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Here's Elon Musk's Plan To Power the US on Solar Energy (inverse.com)
An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from Musk's keynote speech: Tesla CEO Elon Musk -- whose company makes electric cars and has a new solar roof panel division -- reminded more than 30 state governors at the National Governors Association meeting this weekend exactly how much real-estate is needed to make sure America can run totally on solar energy. "If you wanted to power the entire United States with solar panels, it would take a fairly small corner of Nevada or Texas or Utah; you only need about 100 miles by 100 miles of solar panels to power the entire United States," Musk said during his keynote conversation on Saturday at the event in Rhode Island. "The batteries you need to store the energy, so you have 24/7 power, is 1 mile by 1 mile. One square-mile." It's "a little square on the U.S. map, and then there's a little pixel inside there, and that's the size of the battery park that you need to support that. Real tiny."
I didn't do the maths myself beyond the back of a mental napkin, but these folks have http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/energy/... and apparently the overall space checks out. Its far from the first time that similar scale claims have been made, and no, consolidating our entire solar grid into a single spot wouldn't make much sense from a security standpoint, but its interesting to think that we could get from here to there with no more (or less) effort for the country than, say, the Apollo program took.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
One square mile of batteries Is all that's needed to store the energy for the entire US?
Color me skeptical.
(fine print: it's a 200 story building)
Specifically, the cost part.
A quick google and a couple minutes with a calculator comes up with ~$1.5T for the solar panels, assuming sunny days all year round.
Plus the cost of the batteries, of course. And extra panels to cover rainy days.
And let's not forget the distribution system (which ranges from negligible to horrendous, depending on a lot of factors).
And the factories to build 50 billion or so solar panels.....
So, doable? Yeah, could be done. Cheap and easy? Not hardly.....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
This plan will end up costing trillions and still will not work. It will also will cost trillions in grid improvements and probably tens of trillions in storage. I am sure Musk likes the idea of the US giving him trillions, but I think their are better and cheaper options.
I definitely favour replacing all fossil and nuclear power generation with renewable energy sources including solar, wind, tidal and geothermal. However, in the case of solar energy, can anyone estimate the potential impact on the environment of fabricating a square mile of say lithium-ion batteries? how much lithium would that require? What amount of the earth's crust would we have to mine in order to get it?
Similarly, with a solar array of Musk's proposed 10,000 square miles, what would the rate of replacement for panels be? If a panel performed at optimum for say 10 years, it would mean that you might theoretically have to replace 1,000 square miles of panels each year... For panels with a 20 year operational life, that would drop to 500 square miles of panels a year.
Obviously efficiencies of mass production are going to bring the costs down, but this is going to take some serious capital investment to get going. Definitely worth it, but maybe the southernmost states could do a good job of generating electricity and then selling it to their northern neighbours...
Now all we've got to do is figure out room-temperature superconductivity, so that we can get all the power transmitted to where it's needed without the transmission loss...
A 10,000 square mile solar array? Difficult to attack/sabotage/cripple, just due to sheer size.
A 1 square mile electric energy storage farm? Easier to attack. That's what I'd be afraid of.
that's the size of the battery park that you need to support that. Real tiny."
and real easy to target
So apart from the obvious reasons for not doing this - the weather, you also have to consider resilience, counter-terrorism, not having all your wires in one basket.
And on top, the requirement for electricity will always keep growing. So that 1 sq. mile will become 2 (especially when everyone has an electric car). And while the batteries may only take up a square mile, how much space will the industrial slag from their manufacture take up?
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
As cool as all that is, I still think the better solution is to have every roof covered with panels and have local / neighborhood battery storage.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
100 hundred years of US garbage will need a landfill 100 ft high, and 18 miles on each side.
People lose their minds over the landfill "problem", so it seems Mr. Musk is going to have a hard time convincing them to switch to solar.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
That was a weird point. Anything can be 1 square mile in area as long as you are willing to go high enough.
Is Mr. Musk talking about a building ten feet high (roughly one storey) or 1,000? In either case, they only take up one square mile.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
losses? it's a perfect application for the latest ultra high voltage D.C. line tech.
the collectors and storage don't have to be in one spot either, plenty of very sunny places in this USA
The fact that he is a billionaire and willing to spend money on such a project speaks volumes to his humanity. Re: buffett, gates, etc
When all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail...
He is not the first one to suggest using solar powers closer to the equator to power the northern hemisphere. The problem is that once you generated that power, you need some way transport it to where it's needed. There are some more detailed concepts based on HVDC, but that's still fairly new and unproven tech.
Elon Musk just invented 2-D batteries!!! If we fold the 1 square mile of batteries just right I can hold all of the power needed for the US in my pocket. But why stop there? I know I am being pedantic but I just couldn't help myself.
In fact, let's rename it 'universal basic electricity' so that the Slashdot crowd will get interested.
If you took $250 million from each Billionaire jetting around the world talking about Global Warming, they could probably build a demonstration plant that could run Vegas or Tuscon.
Do that, prove it works, then come to the taxpayers.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
If you wanted to power the entire United States with solar panels, it would take a fairly small corner of Nevada or Texas or Utah; you only need about 100 miles by 100 miles of solar panels to power the entire United States,"
We've easily got that much space sitting mostly unused on roofs. Even better it's already right where we need most of the electricity. Obviously Musk and Co are already well aware of this fact. It just requires an investment horizon longer than the end of your nose.
Right. So you really think that if he spent all his own money, built it, and then went to the government and asked them to reimburse him...they'd say yes and foot the bill to the taxpayers?
They'd bitch. They'd moan. They'd form a few committees made out of people who don't know anything about solar, who invest in oil, or who think that the earth is going to end in the next century via divine intervention. Then they'd say they needed to observe the solar plant for a few years to verify it did what it was supposed to do. Then they'd offer to pay for 1/4 of the station on the condition that Musk builds a coal power plant for backup for the battery backup.
Yeah, can't imagine why he isn't going to "Build it first and trust in the government."
I prefer to look at production in terms of megawatt-hours-per-year-per-year. According to Wikipedia, the projected total PV output for the entire world was projected to be around 400,000 Megawatt-Hours this year
No.
The graph you link shows a production rate of 400,000 Megawatt (p) this year. Not Megawatt-hours.
Megawatt (p) = "peak Megawatt". One MW(p) of solar panels would produce 1 Megawatt under peak sun: that is, at noon, if placed normal to the noon sun. How many megawatt-hours you get from that many panels depends on how much sunlight they get (which depends on where they are, how cloudy it is, and what direction they are pointed).
Here's a map of the global insolation (short for "incident solar radiation", by the way) on a horizontal surface (which is not the optimum pointing for a solar panel): http://solargis.com/assets/gra...
Sunlight at noon is nominally 1 kW/m2, so the numbers on the top are effective hours of noon sunlight per year. Thus, if you put the panels horizontal at the "orange" regions of this map, you get about 2200 hours of sunlight. So: multiply your "Megawatts (p)" by 2200 to get Megawatt-hours.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
if you lived in Arizona, that would be great. Where I am, you'd get maybe a quarter to third of the power you'd normally want to use, and that might not be a bad thing at the lower prices that are coming. But what you're proposing is a more a backup or emergency strategy for over half the county.
Not at all. Stop it with the claim that a solution has to be perfect in every respect to be worth doing. Even if rooftop solar doesn't cover 100% of your energy needs it still is a fantastic idea and certainly is more than a backup/emergency idea. I've already done the math and with current technology I could be net zero or better to the grid with my house if I had a solar covered roof and I live in a northern state not noted for intense sun. I'm hardly the only one in that situation. Roofs are nothing but wasted space right now. Rather than covering green fields with solar panels it makes absolute sense to cover roof tops with them. With the cost of solar panels and batteries getting low enough there really is no good argument not to if you can plan for periods of time longer than the current year. Most of the US gets more than enough sunlight to justify rooftop solar as a big part of our energy portfolio. Rooftop PV has an estimated capacity of around 818TWh/year which is enough to cover about 20% of our total energy needs. Total solar capacity is something like 400TWh/year which is over 100X our current total energy usage.
Elon's always been a fencing scar and Persian cat from being a true Bond villain.
Obviously he's going to use SpaceX as a means to loft a NAZI Sun Gun to bend the world to his will.
I mean with those resources, he'd have to be STUPID to not go the SSPS / superweapon route.
Posting this logged in so you know why when I go missing...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
"Do that, prove it works, then come to the taxpayers."
Already done on a small scale (every fully solar-powered off-grid home in the USA,) it's proven to easily scale up (various types of solar plants eist in various form factors) and taxpayers have already been paying for it as-is.
How about instead of waiting on Elon to save your ass, you do it yourself?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Southern US border = 1989 miles (source)
100 miles x 100 miles = 10,000 sq miles (source)
Thickness of solar wall needed: 10,000sq miles / 1989 miles = 5.03 miles
Take this sig and smoke it.
He built SpaceX and trusted the government.
Why not do the same here for a small or medium sized city?
Why should we give him a truckload of money and trust him?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Because powering my home is the same thing as powering a city.
GTFO
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
A quick google and a couple minutes with a calculator comes up with ~$1.5T for the solar panels, assuming sunny days all year round.
That cheap???? The U.S. spends 1.2 Trillion dollars on electricity per year.
oops, my google-fu failed me. 1.2 Trillion is the amount we spend on all energy per year, not just electricity. Electricity is about 31 percent of that.
Still, you're saying that four years of the money we spend on electricity would pay for the panels? Still sounds like a bargain.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Solar has a very low capacity factor (~20%-30%) which means we need to find a way to store the electricity.
We have that and we're making it better fast. Batteries are already available at reasonable price points and the cost is falling steadily.
The majority of storage is done thru pumped-hydro.
Some is but that's going to change as solar and becomes more popular. You'll see homes and businesses with battery packs in steadily increasing numbers in the coming decades. It's already cheap enough that I can buy a battery pack to power my home for an entire day for under $10K and the price keeps falling.
Tesla's gigafactory is not going to be able to produce enough batteries for grid level storage.
Why do you presume it will be the only factory producing batteries? It is almost inevitable that there will be more factories like it and probably sooner than you think. Never mind the fact that they already ARE producing batteries for grid storage.
This plan will end up costing trillions and still will not work. It will also will cost trillions in grid improvements and probably tens of trillions in storage. I am sure Musk likes the idea of the US giving him trillions, but I think their are better and cheaper options.
What options do you think are "better and cheaper" in the long run? Nuclear fission will never happen for political reasons if nothing else. Fossil fuels are a dead end that will choke the planet. Fusion doesn't exist yet. Hydro is fine but limited. Geothermal same thing. Seriously, what do you think is better? I think distributed solar and industrial scale wind are easily the least worst option available to most of us. The cost is already competitive and falling fast. Nothing else available is meaningfully cleaner. Nothing else out there is as easy to distribute. We're going to be investing trillions into energy one way or another so why not pick the one that is clean and that we know works?
Just for scale, there is purportedly a ton of gold in every cubic mile of seawater.
If you took $250 million from each Billionaire jetting around the world talking about Global Warming, they could probably build a demonstration plant that could run Vegas or Tuscon.
Do that, prove it works, then come to the taxpayers.
Hopefully it will work as well as No Child Left Behind, Trickle Down Economics, and abstinence based sex education. Tell me though - exactly what is the show stopper you envision that makes you think this won't work? The concept to me at least is so simple that the only thing left is the scaling.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
How about instead of waiting on Elon to save your ass, you do it yourself?
His plan is to be raptured.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
A quick google and a couple minutes with a calculator comes up with ~$1.5T for the solar panels, assuming sunny days all year round.
Fossil fuel subsidies cost the globe $5 Trillion each year. So by that standard your number seems downright reasonable and cost effective.
So, doable? Yeah, could be done. Cheap and easy? Not hardly.....
Nobody said it would be cheap but it might easily be cheaper than all of the alternatives. Certainly will be cheaper than fossil fuels and the baggage they bring.
He's already going to build a huge battery in Australia:
http://money.cnn.com/2017/07/0...
So he's getting there.
of solar panels. Practically nothing!
We can wait then.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I've never understood why people always talk about using such a big area. For years where I'm at new apartment buildings are required to have cable connectors. Because cable is considered a 'utility'. Well, so is electricity. So why not require them to have solar panels and batteries as well? Most apartments have utilities included in the rent anyway. So in the long run the owner is going to save money. The builders would probably scream, "It's a burden!" which is what they did when they were forced to add cable. But you know what, let's just take the Ethanol subsidy and convert that into a Solar Subsidy. This will help offshoot the cost. And everyone will be happier in the long run. Well, except the Iowa Caucus of course. ;)
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
Most of those [pumped-hydro] locations are already tapped.
For context, there's about 21 GW of pumped hydro capacity in the United States, which is about 1/5th of the capacity of all operating nuclear power plants in the US. But are most of those locations tapped?
No. I'll give you two general counterexamples.
1. One counterexample is the "west coast" of the lower peninsula of Michigan. There is one pumped hydro facility there, called Ludington. It's roughly 2 GW in capacity (with roughly 18 GWh in storage), and about 1000 acres in surface coverage. The lower reservoir is Lake Michigan; the upper reservoir is a man-made pond. But the geological features aren't unique to Ludington, MI -- it's prevalent on much of the lower peninsula's Lake Michigan coast, the result of dunes formed over millennia as debris blew west to east across Lake Michigan. Bottom line: there's no physical reason why one couldn't build a dozen facilities the scale of Luddington, also using Lake Michigan as a lower reservoir.
2. A second counterexample can be found at Taum Sauk mountain. The Taum Sauk Hydroelectric Power Station is a pumped hydro facility with 450 MW of capacity and 3,600 MWh of storage. The lower reservoir wasn't a pool of water at all until the facility was built; it was merely a fork of the Black River. The upper reservoir is an above ground swimming pool, built on top of the mountain. It's entirely man made. The geographic feature needed -- an elevation delta of a few hundred feet (860 in this case), with a slope common for forested mountainside, near a river -- isn't unique by a long shot.
That's two counterexamples off of the top of my head -- the Michigan coast of Lake Michigan and anywhere you've got a mountainous region with a river nearby. Plenty of technical potential.
The reason we don't have more pumped hydro is because the energy market price differential (LMP or system lambda, depending on region) between 3 am and 3 pm simply isn't large enough. It doesn't make economic sense to build more pumped hydro so long as we continue to burn coal and gas unabated, because the gap between the daily highs and lows aren't adequate. However, if we continue to retire coal and gas (and nuclear as it ages) and we continue to build solar PV, we'll see a flip where the peak price of energy drifts from early afternoon to 9 pm -- and storage will be economic, buying energy at 11am and selling it after sundown. Michigan could be the evening power center for the entire Midwest, and scattered new pumped hydro facilities on select Appalachian and Rocky terrain could easily store significant amounts of solar and wind output nearer the coasts.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
We don't know because nobody has had to change batteries in their Tesla. Cars have been going for 5 years and over 200,000 miles with less than 6% battery capacity loss.
You can go troll somewhere else now. We'll wake you if a Tesla battery "wears out" and needs to be replaced.
It will probably happen some day but looks like they will last much longer than a fossil fuel drivetrain.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
> Most of the "subsidies" people come up with are nothing but rules about how
> taxes are figured
Like most power-sector subsidies. Federal subsidies for renewables are paid out using Production *Tax Credits* and work pretty much exactly the same way as the oil and gas industry. This should not be surprising, given they're the same industry.
> Plus, NONE of these amount to a hill of beans compared to the REAL
> subsidies, tax credits and government incentives (like loan guarantees)
> for Solar, Wind and other renewables
The total amount of money that the O&G industry receives, whether that be directly, due to avoided taxes, research, or any other means, is about $466 billion up to 2009. In comparison, the same number for renewables is about $6 billion. The later is over a shorter period, from 1994, but by any measure is much, much smaller than what the O&G industry gets.
I don't know if you've noticed but solar panels are everywhere. Mostly on the roofs of houses. Sometimes in "farms". The good thing about this distributed deployment of power generation is that it provides stability to the grid and avoids building large transmission lines.
(You may have taken his picture of the US showing the land area literally and thought that he wanted to build one solar farm in Nevada to power the nation. Well, that's not happening.)
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Because powering my home is the same thing as powering a city.
GTFO
Okay. Tell me why the battery leveling system in Los Angelous won't work. All of the basics are right there. Its real and its happening.
Things like syncing the AC, and all of the other aspects are right there. The only thing different is the production of th eAlternating current from the Batteries, and getting the charging current to them. It's all been done already. And as engineering goes, it isn't terribly complex.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Then it should be easy for him to do it and say, "look! It works!"
As opposed to , "I know it will work, give me money".
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The IMF has a study showing that fossil fuels receive $5.3 trillion a year in subsidies.
https://www.imf.org/en/News/Ar...
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
And then you look at Germany, that has insolation similar to Alaska, making record-breaking amounts of solar power semi regularly. Meaning if a country that is entirely located further south were to make even a modest attempt, would completely outlclass the Germans at Green energy.
Did you even look at that page? A lot of the "subsidies" are "externalities", "local air pollution" etc.
It is clearly misleading to use subsidies in that sense as governments are not giving 5.3 trillion dollars to oil firms every year. They should just call them externalities.
I used the word most, and not all. Also just a couple of weeks ago the national academy of science debunked the feasibility of a 100% wind, water, and solar system.
Oh crap, I wonder where all these ppl are getting 5,10,15, 20, & 30 year loans for their education, cars, and homes.
If the tax breaks and deductions are available to any and all businesses, then they are not "Oil Subsidies".
According to a Greenpeace list, US Govt. "subsidies" to Big Oil includes several categories, some of which might reasonably be considered "subsidies" but are in fact not for Big Oil specifically. Rather they are tax code elements that are available for any business, primarily in the realm of accelerated depreciation of capital assets. There are also loan guarantee and construction bond programs; again, these are available for all industry, not just Big Oil. Perhaps Big Oil utilizes these tax code items more frequently than other industries, but that does not make these "Big Oil subsidies".
The biggest "subsidy" on their list is in fact not a subsidy at all. Some years ago, the Government leased oil fields and agreed on a per barrel royalty structure. When oil was $30/BB, the royalties seemed reasonable to all parties, so the contracts were signed. In some cases, the Government failed to stipulate any royalties at all! Now, though, those royalties are a pittance and the Government wishes it had structured the royalties differently. The difference between what they are making and what they *wished* they were making is often included in the calculations of "Big Oil subsidies". Congress has moved in the past to try to retroactively modify the contracts and demanded that the oil companies accept new leases.
Greenpeace also includes several intangibles in their "Big Oil subsidies" list. Things such as
* Giving money to international financial institutions
* The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve
* Construction and protection of the nation's highway system (if we had 100% EV fleet, wouldn't this be a Big Solar subsidy?)
* Allowing the industry to pollute
Keep the nature of these fake "subsidies" in mind when discussing the issue. The "Green" industry partakes of several of these same subsidies: Modified Accelerated Cost-Recovery System (MACRS), R&D credits, etc., but also receive direct no-doubt-about-it subsides. Like ethanol's $0.50/gallon production subsidy (when it was in effect) not to mention ag subsidies used to prop up the growing of the corn that goes into ethanol, billions of dollars every year going into the pockets of Big Ag, or EV $7500/car subsidy, solar subsides over the years.
Are we talking about the same "Trickle Down" that ended in the greatest recession in the history of the country? The one that needed major bail outs to the auto, finance, and banking industries? The one that still dropped like a stone even after the use once every 50 years foreign income tax credit that brought all that stashed foreign cash in?
Many of these analyses are missing a basic, fundamental point and variations on that point: You don't have to do the full monty to get improvements.
1. Even if you only have solar farms and no batteries, that reduces the dependency on fossil fuel. For certain parts of the country, the times of maximum insolation correspond really quite well with maximum usage due to cooling and business / manufacturing needs, so no batteries needed, and the existing generating capacity can be scaled back to cover nights and days with less sun.
2. Battery capacity can be phased in (a corollary to point 1) and the system will still be useful.
3. Just because you can't do it all immediately and POOF have a sudden switchover to full solar doesn't mean it isn't a laudable goal to work in that direction. Moreover, because it will disrupt a fair chunk of the economy to switch over to solar, doing it gradually (on the scale of decades) makes sense.
4. Even if the goal is only to achieve 10% replacement of existing fuel-based generating capacity with solar, it's a good thing to do.
5. Our existing nuclear power plants have a finite lifetime and replacement capacity will need to come from somewhere.
6. Just because solar power doesn't make as much sense in certain parts of the country (primarily the more northern lattitudes) doesn't mean there is no value to deploying it where it does make sense.
7. Tesla is a battery manufacturer (among other things); chemical batteries aren't the only way to go for storage. Lithium batteries in particular might not even be a good way to go, given their limited lifetime and potential to catch fire as a failure mechanism.
8. Batteries alone (or some storage technology) without any solar power might be a good idea to allow scaling-back of peak generating capacity.
So, a national effort to improve the power infrastructure just might be a good idea, even if it isn't quite the pipe dream from the summary.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Were talking about Musk here... if there is only one person in the world who could pull this off and be profitable at it its him.
[($)]
Not to mention the fact that home solar is still a big fat fail. It's supposed to be industrial scale solar that's "cheaper than coal".
Don't get me wrong. I would LOVE for it to be the other way. My own house would be solar if it made any sense. But I'm not just going to be an early adopter "just because".
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
So you want to pay for the money to prepay your electric bill for the next 20 years, then churn the cycle again because that's the stated lifespan of the panels?
Do you actually have a dime to your name or are you just some nimwit with no money spewing bullshit?
Extended loan periods for anything end up raping you on interest. This includes 30 year home loans.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
That wasn't trickle down, that was banking deregulation and mortgage backed securities. Even the mortgage meltdown wasn't that bad. Things didn't get really ugly until everyone found out that subprime junk bonds were being rated AAA.
That crashed the entire credit market including business and government.
I remember the day when the ratings fraud came home to roost like it was 9/11 or the Challenger disaster.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
SpaceX: The government of the United States isn't the only entity looking to send stuff into orbit. There's well-known demand in the space industry, and it's growing.
Solar: Don't need to give it to him all at once. Give him the start up money: land purchase, etc. If the city already owns the land, even better. Then pay as the panels and batteries are installed. No new panels? No payment. The technology for panels and batteries is already known to work. The issue is people bellyaching about having to do it, even though their health will be better off once we've put the last nail in Fossil Fuel's coffin. (Seriously, we're losing $1Trillion a year due to health problems from FF air pollution: health care, premature death, sick time, etc.)
Even then, if I was forced to trust my money to someone, I'd give to Tesla, and gladly. Tesla and SpaceX have had much better success at solving today's challenging problems than the FF industry.
It's kinda connected.
What Tesla is doing with battery and solar panel production will make it more affordable to "do it yourself".
People already are doing it themselves using Tesla and other gear.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
That's exactly the problem. Fossil fuels are not paying for the damage they do to health and the environment. They get to spew pollution and everybody else has to subsidize the damage.
Fossil fuels shouldn't be allowed to free ride on everyone else.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Of the $5.302T they claim for 2015, $333B was pre-tax subsidies. Here pre-tax subsidies mean when consumers pay a price lower than the cost to produce; these are by-gosh real subsidies, like Saudi Arabia charging citizens 60-cents per gallon and eating the difference. They lump producer and consumer subsidies together, but a footnote says "Producer subsides as estimated by the OECD are realtively small, at $16.8 billion in 2011 and $17.9 billion in 2015."
The largest portion of the $5T+ is in "post-tax subsidies", which here are the externalities:
* Global warming
They figured global warming costs at $1.268T
* Local pollution
They figured local pollution at $2.734T
* Congestion $359B
* Accidents $271B
* Road damage $24B
I'm not at all clear as to how these would not also apply to a worldwide fleet of 100% emission-free EVs, charged by 100% emission free power (solar, wind, hydro plants).
* Foregone consumption tax revenue $313B
Some countries, like the US, do not have a national consumption tax and some have a consumption tax, but energy is discounted or excluded. If the whole world had consumption taxes AND if energy was included in those taxes...we'd have garnered that figure, apparently. Of course, the US would not be taxing the consumption of electricity made by Mr. Musks solar plant, either, so those was also represent "foregone consumption tax revenue".
They have to pay to process and distribute it. You don't just burn what comes out of the ground.
I don't mind calling them externalities. But subsidy is misleading as it implies that governments are actually cutting cheques to the value of 5.3 trillion dollars to fossil fuel companies each year. They are not.
And there are also significantly externalities to stopping fossil fuel use overnight that would easily dwarf the 5.3 trillion dollars that the analysis ignores. There is no substitute available today that could replace fossil fuels overnight. If all of the hydro, nuclear, wind and solar disappeared tomorrow, the world would barely blink in comparison, and we would probably be ok within the year.
Why the hell is he talking about square miles of batteries? Has he lost his mind? A given capacity of energy storage is typically noted in Joules or Watt*hours, not square miles. Use normal units please. Not just Musk. Please everyone, use normal units. I've had it with the "10 elephants of pressure" or "10 libraries of congress of storage capacity" or "5 football fields of length" etc. Please use normal units everyone.
Panic in a corner, pussy.
We've known all of this for years. Here's a talk by Nathan Lewis from 2010, skip to the 11min mark if you want to see the 100x100mi solar square. In fact, you'd probably need less today since panel efficiency has gone up a bit. Everything Musk talks about is old, yet apparently when Musk says is, everything old is new again! Take for example solar shingles, sold by DOW in 2011 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_shingle).
Do you know what the system lamda is for pumped hydro? For batteries, I come up with $0.07-0.12 depending on the exact operating mode.
How much does it cost to change the batteries in a Tesla?
Ah, Captain non-sequitur!
If you are somehow bringin up the battey replacement cost of a Tesla and think that it has anything to do with this subject - seriously, I want you to put together the exact reason why this bizzare riposte is relevant. But I have things to do tonight, and the rest of your post was silly, so give me numbers. My research on the subsidies is out here on Slashdot, and you can search - I'm not going to do it all over again for someone that posts Mitch McConnell talking points. Meanwhile, thanks for playing.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Are we talking about the same "Trickle Down" that ended in the greatest recession in the history of the country? The one that needed major bail outs to the auto, finance, and banking industries? The one that still dropped like a stone even after the use once every 50 years foreign income tax credit that brought all that stashed foreign cash in?
Yeah. sycodon is reciting alternate fact history. He probably thinks that Germany is sunnier than the USA too, if ya know what I mean.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
That wasn't trickle down, that was banking deregulation and mortgage backed securities..
Trickle down never fails. We should follow it to it's obvious conclusion and have only one person in the USA having all of the money - then we'll all have jobs and work for free and be rich.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Every time I hear people speak of a carbon free future they will mention wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal but add the caveat of something like "with a little bit of nuclear" as if to try to please the entirety of the crowd.
Musk is doing the same in his talks, he'll say that solar would work to meet our energy needs. Of course he'd say that, he's a salesman trying to sell his products. I ask, how much would it cost? Not just in dollars but in lives.
According to this study the safest energy source we have is nuclear power.
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/...
According to the EIA nuclear is very low cost in dollars too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I've had people dispute the numbers on nuclear power safety by claiming those numbers did not include large scale accidents like Chernobyl. As far as I can tell the numbers not only include Chernobyl but also expected reduced lifespan from the survivors. Chernobyl is also largely irrelevant, no one builds nuclear power like that any more and no one would be foolish enough to do so in the future.
People then tend to dispute the solar death numbers by claiming that trip and fall deaths "don't count" for some reason. These are still people dead from the construction and maintenance of solar power, even if it's because people failed to follow the safety rules and paid with their lives for it. By this metric we could say Chernobyl deaths "don't count" because they failed to adhere to proper safety protocols and many died as a result. Dead is dead, and if we are honest about the deaths then nuclear is much safer than even solar.
Then there is the carbon footprint, the whole reason we are having this discussion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Nuclear power has nearly half the carbon output per energy produced than solar photovoltaic power. Concentrated solar thermal power has a lower carbon footprint than nuclear but that is not what Musk is selling, likely because those cannot be put on the roof of your house and because at current estimates it would cost double what PV does.
I look at the math and I found that Musk has it backwards. The future isn't solar "with a little bit of nuclear", it's nuclear with a little bit of solar.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I'm only asking that fossil fuels pay their own way and not freeload by making everyone else pay for their pollution.
(BTW, I have solar panels for 90% of my electricity including an electric car.)
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
So, just because it would take a few years to replace fossil fuels with solar, we shouldn't do it?
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Tell me though - exactly what is the show stopper you envision that makes you think this won't work?
Transmission lines.
The concept to me at least is so simple that the only thing left is the scaling.
Yes, scaling up the plan is the problem. You lose massive amounts of electricity as you ship it from PA to NYC.
Ken
I have plenty of money to my name. I am not super rich but much better off than my average fellow American. Almost entirely thanks to my father and his investment in my education (yes I went to public school). You have no need for more of my personal details.
Most homes have 10, 20, and even 50 year roof & foundation warranties against build defects. It may not cost as much but that is something you are in one way or other paying up front. Similarly, the panels can have warrant, replacement, and cost rolled into the value of the house to spread across 30 years of mortgage. The HVAC, plumbing, flooring, lawn, etc are all done that way, why can't solar? We get loans for shitty assets like cars. Are panels worse?
And I am not sure what you mean by "raping you on interest". My company 401k gets a slightly better return than my current mortgage interest rate. There are mortgage rates just 1-2 percent higher than inflation. That means spending all the money now is almost no better than spending it over 30 years on a loan. Assuming you have no investment options.
And he has an agreement, up front, for the government to pay for it when it's complete. He's not building it on speculation "in case" the government decides to buy it after the fact.
+1
He didn't build SpaceX on the off chance that the government would pay him back. If you look at his clients for SpaceX, it includes NASA but is not REMOTELY exclusive to NASA. Additionally, he built SpaceX partially because it was well known that government funding for NASA was drying up. You might expect him to build solar arrays on speculation if, for instance, the government announced it's plans to get out of the energy business entirely...then there might be motivation for him to get into that business similar to SpaceX.
Not that I really wanted to get involved in this yelling contest, but let's use facts though: The majority of manufacturers offer the 25-year standard solar panel warranty, which means that power output should not be less than 80% of rated power after 25 years and they don't suddenly stop working by then.
Batteries though, maybe ten years?
And dumb ass fake reality show stars get to be President!
Why is Snark Required?
It never works. The top 1% and above reap huge profits from deregulation and government subsidies. Then when the inevitable crash comes the wealthy are the ones who are bailed out and everyone else is left in the lurch.
This is what happened in the 2008 crash. For 95% of the country there was no real recovery. People who lost their houses never got another chance to own a home. Those who lost their jobs are earning a lot less. Real wages are flat or declining. Meanwhile zero interest rates are making Wall Street and others in the corporate criminal economic sector richer then they have ever been.
The about to fail health care reform/swindle is trickle down. A lot of middle class and below people loose medical insurance and a few at the top get billions in tax breaks. In this case the billions are not some hyperbole number like "a gazillion", but actual decreases in their taxes to the tune of billions of US dollars. Real free money, and a real redistribution of wealth from the less well off to the ultra rich.
It's a Republican masturbation fantasy come true (pun intended).
Why is Snark Required?
He was born South African (meaning Fox News would also pretend he's a muslim) and would need a constitutional change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
And common sense would tell you: such a claim would be bullocks.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The fossil fuel industry gets phenomenal tax breaks and it has going as far back as 1913. In 1926 the oil depletion tax break was 27.5 percent annually, and it stayed at that level until Jimmy Carter was President.
Since you are clearly a clueless feeb, why don't you STFU. As long as the empty place between your ears remains a fact free zone, anything you post is a complete waste of bandwidth. Leave the rest of us alone and go back to watching porn in your parents basement.
Why is Snark Required?
that has insolation similar to Alaska ... a guy here (Rei?) once linked one, but I did not book mark it.
Actually Alaska has a significant (2 times?) higher insolation.
But obviously only in summer and not in winter, but over the course of a year it is much much higher than in Germany. Interesting, isn't it? I mean: it does not sound plausible but it is the case. I guess you find some maps to verify it
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
2) Disposing of old batteries and outdated solar panels is an environmental disaster just waiting to explode.
Wrong, they are both easily recycled.
These things contain some of the most toxic chemicals known to mankind.
Wrong.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Not having it all in the same area has even more advantages than just safety and security. By spreading the area out over the longitude covered by the US, the need for storage is reduced.
It doesn't. A battery required for even a small house costs more than $3000, so you are either full of shit or read your books off paper in candlelight.
If power for the entire country were concentrated in one place, then it seems to me that this is an attack waiting to happen. Where is the redundancy needed for a secure operation? While the power grid in the US is vulnerable, it does have some degree of redundancy.
"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!" -- Dr. Strangelove
Thanks. TLDR for skimmers:
Their energy payback times (EPBT)—the time it takes to produce
all the energy used in their life cycles—currently are between six
months to two years, depending on the location/solar irradiation
and the technology. And with expected life times of 30 years, their
Energy Return Ratios (ERR) are in the range of 60:1 to 15:1, depending on the location and
the technology, thus returning 15 to 60 times more energy than the
energy they use.
And 30 years is considered a low-ball figure by most people, although efficiency will be lower than at the start of life it will still be around 80%, so you could assume 50 years or even 100 years (why replace 80% efficiency panels when you can keep them and colocate new panels?) which makes them excellent.
You may never bother to recycle old panels. You'll sell them cheaply to third world countries as they'll still be 80% efficient after 30 years, or you'll keep on using them if you don't have space concerns (consider that a new panel in 30 years time may be half the price in real terms, and generate 20-50% more power, so giving the old panels away may be a reasonable thing to do, the new panels will still be too expensive for some areas of the world).
That probably depends on the place. Power requirements of US residential buildings are staggering, but in most parts of the world, they're much lesser.
Ezekiel 23:20
Is that you, clean coal?
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
That is called business - where the buyer and seller both benefit. NASA got their cargo transportation much cheaper than what it would cost them otherwise, and SpaceX got a flight tested rocket, which can be used for other customers.
Why don't you ask the billions of people who would die during those few years?
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
If it's so profitable long term, why does nobody just build them and sell the electric?
The truth is that solar panels or wind mills aren't all that profitable long term and except for very small, direct use installations aren't yet profitable. There are many other solar designs that are way better at collecting and storing the suns energy.
I'm all for using renewables but at this point we have no economic model that makes sense without massive government cash injections.
What I've learned about Musk is that he only opens his mouth when there is an opportunity for one of 'his' solutions to "solve" a problem and it's not his own money, physics and practicality be damned.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
And everybody suffers from the pollution.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Yeah like the 25-50 year warranties on roofs, those aren't worth the paper they're written on. They don't transfer owners, they are usually prorated after the first year and only cover manufacturer defects, don't cover workmanship, don't cover wind damage even though they're rated for hurricane speed winds, ... and that is if the company that wrote the warranty is even around by the time you need it.
25 years on a solar panel is generous. Many early commercial solar panels are already being replaced 10 years later.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Wikipedia: the average area of a US Walmart is about 10,000 square meters (~100,000 square feet)
Statista: There are about 5000 Walmart stores (and affilliates) in the US.
Total area: about 0.2% of what you need to get 100 miles by 100 miles.
I'm pro solar, but the scale of going 100% solar is not small.
Yea... You do realize that this is how they handle the loss of value of their oil well as you pump out the oil and sell it right? You also realize that this is NOT unique to the Oil Industry either? (And I don't know what I'm talking about... Shesh..)
This is the same thing a manufacturer does when they build stuff using parts in inventory. The value of their inventory is decreased because they used it, thus they can claim this as part of the cost of building their widgets and selling them. Of course the rules for Oil production are slightly more complex, but this is not a unique thing for the Oil Industry. In fact, the lumber and mining industry share almost the identical set of rules.
So this is NOT a subsidy but merely a set of rules about how the Oil industry must calculate the amount they claim for expenses and costs. A set of rules that do NOT benefit the Oil Industry inordinately or unfairly. A set of rules which are shared in principle with other unrelated industries.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
This makes no sense. Why would people die waiting? Perhaps from pollution?
Polluted air 'poisoning thousands' across north of England, warns report
https://www.theguardian.com/en...
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
The 21st century recessions were due mostly to federal government pressure to loan to insolvent home buyers. That pressure was a result of Democratic party policy then in place, that Republicans were unable to end.
This has been thoroughly debunked.
The result was inevitable and had nothing to do with your jealousy of rich people.
It was all about the jealousy of rich people, for other rich people. We can call it greed.
The people who gained insurance coverage under Obamacare were mostly people who didn't want insurance, and with the end of Obamacare will be free to once again do as they please. You, however, think it's OK to point government guns at their heads and proclaim "Your money or your life."
From 2012; The ACA bars the IRS from bringing a criminal enforcement case against someone who refuses to pay the non-insurance penalty. And it makes it very difficult, if not impossible, for it to enforce a tax lien. Law professors Jordan Barry and Bryan Camp have a nice piece in Tax Notes explaining it all. That leaves only one tool—the IRS can subtract the penalty from any refund it owes a taxpayer. But that applies only if the IRS happens to owe somebody a refund. These days, two-thirds of taxpayers get one, but it is usually their choice. Only low-income households who receive refundable credits, such as the Earned Income Credit, always get refunds. But the ACA specifically exempts most of them from the tax because their income is so low. Bottom line: Notwithstanding the nutty Internet rumors that the IRS is hiring 20,000 revenue agents to collect the tax, most people who really want to game the system will probably get away with it.
Cheap storage VM.
That's not paying their own way. Would you accept that argument for SS or Medicaid?
Cheap storage VM.
Going on 12 years for an off-road installation in Wyoming, with all the wind and hail that implies. Batteries have lost some capacity but are still functional for at least another few years, panels themselves (Panasonic) have only dropped to 95% of their average output when first installed. Sure, the warranty won't cover wind/tornado/lightning damage, but that is what homeowners insurance is for. Considering it would have cost 14k just to bring power to the corner of the property, the off-grid solution has already paid itself off, and that takes into consideration the upcoming battery replacement.
You really need to get some new lies. Your talking points have all been disproven a long time ago.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
What kind of habitat are you destroying covering up 101 square miles of land. What animals in the desert are you displasing ?
The truth is that solar panels or wind mills aren't all that profitable long term and except for very small, direct use installations aren't yet profitable. There are many other solar designs that are way better at collecting and storing the suns energy.
I'm all for using renewables but at this point we have no economic model that makes sense without massive government cash injections.
Let's be fair here. Last I checked, no modern electricity generation was profitable without a subsidy of some sort.
Coal and natural gas would be prohibitively expensive if they were not allowed to externalize most of their costs (pollution and health impacts, environmental impacts, land giveaways).
Nuclear is barely even profitable when given a massive subsidy in the form of legal limits on liability. Nuclear would be much more expensive if operators had to pay for insurance beyond their current liability caps. And that's even after the federal government paid most nuclear R&D costs.
Wind actually might be profitable now, I'm not sure on the current state of things.
Oil has the double whammy: externalized costs like coal plus massive federal expenditures to keep the prices stable (defense plus the Strategic Petroleum Reserve).
I would advocate removing all these subsidies and letting the market sort it out, but I really don't want to tank the economy.
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
Oh come on. Fail in what way? The costs continue to decline, and efficiencies continue to improve. My uncle powered a previously power free cottage in Ontario, Canada with one large solar cell and a few marine batteries. This was about ten years ago. That's enough to take care of he lighting, and provide power for a water heater, and a few outlets. Obviously, that's much smaller than an average home, but it scales easily.
Just another day in Paradise
You always do.
And then some say "Oh you see. The market came up with a solution. And so fast! We didn't need to do anything!" Ignoring the fact that we in Europe, China and so on did actively supported that development and that's why we got there.
Whatever in the US or not regulations and tax advantages and support / unfair market was a thing.
Claiming that fossil fuels are being subsidised by 5.3 trillion implies that we would be 5.3 trillion better off without them. I challenge that implication. If we were to stop using fossil fuel today, we would find ourselves more than 5.3 trillion worse off. We couldn't feed ourselves, could take sick people to hospitals, couldn't take medicines to hospitals etc.
This isn't to suggest that we should develop alternative - but the fact that there is no replacement now means that there is in reality no subsidy.
The story is a rip off of this http://www.businessinsider.com...
The problem with this theory is that electricity is only 20% of mankinds energy consumption https://www.iea.org/publicatio... each panel requires 20 grams of silver to build https://www.usatoday.com/story... so to build this solar farm would require 7.2 times all the silver on planet earth.... https://www.nationaleconomicse...
But Elon Musk, who's claim to fame is that he has fleeced more taxpayer dollars than any person in the history of mankind said it, so it must be true, right?
Murphy was an optimist
> You lose massive amounts of electricity as you ship it from PA to NYC.
Empirical, not alternative, facts:
Siemens: 500kV high voltage DC transmission losses for 800km, 6%. 800kV? 2.6%.
https://www.siemens.com/press/pool/de/events/2012/energy/2012-07-wismar/factsheet-hvdc-e.pdf
Pittsburgh, on the east of Pennsylvania, to NYC, is 371 miles, about 600 kilometers, on the highway.
Siemens quotes 2.6% losses for a 800 kV high voltage DC transmission line over 800 km. Nevada to NYC is 4000 km, so that would be about 13% loss.
Citation?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
OH? On the first Google page there is this:
http://news.nationalgeographic...
Are you SURE about your assertion still? This is National Geographic here, not exactly a right wing climate change denying organization...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Why? We knew wind power production was unstable.
He solves it.
No economic model?
Just charge for the usage of nonrenewable nature resources, pollution and climate change. Done.
Your logic is odd. This makes no sense.
"- but the fact that there is no replacement now means that there is in reality no subsidy."
You are trying to defend the indefensible.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
You made the assertions... how about backing them up?
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
From my understanding, panels don't really fail, other than in some pretty unique cases (i.e. a physical accident etc...), and no the lifetime is no where near 45-100 years. The "lifetime" of a panel is 10-25 years, with likely most falling into the 15-20 year time span. This is also the reason why you see renewable energy companies signing 20 year energy contracts, as it more less basically covers the lifespan (and cost) of their hardware. The "lifespan" is more of a reflection (sorry pardon pun) of effectiveness, which lowers each year, more less exponentially as the panel ages until you get to a point where the percentage of efficiency is such that it does't make much sense to keep maintaining the panel anymore from a business standpoint (that threshold can depend on what tolerances the company/site has some may try to milk out as much as they can, however will likely have to compromise in that they will have a contract stipulating they must supply at least XXX MW, and the less efficient your panels, the less power produced).
Those first array's were composed of large concave (or is it convex) panels, which while worked quite well, were difficult to replace as the age. Most new modern array's are made is many many smaller "large flat screen TV sized" panels, which can be swapped out as need be (as their efficiency drops, which can be directly measured centrally, and sending out technicians to do the work on panel R123A23P5 or whatever). So from your example, sure the ARRAY can more less be around indefinitely, however the individual panels will more less all be switched out on an approximately 20 year cycle.
Ok, just saw the FUNNY post... whatever.
I agree with everything you say (though I'm making the assumption you know about the geography etc...).
However I'll give you another reason why additional hydro locations are difficult to find. It is the same reason that the US (and others) lack a lot of off shore wind power. NIMBY. Creating new hydro locations is disruptive, and you will get a lot of opposition, enough to basically make it unfeasible. Sure geographically it might make sense, and it might make sense from a generating standpoint, however if it appears that it is traditional native lands, home to the rare top hat grasshopper, close to cottagers, or any of about an infinite number of things that people can get upset about, it will be hard pressed to move forward. These things typically take up a lot of real estate, and heck you will get people from across the country without any skin in the actual game raising concerns about of it will effect ground water levels, and possible safety issues, etc... So it might be better to say that most of the EASY hydro locations have already been developed, and it just isn't worthwhile trying to do anymore (particularly as you say with the availability of coal and gas generation which you can spin up on pretty short notice).
Then again if you're China you just make a huge one and relocate everyone anyway, but not so easy in democracies.
Siemens quotes 2.6% losses for a 800 kV high voltage DC transmission line over 800 km. Nevada to NYC is 4000 km, so that would be about 13% loss.
Seems odd to have any substations, eh?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
See my next message... :)
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
The consumers pay the tax, dummy. Check how much these oil companies actually pay in taxes. Hint, they're fucking registered offshore.
OK, I will put it another way.
The opportunity cost of not using fossil fuels is much greater, at the present moment, than the opportunity cost of using them. Therefore the idea of fossil fuels being subsidised is at best, uninformed or economically illiterate, and at worst, dishonest.
The public generally doesn't want to pay more for fossil fuels than they are willing to pay now. And as the public are the ones who "pay" these externalities, they are paying exactly what they currently want to pay for the fossil fuels.
To use an analogy, I am not generally subsidising a supermarket when I drive there to buy groceries. I am incurring additional costs that I am willing to incur to get my groceries.
One day, maybe once we have alternatives that can replace fossil fuels, the public may well be unwilling to pay for these externalities, and at that point, if government continues to allow fossil fuel companies to spew into the environment, then yes, they could be considered to be subsidised. But at the moment, no, they are not subsidised. In fact, they are heavily taxed in many places (such as the UK where I live).
The big picture point that I think you are missing is that nobody is going to stop using fossil fuels until there is a replacement source of power.
It is absurd to look at the cost of abruptly stopping use of fossil fuels. Nobody is going to do that.
What people are doing is replacing fossil fuels with wind and solar power because it is cheaper and cleaner.
Nobody willingly pays for the cost of lung disease or sea level rise. These are costs which fossil fuels impose on everyone. It is an involuntary subsidy of fossil fuels. Nothing voluntary about it. Nobody chooses to get lung cancer or have their house swept away in a flood. The fossil fuel industry imposes these costs on others. They don't pay these costs but everyone else is forced to pay them.
No willing buyers and sellers here.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
No, if it is available to anyone, then it is just known as "the tax code".
People willingly pay those costs because people are not willing to live with the alternative - i.e. to live without what fossil fuels allow them to do.
There is no such thing as an "involuntary subsidy". It's called making a choice!
The fossil fuel industry does not impose costs on anyone. We accept the costs because we consider the alternative to be worse.
I can build an SLA bank that will last 25+ years for $1200, AND it will run your AC and other stuff at the same time, you only need enough solar.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
So... you have a secret source of information on a secret program to replace Tesla batteries that nobody else knows about?
I'm sure we would all love to hear more...
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?