Talk:Solar power

For older archives see Talk:Solar energy.

Power costs missing

Table showing average cost in cents/kWh over 20 years for solar power panels

	Insolation
Cost	2400 kWh/kWp•y	2200 kWh/kWp•y	2000 kWh/kWp•y	1800 kWh/kWp•y	1600 kWh/kWp•y	1400 kWh/kWp•y	1200 kWh/kWp•y	1000 kWh/kWp•y	800 kWh/kWp•y
200 $/kWp	0.8	0.9	1.0	1.1	1.3	1.4	1.7	2.0	2.5
600 $/kWp	2.5	2.7	3.0	3.3	3.8	4.3	5.0	6.0	7.5
1000 $/kWp	4.2	4.5	5.0	5.6	6.3	7.1	8.3	10.0	12.5
1400 $/kWp	5.8	6.4	7.0	7.8	8.8	10.0	11.7	14.0	17.5
1800 $/kWp	7.5	8.2	9.0	10.0	11.3	12.9	15.0	18.0	22.5
2200 $/kWp	9.2	10.0	11.0	12.2	13.8	15.7	18.3	22.0	27.5
2600 $/kWp	10.8	11.8	13.0	14.4	16.3	18.6	21.7	26.0	32.5
3000 $/kWp	12.5	13.6	15.0	16.7	18.8	21.4	25.0	30.0	37.5
3400 $/kWp	14.2	15.5	17.0	18.9	21.3	24.3	28.3	34.0	42.5
3800 $/kWp	15.8	17.3	19.0	21.1	23.8	27.1	31.7	38.0	47.5
4200 $/kWp	17.5	19.1	21.0	23.3	26.3	30.0	35.0	42.0	52.5
4600 $/kWp	19.2	20.9	23.0	25.6	28.8	32.9	38.3	46.0	57.5
5000 $/kWp	20.8	22.7	25.0	27.8	31.3	35.7	41.7	50.0	62.5

Could we get a citation or is this all original research? --Wtshymanski (talk) 21:40, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Solar power in the United States

The link to http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/pub_summaries/renew_es.html in this section of the article does not justify the figures in that paragraph. First, the link is to an executive summary, but the full PDF is a paper written in Feb 1993 and so has no figures for 2006 or 2003. It does have 17 year old projections for 2010, but these are not much use now. Following the link to the 'main' article at Solar power in the United States gives us an uncited figure of 'less than 0.1%', so I undid the edit by User:125.236.220.152 that had changed this to 0.2%. This is still unsatisfactory. Trying to track down just one reliable figure, I found one source in the linked article, Solar Energy Industries Association, which gets us to http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/news/news_detail.cfm/news_id=12362 but this gives no percentages, just a total capacity of 9,183 MW in 2008.

Perhaps someone who knows their way around official sources for figures like these can do better, but at the moment the US section here seems to be an unverifiable mess. --Nigelj (talk) 09:40, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

What a mess!

Honestly I don't know how this article has retained its GA status. The article seems to have become a magnet for anything to do with solar, including solar water heating, which is clearly off-topic. I think the discussion of experimental solar is largely non-notable and should also go, to be replaced by a couple of links to sub-articles. The lead section needs to summarize the article, instead of getting hung up on intermittency, which is just one issue among many. The structure of the article needs to be a lot more logical and considerable cleanup is also needed. I've added some tags in an effort to alert readers and provide further guidance. Johnfos (talk) 01:00, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

One way of dealing with this siuation would be to revert the article back to (close to) where it was granted GA status as it was quite good back then. Another way of moving forward would be for an experienced editor to go through the article and remove extraneous material that just does not belong or is poorly referenced. Comments welcome on how to proceed... Johnfos (talk) 05:26, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

And surprisingly, its not just this article. The entire subject of solar power on Wikipedia needs cleanup. Serious overlapping exists in many solar articles. I wouldn't mind doing the cleanup, but I just don't have that much time... Worst case, if the cleanup never happens, time travelling back to GA might be the only option... Rehman⁽⁺⁾ 13:51, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Point taken. Much of the extraneous material here already appears in other articles... I'm going to take the bold step of doing a major revert on the article to bring it back to GA quality. Johnfos (talk) 04:29, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Capital costs

I just wanted to take issue with the assertion that non-renewable energy forms are paid for as they are used whereas renewable energy has to be paid up front. The comment is misleading as up-front capital costs are a significant part of many non-renewable projects, especially nuclear. Perhaps this can simply be edited straight out? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.102.99.38 (talk) 05:42, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Parabolic Trough

In the article, it said:

...the most developed [energy source] is the parabolic trough...

Is that true? I mean where did someone get that imformation. Does that generally mean that the parabolic trough is the most widely used solar energy source? --Michaelzeng7 (talk) 14:16, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Actually it said that the parabolic trough is the most developed concentrated energy source. So what is the most widely used?--Michaelzeng7 (talk) 14:19, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Sourcing of Solar Energy

I'd like to propose adding another section on the fabrication of solar, and in particular PV, including the damage to the environment that solar causes during the fabrication process. This would allow the article to be better balanced, with a 360deg picture of solar. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 221.217.45.190 (talk) 10:43, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

lots of 2010 figures

There are lots of figures in this article. eg, "The world added about 16 gigawatts of new solar photovoltaic (PV) power in 2010", "global solar PV power to nearly 40 GW", "Solar panel prices have halved since 2007, say analysts, at about $1.8 per watt at the end of 2010". maybe these can be worked in. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/14/us-energy-solar-idUSTRE71D4WJ20110214