why is electricity so expensive yet its free from the sun?

Answer 1

It is only expensive depending on how it is generated.

I pay about 7.5 cents / kwh which is pretty cheap. That's because our power provider uses a lot of nuclear energy to generate electricity.

Those that use oil or natural gas will cost more.

The sun does not generate electricity, but sunlight can be converted to electricity by solar cells. The reason that you don't see these being used more is a few:
1. They are very expensive to buy.
Look at these prices!:
http://www.wholesalesolar.com/packages.html#Anchor-Call-11481
And these kits only provide about a third of what a typical house uses!
2. The sun only puts out about 600w per square meter on the sunniest days (That's about enough energy to light 6 bulbs).
3. Not every day is sunny!

Hope that helps.

Answer 2

Whatever anyone says, you have indeed hit upon something.

You can install solar panels into your house or install a geothermal system and/or use wind power. Some states have reverse electricity programs where you can sell your excess energy back to the electric grid.

For your car, you can use old cooking oil if you have a diesel engine and find someone who makes it useable or even make your own (dangerous though). Some places(e.g. Switzerland) have citizens collect all sorts of food scraps which they make into biodiesel which runs some public buses. While saving the scraps is nasty the bus fumes smell good!

There are cars which run off of a battery either totally or mixed fuel and the battery could be fueled by solar panels. There have been cars invented which use solar panels. If you see who funds this sort of technology and gets patents on it you can see why the technology has not gone public. McGill university in Montreal Canada is one of many universities which has done this type of research.

In poorer countries solar panels have been used to recharge batteries for lights and to run schools using computers. This was done already in the early 1990s in the former Zaire for a school of public health. Students sit outside in the sun with computers being recharged by the sun.

For those who argue that it is inefficient consider the inefficiencies in the drilling/mining of fossil fuels, refining, and the inefficiencies of electric plants/generators and cars - all of which could be improved. In Tokyo, Japan there are no emission fumes from cars due to high fuel efficiency standards.
And, how about the inefficiencies of loss of life during wars for control of oil?

And, fossil fuels contain energy from the sun indirectly because they are from tiny animals who ate plants which got energy from (solar) plant photosynthesis a long, long time ago.

There are many things which go into the cost of oil and other fossil fuels. Although oil is "rare" the people who have the oil on their land get very little money per barrel - that's not how you make money with oil. And, of course there are the costs of mining, drilling, and distribution. And, there is the issue of shortage.

But, mostly the costs come from having a monopoly capitalistic system which some on this site write simply as greed (which is true). The wars in the middle east are beneficial to the oil industry who use them as an excuse to drive up price and hence profits. Excessive profits is where the excessive cost is from.

I remember as a very small child in 1970 watching on the "Today Show" about how shortly cars would be electric. Strangely this concept disappeared - despite the oil crisis starting in 1973- for over 20 years.

Answer 3

Because solar energy is not widely used. It is relatively expensive to have solar panels that are big enough to capture enough of the sun's energy to make it cost effect.

Electricity bought from your local electricity supplier is sooo expensive, for two reasons...1.you need it. (google supply and demand, read up on that). 2. You can't provide it for yourself.(apply some principals from your previous google search).

People can create electricity from many things, wind, the sun, nuclear reactions, etc. Wind, takes entirely way too much to make very little energy, never mind the turbines can only be used during a range of low wind speeds. (this will get better over time). The sun, see above. Nuclear, some power plants are of this variety, but it is a dangerous technology, for the most part pretty stable, but it is still dangerous.

Coal, costs money, they burn it to provide you and me with electricity. They pass that cost on to us as well as make a profit.

So there ya go, more information than you wanted I am sure. Research these kind of things on the Internet if you are concerned about them.

Answer 4

Electricity derived from the sun through solar panels is not exactly free, you need to by the solar panels, you need battery to store the energy for use when sunlight is unavailable. You will need to pay for maintenance. To get the same level of power and reliability, you will need a large surface area to capture the sun's energy. All these will add up and in the end, even though electricity is expensive, your solar panel solution may cost much more per unit of electricity when total cost of owership is fully considered.

Answer 5

Electricity doesn't come from the sun unless you install the technology to convert the sun's energy into electricity. The technology itself isn't free. Most electric companies don't use this because it's hard to keep up with the demand with this. Even electricity that's harvested from free resources (wind, water, etc) has to be converted and distributed. This isn't free. If you want to invest the money to install your own solar panels (you'd be surprised how many you need to generate the power you need) then go for it. It'll help the environment and then you won't be obligated to power companies.

Answer 6

Most electricity is created in fossil fuel and nuclear plants... These are ultimately pretty expensive to maintain and run. Procurement of material, manpower, land, power line maintenance and the like all make for a very expensive operation.

Solar power cells are simply too inefficient (about 10-15% total power conversion at best) to be used on a wide scale. Someday the technology may be there where solar cells become vastly more efficient, however, until then we must rely on our power plants to provide the energy we all rely on.

Answer 7

Electricity is not free from the sun.

When is the last time you reached up towards the sun and were electrocuted? Do we get constantly shocks of electrocution when walking in the sun? Err, no we do not.

Electricity is a conversion of energy, and the cost is for payment on upkeep, maintenance, salaries, of machinery that we have created on earth to convert energy into electricity to power our homes. Someone has to take care of those dams, solar stations, wind farms.

Yes, you can get solar panels installed in your house: but you still have to pay someone to make them, deliver them, install them - along with enough money for everyone to make a little money. Once installed, then it's "practically" free, but who has 15k to throw away in one year for an upgrade that may or may not be beneficial on a household?

Etc

Answer 8

Electricity isn't really energy but a means of transferring energy. In order to generate electricity, some form of energy is used to excite electrons. The method of getting the electrons in motion can vary from mechanical/magnetic (in the case of turbines) to chemical (in the case of solar energy). Most electricity sold through power companies is generated by some kind of turbines. While some of that energy is generated by water-powered turbines (hydro power), and some by wind-powered turbines, many of the turbines are powered by steam that is heated by burning fossil fuels or using nuclear reactions. If fossil fuels are burned, then there is a large cost associated, and this is passed on to ratepayers. For nuclear plants, the fuel cost is low, but the building, safety and storage costs are high. In any case, whenever some other fuel is used to get those electrons moving, the efficiency is not 100%, due to the laws of thermodynamics. Plus, when the electricity is transmitted from the utilities to users, there are more losses.

Still, some utilities are getting some of their power from free energy sources, such as hydro, wind and landfill methane. But due to building costs and transmission costs, they still have to charge something. Funny enough, though, their charges aren't going up nearly as much as those of utilities that are dependent on burning fossil fuels to keep their generators humming.

And it's not free to get electricity from the sun, because the solar panels needed to change solar energy into energy that we can use cost money. Still, with fossil fuel prices going up and the price of solar panels coming down, we may reach a point in the near future when it makes more economic sense (let alone environmental sense) to make more use of solar energy.

Answer 9

Converting solar radiation to electricity is a very involved, very expensive process that isn't very efficient, so you would need solar panels covering the entire state of Utah just to have enough to generate electricity for Salt Lake City. Of course, when the sun isn't out, the power goes out, so we must have alternative sources.

Answer 10

It's a matter of how it is harnessed. Energy is NOT free from the sun because to convert it into usable energy it must be harnessed with solar panels- which are more expensive than your average electricity bill.