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A War Over Solar Power Is Raging Within the GOP
mdsolar sends this quote from an article about the politics of solar energy:
"Clean energy technology has always been an easy punching bag for conservatives. Propelled by growing strain of global warming denial within their party, Republicans in Congress have proposed to slash funding for renewable energy programs in half this year, and mocked the idea of a green economy as “groovy” liberal propaganda. Their argument, as laid out by House Republicans and libertarian organs like the Cato Institute and Reason magazine, is that the federal government shouldn't 'pick winners and losers' in the energy markets or gamble taxpayer dollars on renewable-energy loans to companies like Solyndra, the Silicon Valley solar panel manufacturer that went bankrupt in 2011 after receiving $535 million in federal loan guarantees. The assumption has always been that, without heavy government subsidies, renewable energy sources like solar and wind power would never be able to compete with fossil fuels. But something funny has happened to renewables that major power companies and their Republican allies didn't see coming. Over the past two years, the solar industry has skyrocketed, with one new solar unit installed every four minutes in the US, according to the renewable energy research group Greentech Media. The price of photovoltaic panels has fallen 62 percent since January 2011. Once considered a boutique energy source, solar power has become a cost-competitive alternative for many consumers, costing an average $143 per megawatt-hour, down from $236 in the beginning of 2011. Backed by powerful conservative groups, public utilities in several states are now pushing to curb the solar industry, and asking regulators to raise fees and impose new restrictions on solar customers. And as more people turn to rooftop solar as a way to reduce energy costs—90,000 businesses and homeowners installed panels last year, up 46 percent from 2011—the issue is pitting pro-utilities Republicans against this fledgling movement of libertarian-minded activists who see independent power generation as an individual right. In other words, the fight over solar power is raging within the GOP itself."
Climate change deniers deserve each and every tornado they get.
If solar is doing so great then why does it need subsidies? Thats what the GOP doesn't like, not that such a thing exists, but that the government creates distortions in the economy by picking winners before the race starts. Old school republicans and libertarians both distaste government intervention. Solar will eventually become cost effective without subsidies, lets wait for that to happen.
Too long. So long
Solar is not even close to being competitive except in those states where there is a racket - power companies are forced to buy "renewable" energy, and so pay house holds "credit" for being able to pretend they delivered the energy those houses used. If solar ever becomes *really* competitive, then it won't need government subsidies.
Now subsidies for research in the area of making solar better is something different. But I checked into the cost of solar a couple of months ago and without this racket it isn't even close.
Sooner or later, being anti-science and pro-capitalist is bound to catch up with you.
How could there be GOP figures busily lobbying in favor of state taxation and repression of individuals in the interests of incumbent corporations?
I've been assured, with a level of seriousness that only they can muster, by any number of internet randroids, that the right is the side of personal freedom and autonomy, and the left is the path of collectivist fascism and agenda-21! How could this be?
These climate changers just don't give up! Break out the tinfoil hats LOL
perhaps they could stop subsidizing fossil fuels and ethanol as well.
"Clean energy" that has promise has market potential and will fund itself. People who are in love with solar panels should buy their own damn solar panels with their own cash, not my tax dollars. Quite simple.
Paragraphs make text readable. You giant paragraph is completely unreadable. Please write in such a way that people can even have an opportunity to read you.
Thanks,
The Internet
The GOP allowed solar -production- to be kicked over to China. First, the solar companies were complaining about Chinese intrusion attempts, then China started dumping panels on our shores for cheaper than it cost US makers to buy the rare earths.
However, the split is going along two lines of two GOP platforms. Dislike for government versus respect for Big Oil/Big Coal. Solar allows people to be fairly independent [1].
Solar also scales well. One can have a one watt panel to keep a vent fan spinning on a RV's roof, or a multi-megawatt array powering a city like Austin.
Solar is also fairly easy to deploy. Got a clear line of sight to the south? Might as well slap a few panels up, add a grid-tie inverter, and have a lower power bill, or if in a more rural area, have the power feed into a battery bank for complete off-grid use, or even a combination of both with some outlets in a house on utility powers, others feeding from the batteries. Same thing if one has a carport. Might as well have the flat roof do something.
As for price, solar panel prices have gotten to a point where it becomes a "why not?" as opposed to a "why bother?" This is especially true in the RV industry.
[1]: Almost. Good luck having a modern building in the southern US without air conditioning unless one is content to deal with high humidity.
...where much of the government is Republican but a lot of the power on the grid comes from solar farms?
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
Those who have profit incentive from burning oil and gas will put a lot of money into dis-crediting alternatives.
Just to point it out... Just because a few very vocal groups in the GOP are claiming to be libertarian, that does not mean that libertarians are GOP. The interests of the two groups do not align very well, so a conflict such as this is only to be expected.
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
-- Mohandas K. Gandhi
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
Let's be calm about this, they may be on to something wonderful. Let's cancel all programs related to tax dollars propping up all energy producers. That's all perks,bonuses,benefits,subsidies,tax breaks,rebates and other related billion dollar crumbs. To any and all energy producers. And their pals. Yes,that includes farm too Grain to fuel and potatoes to booze( maybe not that one) Just stop it all now. Let's see who's really getting all of the perks. What happened, it just got real quiet? Today, I am an equal opportunity hater. Farm subsidies
The problem really is that residential users want their bills reduced for the same amount of power they generate. It doesn't matter to them that this power is generated during non-peak hours and that the energy companies still need to maintain infrastructure to provide power to them during not sunny times. This will force utilities to break up their charges into actual power production and infrastructure maintenance which means tons of extra work in getting government approvals for the rates they charge costumers.
In order to jump start some industries, a large customer (such as the government) could be such a customer. In being such, it should purchase a service or product for which there is a need. For example, if it is to be Solar Energy, buy or lease a product. Whichever company or companies can supply this product will get the customer. This customer can drive some early demand, and the 'market' can then compete for this market. But the government should not support one customer or company (e.g. Solyndra), with hopes of making some product.
Ideally, the government should be neutral on the source of the service required. If it want to buy a certain amount of Energy, then all customers from whatever source (wind, water, coal, oil, sunshine) should all be able to compete for this.
However, I do recognize that to start some industries, a big project supported by the government, may need to boost the initiation of this. Like NASA helped spark scientific innovation in the quest to go to the moon, We may have benefits as a nation to be the first customer in line to spark some Solar innovation (but we should be company blind, and also specific technology-blind in our choices).
Even better. Make a contest with a big reward. Contests work. First privately launched space ship contest (worked), first human powered aircraft (worked)----make a contest for solar energy product producing 'x' amount of energy for under 'y' cost...
These ideas would be consisted with Economic competition, and should work well within the 'Right's ' agenda, while furthering the 'left's' goals as well.
It has nothing to do with picking winners and losers.
It never did.
It's always been about entrenched interests maintaining the status quo.
Interestingly, the entrenched interests in this case aren't gas/oil companies,
they already started diversifying years ago, it's the power utilities who are resistant to the change.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Guys, this is just a hack piece. If you want to bash the Republicans, pick a topic, keep hidden the real issues, one of which borcharc pointed out above, write it in such a way that the Republicans are demonized, and submit it to places like Slashdot.
Example: We tax the oil companies less on a number of expenses. Taking less from them does not equate to giving money directly to them. However, if you label a lower tax so that it reads like we are giving them money, then it can be used to both demonize them, and also to justify actually giving money directly to renewable energy efforts.
But this article is not really about subsidies, taxes, oil or renewable energy. It is a political article. In today's world we all must learn to recognize such articles for what they really are.
How many new coal plants were built last year?
Solar accounts for 0.17% of our electric production in this country, tripling it won't make any difference.
The numbers are not on solar's side. Electric production from fossil fuels is up more than 30% in the past 20 years, it isn't being replace by solar, demand is growing faster than solar panels are being installed.
I agree that pollution is bad, I agree that releasing tons of CO2 is probably bad (we don't know for sure, but I don't want to find out the hard way, better to play it safe and not burn it all)
My primary complaint is that people who talk about renewables simply are working from emotion and not from numbers and math. The math is not on renewables side, I'm sorry to say.
A billion people in the world are going to get access to AC and clean water over the next 50 years. It matters not what the USA and Europe do, our populations will be overwhelmed by China and India's use of coal in that time.
We need large scale power sources. Right now, the options are coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear.
The sooner environmentalists get off the solar kick and focus on reality, the sooner we can replace fossil fuels with something else. (Which in this case is nuclear, since it is the only option left)
The GOP is getting like George Castanza. We should do the opposite of whatever they think.
It has nothing to do with picking winners and losers. It never did.
It's always been about entrenched interests maintaining the status quo. Interestingly, the entrenched interests in this case aren't gas/oil companies, they already started diversifying years ago, it's the power utilities who are resistant to the change.
oh i'm aware. sometimes i forget sarcasm doesn't translate well on the interwebs :P
in my estimation, we should be pushing for research and investment in alternative fuel and energy tech. the U.S. should be at the forefront, creating new industries and manufacturing jobs in the process. of course, the current status quo and current companies have a problem with losing their "privileged" status, and their political proxies foist it off as "picking winners and losers".
As long as it's two senators per state, nobody is likely to fuck with representatives from even lightly populated corn-heavy states...
Is there any source to support the claim, "Backed by powerful conservative groups, public utilities in several states are now pushing to curb the solar industry, and asking regulators to raise fees and impose new restrictions on solar customers."
Congress (especially GOP members) don't seem to understand that we have no choice but to pick losers and winners. Their reluctance to fund research into alternative energy sources just ensures that the United States will lose. By the time they finally realize we have no choice but to get on board, we will have to pay China, Germany ..... to use the technology because it will have already been developed and made practical (and profitable) by them.
The only reason you subsidize renewable energy generation such as solar is to make it currently viable whereas otherwise it would not.
The only reason you make renewable energy generation currently viable is to jump start development.
The only reason you jump start development is if you want to be the one producing the technology or buying the technology.
There is also the matter that on a grand scale, infrastructure takes awhile to build, it isn't something you can just do overnight.
Anyway so long as the idea isn't that things like solar is going to solve all your energy issues because it will not. It is part of a generation mix. You can however increase its effectiveness and the percent used overall to help mitigate other energy related issues.
There is certainly a lot of political agenda polemic when it comes to energy, and this article is no different.
As Slashdot is theoretically geared toward engineers, having a hard look at the numbers involved is not an optional consideration. See here for Germany's story:
http://www.quora.com/Alternative-Energy/Should-other-nations-follow-Germanys-lead-on-promoting-solar-power-1?srid=ue54&share=1
Solar is great for micro/local-level offsets in particularly sunny places, and it's good if you want to build a compound for the zombie apocalypse. As a key component of energy policy for the United States, it is not and has never been practical compared to wind or nuclear power.
Politicians in every party love being able to pick winners and losers. It's one of the perks of the jobs. People imagine solar as warm, fuzzy, and mother Earth friendly. If that were the case, Germany wouldn't have a bigger carbon footprint now than it did before it had the world's largest nameplate capacity of solar power production.
If you're concerned about global warming from burning fossil fuels, the only choice at the moment that satisfies all the requirements of most first world country's energy policy is nuclear. Nothing else comes close.
Many states can use the cheap solar hot water systems, costing $3-5k professionally installed, less than half that if you're not scared of plumbing. It's not all about generating electricity, spinning meters backwards or off-grid storage.
Some countries around the Mediterranean have laws that all buildings have to have solar systems to heat domestic water. They're different designs from ours, looking somewhat clunky and like the old USSR hodgepodge satellites, but they're effective.
Here in FL, every other cookie cutter house has a pool solar system, but very few have domestic hot water panels, even though they're cheaper and take up far less roof space, and save having to have the 50 gallon tank powered all day every day. I find this very bizarre.
Our house (2 adults, 2 kids) hot water is purely heated from the sun bar the 10-14 days of the year when I have to switch on the power to the tank due to extended cloud coverage. We also have pool panels, but to get the benefit of extending the pool usage period, we have to have the pool pump running a lot longer, which uses a fair amount of power.
Because sometime you fucking cunts need to be reminded that cum-quats can spew gross shit out their fucking asslike mouths.
Optionally, +1 GROSS
Their argument, as laid out by House Republicans and libertarian organs like the Cato Institute and Reason magazine, is that the federal government shouldn't 'pick winners and losers' in the energy markets ...
Okay. Step 1: Cancel all subsidies / tax breaks and tax loopholes for the Oil Companies. Sure they're *only* about $2-4 billion / year, but it's a start. (Note: Reason.com - slogan "Free Minds and Free Markets - thinks these are okay).
Just noting from the Think Progress article:
Last year, the five largest oil companies — BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and ExxonMobil — earned $118 billion profit at a time when consumers paid record-high gas prices. This haul follows after a year the companies earned a record $137 billion profit.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
If you don't think the pro-utilities crowd will win this, you don't understand the Republican party much. Of course, it will be spun as a victory for libertarianism, and of course, it might get enough Democratic votes to cover various behinds, but in the end the money will win this.
But any war that involves the Sun, I predict the Sun wins.
It's always been about entrenched interests maintaining the status quo. Interestingly, the entrenched interests in this case aren't gas/oil companies, they already started diversifying years ago, it's the power utilities who are resistant to the change.
As I understand it, that's the nature of Conservativism - that you are there to conserve the status quo.
If you don't think the government should be interfering in the free market, then stop subsidizing the fossil fuel industry. If an oil company can't make a profit at the current price of oil then let it die.
If there are subsidies above what companies normally get in tax breaks, why would someone against subsidies for solar companies not *also* want to end them for other energy companies? I'd be all for it.
Instead you seem to think, hey theres something wrong over here, so lets add more wrong on top of this other thing that I like.
This is how government spending grows wildly out of control, this mindset of "they got theirs so I get mine".
Stop, just stop.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Why do I get the feeling that we in the US are going to be left in the dust.
China is the world's largest solar panel maker. Its companies, stung by a slowdown in the once-lucrative European market, are moving into Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and southeast Asia, where demand for solar power is rising fast.
The rest of the World sees the writing the on the wall and they are doing something - even the Third World.
As these countries progress forward and develop those energy sources, that will have a long term effect on lowering the cost of "Green"" energy - and less demand on fossil fuels possibly extending their economic life. But one day, those fossil fuels will lose their economic advantage and we, the US, will be behind the curve yet again. This current oil and gas surplus we have will not last forever and unfortunately our short term thinking will bite us in the ass, yet again - like importing Solar, Wind, maybe even nuclear, etc ... technology.
It's ironic that you're posting this on the Internet which was invented by government funding.
This isn't about invention of the fundamental underpinnings. Plowsharing is a grand tradition.
This is about development and deployment in the public sector. Bringing the Internet to the masses wasn't government funded. It occurred when the government got out of the way and let commercial interests play with the new toy. (THAT's what Gore rightly claims substantial credit for.) Scaling it up and the burst of innovation in using it was done with private money in a largely free marketplace, not government subsidies.
In fact, government subsidies HURT this development-deployment phase. The picked winners have no incentive to innovate - they're paid to work on what is already there. The non-picked have no incentive to innovate, or even enter the market - they start at a big competitive disadvantage, and if the did succeed they can expect the government's cronies to get still more subsidies (unless, like Solyndra, they collapse so fast the pumping is ineffictive).
Solyndra failed because they spent the government money like water, ending up with a product that was slightly MORE expensive than the non-subsidized competition - when moving potential customers to a new variant of an existing technology requires a substantial improvement in price-performance - and about a factor of ten to obsolete the previous mainstream approach.
What's driving the current burst of innovation and deployment is the loss of government subsidies around the world. Now the playing field is closer to level. More companies are playing with private investment. The products must compete with existing grid systems, so innovation is occurring and price/performance is improving to where they ARE competitive in progressively more situations.
Indeed, panels are now available at less than a dollar per watt, which is about the point where solar starts beating grid costs in most places where there's enough sun, rather than just remote places or small loads where it's cheaper than running miles of new lines.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
But something funny has happened to renewables that major power companies and their Republican allies didn't see coming. Over the past two years, the solar industry has skyrocketed, with one new solar unit installed every four minutes in the US, according to the renewable energy research group Greentech Media. The price of photovoltaic panels has fallen 62 percent since January 2011.
Why is this story so full of anti-republican spin, when the facts so exactly vindicate the conservative and republican view?
The huge government subsidies proved to be a total flop.
Private industry found the best solar and best wind solutions and put them into production.
The Conservatives were right all along. After the government plans collapse, with 500 million dollar loses, the hands off approach delivers a workable solution.
Several companies are also working full steam (pun intended) ahead on Mini and Micro-Nuclear that can be build for 100 million (less than a small shopping mall).
It appears this whole story is somehow about spewing hate more than shedding any light on the sustainable power developments.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
tags in there somewhere?
If only "common" sense was actually that common...
Did you even read the article you linked to? Most of those subsidies take the form of things like allowing corporations to deduct expenses from their taxes (much like any other business). One of the supposed subsidies to the oil and gas industry cited in the report is government heating assistance for the poor.
While this article is trying to paint a certain picture that may or may not be accurate the real reason solar has been able to take off in the last few years is solar efficiency. It just wasn't economically viable when solar could only get single digit efficiency yields. newer manufacturing and technology is starting to see ~20% efficiency and some promising results have seen up to ~40%. That means less panels to achieve the same result so it costs less to deploy.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Anything that empowers poor people making $120K or less a year must be stopped. Solar power at home? how unamerican!
The GOP hates americans, they hate Poor people even more.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
(who, curiously, seems to have no power whatsoever anymore)...I can promise that we don't give a rats behind if Solar wins or loses on the open market. Cheap energy is a win that we want, and the US needs. Nuclear, Solar, and Wind are all on the table, if they compete with fossils, then fine.
The GOP is basically entirely consistent in its policy on the subject: the problem they're fighting is the impact on the economics of the proposition of the combination of 1) regulating into nonexistence the things the left doesn't like, and 2) giving out massive money to the "in crowd" of toadies as payback for political support, with no substantial merits other than that.
Compared to the massive quantities of money paid into taxes from the sale of fossil fuels, the subsidies are pocket change: they are designed to help to get fuel to inconvenient areas of the country, offsetting the cost without a massive price increase - are you people really against this? This is the sort of thing that was bipartisan at one point, but then you start putting it under the rubric of "subsidizing big business" and it becomes partisan, an evil war-for-oil conspiracy of the already rich. Whereas the already rich could just stop sending fuel to the middle of Nevada, and let the people there walk everywhere, uphill in both direction.
The regulations they are fighting against are those that inhibit growth in total domestic energy production, for dubious gains. AGW is a bullshit theory if the A part of it ends up being in the noise. If people on the left were serious about it, instead of using it as a wedge issue, then they'd be funding more engineering and research on how to better assuage impact and macro-engineer climate, rather than pumping the billions into "raising awareness" and lobbying. Since they aren't really serious, they don't do the expected things, they use it as a tool for increased political leverage.
Beyond that, the left caused the mortgage industry collapse by regulating banks into underwriting loans that they knew - from statistics - could never be paid back, causing a housing bubble. These got packaged as 'mortgage backed securities' and pension funds &c bought them by the bushel as safe investments. The option of letting pension funds go bankrupt was untenable, so we had to authorize the bailout.
The last time the House and Senate were under Democratic control, incidentally the last time we had an actual budget scored and passed into law, the growth curves were set so high than we've gone into debt 5 times over in the 8 years. This is screwing up our economy and our currency. In petrodollars (we should call them 'energydollars'), we're coming out massively behind, and this has actual impact on people's lives. The actual impact is to make people more and more dependent on more and more government. More and more under the control of that special, pretend-educated class, the "best and brightest" who also end up being hypocritical and degenerate, that's basically odious in principle to many of us.
Energy - from whatever source - that is really (and not pretend) cheap, used with a modicum of efficiency, is the thing that makes poor people more well-off, dependent people less dependent, and well-off people rich. The GOP believes in supporting all of those things.
If enough people start putting in solar arrays and going off grid and or feeding back to the grid it will undermine the electric operators.
Delivered electricity costs might very well go way up for traditional customers. Distribution is a high fixed overhead. Either you sell enough generation or your really screw a certain groups of customers with high fixed minimum charges.
Don't misunderstand I am opposed to doing anything to discourage people from going off grid, installing solar or selling back to the grid. I am also against doing anything specific to encourage it. Government should just stay out.
But consider this their could come a day when having reliable electricity available at your home means paying very high monthly fees to be connected to a grid with fewer and few customers, or being able to invest and maintain an solar array and some kind of storage bank, be it kinetic, capacitance, or chemical batteries. That might create some haves and have nots out of what has become a pretty universal condition presently.
The next thing you know some prick like Obama is going to be arguing for an individual grid connection mandate; because its only affordable if we all participate.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Lets stop subsidies for ALL energy, including the oil companies that line your election accounts with cash.
... but it's abundantly clear that the GOP is not seriously opposed to government intervention in energy markets.
You make a big mistake when you think of the GOP as a uniform monolith. It's composed of about five major factions, and much of its recent behavior comes from the Neocons' iron grip on the party machinery (and the others' attempts to dislodge it).
Of particular interest is the Liberty Movement faction - with a primarily libertarian and/or constitutionalist ideology, but far better tactical savvy than the Libertarian Party's people. They're gaining power rapidly. On this issue they're bovernment-hands-off: Don't subsidize: It actually retards development and deployment. Don't interfere for entrenched interests: Ditto. They also want the people energy-independent, and thus better able to resist external control (both foreign and institutional).
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Seriously, fuck off.
If solar is doing so great then why does it need subsidies?
Because it is still a developing technology. Doing great does not mean it has no further to go or that it does not need help. Without subsidies it is difficult in the short run to justify investments in energy that cannot return a profit as long as cheap fossil fuels are available. Given that it is clean energy it is clearly in the interest of society at large to invest in and accelerate the development of the technology to make it cost competitive as quickly as possible. Furthermore subsidies for technology development frequently more than pay for themselves in economic growth in the long run. (see NASA and NIH for examples)
Solar will eventually become cost effective without subsidies, lets wait for that to happen.
It is not at all clear that it will become cost competitive in a useful time frame without subsidies. Without subsidies many of the investments would never get made because a positive return would be impossible. Furthermore the longer we wait the more pollution is released. The clock is not our friend here.
To me we need clean affordable energy whether Global Warming is real or not. We need cheap energy to keep our economy going and we need our children's children to be able to drink clean water and breathe clean air.
What we really need is a President who will tackle energy with the same kind of committment that JFK gave us for the space program. As a country we invested mightily in the program and the process of getting that man on the moon created huge technical advantages for our nation. As a viable program it all went to crap after we reached that goal but we had already made the gains in technology that propelled us for the next few decades.
A similar effort that yielded clean affordable energy would also yield lots of new technologies. We need that and a coordinated effort by the Federal Government is probably the quickest way to get there. That being said, it cannot just exist as a way to reward the President's supporters and just end up as money stuffed into pockets like Solyndra.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
Um, no. Large industrial solar can use land space, but the land can also be used for other things - grazing land, fields for plants that require shade, etc.
Most home solar is done on roofs and walls, and these are PRIVATE buildings.
Why are you stopping us from making clean energy from OUR LAND instead of supporting terrorists by using oil and corn ethanol?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
You're rather cherry-picking your data. Solyndra made a big bet: that the raw cost of the silicon in solar power would be important, and that a remarkably cool manufacturing technique to use a lot less would have a ton of value. As it turns out, that's not how the industry went: silicon costs dropped faster than anticipated, and the manufacturing costs of the Solyndra didn't.
We weren't "picking winners and losers" here: we enabled a big bet. Big bets don't always work.
And the internet was absolutely funded for years by the public purse to develop all of the major technologies and to make the same set of "big bets" about the valuable and non-valuable aspects of internet communication. Private people only became interested because of that investment.
And part of the investment was the "picking a winner". The key to the internet is that it worked across multiple vendors. If we hadn't have done that, there would be an ATT network, an IBM network, a Unisys network, and so on. The government chose a winner (cross platform) and a loser (per-company networks).
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Solyndra was never about making anything viable. Run the numbers like I did. It's impossible to buy/spend that much money month after month. The equipment was purchased. The building was bought. The employees were paid. Now it's just general R&D money to keep buying supplies, yet the amount of money funneled(key word) through Solyndra doesn't add up. It amounts to paying off your friends with money that isn't yours, the rest gets funneled back to the campaign. It's just plain dirty. Run the numbers. It's fucking sick the way corrupt people will game the system.
Models. It's the Global Warming Models that we don't believe in, both the ones that produce pretty graphs, like Al Gore, and the ones run on computers. And to be pedantic, we do believe there is a Global Warming spokes model named Al Gore and climate prognosticating algorithms running on computers, we just don't believe the results they spew.
To be completely pedantic, most deniers and Republicans believe in Global Warming, as in it sure has warmed up since the last Ice Age.
If you want to assert that oil companies are subsidized, you must first offer some valid and specific criticism of this article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidblackmon/2013/01/02/oil-gas-tax-provisions-are-not-subsidies-for-big-oil
So far, nobody has been able to tell me where David Blackmon got his facts wrong.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
As a key component of energy policy for the United States, it is not and has never been practical compared to wind or nuclear power.
This statement would carry a lot more weight if you cited anything resembling a study, statistic or fact. As stated, it's nothing more than an unsupported opinion.
If you're concerned about global warming from burning fossil fuels, the only choice at the moment that satisfies all the requirements of most first world country's energy policy is nuclear. Nothing else comes close.
Here is another unsupported but ardently expressed opinion.
If solar was so great then everybody would be doing it and the gov't bully would hate it and would be passing as many laws as possible to stop us from using it and demand that we use the method. The fact that know one uses it and gov't loves it says it all.
Global warming is junk science at best and a fraud at worst. There are thousands of practicing, professional climatologists, scientists and other applied scientists with graduate degrees who have studied the issue and do not agree with the global warming crowd. But they are "deniers of science" along with members of the GOP who have educated themselves beyond the 3rd grade level that is prevalent in the Democratic party (politicians and voters alike). Give me a break, I have a PhD in applied thermodynamics and I can tell you with 100% certainty that no one knows for sure what the planet is doing temperature wise, and what scientists do know they can only make guesses as to why. Given the fact further that if global warming scientists were serious they would be going to China who is now far and away the worlds largest polluter and get in their face, but they don't because there is no money to be made and quite likely jail time to be served, tells volumes about their motivations. For those of you ignorant of the past, the same cadre of scientists brought you the global cooling theory in the 70s, and they were wrong then as well. We DO KNOW that the earth warms and cools in cycles, probably due to changes in solar radiation. We have had ice ages and warm periods long before the combustion engine, but don't try to talk REAL science to the climate change morons, all they want is for everyone to live in mud huts and die at 35 from dysentery...
You forget to mention one very important detail: Germany is stopping its nuclear plants. As it can't build renewable energy fast enough, part of this is currently offset by increasing use of coal energy. That most definitely has an impact on Germany's carbon footprint.
1) Wrong. Solyndra went bust because...well, just read this: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/five-myths-about-the-solyndra-collapse/2011/09/14/gIQAfkyvRK_blog.html
2) Classical economics introduces the topic of externalities and public goods. Government is an efficient institution for removing negative externalities and providing public goods.
3) Last point, related to the first, in the US, we over-consume and under-invest. The government should do *more* not less, to "choose winners and losers" because the private sector is a mess. Last, subsidies are different from investment. Investment is good for growth, innovation, and so on, regardless of its origin.
The US directly subsidized the oil companies in the budget, but on top of that the US military has to defend all oil tanker routes and secure oilfields. If you included the costs of securing operations, transport pathways, and the cost of maintaining all those overseas military bases, solar would be much cheaper than oil.
Bringing the Internet to the masses wasn't government funded.
Yup. At no point was the telecommunications industry given billions of dollars in loan guarantees, grants, low-cost or even free use of public lands/eminent domain claims, and tax write-offs to build out the national internet infrastructure. That never happened and it most certainly isn't STILL happening. Telecoms are a free-market utopia and a testament to how great private industry is in the absence of government intervention.
=Smidge=
Bringing the Internet to the masses wasn't government funded.
Are you for serious? This is so damnably wrong I couldn't even wait to reply long enough to log in! Seriously. the Telco and Cable companies bringing you this commercial Internet, this bastion of free enterprise you are talking about, is about as heavily subsidized as an industry can get? Who do you think paid for all those cool telephone and cable lines? Why do you think they are stuck with Universal Access rules? Because WE THE PEOPLE paid for them from our taxes.
And for the record, I'm a card-carrying, voting Libertarian. I'm all about free enterprise. It's for that reason that it bothers me to see you so very wrong about what you ascribe to it. Also, as a Libertarian, I also recognize that without some centralize cooperation, there are things we wouldn't have right now, like the Internet and Solar Power that is finally starting to get competitive.
And maybe encourage saving energy more strongly. One thing that struck me when I was on business in Phoenix, Arizona, is how energy inefficient everything was. I would take warm showers in my air conditioned apartment, while it was 40C outside. The water was no doubt heating with electricity or gas. Why not use solar water heaters? And why are the offices air conditioned so much? What a huge waste of energy. The apartment was equipped with a washing machine and a dryer. Do people in the desert really use a dryer? You can just hang your clothes out for an hour and everything will be bone dry. Why were people driving huge trucks just to go to work? There is HUGE potential for reducing energy consumption, which I suspect is the lowest hanging fruit.
Umm, what about the Keystone XL Pipeline... That single project is receiving between 1 and 1.8 BILLION dollars in subsidies.
For reference ALL renewable received $5.93 billion.. over a 15 year period...
Plus the real benefit that oil, coal and natural gas receive are liability protection from spills, poisoning etc plus eminent domain lad purchases for pipelines etc.
These issues are not represented in the typical accounting of subsidies and easily doubles the value.
I remember reading that is all benefits were removed from oil than the price of gas would be between 12-15 dollars a gallon!
Slashdot is geared towards the type of people who share "I F**king Love Science Posts," not engineers.
Are you saying the raw cost of silicon isn't important? It's the single largest cost in the production of solar panels.
At least they call themselves "Liberals". We have plenty of parties that focus on social and environmental topics. There's no need for our 'Liberals' to be much concerned with these problems.
I could write an essay about what they've achieved in the last decades, about what I think was wrong, but I don't think that this is the right place.
Whatever the Kochs want.
Unless we're talking about solar power.... Oops.
Decides to whack me $5 per month to connect my solar array to the grid, I cut the grid off completely and buy a nice little energy storage unit.
but it's abundantly clear that the GOP is not seriously opposed to government intervention in energy markets.
This member of the GOP -- and all the others I know -- are seriously opposed to government intervention in energy markets.
If they were, they would be fighting against oil and ethanol subsidies
I fight against ethanol subsidies. And when I heard in the media that oil companies are subsidized, I went looking for oil subsidies, in order to fight them. But I didn't find any.
would propose winding down the national petroleum reserve (used to manipulate prices)
President Obama has released oil from the reserve to hold down prices, during a time when it would have been particularly politically damaging for oil prices to continue rising. But that was a misuse of the reserve. Its official name is the "Strategic Petroleum Reserve" and it's an invaluable enabling asset for the DoD, whose need for oil would skyrocket at the exact time supplies cannot be assured: during a major conflict.
and would never actively fight against particular forms of energy (as described in summary and TFA).
TFA and the summary are full of it, right from the very first sentence, "Clean energy technology has always been an easy punching bag for conservatives." Wrong. When a new power plant is built, conservatives want to use the energy source that will deliver the highest return on investment, because that in turn will cause the most economic growth and create the most jobs. Conservatives like me will be thrilled if and when the day arrives that solar plants deliver a higher return on investment than older energy sources.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
It was never about global warming why, solar is kicking nuclear ass in the free market!
There are many stupid ways we fiddle while Rome burns, but the pro/con solar energy thing is one of the stupidest. The GOP is supposed to be pro-business. But apparently only when the business is hydrocarbon-based. They're supposed to be pro-efficiency, but they deliberately set obstacles in place. They're only pro-energy if it comes from a Party-approved source.
There was never any reason that industry had to be measured by the effluents it produced. We just couldn't do any better at the time. It's one thing to be conservative. It's another to be obstinately ossified.
Propelled by growing strain of global warming denial within their party, Republicans in Congress have proposed to slash funding for renewable energy programs in half this year, and mocked the idea of a green economy as “groovy” liberal propaganda.
..... The assumption has always been that, without heavy government subsidies, renewable energy sources like solar and wind power would never be able to compete with fossil fuels.
Actually its covered under the economist Bastiat's Broken Window Princicple. Essentially, the green economy was explained to create jobs and increase GDP. Since its actually just creating inefficient rebalancing of the economy its hurting the economy more than the most efficient distribution of labor.
Their argument, as laid out by House Republicans and libertarian organs like the Cato Institute and Reason magazine, is that the federal government shouldn't 'pick winners and losers' in the energy markets
True, that is the policy of libertarians and the reason libertarians believe in this is because the people most affected by inefficient and expensive renewable energy are the poor. Whenever the costs of implementing expensive energy are put onto the power companies the cost is deferred to the users, mandated or not, this affects the poor with higher energy costs more than any other group.
The price of photovoltaic panels has fallen 62 percent since January 2011. Once considered a boutique energy source, solar power has become a cost-competitive alternative for many consumers, costing an average $143 per megawatt-hour, down from $236 in the beginning of 2011.
Maybe math is hard but this is still more expensive than coal or natural gas (which market forces are decreasing the cost of sans government interference) and consumers are going to have to pay for the difference. And where does this money go? To Non-American solar array producers instead of jobs in natural gas or coal in the United States, further reducing employment and skilled labor jobs for the poor or lower middle class.
Backed by powerful conservative groups, public utilities in several states are now pushing to curb the solar industry, and asking regulators to raise fees and impose new restrictions on solar customers.
Ok this is the statement that forced me to comment because it is so false and manipulative. The only way Public Utilities could curb solar companies is to ask them to compete equally in the market with other forms of energy. They are not moving to ban solar imports as this makes it sound, Republicans are simply trying to give consumers the lowest cost of basic energy. Consumers can decide for themselves if they want to purchase their own solar arrays for their homes. Additionally, its generally the rich who qualify for solar array subsidies on their homes and electric car credits at the expense of the middle class and the poor to fund rich people's energy savings.
And as more people turn to rooftop solar as a way to reduce energy costs—90,000 businesses and homeowners installed panels last year, up 46 percent from 2011—the issue is pitting pro-utilities Republicans against this fledgling movement of libertarian-minded activists who see independent power generation as an individual right. In other words, the fight over solar power is raging within the GOP itself."
Otherwise known as Republicans who are under the sway of Environmental lobbyists at the expense of the poor or Libertarians who want the free market to compete for the lowest cost energy for consumers. I agree a natural monopoly occurs with something like a utlity company and therefore some government regulation and oversight is neccesary. But the government oversight committees should be working in the best interest of their customers, the taxpayers, to provide the lowest cost energy to them. They are not supposed to be activists raising the cost of energy for the poor to further lobbyists and the rich's goals of providing cheap energy to the rich on the back of the poor.
Be careful of statements of subsidies to fossil fuel makers. Some of that is regular overseas tax credit that applies to all in order to avoid double taxation. Other is not paying tax on income diverted to sick and disabled miners. Others are tax breaks they get on making things less polluting, so pro-environmental.
And all those billions of dollars that go to keep the houses of low-income people heated? That's not counted as "welfare," but as an oil industry subsidy.
Meet up is the world's largest network of local groups. Meet up makes it easy for anyone to organize a local group or find one of the thousands already meeting up face-to-face. More than 9,000 groups get together in local communities each day, each one with the goal of improving themselves or their communities. For more info, please visit http://www.meetup.com/
Why are you stopping us from making clean energy from OUR LAND instead of supporting terrorists by using oil and corn ethanol?
Im doing no such thing; the question is whether the government needs to subsidize solar, which I see no reason for. If it makes financial or environmental sense to install panels on your roof, wonderful, do so; we had one on my house when I was growing up.
And why are you bringing corn ethanol into this, as if Ive somehow expressed support for it? Isnt that a stereotypically democrat issue, to push corn ethanol as a green alternative to petro?
to put it on a *level playing field* with the oil industry maybe?
to the TFA first: the war in the GOP isn't over 'solar power' it's over **which rich people pull their strings**...the GOP is a bought/sold a-moral quasi-anarchist rhetoric machine...they dont care about the *actual* policy b/c their policy is to *privatize everything in perpetuity*...so no...this 'war' in the GOP is over which rich dudes will dictate their policies to them.
oil oligarchs have been running their playbook for *centuries*...that's not an exaggeration...look at the history of all major oil companies and they are tied to Monarchies (usually Anglo-Saxon or Islamic)
electric/solar energy has been profitable and usable for 100 years...the first electric cars were made in the 1900s!!!
the US government gives ****HUGE TAX BREAKS**** to oil companies...
it's about time we let some competition in the ring...of course it would be better to just end oil company subsidies and tax breaks and guaranteed contracts...but that's not going to get any GOP'er re-elected
disclaimer: i'm a left-leaning libertarian, and I anticipate some respondents might retort: 'all politicians are sell-outs'....That concept is a false dichotomy...all *people* make comprimises...the democrats have systematically and philosophically made better policy choices and are a *functioning party*...not perfect, but saying they are just as bad as the GOP is trolling and will not get a response from me ;)
Thank you Dave Raggett
Estimated cost of Chernobyl disaster: 200-500 billion $
Estimated cost of Fukushima disaster: 300-500 billion $
Number of nuclear power plants worldwide: 435
Average age : ca 30 years
Catastrophic nuclear accident rate pear year and reactor: 2 accidents / (435 reactors*30 years average age) = 0.00015
Cost of insurance against catashtrophic nuclear accident pear year: 400 billion $ * 0.00015 = 45 million $ per year.
Average insurance cost per kWh: 45 million $ / 12.2 billion kWh = 0.3 cents per kWh
I started this BOTE callculation to show how heavely subsidized the nuclear industry is. But the results is quite different. For only 0.3 cents per kWh teh nuclear industry could fully pay a reactor meltdown every 15 years.
... growing strain of global warming denial ...
Denial? It's easy to deny when is hasn't f&^%&^ warmed in almost 17 years! What's CO2 supposed to do? Warm the planet! What has CO2 been doing for the last 17 years? Increasing! What has the planet not done in the last 17 years? Warmed!
The models are all wrong.
BTW, man only contributes about 5%, just 5%, of the world-wide CO2 released into the atmosphere. How much of a difference would it make, according to the models, if man's contribution was 0%? Almost nothing.
Not only the Oil Companies, but Hedge Fund Managers, and Ag loans to multi-billion dollar businesses. Why do they need it? These things are really pork barrel Entitlements.
I'm getting the impression that the U.S. economy is pretty well spent.
Really.
isn't a decentralised private owned source of electricity where you don't have to pay taxes for and may even earn some cash the ideal for these "freedom loving" guys?
I thought libertarianism was about that... but it seems that they are pro-private as long as the "private" part is a huge megacorporation even if it means paying top dollar for a service... but if there is something that is private but small... then it's a filthy liberal manbearpig thing only made for sissies and treehuggers !!! Wit hthe only exception of guns, of course.
-- 29A the number of the Beast
The GOP allowed solar -production- to be kicked over to China
If the GOP had successfully blocked the subsidies to companies like Solyndra, you might have a point. And we'd sure be better off if the GOP had successfully blocked the subsidies to Solyndra. But the GOP failed to do that.
Fact is, low labor costs allow China to manufacture just about everything cheaply. We should be surprised if solar equipment were somehow an exception to that rule. It has nothing to do with what the GOP did or didn't fail to do.
Take heart in one thing: free trade is a great equalizer of all things (and unlike socialism, it equalizes by elevating lower classes, not by lowering upper classes). Over the long run, it even tends to equalize labor costs. Apple's recent decision to open a manufacturing plant in Arizona is an early manifestation of that truth.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
because corn ethanol is subsidized heavily and even mandated.
see, you do like government cheese, you just PRETEND you don't.
Now wipe the cheese crumbs off your whiskers, mouse.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
China is not a world leader in wind power technology. America still has a lot of untapped wind in the midwest. Giant wind turbines integrate with the electric grid better than zillions of roof top solar collectors. I think some in America have decided that wind is the renewable technology to use, solar be damned.
It's funny that the government shouldn't pick winners and losers in energy markets, and yet Conservatives are so willing to spend trillions invading and defending foreign countries under the guise of "protecting national interests". Shouldn't that be protecting fossil fuel interests? If fossil fuels are so volatile, why are Conservatives willing to use military force to stabilize those sources instead of letting them compete fairly against less volatile energy sources?
If renewables had gotten as much direct and indirect funding as fossil fuels got way back when this military interventionist agendas started decades ago, renewables would already be cost competitive, and fossil fuels prices would have stabilized due to economic competition instead of necessitating military intervention. We'd probably be much better off in terms of emissions too. Nothing good comes from proactive military intervention in the long-term.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
The word "encourage" implies social engineering. No, I don't want to be manipulated by the government into doing anything. Instead, let's stop encouraging the burning of fossil fuels by internalizing their externalities into the price of electricity and gasoline. Then people would naturally seek out cleaner forms of energy without any government "encouragement" necessary.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Err, yes, nice.
But Angela Merkel doesn't seem to think the same.
Take it this way mate: It's either you start thinking on implementing an efficient green economy or you will have to learn German and Chinese ;)
This easy.
Big Oil? Well, our local Shell and BP are big players in the renewable game too. And recall that Germany is still Germany.
Or thinking better about it... I think I will support you teabaggers: At the end of the day it's cash for us ;) We just need to be quicker than the Chinese.
-- 29A the number of the Beast
Too bad that nuclear fails on the biggest requirement of all, price.
So we should let Iran and Israel both have nukes and let them duke it out in the Middle East? Why not? We're pretty much energy independent now.
"Solar gets cheaper and cheaper every year, regardless of government funding." I don't think regardless means what you think it means. ;)
The same way Velcro got cheaper regardless of government funding? Because Velcro always existed in mass on the market.
Or how vaccines get cheaper regardless of government funding? Everyone knows the smart money waits until you really really really need something before you pay a research lab to invent the thing you actually needed yesterday.>/p>
Thank goodness for those hippie scientists getting tax dollars, eventually becoming our very professional NREL, so that you (Joe Taxpayer) can install panels on your ranch style home for under $3/W today.
1 Dachshund + 1 Dachshunds = A Paradox.
Not if your solar panels are not based on silicon which was what Solyndra was trying to do with its panels.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Is one way the utilities will accept this.
Get up!
I'm a "for everything" plan. Not picking winners and losers but rather, providing the means to having cheap plentiful Energy, so that we can build and make things (requires energy) and move it to where it is needed, quickly. Efficiency comes when things are scarce OR when there is much competition.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Wow. I love your link... thanks for showing that the fossil fuel industry does not get a single subsidy. Seriously. Everything listed from pages 6 through 13 is a tax break.
And let's look at the things this wonderful environmentalist think tank listed as "Grants":
1) LIHEAP ($6,358): The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. Government funding to keep poor people warm.
2) Strategic Petroleum Reserve ($6,183) : This is the Federal government keeping oil around in case of an emergency.
3) Black Lung Disability Trust Fund ($1,035) : Federal money to pay benefits to sick miners.
4) Highway Trust Fund ($500) : The Highway Trust Fund supports highway, road, and other transportation projects throughout the country. It is funded largely by the Transportation Fuel Excise Tax on road fuels.
5) Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve ($50): similar to the SPR in #2 above, but concentrated in the Northeast where home heating oil is a common fuel.
6) Naval Petroleum and Oil Shale Reserves ($28) : "As the payments do not benefit a fuel source, but rather were used to settle a dispute, they do not constitute a subsidy to fossil fuels."
Calling any of these a subsidy if a sad joke. In short, there is NO SUBDSIDY OF FOSSIL FUELS by the US Government.
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
All this idealized free market reverence is misplaced. Even the free-est markets are not free.
Every time there is a lot of money at stake and there are some extra-large entities involved (very large corporations and governments come to mind, but I'm sure you can think of others) those large entities try to push the system by manipulating the meta-market so the rules work in their interest. The more money or power the entity has the more it is able to game the system in its favor. When government is working well it is gaming the system based on the interest of its constituents (the people, the long view, individual freedom, fairness) but the other big entities can also influence the government in many ways to game the system to their liking.
Corporations today are almost completely beholden to stockholders and a quarterly report based view of the world. Modern democracy-based governments are designed to take their directions from the people, but none is perfect.
Every time the rules change, either because of disruptive technology, scarcities, changes in government, or whatever, someone is going to be on the losing end of it. The big entities will fight any change that makes them the loser. If it is a change that can't be controlled then they will try to change the rules so they can't lose.
There is some ebb and flow here. The big actors don't always know what the best thing for them will be, but they will be out there pushing things around in a direction that someone thinks is in their favor. There will be bizarre structures left in place by strange interactions between some big actors and some (perhaps different) big actors will fight to keep that bizarre structure in place and it can get pretty Byzantine.
This is the nature of the world. Economics and politics are always intertwined. Whether it's the government or a giant corporation someone is picking winners and losers and influencing the "market" in ways contrary to what a "free" market might be.
Anyway I hope there are some big actors that can take the long view and try to make things generally safer, and more stable while also being aware it is a 900 pound gorilla. Promoting alternatives to fossil fuels seems like a good idea.
Err, yes, nice.
But Angela Merkel doesn't seem to think the same.
Take it this way mate: It's either you start thinking on implementing an efficient green economy or you will have to learn German and Chinese ;)
This easy.
Big Oil? Well, our local Shell and BP are big players in the renewable game too. And recall that Germany is still Germany.
Or thinking better about it... I think I will support you teabaggers: At the end of the day it's cash for us ;) We just need to be quicker than the Chinese.
I have no idea why you consider it a foregone conclusion that the United States will be forced into upending its energy economy to support solar.
But lets take your hypothesis that Germany and the Chinese force every other irrelevant country into solar energy, since you stated the Chinese and Germany are big solar players and you had no initial consideration that other renewable energies exist.That means the United States is the only country left demanding, and using cheap fossil fuels. That's great news for the U.S. because lowered demand for fossil fuels will reduce the cost and further increase the United States GDP relative to all the other countries forced to use less efficient solar. Re-purposing Malthus' theory that our increased GDP now will grow our economy and allow us to more easily research other renewables should we ever be forced to need them in the future. This will give us an additional edge compared to the stagnant economies forced into less efficient energy.
Because some believe everyone has the right to spend their resources the way they want, even inefficiently (I disagree with this viewpoint).
The way you fix this, of course, are market incentives. You raise the gas tax to promote fuel efficient vehicles. You raise the cost of fossil fuel produced electricity to promote renewable energy installations.
Rule 1 of economics: Incentives Matter
This statement would carry a lot more weight if you cited anything resembling a study, statistic or fact
You mean like 'I live near a nuclear plant that I don't like, so nuclear is bad?'
Ryan Carlyle has all the relevant facts regarding solar and nuclear in the post I linked - such as the cost per kilowatt-hour people are paying in Germany, the (somewhat better) cost per kilowatt hour you could get for solar power elsewhere, and the fact that people are being driven from their homes in Germany because of energiwende. You might also check out Daniel Yergin's book, 'The Quest,' as it is a good summary of the energy sector's history and the potential for growth in each component.
There are a lot of aging, crappy nuclear plants because politicians chicken out the minute people like you embrace FUD. Except for France, where by some minor miracle in the 1980s they did not; and now France is one of the top exporters of electricity in the world and electricity is one of France's top exports in any category. France and Denmark's nuke plants are where Germany goes to buy its electricity at night.
I appreciate that pretending to be interested in statistics and studies is very fashionable. I don't own any stock in oil companies and where I live, solar is not a bad idea - for rich folks. But the math on this one isn't even close. The portion of residential electric bills that the German government subsidies is greater than the entire wholesale cost of electricity produced from other sources. It isn't just some temporary growing pains: the German energy sector is a disaster, and it is a disaster because politicians figured out how to embrace and encourage pseudo-scientific minds that think reading the title of a study counts as research. There is not a single country in the world that successfully and economically relies on solar power as a major source of power, and there will not be within our lifetimes. The sun just ain't hot enough for long enough.
It is really funny to watch all these idiotic liberals everywhere have their heads explode when Republicans refuse to support solar power mandates or corporate welfare for "green" companies, and then have them support individual freedom to buy (or refuse to buy) solar panels to install on their own property.
It's obvious, straightforward, and right. But liberals don't understand the concept of freedom, only of telling people what to do. They ask "if Republicans support solar power, why don't they mandate it. If they support fossil fuel power, why would they allow solar?"
Simple, really.
It's called freedom. That's the thing that liberals never understand.
Here in Georgia, Georgia Power has been very hostile to anything but coal, nuclear and as reluctantly been replacing coal plants in non-attainment zones (areas that violate the clear air act) with gas powered plants. They have been quoted as saying the sun doesn't shine enough in Georgia or that the wind doesn't blow hard enough off the eastern coast line in the Atlantic ocean. That said, what is most amazing is that Georgia Power it attempting to get a rule passed that states they are the sole provider for all sun derived power for the state of Georgia. Yes, that is correct. If you want to buy solar power from a 3rd party you can not do so in Georgia because only Georgia Power can provide your company solar power. You can put the panels up yourself but you can't enter into an agreement with a 3rd party to install and maintain the panels for you as a monthly business expense. Apparently in Georgia, Georgia Power owns the sun.
http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/2013/10/21/2756402/georgia-public-service-commission.html
http://gareport.com/blog/2013/03/27/hb-657-georgias-solar-monopoly-bill/
http://www.gasolarutilities.com/index.php/news/130-solar-becomes-battleground-for-georgia-electricity-regulation
and I don't want my tax dollars subsidizing your gasoline!
It is also not used to generate power by the utility company. It is only mandated because it replaced the chemical used to oxygenate fuel in order to meet epa regulations in gas engines. The previous chemical was being found in ground water and the health risks weren't completely known so ethanol replaced it.
It really is hard to connect ethanol to solar lime that unless we ignore important facts in order to make points.
The [HISTORICAL] Hull Effect Technology accidentally discovered in the year 2009... HISTORICALLY ANTIQUES solar panel harvesting and managing electricity !
This technology breakthrough...ANTIQUES ALL PATENTS ISSUED since the year 1900 ! This is a TRUE STORY...and the US PATENT OFFICER refused...
to GRANT the FIRST patent application approval. The same GAME of non-sense by attornies... they did to TESLA ! It is posted on the internet !
This was totally accomplished without any Special Government Project Funding Monies !
I am Robert W Hull...the inventor of The New Era For Humanity...FFOTHET-TNBHFH...Have A Nice Day!
Yup, and the libertarian wing wants to.
You cite two inventions, implying that they (and all the other inventions) would never have come to pass except for government funding. Does government funding power Moore's law? Have computers, disk drives, displays, and memory been getting cheaper per unit capability for the past 50 years solely because of government funding? Why are you dissing all of the private individual inventors who ever filed a patent?
Consider the irresistible march downward of solar cell prices:
http://blog.greenwizard.com/wp/2011/11/rising-solars-falling-prices/
A major part of this is the decreasing cost of silicon, and of using less expensive non-crystalline silicon to make cells.
Sorry, but this tidal wave has very little to do with governments. They simply are not a player in the course of history of solar power when viewed at the decade and century-scale.
Honestly, we should not wait for the US to figure it out. Large lobby organisations and stupid backward politicians in conjunction with a not so well-informed (guess why) will hinder any green economy and renewable energy program. Instead the EU should just develop the guts to go renewable in the next 30 years. The only problem, we have to sack all the lobbyists ... But still presently countries like Germany are ahead of the US. We will see if this is still true in 4 years.
That's right. Conservatives don't have some personal grudge against silicon. The big difference between republicans and democrats is that republicans tend to make policy decisions based on calculations while democrats base theirs on wishes. Democrats say "wouldn't it be great if ...". Republicans say "yeah that'd be great but here in reality the numbers just don't work."
See for example my own Slashdot posts regarding solar. I, a conservative, have pointed out that once you factor in the costs of batteries, etc., solar just doesn't make sense. Now that the cost for panels is half of what it was, solar makes more sense in more situations. Lead batteries that last three years before becoming expensive toxic waste are still a problem, so solar is still a long way from being good as the primary energy source for most people, but it now makes sense for some people.
T
The other thing conservatives have pointed out is this recurring pattern:
" Green" company is failing, unable to compete.
Green company donates $1 million to Obama.
Obama gives $100 million of OUR money to Green Inc.
Executives of Green take $20 million bonuses.
Green shuts down.
That's bribery and graft. Graft with a green label on it is still graft and it's unacceptable. It just so happens that this administration called their graft system "Clean Energy and Recovery".
3000 telecommunication companies were destroyed by the USA government to provide a monopoly to AT&T.
The free market invented the telegraph, the phone, the radio, the TV. The Internet did not absolutely need TCP/IP, other protocols would come on line, telecommunications with computers is a logical step to other forms of communications and was inevitable.
You like to point at some specific government programs that ended up being useful but how much money and other resources is wasted by government on things that never work out and only reduce total economic viability?
Well, this is no longer very important, at least not in the USA. Chinese just decided they will no longer buy USA Treasuries and no American media reports on this. Guess what, you can't avoid the reality even if you don't want to acknowledge it.
You can't handle the truth.
The bias in this article is so strong, it's actually generating it's own gravity well.
One also has to remember that a lot of this funding was the result of the govt buying products to satisfy its computer networking needs at a time. They weren't just shoveling cash out to companies and giving people tax credits to buy a computer they could connect to an ISP. Is the government a buyer of these technologies to reduce its electrical costs, make its buildings more redundant, make military deployments more flexible, etc? Those aren't bad because they actually solve a problem and push the envelope for everyone else.
Oil was being drilled for 50 years before automobiles and Spindletop made it mainstream, all without government funding.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spindletop
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_well
http://www.priweb.org/ed/pgws/history/pennsylvania/pennsylvania.html
The big difference between republicans and democrats is that republicans tend to make policy decisions based on calculations while democrats base theirs on wishes.
Oh my god my sides!
If you cant bother to read my post (like the part where I dont actually like the corn ethanol subsidies), you shouldnt expect the discussion to continue.
link: http://www.treehugger.com/renewable-energy/no-more-free-sun-arizona-if-solar-power-fee-approved.html
AZ is, however, a conservative stronghold.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
I guess it should also be pointed out that income tax subsidies on energy-efficient improvements start out looking like a win for Democrats, until they realize that poor and lower-middle-class folks can't afford to pay the up-front costs for energy efficient automobiles, air conditioning units, windows, doors, solar panels, etc.
Those subsidies primarily benefit the wealthy and put more tax burden on the poor, so then Democrats want to reduce the subsidies (which, of course, reduces the incentive to go green).
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
One issue I rarely see talked about is the safety of solar power. Large plants somewhat removed from residential areas will do less damage if they have a fire than the solar units on the homes themselves. There have been instances where fire crews literally had to watch buildings burn because the roof was completely covered in solar panels and electrified.
Just google "fire fighters watch building burn solar panels" and you'll see a ton of articles from different cities fire departments wondering how to deal with this.
So what happens when we scale up nuclear power generation to chase this exponential growth? You've conveniently omitted the problem of disposing with nuclear waste. Your typical traditional nuclear power plant generates 20 metric tons of used fuel each year. In 40 years, we've generated about 70,000 metric tons of nuclear waste which is going to remain hazardous for thousands of years. Should we send it to Mongolia or let the Mafia dump it in the ocean? I am glad that you will volunteer to let us put it in your region, wherever that may be. I don't want it.
Oh, are you talking about thorium reactors? I think a lot of your arguments against renewables (too expensive, too much research required, not feasible, blah blah blah) would also apply to this technology. Doubt my opinion? Perhaps you'd like to refer to the report from the Union of Atomic Scientists entitled "Thorium: Not a near-term commercial nuclear fuel." You have to admit that at this point commercially viable thorium-generated power is vapor ware. Furthermore, it also generates nasty waste, although less nasty than traditional nuclear. Personally, I'd like to see such research money spent on advanced energy storage and efficiency technology instead.
There are a lot of aging, crappy nuclear plants because politicians chicken out the minute people like you embrace FUD
How do you figure? The way I see it is that there are a lot of crappy nuclear plants out there because our ancestors were short-sighted enough to build them. And now the task of cleaning up the mess, which was never factored into the cost of the electricity they generated, is left to us. I'm happy France is exporting something besides their delicious wine and cheese and noxious sentimentality, but I expect their waste will end up somewhere that is not France.
And, well, there is the usual FUD which "people like me" embrace. It's a self-evident fact that nuclear power has associated risks and that history has shown that these risks occasionally result in catastrophe. I'm no actuary so I can't put odds to it, but there are certain similarities between SoCal and Fukushima: old coastal powerplant with creaky design, on a fault line, etc. I'd rather pay a little extra for my energy so I don't have to die of radiation sickness or see my property rendered worthless by a disaster that could have been easily averted.
But the math on this one isn't even close...The sun just ain't hot enough for long enough.
What math are you referring to (your article is TL;DR)? Do you mean the math that shows a rapid decline in the cost of PV systems and a dramatic increase in installations of 60% globally? Or the The math Steve Chu used to predict that renewable energy will be cost-competitive within 10 years? As for the second statement, the current insolation of the earth at the ground is about 7 times total power consumption -- to say nothing of wind or tidal power.
You no doubt think I'm a knee-jerk partisan relying on wishful thinking and flimsy data. I certainly think you're a knee jerk partisan (and pessimist) relying on wishful thinking and flimsy data. I personally would support spending on research on thorium reactors. I'd much prefer fusion (not likely very soon and already pretty well funded) and would pref
we really should be doing more XPrizes, 10 million to whomever can get 50c/watt panels
10 million to whomever can get a 1MW/Hour storage battery
I always thought of Creationism as the Raving Right's version of the Loony Left's Anthropogenic Global Warming-brightmal
You like to point at some specific government programs that ended up being useful but how much money and other resources is wasted by government on things that never work out and only reduce total economic viability?
I dunno, why don't you tell me? Let's go one for one! You name a specific government program and describe how it "reduced total economic viability" and for every one you come up with I'll come up with one that turned out to be a really good idea in the long run.
=Smidge=
They should stop subsidizing things like coal, oil and gas and "let the market decide the most cost-effective options for electricity generation". Oh and that counts for any other energy sources subsidized by the government including Corn Ethanol.
Stop subsidizing energy production in any form, remove any blocks, red tap or other things that result in anything other than a level playing field and let the chips fall where they may.
If that results in higher electricity prices, introduce a direct subsidy on electricity that is totally unrelated to the method of generation.
Do people in the desert really use a dryer? You can just hang your clothes out for an hour and everything will be bone dry.
I live in Toronto, Canada, and I'm still hanging still stuff outside on the days when it's (somewhat) sunny and not below freezing.
I grew up in the desert and had the job of hanging up clothes from the washing machine. Often, especially if there is a breeze, laundry will be dry by the time you are finished hanging it up.
The problem is that few people like to work out in the sun when it's 40 and often even 45 out. Convenience almost always beats efficiency. As soon as I moved out, my parents bought a dryer and removed their clothes line.
It wasn't just that private people became interested after investment in the infrastructure. Government institutions like many public universities had a major part in making use of that infrastructure in a way that was interesting to private people.
Big companies aren't much interested in risky bets when they have a stable business, and little generally companies don't have the resources unless they have some other source of money. Big bets need to be made sometimes for big success, but the flip side is also sometimes they don't pay off. Losing bets once in a while isn't a failure, it's just the cost of progress.
This is not the link to hard numbers I was expecting.
... the Telco and Cable companies bringing you this commercial Internet, this bastion of free enterprise you are talking about, is about as heavily subsidized as an industry can get?
The public Internet wasn't developed by the Telco and Cable companies. It was developed by garage shops that started as small ISPs or equipment companies. Telcos fought it, while cable companies watched from the sidelines.
The "Mom and POPs" built the public net at first. Some of them were literally in people's bedrooms. (At least one I know used rack-mounted equipment but built its own 19" rack panels out of two-by-fours.)
Many of the equipment companies, too, started in garages. Cisco, for instance.
Once things were up and running the Telcos decided they were missing out on a good thing and tried to enter the marketplace. But at first they did it by trying to sell their own overpriced ATM-based services. Others continued to compete rings around them - though often leasing their copper wires for the last mile and various digital carriers for long-haul - or leasing those from the more competitive long-distance carriers.
DSL and cable modems were both developed, not by the Telco and Cable companies, but by private equipment manufacturers (including one spun out of Bell by the antitrust decision), trying to sell boxes at a profit. Some cable companies used this new stuff to leverage their installed base and get into the ISP game. Other ISPs, such as Covad, used DSL to push fat bandwidth through legacy Telco copper leased at regulated wholesale rates.
What finally happened is the FCC relaxed the access requirements on the legacy telcos - deciding two competitors was "competition" (when it takes three to four, minimum, to destabilize defacto price fixing and drive the price down towards cost). The tellcos immediately started squeezing their competition in the ISP market (for instance, Covad), eventually doing in or crippling pretty much everybody but the Cable companies (who also had legacy subsidized copper in place) and some rural little guys.
Telcos and cable companies, with their government subsidized infrastructure and rights-of-way, are the bulk of the ISPs NOW. But they AREN'T what "build the Internet". They're the big fish that ATE it.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
AZ tends to have TONS of solar heating as well as numerous solar panel installations.
AC is because it's dangerous to health to let it be 105F in a workplace.
There are dryers in all sorts of places that don't need them - sometimes they are advantageous, other times you have the choice to dry your clothes by hanging them up. That's a choice you can make for yourself and one that you certainly don't need to be making for others.
Ok, you like what Heritage has to say about the "EOR Tax Credit" and the "Marginal Well Production Credit." Now you -- and The Atlantic, and the CS Monitor, and the Center for American Progress, and Heritage! -- should get your terminology right by grokking "The Difference Between a Tax Break and a Subsidy" on the aptly-named Reason.com.
It's pure Orwellian doublespeak to assert that confiscating a smaller fraction of a Company X's profits is the same thing as subsidizing Company X. I have no particular love for the oil industry, but freedom from doublespeak is something for which we should all fight passionately.
Then there's the matter of your cherry-picking -- failing to mention Heritage points out that "the oil industry faces a higher marginal tax rate at 41 percent compared to 26 percent for the rest of businesses in Standard & Poor’s 500." I bet the industry would gladly give up small-potatoes stuff like the EOR Tax Credit and the Marginal Well Production Credit in exchange for getting its marginal tax rate reduced to 26%. How much higher than 41% would the industry's rate be, if not for the tax credits you detest?
My position is consistent: there should be no subsidies for oil, ethanol, solar, nuclear, wind, or coal; no subsidies, period. (And when I say "period," I mean the opposite of what was meant in this quote: "no matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health-care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health-care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”)
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
And the "sieg heil" democrats are marching in unified lock step behind which of the options?
Same person, backup account.
SS, Medicare, Medicaid, FHA, EPA, FDIC, IRS, Fed, dep't of energy, dep't of education, dep't of interior, dep't of commerce, dep't of labour, so called 'defence' department, dep't of agriculture. Let's just start with those, every single one a failure, every single one a huge waste of resources and inevitably leading towards destruction of the USA economy in the long run, and we are at the end of that long run.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
Tax "breaks" as you refer to them (also known as tax expenditures) are equivalent to a subsidy. If the U.S. government sends you $10,000, or they craft a special tax credit that only benefits you, reducing the taxes you pay by $10,000, the net effect is the same. Either way, they could have charged everyone a little less in taxes by not sending you that money/arbitrarily letting you pay less taxes than everyone else.
On page 7 alone, there are tax breaks so targeted that they clearly exist only to send money to oil and coal companies, e.g.
BTW, the dollar figures are in millions, so that one credit, by itself, is a $14 billion giveaway to people who are producing the dirtiest fuels possible; aside from biomass and fracking for natural gas (the latter being arguable), every other entry listed there is far worse for the environment than the energy sources we used even a decade ago. And we gave them $14 billion dollars to encourage this behavior.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
In short, there is NO SUBDSIDY OF FOSSIL FUELS by the US Government.
If you're going to YELL, at least SPELL CORRECTLY. Otherwise you look like an IDIOT. You're welcome.
There is HUGE potential for reducing energy consumption, which I suspect is the lowest hanging fruit.
More like the fruit that has already fallen and is rotting because it was hanging so low.
You forgot the AOL network, Prodigy network, EarthLink network, and CompuServe network... (if the Internet hadn't taken over, one of them might have become the big winner)
Well, true. But that was done for a reason. Even back then they knew the difference between producers and consumers.
Most Easterners have been sufficiently conditioned to believe being a consumer is a good thing. They have become very good at it. They will write books about freedom, but they are not free to feed themselves.
I think the solution is for the lightly populated states is to switch to GPL.
Then they can simply tell everyone else, you are free not to use our food.
There are hidden energy costs in foundering solar cells.
The boules of silicon used to make solar wafers , common to most panels,
are grown in a blast furnace that uses huge amounts of natural gas
or other fuel or electricity to make the melt.
The metals used to make mounts use huge amounts of energy to
mine, founder and mill.
The plastics used for covers almost completely come from oil.
The electronics processes used to dope and assemble
cells and panels are poisonous and cause huge amounts of pollution.
When we talk about costs and environmental impacts solar panels
look good if you close your eyes to how they are manufactured.
I think one commenter hit the nail bang-on when they wrote that
products imported to countries should be required to be manufactured per
the internal environmental laws of the destination country (us).
Solar electric is no a panacea. It is certianly no environmental saint either.
Wind has a far lower carbon footprint and much faster return scaled
against production energy consumption. But people don't want the noise
and dead birds.
They all have a down side. Pick one, and let's get on with it.
That's right. Conservatives don't have some personal grudge against silicon. The big difference between republicans and democrats is that republicans tend to make policy decisions based on calculations while democrats base theirs on wishes.
Oh, what a load of bullshit. Please stop lying. Taken as a whole, conservatives hate science, and by extension, calculations. I used to think like you do, but then the profoundly anti-science Bush presidency happened, and then the last 5 years happened, and in particular the debt ceiling bullshit happened. I (and others who have woken up) now know that conservatives make policy decisions based on hatred, fear of change, and hyperpartisanship, not on rational analysis.
Like it or not, James Inhofe is one of you. Like it or not, conservatives in America have a massive anti-science movement going, what with climate change denial, hatred and denial of what the facts say about issues like abortion, access to contraception, and so forth, and the entire creationist movement.
You tell yourselves that you are the rational ones. You repeat it to yourselves over and over and over until you actually believe that shit. But you're living in an echo chamber, not reality.
See for example my own Slashdot posts regarding solar. I, a conservative, have pointed out that once you factor in the costs of batteries, etc., solar just doesn't make sense.
So have you personally done the calculations? Or, let me guess, you read a paper published by a conservative "think-tank", one which is being paid to produce the desired conclusion?
People who actually love following the truth have found that conservative think-tanks lie. Over and over and over. They exist for no purpose other than camouflage. It's cargo cult stuff, calculated to sound sciencey enough to fool useful idiots like you.
A great example on a related topic: there was that infamous think-tank paper which claimed to prove that the lifetime energy costs of a Toyota Prius were worse than a gigantic fuckoff Hummer. Very popular conservative ammunition against the hated greens. It was riddled with what amounted to shameless lies, and has been debunked into oblivion, but I've seen still being used quite recently.
That's because nobody cares about the truth on the right. Nobody. Not even you. You're just telling yourself that you do, while being lazy about actual intellectual rigor, and about acknowledging your own mistakes and excesses. I know this because I used to be one of you. Wake up.
(Note: absolutely none of this means I think the left is perfect. Please do not attempt to derail from the topic of how intellectually bankrupt your side is by trying to point fingers at the other. That's a trap which only leads to fooling yourself.)
Getting back to solar... one of the many ways in which this conservative "oh but solar will never be any good" argument falls apart is that conservatives always try to base their objections on a strawman -- namely, that anyone seriously thinks solar is good enough for base load electrical power generation. That's the only way to make sense out of your "solar makes no sense without batteries" nonsense.
Solar doesn't have to be the base load solution to make sense. Everywhere that there are hot summers which demand lots of AC? Obvious candidate for solar as a supplemental solution, to provide peak AC demand right when you need it the most.
Now that the cost for panels is half of what it was, solar makes more sense in more situations.
Hey, imagine that. And how did we get there? Government investment in solar tech. (Chinese government investment in PV solar tech, that is.) It's almost as if the invisible hand of the market isn't perfect at attracting capital to long-term investments which might or might not pay off, and therefore you might sometimes need to have politicians spend the resources of a nation on technology d
Yeah, Chinese dumping of solar cells on the market below cost had nothing to do with Solyndra's problems, just like Japanese dumping of television sets on the American market in the early '70s had no deleterious effects on U.S. television manufacturers.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
You obviously forgot that ATT was one big giant government regulated monopoly. The only reason corporations exist is to funnel government money to the politician's friends. Insiders have always picked the winners and losers. That is how capitalism is structured..
This is very true. But the problem is that often the AC systems overshoot massively. Usually in a large air-conditioned facility, I find myself shivering because they aim low. In my last job (Texas, a few years ago), several senior staff had space heaters in their offices to bring the temperature back *up* to the 68-72 F level, which is insane. They'd reset the thermostat if they could, but it was a building-wide system, with an idiot at the switch.
Perhaps if you didn't use multiple accounts you wouldn't get modded as a troll so often, thus obviating the need for multiple accounts.
Tarrifs caused a massive fuckup in 1204 and a variety of problems since. Sugar and Steel are moribund industries in the USA because they relied on the life support of tarrifs and stagnated. Your kids are fat because they are full of corn syrup because tarrifs made it artificially cheaper than sweeter tasting imported cane sugar that can be used in smaller amounts. Most manufacturing that required a lot of steel moved to somewhere where it was cheaper due to a lack of tarrifs in those other places. It's a policy that provides a short term benefit to a few individuals but is a brake on a nation as a whole, reduces competitiveness, and strains diplomatic relations as can be seen from a pretty major example in 1204.
Solar can use low value land, in fact a desert is ideal, and if often a duel use thing anyway such as on rooftops. The opposition based on land use sounded ridiculous even in the 1970s so I'm sure you can do better with a more realistic objection.
Also nuclear is a different niche - the solar versus nuclear thing is a rather silly dispute among the alternative energies.
Nuclear performs best at enormous scales and stable output while solar can work at small scales and is best for covering times of peak consumption. The lead time for solar is now very fast, a matter of months from conception to completion for a few kW. With nuclear (or even coal since it uses the same or similar) it takes years just to get a turbine built and shipped, let alone everything else.
Then there's the scale, capital cost, requirement to go to governments to get that sort of money and the stigma of Fukushima scaring off governments which renders any sort of new nuclear construction in the USA incredibly unlikely no matter what the fanboys wish for. All you can do is hope than India ramps up their thorium research and China builds a few more things and maybe in a couple of decades a US government may get either of those countries to help out with something in the USA. The workforce needed to build reactors in the USA probably all retired while you were still in school.
In other words the horse has bolted so comparisons between solar and nuclear just make people who do them look as if they are very much out of touch with the state of civilian nuclear technology.
I think you owe Bucc5062 an apology for attacking when he admitted ignorance and then making up convenient lies to cover your own. "Inherent instability"? WTF do you think those expensive control systems in the grid connected panels are there to avoid? Thousands of spread out DC power sources that can pump out whatever waveform the distributor wants are the exact opposite of "inherent instability". I would have loved a lot of panels on the grid in the 1990s instead of all the stuffing about we had to do at peak times.
I get that you don't like photovoltaics but please get your criticism from something factual instead of making things up.
Such a thing means a government or power utility has more time before they need to put in more base load capacity. They save money in the short term. In the long term it's probably a folly but by then it's somebody else's problem.
Near where I am there are two 650MW units mothballed due to a large takeup of solar panels (and people reducing usage). It's projected to be a couple of years before either of those are needed and around a decade before another unit is needed. That's an extreme example because a combination of price gouging by utilities and cheap panels (with power buyback from the utilities) drove a massive takeup but it happened. People are getting the money they spent on the panels back in as little two years due to a payment instead of a bill from the utilities - that's how extreme that example is and why those units are mothballed. It will be interesting to see how it plays out in the long term.
When it comes right down to it, the Republican Party has never stood for anything except keeping the foot of rich people planted firmly on the neck of everybody else.
The fact that they've managed to fool a bunch of drooling, ill-educated, propaganda-loving morons into backing them is no reason to believe they want anything for the middle class except abrupt reduction to slave status.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
....how happens to live in a 100% off grid solar house.
Groups trying to "stop" deployment of solar and wind (and geothermal and yes, nuclear) are just stupid.
I have zero problem with the basic thesis that none of these techs should be subsidized by the government. Let them stand or fall on their own; no industry (and that means none ) should be subsidized by the Feds in any way whatsoever.
But there's also no reason to throw up roadblocks per se. That's ideology, not conservatism or libertarianism.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
No. Politicians and regular people of all stripes make their political decisions based on ideology and then rationalize them afterwards. Except when they don't bother and simply assert that they're rational and "the other party" is irrational - or at least "tend to" be, which gives a convenient way to dismiss any evidence to the contrary as exceptions to the rule.
I think the problem is that most human thought is still stuck in the "greek period", where what matters is aesthetic and religious/ideological appeal rather than connection with reality. Physics escaped it, and have advcanced tremendously as a result; the question is, how do we move politics and economy from the realm of faith to the realm of science?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Drivel. How many jobs are going to be created in a community for placing solar panels on roofs vs working at a new coal or even nuclear plant 75 miles from town. You're also ignoring the fact that the costs of dealing with climate change are insignificant next to the costs of not dealing with it.
No, that's why they are political hacks. Otherwise, they'd first be complaining that the real pork barrel subsidies should be eliminated: ethanol subsidies, and the Department of Defense. Because the DOD spends over a trillion a year on war spending, most of which is focused on the world's gas station, the Middle East. The CIA, keeping the world safe for capitalism since 1953!
Even your crappy math can add together the costs of dealing with massive forest fires, record droughts and record hurricanes. You're also ignoring the fact that while coal might make for some jobs out in Kentucky and Pennsylvania, installing solar panels can be done in any community in the nation.
Otherwise known as the part of your post where you reveal yourself as being divorced from reality. What's next, how the Christian Coalition is under the sway of gay marriage activists?
Go on then - provide links to "educate" someone who was working in power generation and distribution as far back as 1994 as distinct from whatever you know about.
Actually, if it is bellow freezing it's even better. True, it takes some time, the clothes freeze and it is not a good idea to fold them at this point but after the ice slowly sublimates the cloth becomes dry, cleaner and carries a very pleasant smell of freshness....I loved that when I was a kid...
I agree with GP that there are so many low hanging fruits in energy saving. It pains me to observe how much can be achieved by very little effort, yet for some reasons (mostly laziness or ideology IMO) it does not happen. Pity...
market pressure?
cheap solar panels?
And remember: We have too have petrol (BP? Shell?) Not to talk about our Rusky neighbours.
So, your "increased GDP" theory goes down the gutter.
Fact is that if you don't stop teabagging your own technological development and torpedoing your I&D just because it doesn't fit your idea of Redneck manliness and Far-Right political correctness you will end up being part of the third world in a few decades.
Just wait for a couple of teabaggers governments to finish what Mr. Bush did and you will be begging the UK to re-colonise what's left of your country.
-- 29A the number of the Beast
SolarCity installs solar panels on your house for free and then you pay them for your electricity at a greatly reduced rate from what you used to pay your local electric company. Solarcity tho' is not licensed to do business in every state yet but it is in a lot of States... check if yours is. http://www.solarcity.com/
Heh, heh. Said the gore to the ox?
No problem from this here tea bagger hobgoblin, though.
... that someone put the "conserve" back in "conservative".
I'm not going to deny that nuclear has a tremendous ability to scale up. I know it can!
[...] Oh, are you talking about thorium reactors? I think a lot of your arguments against renewables (too expensive, too much research required, not feasible, blah blah blah) would also apply to this technology. Doubt my opinion? Perhaps you'd like to refer to the report from the Union of Atomic Scientists entitled Thorium: Not a near-term commercial nuclear fuel." You have to admit that at this point commercially viable thorium-generated power is vapor ware.
[...] You no doubt think I'm a knee-jerk partisan relying on wishful thinking and flimsy data.
Well I most certainly do not. You present yourself well and your aversion to nuclear energy and desire to jump into and 'crack' the remaining hurdles to solar is very clear.
There is a tremendous difference between the way the world was burning coal in the previous two centuries and the way it is burned today. Likewise nuclear fission needs a serious 'tune up'. Our light and heavy water reactors extract dismally small amounts of energy from fuel and leave long-term actinides in their wake.
But in my opinion the LFTR designs being proposed are so radically different in terms of efficiency, safety, containment and (with active processing) residual waste that it is a tragedy for me to see people draw straight line comparisons between LFTR and 'present day commercial nuclear power'. If it were not for the nuclear weapons program and its mandates nuclear would mean LFTR already, today.
I do not advocate solar and wind for base load energy ON ANY SCALE (as in, abort!) and I do want to see LFTR developed quickly to commercial deployment. I come to this conclusion on one single criteria only.
SURVIVAL.
With LFTR technology we can achieve a single building that will withstand any weather or seismic conditions (and no, it need not be sited near a large body of water) that will generate gigawatts of power, with years' worth of barely-radioactive thorium seed fuel stored in the closet. With active processing none of the long-lived isotopes will form and the harmful lifespan of this waste (of greatly reduced volume compared with spent solid fuel) is ~300 years. This is a BEST POSSIBLE SOLUTION.
With wind and solar -- even once we develop more efficient heat transfer or photovoltaics and more efficient turbines, there is a certain energy storage problem which I might refer to as vaporware. All the batteries presently in the world might power our grids for ten minutes. But okay, I will grant you as-yet-undeveloped storage battery tech, giant lithium chocolate bars the size of skyscrapers.
All of these solar/wind/storage 'solutions' collectively contain millions of discrete and precision parts spread over a large area that must (by their nature) be completely exposed to the elements. As opposed to a single self-contained building that merely outputs process heat or electricity.
What a logistical nightmare wind and solar are, even when they are working. Imagine trying to light a sports arena with Christmas lights. Only now imagine this on the supply side. It is mad in a way that has nothing to do with the 'ultimate promise' of these energy sources. It is a logistical nightmare. Nay, impossibility.
But okay I'll grant you the (remote) possibility that this will all fall into place within 50 years or so, who knows how many open pit rare earth mines will be opened up to achieve the chemical storage feat. Or hydrological or compressed air 'storage' with its laughable efficiency (how many million acres of solar panels again?) or environmental blights. Let's say it's all good, and it's done. There are now one hundred million discrete parts in our base load energy system that are somehow working in concert (again, as opposed to a few LFTR buildings) We are now 100% solar and wind, day and (one, two) nights. That was hard.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
The Internet was not publicly funded on the scale it is now. Once enough academics were addicted to it and it reached the scale it was at when the National Science Federation stopped funding NSFNet, turning it over to the GTEs, At&t, etc who were already doing that for the NSF...and Aol, Prodigy, CompuServe, etc were let on...
Whenever there's a new Republican whipping boy, I invest in it:
starbucks
Cytec (gone private after it tripled in a year) and Nautilus
Rick's Cabaret
Missed out on EAgames (boy, that Was stupid)
First Solar
Apple (at 25 a share, but I sold 3 months after Steve died... not nearly at the peak)
Fannie and Freddie Mac
if Whole Foods, Volvo, abortion, or Sushi can be stocks, I wish I could invest in them.
Yes: they would have been one of "n" winners, each with incompatible content. You'd be in the situation (like the old phone companies) where a person on network "a" couldn't contact a person on network "b". That would be substantially less valuable than the fully interoperable internet we have today.
Want a sig like mine? Join ACM's SigSig today!
You're rather cherry-picking your data. Solyndra made a big bet: that the raw cost of the silicon in solar power would be important, and that a remarkably cool manufacturing technique to use a lot less would have a ton of value. As it turns out, that's not how the industry went: silicon costs dropped faster than anticipated, and the manufacturing costs of the Solyndra didn't.
We weren't "picking winners and losers" here: we enabled a big bet.
DoE analysts said Solyndra was crazy, that silicon prices were already dropping faster than Solyndra predictions. That's why they reccomended that the loan be denied. But then along comes a new administration, that said "Solyndra was a major campaign contributor, and to the victors go the spoils! Free money to what we already know will be a failing business!"
That's not picking a winner or a loser - that's just flat out corruption.
More than that. It is a fight for campaign dollars. Big Utilities and Big Unions have a lot to lose. Blame the GOP or Rand Paul! Yes, that is it! Obama and his ilk are for sale. The high bidders now are entrenched government-like entities and big Unions. But, it is all Bush's fault after all...
Your case is extremely well-put and I appreciate you taking time to re-state your case to me, especially given that you've already spent a good amount of time stating it elsewhere. Consider me (mostly) converted to your point of view. I expect that energy diversity is a good thing and I'll always prefer solar/wind/tidal and energy efficiency in some philosophical way. I can also see the frustration that would come from seeing such substantial investment (and waste) in competing technologies if you are convinced that there is a better way that is not getting a fair shake.
Seems to me LFTR needs a proper PR campaign. The thorium remix vid is certainly a good start, but it's over two hours long and jumps right in with both feet and quickly surpasses the intellectual capacity of 99.9999% of the world's population. Might I suggest one of those whiteboard-and-voiceover videos like the ones produced by RSA Animate? If you can cram a synopsis of your views into a video under five minutes long, I'd be willing to bet you could achieve a much bigger change in public opinion.
"Encouraging" something (renewable energy) by raising taxes on everything else (non-renewable energy) is social engineering in its purest form.
And there is nothing wrong with that.
Oil companies receive huge tax breaks (which most definitely are a form of subsidy) to "encourage" further exploration.
You might think sending solar power business to China is not that bad - after all, it's just a little trickle of cash leaving our economy. Let's think of the cash in our economy as blood in your body. You only have so much blood. Cash leaving our economy for the solar business is like a tick sipping a little of our blood at a time. A little isn't so bad - you don't miss it. But there are millions of low cost products flooding our markets. It's like there are a million ticks feeding on our economy. The blood flowing out of us like a river. How long can your body live when your are spouting a river of blood? How long can the US economy stand to lose that river of cash? Our economy is currently suffering from a major shifting of wealth from us out to developing nations.
And who will lose cash if China places tariffs on imported goods? Big conglomerates. Who does the GOP represent? Big conglomerates. They'd never vote for it. Never happen.
Go to the store and price out some solar power systems, the complete system with inverters and all, and get back to me.
If you can't be bothered to get your butt off the couch, Google and check some of your statements against even the most favorable of sources - the manufacturers themselves. Interstate battery's own web site will tell you batteries that work as designed will lose half their capacity in three years. Maybe in a few years something other than lead-acid will make sense for storing enough energy to power major appliances. The lithium batteries we have today? Ask anyone who has kept a laptop for three to five years what happens to lithium batteries.
Funny, you argue those things, pretend the manufacturers know nothing about their own products, then admit that indeed solar can't replace traditional energy sources. That's good you can at least admit that now.
You mentioned air conditioning, using solar to supplement when it's very sunny and you most need the power. That's certainly the scenario that is most favorable to solar. Look up how much power a decent AC system uses (about 4000 watts) , then how much a complete solar system providing that much power will cost (about $40,000). You don't need a whitepaper, plenty of online stores sell the stuff. The output of solar cells drops over time. Figuring the average useful life is 10-20 years @ 4 months per year of AC use, that's about 60 months of active use. 60 months for $40,000 is $750 / month cooling. I don't know about you, but I'm not spending $750 / month for AC. Maybe during the less sunny months it would still have some usable power, and maybe we can get away with a 3000 watt unit. So around $300 - $400 / month on the low end. That's still pretty steep, but might work if you have more money than brains. What's that? It only runs during the day time, when I'm at work? You want me to spend $400 / to cool my house only when no-one is there, then still pay the power company to cool it after 5:00!?!? You go right ahead and buy a solar system. I'll stick with clean burning natural gas providing my electricity.
Yes, solar is a great idea, and it has gotten better. But solar will really make its stride when it is economically viable WITHOUT subsidies (overt or 'second part') for the production, installation, and the owners/users can still make $$ from them.
I love solar (PV, heat, disassociating it into hydrogen, grid tie or off grid use, etc), but subsidizing it to go from basic research to development is one thing, but we are moving from development to production and this should be the part of the commercialization and not subsidized by tax payers.
The same thing goes with subsidies for agriculture, oil/gas industries, etc.
I am neither Dem or Rep. I tend to be conservative and would rather the Libertarians have their way. But most of all I would rather the gov stop trying to direct how to spend MY money whether it is mine now, or tax money paid on by me or on my behalf.
I agree, but what's happening is that the money for the research and investment goes to the politically favorable company, not the one with the best ideas. As long as it costs a fortune to get elected, this is not going to change.
Like a lot of liberals ideas, its well intention-ed and altruistic but when put into actual practice it ends up being crony capitalism, and the return is far less than the investment. The free market actually works, it ensures that the most cost effective idea wins.
Murphy was an optimist
Might I suggest one of those whiteboard-and-voiceover videos like the ones produced by RSA Animate? If you can cram a synopsis of your views into a video under five minutes long, I'd be willing to bet you could achieve a much bigger change in public opinion.
Thanks for your kind words, and what a great idea! I love those RSA animates, especially the one on 21st Century Enlightenment which ends with a quote by Margaret Mead, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world... indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
I used to be an engineer for a big solar power company. Here's the dirty little secret too few people talk about: Grid Stability.
This is why coal and natural gas usage still goes up even if you're using wind or solar power -- like Germany. The less stable a source is (cloud cover, wind variability, etc.) the more spinning reserve you have to fire-up and keep running just in case the power drops or demand climbs.
For wind, about 80% of the production capacity is matched by fossil fuel generated electricity whether it's needed or not. For solar it's more predictable, but considerable spinning reserve is still needed, often more than 50% of the installed capacity.
If you want to talk about wasted energy or inefficiency, you have to include all the power generating plants running "just in case" they're needed. And if we turn them off, how upset would the public be if their nice clean renewable energy source also meant frequent blackouts and brownouts lasting hours or even days.
The electric grid is one of the most complex engineering tasks ever created. Putting a lot of random variable stuff on it isn't good for anyone, and this is what the power companies are bothered with. It has little to do with economics. It's a technical challenge.
Don't get me wrong, I love solar power. I have solar power myself. But it's not tied to the grid. My power is stored in a battery bank using charge controllers and inverters I specked myself. If you get off the grid and have to manage your power budget, suddenly you take efficiency and intermittency a whole lot more seriously. (And it will also help to create the demand and economic conditions that just might force the advances in energy storage technology that would truly solve the whole problem.)
I think everyone should do this, (wind and solar in an off-grid system) but use the grid as an emergency backup and recharge system only, in the event of storms, dead wind or extended overcast days, etc. Then power the grid with Nuclear. This would be the most straightforward way to end our fossil fuel dependancy. Feeding your power back into the grid, essentially using the grid as a battery, is a bad idea from a technical perspective. It saves money on batteries up front, but there will be other costs to the grid operators. (look up the economic meaning of "externalities".) The grid operators will pass that cost back to the public.
There's no free lunch!
Wolfram alpha says 12.51/ kw-hour in 2011. Thus for a megawatt hour $125 for the utilities vs $143 from the article for solar. The curve on utility electricity prices over time is relevant. Time to get serious here. If you think the curves are future predictions and you have the space and the capital...
There are some obvious differences between Germany and US. US actually has huge swaths of land that are almost perfect for solar - New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, southern California, Nevada.
Also, no-one is talking about switching to solar completely. But why not develop it in regions where it makes sense, like we did with hydro?
coal or natural gas (which market forces are decreasing the cost of sans government interference)
The cost of those is not decreasing sans government interference, it's just being passed onto you and me and everyone else, since environmental effects of those go unaccounted for. It's a classic example of privatizing the profits and socializing the losses.
All of this is really simple. Energy and computers have concentrated most of the wealth in the nation into the hands of very few. Much of that concentration is due to energy costs, the rest is due to the efficiency of the digital revolution which has disadvantaged most wage earners in the nation.
If you want to understand what drives political policy look at who is paying the campaign bills of the major parties, but especially the GOP. It is big carbon energy companies and interests like the Koch Brothers of Wichata Kansas, and it is that they are trying to buy resistance to creative destruction of the carbon energy economy by alternative energy. If some members of the GOP are realizing that solar is actually economically compettive, then that would be consistent with a pragmatic reality that carries with it much agreement across political boundaries, but if the policy of the GOP is driven by the entrenched interests that are fighting tooth and claw to preserve capital investment in what may really be a very toxic industry, and I know of no more ruthless bunch of businessmen than those who produce carbon fuels, then the GOP deserves to go down with them.
I'd be willing to bet that GE or Westinghouse or some of the many companies that are in the nuclear sector might be willing to chip in the cost for such a video. How hard could it be? An artist to draw some cute drawings on a whiteboard. A friendly-sounding narrator. Some time-lapse photography. A few ads to encourage viral popularity. All you'd have to do is write a five-minute script and get maybe $10k for a high-quality production.
Agreed with M. Mead quote. You might also find a few lessons in From dictatorship to democracy: A conceptual framework for liberation. While the book is about fomenting a movement (e.g., a revolution), there are some powerful ideas about how to change minds.
Assuming that's a quality system, with the price you mentioned, that's an extra $200 / month to cool the house during the sunny part of the day only, when you're at work. Peak temperatures are at sunset. So you've spent $200 / month on solar that you can't even use while you're home after work. Maybe that might somehow be useful for 1% of people. For most people, that would be really silly.
Here in Australia if you use 1.5kw for 4 hours a day you would pay $54
Using a 10 year 8% loan that repayment would be $4000
http://www.lowenergydevelopments.com.au/1.5kW-Complete-Installation-Kit-Tin-roof-Tilt-Frame is 2,750 leaving $1000 to pay for installation.
That is assuming you have 1.5kw of usage for the 4 hours during the day for solar to offset.
My Transformation Website
Kindle Books http://www.catprog.org/rev
Interactive CYOA http://www.catprog.org/st
The utility power that costs you $54 only costs me $12.42.
Hmm, you're paying four times as much for utility power, and can buy solar systems for half the cost compared to the US. I wonder if that huge extra cost on your electric bill is what's paying the other half of the solar panels, through subsidies. If the government mandates for solar are paid for via taxes on utilities, that would explain things - you're effectively being forced to pay for solar whether you use it or not.
Most of the extra cost is the grid was predicted to use a lot more then was used. So the grid has to payback the investment,
http://www.ret.gov.au/Department/Documents/clean-energy-future/ELECTRICITY-PRICES-FACTSHEET.pdf
From the $54
$27.50 network costs
$10.80 energy efficiency (and FITs which does not effect the cost of purchasing)
$10.80 to generate the electricity
$4.86 Carbon Tax.
My Transformation Website
Kindle Books http://www.catprog.org/rev
Interactive CYOA http://www.catprog.org/st
It's not to hard for people to argue about whether or not burning fossil fuels impacts global climate. You could publish the math but since public schools do all they can to decrease the amount of math they teach most people couldn't follow it anyway.
Instead, how about if you live in a major city go the outskirts and look towards downtown? Chances are your air look likes a giant shit blanket over the city. That folks is the impact of your gas guzzling vehicles and coal generated electricity. You don't need math you just need eyes.
Then again how many of you remember hearing about air quality warnings? It's not just because we know more that we have these warnings now or because people are paranoid (ok, maybe some of you are paranoid). Our air quality sucks!
Stop arguing stupid fucking disputable points you bunch of inbreed ignorant fucks and open your fucking eyes or just take a deep breath!
Thanks for link, it provided a lot of good information.
If anyone else from outside Oz is still reading this, where catprog says "FITs", that's Feed in Tariffs, which is where each customer is forced to pay for some other guy's solar installation.
The PDF which breaks down the billing shows 9% "carbon tax" and 20% "customer service and renewables schemes". Only 10% is the actual cost of the electricity, so the customer's bill in no way reflects the actual cost of the electricity. That 29% is more than the entire bill paid by Texas residents.
In our area of Michigan (Saginaw valley) much of solar is restricted and the roof installations are still expensive. Panel Price is down, but installation is up. 5 years ago, it was over 50,000 to go off grid. I could probably do it for 35,000 to 40,000 now. That still come out to about 3X the commercial rate. Grid tied installations have been limited since day one. My farm, about 30 miles from where I live is part of a wind farm coop. They are still running over 93 or 94 utilization. Gratiot County has a uniform zoning favorable to wind farms making the regs uniform across the entire county instead of by township. There are already 3 farm and frowing. Wind speeds are ideal and consistant with very few calm days. Just googl;e Gratiot County Wind Farm. AFAIK the farm was built with private capital. Most of the people see how much is being paid out per acre whether you have a turbine on it or not and welcome the wind farm. Turnin sites and access roads par around a thousand per quarter each. The sites make very little noise. The neighboring county to the east (Saginaw County) has people fighting the installation of any towers.
gosgog:
OK you are not sure about how Carbon based fuels are affecting us?? Then add up the cost involved in helping those devistated by Typhoon Hiyan in the Philippines, think back to "Katrina"....it ain't gonna get better, its gonna get worse if the Coal, the Oil, the Plastic Garbage dumped in the Ocean and those folks involved in Nuclear don't start moving to a "Thorium" Base instead of URANIUM. We need to charge industries making a ton off Coal, Oil & Gas and put that money into Solar, Wind Panel, Hydro & Thorium based SAFE Nuke plants.(Won't hurt either to see the auto industry move away from gasoline & diesel power).
Don't.... & y'all are gonna see 300 mph Hurricanes & huge Tornados & Bad snow and ice to come! Take a good look at those Politicos we elect, make sure they aren't owned by Corporations like they are now.
Which is exactly why the bullshit you are parroting from some anti-solar energy luddite political science graduate (or similar) is being attacked by someone who was an engineer by profession (and still is from time to time between cluster wrangling).
Semiconductor controlled rectifiers means this stupid "stability" bullshit has not been an issue since before photovolatics were connected to power grids.
I'm really sick of this political shit of bringing up fake technical problems just to oppose a technology that a party thinks is liked too much by their political opponents. I do not think this is the place for such propaganda which is why I'm asking for proof that it is reality and not such propaganda.
Georgia's regulation of electric utilities defines what it means to be an electric utility: if you produce electricity and sell it you're a utility company and subject to regulations governing same, with an exception for individual installations for local generation where excess might be sold to the grid providers. In Georgia, this messes up 3rd party installers who try to fund solar installation in one particular fashion. You can pay cash for a solar system and you're fine. You can borrow money to finance your installation and you're fine, even if you're borrowing from the solar panel installer. What Georgia says you can't do is allow a 3rd party to place solar panels on your roof and then buy the electricity produced by those panels from the 3rd party. That makes the 3rd party a utility provider.
It would be more useful to talk about the science, technology, economics on the issue. The politicking is killing the country.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
Bravo!
Simple wishful thinking because it opposes your deception.
It's also amusing that you are dismissing experience from some time back extending to the current day as less relevant than your computer science studies - what a pathetic little bluff.
Since you are arguing that very tightly controlled and clean signals are causing instability, which is the opposite of what is observed, you really need to put up some kind of fact to back it up instead of "trust me - I know about computers".
You are gravely misrepresenting the issue here and pretending a series of unrelated problems is a single one that conveniently fits your silly propaganda and can be blamed on a thing you do not like.
With respect, in comparison to output from other generators it IS trivial. Not much power in one spot, spread out, clean signals with the right timing. How could it be anything else? Oh yes - those mythical spikes that somehow leap out of a DC source and somehow bypass and ignore everything that is turning it into better behaved AC than anything without those rectifiers. You should know better than that from your high school physics.
More doublespeak.
If a government confiscates a smaller fraction of a person's earnings, the government did not "give" money to that person. It was never the government's to give; 100% of it belonged to the person until the moment when taxes were rendered. It's just scary how many people have begun to think of all assets as belonging to the government, and that we should be grateful for whatever fraction the government "allows" us to keep.
If words are to mean anything, government "giving" should be reserved for situations where a person receives some benefit without having paid for it. NOT for a mere adjustment in the rate at which privately-owned assets are confiscated.
Confiscating fewer privately-owned assets only increases the deficit if the government is already living beyond its means. In 1998 - 2001 there were four consecutive years of surpluses. If fewer private assets had been confiscated during those years, the short-term effect would have been a smaller surplus, not a larger deficit. (And the long-term effect depends on whether we sit on the inhumane side of the Laffer Curve.)
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Thanks for the thorough treatment of this subject. However, you have called it a "tax break" as well as a "subsidy." It can't be both -- see "The Difference Between a Tax Break and a Subsidy" on the aptly-named Reason.com.
It's pure Orwellian doublespeak to assert that confiscating a smaller fraction of a Company X's profits is the same thing as subsidizing Company X. I have no particular love for the oil industry, but freedom from doublespeak is something for which we should all fight passionately.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
And who would be responsible for ensuring these external costs are accounted for in the price? I don't see how this would be possible without government involvement.
What are you talking about? Really, you're not making any sense. You sound like you're talking about stock investment instead of public-sector infrastructure.
Seriously, by your line of argument, the freeways wouldn't exist. You need to look beyond the near-term immediately quantifiable numbers. A power utility has a low rate of return when properly operated and managed. The only power utilities that get high margins are the ones on the verge of breaking things -- like Enron. That said, the greater return -- beyond just the financials of the utility company itself -- includes things like, you know, people having relatively inexpensive access to electric power. Which is kind of a requirement for anything resembling a modern life and economy.
Enterprises with low rates of financial return, but high rates of overall return in terms of what they enable, are precisely the kinds of things that government should do, precisely because the private sector either won't get involved, or will engineer market conditions that benefit the company while screwing over everyone else. Imagine if every road were a toll road, or if every power company were like Enron. I certainly don't want to live in that world.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Yes, government involvement is always needed to prevent market failures. Breaking up monopolies is another example.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Instead they are designed to do things like cover the sudden loss of 500MW or so when a unit fails somewhere on the grid. The sort of thing that happens every year or two in state sized grids. Keep that in mind and consider your proposed problem again, which is far easier to handle than such incidents.
Because I have been in distribution control rooms and had it all carefully explained to me and had a long association with people who actually are experts in this field and talk about it at length. Sadly I don't have to be anything close to being an expert to identify the technical flaws in the propaganda you were parroting when you presented yourself as an expert to rudely attack the poster far above and attempt to mislead them.
You seem to have forgotten how a combined turbine and generator works - there is no DC line. Coils spinning and stationary coils. AC comes out. High school stuff. For a while it looked like you were starting to think for yourself but now you've reverted to making things up again.
It's your misinterpretation of what they are saying, especially your own contribution of "to enable spot generation" that is at fault. A combination of neglect and expanded requirements mean that huge investments are necessary in a lot of areas whether people put photovoltaics on their roof or not.
My point is that the experts are not saying what you are which is why I took you to task in the first place.
You misunderstand what is required (and what is in place). It's like turning off peak water heaters on and off. 20th century technology not microcontrollers.
No.
HVDC power transmission is still very new and rare. There's an interesting wikipedia page on it you may want to look at and it's the way of the future for very long distance transmission but you seem to have been very gravely misled by someone. Those 30kV lines you see crossing the landscape are most definitely AC.
Lots of people tried to do thin-film/amorphous solar panels. All the others had the sense to make them flat to maximize the sun exposure rather than coat the entire inside surface of a tube, only half (at best) of which was going to catch sunlight anyway. Solyndra's engineering and design wasn't flat - but it was just flat awful.
Seriously, it's hard to imagine a stupider idea to throw over half a billion dollars at than Solyndra (maybe feeding plants Brawndo?) - this was corruption and unsavory dealing at its worst. Solyndra was doomed by a stupid concept, as anyone with any technical ability at all knew from the beginning.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
I did not work in the control centres, and neither did you mister self declared expert.
I'm not even going to bother to read the cut and paste from wikipedia that I pointed you to about a non-solar reason why it's a good idea to upgrade grids. Why are you continuing this silly bluff after the "star DC from the 1950s" mistake?
shut the fuck up you hyperbole abusig son of a bitch
States rights is not about allowing oppression, but allowing the people of a state to organize a government fitting their culture. Our current system does not allow this. Rather, it forces each state to adhere to what the federal judiciary and Congress believe should be a one-size-fits-all vision of America. Anyone who has looked at a "red/blue map" of America knows that we are dividied country, now more than ever in our history, and we need to devolve decision making down to the community level as much as possible. Most of our bad federal policies these days come from forcing all important decision making as high up the government food chain as possible rather than letting communities decide. So now you have a culture war between Chicago and the rural South and Midwest over gun rights because the federal government is inextricably involved that the two views cannot coexist within their communities.
As America becomes more diverse, poorer and the federal government more strained we will face a choice. Either we can devolve decision making to communities to take pressure off of the central government or face the inevitable acrimony as large minorities decide to break away because they are tired of having their visions consistently crushed by a small majority.
The further down decision making is pushed, the easier it is for political rights to be upheld. It's easier for a minority (political, racial or otherwise) to rebel or relocate when most decisions are made at the local level than the federal level. The further down you go, the smaller the political authority you are challenging. It's easier to challenge a mayor and sheriff than a governor; it's easier to rise up against a governor than the President with the backing of the US Army. It's much harder to justify federal involvement in an armed conflict between a revolting minority in one city when the federal government is not being challenged.
The problem with a flat design was two fold. One is that it doesn't allow for wind to pass through as easily. This helps with the survivability but not efficiency of the panels in places that have high winds (like dust storms in the desert where many panels are located). The second problem is that a flat design requires some orientation to the sun. Many solar panels require motors to angle the panels based on the time of day. There is less reliance with Solyndra's design.
The main issue is cost really. With cheap silicon based panels flooding the market and the drop in gas prices to $3 range, Solyndra's design is not cost efficient. The gamble of half a billion dollars was that, a gamble. If gas prices hit the $5 mark and China didn't subsidize the silicon panel industry, Solyndra might have survived.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
They DO have a thing called "winter" in Phoenix.
While, I do think that they could benefit from a lot more PV and solar thermal use (they're using incredibly scarce fresh water to cool that nuclear power plant in the desert), I can see why they still need clothes dryers.
The AC, IMO, is more a function of culture than necessity. Folks in these warmer climates DO tend to overcompensate. When I was in Illinois, people would crank them up full-blast in the summer, because it was so damn humid outside, and it felt so damn good to come inside from being out in it. But not so good to sit in the chill all day long, freezing your ass off.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Even though the oil/gas companies are diversified I am sure they are also behind their customers, the power companies.
These are the same tired and overwrought points y'all have been preaching since the 1970s. Americans don't want nukes, so just give it up. Move on!
Unless, or course, you are in favor of tyranny and ignoring the people's will. In that case, you've got a career in government waiting for you; you'll fit right in!
"Big bets don't always work"
That's why you are supposed to "bet" with private money and not taxpayer money.
When Obama says he is "investing" I want to puke. You can't "invest" with money that isn't your own, but you can sure gamble. It's so wonderful to live in a country where we get to be involuntarily co-dependent to a gambleholic, and Solyndra wasn't the only gamble that failed to pay off.
Solar power will come on in a big way, some day, but we don't currently have the technology to make it practical (in terms of cost or efficiency). We don't know what discovery lays in our future that will take us from the "vacuum tube" stage to the "transistor" era of solar power, but we do know which was created by government and which by private money.
I don't care if you want to put solar panels on your roof with your money, but millions of people are putting the equivalent of vacuum tubes on their roof and I'm being forced to pay for it.
Funny how there is an inverse relationship between government subsidies over time and the amount of usefulness of the internet over time.
Solar is great for micro/local-level offsets in particularly sunny places
So having exactly that as part of a national energy policy is not viable why, exactly? Oh, wait... you cited some "expert" on why Germany's renewable energy policy is such a "disaster". Too bad your "expert", one Ryan Carlyle, an engineer employed in (drum roll, please) ...the petroleum industry. Puh-lease.
The fact of the matter is that the technology commonly being deployed in Germany is a resounding success. Is it yet an economical replacement for fossil-fuel generated electricity? No, but then the key word is "yet". As fossil fuels become more expensive (due to both production and carbon mitigation costs) solar (small local installations) looks better and better. Only an idiot (or a petroleum industry whore) would refuse to recognize this trend.
You've said the solar is competitive but haven't stated whether it is competitive w/o the federal support, which is absolutely necessary. I see no conflict provided the government quit subsidizing solar and every other form of energy.
I suppose you think someday soon Scrooge McDucks money pool will be empty.
Money doesn't work like you think it does.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Ok, I am from Arizona and I can tell you why you don't want to hang you clothes outside to dry, dust. Lots and lots of dust. Oh, and the get kinda of crisp and crinkly, and scratchy.
Now if someone were to build a heat exchanger dryer, that would work, most of the time.
What I want to know is why they put the stove and the dryer in the middle of the house where you have to manage all the waste heat with your air conditioner.
Hey, why not use the waste heat from the A/C to dry clothes.
Arizona has not been a hotbed for innovation for a long time. Build it fast and build it cheap. Offload as much of the cost to the community as possible.
“Every town or city has a vast expanse of roof exposed to the sun. There is no reason why we should not use the roofs of our houses to install solar apparatus to catch and store the heat received from the sun. Solar heat [can be used].... to heat a liquid and store the liquid in an insulated tank... applying even the Thermos bottle principle of a partial vacuum around the tank.” (1914) “Coal and oil are......strictly limited in quantity. We can take coal out of a mine but we can never put it back.” “What shall we do when we have no more coal or oil?” “[ The unchecked burning of fossil fuels] would have a sort of greenhouse effect.” “The net result is the greenhouse becomes a sort of hot-house.”(1917). -- He was pretty much on the button I'd say.