solar power economics

Yet another on-topic post from John Larkin. As usual, he's picked up some half-witted right-wing journalist recycling denialist propaganda

- this time from Bjorn Lomborg.

I suppose I need to remind everybody that there's a word that describes this kind of behaviour - gullible - even if John Larkin is going to find this insulting.

On the other hand, he doesn't seem to have any inhibitions about insulting our intelligence with this kind of clap-trap.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Clap trap? So, how much did they spend, and how much solar power did they get for it? Your figures are eagerly awaited.

-- Cheers, James Arthur

Is Der Spiegel also right-wing denialist clap-trap?

I suppose anything that treatens your prejudices is, by definition.

..no answer..his foot got stuck in the sound emitter..

. .

"From the standpoint of the climate, every solar system is a bad investment," says Joachim Weimann

Green jobs fiasco, 5x more costly than wind, blah, blah, blah. Stimulus: once the party's over, the magic won't quit.

James

The problem with article is neither solar nor fossil fuel was analyzed along the entire food chain. Making silicon for solar cells takes a huge amount of energy. That is why the Chinese get the raw silicon from the US, then finish the wafers domestically. It takes years (argued between

10 to 20) for the panels to produce more energy than it took to make them. Say what you want about Solyndra, the science was good. They produced thin film solar. It was a low energy to manufacture scheme. Trouble was they had to compete with Chinese junk.

Coal has additional costs not counted in the article. For instance, the slag heaps where it is mined or the need to remove entire mountain tops. There is acid water created due to the mine being exposed to surface runoff. The Tennessee fly ash pod failure was epic.

Natural gas is now dirt cheap thanks to fracking. Of course, some people can now light their tap water. Obviously there are hidden costs to fracking.

Nuclear power is quite the fraud, at least if based on mining uranium. The yield is very low, thus vast amounts of ore need to be mined, all running on diesel earth moving machinery. There is no solution to the waste problem. Apparently the gaseous diffusion is the only part of the process that really improved over the years. That is, they have made great strides in reducing the amount of energy used in the refinement process. [Our nuclear weapons used uranium processed with power from coal, hence the location of Oakridge.]

California electrical power is about 2.5% alternative if you exclude hydro. The state has a few industrial scale solar plants in the desert, and two (at least) wind farms (Tehachapi and Altamont).

Funny thing the article claiming high power usage at night. That is not the case in the US. Solar is actually well suited for the power usage cycle since there is much AC during the day.

When the dust settles, it is generally a better payoff to conserve energy than to create it greenly.

I loved that number, where all the solar investment slowed gown global warming by 23 hours.

What's "denialist" about analyzing the economics and net CO2 effects of PV solar panels? I think Bill revisited his usual stash of insults in lieu of actually thinking. Less work, I guess, and we know how he avoids work.

In that case, PV solar will reduce CO2 generation not by creating much energy, but by driving up the cost of conventionally generated power. In California, the utilities are mandated to get 30% of their power from "renewables", and will pass the cost on to consumers. I'd guess that will double the cost of electricity.

Solyndra was doomed from the beginning at $5 per watt. Anybody else, Chinese or otherwise made it a almost half of their cost. Solyndra was never economical and the CEO and big guys were evidently corrupt as well.

boB

The energy used to produce them is included in the price of the cells and modules.

...

d

ing.

you will know that the economics of solar is good when you see the company that makes the solar panels, using their own product to make their own energy.

Mark

As you know, Solyndra was a Bush deal that Obama decided to finish. So corruption is hard to prove.

You missed the point. Solyndra is a low energy solution. It can "pay back" it's power used to manufacture it very quickly. Price is a matter of volume.

Coating a glass tube with PV film, then putting that inside another glass tube, and using about a fourth of the active material at any one time, does seem a little strange.

The facility they built in Fremont was insane.

Renewable is solar, wind, geothermal, and biomass. Wind is competitive.

Price is everything in the PV industry.

Yeah, they would definitely get some sales, but not enough.

Price is the main reason, besides wasteful spending, that they went under.

boB

This map is about horizontal irradiation, thus tells about the conditions for agriculture.

At higher latitudes, small PV arrays are usually tilted to be more or less perpendicular to the sun rays. The summer output is similar to lower latitude output, but of course, during winter, the days are shorter and at low solar elevation angles, a lot of the light is lost at atmospheric absorbtion. This makes PV usable for air conditioning during the summer, but more or less useless for any real winter time production.

They all have their place. Don't forget hydro.

boB

Ahhh...a way to almost double the energy captured by PV arrays in the winter is to add snow on the ground.