Via Slashdot Hugh Pickens writes:
According to Rhone Resch, the last three years have seen the U.S. solar industry go from a start-up to a major industry that is creating well-paying jobs and growing the economy in all 50 states, employing 93,000 Americans in 2010, a number that is expected to grow between 25,000 to 50,000 this year (PDF). In the first quarter of 2011, the solar industry installed 252 megawatts of new solar electric capacity, a 66 percent growth from the same time frame in 2010.
Solar energy is creating more jobs per megawatt than any other energy source (PDF) with the capability, according to one study, of generating over 4 million jobs by 2030 with aggressive energy efficiency measures. There are now almost 3,000 megawatts of solar electric energy installed in the U.S., enough to power 600,000 homes.
In the manufacturing sector, solar panel production jumped 31 percent. ‘The U.S. market is expected to more than double yet again in 2011, installing enough solar for more than 400,000 homes,’ writes Resch. ‘Last year, the industry set the ambitious yet achievable goal of installing 10 gigawatts annually by 2015 (PDF) – enough to power 2 million more homes each and every year.’
For a serious look at pedal power:
“Bike powered electricity generators are not sustainable”
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/05/bike-powered-electricity-generators.html
DirkH says:
July 28, 2011 at 3:15 pm
A lot of German studies allege that energy payback time is “1 to 3 years depending on insolation”; I don’t believe a word of that; i think they don’t account for any energy used but for the PV cell manufacturing itself. There is IMHO NO honest study.
The 1 to 3 years payback time is so short becasue in Germany, the power produced is sold directly to the grid for which one gets paid twice or more the cost of a ‘normal’ KWHr. In my (EU) country, we get a rebate of €3000 for a domestic installation costing around €7000 (about 2KWp installed power), then get paid about €0.09 (9 eurocents) for each unit exported to the grid. Thus, payback is about 6 years. But if no stupid socialist style subsidies are included, the payback would be about 12-16 years, depending on quality of PV’s (Chinese unbranded to top branded).
This is actually robbing the poor to subsidise the rich. The poorer section of society do not afford to purchase PV’s, so what is happening is that the government/power producerss push up the price of an oil-fired KWHr to subsidise the scheme (scam), which KWHr is then sold to everyone included the poor. But it is the rich who are buying the PV’s thus milking the cow, while the poor just have pay up at a higher price of electricity without benefiting from the scheme.
This is socialism standing on its head.
” There are now almost 3,000 megawatts of solar electric energy installed in the U.S., enough to power 600,000 homes.”
Has anybody figured out that all 600,000 of those homes powered by solar would be dark after sunset? All those folks would have to watch TV by candle light.
America the Idiocracy
O silicon for everyone
For rising labor costs
For union labels, on the sun
Opportunity lost
America, America, sweet land of sub-si-dy
And public goods made by (the) brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
Berényi Péter says:
July 28, 2011 at 3:25 pm
I am absolutely sure generating electricity by treadmills would create even more jobs per megawatt than solar. I hope no one will push such a policy in Europe though.
You’re on to a winner there 😉 Solve unempolyment, health and ‘the energy crisis’ in one fell swoop.
To quote a great economist…
“Give them spoons!”
“Solar energy is creating more jobs per megawatt than any other energy source”
@Mark Wagner CPA July 28, 2011 at 2:36 pm
“This is the very definition of inefficiency.”
Too true, Mark. May as well ask “How many hippies on welfare does it take to change a light bulb?”
Who is this person and what is this fluff piece doing here on WUWT?
OK, I went to the study, and–surprise!–it’s worse than I thought. Solar photovoltaic indeed has the highest jobs-per-megawatt ratio, but ALL non-fossil fuel alternatives (including energy efficiency!?!) came out higher than coal and gas (nuclear was just barely higher). Has anyone ever made a stronger case for continued reliance on fossil fuels???
BTW the “megawatts” in the study are the output averaged over the life of the plant, so the numbers are sensitive to errors in estimates of plant durability (*cough* solar *cough* wind *cough* ).
Look, I’m all in favor of solar. I’m guessing that by the end of the century, the spectre of exhausting natural hydrocarbons is going to be looking more and more immediate to the world’s 7 or 8 billion inhabitants. The next century is likely to be the century of solar, fission and (hopefully) fusion with minor contributions from hydro, oil, natural gas, coal, biofuels, geothermal, tides, etc.
And unlike Germany and England, most of the US is close enough to the equator that solar may well work pretty well.
But 4 million solar jobs created in the US in the next two decades? How can a I take a source that makes predictions like that seriously?
It’s, now, expected that some Solar Farms will be installed next year at a cost of $2.00/watt, or even less.
Considering, that these panels are assumed to last, at least, 50 years, and possibly much longer, and considering that in most areas of the U.S. the electricity needed most is during that time that Solar Cells are most effective, and there’s very little doubt that that electricity will be the cheapest ever installed.
RayG,
“Our local paper, the San Jose Merc., ran an article yesterday talking up how great it is that the new visitor’s center in Yosemite is the largest grid-connected PV installation in the U.S. national parks. The article went on to extol the claim that the installation will save the U.S.P.S. over $50,000 annually in electrical bills. All of this at a cost of only $4.4 million.
Let’s think about this for a moment. $4,400,000 divided by the $50K per year savings means that it will take only 88 years to recover the initial investment. This yields a ROI of 1.1%. I have read various numbers for the estimated life expectancy of the panels with most clustering in the 25-30 year range so they will have to be replaced twice before the initial installation cost has been recouped. Absolutely brilliant.”
Better the USPS hired a few competent CPAs. The lost opportunity cost is huge!
IINACPA, but it seems like they’d have been FAR better off if they’d taken that 4.4 mill and invested it, using the proceeds to pay for the electricity. They’d need around 1.2% return to get 50K interest. I think ING has CDs that’ll pay that no problem. At 5% it’s more like $220k. Plus, it’ll run at night.
RE: Frank Lee MeiDere says: … Why not hire the homeless to generate power through bicycles? At 75 watts per hour per bike … “Tests cited in this book, carried out by Oxford University Professor Stuart Wilson, found that the average cyclist can generate 75 watts per hour.”
The average cyclist is in much better shape than the average person, who is in better shape than the average homeless person. My first hand experience trying to generate 25 watts on a generator bike tells me that getting even 25 watts per hour is a too much to expect.
Given the high cost for equipment and the limited power, generating electricity by treadmills is just like trying to push solar electrical power today. Nice, but not practical or cost effective.
The energy source itself should create as few jobs as possible, in order that the inexpensive energy will stimulate and make possible as many jobs that actually produce something as possible.
If you put each and every unemployed worker in the country to work generating electricity….where would we be? Right where we are now, but subsidizing work that could be done far more efficiently with a high-density energy source. As soon as you become inefficient, someone (or some country) takes up the slack, fills the void, and you go backwards that much more.
Last time I checked, semiconductor production produced lots of toxic waste that can only be disposed of in toxic waste landfills. I suspect the scale of solar panels compared to consumer electronics means orders of magnitude more toxic waste to dispose of.
@frank Lee MeiDere
75 watts on a bike is skinning it back dude. Gonna have to spend more than you generate producing the food to feed them. And, they’re gonna have to take about a 15 minute break to recover from each 30 second burst of production. On day two, they’re not gonna show for work, no matter how much you offer them. You’ll need to bring in illegals.
From Dr. Dave on July 28, 2011 at 3:32 pm (excerpts):
Use Nickel-Iron batteries, aka Edison cells or batteries. Old design that works very well. They withstand repeated deep discharges, are tolerant of overcharge and even (limited?) short-circuiting. There are ones over 70 years old still in use, at 100% rated capacity. People actually collect the old ones, and use them. They are stored discharged. When needed you replace the electrolyte (potassium hydroxide), I’ve seen recommendations of every 10 to 20 years. And the used electrolyte you can pour on your garden if you want, it’s safe for the environment.
There’s quite a bit of interest in them for renewables (wind and solar), well worth looking into. See the linked Wikipedia entry and references, Google for more info. If it’s just the batteries keeping solar from being worthwhile, here’s the solution.
The state of Massachusetts gave Evergreen Solar millions of dollars to build a plant in the state. The company is now on the edge of bankruptcy, due to Chinese competition, and the state will never see its money. Thanks to Governor Deval Patrick for picking a winner.
‘Last year, the industry set the ambitious yet achievable goal of installing 10 gigawatts annually by 2015 (PDF) – enough to power 2 million more homes each and every year.’
A few weeks ago I put up a similar fluff piece that reported that, world-wide, the installed manufacturing capacity should be about 20 gigawatts per year, by the end of 2011. Right now, it looks like the 10GW/yr goal for the US is achievable by 2015. The cost might be $0.05/kwh (lifetime) for large systems by then, based on extrapolating recent trends.
It is true that solar systems generate their power in the daytime, but that matches peak electricity consumption (I previously linked the California Independent Systems Operator web site, which displays predicted and actual demand by quarter hour, and also generation from various sources. You can see that solar power is at least 80% of max from 9am – 5 pm.) For night time use, solar requires backup, but the backup is already in place, and solar generation will allow it to last longer. I previously linked to a Home Depot system for homes; the cost of electricity for that system, per kwh, is lower over its estimated life span than the cost from other methods of providing peak power. Eventually, all of the electricity in the US will be priced according to the load at the time it was used, and then the incentives for home-owners to install their own PV systems will be blatantly obvious — at least in some parts of the US.
Local solar power is proportional to local insolation, as is local A/C use, and both are eminently predictable.
This is a topic that should be revisited annually.
About feed-in tariffs. I support a low feed-in tariff. If I generate electricity to the grid, my neighbor uses it, it goes through his meter, and he pays the utility company for it. It seems fair to me that I get a small share, the large share to go to the local utility which provides and maintains the local grid and which pays CAISO for maintaining the larger grid. To get things started, I would recommend $0.01/kwh; it can be adjusted in light of experience, if such experience justifies keeping it at all.
Most jobs per megawatt-hour? Really, it is true that some solar backers are not clear thinking. However, that is also a transient, since most of the labor is in the installation.
I have no problem with some funding for R&D for solar power though not wind……….we have been researching wind power for 3000 years. However, it is stupid to subsidize the PRODUCTION of solar energy.
Photovoltaic totally works under the right circumstances. Powering a whole house 24 hours a day is not one of those circumstances. In fact, photovoltaic might not be economical for that application even if the panels were free.
Lead story in our local weekly paper (which is a subsidiary of Murdoch’s empire) is that locals are devastated at how much they’ve spent on their solar panels for very little return and to make matters worse many of them are breaking because of cold temperatures costing over $1000 to fix.
The world can only produce 2 billion Lithium batteries and then it’s all gone.
The purpose of a gravy train, is the ride, not the destination. The purpose of solar power is the installation, not the energy. It will be the salesmen who derive the benefit, and the consumers will be left with the pane.
The easy solar build-outs will be sold first. Rural locations with open sunny areas and southern suburbanites with untapped home equity will buy first. Following will be larger professional installations over parking lots and roof tops of businesses.
Here on the Gulf coast of Florida, they are already placing highly visible solar panels on top of the tall, free standing advertising signs. When the big box home improvement stores start mass retailing solar panels, the amateur weekend handyman will be putting up panels just like the ones they see on those Lamar signs. The trouble will start when the next hurricane blows through and those 100 pound, glass and metal panels become 90 mile per hour missiles flying around the neighborhoods.
Ask Portugal and Spain how many net jobs were created in their competition to become “solar capitals of the world”. Forty-plus cents per Kwh power destroys many times the number of jobs created nationally than those created within the solar industry itself. Hiding that effect from consumers via subsidies funded by taxpayers does not change the overall economic effect of solar.