Re:The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan (2006)
by sliverstorm on Monday March 04, 2013 @12:39PM
(#5319332)
Solar panels are nice in that if one fails, you just replace it. That's also why they are not nice; all the upsides and downsides of a disposable unit-based system.
I'm curious where you are getting this "conservative" estimate of 50 years. I typically hear 20 years, 40 years tops.
photovoltaics might be the future, but they aren't the today as best I can tell. They are inefficient, and much like the Prius batteries people like to talk about, are pretty environment-unfriendly to manufacture.
Are you sure a thermal solar installation will last as long as photovoltaics? Any plant with the efficiency gains you describe has gimballing mirrors, highly thermally cycled metals, steam circuits, and freakin' turbines among other mechanical contraptions all over the place. I see a whole lot of disadvantages compared to a completely solid-state, arbitrarily scalable panel that lasts (conservatively) 50 years.
I realize some places might get really neat solutions out of thermal solar, but I just don't see how it's anything more than a niche. By contrast, photovoltaics have the prerequisites to take over the entire market from the bottom up. They are our future.