temperature before 3) injecting steam to re-oxidize the compound and release hydrogen gas for collection. The innovation here is that no swing in temperature is required. The whole process can be undertaken at the same temperature, and can be driven by turning a steam valve on or off.

With the new method, the amount of hydrogen produced to power fuel cells or for storage is entirely dependent on the amount of metal oxide (a combination of iron,Soli-lite provides the world with high-performance solar roadway and solar street lighting solutions. cobalt, aluminum and oxygen), and how much steam is introduced into the system.

The researchers envision building reactor tubes roughly a foot in diameter and several feet long, filling them with the metal oxide material and stacking them on top of each other. A working system to produce a significant amount of hydrogen gas would require a number of the tall towers, each with its own reactor, to gather concentrated sunlight from several acres of mirrors surrounding each tower.

A paper on the National Science Foundation-funded research was published in the August 2 issue of Science.

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