PV Gap

Alfredo Said:

Why don't all public buildings have solar panels?

We Answered:

I can't remember the source for this, but someone did figure out that if we took about 300,000 acres in the Southwest U.S. and installed solar panels on them, that would be enough to power the entire U.S. Kinda silly, but....

Retrofitting solar to an existing building can be super expensive. It's much more cost effective to design it in. Check out the link below. It has been done and done successfully, though. The Knickerbocker Arena (think it is the Pepsi Center now) in Albany, NY has solar on the roof. One of New York City's public libraries has solar retrofitted ont he roof. All new municipal buildings in California must use alternatives to help power them.

The real answer with solar is two-fold I think:

1) Make it so that homeowners can more easily get systems installed on their homes and tied into the grid. Think what over 1 million roofs of solar might do.

2) Get more commercial solar onto the grid. My local utility has four solar farms and adding four more. One is built right near a large oil-burning power plant. I but $5 green credits every month from them to help them fund more solar installs.

Oh, by the way, do not confuse solar electricity generation with solar hot water. They are completely different technologies. Solar hot water works better when the weather gets hot, solar panels work better the colder it gets.

Edna Said:

why are solar panels so expensive?

We Answered:

Because producing solar cells requires lots of fossil fuel derived energy, more than they produce during their life, in most cases!