1. This is a weird requirement because the embodied energy of solar panels is quite low, requiring 6mo to 1.5 year to payback. There is no hypocrisy here. Only some narrow ideological requirement that fails to account for the existence of variances in global markets, business realities, existing energy agreements, and basic common sense.
However the real issue with your arbitrary ideological requirements is business related.
(a) Power production and equipment manufacturing require very different business models. It is no secret that while many solar installations are cash flow positive, they take a long time to generate profits. Yet they take a large amount of initial capital to build out. On the other hand, large scale solar manufacturing is new and evolving quickly and capital expenditures are needed for expansion and continually modernizing equipment. Basically, there isn’t enough equity for most manufacturers to tap for the construction of their own power facilities on top of manufacturing requirements. Goining into heavy, leveraged debt to satisfy some arbitrary ideological requirement is not good business.
(b) Financing aside, even if they could say, throw in a 2-4 GW installation to “power themselves,” which is absolutely feasible by the way, it would be a disaster to sacrifice your year's production in an expanding industry where client retention and market share are key.
(c) Also since the cost of alternative generation varies by location, it should be no surprise that solar panels prices vary by local. It would be a terrible business decision to sell a panel to yourself (at cash cost $0.47 $/W), when you can sell it to a project developer at 0.58 $/W or a project developer in a FiT market for $0.64 $/W, or because the EU is insane, at a “minimum” price of 0.74 $/W to EU member countries. This isn’t how you make money...
In short it seems ridiculous to require solar manufacturers to some how forgo ruthelss capitalism in markets where their competitors are... ruthless capitalists.
Incidentally, 6 or 7 of the 8 largest solar manufacturers are moving into plant ownership. Because, as you suggested, they have the ability to build the lowest cost plants. These plants however are not co-located with manufacturing facilities, mainly due to reasons (b). Of course, it is not easy to springboard into such capital intensive business segments so it is moving slow. They are implementing a variety of strategies including 1) YieldCos (separate sub-entities with access to low cost capital) 2) raising capital from private markets 3) JVs with investment banks and other financial firms.
So in conclusion it does look as though solar manufactuers will also be utilities. In that, as of right now, they are aiming to own several GW of their own production. Given the fat project pipelines in Japan, China, India, and ME, as well as the fact leading module producers are generating 15-20% GM in non-subsidized markets and targeting 0.4 $/W by the end of 2015, I would not bet against them.
You are right. That is how people think, in part, because the utilities trained us think this way: the final unvarying retail rate of electricity. This will backfire and kill utilities 1) the retail rate target is a lot easier to match than actual generation costs. In fact, wind and solar are presently less than retail rates without government subsidies for 1000's GW+ of grid connections and quickly extending their lead 2) do to new business models, financing for dg resources is now competitive with financing for large utility projects.
Ergo, distributed renewables offering amortized electricity rates less than retail + tax ($ 0.136/kWh in my "low cost" midwestern state) are cashflow positive. Given that a household will spend $20-30k on electricity over a generation, distributed production is a rock solid investment, a wonderful asset diversification, and an excellent hedge against the inevitable climb of energy prices.
As a side note, we can pay 1.00 $/100kWh (a token amount) for wind energy and it is a fairly popular program.
This is active research by people who do things instead of offering ignorant internet speculation. In fact, as a physicist, I'd expect you to find overwhelming evidence contrasting your speculation in less time than it took to write your comment. By one metric, energy payback time, EBPT, new wind and solar generate their equivalent embodied energy in less than a year. Embarrassing.
Right, so as we are no where near saturating the globe with wind and solar energy, what is the problem promoting these resources, especially when economical?
How is this an argument every time? Can you please fight the imaginary problem of solar/wind saturation when it becomes a real one?
the cost of nuclear energy is incalculable, but very high. Ergo, it is difficult to build support for nuclear energy from an economic argument, unless you resort to lies and propaganda. What, fortunate for nuclear and not emerging technologies, we've already spent more money developing nuclear tech?
home automation server aggregating 8x temperatures, 4x humidity, weather station, 6xPIRs, 2x NFC readers, 2x CO, 6x pressure, 3x cameras, and 1 relay for thermostat, about half of these are still running via arduino nano clones as I migrate to purpose-built ICs.
presently also hosting 6tb of files, but it gets bogged down when 2 PIR activated cameras are recording while streaming 720p+ video so will likely offload this to a separate unit during next overhaul.
have a separate one for building out things before I add to the above, presently ~13x reed switches, and 16x relays as I migrate from sensing to control.
coupled to my router running vpn and a webserver, I get all I want at ~10W tdp.
Water has a heat capacity of about 4 kJ/kg*K, which is to day it takes 4 kJ to raise 1 kg of water 1 K in temperature. A typical rock (granite, say, although most others are similar) has a heat capacity of 0.8 kJ/kg*K, so rock is both less able to transport heat and less able to absorb heat than water.
that is the intrinsic property of specific heat capacity, isn't the extrinsic property more important here as we are talking about specific amounts of things? Rocks have >25% (2-3 times?) density of water so for a fixed volume, rock holds more thermal energy than water.
1. replace your refrigerator. If you have one over 10 years old a new model will pay back quickly. models with efficient compressors will payback well (I replaced a 15year old GE with a new samgsung with a
2. yes insulation. DIY your attic insulation and if you have more than 3000 HDD, it will probably pay off in a single heating season
3. when exceeding 6000 HDD (northern climates), paying a contractor to insulate your exterior walls will pay off very quickly
4. in a cooling climate, a modern 15-16 SEER AC will pay off
5. in specific situations even high efficiency windows will pay off
6. in a cooling climate painting your house white will pay off. planting trees to shade from noon/west sun will pay off
7. in a cooling climate a hot water heat pump may pay off
8. natural gas furnace upgrades will not pay off until gas exceeds ~2 $/therm.
lastly, cover your whole roof with a PV array, it will withstand the hail =) also consider a metal roof. contrary to popular opinion, they are quieter and more robust than asphalt shingles.
You are wrong. It isn't a democracy. The NFL is essentially a criminal enterprise whose existence and methods were legalized via backdoor legislation. This is not democracy. Finding "cooperative" judges to side-step referendums, overlook glaring legal issues for "expediency" and bypass the spirit of the law due to overwhelmingly negative public opinion is not democracy. Making baseless, unjusitified, and wholly discredited financial estimates and claims to ultimately leveraging the ignorance of citizens to provide corporate welfare is not democracy. Its collusion, fraud, and plutocracy.
Municipal law in Minneapolis required a vote on any public financing over 10 million. Somehow the state and the mayor railroaded around this legislation and started building a billion dollar stadium without public consent. The did this because spending a million dollars per citizen was wildly unpopular. The city council members and mayor were subsequently removed from office. Yet there is still a billion dollar stadium going up essentially due to legalized racketeering. Lawsuits against the construction had merit but were repeatedly shut down; the judges concluded it was too late because firms illegally started work before the municipality even had authorization to proceed with contracts...Other locations have had stadiums built under similarly auspicious conditions.
Furthermore, there is no evidence of this supposed business flurry that stadiums bring. It's like the fabled money making college sports programs. The math does not work. There is ample research negating these bogus claims. It's hilarious how you equate a billion dollars in revenue (extremely arguable) as justification for extorting (tens?) (hundreds?) of thousands of dollars from each of the citizen of Phoenix. Do you seriously expect to reap financial rewards ? This is corporate welfare of the worst kind.
I don't want to go on a rant here, but supporting the NFL requires extreme moral compromise. In essence fans support an enterprise in legalized racketeering, legislated collusion and extortion, the willful and continued criminal cover up of TMI and even pre-concussive TMI, the exploitation of youth, especially disadvantaged youth by pro and "college" play, and the perpetuation with war-like simulation and mysogeny. In retrospect, it may be the perfect analogy for America.
Let's just eliminate all specificity and refer to everything as physics. Sounds useful to me! Anything else is just more hype for charlatans and fools! Nuance and differentiation are for the birds!
perhaps you mean the myriad state subsidies. I agree, 90% should be eliminated immediately, because they artificially inflate the cost of solar. yes. states with subsidies have higher solar costs. namely, CA, MA, WA, MN, NJ, egregious subsidy programs and very high costs.
and now that modules are cheap and net power is less a concern than generation profile, we can start defining a vast, distributed array that is both impervious to intermittent cloud cover and provides a very flat and predictable production curve for 8-12 per day and provide on the order of 60% of residential and 80% of commercial power consumption.
as shown by the trillions of dollars we've wasted on utter fail so far.
I'd love to see evidence of that figure. I'd also love to see you opine on the cost effectiveness of investment in nuclear and fossil fuel technology relative to their present cost effectiveness relative to solar. Please contrast it with the 'trillions' of public money [we] wasted on the solar fail. I expect you would rather live in denial.
That isn't residential ( I would be surprised if it scaled smaller sizes) and it looks like an academic prototype. Regardless 0.75 is good for single effect unit. Of course, this thing has to hit the design condition in cloudy and humid weather or you also need an AC.
Air source heat pumps are useless at the dead of winter in my climate too (-22F design temp), but they are improving and new techniques for shallow group coupling are getting cheaper and vastly improve their performance. No reason you can't couple it to your solar thermal system to boost the COP while maintaining peak solar thermal efficiency, as well. If an AC/HP retrofit is more expensive than alternatives, that sounds like an issue with your local labor market. I'm pretty sure solar thermal installs are more expensive than AC installs in most US markets.
There will be no cost-competitive low-temperature solar thermal Stirling engines.
Per the comment on single-room resistance heating. That is a great solution, but it seems like your house also needs efficiency improvements. Cost effective energy efficiency can take loads down 40-70%.
Also something is wrong with your #s. I pay $0.5 - $1 / therm (100k btu) and use 80 therm in Jan. to heat my moderately energy efficient home, which means I use 6x your energy, but my energy cost is 20-40 times cheaper. 140 therm for 1300ft sq seems ok for a cold climate, but that implies your gas prices are unusually high for the US, which I presume from the units.
cheap PV is predicated on current prices available to consumers.
cheap batteries are extrapolated from historical data, the technology pipeline, and simple learning cost models. given the track record on related technologies, i wouldn't bet against manufacturers' ability to make things cheaply.
of course until we hit these cost points, your opinion remains valid. what bets against economies of scale have you previously won?
yep, the old stand by: if you really care you would cease all interaction with fossil fuels. hence, no one really cares and your argument in favor of the tough, hard-working, minimal profit collecting oil executives is somehow justified.
Slashdot Mirror
1. This is a weird requirement because the embodied energy of solar panels is quite low, requiring 6mo to 1.5 year to payback. There is no hypocrisy here. Only some narrow ideological requirement that fails to account for the existence of variances in global markets, business realities, existing energy agreements, and basic common sense.
... ruthless capitalists.
However the real issue with your arbitrary ideological requirements is business related.
(a) Power production and equipment manufacturing require very different business models. It is no secret that while many solar installations are cash flow positive, they take a long time to generate profits. Yet they take a large amount of initial capital to build out. On the other hand, large scale solar manufacturing is new and evolving quickly and capital expenditures are needed for expansion and continually modernizing equipment. Basically, there isn’t enough equity for most manufacturers to tap for the construction of their own power facilities on top of manufacturing requirements. Goining into heavy, leveraged debt to satisfy some arbitrary ideological requirement is not good business.
(b) Financing aside, even if they could say, throw in a 2-4 GW installation to “power themselves,” which is absolutely feasible by the way, it would be a disaster to sacrifice your year's production in an expanding industry where client retention and market share are key.
(c) Also since the cost of alternative generation varies by location, it should be no surprise that solar panels prices vary by local. It would be a terrible business decision to sell a panel to yourself (at cash cost $0.47 $/W), when you can sell it to a project developer at 0.58 $/W or a project developer in a FiT market for $0.64 $/W, or because the EU is insane, at a “minimum” price of 0.74 $/W to EU member countries. This isn’t how you make money...
In short it seems ridiculous to require solar manufacturers to some how forgo ruthelss capitalism in markets where their competitors are
Incidentally, 6 or 7 of the 8 largest solar manufacturers are moving into plant ownership. Because, as you suggested, they have the ability to build the lowest cost plants. These plants however are not co-located with manufacturing facilities, mainly due to reasons (b). Of course, it is not easy to springboard into such capital intensive business segments so it is moving slow. They are implementing a variety of strategies including 1) YieldCos (separate sub-entities with access to low cost capital) 2) raising capital from private markets 3) JVs with investment banks and other financial firms.
So in conclusion it does look as though solar manufactuers will also be utilities. In that, as of right now, they are aiming to own several GW of their own production. Given the fat project pipelines in Japan, China, India, and ME, as well as the fact leading module producers are generating 15-20% GM in non-subsidized markets and targeting 0.4 $/W by the end of 2015, I would not bet against them.
You are right. That is how people think, in part, because the utilities trained us think this way: the final unvarying retail rate of electricity. This will backfire and kill utilities 1) the retail rate target is a lot easier to match than actual generation costs. In fact, wind and solar are presently less than retail rates without government subsidies for 1000's GW+ of grid connections and quickly extending their lead 2) do to new business models, financing for dg resources is now competitive with financing for large utility projects.
Ergo, distributed renewables offering amortized electricity rates less than retail + tax ($ 0.136/kWh in my "low cost" midwestern state) are cashflow positive. Given that a household will spend $20-30k on electricity over a generation, distributed production is a rock solid investment, a wonderful asset diversification, and an excellent hedge against the inevitable climb of energy prices.
As a side note, we can pay 1.00 $/100kWh (a token amount) for wind energy and it is a fairly popular program.
This is active research by people who do things instead of offering ignorant internet speculation. In fact, as a physicist, I'd expect you to find overwhelming evidence contrasting your speculation in less time than it took to write your comment. By one metric, energy payback time, EBPT, new wind and solar generate their equivalent embodied energy in less than a year. Embarrassing.
Its crazy, as if they need to exaggerate the cost of nuclear. Just look at the Areva projects. 300% over budget, how many years late? O-K.
Right, so as we are no where near saturating the globe with wind and solar energy, what is the problem promoting these resources, especially when economical?
How is this an argument every time? Can you please fight the imaginary problem of solar/wind saturation when it becomes a real one?
the cost of nuclear energy is incalculable, but very high. Ergo, it is difficult to build support for nuclear energy from an economic argument, unless you resort to lies and propaganda. What, fortunate for nuclear and not emerging technologies, we've already spent more money developing nuclear tech?
home automation server aggregating 8x temperatures, 4x humidity, weather station, 6xPIRs, 2x NFC readers, 2x CO, 6x pressure, 3x cameras, and 1 relay for thermostat, about half of these are still running via arduino nano clones as I migrate to purpose-built ICs. presently also hosting 6tb of files, but it gets bogged down when 2 PIR activated cameras are recording while streaming 720p+ video so will likely offload this to a separate unit during next overhaul.
have a separate one for building out things before I add to the above, presently ~13x reed switches, and 16x relays as I migrate from sensing to control.
coupled to my router running vpn and a webserver, I get all I want at ~10W tdp.
Water has a heat capacity of about 4 kJ/kg*K, which is to day it takes 4 kJ to raise 1 kg of water 1 K in temperature. A typical rock (granite, say, although most others are similar) has a heat capacity of 0.8 kJ/kg*K, so rock is both less able to transport heat and less able to absorb heat than water.
that is the intrinsic property of specific heat capacity, isn't the extrinsic property more important here as we are talking about specific amounts of things? Rocks have >25% (2-3 times?) density of water so for a fixed volume, rock holds more thermal energy than water.
Yes as Ambassador Kosh notes below.
1. replace your refrigerator. If you have one over 10 years old a new model will pay back quickly. models with efficient compressors will payback well (I replaced a 15year old GE with a new samgsung with a 2. yes insulation. DIY your attic insulation and if you have more than 3000 HDD, it will probably pay off in a single heating season
3. when exceeding 6000 HDD (northern climates), paying a contractor to insulate your exterior walls will pay off very quickly
4. in a cooling climate, a modern 15-16 SEER AC will pay off
5. in specific situations even high efficiency windows will pay off
6. in a cooling climate painting your house white will pay off. planting trees to shade from noon/west sun will pay off
7. in a cooling climate a hot water heat pump may pay off
8. natural gas furnace upgrades will not pay off until gas exceeds ~2 $/therm.
lastly, cover your whole roof with a PV array, it will withstand the hail =) also consider a metal roof. contrary to popular opinion, they are quieter and more robust than asphalt shingles.
This idea is contradicted by RECS and census data.
best parameter of growth (children per women) is education level of women. strong inverse correlation.
Except standard of living = energy consumption (or nearly so).
+- 200% error is not nearly so, especially when Americans are +200%
You are wrong. It isn't a democracy. The NFL is essentially a criminal enterprise whose existence and methods were legalized via backdoor legislation. This is not democracy. Finding "cooperative" judges to side-step referendums, overlook glaring legal issues for "expediency" and bypass the spirit of the law due to overwhelmingly negative public opinion is not democracy. Making baseless, unjusitified, and wholly discredited financial estimates and claims to ultimately leveraging the ignorance of citizens to provide corporate welfare is not democracy. Its collusion, fraud, and plutocracy.
Municipal law in Minneapolis required a vote on any public financing over 10 million. Somehow the state and the mayor railroaded around this legislation and started building a billion dollar stadium without public consent. The did this because spending a million dollars per citizen was wildly unpopular. The city council members and mayor were subsequently removed from office. Yet there is still a billion dollar stadium going up essentially due to legalized racketeering. Lawsuits against the construction had merit but were repeatedly shut down; the judges concluded it was too late because firms illegally started work before the municipality even had authorization to proceed with contracts...Other locations have had stadiums built under similarly auspicious conditions.
Furthermore, there is no evidence of this supposed business flurry that stadiums bring. It's like the fabled money making college sports programs. The math does not work. There is ample research negating these bogus claims. It's hilarious how you equate a billion dollars in revenue (extremely arguable) as justification for extorting (tens?) (hundreds?) of thousands of dollars from each of the citizen of Phoenix. Do you seriously expect to reap financial rewards ? This is corporate welfare of the worst kind.
I don't want to go on a rant here, but supporting the NFL requires extreme moral compromise. In essence fans support an enterprise in legalized racketeering, legislated collusion and extortion, the willful and continued criminal cover up of TMI and even pre-concussive TMI, the exploitation of youth, especially disadvantaged youth by pro and "college" play, and the perpetuation with war-like simulation and mysogeny. In retrospect, it may be the perfect analogy for America.
Their ability to organize as a non profit was specifically carved out for them by legislation. Its corrupt.
Let's just eliminate all specificity and refer to everything as physics. Sounds useful to me! Anything else is just more hype for charlatans and fools! Nuance and differentiation are for the birds!
i agree, but i might share the same advice regarding your current administration
perhaps you mean the myriad state subsidies. I agree, 90% should be eliminated immediately, because they artificially inflate the cost of solar. yes. states with subsidies have higher solar costs. namely, CA, MA, WA, MN, NJ, egregious subsidy programs and very high costs.
the 30% ITC? No problem. its goes to 10% in 2016 anyway. Modules will be 30% cheaper by 2018-2019 anyway.
I'm glad you're still opining on things based humorously outdated knowledge, however.
there is no storage in bloom. its just a local natural gas guzzler in the shape of a fuel cell instead of a gas turbine.
and now that modules are cheap and net power is less a concern than generation profile, we can start defining a vast, distributed array that is both impervious to intermittent cloud cover and provides a very flat and predictable production curve for 8-12 per day and provide on the order of 60% of residential and 80% of commercial power consumption.
as shown by the trillions of dollars we've wasted on utter fail so far.
I'd love to see evidence of that figure. I'd also love to see you opine on the cost effectiveness of investment in nuclear and fossil fuel technology relative to their present cost effectiveness relative to solar. Please contrast it with the 'trillions' of public money [we] wasted on the solar fail. I expect you would rather live in denial.
That isn't residential ( I would be surprised if it scaled smaller sizes) and it looks like an academic prototype. Regardless 0.75 is good for single effect unit. Of course, this thing has to hit the design condition in cloudy and humid weather or you also need an AC.
Air source heat pumps are useless at the dead of winter in my climate too (-22F design temp), but they are improving and new techniques for shallow group coupling are getting cheaper and vastly improve their performance. No reason you can't couple it to your solar thermal system to boost the COP while maintaining peak solar thermal efficiency, as well. If an AC/HP retrofit is more expensive than alternatives, that sounds like an issue with your local labor market. I'm pretty sure solar thermal installs are more expensive than AC installs in most US markets.
There will be no cost-competitive low-temperature solar thermal Stirling engines.
Per the comment on single-room resistance heating. That is a great solution, but it seems like your house also needs efficiency improvements. Cost effective energy efficiency can take loads down 40-70%.
Also something is wrong with your #s. I pay $0.5 - $1 / therm (100k btu) and use 80 therm in Jan. to heat my moderately energy efficient home, which means I use 6x your energy, but my energy cost is 20-40 times cheaper. 140 therm for 1300ft sq seems ok for a cold climate, but that implies your gas prices are unusually high for the US, which I presume from the units.
cheap PV is predicated on current prices available to consumers.
cheap batteries are extrapolated from historical data, the technology pipeline, and simple learning cost models. given the track record on related technologies, i wouldn't bet against manufacturers' ability to make things cheaply.
of course until we hit these cost points, your opinion remains valid. what bets against economies of scale have you previously won?
uh yeah or he was trading on margin like any trader does.
yep, the old stand by: if you really care you would cease all interaction with fossil fuels. hence, no one really cares and your argument in favor of the tough, hard-working, minimal profit collecting oil executives is somehow justified.