L R AS Published on Sunday 30 June 2019 - n° 283 - Categories:various sectors
Solar installations should be on buildings and not in power stations.
According to Mikhail Lifshitz, co-owner of JSC Rotec in Russia, solar parks should only be built once all roofs have been equipped with solar systems.
In Russia,
there are 3,600 hectares of land occupied by voluminous metal structures weighing more than 63,000 tons. In the long term, all these installations deployed outside the cities will have to be dismantled. In Russia, 70% of the buildings have flat roofs. They should be equipped just like the vertical facades.
Consolidate solar installations on roofs, avoid using natural resources and money to erect heavy metal structures for solar panels; and save kilometres of cables and money on high-voltage equipment that heats the environment and consumes resources for its own production.
If we consider only the 92 Leroy Merlin shops that have a minimum surface area of 10,000 m²; if only 8,000 m² can be equipped with solar panels, this represents 736,000 m², corresponding to 117 MW. This solar production will not require fuel, grid losses or costly maintenance.
Deployment is currently hampered by the inertia of the industry and the current technological characteristics of solar panels. This inertia stems from the history of production: panel production required and still requires aluminium, glass and component producers, as well as a banking system providing loans with a 25-year guarantee on solar panels. The industry became slow and not very receptive to technological innovations.
If you want to install panels on roofs, you have to consider the weight of the panels, and
the one that maintains the stability of the unit against the wind. According to European standards, construction with panels and ballast will result in an additional pressure on the roof of approximately 180 kg per square metre, which of course was not taken into account when designing the surface roofs. For example, when installing such systems, it is inevitable that the integrity of the roof will be damaged.
The situation in the solar industry is similar to that of aviation. Over the last six years we have seen the widespread distribution of composite materials in large aircraft.
Today, we can say that composites have come into the photovoltaic industry and will radically change its appearance, returning it to its original purpose: to become an affordable and flexible alternative to conventional energy. The composites industry has learned to manage ultraviolet degradation, and the resistance of acrylates is able to compete with the glass surface in terms of abrasion wear. The industry not only aims to increase efficiency and lower prices, but also has to look for alternative materials. These must reduce the weight of the panels by several times. This can be done by means of flexible membrane roofs, solar panels that are integrated into the roof membrane. Composites will consign the current panels to history, making it possible to build solar parks first on the roofs and then, if there is not enough space, to build solar parks.
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2019/06/25/step-back-to-catch-up/
PV Magazine of 25 June
Editor's note The author's comments are common sense. The only problem is that we need panels that are much lighter and easier to install on roofs.
The production of panels is in a logic of improving technologies and yields, based on the panel model that has existed for the last ten or twenty years. Their characteristics predispose them for solar power plants, to be installed on trackers, and to obtain the lowest average cost of electricity in order to compete with gas or coal generators. This is now a given.
Now we need to consider where PV installations should be located, in solar farms or on the roofs of houses. So far, the cost of installing the panels has been considered, but not surrounding costs such as the cost of power lines and the cost of the electricity grid.So far, the cost of installing the panels has been considered, but not the surrounding costs such as the cost of high voltage power lines to evacuate the production, the cost of connecting the distribution stations to the user, the cost of land. Currently the cost of a kWh installed on a building is higher than that of a power plant, but if we added all the costs of power plants to supply a building, would we still favour power plants?
