From the Ventura County Star:
ROACH DRY LAKE, Nev. — Not a light bulb’s worth of solar electricity has been produced on the millions of acres of public desert set aside for it. Not one project to build glimmering solar farms has even broken ground.
Instead, five years after federal land managers opened up stretches of the Southwest to developers, vast tracts still sit idle.
An Associated Press examination of U.S. Bureau of Land Management records and interviews with agency officials show that the BLM operated a first-come, first-served leasing system that quickly overwhelmed its small staff and enabled companies, regardless of solar industry experience, to squat on land without any real plans to develop it.
As the nation drills ever deeper for oil off its shores and tries to diversify its energy supply, the federal government has failed to use the land it already has — some of the world’s best for solar — to produce renewable electricity.
The Obama administration says it is expediting the most promising projects, with some approvals expected as soon as this month. And yet, it will be years before the companies begin sending electricity to the Southwest’s sprawling, energy-hungry cities.
Read more: http://www.vcstar.com/news/2010/sep/01/land-leased-for-solar-power-unused/#ixzz0yMLDZjM2
– vcstar.com
From: Z on September 2, 2010 at 4:11 pm
Reply:
Might be because Mars has practically no atmosphere…
The sun will never start shining at night. The wind will always stop blowing.
These sources are very expensive and do not account for doubling the cost again by reason of back up power in addition to storage costs.
Paulw,
Greenpeace has about as much credibility as Pravda.
Please do not either expose yourself by citing them as something worthy of anything more than disregard or insult the intelligence of people here. Greenpeace- the big enviro con-artist- is part of the problem. They are after nothing more than their power and money, and do nothing of any worth for anyone except themselves.
“Look at mobile phones. Until 1997, there were a niche item for rich guys and the handsets were large and unwieldy.” – PAULW
Pauly, Maybe you’ve been influenced by some zealous ‘educators’. Based on the above statement I must conclude that you are very young. The mobile phone “blew up” in the early 90’s. The era you describe would be prior to the mid 80’s. Also due to your youth you may not know this, but people have been singing the siren song of solar energy since at least the late 60’s. News Flash; It still has not panned out and probably never will as a primary source of electrical utility for the average home. Not every ideas’ time will come. The wayside of history is littered with technologies that just didn’t pan out, sorry.
As far as subsidies to fossil fuels it would probably be more accurate to say that fossil fuels subsidize the government as the gov’t makes more on, for example, a gallon of gasoline than the ‘oil companies’. Unlike your solar energy fossil fuels would be viable subsidized or not. Thay don’t call it “black gold” for nothing.
“Look at computers, look at aeroplanes, look at automobiles, look at anything: what you see is a period where things must be tried out, ” PaulW
With the exception of perhaps airplanes everything that you mentioned had to be viable in the market place immediately, and were priced accordingly. Primarily though they all answered a valid need, which gave it value. (not a contrived need). Face it. Without the climate husters/governmental nexus there would be absolutely no demand for solar uless you count Ed Begley Jr.
paulw says:
September 2, 2010 at 1:17 pm
…..What we need to understand is that it is important to diversify our sources of electricity. Solar energy is very promising, safe, requires minimal maintenance. We need to make it better and cheaper.
If we are to slag off solar energy just because we want to prove the world that CO2 is not bad, then we would deserve what is coming to us.
___________________________________________________________
Paul are you mathematically challenge or just too lazy to read and try and understand what is being said?
1. The energy is just is not there, no matter what you do you can not get anymore energy.
2. The energy is erratic and has to have uniform energy to balance.
3. As Charles S. Opalek, PE said
“Solar pv energy has an EROEI ratio of 0.48 (www.dieoff.org/pv.htm). That is: In the lifetime of a solar pv installaton it will only return 48% of the energy that went into its manufacture, installation and operation. Wind power is worse. It’s EROEI by my calculations is 0.29.”
Do you understand what that means? Solar and wind use MORE fossil fuel powered energy to manufacture than the CO2 free power they produce. Biofuel is just as bad, requiring 27 to 118 percent more fossil energy than the biofuel produced.
Therefore solar and wind are only good for niche market uses, and nuclear and hydro are the ONLY known non CO2 producing power source currently available .
We are not being stubborn we have researched the available information and found the truth. ( I was considering a combo of wind and solar for my farm)
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
September 2, 2010 at 5:05 pm
From: Z on September 2, 2010 at 4:11 pm
Just as a general semi-related question: Anyone know why they didn’t make the Mars rover wind powered?
Reply:
Might be because Mars has practically no atmosphere…
—…—…
True. In part. The very low atmospheric density on Mars means a much larger, much heavier, much more bulky wind generator would be needed to generate effective power on Mars. If the solar panels can create enough power reliably without needeing a wind generator, why bring the extra weight?
Every extra ounce (on Mars) means about 16-24 times the increase in launch vehicle weight, fuel, and structure at launched.
But the Mars rovers are small, very light weight, easy to tip over, did I mention they were mobile and very light weight?, inaccessible little vehicles that can tip over easily when they hit a rock, incline, sand, or a crater’s edge. It’d be like attaching a four-ton thirty foot high windmill to the top of a dune buggy – then taking it out across the sand while you drove the whole thing in a hurricane via remote control with a 20 second time delay. .
So attaching a retractable, controllable, portable, windmill on the top of the vehicle would NOT improve reliability or mobility, but would great;y increase weight and reduce redundancy. Increase the threats – and, if the wind were blowing the wrong way – greatly increase the amount of power needed to travel;. Each time the wind generator deployed (since it could not generate much power right near the ground) you’d have to stop traveling, rig out the outriggers and braces, extend the generator, aim it, create power, then re-rig in everything, then travel again. If anything failed at any time, you could not move again.
Worse, you could be stuck with the unit unable to move (because some lever or gear or footpad or retractor jammed or got dirt in a gear or motor) AND unable to create power … with the wind generator blocking the sun from the (backup) solar cells.
Continuing my thoughts from above: Fixed non-mobile base with a good anchor? Heavier tower, larger rotor, higher center of rotation or longer vertical length, larger wind generator (10-15 meters) higher above “ground” level? With some degree of local cleaning repair and maintenance?
Sure. Makes a lot of sense.
The cheapest, simplest, cleanest, reliable and continuous power is Geothermal. Ice land get just about 100% from its geothermal sources. These are almost infinite
Solution
Lay a DC Power cable from Iceland to the Faroe Islands. Split it there and lay cables to Norway and Dounray in Scotland. Pump in the Power. As the Income mounts build a similar cable system to the West.
So many technical ways to do and initially to kick start its viability, it can be done very Cheaply. The cable cost is high but that cost can be bought down. Much better and simpler than oil or gas pipelines and safer two. Fibre optics communications can be packaged in as well.
Iceland can use growth in power to repay debt, bankers can assist to assure they get lost money back. In addition Iceland can increase temperature dependent agriculture and produce high value products for both European and American markets.
QED
{Smokey says:
September 2, 2010 at 6:30 am
Way before it was fashionable [in 1984] I installed a solar heater for my swimming pool. It consisted of 12 3.5 X 7 foot boxes enclosing black anodized copper tubing under a plate glass wind barrier [if the tubing isn’t enclosed it will act as a radiator, and any breezes will greatly reduce the heating capacity].}
My neighbour when I was a kid, used his driveway. he laid tubing down, then had the asphalt laid. The hottest pool in the neighbourhood!
Jon says:
September 2, 2010 at 4:53 pm (Edit)
It is getting dark and all the supporters of solar can’t respond.
Lolz.
Solar is semi-viable for individual dwellings. A 15×15 foot array will make around 4kw during the day while folks are at work, if it’s sunny, and summer. Get a redundant UPS system from a closed down office and charge it during daytime when your electric is free from the panels. Invert mains voltage off the UPS in the evening. Simples.
Or if you can’t afford the investment, get a company to install it free. In the UK, with the new ‘feed in tariff’ being so attractive, there are companies offering free panels in return for the money they will get from subsidy. They think it will work because folks work during the day, but they haven’t reckoned on my UPS scheme. 🙂
They tie you in for 25 years, but include fitting, maintainance and theft insurance. When some more efficient technology comes along, it will pay them to upgrade your system free too…
UK readers south of Hull should google Isis solar, Homesun and A Shade Greener.
Taphonomic says:
September 2, 2010 at 10:18 am
Atmospheric carbonate dust and any dust that has already settled on the solar panel will disolve in brief desert rainstorms and re-precipitate as carbonate blotches that are hell to clean off. Anyone who has been in the desert and seen their nice new car wash ruined by a one minute shower can attest to how quickly their car beomes encrusted with carbonate crud. The solar panels baking in the sun just exacerbates the effect.
Siemens Stirling engines fired with wood pellets use a compressed air system to clean the soot off the heat exchangers. Compressing the air uses a small percentage of the power generated. Could that be a solution for solar mirrors and panels? Assuming it gets cloudy for a while before it rains, maybe the mirrors or panels could be automatically inverted before the rain starts to prevent the carbonate getting caked on?
To every technical problem, a solution… Doesn’t cut down the square footage issue though.
“…would put 2.5 MILLION people to work”
Doing what? I don’t see it (except for one lone year to install all of the solar panels on roofs).
I read something intriguing the other day. If the companies making solar panels had to run their entire factories off of solar power, it would take twenty years worth of energy to create each solar cell that is only going to last for twenty years. I still wonder if that report was not exactly correct.
That was saying a lone solar cell which outputs one watt of power six hours a day in twenty years would produce 43.8 kWhrs max, no clouds, in it’s lifetime. Solar panels peter out in about twenty years. Of course, there are many solar cells in one solar panel. The report implied it takes 43.8 kWhrs, after totally all production energy used, such as melting the sand and silicon purification etc, just to produce the solar cell !! Amazing way to look at it!
Well they don’t run these factories on solar power do they. So use that logic to figure how much coal and gas it takes to produce your “clean” solar power on your roof today.
People of the world, where the hell did your logic go? I know, lack of truthful information in the information age.
Now if each 3″x3″ cell could output, let’s say 10 watts (which it never will for 6 watts output is a clear sky at high noon, low latitude, at noon and at 100% capture) or if they could produce it using 1/5th of the power that it produces in it’s lifetime, therefore at 1/5th today’s price, then I could see it making a sizable difference. It’s not there and may never be “there” by the physics of what they are and how they must be made.
What we are doing right now it buying solar arrays that basically burn up the same amount of energy to produce them, today, as they will ever re-capture from the sun, twenty years worth. For our kids sake, that not a very bright thing to do, burn their energy today. That energy I’ve spoke of should be used to carry this world the 10 to 15 years down the path while we develop better, safer things like thorium reactors to carry us the next hundred years till fusion reactors become reality, if ever. But we can’t if everyone buys solar panels today, it will drain our world’s reserves running the factories to bring you solar panels on your roof.
I hope that report was wrong and the above scenario is not what is actually going on right now.
George E. Smith’s comment of 30,000 square miles of solar panels, I shudder.
They’ve probably discovered a fundamental problem: solar doesn’t generate much power at night. The other fundamental discovery: wind doesn’t generate much power when the wind doesn’t blow – which is about three quarters of the time.
And what happens on windless nights? Don’t ask!
Chris
tarpon says:
September 2, 2010 at 5:07 am
http://commerce.mt.gov/Energy/energyaccomplishments.mcpx
Coal-to-Liquid Plants
Many Stars CTL – August, 2008
The Crow Tribe announced in August 2008 a partnership with the Australian-American Energy Co., a subsidiary of the Australian Energy Co., to build the Many Stars coal-to-liquid fuels plant outside of Crow Agency. The project would produce 50,000 barrels per day of diesel and other fuels. The $7 billion plant would employ up to 4,000 during construction and would create 1,000 permanent jobs. EPDD has been instrumental in this project from the inception by making the initial introduction between the Crow Tribe and AAEC. We continue to monitor and support the project as they work through permitting, education, and workforce issues.
Website for Many Stars Project: http://www.manystarsctl.com/
Germans used process to fuel their air force during WW II.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_process
Solar is semi-viable for individual dwellings. A 15×15 foot array will make around 4kw during the day while folks are at work, if it’s sunny, and summer. Get a redundant UPS system from a closed down office and charge it during daytime when your electric is free from the panels. Invert mains voltage off the UPS in the evening. Simples.
Or if you can’t afford the investment, get a company to install it free. In the UK, with the new ‘feed in tariff’ being so attractive, there are companies offering free panels in return for the money they will get from subsidy. They think it will work because folks work during the day, but they haven’t reckoned on my UPS scheme. 🙂
They tie you in for 25 years, but include fitting, maintainance and theft insurance. When some more efficient technology comes along, it will pay them to upgrade your system free too…
UK readers south of Hull should google Isis solar, Homesun and A Shade Greener.
I do not blame people for taking advantage of government give away programs. I do, however, object to paying for them and then having the people I am forced into subsidizing telling me it is a great idea and that they are saving the earth, when they are certainly not.
Well they don’t run these factories on solar power do they. So use that logic to figure how much coal and gas it takes to produce your “clean” solar power on your roof today.
True they produce them where the power is cheapest, which means coal in most cases.
Coal-to-Liquid Plants
SASOL in South Africa has been producing and licensing liquified coal facilities for many years. This fuel is approved for use in commercial airliners, etc.
And if we would have continued R&D and building reactors the last 40 years instead of fretting about China Syndromes and mutated fish we probably would have electricity too cheap to meter. But as is par for the course for this country we pi**ed away time and money to no effect.
—-
If you’d read a little further in the Wikipedia article you paraphrased in your post you would have read that the reason nuclear power was developed in the 1950′s was because it was thought (at the time) it would provide electricity ‘too cheap to meter’.
Roof-Tops! The future of the world is in ‘Roof-Tops’! Think clean! Think outside the box (house)! Roof-Tops!!!!
I believe that in view of historic efficiency progress, solar may one day be a feasible alternative for some portion of energy needs, which one day may even be a significant part in some parts of this world. Currently it is a rational decision not to install solar capacity as the rate of expected efficiency increase exceeds the energy yield of current technology installations. It is rational to develop solar electricity up to a point where it becomes economic or at least venture in that direction, as it is clean renewable and abundant and does not ruin the landscape the way wind driven generators generally do. It makes little or no sense to subsidise inefficient systems for large scale projects better subsidise research and development until the technology is mature. Until the land reserved for the purpose may serve us in its ravaging wild beauty.
Pascvaks says:
September 3, 2010 at 5:50 am
Roof-Tops! The future of the world is in ‘Roof-Tops’! Think clean! Think outside the box (house)! Roof-Tops!!!!
As long as you are willing to pay for whatever you put on your rooftop, don’t expect me to pay for any part of it, you are willing to forgoe tax credits, are willing to accept the real value for what you put back into the grid; I say go for it.
If you expect me to help you pay for it, pay taxes to support it and higher electric rates to subsidize your hobby and puff up your eco-ego, then forget it.
Jon says:
September 3, 2010 at 4:19 am
I do not blame people for taking advantage of government give away programs. I do, however, object to paying for them and then having the people I am forced into subsidizing telling me it is a great idea and that they are saving the earth, when they are certainly not.
Agreed. I just want to save money, not the world. Also, I predict these subsidies won’t actually last long, so if I can get a solar speculation co to give me $20k’s worth of panels for nothing, I’m a happy man. They will still supply a goodly proportion of my needs whether or not they make money by feeding power back onto the grid.
I do not know what your qualifications are. Let’s see what the Danish Wind Industry Association says on this,
http://guidedtour.windpower.org/en/tour/env/enpaybk.htm
Vintage (from the 80s) wind turbines gave back the energy for their constructions in about two years.
Modern wind turbines give back the energy required to produce them in two to three months.
Let me quote from the website,
http://guidedtour.windpower.org/en/tour/env/enpaybk.htm
Do we reject their data just because this is their business and may not be impartial? Shall we not trust them?
Do we reject their data just because this is their business and may not be impartial? Shall we not trust them?
Since none of them can exist without massive grants, tax credits and forced purchase of power at far above market rates; I don’t believe them.
If this were true then we should not have to mandate purchase of the power or give a tax credit for any installation over 2 months old. Cutting off any of the massive public funds any wind farm gets would immediately send the turbines to a salvage yard.
What Justa Joe does is what drops the credibility of this website to the bottom.
1. There is some sloppy referencing there. It is not me that said that.
However, it is true that creating business for solar energy producers, we will be able to achieve high quality, efficient, cheap solar panels. It’s like the Nokia phones. They start with lousy early phones and they have reached to miniature devices. China is investing in a 2GW solar park with First Solar (US company), with the caveat for technology transfer. First Solar makes new technology solar panels (not the silicon ones). Smart guys the Chinese.
2. You are condescending, picking on age. This type of attitude shows lack of arguments. You are trying to divert the discussion to name calling. You make this website and Antony look silly.