current commercial silicon solar cells cost as little as 25cents per square centimeter and can convert sunlight into electricity with at least 10% efficiency. it currently cost about $ 150,000,000 to build a 750MW coal fired electric power plant. What would be the cost of the solar cells needed for a 750MW plant in a region where the intensity of the sunlight is 900W/ square mi?
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
It is just multiplication and division – shame on you…
Sun provides 900w/m^2, so a 10% efficiency means you get 90w/m^2 with solar panels… So a cost of .25/cm^2 means you have to figure out how many cm^2 are in a m^2, which is 10,000 cm^2 per m^2.
So the first calculation is rather simple – $ .0025*10,000cm^2 = $ 25/m^2.
$ 25 per square meter sounds about right, and each square meter provides 90w. It is just a division away, and you should be able to do it…
Good luck…
900W / m^2 not per square mile.
here’s a thing, if someone DID decide to slap together a power plant like that, the cost of those cells would surely drop.
As a math problem, it’s just multiplying everything out.
For example, there are 10^4 square centimeters in a meter, and if each square centimeter costs 2.5 * 10^-1 dollar (i.e., 25 cents), then each square meter of solar cells costs 2.5*10^3 dollars, or $ 2500.
By the way, these numbers are very old, the problem must have been written many years ago. Solar cells are are now a factor of 10 cheaper, and a coal-fired plant would cost more than $ 150M in today’s dollars to build. The coal plant will still be cheaper, but not as dramatically.