co2 you say?

4/5/2011 12:29:08 PM

Quote :

"Glad they are so concerned with global warming. I'm sure this will only further increase their CO2 output."

Reminds of me of utility reps making fun of activists for having meetings and thus buying more of their product.

4/5/2011 3:00:47 PM

Quote :

"General Electric says it's going to build the nation's largest solar panel factory, part of a $600 million dollar bet on the future of solar power in the United States. The new plant will employ 400 people and produce enough solar panels to power 80,000 homes per year, GE said Thursday. The company isn't saying where the plant will be located, but it does say that there are multiple locations being scouted. . GE says its thin film solar panel has been certified as the most energy efficient of its kind by the National Renewable Energy Lab in Colorado. The technology for the panel, called CdTe thin film, lends itself to low-cost, large-scale manufacturing. GE recently acquired PrimeStar Solar Inc. a maker of thin film solar panels based in Colorado. "

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/07/ge-largest-solar-panel-factory_n_845981.html

4/9/2011 4:14:57 PM

Anyone have any ideas on why big companies are putting in solar installs if it isn't profitable?

That is, is it profitable today with todays subsidies or is there some expectation that inevitably through massive lobbying campaigns and political inertia we'll end up with a carbon tax that these big companies will game?

I've seen blog headlines (though haven't really investigated) that the carbon tax system will be the next "big scam" that the likes of Black Rock and GS will be profiting from.

4/9/2011 4:49:09 PM

Quote :

"is it profitable today with todays subsidies"

You got it. Rebates for the most egregiously subsidized can cover up to 80% of the installation cost. You only pay 20% out of pocket, the rest of us pick up 80%, and then you collect 100% of the lowered utility bills, making such installations quite profitable.

4/9/2011 11:51:07 PM

These links are almost always relevant... in some cases:

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/52665

Quote :

"... windmills (...) operators in Europe may have become their own worst enemy, reducing the total price paid for electricity in Germany, Europe’s biggest power market, by as much as 5 billion euros some years... ... Spanish power prices fell an annual 26 percent in the first quarter because of the surge in supplies from wind and hydroelectric production..."

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aGDZMpv5Y9Vo&pos=13

Quote :

"Twice this year, the nation’s 21,000 wind turbines pumped out so much power that utilities reduced customer bills for using the surplus electricity... The wind-energy boom in Europe and parts of Texas has begun to reduce bills for consumers. Electricity-network managers have even ordered windmills offline at times to trim supplies... Spanish power prices fell an annual 26 percent in the first quarter because of the surge in supplies from wind and hydroelectric production..."

4/10/2011 12:30:12 AM

Quote :

"Anyone have any ideas on why big companies are putting in solar installs if it isn't profitable? "

part of it is the tax incentives, but most of it is planning for a future change in profit lines. Solar technology has been following it's own version of Moore's law, with a doubling of power output for each halving of production costs on a 24 month cycle. We are at a point now where it is anticipated that solar will be cheaper than coal and natural gas within 2-4 years. If we pass a carbon tax, this shift in pricing structure could happen overnight. If a company wants to be in a position to capitalize on this market shift, they need to be setting up their production and sales infrastructure now or else they'll get passed by the small startups already in the market. It only makes sense that we're seeing companies like GE, Westinghouse, Siemens, and ABB posture themselves so heavily into the solar and wind markets now as opposed to 20 years ago.

With current solar farms being installed, the cost of the panels is not that significant compared to the infrastructure costs of the engineering, panel mounts, collector rings, substations, and transmission lines necessary to tie the panels into the grid. They can put the systems in now and replace the panels in a few years when more efficient units are available.

Solar farms are extremely cheap from a labor standpoint compared to operating other generation facilities; all you need is a bunch of untrained staff to walk around all day with squeegies keeping the panels clean. This is a huge contrast from nuclear, coal, and wind power.

4/10/2011 3:01:20 PM

^ Such is the hype, otherwise known as half the truth.

The true part is that, yes, solar panels are improving at an impressive clip, price per installed watt improving at 20% per year (or something like it). The false part is suggesting that this somehow means solar electricity is improving cost wise at 20% per year, which is a lie, since the price of the solar photovoltaic panels is already well less than half of the costs of installation and operation. As such, even if the price of PV panels dropped to zero, it would only, let's say, cut the price per KW in half, which is still not cost effective compared to coal. For a revolution in solar power to take place, it is these other costs which must be dealt with, which so far seems intractable. The largest of which is the requirement for hot backups, which to be cured would most likely require a revolution in battery technology, which seems unlikely in the medium term.

4/11/2011 12:58:02 AM

Quote :

"The false part is suggesting that this somehow means solar electricity is improving cost wise at 20% per year, which is a lie, since the price of the solar photovoltaic panels is already well less than half of the costs of installation and operation."

Care to back that up with some numbers? The last design/build project I quoted out on a 100MW PV solar farm broke down to about $15,000,000 on the 35kV collector ring and substation, less than a million for a 230kV transmission tap, and someone else doing the minimal site grading, road construction, and panel installation. I don't know what their grading numbers were, but 100MW of panels at $2 per watt works out to $200,000,000. That's a LONG way from being less than half of the cost of installation and operation.

4/11/2011 10:03:52 AM

these are all high upfront costs but i mean come on see the big picture:

panels are easily upgradeable as technology advances
EXTREMELY minimal maintenance
clean, sustainable energy
decreases our dependency on fossil fuels

GE can afford it last I checked they made 5.2 bil in profits last year with a 3.2 bil tax refund, that means you and i (assuming you paid taxes) paid them! A very obvious problem with this story is the number of jobs created and production amount is too small for such a large grant. They need to quickly ramp up both numbers.

usuncut.org

4/11/2011 10:28:54 AM

20% per year? Not for any price metric that matters.

4/11/2011 10:37:56 AM

I'd like to see that overlaid against cost per watt of coal, fuel oil, and natural gas. There is so much fluctuation in fuel prices over the last decade that it's hard to draw a baseline comparison by just looking at dollars.

4/11/2011 10:59:41 AM

i'd love to get solar panels for my roof... it faces the southern sky, has a steep angle, and an unobstructed view. I just don't want to invest in them since it would probably take 20 years them to pay for themselves. If there is a massive drop in the price for home units i would be game. (like say if they paid for themselves in 5ish years)

4/11/2011 11:06:07 AM

Quote :

"GE can afford it last I checked they made 5.2 bil in profits last year with a 3.2 bil tax refund, that means you and i (assuming you paid taxes) paid them!"

no that means they got their own taxes back.


We do, however, subsidize their solar business directly and it would not be profitable without it. solar is a joke. wind is a joke. nuclear is the only way forward.

4/11/2011 11:43:34 AM

solar, wind, and natural gas are the way of the future. Nuclear is on it's deathbed.

[Edited on April 11, 2011 at 11:55 AM. Reason : with natural gas bearing the brunt of the workload.]

4/11/2011 11:51:53 AM

weren't you very much opposed to solar energy in the past? or were you just against it for use at the time?

I'm afraid you might be right about nuclear after all of this japan stuff.

4/11/2011 12:20:14 PM

I'm opposed to solar being pushed on the home consumer about being this great investment, because it's not without huge tax incentives and RECs that could disappear quickly. I'm not even a big fan of PV technology; I think solar thermal is the way of the future, but that's still several years out from being financially viable enough for utilities to jump heavily into it. Big companies like GE need to be laying the groundwork now to make solar power a profitable reality in the next few years so that they can corner the market with their products. I wholeheartedly support this, as opposed to all the startups with little to no R&D capital that are pretty much conning the consumer into buying their products under the false pretenses of being a sound financial decision.

With that being said, I guess I should clarify that I don't see renewables accounting for more than 20% of generation in the next 25 years. We are ramping up heavily for natural gas, and for right now I think that is the smart move.



[Edited on April 11, 2011 at 12:59 PM. Reason : I'm still not recommending anyone go out and put PV's on their roof at this moment. Maybe in 4 years]

4/11/2011 12:53:32 PM

Quote :

"I'd like to see that overlaid against cost per watt of coal, fuel oil, and natural gas. There is so much fluctuation in fuel prices over the last decade that it's hard to draw a baseline comparison by just looking at dollars."

Wrong question to ask. Solar PV should be almost all capital costs, but the one's you talk about comparing it to have significant capital and operational costs. You can plot the various operating costs of nuclear plants and you will see it falling as well over most of that time period. But that's of little meaning.

You can't make a comparison to coal or nuclear capital costs at all for this scope. After all, we simply haven't been building nuclear plants and built very few coal plants during that period. The sample bias swamps any rational comparison. The rate of build orders that we're actually talking about when mentioning nuclear or coal in the context of our energy future makes the build rate during that period look like peanuts. And if you looked to a different nation (like China) that had been building plants during that period, the bias due to different economic and social conditions would swamp any meaningful comparison you could hope for.

4/11/2011 12:57:03 PM

I meant the actual fuel costs of coal, oil, and natural gas. I want to see if those solar costs per watt have been dropping compared to the cost per watt of fuel increasing. The capital costs would be similar since we're talking about new facilities, not installing solar and taking other facilities offline.

Operational costs for steam plants are much higher than that that of a solar farm. I need to dig through some of my old copies of Public Utilities Fortnightly and see if I can find their cost breakdown on facility operational costs. Wind was astronomical, with coal and nuclear being slightly higher than solar due to the amount of skilled laborers required to operate a steam plant.

[Edited on April 11, 2011 at 1:05 PM. Reason : I think Natural Gas has dropped significantly, while coal and oil have skyrocketed]

4/11/2011 1:04:22 PM

oil and NG go up and down so often in comparison to what we're talking about that it's hard to tell. But costs of fossil fuels have, and should, continue to rise.

Quote :

"Operational costs for steam plants are much higher than that that of a solar farm."

You know solar thermal is more economical than photovoltaic, right? Operational issues ubiquitous to steam plants exist for those too...

4/11/2011 1:14:36 PM

instead of having to worry about pulverizing coal into dust, handling railcar shipments, cleaning out fly ash pits, and operating scrubbers, a solar thermal plant hires a bunch of uneducated day laborers to go around all day with squeegies cleaning the mirrors. There's a hell of a lot more to a coal plant than just running the boiler and maintaining the turbine.

4/11/2011 1:21:15 PM

Quote :

"WASHINGTON -- Solar power may be cheaper than electricity generated by fossil fuels and nuclear reactors within three to five years because of innovations, said Mark M. Little, the global research director for General Electric Co. "If we can get solar at 15 cents a kilowatt-hour or lower, which I'm hopeful that we will do, you're going to have a lot of people that are going to want to have solar at home," Little said in an interview. The 2009 average U.S. retail rate per kilowatt-hour for electricity ranged from 6.1 cents in Wyoming to 18.1 cents in Connecticut, according to the Energy Information Administration. "

http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20110531/BUSINESS/105310317/GE-Solar-may-cheap-option-five-years

6/1/2011 12:47:43 PM

^^ All of that is included in the current price, as coal plants must already employ people to do all the tasks you listed, and yet coal is still cheaper.

I suspect it has something to do with the fact that when the sun goes behind a cloud, all those "day laborers" as you call them are left standing around earning a paycheck not producing electricity.

6/1/2011 1:17:27 PM

^^one can only hope. And imagine, a "green" power source that can stand on it's own without subsidies!

6/1/2011 1:54:22 PM

Yeah, we're all still waiting for those oil companies to "stand on their own" without subsidies.

6/1/2011 3:29:22 PM

^ oil companies = "green"?

6/1/2011 7:10:33 PM

Too bad you weren't "UberCool" enough to get the point.

6/1/2011 7:50:55 PM

^^^ Whatever subsidy you are thinking about is swamped by the taxes they pay.

6/1/2011 9:43:03 PM

^oil speculation adds about 65 cents per gallon

6/1/2011 9:52:57 PM

Quote :

"i'd love to get solar panels for my roof... it faces the southern sky, has a steep angle, and an unobstructed view. I just don't want to invest in them since it would probably take 20 years them to pay for themselves. If there is a massive drop in the price for home units i would be game. (like say if they paid for themselves in 5ish years)"

solar water heater

6/1/2011 10:42:13 PM

Yeah, passive solar is the way to go right now.

This also seems to be good:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_heat_pump

[Edited on June 2, 2011 at 12:50 AM. Reason : .]

6/2/2011 12:46:24 AM

Quote :

"Solar power may be cheaper than electricity generated by fossil fuels and nuclear reactors within three to five years because of innovations, said Mark M. Little, the global research director for General Electric Co."

And it might still be three times as expensive, too. We've long heard talk of these "innovations," and yet, none of them solve the problem of what to do when the sun isn't shining, much less solving the problem of the innovation actually existing in the first place.

Quote :

"^oil speculation adds about 65 cents per gallon"

And liberals add 100 cents per gallon by their mere existence. I, too, can make unfounded claims.

6/2/2011 10:38:46 AM

Quote :

"General Electric says it's going to build the nation's largest solar panel factory, part of a $600 million dollar bet on the future of solar power in the United States."

My only concern with this is that once General Electric gets the manufacturing process down, they'll simply build a larger plant in China or Vietnam for mass production like that other Boston company did.

6/2/2011 11:47:20 AM

Quote :

"^oil speculation adds about 65 cents per gallon"

You are despicable. You know why? Have you ever heard someone say the use of fossil fuels is like "borrowing from our grandkids"? Well do you know what speculation does? Really, I want to know what you think the net economic effect of speculation is.

Speculation causes the price to go up in anticipation of higher prices later. Does this make any sense to you? Did you ever, for a moment, let a ray of logic come though the clouds of ignorance in your mind? Our grandkids (and even our kids) don't have a place at the table when it comes to bidding for oil.

But you're not satisfied with this. You're not satisfied with ONLY stealing from people who are powerless against you by filling up your car when you could take the bus. You want to go further and penalize those who would drive up the price at financial risk to themselves, causing the world to use less now and develop more resources for tomorrow.

Really, I hate you. Do you drown kittens in your spare time? "Going after oil speculators" is not only intellectually dishonest, it is downright wretched.

[Edited on June 2, 2011 at 12:14 PM. Reason : ]

6/2/2011 12:13:31 PM

Quote :

"I suspect it has something to do with the fact that when the sun goes behind a cloud, all those "day laborers" as you call them are left standing around earning a paycheck not producing electricity. "

solar thermal plants have incredible ride-through time for periods of cloud cover and even into nightfall, especially with some of the newer designs that use molten salt storage to store heat and continue generating electricity later into the evening when demand is still high.

[Edited on June 2, 2011 at 1:08 PM. Reason : .]

6/2/2011 1:08:17 PM

This should be an interesting year for the global solar panel market. US companies are complaining that the Chinese manufacturers are receiving enormous government subsidies in order to sell panels below cost. The ITC agrees with them, and now it's just a matter of how much the new Chinese import tariffs will be.

Considering that China is having to bail out their largest panel manufacturer due to massive losses last year while several American plants closed shop this year, this could get ugly. By the time the tariffs take effect later this year, more American panel manufacturers will have closed shop or reduced production capability. Solar installers are practically begging for work right now, because there will be none in a year.

1/23/2012 5:46:05 PM

What about MWh per year per area of land used to produce electricity? Anyone got any back of the envelope calculations for the total square miles of solar panels you would need to produce the amount of energy the US consumes in a year? Just curious. Id do it myself but Im just lazy.

1/23/2012 8:37:51 PM

wasn't the back of the envelope calc a few years ago that it would take enough panels to cover the state of Arizona?

1/23/2012 8:59:33 PM

I have some back of the envelope calcs showing solar thermal plants to have a land use efficiency close to that of existing nuclear plants, but I've never really looked into panels. I'd guess that panels are probably half the efficiency of current solar thermal plants, but that will improve.

1/23/2012 10:15:31 PM

how are you calculating land use efficiency for nuclear such that it even comes close to the same low level as solar?

1/23/2012 10:21:06 PM

the massive cooling lakes required for nuclear has to be factored in. There are plenty of nukes that are built on manmade lakes for cooling. You also have to figure in the amount of land taken up by mining, fuel processing, and future spent fuel storage when trying to evaluate land use efficiency of nukes. That's not really the case with solar, because the base silicon materials are used for other electronics that we use already.

1/23/2012 10:38:36 PM

here's what I posted in another thread a month ago. Feel free to verify the numbers.

Quote :

"Shearon Harris sits on 14,000 acres of land (plant and cooling lake) and produces ~7.2 billion kWh per year, roughly 500,000 kWh per acre. Nevada Solar One sites on 400 acres and produced 134 million kWh per year, roughly 335,000 kWh per acre. Factor in the mines and processing plants required to make fuel rods, and the land usage issues disappear. The best climates for installing solar thermal units are out in the sunbelt states and possibly in the deep south, which would require serious upgrades to our existing transmission systems. HVDC technology has come a long way in the last few years though, and I think we'll start seeing a lot more long distance interconnects being planned for this reason. "

1/23/2012 10:44:38 PM

and there's also plenty of nukes that aren't built on manmade lakes. Given that the lakes are then used for plenty of other purposes, I'd say that they should be factored out, much as you factor out silicon usage because it is used for other purposes.

1/23/2012 10:44:59 PM

Someone had to have their property purchased/condemned in order for the lake to be flooded. Farm land or Timber and possibly a few homes were condemned and destroyed so that the lake could be built, so you have to consider it in land usage calculations.

If you don't build one adjacent to a manmade lake, then you are limited by geography to areas that have large volumes of water. That doesn't work for a large portion of the country. At least with solar thermal plants, you'd be building them in regions of the country that no person would ever want to live in, like the desert regions of the Southwest.

1/23/2012 11:55:10 PM

Quote :

""Shearon Harris sits on 14,000 acres of land (plant and cooling lake) and produces ~7.2 billion kWh per year, roughly 500,000 kWh per acre. Nevada Solar One sites on 400 acres and produced 134 million kWh per year, roughly 335,000 kWh per acre. Factor in the mines and processing plants required to make fuel rods, and the land usage issues disappear. "

That seems like a boon for solar to me.

~60% of the power generation for a far simpler, safer solution? that could easily be worth it in most areas vs. nukes.

1/24/2012 12:07:27 AM

Can I ride my bike swim, boat, fish, hunt, camp, and picnic on the land occupied by the CSP plant?

[Edited on January 24, 2012 at 7:04 AM. Reason : .]

1/24/2012 7:04:26 AM

^ gets it

1/24/2012 8:19:09 AM

Frankly this power output per year per land use calculation is pretty important. The way I see it is that the largest demand for electricity is near population dense areas where land is a premium. Wind and solar simply take up too much space and don't provide consistent base-load power and this is why they will never be the sole solution. On top of that, with the advent small modular nuke plants, like the ones m-power plans to build, nuclear is about to have the ability to completely decimate wind and solar on land use since these modular reactors can be buried underground. Really a combination of solar, wind, and nuclear are the best bet. Id like to see tons more nuke plants built like the AP1000 and modular reactors to provide sustainable base-load power. I also think it would nice to see all buildings utilizing solar panels to reduce the overall power demand.

1/24/2012 9:08:41 AM

^ i’m thinking of the rising 3rd world where their infrastructure is going to be more power efficient than ours from the ground up, and the political/material costs of a solar plant are most likely lower than a nuke, and are cleaner and safer. They would almost be dumb to NOT go solar in that case.

1/24/2012 10:08:40 AM

Nah, developing countries will go with whatever is cheapest, which is coal right now.

1/24/2012 10:18:20 AM