Hey guys,

 

A friend raised my attention to this article about solar energy. The article itself (very short article) wasn't the issue, but rather the first comment (lonnng comment, apparently copied off of some other publication about Zenith Solar).

 

Some people told me that this is fake, and doesn't follow science or physical principles - but I am not sure I have enough background in Solar energy construction to judge for myself, so I immediately thought of you guys here in the forums!

 

Help me out here.. can this be real, or is this a fake hoax/fraud?

 

Again, I'm only relating to the comment, not the actual blog post.

 

Thanks !

 

~moo

I'm going to say "true but extremely misleading." They're comparing apples and oranges, specifically traditional photovoltaics vs. focusing and concentrating methods. Obviously systems which concentrate sunlight are going to produce more power per unit area on the actual collecting surface. What is needed are cost and efficiency comparisons with the whole system.

If I'm not mistaken, that's related to the below:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXyJrFKwjrc

There are basically three different approaches being discussed, and not being differentiated very well. Standard photovoltaic, which is the large panels. Then there are two different concentration techniques — one is photovoltaic and the other is thermal. Concentration onto a photovoltaic cell can be cheaper if your mirrors are cheaper per unit area than the cell, but you often have to cool the cell and have the mirrors track the sun. Solar thermal concentrates the light to heat up some fluid, which you can then use to boil water and make steam to run a turbine. AFAIK, this doesn't scale down particularly well — there is a minimum size system you need; I think it tends to work well in warm, sunny areas and significantly poorer in cooler regions with less direct sunlight.

 

So as Sisyphus has said, true but misleading.