In addition, generating electricity in a large power plant is significantly more efficient than doing so on a small scale even after taking transmission loss into account.
It looks like the primary advantage of a device like this is that you can make use of heat that would otherwise be waste.
This is not necessarily true. A power plant is only like 40% efficient at turning gas into electricity, but fuel cells are 40-50% efficient. This isn’t like comparing a car to a power plant which has a relatively inefficient internal combustion engine.
In practical terms, a therm of gas has about 30kWH of heat energy and costs $2.27 in California, for example. That’s $0.075 per kWh. Fuel cells are something like 40-50% efficient at converting gas into electricity and can even recover the rest as heat..so say it costs you $0.15 per kWh. That’s almost 50% cheaper than PG&Es Tier2 for residential electricity, and gas does not have the same issues with brownouts and power cuts, and you get 50% of the power back as heat. Fuel cells are silent, portable, and unobtrusive, and can scale to demand with extreme efficiency (Unlike power plants). Personally, if they were available I would seriously consider one.
Wouldn't that only apply to fossil fuels? I would think the watts per square meter of any solar panel I buy is similar to that of one used in a solar farm.
There is no micro nuclear to compare against obviously.
Actually thinking about it the conversion scheme (DC -> AC) used by the utility scale operator might be a bit more efficient. They'd care a bit more about getting that last 0.5% or 0.1% of gains than a residential customer.
Splitting hairs, but a 23% efficient mono perc panel will edge out a 19% poly silicon panel even if utility conversion is a lot better. Although I think in that specific case the perc panels are cheaper now for utilities too.
If you're using it at 12V and/or you shelled out the extra money for multi junction in your caravan you're probably still ahead. There will also likely be 5 years or so after hybrid perovskites hit the market before anyone is keen to put down big money on the lifetime predictions.
It looks like the primary advantage of a device like this is that you can make use of heat that would otherwise be waste.