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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."
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?
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!
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
Can we all just start to admit that wind and solar farms have their own negative environmental implications just like everything else.
Global warming no, environmental disruption yes.
There's something I've never understood here.
if you have land for wind power, why would you not want solar spread around it in the safety zone of the tower? Same lines can carry all of the power. Lower real estate cost. Why is it that I only ever see or hear about a solar farm or a wind farm and never an energy farm?
Maybe someone here more familiar with the topic can help me out, or tell me that it's being done and just not talked about much.
Warning: Teh poster of this messaeg is lysdexic
Wind turbine generation is such shit. If you have a lot of constant, unending wind, it seems like a good idea; typically, solar outclasses it by far.
My analysis of solar has changed in the past month. I last looked half a decade or so ago, when the ROI for solar was 19 years; it's now 2.5 years. Seriously. What the fuck? The arrays are more efficient, and they're down from like $3.84/W for shit-efficiency panels that degrade rapidly to $1.81/W for high-efficiency panels that degrade by less than 0.7% per year and are guaranteed to have above 80.7% efficiency 25 years into their lifespan--with god damn microinverters and advanced monitoring systems. When did this shit happen? I can generate 9,800kWh/year with optimal placement, 9,200kWh/year with simple placement, and thus about $1500 of electricity and $1700 of SRECs.
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We are now ready for fixed infrastructure payments instead.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
How many GOP Texans were screaming about how solar, wind and other renewables were nothing but communist liberal bullshit and yet.. here we are.
Bread and circuses.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
They could probably add in a plant to do hydrogen generation with the "overflow" electricity not needed for grid purposes and pretty easily tie it into the existing natural gas network while they're at it.
If you had read the article you would know that Texas doesn't subsidize solar. The made a vast improvement to their power grid that would allow private businesses to do what they will with it. In fact you will probably find that this measure is quite popular in Texas as they are quite proud that their state has its own energy grid. The key difference here is that Texas owns its own power lines, and any investment in their lines directly benefits everyone.
Energy as a whole is very well done in Texas. When I lived their for 5 years I had a choice between at least 5 power companies at any address I chose, and I could select the source of my power, be it hydro, wind or solar. Renewables isn't some crazy conspiracy to the people there. Just another option.
"There are lies, there are damn lies, and there are statistics"
They're working on it, but it's difficult.
Stale pastry is hollow succor to one who is bereft of ostrich.
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.
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Lord, give us one more boom. We promise not to piss it away this time.
Yes PV solar plant are becoming less expensive if they dump all their power directly to the grid. If they are required to have a storage system so that they can base production on demand rather than supply the costs rise greatly. A molten salt plant is much more expensive to build and maintain than a field of PVs. Otherwise we get conventional plants that ramp way down during the day and back up at night. Both those ramps waste a lot of money and CO2.
More thought and money needs to go into storage. I don't think enough lithium batteries can be made to meet the terrawatt demand.
As if millions of birds suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly burned to a crisp.
Unfortunately most of them ran into windows and cats before they got there. A few managed to land on a live wire, get hit by a car or eat some poisoned plants first. One amazing bird managed to successfully fly through a wind turbine to reach its destination of concentrated solar power. http://www.usatoday.com/story/...
This "boom" is really just another observation of the scramble to grab federal subsidies before they dry up next year. Once the full cost of PV is carried by the owners the economics will change.
I own 4 Community Solar units even way up north here in Seattle, and my last electric bill, before I got more efficient washer, dryer, fridge, showed $81 for electricity used, but I had $43 per unit, which means show me the money, baby!
Adapt. Because nobody's waiting for you to get your rear in gear.
Note: Passive solar is 10 times cheaper than active solar, so do that when you buy a new house and build it to allow for active solar. Here at the UW we have patents for solar film (like car wraps), window screens, and even have an all-electric Formula 1 race car that can charge from a solar panel.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I know a small company in S.E. of San Antonio that has been building solar farms in that area for a while for themselves to manage. It's a boom everywhere in the state & has been going on for years.
The federal subsidies help.
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> I disagree mostly because solar really didn't get cheap until the Chinese began to flood the market with panels, around 2010-2011 or so.
It wasn't the Chinese so much as solar grade silicon production. Prior to about 2009, demand for silicon for solar cells was smaller than for electronics. So solar piggy-backed on existing silicon foundries. But electronics-grade silicon is expensive (~$400/kg) because even one defect can ruin a chip. Eventually solar cell production got big enough that solar-grade silicon was worth it's own foundry lines. Defects in a solar cell just degrade the output a little bit, they still function just fine. The lower quality product was much cheaper to make ($18/kg last time I looked). Since the raw silicon was a major component of final panel cost, you had dramatic cost reductions for a few years.
Now we are back to more incremental cost reductions, but the panels are now so cheap that the "balance of system" (panel mounts, labor, wiring, inverters or transformers, permits, etc.) is the majority of the cost, and that's where work is being done to reduce them more.
"On a sunny summer afternoon, the facility could provide more than 5% of the city’s power needs at a price—$50 per megawatt hour—considerably below other solar projects. In July, Austin Energy announced bids for a new round of solar construction that were below $40 a megawatt hour."
That's 4 cents per kWh.
Wow.
"So how much is energy consumption increasing nation wide?" Energy is decreasing nation wide, largely in part to it being imported in manufactured goods rather than manufacturing them here.
"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.
Your post doesn't make much sense without units. 50 what? Presumably cents. 25 of electricity? Dollars? kWh? What?
Back when I costed it out, 'ancillary' was about $1-2/watt for the wiring, inverter, etc... It got cheaper the bigger you went.
I don't read AC A human right
Don't be ridiculous. Even if they were an actual crime family, most real crime families only oppose something until they can control and profit from it. If Texas goes solar and they control Texas, then they can very well benefit from solar.
Oil companies have been re-branding themselves as "energy companies" for years now. Don't think for a moment that they don't want solar and that is motivating their actions. What they don't want is to be left behind because of their legacy investments in oil/gas/coal extraction. They have significant investments in fossil fuel extraction, but don't think for a moment that they won't simply buy up the solar capacity when it comes time to do so. They may even support it, at some point.
If anything energy companies are being held back by the fact that there is a significant demand for gasoline and other oil products that will not be going anywhere even if we power the grid 100% with solar. They have significant investments in oil extraction equipment and mineral rights that they want to pay off. If it becomes relatively cheap to get solar power online, it will be easier to add it to their inventory while maintaining those other assets.
Correction: Texas wasn't bad-mouthing alternative power. Texas was bad mouthing heavily government subsidized alternative power.
The difference is subtle but extremely important.
you forgot the fact that pollution from coal is doing a large number on these birds as well.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Oh my lord, it must be communism when the government owns infrastructure!
The horror! They should immediately sell (coincidentally of course to a republican donor) all those power lines and get back into the monopoly power business.
The key difference here is that Texas owns its own power lines, and any investment in their lines directly benefits everyone.
Damn pinko socialists.