274 comments on Ten Fundamental Principles of Net Energy
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1) You've neglected the cost for new (non-waste)silicon, additional storage, transmission lines, maintenence and labor of pv systems. The boundries for eroei analysis are greater than those for energy efficiency studies
2)Your analogy is lacking. Cotton candy is light and contains little caloric content but is full of embodied energy. She spinning machine and labor use a lot of energy
1) What I quoted was total cost of ownership divided by total energy produced. That is usually what you do for all other electrical sources, too. Transmission cost of PV is lower than that of conventional power sources because the generator can be on your roof rather than three hundred miles away. There is even an over-unity net gain because local generation causes smaller peak loads in summer and the reduction of I2R losses from the coal fired or nuclear or whatever power plant will show up as a greater than unity transmission efficiency for PV (all other things being equal). There is never a free lunch, but sometimes there is a win-win.
2) I meant to say that cotton candy has a lot of calories but you couldn't survive on it. A pure cotton candy diet leads to avitaminosis and lack of essential amino acids and fatty acids. Please don't ever try. No matter how much of that stuff you will eat, you will always get sick and ultimately die.
What we need here are essential facts, not BA kind of fluff!
Then you will have to incalculate that: either the panels are on the roofs, where people live, or they are in a place where there is more sunlight in a better angle, where they can be more efficient.