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Solar Power Is Booming — Why Do We Want To Kill It?
TaeKwonDood writes with a followup to the news we discussed over the weekend about tariffs being places on Chinese solar panels. He writes,
"According to Forbes, 'Solar power is booming. Imports from China were a tepid $21 million in 2005, but in 2011 installations totaled nearly $2.7 billion. That's a huge win. And just as advocates for solar power had hoped, a larger market drove down prices. Solar energy cost has declined by two-thirds in the last four years, meaning it will soon start to close in on fossil fuels.' There's just one problem: now the government wants to kill it. The article continues, 'As the market was flooded by both silicon (from silicon producers) and thin-film panels (by Chinese manufacturers), the price for thin-film panels came crashing down – along with Solyndra’s business model. ... Yet that isn’t the only instance of mismanagement. The whole clean energy program remains flawed, even at the consumer level. The people who are the most likely to be impacted by high energy prices, the poor, are the least likely to benefit from the solar rebate scheme because they lack the capital to pay for the installation.'"
Because there are other panel manufacturers like Solyndra who got Federal money, and it will look bad if they fail, too.
duh.
the poor, are the least likely to benefit from the solar rebate scheme because they lack the capital to pay for the installation.'"
Uh oh.
Maybe the tariffs are because the Chinese have been subsidizing their solar exports in violation of the trade agreements?
Part of the problem will of course be that photovoltaics aren't reliable. Concentrated solar onto molten salt and wind are much more reliable than photovoltaics. Or we could just go nuclear.
While I'm not big of the idea of "the long tail" or "trickle down economics", I would think this would help the poor in a small manner. By those able to afford it having solar panels, the power companies have less demand for their energy and so the poor are less likely to see an increase in power prices (and, rarely, a slight reduction). This is, of course, assuming things like the able don't have their own, separate power station from the poor, enough able people install them to actually make some sort of dent, etc.
Even if they get no impact from it, "the poor still can't afford them" doesn't seem like a valid mark against such a program; I didn't see anyone complaining that the tax breaks to those who bought hybrids were bad because the poor still couldn't afford hybrids.
To the government that the US can no longer sustain a competitive domestic solar panel industry. This was predicted in shockingly accurate detail by HBS researchers 3 years ago. Protectionism is only going to make it worse -- amazing that these ideas still fly.
Photo-voltaic panels are not cheap enough or efficient enough to be a truly economic means of producing electricity. The subsidies potentially enable economies of scope and scale to the point where it would be economical. Long way to go though still.
We live in a carbon/credit world economy. Carbon is distributed through banks by extending credit. This is there sole reason to be, without centralized energy distributing banking as we know it is dead. So it's a war and in the US the banks are in charge.
In the future era of distributed renewable energy generation you don't need credit to produce, only access to a renewable energy source.. And that source is likely to be payed off, so production will be free. I call this the robo(eco)nomy. Robots will do our work using renewable power sources, and we will be able to restore the ecology using them as well..
The power companies will simply increase the price per kilowatt so that their revenue doesn't decrease. And the government will be pleased, as higher energy bills will cause people to be more mindful of their energy use.
...the greedy oil magnates and commodities traders are. You can't bottle sunshine (well, you can, but try explaining biodiesel to this lot...), therefore the greedheads aren't interested. I hope they all spontaneously combust.
The US gov't believes it can run the economy for some reason.
There is all this nonsense talk about how oil industry is getting 'subsidies', while in reality those so called 'subsidies' are just deductions in tax payments that the oil companies make, all while the real subsidies is money that the gov't wastes giving uninsured loans or just straight money to all these 'alternative energy' companies, that in reality would have never gotten anywhere based on the real market, all this, while the Chinese companies found all the necessary efficiencies to produce lots and lots of those solar panels very cheaply, and now there are all these tariffs by the US gov't on the Chinese solar panel products.
Who do you think gets hurt in all of this? Well, it's obvious - who is really gaining when the Chinese are importing cheap solar panels into USA in exchange for US dollars? If you can answer this second question, then you can answer the first one.
By the way, Obama believes he is a great genius of a businessman, why is he not using his own money to sponsor all these 'alternative energy' companies but insists on spending other people's money on this?
You can't handle the truth.
Poor also don't have the money to get the subsidy for the Tesla cars. They're missing out on like 10 thousand dollars!!!!
Once they drive our domestic PV manufacturers out of business they'll be free to charge what the market will bear.
What of our salvation vaporware vendor Twin Creeks?
Firstly to address the article, one is a start-up loan guarantee to offset the risks in surmounting what is a huge barrier to entry, the other is a continued subsidy to aid an established industry. Sure they're both in the same vein of using public funds to bolster industry, but not quite comparable beyond that, are they? Continued subsidy of established industry is one of the major arguments made by those who are against US agricultural subsidies, and they make a reasonable point regarding the negative impact it has to the outside world. Many countries feel justified to place tariffs on US agricultural products because of this.
Now to address your post, let's look at the not so apparent inconsistency in the rhetoric surrounding the motivations behind the subsidy. If the Chinese government indeed only wanted to make renewable energy more affordable for the average Chinese person, as many say is the sole motivation, it could very well have implemented a tax rebate policy with low-income allowances for Chinese consumers (as it's typically done in the US, at least the rebate part) -- and if fearing the money drain to imported panels, they could even have made "for use on domestically made panels only" a condition for such rebates/allowances. Under such a policy, imported solar panels would find it difficult to compete in the Chinese market, but it wouldn't be as big of a deal. That's not what happened. By continuing to subsidize the already established manufacturers directly, it places anti-competitive behavior behind the rather more difficult-to-assail rhetoric of "making energy affordable for the average Chinese person." Unfortunately, this rhetorical sleight of hand is able to misdirect many people.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
It makes no sense for the "poor" to buy/install solar. Even if you're "rich" and can afford the $10-30K payment, you're still looking at 7-10 years ROI to break even. If you're poor, why the hell would you ever make that investment? Second, the poor are also probably using less electricity. They have fewer computers, TV's and aren't going to be buying a plugin hybrid/electric car, so they use less electricity. In terms of energy use, the poor care more about gasoline for their cars and heating oil in the winter to heat their homes which they spend more $$$/month then electricity. Not to mention, the poor are more likely to rent then own their home, so where are they going to install it?
That said, it shouldn't be a shock that when the Gov't tries to "help" an industry it often screws it over as in this case. Of course that helps me since I was able to order solar for my home about a month before the tariff was announced and lock in my price. Probably the only way I'm going to get any benefit of my tax dollars being wasted on companies like Solyndra.
But the bureaucratic people in Washington are what stopping progress. We vote on the dog catcher, why not vote on the head of the Dept of Energy?
a larger market drove down prices. Solar energy cost has declined by two-thirds in the last four years
Subsidies created an artificial demand and subsidies drove down prices. Solar energy cost hasn't really changed all that much when you take into account the actual cost, including contributions from American and Chinese taxpayers, installation, maintenance, related equipment, etc, etc.
The whole clean energy program remains flawed
That pretty much sums it up. And it's about the only accurate statement in the entire commentary.
Precisely. Consider what happened with water in my area; we entered a conservation phase, and they promptly jacked up the water rates "to ensure minimum funding to maintain the system." Water conservation phase ended, usage increased and... hey look the rate stayed the fucking same.
Reminds me of seasonal gas price hiking. Nothing to do with politics, everything to do with greedy-ass oil execs and Saudi princes.
Will we allow china to undersell and then control another emerging high tech resource?
Solar is one of those things that doesn't seem to lend itself to concentrated production then wide distribution. (Like traditional power generation). You need lots of space.. What would our power demands look like if, say, every roof in the US was covered in solar cells? Rather than have them supplement power for just that household, what if they could backfeed in to the grid and reduce your power bill that way? I think that would be simpler and easier to maintain on a wide scale.
First, import cost of parts has nothing to do with installation costs.
Somehow, you make it look like a "gain". So it's not a "win".
Second, "solar energy cost has gone down". Really?
Did subsidies go up ? Was it the parts or the installation ?
Was that the cost for 50 megawatt plants or homeowners ?
What govt wants to "kill" it ? Just because the govt MIGHT
want to save TAXDOLLARS from subsidies in a bad economy
doesn't mean they WANT to kill it !!.
Third, was Solyndra's business model based on supplying
50 megawatt plants? , Or the cost of build staying the same?
How bout "a BAD or unfeasible business model ?
Fourth, In what way are the poor screwed ? The costs
under ANY circumstances mentioned are ABOVE standard
energy costs.
Oil, coal and gas are subsidized... how does all that compare ?
Fifth, Solar is extremely inefficient. NO matter who is doing it.
The ONLY way it might approach reasonable-ness in cost
is for the govt to force a patent pool among the IP holders
so that the technologies can be combined. As it is,
everyone is merely fighting for feifdoms and their share
of the continuing flow of govt "research" ( yeah, right ) money.
Changing the people in power is incredibly difficult. Those who would best run the country will not run for office. Those that run are not fit for office. That leaves us with people who are all about "collaboration" -- that is the people who honestly believe that reality is whatever the consensus says it is. pi=3 is good enough... Consensus builders have no patience for cold hard facts.
PV panels also take far more energy to make than they ever return in their lifetime. It is an illusion, similar to ethanol, where one may have x amount of watts provided, but in reality, it took far more energy to drop the petrochemicals for the plants than it would have been just to refine the oil for gasoline or diesel.
Then there is the fact that solar requires a lot of surface area. Yes, those solar arrays in west Texas are cool looking, but they are next to useless because voltage losses over the long wire lengths burn off most of the energy. In urban areas, the energy gained from having solar cells is not enough to bother. Yes, someone might be able to power a 12VDC fan from a rooftop panel setup, but lets be real here. Homes use far more energy than that.
As for off-grid setups, its ironic that right next to the solar panels and batteries is some type of gas/diesel/propane powered generator hidden away that does all the work. Lets get real folks... Solar is a cute things to spend money on to appear "green", but the only real energy source we have is coal and oil these days, and likely will remain that way for a while to come.
"The only problem is that the American market growth is fake, funded primarily by the government, while the real revenue benefit has occurred for Chinese manufacturers. America, the home of Silicon Valley, basically abandoned thin-film silicon to chase after new technology while China embraced it, once again showing that the U.S. government is not particularly qualified to predict market outcomes or to pick winners and losers in the green tech sector."
Translation: Solar will fail or succeed on its own. Keep the government out of it. Stop subsidizing it. Stop slapping tariffs on it.
They are preparing to scorch the sky.
I'm not talking about the able/rich or power plants producing electricity from solar for the poor, I'm talking about decreased demand on the power plants due to the able/rich not needing as much because of their own solar panels. I'm no power station expert, but less stress on the plant likely means lower overall costs which could be passed on to the remaining customers in the form of slight reduction in cost (or, much more likely in my pessimistic mind, a delay in the rising of costs.)
We don't want panel manufacturing here! Just the panels. Leave that heavy industry in China and let them pollute their earth and water and contaminate their citizens. If we make the panels here and pay domestic wages we won't be able to afford to deploy them, so we'll have to keep using fossil fuels and wrecking our environment. Also, if we have factories here then people without degrees will still have disposable income to buy guns and trucks and vote for republicans and stuff.
Stop the tariffs now!
Do we do that? If not, why not? It would seem to solve the supposed issue without this tariff. You want cheap panels, fine, no rebate for you.
Of course, if difference in panel price > rebate/tax break allowance, that doesn't matter much, I suppose.
Not too long of a way to go. Basically they need to get the panels + installation down another 25-50% (and technologically this is not insurmountable) but in addition to that, they have to do so with something resembling a respectable profit margin. RIght now companies are running things close to the wire trying to compete, and that's not sustainable on a financial plane.
Of course, if the price of competing energy goes up (if there is a recoveing economy, it will) then that makes the competitive point for solar easier to acheive. In some local markets, solar is already cheaper.
Someone had to do it.
I thought all the alternative energy arguments were about climate change and our impact by fossil fuels and carbon footprints and all that possbile man-mad impact, which would kill us all in an apocolyptic disaster.
I'm not sure how poor people factor into this. The poor currently aren't doing anything to cause it (in theory, what with them not owning hummers or polluting factories), so why do we care if they add solar panels? If anything they're getting the benefit of everyone else possibly decreasing use of fossil fuel energies in terms of price, pollution, slowing down our usage of natural resources, etc.
They may not get a tax break on solar panels, but I highly doubt they're getting many other tax breaks that benefit society either (I'm not getting in to the argument of how much tax paid for benefits they may or may not receive). Most people have to be pretty eagerly motivated to throw down $20k on some panels, just to get a percentage back. That same advice was given to me 5 years ago when I was told I should buy the biggest mortgage I could because I'd get a tax break on the mortgage interest.
As an avid boater, I have 4 different methods of generating power, solar, wind, towed, and shore hookup. Boaters have been using alternative energy options for years due to the nature of cruising (sailing, not gay cruising, although as they say, any port in a storm).
Until there is some very good reason to invest in home solar or wind, I don't see the poor getting to into it, unless there's a true economic benefit more than save the planet. You want to see the poor magically buy solar panels? Change laws country wide that allows you to sell energy back into the grid for market rates and get cut a check. It's amazing how much solar and wind generation, and decreased energy cost and usage would erupt overnight.
"Step right up! Cash4Power is in your neighborhood! Bring your stolen bicycles from bums and alternators from cars on blocks in, and we'll show you how to build a windmill and make hundreds of dollars a year while working at home!"
Nevermind the capital. I could install solar right now if I wanted to. I can't. Why? I rent. No landlord in their right mind will let you install panels and take them with you if you move (not that it'd be practical to do that anyway). The owners are making money just fine without the panels. Why add yet another maintenance chore to their property? Maybe with stronger incentives they would. Apparently, those incentives (from the free market or the government) aren't strong enough. So. My roof remains bare, and it gets hot in the Summer. Even if the panels were just empty shades the house would benefit.
I have to admit though. Even if I could install panels I probably wouldn't at this point. A good panel install costs about $30k. I can (and do) pay all my utility bills with the dividends from a comparable number of shares in the local utility. Option collars can actually be put on for a modest credit without having my shares called away very often. In fact, my shares have yet to be called away in the several years I've been doing this and the ute is yielding 4%. Try getting an insurance company to pay *you* for insuring your house.
I spent six years in Tucson and I know folks who have PV panels on their rooftops which provide most of their power. There are lots of urban areas that get a shitload of sunshine.
I agree, though -- solar isn't going to provide baseload power. It's not just coal and oil, though -- nuclear can, too. So can geothermal.
And on display for everyone to watch.
Are we getting close to stopping this yet? Apparently not.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I do not see the anomaly. the market for solar power cells was not driven by any big need for solar power production, and so it all hinged on subsidies to the producers, be they the producers of solar infrastructure or the installers/managers. Moreover, when the size of the market was small the impact on energy bills at the wider level was negligible, like having a 0.01c tax surcharge.
Fast forward to today, and things are quite expectedly different: the installed base is BIG, the subsidies are a botload of money, and the shift between the have and havenots has widened. On the "have" side, big producers of energy receiving subsidies, which given the expenditure were well off to start with, all the infrastructure managers (politician), and the lobbyists who have to be paid to make sure the merry go round keeps going. On the "have not" side, traditional energy producers and especially network managers, who have to justify the expenditures required to adjust to a wildly varying power source (backup generators, more transmission lines, etc); small businesses and individuals, who do not have the clout to say that they do not want or can afford to pay money on top of electricity simply because someone goofed ten years back. And goofed they did: If the level of subsidies would be cut to the level rendering viable only the latest and cheapest generation of solar plants, the "stranded asset" problem would be enormous, since may if not all of the older plants would tank.
the saving grace for the old solars is simple and crude: since most of the installations were financed through bank loans, and banks are the "little princes" of western governments, non one will force the situation, unless the taxpayers really get upset.
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
Or an increase in costs, because thanks to lots of users running solar panels there is now far more variation in demand...
Sure the demand on hot sunny days might be lower, but during the hours of darkness it will be just as high as it ever was, so you still need to keep the same capacity available in the coal/gas/nuclear plants.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
I'm going to start calling bullshit on this off-repeated meme. I don't know if its true. I've only seen sensationalistic assertions. Furthermore, I don't know if it remains true when you scale up production and improve manufacturing techniques. For all I know you could be using 1980s numbers for 2012 industrial processes.
It's just repeating the sin of the problem with conventional power generation. Cost shifting.
Of course conventional power generation is cheaper. It's cheaper because it's costs a hidden and shifted on to other parties. You conveniently ignore the cost of pollution and exhaustion of non-renewable resources.
With solar, we just happen to know the costs up front.
I mean, they're nice and if you can get them, do it. But! I went off-grid in '80 or so, when subsidies were hard to find, solar was $7/watt for panels or more, and it still paid off. I just doubled what I have here so as to have enough extra to charge my new Volt too - and it's a pretty big deal to just tell the gasoline man to get lost entirely - more panels is also more times the house system needs no backup. Finally there. !00% NOT Chinese stuff, though I have no axe to grind with them as a people. I just prefer poly xtal big, thick, reliable, conservative cells, that's all - I've got them 30 years old at still 80% of original spec. Even those are down to 3.50/watt or so now, made in USA if you care (I don't much, I'm just trying to get the most kWh/buck). It was hard at first, but built good habits of no waste, and now its fantastic - and no monthly bills...just internet. I got a much better subsidy thusly - I bought raw land and homesteaded on it. Power companies are in a lot of places, in charge of enforcing the building permit and inspections regimes. So, if you're not and never become a customer - well, my buildings are taxed as barns and sheds even though I obviously live here. In today's tax environment - lookee, no property taxes to speak of.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
uniform Slashtard Obooboo shills
Having known and worked with a number of people in the alternative energy industry I can assure you that they've long since stopped being scrappy little upstarts. They're big business and even big oil has entered alternative industry. They're not stupid. They know there's a ton of money in the industry and a massive amount more to be made.
As for the Chinese, they do have a propensity for dumping goods on other countries. It's something the EU has responded a number of times in the past. And of course a lot of it is driven by protectionist policies, as was the case when the EU imposed tariffs on Chinese clothing several years ago. The problem is that the line between meeting consumer demand for cheap goods and dumping is quite blurred. The Chinese government also has countless policies intended to favor their own companies. It's something you'd expect any rational government to do if they want to ensure the success of their own nation. The global economy will eventually change to the point where these practices might not make sense, but we're not at that point yet.
That is not to suggest that these moves are necessarily a good thing. And they don't fix the core problems with American manufacturing. The government is treating the symptoms not the disease. And that's assuming that they're not pandering to special interests, which of course we all know is not the case. But this sort of thing is definitely very complicated.
solar powered panels still cost a lot to produce when compared to its output, but more importantly the process in which they are made results in 3 parts environmentally harmful substance to 1 part photosensitive material.
Well doing that would still be anti-competitive, less so than directly subsidizing the manufacturers since it doesn't really affect exports, but anti-competitive nonetheless. If the US did it, I'm sure other countries would definitely complain, but if it did it as a retreat from direct subsidies, it may be seen as an easier pill to swallow (hmm, that's giving me evil conspiracy ideas haha). In the US, Japanese hybrid cars are the most popular. This is because rebates are less biased, and they stimulate a sector without picking favorites within it.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Basically they need to get the panels + installation down another 25-50%
A good way to do this is to standardize the mounting brackets, and then change building codes so the brackets are required to be pre-installed on all newly constructed buildings. As prices drop, they can install the panels cheaply because the brackets are already there. This will be much cheaper than retrofitting panels onto an existing roof.
* Partisan opinion: Solar Power Is Booming â" Obama administration is killing it
* Partisan opinion masquerading as fact: Solar Power Is Booming â" Why Do We Want To Kill It?
Is this the new Slashdot TV: Fair and Balanced?
But I thought the water company was owned by the government? How can you blame greedy private executives for the "high prices" of the government-owned water company? Hmmmm.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
It's already reaching the limits of theoretical efficiency given the current harvesting mechanism. And yet it's not profitable. Money isn't just some abstraction. It represents resources which go into production and distribution of the thing. If it's not profitable, then it's an environmental as well as financial net loss. More resources go in than come out. If something cannot be made profitable even at peak efficiency, it represents a net waste of natural resources.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
not controllable by the government/corporations. Suddenly, the average person is that much more independent. Take out property and income tax, replace it with a VAT, break up large banks, re-institute Glass-Steagal and put back (or actually enforce) anti-trust legislation and heavens, you just might be on your way to a robust, resilient country of relatively independent citizens, not too subordinate to any central authority.
Now, go back to watching American Idol and Fox News. You will be instructed what to do on election day. That is all.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
False. If Chinese solar companies started raping us with price, then a new company (located in EU, US, India, Korea, or even China itself) will rise-up and sell the panels for less. No monopoly has ever set arbitrarily high prices and lasted more than 2 decades max.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
I don't want solar power, I want colon power.
I just want to know if it matters what I eat, and whether they're going to hurry up. Tonight is Tex-Mex. I guarantee I'm going to be a power station by morning!
Futurist Traditionalism
I hear this same argument all the time here in Anguilla where I live. "we don't want solar unless it reduces the cost of electricity for the poor man".
It's nonsense because solar is not going to drop the wholesale price of electricity, the differential from the price of NG or Nuke is never going to be substantial enough. Electricity in America is very very cheap. There is little point in trying to reduce the cost further, it is mostly administration charges at this stage.
The reason countries like the USA and other are promoting solar is because it is a renewable source. OIl and other fossil fuels are filthy and news of their imminent demise is not exaggerated. They will run out. America has a responsibility as a first world nation to reduce emissions.
Turning to renewable sources allows more time before the end of oil and for the technologies to develop. You can't expect we can transition once there is a crisis. Unless we start now and incentivize the use of RE, we will never get to a point where we can manage without fossil fuels. Great strides are being made and the discovery of grid based storage at economical cost will be a game changer.
Another reason to promote RE sources is energy independence. If countries that are not in the Middle East could survive on domestic production and renewable sources, the politics of the world would change dramatically, and the price of energy would drop, spawning another economic boom. At present, the US public is crying about high gasoline prices caused by geopolitical issues, but at the same time complaining about subsidies for renewable sources aimed at developing solutions to this issue. And blaming Obama for both.
Let's make this very clear. Oil will get more and more expensive until it runs out, the planet will warm in the mean time from CO2, and there will be instability in the Middle East and Venezuela. Or you can believe the Forbes and Fox News stories that tell you the opposite.
I live in a country that has probably the highest electricity costs in the world, 43c/KWh, unlimited sunshine, and refuses to allow people to install solar. Figure that policy out. Very soon we will not be a viable state because of high energy costs, but there is still no vision or will to move out of the dark ages.
Be glad you at least have the right to install solar or wind or whatever.
CM www.cometenergysystems.com Blog: http://caribbeanrenewable.blogspot.com/
Pick a winner so your friends/family/supporters will be helped. Subsidize it. Watch supply increase in response to subsidies, while demand stays flat. Oh, no, prices are dropping, which hurts those we picked to win. So tariffs and quotas and price fixing and whatever to drive prices back up. Watch supply fall apart completely. Blame "free markets". Repeat as needed.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
As an aside -- China doesn't do tax rebates for individuals, AFAIK. That kind of policy is simply alien to how they operate their tax policy, and how they implement economic policy. It's a market-based approach that makes sense to us, but doesn't fit in with Chinese policy.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
citation needed.
I don't see this working out too well. Solar is very site-specific: the panels need to be oriented a certain way with relation to the sun, they need a certain elevation that depends on latitude, etc. The people who build houses are morons, and I have no faith that they'd actually put these mounting brackets in correctly on every house. Instead, what'll happen is you'll buy a house, it'll come with some brackets to mount your panels pointing north or east with a completely inappropriate elevation, and you won't notice it until 5 years later when you decide to add panels. At that time, it'll be too late to get the builder to do anything about it as the house will be out of warranty and/or the builder's company out of business.
There's a reason that we humans do a really good job making small gadgets, and a horrible job building anything big. Small things are easier to build in a factory with lots of automation; as soon as you start adding lots of people and complicated, non-automated processes to it, the whole thing goes to hell. Coupled with the overall decline of western society, you might as well give up trying to build anything that's larger or heavier than a flat-screen TV (remember, we used to be able to build skyscrapers like the Empire State Building, but it's completely impossible to build anything like that any more in the west).
Solar already has the highest return on investment of renewable energy sources. Panels are continually improving and payback periods are now under 10 years and projected to be in the neighborhood of 4 years soon.
Solar R.O.I.
They are trying hard to NOT address the fact that China is subsidizing and then dumping solar cells/panels on the western market (USA AND EU). If we really wanted to tell China to play fair, then we would have had real tariffs on panels that are made out of solar cells from China. Doing 5% does not address the issues. It should be around 40-60%.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The poor currently aren't doing anything to cause it (in theory, what with them not owning hummers or polluting factories
Maybe the poor in your area are different, but here in Arizona, poor people routinely drive giant gas-guzzling SUVs and pickup trucks, usually with expensive rims on them. You can see them when they drive up to government offices to collect their assistance checks.
A rail at the eve and a rail at the peak. Wire these to a junction box near the utility box downstairs. One rail is positive, the other negative. The only problems I see in doing that at construction is corrosion.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
I wish solar energy was the end all be all solution to our energy problems. But it is not. Simply put, when the sun isn't shining, you have no power. It is fine as a backup system or one to augment the grid. But reliable it is not. The cost per kilowatt hour is also too high. Most electricity in the US is still produced from coal. That is because it has the lowest cost per kilowatt hour. The best solution I see is building Thorium reactors. Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTR's) do not have the problems that plague uranium and plutonium fueled reactors. Fusion sounds cool, but so far it has been nothing but a huge government "make work" project. It is nowhere near ready for commercialization. LFTR's would be clean and cheap. They should be competitive with coal per kilowatt hour cost. You don't have to depend on the huge thermonuclear reactor in the sky being obscured by clouds or it being night either.
Oh, yeah! Wise guy, huh? Woob woob woob woob! Nyuk! Nyuk!
Stupid Water Barons!
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
While I'm not big of the idea of "the long tail" or "trickle down economics", I would think this would help the poor in a small manner. By those able to afford it having solar panels, the power companies have less demand for their energy and so the poor are less likely to see an increase in power prices (and, rarely, a slight reduction).
Its not likely that power companies will be able to abandon maintenance on infrastructure that solar users no longer use, so those costs will have to be borne by a smaller number of customers.
On a more cynical note, the power companies will continue to operate on the assumption of constantly increasing profitability. With fewer customers, they will have to raise prices to meet their goals. Fair? Reasonable? Of course not. But fairness is not for the poor in America. Power companies will run themselves into the ground trying squeeze dry anyone they can, and the poor are the least able to escape their grasp.
There are a number of areas of the US where this has been handed over to private enterprise.
I don't care, I'm not poor.
Taxed through inflation, income, sales taxes to pay wealthier people to put panels on their roofs. It's generally morally sickening, but no more sickening than the rest of the corruption.
I didn't see anyone complaining that the tax breaks to those who bought hybrids were bad because the poor still couldn't afford hybrids.
That's purely because you are incapable of using Google.
e.g.
http://97.65.137.56/202194/ron-paul-right-again-electric-car-subsidies-transferring-wealth-from-the-poor-to-the-rich
Deleted
PV panels not earning back their energy production costs is an urban legend. The actual earn-back period including production, transportation, and installation is only a couple of years.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Um... no. Well, maybe.
Depends how your solar system is tied into the grid. If you have no charge/storage attached to your system, then sure. Night-time use will resort to grid based electricity. Attach some storage to your system, however, and you are good for days.
Most municipal water supplies sold out to private industry years ago.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Depends on where you live. Lot of municipalities have private water companies. Lots more have govt. owned divisions that have "privatized" operations.
Just because we are spending a lot of $$$ on importing crap from China doesn't mean that people are making money. In fact it is costing more to build and maintain these 'solar farms' than they make. Taking into account depreciation these businesses are doomed. If you only measure income and ignore the fact that the panels require to be maintained than sure, but then again if you do that you might as well snort the rest of that cocaine that you have.
They should get the cost of the panels themselves down to roughly the cost of roofing tiles or close anyway. Years ago I thought of (and see some people have made similar designed) lego like roofing tiles where they couple to each other to make a solar grid that is the roofing structure itself no need for roofing iron or tiles underneath it.
New houses should be built with solar roofs built in.
'Cos there ain't no meter on the Sun,
No, there ain't no meter on the Sun.
How ya gonna charge
Enough to keep ya livin' large
When there ain't no meter on the Sun?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Plenty of people here (south-eastern Australia) can easily power their whole home, and then some, from a rooftop panel array (at least for most of the year ... mid-winter gets a little trickier). Yes solar isn't good enough for baseline power load, but it still push out enough power to run a home if the conditions are right (and they are right in many places on earth).
I lived in a completely solar-powered place for a while (in northern NSW) and it was fine. Very rarely needed to draw extra power from the grid. Running three hair driers at once might do it, but how often does that happen? (Heating and cooking were gas, by the way ... and they are traditionally the things that chew up insane amounts of power if they are electric - exclude those and most home appliances simply don't require that much power)
According to documents filed with the SEC, the publicly traded Chinese firms I follow (~70% of production) have net gross margins for the entire period in question. Granted, they are still running at operating losses for a myriad of other reasons..So either these firms are fraudulent (a pretty serious allegation, far worse than dumping or this is all protectionist garbage) Yet, the majority of opinions on this forum are based on this easily falsifiable U.S. financial media reporting. The evidence of positive gross margins is publicly available via the SEC... Where is the critical thinking here people? Isn't the burden of proof on those who make the accusations? Instead, the firms behind these allegations remain anonymous and fail to provide any evidence. I'd also like to see evidence that Chinese subsides are larger than U.S. subsidies... The big public firm behind this, SolarWorld, is well connected politically and couldn't compete with China even with a 50% tariff ...
In theory, the poor also benefit from a cleaner environment.
I'm confused as to why people say it's thriving when it's taking such a huge amount of money in subsidies. All competing energy forms take in either no or comparatively irrelevant subsidies and yet remain competitive. If solar power needs these subsidies then they're not thriving. Perhaps they're doing better then awful... but that's hardly a grand success.
In any case, I want solar to succeed, but I think it won't succeed until the social planners get out of the process. Solar will succeed or fail not because people believed in it but because it's a superior form of energy. Having solar shouldn't be seen as something "good" people do as if it's a sacrifice. Rather, it should be what "smart" people do because it's actually cheaper. Until we get there solar power stands about the same chances of catching on as ending poverty in Africa. The same sort of people are backing both initiatives and it's all for a good cause. But things don't get better because people care. I wish they did but they don't. They get better because it is in everyone's interest for them to get better.
Further, attacking our fossil fuel industry doesn't drive people to solar because it's easier to fight back against the regulations then it is to magically make solar panels as effective as coal power plants.
People need to be practical.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
True, though putting these things in domestic homes is likely to lead to at least a few incidents where nutcases try and break one open
"Hey guys! Watch this!" - I think I just envisioned our next Darwin Award winners. Irradiating sperm should count, right?
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you are shorter of breath and one day closer to death
Either me a solar energy company that runs its entire operatio - extraction, through refinement, through fabrication, installation and maintenance, including keeping the meat alive - entirely on solar panels, or kindly fuck off and die in the same cold, dark cave that we'll all be huddling in if we take one more step down the risible Greenwashed Brick Road that is photo-voltaic.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
The key is in the barriers to entry that the monopolist can depend upon. If a chinese solar monopoly does emerge it will be due to tighter integration with their suppliers, better manufacturing facilities, and a cheaper labor supply. Manufacturing can become entrenched in a specific place just because of the knowledge gained and innovations achieved as a direct result of the application of the process. You're right, of course, any monopoly based just upon subsidies would be unsustainable in the long run (when nothing is fixed including the capital assets required to compete). However as Keynes remarked - "in the long run, we're all dead." Maybe rather than trying to resurrect the US solar business we should invest in whatever the next technology is (whatever that might be). I dunno what it is, but I'm fairly sure that thin-film solar is not the end all be all.
So why is the internet so expensive? It's because the Chinese can't sell us cheap internet access.
Go look at pretty much everything. Hardware always goes down in price. Services however always go up. However hardware that is made in China by Chinese is cheap, throwaway and disposable. Many CRT televisions made between 1960 and 1985 still work, but few made after LCD panels took over, last more than 3 years. Chinese made LCD trash (eg Proview) last barely two years.
Peak load during summer months in the US when solar generation is at its best (and power demand is at its highest) would be a good example of this. More solar panels mean less time spent running "peaker" units (that are only turned up when extra energy is needed to feed the grid). Baseload electrical generation is not that variable. Interestingly enough energy usage patterns are not the same in all parts of the world. England for example uses more electricity during the winter (for heat) than they do during the summer so it's good to note that this example does not work well in all contexts.
And as you rightly point out we probably also need to pin some of those externalities on the dirty energy producers. The real issue there is that a good number of people may not be able to afford the true cost of the energy that they are consuming. (of course that goes to show)
Dollar cost is a pretty good proxy for energy cost, and the ad on this page is for solar panel kits - about $10k/1kW. Be generous and call that 12 kWh/day or 4400 kWh/year. Electricity in most of the US is $0.10-0.15/kWh, so those solar panels might generate as much as $600 of electricity per year and take just about 17 years to pay for themselves (without present value discounting).
+1 Rounded Corners
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
38Â 53' 52" N 77Â 02' 05" W
Thriving is not the word I would use to describe the solar industry right now. Just a few years ago, there was a boom in solar and other renewables when the price of natural gas was high and governments mandated carveouts in electricity markets that were reserved solely for renewable energy, and in some cases, just solar. In the last year or two, economic conditions have decreased the forecast demand for power and shale gas has made power from natural gas so cheap that other sources, fossil and renewable cannot compete. In an ironic twist of fate, coal power is on the decline because cheap natural gas makes coal an economic non-starter. Same goes for nuclear. However, government regulations that require a percentage of renewable power sold have carved out a market that is free of competition from fossil fuels. If weren't for renewable portfolio requirements, the renewable power industry would also be on death's door.
What this means is that there is a glut of solar cells on the market that will eventually be resolved when the weaker manufactures go under. However, cheap solar cells mean cheaper projects. This has resulted in PV becoming attractive in areas where there is plenty of sunshine and a strong RPS (California and possibly Arizona come to mind.) This works if you are a utility scale project developer or a homeowner with a high electricity bill. However, the demand is highly dependent on regulation, not market forces.
If absolute power corrupts absolutely, what does this say about renewable power?
Irradiating sperm should count, right?
It depends whether they have already managed to procreate, doesn't it?
Seriously. I dream of doing what you've done, some day. Except with a large greenhouse for growing our own vegetables and a patch of land for cows, chickens, and fish for milk, eggs, and meat. Might I ask what part of the country you're in? Just wondering what your seasonal temperature variation might be and its impact on your energy footprint.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
that is happening right now. Dunno if you've driven through the Midwest lately, but wind farms are sprouting up everywhere. I've read the same can be said for solar in the Southwest. And every major car company now has at least a hybrid vehicle in its line-up and a decent chunk of them have EVs.
All of those things represent major commitments in planning and resources. They are not whimsical undertakings begun by eco-hippies, but by engineers and accountants. And they indicate that the energy footing of the entire American economy is shifting away from fossil fuels right now whether you think it's efficient or not. (Actually, if you included the externalities of fossil fuels that their boosters never do, such as the cost of fighting wars to seize supplies in the Middle East and environmental damage, your efficiency calculation would probably net out much differently than you think it does.)
Energy efficiency and alternative energy is pervading all sectors and levels of the economy now as we speak, too. Taken together, it will take far less time than any one accepts now to wake up in a different energy future. If you chart the path of the growth of plug-in hybrid cars and EVs and overlay that on the chart oil prices, then the implosion of demand for oil could well be particularly brutal (for the oil companies); My brother is an engineer at Ford and said after the last spike in the price of gasoline that the company killed new pickup factories that had just been completed because they wanted to refocus on hybrids and EVs.
And that was last time. If gas does go to $6/gallon this summer, as some industry watchers are predicting, I think you might just see a lot of people jump ship on ICEs altogether. Since 2/3's of American oil consumption goes to run cars, that would be a panic moment for Texaco.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
In a way we do when we vote for a president. Most candidates will at least pretend to have some sort of energy policy. The guys who come up with the policy usually are the ones who end up nominated for the cabinet position.
Then it's up to your congressmen to vote yes or no.
Of course, if you just vote for the least offensive presidential candidate (instead of the guy you really want to win), and the incumbent congress critter (because he's got tenure, or name recognition), well, that's what you get.
We need to kill cheap/stupid solar power because it funnels dollars into yuan.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I did not know that the President was the chief scientist and engineer of U.S.A.
Anyways my dear leader is better than your big brother.
The poor are also more likely to have electric baseboard heat, poorly insulated walls and attics, electric water heaters, and (thanks in part to Fox News and Rush Limbaugh) incandescent light bulbs.
However, I agree with you on the plug-in hybrids. They don't make any economic sense in much of the US, at least in area.
I also think that most people would be better served installing solar hot water heaters before they go with photovoltaics. They work just about everywhere, are dirt cheap to operate, and that makes the payback work out much sooner. You're just transferring heat energy, not hitting electrons with protons. This is something that we've been good at for 200 years now.
And if we are giving economic stimulus through government incentives, we want to give the stimulus to OUR idiots, not them. Besides, making solar panels is tremendously polluting when done wrong. At least a US factory would have some sort of environmental standards.
Thin film has horrible efficiency and really REALLY bad longevity compared to monocrystalline. In fact right now you can buy mono crystalline CHEAPER than thin film if you go for watts generated.
One, $200.00 100 watt monocrystalline panel versus having to have 6 15 watt thin film panels. My 100 watt panel is the size of the 15 watt panels.
A lot of the china junk is just that. junk. talk to anyone that has been suckered into the harbor freight 45 watt kit.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It's not really market demand if it's all regulated is it? If you force me to buy something and I buy it... I didn't buy it because I want it. Just as if you mandate that I have to hire someone. I didn't hire them because I wanted them or I found their labor competitive... I didn't have a choice.
I'm not a fan of putting loaded guns against people's heads and saying "do this or we see how many of these chambers are loaded"...
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Well said.
" If Chinese solar companies started raping us with price, then a new company (located in EU, US, India, Korea, or even China itself) will rise-up and sell the panels for less"
Except for time delays and barriers to entry. The Rockefellers and Carnegies did exactly that back in the robber baron days, as did the railroad tycoons. The Chinese did the exact same thing to the US rare-earth mining industry only a decade ago.
Building a replacement for the now-overpriced good or service takes years and costs million/billions. And at the end of your investment, the monopolist can drops prices and crush the newcomer again.
That 10k pays for all kinds of stuff not typically considered energy (and which wouldn't be counted against other forms of energy generation).
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
s as much money? please tell me what social benefit Goldman Sachs or Merrill Lynch provide to society versus a couple of failed solar power companies.
then of course we subsidize shitty contractors like Halliburton in our never ending wars.
The cost for installation is a joke. It should get better once installation outfits become as commonplace as roofing companies, but at the moment the lack of competition and requiring "certification" means that in some areas you're stuck.
If you live in state that doesn't require certification, you can save yourself a boatload of cash by installing the racks and panels yourself (should take less than day with a friend or two), and then hire an electrician to finish hooking everything up.
~X~
False. If Chinese solar companies started raping us with price, then a new company (located in EU, US, India, Korea, or even China itself) will rise-up and sell the panels for less.
Then they dump the price until the new company goes out of business (and loot their corpse if they have anything interesting), then jack it back up. Rinse and repeat until no one will give fund any competing startups funding.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
A rail at the eve and a rail at the peak.
PV panels are wired in a more complex way in order to reach the nominal voltage (300-400V.) The uninsulated rails will also short through the rainwater, and they will corrode at lightning speed because of the voltage on them.
It is not true that "Almost all solar electric devices curretly use Selenium.". Silicon, which is the active material in most of the panels thant the Chinese are so successfully selling, is essentially unlimited in supply. Think sand - SiO2, the source for most silicon - there's not a shortage of sand. Anyway, selenium is not so expensive (refined Se ~ $100/lb, Google is your friend), and the PV tech that uses Se uses it in thin film form. That is, a panel uses very, very little. Like maybe a buck or so per panel. Fabrication is a much bigger cost component than Se, Te, In, or any of the other elements used in thin film solar panels.
If solar energy isn't thriving, what is? The solar industry has blown away expectations for several years running... Even the massive over capacity and German/Italian incentive cuts haven't slowed it down. In fact, we're in the midst of a shift from western-RPS based demand to BRIC/developing country demand. That ought to tell you something about the cost of solar energy. The annualized growth is ~30%-40%. The global solar industry is growing at 10-15X the US economy... The fastest growing industry of its size ($50b + ) on earth. The US was ~7% of the 28GW global installs last year, growing 109% from 2010. Any hiccup with fracking (e.g. regulations, LNG exports, etc) and solar takes the lead everywhere. Module + BOS costs are at grid parity. Installation costs still tip the scales, but they will die as the industry matures (really? We're paying electricians 400-600% the cost of the equipment to mount on residential roofs? absurd...I could very successfully argue at this point that these guys are just eating all the incentives, at least in the US) and large firms dominate installation/leasing or utility scale arrays dominate. IMO, there will be utility scale PV projects installed at $2/Wp by 2013, neglecting incentives. Calculate LCOE on that over 30 yr... The big firms are still not even completely vertically integrated yet, but they will be soon... from polysilicon to project.. From modules they can grab 1 cent of profit off each vertical and they gross $60 million per GW (which is what they are doing now, and basically breaking even or slightly losing money due to OPX and debt payments) or they can do the project and grab $280 million per GW at $ 3 installs or $180 million per GW at $2 installs at a margin of 7 - 9 %. Or heck, they pay just start installing plants themselves. Not to mention China Development Bank has something like 40 billion in project financing available, which few firms have used at all...
haha, that guy needs to settle down a bit!
only manages their own power and money
i.e. politics
XDDD
http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2012/03/29/get_the_government_out_of_solar_99590.html
Solar power energy per square meter of the earth's surface is 120 watts. The US consumed 3,741,000 MW*h/yr in 2009. The US has a surface area of 9,629,000 square kilometers.
3,741,000 MW*h/yr == 3,741,000 * 1,000,000 * (365*24*60) =~ 1.18 * 10^20 Watts
Assume 20% conversion efficiency, running at 8 hours per day, and every single square meter of the US covered by solar panels:
9,629,000 * (1000 * 1000) * 120 * (0.2) * (8 * 3600) = 6.66 * 10^18 Watts
So, even if we covered the US in solar panels, we're still short by a factor of 20. Incidentally, if we assumed 100% conversion efficiency and 24 hour per day operation, that still leaves us short 25%.
So, dumbass Slashdot editors and submitters notwithstanding, physics and math wins in the end. Enough with these inane stories supporting solar. Maybe start supporting sane energy policies like safe nuclear?
Morons.
Just to make things clear, the only type of free market that exists is the black market. All other markets have some sort of regulation in them that the participating parties recognize. In black markets, there really are loaded guns put against people's heads. As far as I am aware, there are no people holding guns to any consumer's heads forcing them to buy power. If this is happening where you live, you really should consider moving to a country.
The question you raise is valid but cannot be easily answered with the usual guns and butter theory from economics. Electricity is a more complicated market system than other industries because of high cost of entry and the semi-monopolistic nature of the business. The wholesale portion is regulated at the federal level and the retail portion is regulated by the states. The utilities, on the other hand, do face penalties in some states for not complying with that state's requirements for the purchase of renewable energy. As each utility is under the same constraints, there are not discriminatory practices or coercion. Participation in the market requires compliance with the rules. The RPS requirement is no different than the myriad other regulations that utilities have as a condition of operation.
The RPS requirements (renewable portfolio standard) are in place as a means to put a price on pollution. Without regulation, there isn't a cost to polluting and the ones who pay are those who must live in the polluted area. Attaching this externality within the confines of a market system is not easy to do fairly and not going to happen in the absence of regulation. This legislative mechanism is not the perfect way to do so but it does have the side effect of creating a market for renewable power where none existed thirty years ago. There are other ways to attach a price for polluting but they are political suicide to implement.
If absolute power corrupts absolutely, what does this say about renewable power?
I don't disagree that because some bad things are done that any bad thing can be done to any extent without limits.
That would be like saying because there are bar fights in a given bar its okay to murder people in that bar.
The bar fights themselves shouldn't happen but assuming that's unavoidable you shouldn't escalate the situation.
Maybe you think I'm being unfair? I'm trying. I don't like such heavy handed tactics. I don't care if they're common in that industry. I'm not going to be okay with a given firing squad in Cuba simply because firing squads in general in that area are common. It's wrong.
I'm not against renewable energy. In fact, I think it's the future and we must invest in it heavily. But I don't think that is the right way to do it. The process of investment must be organic and natural... not forced by the state. That is not "demand"... that is the government putting a gun against your head and saying "buy it"... It's coercion. And coercion is not demand.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I'm not sure if I would call an oversupply of solar cells an indicator of a thriving industry. The solar industry was growing quickly a few years ago but that does not appear to be the case today. I can't give you any facts on that other than anecdotal observations of changes in the industry in the last year due to the massive supply of natural gas that has come into the market.
I'd like to believe that solar prices have come down enough to compete against natural gas but they haven't. I've seen figures for natural gas plants operating at around $20-30/MWhr based on $2.50/MMbtu. This is roughly 1/4-1/5 the price of a solar PV installation. Even factoring in a carbon cost, there is still much ground to cover to make up the difference.
Believe me, I'd love to see green power be the dominant type of generation on the grid but the economics of cheap natural gas dictate that this will not happen in the near future without the help of subsidies or increasing RPS requirements.
If absolute power corrupts absolutely, what does this say about renewable power?
By your analogy, any sort of regulation is a heavy handed tactic. A completely unregulated system will work with one man on a desert island but falls apart in a population center where competing interests exist.
That being said, if you have a solution that does not employ heavy handed tactics to get more renewable energy built, don't keep it a secret! The present system can certainly be improved.
If absolute power corrupts absolutely, what does this say about renewable power?
Simplistic thinking. Chicken vs Egg problem. If you do not understand it, another nation will eat your lunch down the road. China is kicking our ass and free market zealots are hurting themselves over their religious economic beliefs... and us realists know better. Free yourself from the reality distortion field of religion.
It will not be long until you are required to hire people. Too many people, not enough legitimate jobs and way too much trouble with massive unemployment.
All this will come and eventually most people will recognize the problem when it is big and obvious. Smart software, better robotics, out sourcing... The machines can be beaten by cheap Chinese labor for now. THINK about it. To beat out expensive automation we must be desperate, poor, undervalued and unregulated (unclean, unsafe, and unaccountable.) If working for Foxcon China is so great then why do they put suicide nets around the buildings?
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Very well comrade, we'll just set up a big federal program doles out "jobs" or if you prefer we can dump trillions in tax dollars into the groupthink approved company of choice.
As to china kicking the US's ass on it, that's not the free market people's fault.
1. Factory regulation in the US is such that it's a pain in the ass to make anything in the US. Steve Jobs for example went on record saying he wanted to make ipods in the US but it was almost impossible to get a permit to build the stupid factory.
2. Energy. By not building the energy we need we can't supply energy intensive industries like the semi conductor industry. We need nuclear power plants amongst others. Solar doesn't cut it. In china, do they use solar to power their solar power plant companies? No. They sell that to you. Their power their industry with nuclear and coal. So if you want to talk about the chinese, look to your own stupid energy policy making it impossible to supply energy intensive industry.
3. Labor policy in the US is uncompetitive. Look at what happened when Boeing tried to open a factory in a Right to Work state... the feds jumped on them and told them they COULD NOT build the factory there. Think about that.
4. Much of China's increasing dominance in high tech manufacturing comes from their dominance of rare earths. The US used to be the primary producer of these minerals. Why did we stop? Oh, to be sure China was pumping out cheaper product. But importantly the primary mines in the US that produced rare earths were also basically harassed by environmentalists out of business. Only now with the Chinese playing trade war games are these mines able to open up again as the enviros are being musseled.
So above and beyond if you think it's the free market people screwing up US industry you don't know anything.
The US remains a global industrial power house. China is growing rapidly but the US has massive industrial capability. But we're also infested with economically ignorant socialists and cultish enviro zealots.
Don't believe me? WHY is china more competitive? you really think it's just their state sponsorship of industry? Really? Want to bet we pump more money into our industrial base then they do on an annual basis? We do.
It isn't a lack of subsidy. It's the constant undermining of everything we do.
If we wanted to build the golden gate bridge today it would cost 10 times what it did originally AFTER inflation and probably take 10 times longer if it were allowed to be built at all. Doubtless the foundation would endanger the habitat of a local mud crab or something equally idiotic. And before you say I'm exaggerating these idiots recently shut down a LARGE solar power plant project because it infringed on the habitat of a local lizard... it was in the middle of the god damn desert. if we can't build a solar power plant in the middle of the desert we can't do anything.
So I have zero patience for the argument that it's the free market people doing this... we don't have the control to do it. We're not the ones calling the shots. We wish we were... really. But blaming us is like blaming the guy in the wheel chair of being an axe murderer. We lack the political strength to effect industry on the level you presume. We are strong IN the private sector itself but in government we only get anywhere by bribing people. We'd love to just argue our case but we're faced with little more then the ignorant, the crazy, and the corrupt. Amongst them all at least the corrupt will negotiate.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
True. But I'm not suggesting no regulation. I'm merely saying that if you do it, you have to have proper respect for what you're doing.
For example, if a guy wants to dump toxic waste in a lake people drink from and the result will be thousands of people die... will you be willing to put a gun against his head to make him stop? Yes. Those are circumstances where regulation is appropriate. But any situation where it would be wildly inappropriate to threaten someone's life or livelihood over the matter simply shouldn't enforced in that way.
Now you can have additional layers of regulation for less extreme circumstances but the consequences and nature of the relationship has to be proportionately less hostile. So for example, maybe you make something a quid pro quo? By making it a voluntary exchange of one thing for another you avoid much the stigma. It is important that it truly be voluntary. You can't say "if you want to breath, give me 40 dollars"... that's just mugging someone. If you want this "service" it costs X... and they don't have to buy and ideally you shouldn't monopolize the service. So if it's a vital service but one that you're charging an unreasonable price for a competitor can come in to make a better deal... or if they're a large entity they might just provide that service themselves.
I have no problem with regulation. It's just that it isn't a casual exercise of power. Most of it is backed with violence. Do this or men with guns will come and make you sorry. That is appropriate for life and death regulations where people will DIE or come to great harm if the regulation isn't obeyed. But in any situation where it wouldn't be reasonable to threaten someone with violence such regulations are heavy handed, brutal, immoral, and uncivilized. Part of being civilized means not using a sledge hammer when a gentle pat on the shoulder will do. Many people seem to just like the power. Love of power for it's own sake is savage. It's like the love of sex for it's own sake. We expect such from primitives but more civilized societies realize it is more complicated then that. You don't jam guns in people's faces simply because you think it's funny or cool or you enjoy the power or it's easy.
It eats away at the very fabric of the community by enshrining the absolute power of the state above any interconnected communal responsibility.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Don't know about the US but the EU has massive farming subsidies and mountains of unused food because we want to remain self sufficient. If we didn't maintain our own food growing capabilities we would become dependent on foreign countries, just like we are for oil.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
What fkin bunch of random rambling involving buzzwords like: renewable, bank, carbon, war, economy, robots 111!!!LOLOLOL I call this some damn good pot!
Seriously now, solar power is extremely expensive and needs _massive_ subsidies to scam people into them. It never "boomed" and I don't see them succeeded in the next 100 years. See you in 30 years when you see the real costs of stability/maintenance for those solar panels. I know a friend who bough such babies and he is still discovering hidden costs appearing, again and again. The sales guys and the stupid hippies boasting that renewable energy is the future fail to mention those costs.
False. If Chinese solar companies started raping us with price, then a new company (located in EU, US, India, Korea, or even China itself) will rise-up and sell the panels for less.
Spoken like somebody who has no understanding of engineering at all and learned about business from political screeds. Somebody's going to invest the money in complex high tech manufacturing plants to compete with a monopolist who can undercut his prices any time it wants?
You seem to think actual experience and practical know-how aren't factors in competitiveness. That's to be a common American delusion these days, that money capital can conjure intellectual capital out of thin air. The killer advantage Chinese solar companies have isn't low labor prices, it's not even government subsidies anymore. It's the practical manufacturing expertise they obtained with those subsidies. And because China is now producing solar panels on a scale larger than anyone else, they've got know how that enables them to bring technical advances in solar technology to market faster than any startup could.
Ironically, undervaluing know-how was the mistake the Maoists made in the Great Leap Forward. They thought all they needed to do to supply their needs for something like steel was to study the theory of steel production then build steel mills starting from first principles. They didn't understand that actual experience designing and operating a successful mill was critical to getting past the cottage industry stage. The *next* generation of Chinese leadership learned that lesson, which is why China's economic development policies all make acquiring know-how the top priority. Cut a sweet short term deal with foreign companies, but insist the production happen in China so that China gains the most valuable asset that company has: practical know-how.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Nuclear produces too much over night so it has to be sold cheap or just dumped. And when one goes out (and they do), then that's a huge shortfall to be made up by what? Nuclear isn't baseload capable.
Gas can follow therefore wastes much less, but is one of the most expensive electricity generators. Baseload capable, but you'd see your bills shoot up two-three-fold.
Coal can't follow as well as gas, but better than nuclear, but that's not an option.
None of them can manage baseload.
But together, they DO.
We could just use solar as the major baseload. Solar thermal storage will run 24/7. Wind blows at night and most people are at home and the power load reduces drastically, so the "loss" of sunlight at night is barely a problem.
Same thing happened where I lived. They made a massive push for us to conserve electricity. Apparently we did so well that the utility was losing money, so they jacked up the rates. There was a lot of rage over it, summarized by the question: What's the personal benefit of energy conservation? Well, I'll tell you that it isn't lower bills.
Well, if the companies in question get a subsidy from their government aren't they able to lower the price of their products? Thus making it plausible that the companies would sell their products at or below the cost to manufacture them? I mean, if I was a company looking for some profit, selling something at way cheaper prices than my competitors because I just received some free money sounds like a great idea.
I don't know much about industry with regards to financial reporting and subsidization, but that seems to be the argument I hear the most. The companies aren't losing money, simply getting it from somewhere else.
Gas and oil companies have deep ties to all the politicians, and they now see solar power as a threat, now they want to kill it....
thats it, no magic here...
"The article continues, 'As the market was flooded by both silicon (from silicon producers) and thin-film panels (by Chinese manufacturers), the price for thin-film panels came crashing down – along with Solyndra’s business model. .."
This statement is misleading, and largely wrong. The whole idea of thin-film was to lower cost of materials and produce cheaper panels. The lines were engineered from the start to hit price points that were far below conventional techniques.
But just like the semicon world as a whole, rapid upscaling of production largely solved the cost issues on the conventional techniques, and soon those panels were the same price as thin-film. At that point the inherent disadvantages of thin-film made them far less interesting.
This is the reason for the tarrifs, as well as the price drop. Also, the chinese are using the technology Americans are developing, and then losing money on this in order to kill American businesses. This is the reason for the tarrifs. Slashdot, I'm disappointed in the quality of your post.
When consumer electricity was introduced it was a luxury for the wealthy and populous areas first. Just like DVD players being $400 when introduced - a free market will find a supply & demand price point that benefits most people AND suppliers. It's governments and the impatience of "know-it-alls" that muck up the system. We didn't need a "DVD Player" policy to make them get cheaper, why do people think the energy market has a different set of rules? Whenever you hear the term "energy policy" run like hell.
>>>The Rockefellers and Carnegies did exactly that back in the robber baron days
How about we stop living in the distant past, and provide some examples from the PRESENT.
>>>The Chinese did the exact same thing to the US rare-earth mining industry only a decade ago.
Name the companies that did this supposed dumping. And were they cheaper in price because of illicit practices, or because of the same reason Macs are cheaper to build in China than the U.S.? You shouldn't be buying into the "dumping is killing us" propaganda put out by GM, Ford, and other companies trying to seek government protectionism (or handouts).
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
I'm not sure where the violence comes in. Failure to make RPS requirements in the states that I am familiar with involve monetary penalties, not death threats. This approach seems to be working. Are you suggesting that compliance be rewarded with cookies instead?
It is good that you recognize community responsibility as being important but this becomes difficult in situations where the liabilities (pollution in this case) can be offloaded elsewhere while providing benefits to those who don't pay for the liabilities. For example, there is a utility in California that has a coal facility in the middle of nowhere that generates power for use in Los Angeles. The Los Angelenos get cheaper power and the people in Utah get the pollution. Community responsibility can't regulate this situation.
If absolute power corrupts absolutely, what does this say about renewable power?
Why is it that when the Republicans want to do something, they are "encouraging private investment" but when the Democrats want to do something, its a subsidy?
This whole argument ignores the other 70% of the equation--the money spent by private individuals in buying solar panels. Let's say it costs $25K to get enough panels to produce all of a home's electricity (it does for me with current market costs). Let's further speculate that we want to provide solar power for 100 million homes. A little math reveals the cost would be about $2.5 Trillion. If the gov't kicks in 30%, then private individuals are kicking in 1.75 Trillion and the gov't 750 Billion.
Seems like a good deal to me. For less than we've spent on the recent wars, most Americans will have a zero dollar electric bill, while virtually eliminating the need to burn coal and freeing up most of our natural gas production for use by vehicles, eliminating our need to import oil.
There are no direct subsidies. Only provincial tax and energy breaks that look identical to what all municipalities (including Ca, Az, Co, Ma) do to entice development. China Development Bank has given loan-guarantees and project financing to many players ... with terms that look terrible in comparison to what our Dept. of Energy offered First Solar, Solandra, etc. What no one wants to admit is that most of the financing for this Chinese push came from private markets in US and HK. AKA Capitalism, is a destructive bitch!
The numbers don't support your conjecture! The over capcity is not due to lack of demand, its do to crazy production capacity increases in China. The solar energy industry hasn't stopped growing. It may slow in the US (it hasn't yet!) due to cheap natural gas, but most of the world doesn't have that luxury (or our prices!). Furthermore, natural gas is the perfect companion to solar energy It's cleaner, cheaper and more efficient than other fossil fuels. And a huge installed natural gas base is perfect for a large solar grid: the gas does load following on solar and base load. Economical and clean! Everyone is happy. :) And natural gas infrastructure is the perfect segway into a syn-gas economy ... artificial natural gas from solar or biomass.
Changing the people in power is incredibly difficult.
So why do it...
Those who would best run the country will not run for office.
You really believe that? What do you suppose the reason for that is?
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love."
No where is that more true than your /. post.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Come now.
The regulation requires you do X or something happens... right?
So you say that something that happens isn't violence right? Well, what happens if you don't do what they asked and you don't comply with the penalty?
What is the final "or ELSE" on such regulations?
Violence. Men show up and make you pay. Resist them and they'll try and put you in jail. Try to resist that and they'll kill you.
So the basis of your regulation is a death threat. You cannot disobey on pain of death.
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The penalty would depend on the state. According to the regulations that I am aware of, the corporation gets fined an amount proportional to the amount they are short. In reality, they get an angry letter from the PUC telling them to comply with the regulation. I'm not sure what happens if the corporation refuses to pay the fine as I am not aware of any cases where they haven't eventually worked out a deal. My guess is that failure to comply, if it was serious enough, would result in revocation of a license to operate in the area because it is under civil law, not criminal law. So far, I haven't seen any violence inherent in the system. Do you live in Mexico?
If absolute power corrupts absolutely, what does this say about renewable power?
Don't be obtuse.
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The demand for solar comes from government carveouts and feed in tariffs. In some areas, carbon trading would also create demand. There are also areas off the grid where diesel generation is expensive enough to create demand for other less expensive sources of generation. Worldwide, governments are backing off from feed in tariffs and increasing RPS requirements. There is usually several years of lag where older projects need to complete. In the absence of demand, new projects do not get financed and built but this is often not seen for a few years after the change in regulation. There has been a huge change downwards in the demand from utilities to buy renewable energy in the last two years. This is due to both the lack of escalation in government regulations and the massive decrease in cost of natural gas.
As for natural gas, it is better than coal (much less NOx and SOx) but still emits about half of the CO2/MWhr. Even though natural gas turbines combine well to take away power fluctuations when a cloud passes by, the backup capacity required by a solar (and wind) facility is usually estimated to be about the same capacity as the solar facility. If it costs 2x as much to operate a solar facility and there is a need for a backup NG turbine, what rational corporation would bother with the solar facility, except to comply with government regulations for RPS?
Sadly, renewable energy is considered to be a luxury in much of the world, including North America. A combined cycle NG facility operates 24/7 and provides a source of power that is not subject to intermittency. Compare this to a solar facility that only operates during the day, is subject to brownouts every time a cloud passes overhead and costs more money to operate when you factor in capital costs. Unfortunately, the economics of electricity today take precedence over the needs of grandchildren in the future.
This situation will change in the future but only when there is enough natural gas turbines to suck up the excess supply of natural gas. This might take some time because natural gas is being dumped on the market as a by-product by oil drillers in the shale fields. I don't mean to sound like a doomsayer but the economic situation is very unfavorable for clean energy at the present time. I'm glad that you have lots of enthusiasm about this but believing in it isn't enough. The best thing you can do is to put pressure on your utility and elected officials to get more clean energy.
If absolute power corrupts absolutely, what does this say about renewable power?
Really? If you can give me an example of jail time or state sanctioned violence to a director or corporate officer for violation of an RPS requirement, then I'll agree with you. I'm not seeing it in the USA. That is why I am asking where you are.
If absolute power corrupts absolutely, what does this say about renewable power?
Again, that's obtuse.
Just because companies nearly always comply rather then suffer total destruction doesn't mean that they're not being threatened with total destruction.
For example, I could mug people for my whole life... make a career out of it and yet never kill anyone because everyone simply submits. Does that mean I'm not threatening them with violence?
According to you for the threat to be real my victim needs to refuse to comply and I need to execute them.
Play devil's advocate with your argument a little before commenting again please. This fisherprice crap is beneath people that don't spend a good portion of each day eating elmer's glue.
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Maybe you could show me something in the regulations that state that violence will be the result of non-compliance. I'm not being obtuse. Violent punishment is usually reserved for violent crimes. If that's the case for non-compliance of what is effectively an environmental regulation, show me where it says so.
If absolute power corrupts absolutely, what does this say about renewable power?
You are being obtuse. If the regulations are not followed and subsequent action is ignored then eventually the people or company will be stopped by force. If that is resisted then things will escalate.
At no point will the government simply say "oh, well since you don't want to comply we'll just leave you alone then"... no, the press the point and it goes through a series of escalations.
Finally, they won't claim that they shot people for not following a regulation. What they'll do is say they shot people for resisting arrest or obstructing officers. But all of that results from the non-compliance with the regulation.
You know all this... so If you're not going to discuss this in good faith we're done here. I have no patience for people's silly stupid obvious little games.
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Like I said, give me an example or show me how this is possible in the present regulations. You claim there is the threat of violence. I don't see it so I'm asking for proof. Show me an example of violent coercion in RPS compliance, or even in any environmental non-compliance by a corporation and I'll concede that you are correct. Otherwise, you're just talking paranoid nonsense.
If absolute power corrupts absolutely, what does this say about renewable power?
My example is obvious. If you don't have to have a discussion in good faith, that's fine. Just know that you're conceding the argument by default.
It's quiet obvious that if regulation is ignored a fine is levied. If that fine is not paid then then possibly a license or further fines will be levied. If those are not paid or complied with things will escalate eventually leading to the forced closing of the company and ceasure of property. If this is resisted then obviously there will be violence.
The above is obvious to you. If you want to be obtuse that is your choice but your obtuse responses are not a rebuttal or a reply to my argument. It's merely obstruction and I have to take that as your intent to leave the discussion without making a counter argument. As such, you concede unless you've realized that being obtuse and officious is not a winning strategy.
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That level of progression is just silly. By your reasoning, a traffic ticket by a meter reader will eventually lead to violent seizure. Sorry, can't buy that. There are too many examples of far more serious violations that didn't result in violence to really believe that.
If absolute power corrupts absolutely, what does this say about renewable power?
You're right, a traffic ticket can go there but then that's YOUR system. I'm arguing against your casual use of violence. It's wrong. It's casual brutality.
The resort to violence is only required to stop violence or harm to other people. In all other instances the escalation should be capped at actions that are no worse then whatever the other person is doing. Your actions should be reciprocal and not disproportionate.
For example, would you send the police to collect library late fees? It makes a great deal more sense to just cancel the card and forbid them to check out books in the future until the debt is paid. And the debt should never exceed the replacement/purchase cost of the book.
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My point exactly. In the system that I work in, the utilities are regulated to have a percentage of clean energy in their portfolios. Failure to do so results in nasty letters and heavy fines, not prison terms and firing squads. It is unlikely that non-compliance with green regulations will result in jail time or licence cancellation. It is more likely the shareholders will oust the non-complying management before that happens. The system represents a reasonable compromise to balance the need of the state to regulate pollution against the need of the corporation to show profit and the need of the consumer to not be coerced into purchasing expensive power due to monopolistic practices. I don't see abuse of power here any more than in other business practices and certainly less than in unregulated businesses such as drug trafficking in Mexico.
If absolute power corrupts absolutely, what does this say about renewable power?
Nasty letters are generally meaningless.
The fines are only a request for money.
The threat is what happens if you don't pay.
That is what your fine is backed with... violence. You can acknowledge that obvious point even if you feel it is unavoidable or you'll so damage your own integrity that the discussion will end for lack of an opponent with credibility.
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I can give a number of reasons -- which I shall try to make my points clearly and succinctly
1. Embarassment/political flak from Solyndrra. Is it not the case that Solyndrra's economics were made imposssible by low-cost solar modules from China being sold here? One error in a major loan guarantee program should not blow the whole technology out of the water, but it seems that when the federal solar/renewables program is brought up, the word Solyndra seems to be in the first paragraph. So, the Republicans want to beat the Democrats over the head with this, citing it as a quixsotic waste of federal money on a fanciful and expensive technology experiment. Of course, had it worked and been economically feasible, it owuld now be cited as a winner and an example of what the federal government can do to help stimulate jobs. Now, of course, the Democrats would really rather forget the whole thing and are not doing anywhere near a good job of getting the word out of our successes, and the amount of electrical generation is being provided and offset by vaarious forms of all of the renewables, including solar electric.
2. The Republicans have killed our renewable energy industry once before, during the early years of the Reagan administration, so they do know how to do that. We must stick by our guns this time. When we shelved all of the technologies that we ourselves had invented, the Europeans, Chinese, and Brazilians made no such mistakes. They went forward and now havie thriving businesses based on the very technologies we invented. The companies who made this equipement have had over 30 years of revenues from increasingly large-scale manufacture of this equipment. Atlantic-Richfield could not find a US buyer for its photovoltaic company in the early 1980s. At the time, ARCO Solar was the world's gold standard for photovoltaics and Germany's Siemens bought the company. At that same period, the Chinese not only had no photovoltaic manufacture, they did not have more than very simple laboratory scale fabrication of very primitive photovoltaic cells. They were trying to hire a small company I was associated with, SunWatt to help them with technology transfer. We were unable to strike a deal that made sense for us to work with them, but clearly however they did it, they are not making the same mistake we made back in the early 80s and the mistake we appear to be about to make again of abandoning technology that we invented and must have for appropriate applications if we are to truly stop our dependence on imported oil and on coal.
3. Most Americans have no knowledge of how our energy systems work and do not understand that there is no single magic bullet technology that is going to solve all of our problems. Wind alone is not going to do it, nor photovoltaics, nor large scale solar thermal, nor geothermal, nor advanced synthetic biofuels (made from waste wood, grasses and oher low-value organic materrials instead of from corn), nor advanced nuclear power technologies. We need all of these things and to somehow give all of these valuable technologies a bad rap because one early-stage solar company got put out of business by the Chinese.
4. Speaking of Solyndra one more time -- I just heard Mitt Romney beating Obama aabout the head over Solyndra. If he keeps this up, we willl surely know that he is no better, or no more knowledgeable about energy matters than Reagan was. That alone would be enough not to vote for him in November.
5. The various solar and other renewable technologies have had significant private investment this go-around, unlike the situation during the 1980s. Silicon Valley investors have been involved in a major way. One of the more interesting portfolios of startup renewable energy companies is that of one of the Valley's wealthiest venture capitalists, Vinod Knosla. His website is available for view by anyone -- I recommend googling it to get to the site. Khosla has invested in companies that are developing technologies that he believes can be made to be commercial suc