Next Texas Energy Boom: Solar

Layzej writes: The Wall Street Journal reports: "Solar power has gotten so cheap to produce—and so competitively priced in the electricity market—that it is taking hold even in a state that, unlike California, doesn't offer incentives to utilities to buy or build sun-powered generation." Falling cost is one factor driving investment. "Another reason for the boom: Texas recently wrapped up construction of $6.9 billion worth of new transmission lines, many connecting West Texas to the state's large cities. These massive power lines enabled Texas to become, by far, the largest U.S. wind producer. Solar developers plan to move electricity on the same lines, taking advantage of a lull in wind generation during the heat of the day when solar output is at its highest."

Comments

Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

So when the economics make sense, investments follow, without the need for governments to step in and choose winners and losers. Who'd have guessed?

Re:Wow

[Rei]

And clearly the massive government investment in both R&D and incentives that let companies achieve economies of scale did nothing to create the current environment where, with the technology developed and economies of scale on hand, companies can make an unsubsidized profit even without subsidies - right? The two things are totally disconnected.

Re:Wow

[ShanghaiBill]

But it's ALSO true that government subsidies can accelerate the development of practical cost-effective technologies

It's ALSO true that government subsidies can slow development by pushing inferior technologies into mass production before they are ready. Subsidies can occasionally be justified, but in the case of solar, the billions spent on subsidies would have been far better employed on R&D to find technology that made economic sense, rather than mass deployment of technology that did not.

Re:Wow

[PraiseBob]

Solyndra gets a lot of criticism, but it's important to note that the program as a whole made money for the public AND spurred energy growth. How is that not a win-win? There were dozens of companies involved, and a few of them didn't pan out, but it is unreasonable to expect a 100% success rate.

Re:Wow

[Rei]

First off, what magical world do you live in where every investment in a higher-risk financial product pays off? What I couldn't give if I could invest in the world you envision ;) The program as a whole already broke even after just three years in play. All of the outstanding loans are now just profit for the government.

Is this the highest interest rate investment the government could have earned money with? Of course not. But that was never the point; it helped the companies that succeeded vastly scale up. While making money. And not only do they get the interest payments, but they also indirectly get the tax revenue from all of these much larger companies and all of the knock-on effects.

Re:Wow

[PvtVoid]

governments to step in and choose winners and losers

I get so fucking tired of this "picking winners and losers" bullshit. Venture capitalists do this all the time. Do you think the people who do analysis for the Department of Energy are bunch of drooling morons? Backing technology development that is in the public interest is exactly what governments are for. Just like venture capital, some of it is going to pan out and some of it isn't.

Re:Wow

[Crashmarik]

Yeah because someone investing their own money is the same as a congressman earmarking for donors.

Re:Wow

[mspohr]

Yeah, because there are no subsidies for fossil fuels.... oh, wait... about $5 trillion a year.
http://www.theguardian.com/env...

Re: Wow

[mattwarden]

Yes government subsides sure did accelerate ethanol production capabilities, didn't they? And that boondoggle may have slowed the development of alternatives. Like solar.

It's central economic planning, period. Why are we debating this ignorance?

Re:Wow

[gtall]

Yeah, the government never should have sunk all that money into ARPANET, it would have just happened by Immaculate Conception when the economics made sense. Come to think of it, all that money the government sunk into quantum mechanics made no sense until there was use for it, then it would have miraculously evolved from its primordial ooze by bootstrapping itself into usefulness.

Wow, economics is truly miraculous, able to conjure...well...just about anything out of nothing.

Re:Wow

[plopez]

It is also true the private sector can block development of new technologies when it seems too risky or threatens an existing profit center. E.g. the way GM killed off the EV-1 electric car.

Re:Wow

[Solandri]

Solyndra was a scam. Their "technology" involved using half-cylinder solar panels (hence the name) laid out on a plane to get around the problem of lower solar production when sunlight hits at oblique angles. Anyone who's reasonably competent at geometry can tell you the problem right there. The effective collecting area is the projection of the surface of your collectors at a right angle to the direction of the incoming sunlight. That is, the planar area the sunlight sees - the cosine of the angle between the incoming sunlight and a normal from the plane of your collecting area. Doesn't matter whether your panels are flat, a cylinder, pyramids, or whatever - only the projection matters.

And since the largest planar area you can cover given a square meter of PV cells is flat, a cylindrical collector is actually less efficient than a flat panel. In fact it's efficiency is a factor of 2/pi (0.6366), since it's just the ratio of semi-circumference (half cylinder) to the diameter (flat). When some of the Solyndra generation data leaked out, they were indeed about 40% less effective at generating power than a flat panel.

Could they have arranged their half-cylinders in something other than a plane? Yes, but non-planar arrangements run into the problem of shadows from one collector covering up another collector at certain times of the day. The net result is worse than a plane. So flat panels are always best. If you want to capture oblique sunlight more effectively, the mathematically best solution is to tilt the panels to follow the sun (shadows from panel to panel will still interfere at extremely oblique angles). Or to raise reflectors at certain times of the day to reflect the sunlight into your static collectors.

Re:Wow

[aaarrrgggh]

I don't think Solar could have gotten the critical mass without the incentives. Even with incentives, it took several decades to be a meaningful contributor. Quite honestly, the R&D incentive money is best spent on the challenge that follows, not the first-mover challenge: energy storage. By subsidizing the PV panels up front, you get the industry moving which will create its own R&D investment. By increasing non-dispatchable generation on the grid, you need to have improved energy storage and demand control solutions.

From the small view I have on where money was being spent, 6-12 years ago a tremendous amount of investment was being placed into these areas for technologies that are viable now.

Granted, not all $$ are spent with the same efficacy. That is the nature of R&D though.

Re:Wow

[riverat1]

Government and civilization go hand in hand. Can you name one civilization that has ever existed that didn't have some form of government? Can you name one civilization that has ever existed that didn't not have taxation in one form or another? Yes, governments change from time to time by internal or external force but that's usually accompanied by a lot of turmoil and change in the underlying civilization.

Re:Wow

[angel'o'sphere]

I don't get why americans always repeat such myth.

Just because your first government was the english king, there is no reason to distrust every government. Well, Nixxon might have been an exception.

Subsidies can occasionally be justified, but in the case of solar, the billions spent on subsidies would have been far better employed on R&D to find technology that made economic sense, rather than mass deployment of technology that did not.

First: which technology besides solar is "better"? Or makes economically more sense? When we clearly right now are at the point where solar makes economical sense?
Second: the billions spend where likely not the US american billions but the European, notable German, so why do you care?

I guess you had preferred to wait till the oil runs out, that might be in 20 years? The oil price right now is something like $45. The highest price the last 5 years was something like $135 (or was it $150?).

With current usage patterns the oil price in 20 years might be something like $5000 per barrel. Obviously that won't be the case as demand will drop rapidly the closer we come to the "empty wells".

Anyway, in 20 years every solar panel -- regardless how efficient or cheap -- will be cheaper than oil. Without any development at all.

So: what benefit would have from that?

None ... you had wasted 20 years paying "to much" for oil/energy.

I rather have a cheap competitive panel right now. And what I and my fellow europeans expect from a government is exactly that: lay the legal framework and funding for new futur technologies. Fuck your stupid brain dead idea of "the free market fixes all", it took Obama to give you affordable healthcare for every one. By crafting a law! There was no free market fixing your third world problems. And there will never be a free market building you the next Fighter Air Plane, Carrier or other thing where the development cost is 100ds of billions!

Can't be so hard to grasp that there is no company on the planet, no investor, no consortium that could have propelled the progress in solar technology we made in the last 30 years further than the government funding did.

Re:Wow

[WindBourne]

Actually, the real problem is that we allowed China to dump on America. Had we not done that, then we would have a lot more manufacturing here and it would be even lower costs.
Thankfully, Solar City is doing it right. They got the infrastructure in place for putting up panels, got the costs down, and now, is focused on lowering the costs of panels by manufacturing their own. And yes, they will come down.

What is going to be a problem, is that China is going to manipulate the money again and dump on the west to revive their economy that is a total disaster.

Re:Wow

[riverat1]

It sounds like you want a level of perfection out of government that is not humanly possible to attain.

In "oil" country no less!

[pr0t0]

If I felt so inclined, I'm sure I could dig up post-upon-post from previous slashdot stories about how unlikely solar (and wind) power is to take off in any meaningful way, and how electric cars will never be a thing. We are just at the beginning, and the economic incentives took only a few year to become reality. I'm guessing that is due in no small part to subsidies paving the way for investment and growth that so many complained about. An industry, and really a way of life, is slowly being built from the ground-up. It's pretty exciting to watch!

Re: In "oil" country no less!

[drinkypoo]

It's not oil country, it's energy country. Try opening your mind, it hurts at first but the benefits are astounding.

Texas has been describing itself as oil country and bad-mouthing "alternative" power all along, so your comment is apt, but only if you aim it in the correct direction.

Re:Call it what you want it isn't green

[Jeremi]

Can we all just start to admit that wind and solar farms have their own negative environmental implications just like everything else.

Straw man argument -- nobody ever claimed otherwise. Obviously, anything humans do has environmental implications.

The claim is that wind and solar farms have less environmental impact than the use of coal and other fossil fuels they intend to replace.

True Benefits to Solar

[nucrash]

While taking over a desert to lay out a giant solar power farm, roof top units are probably more ideal. A large portion of power is lost through transit. I have heard calculations from 65% to 84% of power produced being lost from generation to the time where a device is powered. I don't much care for those kind of losses. Smaller and distributed sources of power generation help to create a more robust power grid.

Who killed EV-1

[Anonymous Coward]

"GM" didn't kill EV-1. Government regulation did. CAFE didn't give them any credit for EV-1, and the environmental and liability costs of EV-1 were so high that GM was forced to crush them rather than accept decades of liability for an experimental design.