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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?
That's true. But it's ALSO true that government subsidies can accelerate the development of practical cost-effective technologies, by getting them scaled up earlier.
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.
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.
Stale pastry is hollow succor to one who is bereft of ostrich.
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
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.
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.
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.
Stale pastry is hollow succor to one who is bereft of ostrich.
BINGO! The West Texas plains were a boon to wind prospectors. Every energy company with any renewable aspirations bought/leased a patch of land and threw up a wind farm. Just one problem...nobody lives in West Texas. It's open range for hundreds of miles. The very conditions that made wind possible left a very real problem. All that electricity needed to get to Dallas but the power line to Dallas was at capacity. All those wind turbines producing electricity and nowhere to send it. Storage tech was prohibitively expensive (If electricity is selling for $0.09 kWh storing it at $0.10 kWh doesn't make financial sense.) so into the earth all that electricity went. So ERCOT set out to build more capacity around 2008. Those lines went live in 2013. Combine that with technology making CSP even cheaper and you've got the next gold rush on your hands.
Full disclosure, I work for Nextera Energy. Parent company of Lone Star Transmission who operates a stretch of those transmission lines.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
And this helped by funding chinese solar manufacturers.... how?
love is just extroverted narcissism
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.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
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"
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.
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.
Place something witty here
Yeah, because there are no subsidies for fossil fuels.... oh, wait... about $5 trillion a year.
http://www.theguardian.com/env...
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
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?
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.
This is classic misunderstanding of Republican ideals. They're not against renewables per se. They're against subsidizing the sale of technologies which can't self-support themselves. If/when the technology is able to compete economically on its own with existing technologies, they are more than happy to use it.
The error is actually in the environmentalists' thinking. They support wind and solar unconditionally regardless of cost. They then assume everyone else thinks like they do. Since the GOP opposed wind and solar in the past, they erroneously assume the GOP must oppose wind and solar unconditionally. (I narrow it down to environmentalists because most of the people on the left are aware of cost constraints.)
In fairness, there is a non-monetary cost associated with pollution which many GOPers leave out. But if you factor that in, then nuclear ends up being the best choice of power source at present. And most environmentalists oppose nuclear so I can't give them credit for correctly factoring in pollution costs.
Yes and No.
(Disclosure: I used to work for Solarworld).
I partially agree because it was the introduction of *massive* tax/tariff subsidies from the EU member governments (most notably Germany) that drove a lot of development and growth, which led to the rise of solar-panel makers like Solarworld, Q-Cells, etc. (all based in Germany). I think only First Solar is the only big boy that's based in the US.
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. Before China, solar panels cost around $2.50/Wp; after China started the flood, they could be had for as cheap as $0.75/Wp.
All that said, you get what you pay for... Solarworld for instance has the 25-year power output warranty, 17-18% conversion, and high wattage densities (255+ watts per panel), whereas the real low-end Chinese stuff is barely warrantied for a year, might get 10-12% conversion, and might get you 160-200-watt panels (in real-life testing; forget the label's claims).
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
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.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
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.
> 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.
Solar cells are a major piece of the puzzle, and arguably the biggest piece.
There are other things falling into place as well.
Relatively inexpensive MPPT controllers. Yes, these require an inductor coil to get the voltage from the panels (100+ volts) to a usable voltage/amperage combination for the battery bank. To boot, most MPPT CCs are multi-stage, so batteries are not boiled when near 100% SoC.
PWM controllers are cheaper, and because solar panel technology is so relatively cheap, it might be cheaper to throw more panels on as opposed to using a smarter charge controller. In fact, I bought a decent 60 amp, 12 volt, multistage CC with a voltmeter and ammeter for $8.
Inverters are not standing still. One can have a choice between charging solar batteries for off-grid use, using inverters to feed the grid, or anywhere in between.
The component that sucks the most is still batteries. They don't hold much energy relatively, and need to be replaced every 5-10 years. Even here, there is progress. For "drop in" batteries, there is a "Smart Battery" brand that goes where flooded lead-acid batteries are used. A battery charger that works with LiFePO4 is required, but since the special discharging circuitry is on the battery, this not just provides a longer usable life, but lead-acid batteries get damaged if drawn below 50% SoC, while lithium batteries can be drawn down a lot further (3-10%) before suffering ill effects.
What is happening with solar is a combination of the above factors, which gives energy independence, which builds momentum behind it. It used to be that solar power was for hippies, but both the far right and far left have embraced the concept, and it is more of a mainstream, "why not?" as opposed to "why" concept, especially with RVs, camping, and boating.
Solar has been on a consistent and predictable downward trend since 1860 (when solar was discovered). It follows an exponential curve just like Moore's law, the difference being Moore said that the number of transistors on a chip doubles every 18 months and in solar the metric of $/watt halves every 5 years. This has been going one for a century and a half. Kurzweil et andere have lots of graphs on technology like this. With or without government investment.
"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.
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.
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.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
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.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If solar made economical sense, it would not need subsidies. Maybe it will not in the future ... but we're not in the future.
You missed the headline, or the article or the summary or all of it.
Solar energy is now the cheapest energy on the planet.
Oil will not run out in 20 years.
With current usage, it will. That is a no brainer. With replacement of current cars by electric cars it, won't. That is a no brainer, too. So try to comprehend what I write instead of jumping to knee jerk reactions and making a fool of yourself.
We are 10 years beyond "peak oil" ...
America's government has subsidized green technologies with billions of dollars Did it? Any proof of that? Over what course of years?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
It sounds like you want a level of perfection out of government that is not humanly possible to attain.