2007-01-16 00:03:21 · 4 answers · asked by gerald m 1 in Environment
A100 watt solar panel retails for about $500. Chances are it costs less than a quarter of that to build. Over its lifetime it will generate somewhere around 35,000 kilowatt hours of electricity. At ten cents a kilowatt hour that is $3,500. Is it worth it? You bet.
2007-01-16 02:35:15 · answer #1 · answered by Ed 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Not very much really, it is just very expensive because no body is funding solar panel research sufficiently. This isw because the big oil companies are fighting hard to keep a more sensible product of the market, because they would lose a lot of bussiness.
How much energy to build a solar panel, I don't know but it can't be all that much.
2007-01-16 00:13:55 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Far too much to make solar truly worthwhile, unless the cost of getting electricity to a particular location is very high.
I quote Don Lancaster
--//--
Photovoltaics
Photovoltaic "pv" solar cells are wildly successful when
used on solar power calculators. This enormously large
market is driven by people who are happy as a clam paying
five hundred dollars per kilowatt hour for all of their
electricity. A figure gotten by taking that fifty cent retail
value of the cells extended over the total actual calculator
use lifetime energy consumption of about one watthour.
To date, on a historic and totally system wide basis, not
one net watthour of solar pv electricity has ever been
produced. Solar pv thus remains a net energy sink.
2007-01-16 00:10:51 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋
1
2017-02-01 07:52:46 · answer #4 · answered by ? 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋