Solar Panel Efficiency Apparently Not Great...YET
Wednesday Aug 01, 2007
Very educational (for me anyway) viewpoint piece in BusinessWeek on energy conversions for converting solar energy into usable electricity; also ways to trim the conversion train for greater efficiency. At Sun we strive to do a similar thing with our computer processors, constantly innovating to get more compute power by using less power, all through various efficiency innovations.
<SNIP FROM BIZWEEK>
Sometimes the best solutions to the energy crisis are the simplest, and often they're right in front of our eyes. Consider the use of solar power to light a home. Even the most advanced photovoltaic solar panels convert just 20% of the available sunlight to electricity. The resulting direct current (DC) then must undergo conversion to alternating current (AC), losing another 20%. If that AC goes on to light an incandescent bulb, which is only 5% efficient, you end up using a fraction of 1% of the original sunlight as room light. (Even switching to compact florescent bulbs, which are 15% efficient, makes little difference in overall energy efficiency.) But if you were to simply leave sunlight as light—via proper skylights, window orientation, and louvers—nearly 80% of the light ends up as illumination.
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When you have so much land why create basements.
Because you would use less land.
Lighting is a small portion of the energy requirem...