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.’
The obvious answer, then, is to build solar powered plants to pedal the bicycles!
From joe Matais on July 28, 2011 at 3:36 pm:
Good news!
Wow, it only took them 10 months to get that far. Quick math with 30-day months, that’s 183 kilometers per 24-hr day, a bit more than 7.6 kph. Yup, as clearly shown by ‘the world’s most advanced solar-powered boat’, solar is well-positioned to become the “fuel of choice” for commercial shipping. Maybe the US Navy should consider it as well. Either that, or switch back to wind-powered sailing ships.
BTW, after reviewing the geographical placement of the Philippines, what qualifies as going across the Indian Ocean to get there? Taking the long route around the Western coast of Australia? If so, why’d they do that?
Quick math: 14kph * 10 months * 30 days/month * 24 hrs/day = 100,800 kilometers. So it’s traveled a bit more than half of the maximum amount possible.
Searching for the nearest fossil fuel-burning equivalent, a new Evinrude E-TEC 130HP outboard motor can be had for around US$12,000. It’s very clean running: “Fully stratified combustion for an exceptionally cleaner boating environment, meeting EU2006 and CARB’s 3-star ultra low emissions standards.” For cost comparisons one would have to guesstimate the gasoline and oil (it’s 2-stroke) consumption and prices wherever they end up filling up.
Of course I’ve seen pics of boats, often in developing countries, where the “motor” looks like a standard automotive engine counterbalanced on a pivot with a very long shaft and propeller on the end, tilt the prop in and out of the water by hand, also provides directional control. Entire setup could probably be had for $3000 to much less. That could definitely be around 127 HP to somewhat more.
Gee, I wonder how those prices compare to 38,000 high-end high-efficiency solar cells, the electric motor, and everything else needed. But hey, the fuel is free so it’ll pay for itself eventually.
BTW, did any other solar-powered vessel ever cross the Atlantic before? If so, just how slow were they?
252Mw of installed capacity? When the wind industry talk of installed capacity they ignore the fact that you get 20% of that, if lucky. Since solar panels are around 10% efficient then that gives 25Mw. So all those jobs for such paltry returns, is it worth it.
Cover your roof with solar panels and a solar hot water heater, fill your basement if you have one with batteries and inverters then you are off the grid. To live like your neighbours you will need to spend the odd 100,000 dollars but you will be free of the grid, the battery maintenance and longevity is like looking after a swimming pool in a bad place. This is predicacted on the fact that the sun will shine, This is not always the case, and not only is the shower not particularly to your liking but the TV will not work either, a couple of weeks of nasty weather and your 100,000 dollars looks like a bad investment. Especially when you have to ask your neighbours if you can have a shower.
Specifically, the authors state “we find that all non-fossil fuel technologies (renewable energy, EE, low carbon) create more jobs…” As many readers here have observed, “waste more jobs” is the reality. Who do they think pay for the scam?
@kuhnkat July 28, 2011 at 8:53 pm
“What happens when the gubmint can no longer subsidize this boondoggle??”
Spain’s idiocy answer’s that.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/17/spain_sustainability_scam/
ferd berple says:
July 28, 2011 at 2:05 pm
“Why not simply hire people to turn hand cranks to produce energy. That would certainly create even more jobs than solar power per megawatt.”
That is very funny!
So, instead of “Power to the People”, it will be “Power from the People”.
edbarbar said on July 28, 2011 at 7:30 pm:
Perhaps, but not many homeowners have two suitably-sized reservoirs, high and low ones, in their backyard, especially in the suburbs. And they’re a real pain to install in apartment buildings. If you’ve doing solar with storage on less than a large-commercial or utility scale, batteries are most likely the only practical choice, likely the only storage method possible. And compared to lead-acid and other competing battery technologies, nickel-iron holds the lead for long-term price advantage.
Where did you pull that “30% storage” from? For a longer look try this vendor’s FAQ. They specify new ones as 90% efficient, then leveling off to around 80% during their lifetime, which can easily be many decades. See their main page for more info and assorted testimonials and magazine excerpts. Which includes an excerpt and pic from a 1980 Mother Jones article about a guy who collects and uses the old ones, some of which were 80 years old at the time of writing and still working.
I am not a Green (capital g), often not even “small-g green”, but I can acknowledge “green” technology that actually works and is worthwhile. Home-based PV can be right at the edge of being fiscally prudent, even an acceptable choice when self-installed and even home-brew (panel construction). Batteries are a problem, nickel-iron works and can be a deciding factor, I’m just admitting they can be a good choice, likely the best choice. 😉
See the Energy Information Agency statistics (year to date) in the executive summary part 1.
http://www.eia.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/epm_sum.html
In electricity generation coal is still king followed by natural gas, nuclear, and hydro a distant fourth. Everything else added together is minimal. Solar is generation and storage have to become much more efficient to be a realistic energy source for the nation. We generate ten times more electricity from landfills, industrial waste, agricultural waste, and other biomass than we do from solar.
As a nation our trash generates more electricity than photovoltaics.
>>Rosco says: July 28, 2011 at 2:09 pm
>>Solar energy is certainly the green energy everyone can get
>>behind – if only it weren’t so damned expensive.
Everyone??
Hey, Rosco, I work the night-shift.
.
>>Solar-boat
>>Quick math: 14kph * 10 months * 30 days/month * 24 hrs/day = 100,800
>>kilometers. So it’s traveled a bit more than half of the maximum amount possible.
Perhaps they forgot to factor in the fact that the sun goes down at the end of each day !?!
Seriously, just what do they do at night with that solar-boat? I bet there is not a whole load of excess power to recharge a vast array of batteries, so I imagine that the craft is pretty much dead in the water at night or after a week of cloudy days.
This is what the Green fraternity fail to tell the public – that their pipe-dreams are simply that. They may champion a solar aircraft, and pretend that this is the future of air travel, but fail to mention that its payload is just 80kg and it is so fragile it needs a crew of 12 to handle it (Solar-Impulse). They may champion wind power for boats, but fail to mention that when we did use wind power, the entire fleet was often bottled up in port for weeks due to unfavourable winds, or likewise becalmed in the Sargasso Sea.
We are building a ‘future’ on unrealistic pipe-dreams.
.
P.S. The concept of a solar boat is not new. Here is one from 2500 BC (/sarc)
http://www.1worldtours.com/SolarBoat-2-large-web.jpg
.
Doug Badgero said on July 28, 2011 at 5:10 pm:
I agree, as the fuel is free and the production will go on regardless. However I can envisage some politician somewhere pushing a “solar power production replenishment tax”:
The Sun will not always produce free solar energy! The fuel is being consumed. We need this tax now to save enough money to refill the Sun with more hydrogen someday. And we can’t wait to do this until after the Sun runs out of hydrogen, we will all freeze to death as soon as the solar flame goes out!
chris y says:
July 28, 2011 at 9:42 pm
….
Notice anything missing from this list? Yup, no mention of daily solar insolation. Now why would that not even get a mention?
=====
I took the trouble a few months ago to look up the day length and maximum sun angle in December in Berlin. Less than 8 hours and 17 degrees respectively. It looks like there is simply no way that solar is going to work well except possibly in extremely specialized off grid applications for about a third of the year in Germany.
Ferd Berple:
Why not simply hire people to turn hand cranks to produce energy. That would certainly create even more jobs than solar power per megawatt.
The article says 93,000 people made enough solar for 252MW per quarter, or 1GW annually. 1e9/93e3 = 10,752W per person. Using, say, 25W per person per crank, you would need 93000*10725/25 or 40,000,000 people to generate 1GW. The USA uses 29.26 PWH per year, or 29.25e15/365/24 watts, or 3.33e12 watts. So you would need only 1.33e11 people 24×7 to run bicycles to generate that kind of power. Or only 435x the entire population of the USA. Seems rather inefficient.
Exercise: After how many years of growth of the solar industry at current rates will it supply 100% of USA power, assuming it runs at 100% capacity and is always on? Assume no constraints. How many years if it runs at normal capacity and is 100% storable?
Energy is unbelievably cheap. Real energy, that is.
re Frank Perdicaro-
“My 1.2 KW system cut my power bill around $100 per month. ”
This claimed savings is way too high. Depending on where in CA you were located, the average hours of direct sun per day is around 5.6 hrs/day (based on average of latitude-fixed-tilt panels at 10 sites in NREL database for CA). A perfectly operating 1.2KW system (always quoted based on panel DC peak output power operating at the maximum power transfer point on the VI curve) will provide about 1 KW AC maximum. That comes to 5.6 kWhr/day, or 168 kWhr/month.
If you are saving $100 per month, then you must have been paying about 60 cents/kWhr from your power company. This seems outrageously high, even for California…
Or perhaps the feed-in tariff was 60 cents/kWhr? That would be similar to Ontario, Canada’s FIT.
It is impressive to see ‘gigawatts’ associated with solar energy.
However, there is a question that needs to be answered:
What is the actual output of solar vs the nominal power capability?
In wind mill power,the actual output is a small fraction of the stated capacity in most situations.
What is actual vs. stated in solar PV?
Mike Jonas says: July 28, 2011 at 2:16 pm “If American consumers are forced to pay higher prices for solar electricity, as Spanish consumers have been forced to do, then the jobs are a very dangerous illusion.”
Mike here in the state of CA we have in place a legislated mandate for green power as defined in our Renewable Energy Standard for the electrical market (we recently passed a law to have 33% of our electrical energy coming from RE sources- we are not allowed to count our large hydro generation as a RE source by the way- by the year 2020). And yes, in order to install solar generated electricity the cost of the generation has to be paid for by someone. Approved RE projects will be paid as follows for the electricity they generate. http://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/PUBLISHED/FINAL_RESOLUTION/111386.htm
The costs of the generation will be paid for by-
1) consumers of the RE electricity in our state- (see above link for the costs that PG&E, SCE and SDG&E customers will be paying for the generation of RE-note that the time of delivery factors are very important in calculating the costs that will have to be absorbed (via some cost allocation process) by the ratepayers.
2) the taxpayers of the state through various incentive programs (rebates, tax credits) to individuals, institutions and corporations
3) the taxpayers of the country through various incentive programs (rebates, tax credits, accelerated depreciations, etc. etc.)
The opportunity costs of paying a generator $.24+ (PG&E) or .34+ (SCE) for solar energy for 20 years of output during peak times was discussed by a former chief of staff to the chairman of the PUC (http://www.sacbee.com/2010/08/13/2955810/state-should-look-before-it-leaps.html#none) And yes, the disposable income of the ratepayers in the state will be less then otherwise would of been the case so other jobs will be lost as only governments can run deficits for long periods of time.
In SoCal, power rates are highly non-linear, thus the Tier numbering.
IIRC, Tier 4 was like $.5 per KWH — stupidly high. The inverter system
I bought is particularly good at capturing power at non-peak hours.
Behavior modification also comes into play a bit. My neighbor on one
side had a $400 bill, and on the other in the $200 range. Our bills
infrequently went above $80.
Now here is some news. Unlike almost anybody else, I publish my solar
power statistics on-line in real time! No PRAR or FOI needed to check
my power production. See
http://enlighten.enphaseenergy.com/public/systems/YTjf174
Looking at the Lifetime graph you can clearly see the variation as a
function of time of year, and when I reposition the panels for greater
yield and when I bought a few more.
You can even see the panels from space via Google Earth.
hunter says:
July 29, 2011 at 5:42 am
“What is actual vs. stated in solar PV?”
You usually announce the peak performance of your plant. For every place on the planet you can look up the number of hours of full insolation per year; 800 hours for Germany, for instance. So you get this number of hours times the peak performance as the power delivered per year. For Germany, this results in a capacity factor of about 10%.
Kum Dollison says:
July 28, 2011 at 4:20 pm
“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.”
It’s 2.40 EUR per Watt for silicon PV ATM; at about 1.40 EUR/USD that’s 3.36 USD. You have to include the cost of the inverters. I often get the impression that people think it suffices to mention the price of the modules; but that’s only half the cost.
Assuming that the price goes down with 20% a year we would arrive at 2.8 USD next year for panel+inverter. Maybe by using cheaper thin film panels you might arrive at a slightly lower cost, but the gap between thin film (First Solar, Cadmium Telluride) and silicon is getting narrower. Also, you will have to use more area with the thin film solution as they’re less efficient. So it only works out when you have a lot of cheap land. The cost of the land is usually not mentioned in all these wildy optimistic cost assessments.
So, yes, i very much doubt that you will get cheap electricity from that. Wait another decade.
In 2010, the median US household income was $52,026. When someone proposes a solar project that costs $1 million and will create anything less than 20 jobs, they are proposing a NET DESTRUCTION of wealth. The project funds will come from somewhere, even if they are borrowed or made available through theft-by-dilution (aka printing money).
One of the reasons the left (er, “progressives”) gives for hating oil is that they insist “we are not paying the full price”. And to the extent we have to have to buy a large military to protect the flow of foreign oil, they are right. But where is their desire to have the public pay the full price of solar energy? They don’t dare raise that issue because they know that solar power is not presently “sustainable”. But the left, who is the first to claim any cut in government services is done at the expense of the poor, is happy to have solar power at the expense of everyone by government subsidies and policy distortions.
I look forward to having solar panels on my roof, when doing so makes economic sense. Not a penny before that.
Even “when you have a lot of cheap land” …it’s a failure
See :
http://abc.com.au/news/2011-07-25/solar-umuwa-apy-lands-sun-farm/2808796
I began experimenting with solar (PV and water heating) a few years ago. For my location (central NM) the water heating is a big win. For my family of three, $3k in hardware has eliminated any non-solar energy being used during the summer months to around 50% in the winter months (note that I did all the installation myself). Adding more collectors would boost the winter numbers but since I’m already saturated in the summer, the cost/benefit would be much less. Also note that my house is all electric (wood for winter heat).
For solar PV, I have 1KW pseudo grid tie system connected to a computer for monitoring. I paid about $2.50/Watt a few years ago for the panels. The same panels are now about $1/Watt cheaper.
Testing shows that my system will produce, on average, 200 Watt/hours 24/7. Of course the power produced is higher when the sun is out and zero at night 8^). This is the total power produced divided by the time of the test. Power drops during the winter months, but panel output is actually higher due to the cooler temps.
Of course payback is many years away, and I saved by doing my own install. but it goes to show that in my area, a 20% ‘efficiency’ rating is ballpark. That is, when a system has a claimed capacity (usually the peak power rating of the panels), the actual averaged power is 20%. A 5-KW ‘system’ will actually produce 1KW. A 5 KW system theoretically would 100% cover my typical electric usage, which cost about $100/month. A rough guess on the hardware costs means about a 10-year payback. Paying for installation, etc. could easily double that time.
I read somewhere that for every Watt you can save by reduced usage (i.e. turning off the light in an empty room), you could effectively eliminate 4 Watts of installed solar costs. Basically it’s far cheaper to save what you can by conserving usage versus trying to offset the usage with solar.
Passive solar water heating (good deal)
PV electric (pure novelty item)
Depending on whether you use the Spanish (2.2) or Scottish/Danish (3.7) numbers, those 93,000 jobs cost 204,000 or 344,100 jobs elsewhere (in the real economy, that has to pay its own way–plus carry the rent-seekers).
I heard a solar installer on the radio the other day waxing about the wonders of solar energy and freeing yourself from the power companies.
Using the numbers he provided on the show.
A 2.5kW system cost $20,000. The nice kind generous taxpayers pick up half of that, so the cost to the homeowner is only $10K.
He has found that this system can reduce your power bill by $50/mo during the summer.
That sounds great, doesn’t it.
Assuming summer lasted all year. That would be $600/yr of power. Let’s assume that you got a 30 year 5% loan to buy that panel. That works out to a payment of $53.86 a month.
$53 is greater than $50. That’s a problem.
Here’s another problem. It isn’t summer all year long. At this latitude, we have about 14.5 hours of sunlight in the summer. It drops to 9.5 in the winter. Also the sun is lower on the horizon. Also we get several feet of snow per year. I bet the power production drops dramatically when there is even 1 inch of snow on the panels. So in the winter, you will get much, much less power from these panels.
Here’s another problem. Your payments last for 30 years, but the panel won’t.
In addition to snow, you have to clean the dust and the bird poop off of the panels, otherwise your power output drops. Oh, and be careful not to scratch the glass, otherwise that will also drop your efficiency.
Final note, good luck finding a 5% loan. 10% is more likely.
In other words, even with taxpayers picking up half the tab, these things will still lose you lots of money before you are done.
“One needs to calculate jobs/(investment + subsidy) to understand whether the jobs created are a net drain or positive for the economy.”
Ya, but there’s no calculation necessary.
On a network basis each MW of solar has to be backstopped by about a MW of Nuclear/Thermal/Hydro.
This means that you for each installed solar MW you need a second MW “on standby” from a stndard nuke, steam or gas turbine that’s ready to rumble.
It does not take an economist to realize that each MW of solar therefore costs not only the cost of the solar + subsidy + eyesore rating, but also the investment for the standby power, which “oh by the way” could have handled the load without the solar.
So, with no math, I can demonstrate that solar power is a waste of money until you can store power cheaply in industrial quantities .
( invent that: cheap dense power storage, and your wealth will make Bill Gates look like a pauper starving in rags. Young nubile women will beg to be your mistress, world leaders will plead to have you for a luncheon. )
Next question?