I am interested in solar business

Could You Define : Discuss ?

discuss just mean we share some information about what kind of things both of us are interested in , such like I think solar energy is benefit for us to use in the future . ,

yea joy, more info please.

It's perfect reply , what do you do ? are you engineer or what ? does you job related to solar products ?

What do you mean with discuss?

Do you have products that need sales?

hello , I am sorry for delay my reply , yes , it is true that one of the reason I sell solar products , such as solar panels , solar cell , solar light , the other reason is want to share international information with people who also interested in renewble energy ,

that's it , i am not going to persuade people to buy our products , just learn more knowledge and know how is the market going on .

Are you working related to renewble energy industry ?

have nice day .

Could you log in, then we know who asks what. When you are logged in you get informed when someone adds something to a blog, and you can send direct messages to the users, without others seeing what you ask or tell. Somtimes this is handy when the info is partly confidential.

I'm not professionally active in the renewable energy sector but I which to be.

I'm working as application development engineer in the heat tracing business. From this side I see a lot of energy related stuff, thermal calculations are my speciality.

I mean you have a plan, or a idea at least. Would you please send me your business plan by e-mail: acquaway@acquaway.ind.br Fernando Vasconcelos

Why solar, there is no business like snow business

I agree! And with so much talk about nano-this and nano-that today, we should be able to seed clouds with nano-power plants, and store the static electrical energy of falling or blowing snowflakes. With a nano-battery or nano-capacitor on each flake, we should be able to get actual kilowatts megawatts from a decent storm.

I have outlined the energy capture portion, it is up to someone else to work out the transmission and distribution.

I like to participate as well and offer these products in single or multi silicon form cell.

Can you direct me to some specific data sheets?

Or send them to my mail box.

Gwen

Hi Gwen ,

Thanks for your suggests which is let me logged in .yes , I am doing solar business , but I read your comments that you are working for hot tracking systems ,for what kind of industry to use this system ?

But you mentioned it your wish your'd like became much understanding of solar products ,

What do you think of solar panels , or build solar pv station is will growing fast for application in your country or Europe ? for commercial or residencial ?

My contact information is :

By the way , my english name is joy ,

yanjiang_123@126.com

joy---cute@hotmail.com

Skype : yanjiang-solar

www.jc-solar.com

Have a nice day

Bye

Joy

I would certainly like to be part of this conversation AND business opportunity, too. It is interesting that the initial responses to this blog posting come from all over the world. It is something that we all share, where we may all benefit, where we can all contribute.

There are many hurdles to success here BUT I feel strongly that we must continue to enhance the efficiency, lower the cost and increase the robustness of photovoltaic systems (just as has been done with ALL energy systems in the past).

Count me into this thread also; we have been separating the chaff from the wheat for a while already.

Sure. what do you want to know.

v

and their products, like yard lamp street lamp etc.

info@ndt.cn

Solar energy can be converted to other types to be applicable.

Presently most effective (economy!) is heat, e.g. hot water production.

Second, is electric energy production. China has a lot of manufacturers of solar power panels, but..They are to small (old technology) and small Watts per squarre meters as well as too expensive. So their products MUST be more effective to become competive. Of course small backyard ligts are OK.

USA introduces new technologies, better W/m^2 and soon better USD/W factors.

States which have most of so called solar businesses / contractors are California and Florida. Leading reasons are number of sunny days/year and rich customers.

In Europe is hard to find locations with higher Sun radiation per m^2 (square meter).

You may find many another opinions and info about solar energy right here -= in CR4, Take your time to learn! If you are looking for partners or market (to invest in devices/equipment manufacturing) ask more specyfic questions.

Even with less sunny days in northern parts of Europe, solar business is effective and economic...
Using solar heat for hot water and heating can save up to 50% of energy costs!!!

Solar electricitiy is supported in some countries by the government, you get more money for "your" electricity than you usually buy for...
and, as a fact, in the long run you will get more money from the roof than from a bank!!!

So we get an answer for the question: "What are the trends in EU?"

I have seen simple warm water panels in Sweden in 1980's. Of course most effective the installation was for maybe 3 months. In more powerful installations the solar solution must beat heat pumps technology.

Also in nothern states of the USA (New Jersey) lately the home owner installed the PV + Hydrogen installation to produce serious number of kW and kWh. It costed about 500 000 USD. I am not sure he can get ROI better then 25 years. Majority of States offers tax credits and grid-reverse kWh meters so electricity can be taken from the grid when needed or send back to grid when solar energy is high.

Up to now the discussion is very basic. We have a lot books as well as installations I know that are working (and are in good shape) for over 20 years. These old (but expensive) constructions on roofs proved to have life expectancy higher then shingles.

Sun radiated energy could produce much more kWh or Joules if the solar panel could be cheaper.

Anybody could write here what are the today's panel prices in your country? Or list the links

And, building on your question, who are the major suppliers (company names), what is the cost of the solar panels and what is the power output for each?

Well, I have done a little research into the subject of solar cells and panels (including a few weeks of solid research and sourcing). A few years ago, as part of our R&D team here, I found that the best way to design a new (and very specialised) solar powered product was to find all the solar cell and panel manufacturers in the world (using many of the fine online solar manufacturer directories) and check every single one of them. The compiled list came out to about 10 pages of major cell and panel manufacturers, 5 pages of minor cell and panel manufacturers and 1 page of flexible solar panel manufacturers (and a large number of additional pages of primary suppliers of solar inverters, charge controllers, batteries and product producers).

Consider trying to accomplish THAT 20 years ago without the internet! As to the pricing, mine is a bit out of date (but due to the curent manufacturing processes for panels the prices between manufacturers are roughly the same).

Now, I don't know what is happening at the moment but there was a world-wide shortage of solar panels last year due, in part, to the Germans buying up whole production runs from the main world suppliers (BP solar, Kyocera, Sharp, etc) to use in their solar power plants. Those wacky Germans. I believe there was also a Silicon shortage (but I have not been following it recently). Copper prices (and to a lesser extent aluminium and steel) are of more concern at the moment.

Now although the cells and panels themselves are still hopelessly inefficient and STILL require alot more energy to manufacture them than they would produce over their entire life span when included in a system (such as grid tie, home power, etc), they do have their place in use on remote sites or where other forms of power supply are not easily available. Current development into new solar cell technology and manufacturing techniques looks promising, but until a product is made available we will just have to watch and wait and see what develops. Afterall I can design with a dream filled full of promise, but I cannot sell that to an end user (or can I).

Hi Jack, ....best way to do this for now would be to tie these panels to other consumer goods - a complete self contained package, i.e.: beer coolers, solar - TEC cooling system, street lights(talk to local councils), etc. Just make sure to buy me some beer when you make money!!!!

Consumer goods are not really my area (although there are exceptions). My work is primarily in heavy power and distribution as well as industrial applications, so my use of solar panels and cells reflects this (specialty and niche applications, and such). For example, when a product is supported 100m in the air in the middle of nowhere you really don't have the luxury of running a 5km long extension cord to the nearest buildings power outlet.

Of course there are other solar technologies other than standard cells and panels that look promising like - Solar concentrators (up to around 40% efficiency so far), transparent solar panels that can be used as windows, or my favorate - flexible thin film solar panels (which show the most promise for those difficult special applications). Flexible film is opening up alot of product development opportunities, and these will only increase as the available power and efficiency increases.

Good job JACK! And excellent general info pack.

Do you have some basic indicators ($-USD/Watt) of the PV panel models, of course the smaller the better?

E.g. Sharp, BP. I found the BP is offering full service (installation +aftermarkt) but is is still too expensive. Any opinio0n about China product's prices?

Depends on what you want (grid-tie for powering your house - forget it). For an application engineering project, I doubt BP are going to come down and install it for me.

I found Sharp panels to be both cheaper AND higher efficiency than equivalent BP panels (in around the 80W and 125W panel range), although this was just from our local supplier. Cost analysis on power VS price down here varied from around 0.026 for 2W panels up to 0.137 for 125W panels (all 12V), although it should be noted that this analysis is based on small quantity purchase sub-supplier pricing from 2005 and 2006 (so the price should be lower now). As for the efficiencies, 12.4% for the Sharp panels is about the limit of current solar technology (compared to BP's 11.1%).

Freight just kills the price (the panels are very heavy after all). I have not tried going direct to China as the quantities I use are fairly small (and to a smaller extent, the panel quality and life is unknown). Pricing should be better, but you really need to ensure the quality and panel life are good. It's no use saving 20% on a panel if it only has half the life of a brand name (although if it lasts the life of the installation, maby). You get what you pay for after all.

Performing your own in-house panel quality testing doesn't work very well (Yes boss, the accelerated panel quality tests will be completed in 2 years).

A few years ago, they were vaporizing doped silicon onto window glass, with remarkable savings. What happened to that? How about fabric made from glass fibers, each strand being formed with doped surfaces? Anybody ever make fiberglass panels which produced electricity? Imagine the fabric surface of a zeppelin generating enough power to drive itself?

Ideas are the cheapest thing in this day and age. How many MORE do you want? Why are we STILL talking about solar collector shingles? That is SO last century! How about solar collector points on roofs which carry light through fiber optics to the offices inside...who is doing this work? Why isn't it YOU?

Yusef1 stag@cyberus.ca (could not be bothered to sign in today...grin!)