Guest Post by David Middleton
My apologies to the memories of the late Richard Llewellyn and late John Ford; but I just had to borrow their title for this post. This paragraph from a 2010 Telegraph article really says it all…
Its 500,000 photovoltaic panels will generate 30 megawatts of electricity, enough, in the popular measurement, to power 9,000 homes. It is costing about $250 million to build, significantly less than a gas, coal or nuclear power station, which can easily exceed $1 billion. And it represents a sea-change in America’s energy business.
America has been notoriously devoted to hydrocarbon fuels. Big Oil, Big Coal and big Texan hats in the White House were seen by the rest of the world to be keeping it so, whatever the global interest. Oil barons funnelled money to scientists ready to pour doubt on the science of climate change, and conservative Republicans led the charge to pour scorn on those such as the former Democrat vice-president Al Gore who were urging Americans to rethink where their energy was coming from.
The power plant described in the preceding passage is the Cimarron Solar Facility, built on Ted Turner’s 590,823 acre ranch in northern New Mexico. It is indeed true that most natural gas- and coal-fired power plants cost a lot more than $250 million to build. However, it’s also true that most natural gas- and coal-fired power plants have nameplate generating capacities a bit larger than 30 MW…
TVA to build natural gas power plant
By DUNCAN MANSFIELD, Associated Press
Posted June 4, 2009
KNOXVILLE — The Tennessee Valley Authority on Thursday decided to build an $820 million natural gas power plant in northeastern Tennessee to comply with a North Carolina lawsuit over air quality.
The 880-megawatt combined-cycle gas plant would be as large as the 1950s-era, coal-fired John Sevier plant in Rogersville that a federal judge has targeted for new pollution controls on North Carolina’s behalf.
[…]
- $820 million divided by 880 MW works out to $931,818 per MW.
- $250 million divided by 30 MW works out to $8,333,333 per MW.
Assuming that the gas-fired plant managed an 85% capacity factor and a 30-yr plant lifetime, the initial capital expenditure would work out to $0.004/kWh… A bit less than half-a-cent per kilowatt-hour. Assuming a 25% capacity factor and a 30-yr plant lifetime for the Cimarron Solar Facility, the initial capital expenditure works out to $0.127/kWh… Almost 13 cents per kilowatt-hour! The average residential electricity rate in the US is currently around 12 cents per kWh… That’s the retail price. As a consumer of electricity, I know which plan I would pick. I’m currently paying about 9 cents per kWh. I sure as heck wouldn’t seek out a provider who would have to raise my current rate by about 50% just to cover their plant construction costs.
Solar photovoltaic electricity is bankruptcy the green way writ large. Here in Texas, Austin Energy has agreed to a long-term purchase agreement to pay $10 million a year for 25 years, for the electricity generated by the Webberville Solar Farm. That works out to more than 15 cents per kWh.
In concert with his efforts to drive up the cost of coal- and natural gas-fired power plants, President Obama has aggressively pursued an agenda of financing expensive power plants with taxpayer dollars. Many of these taxpayer-guaranteed loans have gone to financially strapped companies, lacking the means to repay those loans. In most cases local utilities were coerced or enticed into signing long-term purchase agreements to buy electricity at nearly double the cost of coal- and natural gas-generated electricity. The sole justification for this “green” centralized industrial policy is the Lysenko-like junk science of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming.
The economics of this “green” centralized industrial policy are mind numbingly horrible.
The capex for solar power plants averages between $6- and $7-million per MW of installed capacity. Coal-fired plants generally run less than $2-million per MW and natural gas plants currently run less than $1-million per MW. The average retail residential electricity rate in the U.S. is currently less than 12¢ per kWh. The levelized generation cost for the plants being financed by the Obama administration is more than 20¢ per kWh. His “green” centralized industrial policy will drive the wholesale cost of electricity to nearly double the current retail rate.
One need not literally seize the assets of businesses and install gov’t bureaucrats into management position to effectively nationalize those businesses. All it takes is to make them dependent on gov’t and/or direct their activities through regulatory constraints.
Matthew R Marler says:
May 5, 2012 at 11:21 am
That’s nice, but the natural gas plant, at $820 million, won’t produce any electricity. For the production of electricity, it has to buy natural gas, the prices for which, over the next 30 years, are not known, but will most likely average out to more than current gas prices.
WRONG. Dave Middleton has already answered this spurious argument – his above figures DO include fuel prices.
David Middleton says:
May 5, 2012 at 8:03 am
@HankHenry,
Figure 1 includes fuel costs.
Furthermore, fracking and other new extraction technologies have driven way down the price of gas in the USA, as I am sure you are aware (a fact that fills the AGW ranks with misanthropic angst). So gas prices for the forseeable future will stay LOW. Solar will stay very uncompetitive.
Solar power has contributed materially to Spain’s bankruptcy.
David, oil, particularly light sweet crude is most definitely a fungible asset; almost to the extent that gold is. it is traded on the global market and a bbl of oil costs the UK, France, Japan or the USA the same (shipping costs may vary). To a lesser extent coal and CNG are fungible assets. Electricity is NOT a fungible asset for all the obvious reasons, not the least of which is that you have to generate it at the time you need it. Further, there is high value and low value electricity. Despite claims to the contrary, “renewable” electricity sources such as wind and solar tend to be very cost and low-value sources. One might argue that solar provides augmented capacity for business use (particularly in the summer months) on sunny, cloudless days. The problem is the businesses are located a long way away from where the solar electricity is produced, inverted to AC, stepped up in voltage and sent through transmission lines that are inconveniently not resistance free. On the flip side, most residences use the most electricity after the sun goes down.
You can all mock Solar Power but just have a look at this efficient German solar farm as published by yours truly WUWT.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/05/solar-showdown-weeds-vs-silicon/
OOPS!
@Dale Rainwater. Dave,
Crude oil and LNG are very fungible. Pipeline-bound natural gas is fungible within its pipeline system. Crude and LNG are almost interchandeable on a BTU basis. “Energy” is not fungible and that’s why EROEI is akin to Soviet Union accounting.
Phlogiston: Furthermore, fracking and other new extraction technologies have driven way down the price of gas in the USA, as I am sure you are aware (a fact that fills the AGW ranks with misanthropic angst). So gas prices for the forseeable future will stay LOW. Solar will stay very uncompetitive.
You might be correct. I can’t see more than 5 years into the future, and maybe not that long. If solar prices decline 40% every 2 years, as expected in the review I posted, then the discussion will be much different in 5 years.
Jobs are never a benefit they are always a cost. Think back to agricultural. In the past a large majority of the population had to work to provide food for all. As jobs were lost due to technology (tractors etc) fewer people were required to provide increased amounts of food for all. So if you divert more people to creating energy then you have fewer people using it productively.
Interesting industry response to falling PV prices:
Why Solarcity Is Succeeding in a Difficult Solar Industry
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/40352/?p1=A1
Most of the money being made in the solar industry doesn’t come from making and selling solar panels. In the case of some small residential systems, solar panels account for only 20 percent of the overall cost of a system. The rest includes the cost of electricians to install the panels and hardware to connect the systems to the grid. Most of that money goes to companies like Solarcity. Indeed, some established solar-panel manufacturers, such as SunPower and First Solar in the United States, are looking to survive by not only selling panels, but also building the systems and selling the power.
Solarcity is finding ways to expand the market for existing technologies—mainly solar panels, but also equipment for improving efficiency and storing electricity. It also addresses one of the big challenges with selling solar-panel systems to homeowners—the high upfront cost—and that’s allowed it to quickly increase its share of the residential solar-installation market.
The real areas where costs have to be wrung out of the turn key solar package to make them cost effective is the labor to install and the inverters to convert the DC power to AC.
As I see it you have 3 options, 1) a peak Kw load set up that is sized to your highest peak demand to offset all of the electrical load between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. to sell that power to businesses 2) a full kwhr load set up to offset all of the kwhr (2 to 3 x size option 1) you consume per day and use the utility as de facto storage by spinning the meter backward from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. OR 3) Off grid set up with battery storage sized at 1.5 to 2 times of a full load kwhr system to account for cloudy days.
Option #1 makes the utilities happy by them not having to purchase expensive out of area electricity during the peak, this is essentially free power to them and charge you base load at night; option #2 makes the utilities ambivalent since unlike #1 they lose billing you for your base load at night while they still have to supply it so they are just getting the monthly service fee to offset meter reading and billing expenses but they are making money off your souped up power generation at peak demand to sell at a profit to businesses and option #3 makes the utilities very sad, they lose the benefit of the free peak power and a customer.
I live in Northern California and get my electricity from PG&E, For me electricity costs $.34/kWh and if it costs $.12 or $.01 to produce, the difference to me, as the end consumer, is much smaller than to someone who pays only $.12/kWh for their power.
Interestingly, PG&E’s “Tier 1” residential rate for regular households is only ~$.13/kWh, Tier 2 is ~$.15/kWh. However, just about all households I know of end up in Tier 4 or 5, where the rate is $.34/kWh. This is an improvement over $.42/kWh PG&E used to charge for the top tier, but the trade-off for lowering the top rate was the shift of tiers down, so that more consumers ended up in Tier 4.
To be absolutely fair, PG&E does discount their rates for low-income households, starting at $.08/kWh and topping out at $.12/kWh. With a seasonal rate program, there are additional discounts for the low-income consumers, (like top winter rate of $.08).
Solar panel fields have their problems- no plants run by uncontrollable sources of power (sun, wind,etc) can replace any of the current controllable power plants. Those plants must remain operational and fully staffed and ready to ramp up at a moment’s notice. The only savings is in fuel, but fuel in some plants (such as nuclear) accounts for a very small portion of total operating expenses (nuclear fuel costs around 1/2 cent per kilowatthour, for example). Nor can a 30 megawatt solar plant be considered equal to a 30 megawatt controllable power plant. In the desert figure a daily average, year round, of around 6 suns per day. Thus panel arrays with a 30 MW output capacity would be reasonably expected to produce only 6 times 30 MW (180 MWhrs) each average day, minus losses (figure 10%). A controllable power plant with a 30 MW output capacity could obviously produce 30 times 24 (hours) or 720 MWhrs of electricity per day, or roughly four times as much.
The data cited about solar panel costs are way out of date – solar panels have come way down in price – for thin film to less than 80 cents per watt, and around $1.20 for crystalline. Inverters cost around 60 cents per watt. Large projects usually use thin film, although it no longer has the cost advantage it once had. I would figure somewhere around $2 per watt for the solar equipment.
You also should include the cost of the land and what’s left would be the labor to install and maintain all those panels. Only considering equipment costs, $250 million would buy roughly
125 million watts, or 125 MW. If equipment costs are half of what’s required (typical) then
that $250 million should produce a solar power plant with a capacity (when the sun is shining)
of roughly 62 MW, not the 30 MW stated in the article of several years ago. The big problem, only recently recognized in England with respect to wind, is that the fact that solar and wind cannot lead to the shutdown of a single controllable power plant (can) mean a near duplication of expenditures for power. THAT is why uncontrollable power plants are so expensive – at best they simply duplicate existing power plant capacities. They are far more expensive than the flawed and simplistic estimates always provided by environmentalists. Just as inexplicable as the phony arguments of the environmentalists are the invalid arguments offered by opponents of uncontrollable power sources. The issues are not all that complicated or difficult to understand.
Mr.D.Imwit says:
May 5, 2012 at 1:16 pm
You can all mock Solar Power but just have a look at this efficient German solar farm as published by yours truly WUWT.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/05/solar-showdown-weeds-vs-silicon/
OOPS!
By “efficient German solar farm” they were of course referring to the green stuff on top, not the irrelevant flat structures underneath!
Well just eyeballing the photo of this plant, it looks as if the solar cell occupancy factor is 50% at absolute most. So with solar irradiance at air mass one being about 1 kW/m^2, this thing is looking at no more than 500 W/m^2 of occupied real estate; and if the average conversion efficiency of the system is 20 %, then we are looking at about 100 Watts of electric power (peak) per square metre of occupied land.
If the cost of building the plant is $250 meg, what is it’s actual value, and what will be the property tax increase in the State of New Mexico, for that kind of real estate improvement ?
And that peak power comes to about 3.3 kW per home.
Most new houses provide two phases of 120 Volts at 200 Amps capacity. That works out at 48 kW peak power capability, so this boondoggle will actually provide only about 7% of an actual house peak needs; and that’s all you get for your $28K cost to build per house.
And since this is in New Mexico, I dare say the average house would need a tad more air conditioning than I currently need in Silicon Valley (which is precisely zero actually.)
What was it Fred Singer said;- “Who’s going to clean all those solar cells ?”
Count me as among the non investors in this project; well other than as an enslaved tax payer who will get dinged by the gummint to subsidize this foolishness.
Hey Ted; I’m all for you doing this on your ranch, so long as you pay for the whole thing, and leave me out of it.
“”””” dscott says:
May 5, 2012 at 2:56 pm
Interesting industry response to falling PV prices:
Why Solarcity Is Succeeding in a Difficult Solar Industry “””””
Because their customers are too damn dumb, and they allow Solar City to use THEIR real estate for Solar Cty’s solar collecting system, for zero rental cost, and then THEY allow Solar City to sell THEM back THEIR own solar energy, instead of buying THEIR own solar panels and gathering THEIR solar energy for themselves, without Solar City.
So what is the going rate per square foot for office space rental ? Seems like that would be a good price to charge Solar City for Roof space rental.
Brewster says:
May 5, 2012 at 6:46 am
I have been experimenting with a small solar setup here in central NM. During the winter with the shorter daylight hours, power generation is nearly equivalent with summer due to the colder cell temperatures. I adjust the panel orientation monthly to the optimum point (elevation angle changes) to maximize the power generated. Using the latest generation of inverter technology, I average 20% of rated panel capacity. For example, 1kW of panels would produce on average 200 Watt/hours of power. The article states “500,000″ panels. Assuming these are the larger 260W panels (5×10^5*260*20%= 26MW). Close enough to the stated capacity, but no compensation for panel aging (as well as the other degradation issues mentioned).
Panel prices have dropped to below $1/Watt, with the extra costs of inverters and assorted support hardware, a self -installed system (read as free labor), in my area the payback time is around 10 years assuming nothing breaks…..
BS:
For one, solar insolation difference from summer to winter in central NM is approx 42% . You know how I know this? Well let me tell you a story.
My father installed a solar system just like one you described in the 1980’s in which it was motorized and would adjust itself based on settings. My father was a tinkerer and made it even better by making the angles “perfect” so that the machine was at any time of the year at the ideal angle to capture sun-beams.
The winter differences are staggering in NM. My father measured the generation at about 42% of summer highs in amount of power generated. (that is rounded up by the way too) I remember him talking about how he had installed the system in one of the best locations in the country and during the winter it was like farting in the wind so to speak. That 42% figure by the way is for sunny winter days too. (Ideal anyway). That is a comparison of apples to apples and nothing less.
So basically you just lied to us here. That is rather uncalled for. If you were being truthful with “nearly equivalent” you would have said less then half of the power generated during the summer is generated during the winter. You should tell the truth. I expect nothing less.
As far as payback time…what a joke. When the taxpayer is paying for these things, you could just increase the subsidies and pay people to install them and the payback time is zero. Subsidies make payback times irrelevant for comparison purposes. I don’t want to pay for your novelty projects in the NM desert that you make up things about and lie about.
The effects of renewable (unreliable) power on spot trading prices. When the wind blows and sun shines, you can’t simply turn off the power like throwing a light switch. You must sell the excess, often at negative prices.
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/05/05/andrew-mckillop-forget-global-warming-and-face-up-to-real-climate-change/#more-6225
As Vahrenholt asks, taking the present day case of Germany, on an average non-winter Sunday, Germany will need about 35,000 MW only, but in winter that can jump to 80,000 MW. However, the country already has 27,000 MW of wind and 28,000 MW of solar capacity, so what does Germany do on a non-winter Sunday when it is windy and sunny? As he answers, right now, Germany is forced to give it away to neighboring Poland and other countries, at negative prices, with major power transport and transformer capacity headaches. For the growing business of electricity trading, of course, this destabilization of power supply over large areas, on a hard-to-predict but recurring basis is pure gold. When the wind blows in Germany, they can talk down power prices to nothing, even less than nothing. Later on, they can rack up power prices to extreme highs of beyond 150 euros per MWh (1000 kWh): life is fun, for traders !
@Matthew R Marler,
This is like me saying, “We need to drill this well right now, because I think rig rates will decline by 40% over the next two years.”
David Middleton: This is like me saying, “We need to drill this well right now, because I think rig rates will decline by 40% over the next two years.”
That is true. Drillers think things like that; they cut back drilling when they anticipate increases in costs or decreases in oil prices. These are calculated risks, and the question arises, how solidly are the expectations based on good evidence?
Complementarily, one could say “We need to avoid investments in solar because the prices have never declined as promised, and we know for sure that gas prices will never be higher than now”.
Perhaps we can meet again in 5 years and compare notes. I expect that electricity prices for new PV installations will be less than 1/4 what they are now.
Recent snippets from Oz:
THE nation’s strongest growth in renewable energy jobs is predicted in South Australia.
Almost seven times [sounds a lot – JT] the current number of green workers are projected to be employed in SA by 2030. There were 751 people employed in the state’s industry in 2010 [but from a very low base – JT], with the Clean Energy Council predicting 5081 people will work at wind, solar, geothermal and renewable energy facilities within two decades. It compares to 6603 workers projected for NSW, 6523 for Queensland, 6516 for Victoria and 4386 for WA. Nationally, 36,632 jobs will be created in the renewable energy industry by 2030, up from 8085 in 2010. Policy director Russell Marsh said wind and solar technologies would account for most jobs growth, with 14,281 jobs forecast to be created in wind power alone.
Meanwhile:
SA WATER faces an annual carbon tax cost of about $6.2 million, putting further significant pressure on spiralling water prices.The new Clean Energy Regulator has released a list of 248 high-polluting companies and entities expected to pay the tax from July, including some of South Australia’s biggest employers, based on their exceeding amount of carbon emissions.
In Australia, the water authorities charge a fixed amount for ‘availability’ (if it runs past your house, even if not connected, you pay this charge) then for each kilolitre consumed. I have 50,000 litres of storage and rarely have to use mains but they are putting up the ‘availability’ charge to ensure everyone gets hit, regardless of use. The additional $6.2M will be added to the availability charge, without doubt.
Bring on an election.
Dave, great post, it looks like I missed another good one
To the weirdos arguing “gonna get better”…. it delivers x,y, or z….. nonsense.
My thoughts……..Comparing solar energy to traditional forms is incredibly vapid. From nameplate to uptime they’re apples to oranges…… or better ripe to rotten. Uptime is the most egregrious comparison. Yes, traditional plants, as individual plants don’t have the daylight uptime as solar plants. But, traditional plants don’t operate by themselves. They work in tandem to where if one is down the others are up. At night, all regional solar plants are down. Always.
In most places peak solar output does not coincide with peak demand. Typically peak demand occurs between 4pm-8pm. This is the typical peak output times for solar.
Comparing various fuels in like terms is almost as vapid as nameplate capacity. While their functions overlap, they aren’t the same and have different market forces effecting their value. 1btu of coal energy is not equal to 1btu of gasolene. It’s stupid to make such comparisons.
The cost of solar energy underscores how little importance fuel for energy has on the retail cost of electricity. We could make nat gas and coal free and most would only see about a 2 cent/kWh reduction in cost.
Well, we can extrapolate from there regarding the various other issues.
Incidently, TVA also won the North Carolina case on appeal.
Kforestcat
“”””” davidmhoffer says:
May 4, 2012 at 9:58 pm
You’v forgotten that very critical factor in green thinking, job creation:
Solar panels require thousands of person years to build the manufacturing plant and install the solar panels. “””””
The “green Job” creation, is the very reason that the tax payer should stay out of the solar energy business. A real economically viable industry creates fewer jobs; not more jobs, than that which it replaces, otherwise the real cost can NEVER go down.
It is NOT an economic problem; it is a TECHNOLOGY PROBLEM !
Namely the technology DOES NOT EXIST !
Solar energy when it is made available to us by the sun, is supplied at a power density of 1362 W/m^2 extra-terrestrially (TSI); or more practically at about 1kW/m^2 for a ground level air mass one or maybe AM-2 location. That is the best conditions peak power density.
Present high production Single Crystal silicon PV panels, apparently can reach 23% solar to PV (DC) conversion efficiency; probably more like 20% in really high volume.
Solar city Cadmium Telluride solar panels don’t come anywhere near that.
The current record for solar-PV conversion efficiency is 43.5% for a triple junction; triple bandgap solar cell, and I am sure that is not terrestrial solar. That is an admirable figure, and better is yet to come. The PV group at Santa Barbara under Shoji Nakamura, are working on a GaN/InGaN PV junction for the shorter wavelength (wider bandgap) cap for a multi junction; multi bandgap PV cell, and they believe they may be able to reach 60% total solar conversion efficiency.
Such technologies are not cheap; but such cells are used in multi sun concentrator optical arrays such as have been pioneered By Roland Winston; formerly of the U of Chicago, and now with the U of California; Merced; who knows more about optimised non imaging optics, than anyone on earth. He has actually made solar images that are brighter than the sun (inside high refractive index YAG crystal non-imaging concentrators.
Unfortunately such two axis steered Optical concentrator arrays, are even less land efficient than are flat solar panels.
The two axis steered mirror steam turbine thermal solar arrays, may be the worst of all in terms of land utilisation, because most of the mirrors are off-axis mirrors, focussing on a common focal point boiler system. But steam turbine technology is well developed, and may yield solar-electricity conversion efficiencies in the 40-60 % range. Those systems are Carnot efficiency constrained, so they rely on very high steam pressures and Temperatures to reach those efficiency levels.
Meanwhile other groups are spending taxpayer dollars on low efficiency PV converters that can be cheaply sprayed on base substrates. I call those the garden hose sprayed fence systems.
They brag about how cheaply they can spray their goop on to battleship plate substrates; well they aren’t too efficient; maybe 5-10%
Hey you can cover land with Saran wrap quite cheaply; and it also doesn’t give you a whole lot of solar energy collection efficiency.
In the end NOTHING matters in solar PV technology, besides total conversion efficiency; from solar photons in to 60 (50) Hz AC electricity out. No matter what it costs the land availability and cost set the economic basis; so efficiency is the first, second, and third most important technology problem and that is not yet solved.
I truly believe the high tech PV folks are going to reach that 60% conversion efficiency; at least for the solar – DC , and it won’t surprise me a bit if they do it in the next five years.
But these charlatans of the Solyndra type; who had the perfect technology scam, long before they had a financing and political skullduggery scam, will keep on bleeding the taxpayer for their fly by night schemes like Energy Sectretary atom trapping Nobellist Steven Chul\’s microbial renewable energy.
But so long as alternative energy is perceived as an economics problem to be solved by economists (and their political hacks); instead of a science and engineering problem to be solved by scientists, engineers and technologists; then the world will wait for free green clean renewable and plentiful, non polluting alternative energy.
In the meantime we do have that stored chemical energy that comes from liquid and gaseous “rocks” deep beneath our feet, known as petroleum and natural gas.; not to mention that fossilized bio fuel known as coal.
Ted Turner has made quite an investment in those worthless panels. He must be thinking very hard about how to make sure he doesn’t lose all of his billions again. Al Gore, Jimmy Carter, and George Soros agree with him on this: “Mitt Romney “would probably make a good president,” liberal icon Ted Turner says in an appearance on the network that fired him on Thursday night.
Making an appearance on CNN’s “Piers Morgan Tonight,” the station’s founder refused to endorse either Romney or President Barack Obama, but says that he has no problems with the GOP’s presumptive candidate.
“He’s a real gentleman,” he says according to a partial transcript released by the show. “I think he’s been very successful. I think he’s really smart. And I don’t agree with everything that he believes, but I agree with a lot of it. And I think that he’d probably make a good president.” http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Turner-Romney-CNN-president/2012/05/03/id/437981
Perhaps their support comes from the fact that Romney wants to invest $20 billion in “car technology” and “energy.”
This renewable energy shortfall was predicted by Sallie Baliunas, Tim Patterson and me in 2002, at:
http://www.apegga.org/Members/Publications/peggs/WEB11_02/kyoto_pt.htm
“The ultimate agenda of pro-Kyoto advocates is to eliminate fossil fuels, but this would result in a catastrophic shortfall in global energy supply – the wasteful, inefficient energy solutions proposed by Kyoto advocates simply cannot replace fossil fuels.”
Grid-connected solar power is much more expensive that wind power, and suffers similar problems of intermittency. Still, I have some hope for solar power in the long term, because of the rapid pace of progress in the electronics industry – we’ll see …
In the interim, for all you uber-subsidized solar power enthusiasts, a catchy slogan:
“Solar power – stick it where the Sun don’t shine!”
Forgive my rudeness, but a trillion dollars of scarce global resources has been squandered on energy nonsense including wind power, solar power and corn ethanol. Sometimes being polite is just wrong – these green energy scams are deplorable.
ferd berple says: May 5, 2012 at 5:57 pm
Good comment !
Grid-connected solar and wind power generated at off-peak times is like garbage – you often have to pay to get rid of it !
Ian of Fremantle says:
May 4, 2012 at 9:54 pm
Whether or not you believe in CAGW and on this blog most are sceptical as indeed am I, the development of non polluting forms of energy production surely is a plus for the environment. Isn’t it? Everything isn’t always down to the dollars and cents. Is it?
_______________________________
And how many acres of land have those panels taken out of the biosphere? plants do not grow well under solar panels and you are going to want the vegetation kept trimmed back around the panels so they do not end up in the shade. Mowing would be a real pain and could damage the panels. That means the best most economical method will be to use a seasonal or year long Complete Vegetation Killer such as Ortho Ground Clear Complete Vegetation Killer
You are talking about 240 ac of completely dead ground soaked in chemicals where nothing lives.
The only thing green about this “eco-friendly” energy fiasco are the greenbacks sliding into the pockets of the scam artists…. I wonder how much under the table the likes of [SNIP] are getting for murdering science? [SNIP: Gail, associating names here might be libelous. -REP].