Plans2Reality

Efficiency Doesn't Matter

Not for mass-market solar panels, anyway.

The goal of mass-market solar, otherwise known as grid-tied PV, is to generate electricity for the grid, so we don't have to burn as much coal, oil, etc. It's a fine idea.

But anyone in the fild will tell you that PV electricity is still a lot more expensive than coal-fired electricity, even when the sun is shining - never mind darkness. (And even if you factor in a pretty high carbon tax. Coal is cheap.)

Therefore, the goal is to get the cost of PV electricity down as far as possible - ideally as cheap as coal, even cheaper if possible.

Now, electricty is sold in units of kilowatt-hours (kWh). So we need to get the cost of PV, in terms of dollars per kWh, as low as possible. It doesn't matter how EFFICIENT a PV panel is, only how much it costs. Sunlight (unlike coal) is free, so it really doesn't matter if a panel is 10%, 15%, or 20% efficient - not if such efficiency comes at a cost.

There's nothing _wrong_ with efficiency, per se. And I am sure the boffins will find ways to improve it. But anyone who asks what a panel's efficiency is doens't understand the problem. The only meaningful question is, what's the cost per kilowatt-hour?

A Blog Recommendation for Book Lovers

Holly Payne's Blog is up and running. Holly is a local author, most recently of Kingdom of Simplicity.

Check it out at the link above, or http://hollypayne.wordpress.com/

More on the book at www.kingdomofsimplicity.com

Kingdom of Simplicity - Video Interview

There have been a number of excellent newspaper articles about Holly Payne's book, Kingdom of Simplicity , but this is a video interview, and a better one that average in terms of the typical morning TV show format. Give it a look!   

Holly Payne interview on View from the Bay, our SF ABC affiliate.

Solar Panels: Why Quote the Wrong Spec?

Here at Plans2Reality World Headquarters, we have been looking at solar panels for electricity. This has provided an interesting and instructive lesson in marketing along the way. I shall christen it:

Bragging About the Wrong Thing

Solar panel makers love to brag about two things: their watt-peak (Wp) rating and their efficiency. Oddly enough, neither one matters. Nope, not a bit. Not one d*mn bit at all. 

(Let me interject here that _all_ panel makers are equally involved. In private conversation, many have told me they agree with the analysis I am about to present.)

First, Wp. The peak-watt rating is a measurement of instantaneous power output from the panel, taken under an incident light intensity of 1000 watts per square meter, and at a cell temperature of 25C.

So what's wrong with this? The panel will never actually see these conditions in the real world, and there is poor correlation between these "STC" ratings and real-world performance.

1000W/m2 does approximate the noon-day sun, but most of the time it isn't noon. Furthermore, most solar panels are NOT installed in sun-tracking mounting systems, so at best the panel "sees" full sun only at noon. The oblique angle the rest of the day reduces incident light. (Actually, most smaller arrays are installed so the panels aren't at the optimum angle even at noon - residential rooftops are usually not at the correct angle, but it's easier, and nicer-looking, to mount them flat against the roof.)

So your panel will never generate its Wp rating, due to sun angle. But wait, there's more!

PV panels are quite temperature-sensitive - some more than others, but all are to a fair degree. And when you place an object in the sun, it gets warm - warmer than 25C most of the time.

How much warmer? Well, That Depends.

The exact amount of heat gain depends on the specific PV material. Some panels will get warmer than others. In addition, the degree to which the panel cools off, that is, sheds heat via conduction and convection to the environment, varies substantially among panels. There have been attempts to quanity this (NOCT, PTC) but these are at best compromises.

Net-net of all this: the Wp rating of the panel represents a power output you will never see in real life. Couldn't be much more meaningless than that, huh?

So what specification SHOULD we be talking about? 

We should be talking about kilowatt-hours per dollar. Why? The answer is quite simple: Solar panels are installed to generate electrical energy. Electrical energy is measured - and sold - in units of kilowatt-hours. So why not measure our PV installation the same way the electric utility measures the electricity it sells us?

It's just that simple. Really.  I am putting up PV panels so I don't have to buy kilowatt-hours from the utility. Great. So tell me how much the kilowatt-hours from the PV panels will cost.

Nothing else matters, folks. Nothing.

Next installment: Efficiency doesn't matter either.  ;-)

It's Out: Kingdom of Simplicity.

Holly Payne's new novel is a very readable tale. Only a few stories have the ability to pull you in and make you neglect what you should be doing in order to spend more time reading, and Kingdom of Simplicity does that. 

The story revolves around a young Amish boy growing to manhood, and facing the challenge of forgiving himself. No spoilers here; but... in Olde English, the prefix "for" (as in forgive) means, very simply, before. To for-give is to give as before. Not to give grudgingly, or agree to overlook, but to give. Eli, the novel's protagonist, must come to grips with this, and discover what he truly needs to give. 

It's a Romance, in the truest sense of that term. Emma loves Eli, but he cannot see it, much less accept it, until he can forgive, and learn to love himself in all his human frailty. 

Few if any of the folks who read this review are Amish, but do not think that the experiences of this young man don't relate to "modern" life. All life, at all times, is "modern" to those to whom it happens, and this is a novel for all time. 

I had the pleasure of buying a copy after hearing the author read from it, and to hear her read it is remarkable. Rarely have I been so drawn into the world of a novel - too often one feels one is watching from a distance, but Ms Payne will draw you into Eli's world completely. Such a wonderful love story! Buy it, read it, and grow from the experience.

Eli's Almost Here

The Kingdom of Simplicity, a new novel by Holly Payne, is set for release on June 6th. Her third; it is an excellent book, and IMHO her best yet. I've had the privilege of proof-reading the galleys, and I love the story.

Eli Yoder is an Amish boy trying to come to terms with tragedy and forgiveness. The story is, in once sense, fiction, but it is true in another - it's based on true events, both in the Amish community and in the author's own life.

Find out more at: Kingdom of Simplicity. And soon on Eli's own blog. Stay tuned....

Spring

The season and the mechanical device. I can't quite beleive I haven't posted since February. After a slow winter, business activity has increased. It seems as though there was a sort of pause last fall, waiting for the other shoe (or bank) to drop. Now, while we are by no means out of the woods, business activity is increasing again.

So, here at Plans2Reality we are springing forward as well. We've expanded our offices and our service offerings. There's increased emphasis on what I call 'Driving the Design Win Process' as we help our clients close the technology design wins they need to drive sales.

Got Design Wins?

A Modest Proposal

Even solvent banks don't seem to be lending much, and the VC community has pulled up the gates. So, a modest proposal to get the economy going that probably will not cost too much:

A tax holiday for the proceeds from any new VC or similar business investment made in the next 12 months. No capital gains, no income tax, no nothin'.

I will leave it to the boffins and policy wonks to hammer out the definitional details, but this is the gist of it.

Note that this is NOT the usual investment tax credit. Those are okay, but are more loop-hole than incentive. This is aimed at venture-oriented, higher-risk investments - new businesses or LARGE expansions of existing ones.

Write your Congress-person!

Eli's Coming......

Yes, Eli is coming. Stay tuned for details.

Writing for PDF

Most technical documents today are distributed as PDF, not as hard copy. This leads to a question: are you writing for PDF?

Writing for PDF means taking advantage of the assumption that the user will either view on-line or print on a laser printer. Many of the conventions of bookbinding make little sense when documents are laser-printed - the idea of different right and left pages, for example.

You can take it a step further, of course - PDF allows you to embed hot links to other places in the document, and to web locations.

You can also embed video and audio files. This is of particular use if your product has video or audio capabilities. As the old writer's maxim puts it: show, don't tell.

Think about your audience's intended use of your document - then write for PDF.