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Solar Energy Is the Fastest Growing Industry In the US
Hugh Pickens writes "According to Rhone Resch, the last three years have seen the U.S. solar industry go from a start-up to a major industry that is creating well-paying jobs and growing the economy in all 50 states, employing 93,000 Americans in 2010, a number that is expected to grow between 25,000 to 50,000 this year (PDF). In the first quarter of 2011, the solar industry installed 252 megawatts of new solar electric capacity, a 66 percent growth from the same time frame in 2010. Solar energy is creating more jobs per megawatt than any other energy source (PDF) with the capability, according to one study, of generating over 4 million jobs by 2030 with aggressive energy efficiency measures. There are now almost 3,000 megawatts of solar electric energy installed in the U.S., enough to power 600,000 homes. In the manufacturing sector, solar panel production jumped 31 percent. 'The U.S. market is expected to more than double yet again in 2011, installing enough solar for more than 400,000 homes,' writes Resch. 'Last year, the industry set the ambitious yet achievable goal of installing 10 gigawatts annually by 2015 (PDF) – enough to power 2 million more homes each and every year.'"
Jobs per megawatt? What the hell kind of measure of efficiency is that?!
Jobs per megawatt
I think this is a very good trend, and I very much hope it continues. More interest will spark more development and more improvements in the technology, which will make it even more mainstream. Go solar!
"South Korean Scientists Create Glowing Dog," hehe.
I sincerely apologize for me sophomoric attitude, but I had to.
...no doubt.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
It seems to me, Higher jobs/MW = Higher cost/MW
How much of this industry growth is fueled by government subsidies?
Shit that's about as useless as grams per watt!
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
It isn't. Biotech is.
Many houses can and a few use solar to heat their hot-water rather than provide power to the home. Why are these never included or even pushed as an additional source to lesson the power grid loads?
Why people surprise about thing like this? It energy of light. So of course it growing. Some people so dumb.
How many jobs per library of congress is that?
How much government money has been spent creating these jobs? And what is the percentage of salary for solar workers compared to this government money?
The first link is from the white house website, and says: Solar's robust growth in the past years has been the result of [...] most importantly, a strong commitment from the Obama Administration and other policymakers in Washington. So this means it's taxpayers dollars that are paying for this? This is not news, but propaganda. Once we run out of money after hitting the debt ceiling, all this "robust growth" will effervesce into thin air.
The good news: Solar energy is the fastest growing industry in the US.
The bad news for solar energy: Solar energy is the fastest growing industry in the US.
The bad news for the US: Solar energy is the fastest growing industry in the US.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Contrary to the above posts Jobs/MW isn't all that odd a metric, particularly if you actually read the article and not the headline.
One of the claims regarding clean/alternative energy is that, among other things, it will create jobs since the entire industry barely exists compared to where it would eventually need to be scale wise. The paper basically says, ok let's see if that's the case and count number of jobs created. Since the product of an energy plant should be MW not white papers, glossy brochures or fuzzy feelings it makes sense to use that as a measure of efficiency. One obvious metric is jobs/MW.
I'm willing to bet that if the findings had shown that solar was way behind other energy sources then many (if not most) of the people who post 'Jobs per watt, what a bullshit metric' would be posting instead about the absolute value of the metric rather than the metric itself. There'd be quite a few more posts of the 'See solar is bullshit'. We'd probably still have conservation of contrariness though because the green folks would be posting 'Jobs per watt ? What a bullshit metric' so it all works out.
and a DIY install on the electricity side can end up very badly with out the right hook ups and the last thing you need is when the power is out is for the panels to back feed to the grid and kill a lineman.
The solar industry is propped up by govt tax breaks and subsidies. As soon as those expire, then the industry goes belly up.
Sustainable energy is not self-sustaining, as the markets well know.
According to TFA, 1Q2011 = 252MW. So if growth is at least flat for the year, thats 252*4 = 1008MW, or 1.008GW. Also according to TFA, growth for jobs over the same period is 25K - 50K. So that's somewhere between 24,801 and 49,603 jobs per gigawatt. So it will take between 30,009 and 60,019 jobs to build me a flux capacitor? That can't be right...
The denialists are always banging on about how we CANNOT stop using fossil fuels because all the GDP growth has been when we've grown use of fossil fuel energy and therefore use of energy == GDP. And what do all the people do with that GDP according to the denialist Free Marketeers? It gets creating jobs. You know, all those big companies who CANNOT be taxed because they're "job creators"?
So denialists have been using for decades "jobs per megawatt".
And only NOW do you complain.
Why is that?
"Solar energy is creating more jobs per megawatt than any other energy source"
I read as "Solar energy is the least cost effective of energy sources"
There are so many jobs tied up with the Shuttle, we have to keep it in service - no matter how little they actually do for society or how much it costs.
Well, the point is that these days the number of jobs is merely indicative of how much money you're wasting. In fact, given the macroeconomic situation of the US, this may do a whole lot more good than harm - but it's not because of the energy being produced, but because of the money being poured into the economy as a whole through the jobs.
Ten years down the line, however, this argument won't hold. Then it's a matter of is it economic or not. And given the actual observable progress of the technology (rather than the miracles being published every month or so), especially when it comes to the necessity of energy storage, it seems the solar industry will be blowing bubbles for a while, but stagnate well before supplying the quantities of power that the enthusiastic projections today envision.
Specifically, it will run into a brick wall some time before the point when solar peak power supply approaches power demand (which is at about 10%-20% of total power, depending on local energy storage) - it also depends on how much wind energy they have to share the grid with, as the same is true for wind power.
As for the rest, especially the copious amounts of oil and gas we're using in industrialized countries, we'll have to find other alternatives as well, instead of deluding ourselves about the capabilities of wind and solar. Mind you, they are significant. But we're lucky if we can get about one quarter or a third of all our energy needs out of them.
In that game everything was measured in Energy, not money. Energy were credits you could use to purchase products, energy could produce more food, produce more minerals, even produce more people. Yet again, SMAC taught me how the future would really work. ;)
...do they have a night shift?
Cycling is creating more jobs per megawatt than any other energy source :D
Solar hot water heaters are becoming popular. They are closed, passive systems that can knock a chunk off an electrcity bill without the full array of solar cells on the roof, and will pay for themselves within five years. We installed our system last winter and it works like a charm - free 60F hot water twenty four hours a day.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Any industry heavy with government subsidies - defense, social welfare, medicine, and now 'renewables' - attracts opportunists of both the legitimate and illegitimate sort.
Legitimate businesses are interested because they know that having a politically-attractive industry can make a lot of low-/no-interest money available as well as making the government paperwork (permits, etc.) all move much quicker than usual. Finally, it's a truism that once established government programs almost never die (for God's sake, the TVA's REA is still alive and flourishing - conveniently renamed to the RUS "Rural Utilities Service" - to legitimize its ever-spreading 'responsibilities' hahaha).
Illegitimate business (con men, criminals, etc.) are attracted because government investment typically now means at least dollars in the 10^6 range, that until they reach 10^9 these numbers are considered 'trivial' and barely worth notice/mention by Federal agencies (how many pallets of $$billions have been untraceably 'lost' in Iraq/Afghanistan?) - a perfect environment for fraud.
-Styopa
Solar energy is total fail.
The Germans will also fail.
You're not supposed to believe there is a future without nuclear power.
Go back to your TV and turn it a little bit louder.
Thank you!
Too bad solar manufacturing is heavily subsidized by the US government and then the purchase by the consumer is also heavily subsidized by the US government and state governments.
You can't even get a permit let a lone build a nuclear or coal power plant because of EPA regulations and red tape.
It's like watching a race between two people running and one person get's hit by a car every third step they take and acting surprised the other runner is doing so well. It's a rigged race and the desired outcome shouldn't be a huge surprise.
I'm not against solar, in fact I thought if we were going to spend that near trillion in stimulus we could have near afforded to put a solar system on every single family home in the US. Instead we wasted it on nothing... shame.
"In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash"
This is a risk you run even with people who don't know what they're doing connecting a generator during a power failure. Hopefully anyone playing with an alternative energy source in their own home (solar/wind, or generator) will do a some of their homework and avoid this. In the case of grid tied solar, pretty much all domestically available grid-tied inverters have very rigorous protection to avoid an islanding situation. Even if they're not installed exactly up to code they should be able to detect this and not backfeed the grid.
Then again, someone can still be a moron and connect a non-grid-tie inverter up during a power failure and backfeed, so who knows. I guess this is bound to happen at some point, but hopefully most DIY people learn enough to know why this is bad by the time they get to this point.
Saying "I'll probably get modded down for this" in a post is the best way to get it modded up.
As long as complete kits are supplied with socket connections, "solar panel, battery, rectifier and switch board connection", there shouldn't be too much of a problem. Even better if a set of standards governing default connection standards for a home solar power kit, would allow people to mix and match as long as the equipment adhered to the standards and they used default electrical connections. Excluding off course the wiring the switchboard socket which should require a licensed electrician, beyond that plug and play would save considerably on the install side.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
As related by Mark Calabria of CATO:
It used to be that solar panels were by far the most expensive part of an installation. At the moment, for an installation that can supply 1350 kWh/year, the panels cost E4500, the inverter is E1200, labor is in the region of E1000 as well I suspect. So the panels are still 66% of the total cost. Two years ago, the panels would have cost E8500, or more than 80% of the total cost. When the cost per Watt reaches E1, the panels will be 50% of the installation cost.
At that point savings in the cost of inverters and installation will become more critical than they are now.
You can't even get a permit let a lone build a nuclear or coal power plant because of EPA regulations and red tape.
You're not going to hear much sympathy from me. I've been to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, I've seen what natural water should look like. By my own first hand account, there is none of that on the East Coast.
So let's see here, after some shallow checking on Google News we have: Frack water to be dumped in Niagara Falls, the EPA has been completely ignoring Anacostia River pollution and the dead zone in the Chesapeake is growing. And that's just news from the last couple of days. How can I be upset that the EPA wants to tie up companies in "red tape" when this is happening in our country? Why don't the solar companies get the same red tape? Oh, right, they don't produce a byproduct that is often dumped in nearby water. I'm sure the site of solar panel farms suffers the same environmental scrutiny that your poor "hobbled" coal and nuclear power facilities face. It's just that the byproducts and environmental effects appear to be okay for local residents.
It's like watching a race between two people running and one person get's hit by a car every third step they take and acting surprised the other runner is doing so well. It's a rigged race and the desired outcome shouldn't be a huge surprise.
The way I see it, is it's more like two people racing and one person pouring crude oil along the entire race path and then sliding on it with a sled and beating the person that's trying to run through it. Meanwhile the people who live near the race track are drinking shit in their water. Think I'm making that up? Go ask the residents of West Virginia who get to watch their entire state terraformed into slag. PA's natural gas boon could result in the same thing if we don't have that evil evil evil "red tape."
My work here is dung.
For a long time I thought a balanced approach to renewable energy was the best strategy but I've recently changed my opinion to favoring solar heavily. Specifically, solar to various hydrocarbons. Even though it's not as efficient as other solar storage techniques, such as pumping water uphill, it directly generates a portable, energy dense medium. The lecture that really changed my mind came from Cal Tech professor Dr. Nathan Lewis. He talked about limits of every energy source and broke down the numbers in terms of potential energy from each. Nothing even came close to solar. And even though solar to hydrogen is cleaner, realistically, solar to hydrocarbons are much easier to use in our current economy.
great to hear that this so underused industry is now coming out of the dark ages, and trying to catch up with the 21st century. Seriously though....its great that we are now moving (although at a snails pace) towards other fuel sources for our country.....screw those shieks and their oil....hopefully we will have a fully self sustaining operation within the next 10 years and kiss oil goodbye forever!
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
For years governments (at least in Australia) have been saying that going green will be bad for jobs and economy, while some of us have been saying there is enormous business potential in green tech, if given the right guidance. (Although in my opinion, the best guidance is probably not subsidies.)
I reckon that the easiest way to go green is by taking advantage of capitalism, but for some reason the Liberals (blue) just don't seem to see it. It seems they're only on board now that they realise that they're losing votes because of their stance. In Australia I wish there was a cyan party (blue-green) rather than the Greens (which is really red-green).
Is it just in Australia that it's like this? How about the US and Europe? Can other governments see the business potential in "green technology" other than China?
The last time I checked, the real cost of solar electricity was several times bigger than the cost of electricity as we pay it. If that is true, this whole industry survives only because it is subsidised, i.e. we all pay for it.
When we built our 32-foot sailboat and embarked upon a 5-year cruise of the eastern North Pacific (read: Washington, Oregon, California, Baja and the Sea of Cortez) we bought two 33-watt solar panels in Oakland, CA and used them throughout the cruise. They worked amazingly well but we did spend a bit of time making sure they were oriented properly. We later augmented them with a wind generator (hand-carved propellor and a 35vdc motor hung in the rigging) which helped the refrigeration system make enough ice per day for two drinks each at sundown instead of just one.
We were a novelty then...
Now we're solar in our little 21-foot camp trailer and, guess what..... we're *still* a novelty. Two 40-watt panels (about half the size physically as those we bought in 1981 but roughly the same price in 2010 dollars) still give us all the power we need but we're typically the only solar-powered RV in the campground. And other campers continually ask us if they actually work.
I'm convinced that distributed solar power is the best answer to the energy problems facing the USA but I've been skeptical that we're educated enough as a culture to get there. Nice to see this piece.
It's also nice to have been a pioneer.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
the government subsidies dry up
There are now almost 3,000 megawatts of solar electric energy installed in the U.S., enough to power 600,000 homes.
This would mean that each home consumes 5 kW. That's really low. Most small houses have a 100 A panel if their stove is electric. 200 A panels are pretty common. The reality is closer to 10 kW.
For comparison, 3 GW is either three large gas or coal thermal plants, or 1.5 nuclear reactors.
Remember, on top of that, that you cannot store electricity unless your production is near a hydro dam -- you can then pump up water back into the dam as storage, at a 30 to 50% efficiency loss. So your 3GW solar plant need a load-following thermal or nuclear plant to absorb the loss when the sun hides or at night. You have to factor that in the cost. That adds $5 to $10 per watt.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
I'll assume you're either a union boss or a lifetime apartment dweller. The rest of us who have, you know, read books and looked up our local codes, do our own electrical work from time to time. Some things are really not DIY (like HVAC installation) but others are.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
It just highlights how economically inefficient solar photo-voltaic cells are. Someone may have better numbers but I think the capital costs on Photo-voltaic plants are somewhere around 5x more then nuclear. Unless the tooth fairy (or federal govt) is subsidizing the costs, this isn't good. Also, a lot of the jobs are going to be in China where most of the PV cells are made.
Where are the actual solar panels being made? Are you pi55ing money out the door to China yet again?
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
... would be jobs/megabuck moved. To maximize that measure, we should replace all thoss ATMs with human tellers.
Right?
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
I thought it was standard practice to pull fuses on either side of your work area... if not, why? It's a quick task to pop one of them out of their clamps with those long fiberglass fuse pullers.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
In total coal, gas and oil bring in huge amounts of taxes. Solar (and wind) suck up huge amounts of taxes. In absolute terms oil, ,gas and coal may get a lot, it's very small compared to the energy produced. For PV and wind the tax subsidies are a substantial portion of what is paid for the electriity. Without the subsidy the PV and wind plants would fail.
I wonder when the climate change people will climb all over this for all the new land area converted from lighter colors that reflect light back into space into large areas of dark colors for the express purpose of converting more of the sun's energy to heat?
In one place there is a proposal to paint all the rooftops white to reduce global warming and in the next breath is to put up a bunch of dark color collectors to maximize the intake of energy (heat) for use.
The truth shall set you free!
The study lumps front end labor costs by an average over the lifetime of the facility. This gives the impression that we can have a burst of spending and then a nice number of jobs but that is just an illusion, an artifact of the average. The jobs and expenses are front end loaded. To average the cash expenses we need to acquire debt over the period of time.
Now we need to consider the actual lifetime of the employment over the life of the facility and is the up front payment worth it?
The fact that solar costs more should cause us to choose coal because of cost. Unless we factor in the cost of carbon which is another discussion....
Any time someone claims that something is the fastest growing anything, it's almost certainly BS. Things which grow in numbers normally follow a curve where they grow slowly, then grow faster as they can more rapidly spread, then grow slowly again as they approach saturation. And that's true even if the total size at saturation is tiny--there's still a point in the cycle where the growth rate is big.
So "___ is the fastest growing ___" just means "___ is at a different point in the cycle than its competitors, not that it's doing well or that it can be favorably compared to competitors with lower growth rates. Without some sort of statement about absolute numbers (or, in this case, comparison of absolute numbers to other technologies), rather than growth rates, claiming that something is growing fast is meaningless. If there are twenty people in the country who want something, the point where it goes from 5 to 15 of them is rapid growth, but the numbers aren't high, nor is the growth sustainable after saturation.
and that still does not stop power from back flowing to wire on the other side of the fuse.
There's more than one fuse. Up and down the line.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
...yet somehow, people complain about this aspect of solar energy never seem to want to bring up the fact that nuclear energy is far more dependent on government help for far more years? Solar becomes self-sustaining as the cost of fossil fuels rises, but I don't think nuclear will ever be economically viable without government help.
creating more jobs per megawatt than any other energy source
Um, isn't that a bad thing? The more jobs you need for each MW of power, the more expensive that MW of power is. I want fewer jobs per MW, not more. Who writes this shit?
It's been about 30 years, but I installed central A/C. Sears sold a kit with precharged lines. That kind of stuff seems hard to find now, probably due to the need to regulate the refrigerants.
But back to the risks to linemen from home generation. When they work on the lines, they isolate the feeds and ground them. Or they work using techniques designed to provide safety when working on energized lines. Some times it is necessary to work on a line while energized.
Well, some of us happen to be perfectly qualified electrical engineers or technicians.
Plus there was once a time when powering any appliance required to hard-wire it to the mains. Then things like standard plugs were created: instead of requiring specific electrical knowledge and practice, it was possible for virtually anyone to connect and disconnect electrical equipment as they liked, anywhere in their home. Since the inverter between the solar panels's DC wiring and the mains is an enclosed, all-in-one piece of equipment anyway, there is not alot one can do wrong that would propagate to the mains. I don't see any serious reason for the DC wiring not to become quite standard and easy to set up.
It's the kind of measure you use when you don't want to discuss subsidized dollars per job. It's also the kind of measure you use when you don't want to discuss how many non-subsidized jobs it cost to pay for one subsidized job.
Indeed. Ours is not a zero sum world, though politicians (successful ones, anyway) often frame an economic issue as if it were a zero sum game. Taxpayer funded energy initiatives (including indirect funding via tax breaks) mean that every job created via those initiatives has a non-trivial cost associated with it. Michael Lind sums it up in an article at salon. A relevant quote:
And if the green crony capitalists of the left succeed, working Americans will be forced permanently to pay artificially higher utility bills to subsidize politically-connected "venture capitalists" who will derive a permanent, rigged stream of income from zombie green corporations, whose uneconomical solar and wind energy will be purchased by utility companies under legal mandates written by green lobbyists.
One need look no further than the the ethanol subsidy program for an easy example from the alternative energy sector of the economy.
Any grid-tied PV system you buy from a store that is UL listed will not feed energy back to the grid if the rest of the grid is down. Off-the-shelf generators pose a bigger risk than a grid-tied PV system - and they're much cheaper, too.
Regardless - there is a reason why linemen treat wires as hot at all times even when they know it's not though, you know...
fuse at each transformer but they don't pull each one they mainly just pull the one at feed line.
DIY HVAC is pretty common especially in the off-grid community these days. Most typical setup are your mini-split systems. Very simple to install - and very efficient, too.
They have a real simple solution for that. You may not like it if you don't have a properly protected system. What they do is ground the lines while they're working on them.
You've just explained why every person in a bureaucracy who is selfish and otherwise useless does everything in their power to perpetuate the inefficiency of the aforementioned bureau.
You've also explained why, when used by selfish people, unions kill companies and/or industries.
A few things that might be interesting...
1) I think it's great for purely economic reasons. I intend to get a fully electric vehicle (hopefully the Tesla Model S gets good reviews). Also, as I turn more and more into my father, I don't have to go ballistic when the lights get left on. It will pay for itself in about 8 to 10 years, after that, it's gravy.
2) I received a 30% tax credit without which I wouldn't have done the project.
3) I think overall it's a good long-term investment both for myself and society. Ten years goes by faster than people think and if we all started converting to solar we'd need less and less energy. Combined with advances in electric cars we could wave goodbye to middle east and oil-funded nuttiness. Better investment on that front I think than blowing holes in sand.
4) I don't really buy AGW (one way or the other), and I didn't do it remotely for that reason. I do believe it is apparent we have limited fossil energy and that prices can only rise there.
5) I also support nuclear, but given Fukushima, that is sadly dead for another couple decades.
Does anyone know a good place to buy solar panels on the open market? What i'm really interested in is seeing the metrics compared. I know thin film is cheapest, but least efficient, but I want to see the cost performance trade offs somewhere and I haven't been able to find it. Anyone know of a good website that has this?
d
all language nazi's will burne in heil!
Don't we want less jobs per energy?
I can beat Solar easily, and solve both the energy crisis as well as the US unemployment problem.
Step 1: Figure out how many unemployed people there are in the US!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_unemployment_rate
9.2 Hooray!
Step 2: Figure out how many Americans there are!
Google!
307 Million
Step 3: Do some complicated math!
1st assume a population of 300 and an unemployment rate of 10%!
30 Million people!
Step 4: Buy 30 Million exercise bikes and hook them up with dynamos and connect them to the grid!
You might possibly need an inverter or something fancy.
Step 5: Hire 10 Million people at minimum wage for each of 3 shifts.
Step 6: PROFIT!!! :)
Now you have all the power you need, no unemployment, and as a bonus I solved all your obesity problems you have in the US as well!
I'll take my Nobel peace prize!
You're on your own with that whole debt thing though, I'm not touching that one!
It is called Island Protection.
Make sure yours works and that will not happen.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-26/solar-may-be-cheaper-than-fossil-power-in-five-years-ge-says.html
If externalities were accounted for (pollution, risk, disease, war), renewables have been cheaper since the 1970s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power
"The book argues that U.S. domestic energy infrastructure is very vulnerable to disruption, by accident or malice, often even more so than imported oil. According to the authors, a resilient energy system is feasible, costs less, works better, is favoured in the market, but is rejected by U.S. policy."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Agreeing, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality
Taxes, subsidies, and regulation are all ways of dealing with externalities through government planning affecting the market.
US Republicans are the worst sort of regressive "socialists" -- they regularly privatize profits but socialize costs.
Renewables have probably been cheaper that fossil fuels and nuclear, accounting for externalities, since the 1970s:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power
The total is problematical, but interesting links on the true costs of oil: http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/oil-gas-crude/461
On the odd energetics of gasoline made using natural gas and electricity vs. plain electric cars:
http://www.evnut.com/gasoline_oil.htm
Why safer electric cars should be free:
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/browse_thread/thread/6cdc99eaaba91855/09eb7f4c973349f2?hl=en#09eb7f4c973349f2
See also my presentation here on five interwoven economies (subsistence, gift, exchange, planned, and theft):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Solar electric power (photovoltaics) is very expensive to install. But its operating costs are near zero.
Over a 40 year timeframe, if you amortize it out, a solar power station in the sunnier parts of the United States should generate electricity at a price of about 10 cents per kilowatt hour, possibly less. I've done some math on this, I have a micro solar power plant on my house and a website about it: http://www.yourturn.ca/solar And for the website I put together a page of analysis and estimates for the cost of various kinds of power sources: http://www.yourturn.ca/solar/solar-power/how-does-solar-power-compare-to-other-energy-sources/
10 cents per kilowatt hour should be a "grid parity" number. Considering what Californians pay for electricity, you should be competitive with other power sources, and still be able to make money at 10 cents a kilowatt hour.
The problem with solar, is that it's only available when the sun is shining, and its output varies as the sun moves across the sky.
This is why energy storage is actually the most important technology for the future of our power system. Solar is actually very efficient and effective. It can get better, sure, but the real challenge is not in getting energy from the sun, we're good at that now. The challenge is in storing the excess power for when the sun isn't shining.
There have been recent advances in solar thermal techniques, which don't directly generate electricity, but which concentrate the heat from the sun in some medium, and then use that heat to generate electricity. Molten salt is the "next big thing" in this space, and a new solar power plant in Spain recently turned on and ran for 24 hours straight on solar heat that was stored in molten salt. http://utopianist.com/2011/06/spain-now-running-worlds-first-solar-plant-to-create-power-at-night/
One way or another, energy storage is the real holy grail, not solar power. The sun is the ultimate energy source, virtually all our energy sources are derived one way or another from the sun. We can now get lots of power "straight from the source" as it were. We just need to control that power once we've generated it, and the world will be a very different place.
--Julian