Printed Solar Cells

[finnsawyer]

Suppose, however, I could do my house roof in solar panels.  Roof pitch: 4 feet in 12.  Latitude: 47 degrees north.  South facing roof dimensions: 28 ft by 20 ft.  East and west facing dimensions:  16 ft by 12 ft.  Kind of changes the outlook.  A lot bigger area than a car.  Should provide considerable power even at this latitude.

[tcrenshaw]

They already have solar panels or I guess you could call them shingles that replace standard roofing material. They are supposed to be able to take a fair amount of punishment from hail. I don't know if they come in life ratings like regular roofing, meaning 10 year, 25 year...etc. I also don't know their price but I'm sure you can find them on the net.

[iFred]

First there was the Stone Age; this was followed by the Bronze Age which led to the iron age and steam power, mass production and the Industrial Age. The age of the combustion engine, the plastic age and the nuclear age. When I think how fast that technology got replaced by other technology as we move through time and how fast things occur now that we are moving beyond not just the information age and globalization ( a term cooked up by our great leaders to create competition and resource and labor management at lower costs), and look forward to the energy age, the DNA & cybernetic age and the space age yet to come, I can understand the fear that change brings, but I can assure all of you that it will come with certainty and it will come rapidly. In fact you won't see it coming, it will move in so fast and so rapidly as it did with all the other ages. This leads to a special word that confines and focuses what I am about to say.

The appropriate word I wish to use here is "Paradigms or paradigm shift", shifts in conscious behavior. These paradigms are universal, meaning that they affect group consciousness and understanding globally. They are the driving force towards creating the next stage of human development. You can not control nor stop a paradigm or paradigm shift when it occurs because it moves rapidly, it changes universally and it affects globally the human consciousness and awareness that, change is happening.

So when I say that the collapse of a single industry such as the energy industry is minor I really do mean it. I'm not taking it personally as you have assumed. The energy industry is composed of several sectors all of which will be effected but still will require human intervention, retraining maybe and changing of the guards for sure. But it still needs people to run it, and since we are dealing with just a single industry, it's not like the rest of the world would utterly fail as a result due to new technology that replaces it. The guy down the street making pizza or the company that makes widgets will still continue to produce but will change only the way in which energy is made, transported and used. And there is always a phase in period which allows the change to occur and this is what creates opportunity for those with insight. This phase in period is already taken place but you will not see it in full force for another 10 years. But it is coming and it is coming rapidly.

The reason for the rapid change is due to the amount of "cheap sweet crude" that is presently available. This is the reason why the prices of oil are changing so rapidly now, because the sweet crude will reach it's peak soon (within 10 years), after this the production costs to produce anything that is not sweet crude oil will increase exponentially in cost due to the higher costs of production to produce high grade oil from low grade crud or bottom of the bucket stuff.

Rest assured that when the sweet crude oil is gone, the industry will have to change to another form of energy, and with or without them it will happen... that will be a paradigm shift that will occur to that specific industry one way or the other.

[nothing to lose]

One must remember ALL SHOWS are basically either for entertainment or selling something, even the Science and home workshop shows

"The show I was watching was saying that there is a very large supply of coal in the United States but even the large amount would only allow for about 250 years worth of use. That's really not that long and isn't what I would consider unlimited."

Let's see first ONLY 250 years? Hmm, how long we been using all this oil?? Not alot of cars, trucks, airplanes, plastics and such around in 1905 and that would be 100 years.

 So if at current and predicted future levels of use coal should last 250 years replacing oil I'd be willing to call that nearly unlimited, especailly since durring that time we will still be working at getting RE sources online reducng the need for that coal and in 100 years we may be able to extend the next "last" 150 years of coal to around 300 years. I mean how much more will we use wind and solar in 100 years for homes and maybe electric cars then just need coal fuels for heavy trucks and maybe farm equipment, manufactoring etc... Getting the homes and cars off oil would extend the life of the coal supplies.

2cnd is the fact the 250 years of coal will outlast the earth anyway! The doom sayers claim global warming will flood the planet and kill us all far before the 250 year coal supply would run out. I just heard the recent ocean earthquake has caused the earth to shift 120 feet on it's axis. Hmmm, if that is true what effect will that have on the ice caps and global warming?? Is the earth correcting for this and refreezing the ice caps shifting them from the sun, or helping it to melt faster shifting them into the sun more? What other effects will this have durring the next 250 years, and more importantly will it happen again shifting another 100 feet or more??

When we consider todays new born babies grandchildren will probably not even be living in 250 years (3 full generations here and gone) I would start calling it unlimited.

"That's really not that long and isn't what I would consider unlimited. "

1776. -2005, How much has the world changed, and that's less than 250 years, and most of the change has been in less than the last 100 years. Cars, electric, plastics, space travel, solar, heart transplants, etc...  I think 250 years would be a tremendous amount of time looking at just the recent previous 50-75 years or so. 50 Years ago I don't think we even had a man on the moon yet
      
1955. ??
      

[tcrenshaw]

For sure, this show was for the dooms dayers and how we're going to end the world. So just like this discussion, it all is a form of persuasion. They were trying to sell their point. I just don't happen to believe that the human race will all be dead in 250 years.

Coal and oil have both been in use for more than just 100 years. Oil was used in Mesopotamia around 4000 B.C. for caulking for ships, settings for jewels and mosaics and as an adhesive to secure weapon handles. In Egypt is was used for embalming as well as on the pyramids. Even the Roman's used oil based lamps. The Senecas and Iroquois used crude oil for body paint and ceremonial fires. We've only been using it on a grand scale for the last few hundred years. And remember our appetite for energy has not just doubled since its large scale use started. Our energy use has grown exponentially, and it will continue. Just look at China over the last few years. They now use almost as much oil as the U.S. and are expected to surpass us in the next two to five years. Yet ten or fifteen years ago their usage was negligible.

Also what has to be taken into consideration for the 250 years of coal is that the first chunk of coal was easy to get to, the last chunk will not be. Just like we'll have oil supplies long into the future to but when we reach the half way point, meaning half of the oil reserves in the world are gone, that's when the price starts getting jacked up. Oil will start to be more and more difficult to get to. The same thing will eventually apply to coal. The expense will become very high. So just because we have 250 years of coal based on a best guess level of usage over that period of time doesn't mean it'll be economical to use.

I'm not a dooms dayer though. I think we'll be around long after 250 years. Climate change will cause some issues but will it wipe us from the earth. No I don't think so, at least not in the next 250 years. It may cause massive problems, including a lot of death but a complete loss of humanity, I don't think so. Other than microbes we are one of the few creatures on earth that live in just about every environment found on earth. Extreme cold to extreme hot, wet and dry, high altitude and low. We are an adapting, surviving species.

As far as the earth shifting, this is nothing new. The poles have completely switched a recorded three times (best guess from the science community). The switching (again according to the scientists) takes several decades to occur and there's plenty of evidence that this is happening again. When the switch does happen all hell breaks loose. Will we be wiped from the earth at that time, most likely. Will this happen tomorrow or in the next 250 years, most likely not.

If you wish to say that coal is unlimited in your life time or in a few generations life time then yes you're correct but it is not unlimited. And if humanity is going to be gone in just a little over the length of time that the United States has existed, why even try for alternate energy sources? After all the estimates are that man has been on earth for 6009 years. Science says anywhere from several hundred thousand years to several million years. So who knows when it'll all come to an end. This may be the only place where science and the bible agree - no one knows when the end is, it's all a guess on our part.

[tcrenshaw]

The 6009 years is a biblical number. Sorry, forgot to include that in the post.

[finnsawyer]

Cost would be a factor.  I was just trying to point out that if the entire roof could be covered with solar panels a fair amount of power would be available.