Apparently it is imperative that we keep CO2 levels above 240ppm unless we want to destroy life as we know it. We have an obligation to save the planet and it's inhabitants from dying a slow, cold death!
I understand the real plan completely; after all, it's been publicly stated before: "...Under my plan, energy rates will necessarily skyrocket..."
What they fail to understand is that if electrical rates were to rise high enough to make solar a viable option, there would still be no one to buy them because businesses and industries would have long since closed or nearing the end of a slow painful death. Of course, there are those that support this plan as well: "Giving society cheap, abundant energy . . . would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun."
– Paul Ehrlich, “An Ecologist’s Perspective on Nuclear Power,” May/June 1978 issue of Federation of American Scientists Public Issue Report
With current technology, there is no pay back for solar power, and there is no such thing as base load solar power. Instead of spending billions on subsidies to incenti-vize the manufacturing and purchasing of solar panels, money should have been spent 100% on research and development into creating technology that could efficiently convert energy from the sun into electricity.
Even at $1.60 per watt material cost, given power rates in my area, daylight hours, and angle of the sun, it would take a little over ten years to produce $1.60 worth of electricity (22,857 hours at an average of 6 hours per day of peak output). There is no pay back for solar (unless you count grants and tax write offs, but the product cannot pay for itself.) These are rough numbers, but fine tuning them to bring them closer to reality would only shave a few months to a year off at best.
The other problem is capacity (maximum output.) The facility where I work has an average demand of 20MW. It is probably not even possible to construct a solar plant that could power this single facility, or provide base load power. The real estate and technology does not exist.
One more perspective: The going rate to build and install large solar power systems is about $10,000 per Kwh. Commercial customers in this region typically pay (annual average) $0.075 dollars per Kwh to purchase power from the power company.
A few months ago I asked someone what the return on investment would be for their system (wind turbines this time) and the guy actually got mad at me, and told me that I couldn't think of it that way, and that we just needed to do the "right thing." I then asked him if he were willing to help us do the "right thing" and install the system for 10% of his proposed price (which we would still end up paying twice as much for that power, but at least it would be a manageable budget increase) and of course he just didn't have a response for that, and the meeting was over at that point.
I work in energy management at a facility that is the largest of its type in the world, and our monthly power consumption is always well over one million dollars and that's after paying nearly half the rate per Kwh as a residential consumer in the area. As you can imagine, we often invite people in to pitch the latest and greatest in solar technology. At the moment, there is no such thing as "return on investment" on installing such a system. Just last week we heard a pitch from a group that wants to build a 40 acre solar-array that we could use to offset our load during peak hours. While they were being cagey with providing any numbers as to what sort of output we could expect from this system, they did tell us that the peak output would be 11Mw of power. This would be the output at high noon on a clear day. Even if we were to figure eight continuous hours of peak output from this system 365 days a year (not even possible)and figuring energy costs increases every few years, it would take 91 years for this system to generate the amount of power that we could have bought outright for the price to install this system. Given that such output numbers are impossible and that the life of the product is only 25 years, it will never pay for itself.
Would you want us to use taxpayer (via the Stimulus Bill) to build a 120 Million Dollar solar-array that will only produce 12 Million Dollars worth of electricity over it's life time?
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Apparently it is imperative that we keep CO2 levels above 240ppm unless we want to destroy life as we know it. We have an obligation to save the planet and it's inhabitants from dying a slow, cold death!
I understand the real plan completely; after all, it's been publicly stated before: "...Under my plan, energy rates will necessarily skyrocket..." What they fail to understand is that if electrical rates were to rise high enough to make solar a viable option, there would still be no one to buy them because businesses and industries would have long since closed or nearing the end of a slow painful death. Of course, there are those that support this plan as well: "Giving society cheap, abundant energy . . . would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun." – Paul Ehrlich, “An Ecologist’s Perspective on Nuclear Power,” May/June 1978 issue of Federation of American Scientists Public Issue Report
With current technology, there is no pay back for solar power, and there is no such thing as base load solar power. Instead of spending billions on subsidies to incenti-vize the manufacturing and purchasing of solar panels, money should have been spent 100% on research and development into creating technology that could efficiently convert energy from the sun into electricity. Even at $1.60 per watt material cost, given power rates in my area, daylight hours, and angle of the sun, it would take a little over ten years to produce $1.60 worth of electricity (22,857 hours at an average of 6 hours per day of peak output). There is no pay back for solar (unless you count grants and tax write offs, but the product cannot pay for itself.) These are rough numbers, but fine tuning them to bring them closer to reality would only shave a few months to a year off at best. The other problem is capacity (maximum output.) The facility where I work has an average demand of 20MW. It is probably not even possible to construct a solar plant that could power this single facility, or provide base load power. The real estate and technology does not exist.
One more perspective: The going rate to build and install large solar power systems is about $10,000 per Kwh. Commercial customers in this region typically pay (annual average) $0.075 dollars per Kwh to purchase power from the power company. A few months ago I asked someone what the return on investment would be for their system (wind turbines this time) and the guy actually got mad at me, and told me that I couldn't think of it that way, and that we just needed to do the "right thing." I then asked him if he were willing to help us do the "right thing" and install the system for 10% of his proposed price (which we would still end up paying twice as much for that power, but at least it would be a manageable budget increase) and of course he just didn't have a response for that, and the meeting was over at that point.
I work in energy management at a facility that is the largest of its type in the world, and our monthly power consumption is always well over one million dollars and that's after paying nearly half the rate per Kwh as a residential consumer in the area. As you can imagine, we often invite people in to pitch the latest and greatest in solar technology. At the moment, there is no such thing as "return on investment" on installing such a system. Just last week we heard a pitch from a group that wants to build a 40 acre solar-array that we could use to offset our load during peak hours. While they were being cagey with providing any numbers as to what sort of output we could expect from this system, they did tell us that the peak output would be 11Mw of power. This would be the output at high noon on a clear day. Even if we were to figure eight continuous hours of peak output from this system 365 days a year (not even possible)and figuring energy costs increases every few years, it would take 91 years for this system to generate the amount of power that we could have bought outright for the price to install this system. Given that such output numbers are impossible and that the life of the product is only 25 years, it will never pay for itself. Would you want us to use taxpayer (via the Stimulus Bill) to build a 120 Million Dollar solar-array that will only produce 12 Million Dollars worth of electricity over it's life time?