That is a very good point.
http://www.pvresources.com/en/top50pv.php
If you look at the top 50 PV plants globally, all but two were constructed in the last 3 years.
I would guess that as they start retiring their nukes, in the wake of the Fukishima disaster, that 1% will likely climb, as will the wind and natural gas generated segment, although the last makes them rather more dependent on Russia than they would like.
Still trying to figure out why Darrin thinks there is no natural way to collect solar power. Freaking standing outside is collecting solar power. Of course the issue is how to do it at a production and cost close to that of traditional sources of electrical power. Of course that is being addressed in the articles Darrin still seems to have not read.
Lol
Rainwater can easily be collected on a rooftop, in a fashion similar to solar power collection, and "concentrated" into a holding tank.
The analogy doesn't quite work all to well, simply because liquid water is in the same phase when it is collected as when it is used.
Electricity, as you are probably familiar is not. Often it is stored in a chemical battery or similar, going from one form of energy, electrical, to chemical, and then back again, with a lot of loss along the way.
We have had a lot of conversations concerning PV, thermal and so forth, so you are doubtless familiar with these issues by now.
Maybe with all these advances in the technology, Germany can get up to 3% of its power from PV.
The thing is that I don't think he understands his own argument when he dismisses "efficiency".
For PV "efficiency" = Density.
When the author starts commenting that efficiency gains are driving the costs down, he is directly saying that the ability to capture sunlight, i.e. density of power per dollar, is going up.
PV generally is rated in a "cost per area". You calculate the amount of electricity you need, then the generating capacity, then can figure out how much you need.
Efficiency gains usually produce more wattage per unit of area, although you can also simply drive the costs down as well.
Tell me Darrin, could you always post on the internets from work?
Oh I don't know. That will happen only around the time German's get 100% of their water from rain.
Still hanging your hat on that? Even after it has been noted that Germany because of its geography, will never really be able to get a high % of energy from solar?
Talk about density...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewab...rgy_in_Germany
------------------Since the passage of the Directive on Electricity Production from Renewable Energy Sources in 1997, Germany and the other states of the European Union have been working towards a target of 12% renewable electricity by 2010. Germany passed this target early in 2007 when the renewable energy share in electricity consumption in Germany reached 14%.[4] In September 2010 the German government announced the following new aggressive energy targets:[5]
Renewable electricity - 35% by 2020 and 80% by 2050
Renewable energy - 18% by 2020, 30% by 2030, and 60% by 2050
Energy efficiency - Cutting the national electrical consumption 50% below 2008 levels by 2050
Because I am more honest than you are:
Criticism
A 2009 study from RWI Essen of the effects of the Renewable Energy Sources Act concluded that:
using photovoltaics in emission reduction is 53 times more expensive than the European Union Emission Trading Scheme's market price, while wind power is 4 times more expensive, thereby discouraging other industries from finding more cost-effective methods of reducing emissions;
although renewable energy subsidies increase retail electricity rates by 3%, they reduce the profits of German electrical utilities by an average of 8%, making them less compe ive with other European utilities;
although employment has increased in the renewable energy industry, other sectors of the German economy are less able to hire workers due to higher electricity costs;
despite lavish subsidies, Germany's photovoltaic industry is losing its market share to other countries, particularly China and Japan;
it stifles renewable energy innovation by arbitrarily awarding subsidies to different technologies, instead of according to their cost-effectiveness.[25]
How come Saudi Arabia doesn't have as many hydroelectric dams as the US?
I mean besides the fact that they are Muslims.
double post
PV in both Germany and Spain has proven to be less than economically viable, simply because their subsidy schemes were found to be fairly inefficient.
The main thing that really kills efficiency as far as the system goes:
http://www.ins uteforenergyresearc...dy_-_FINAL.pdfDue to their backup energy requirements, it turns out that any increased energy
security possibly afforded by installing large PV and wind capacity is undermined by
reliance on fuel sources – principally gas – that must be imported to meet domestic
demand. That much of this gas is imported from unreliable suppliers calls energy
security claims further into question
If you want to criticise something, why not use arguments that are a bit less vague and hand-wavy?
. Now I am doing Darrin's job for him. Again.
I have to stop doing for lazy people.
Let me stop the sidetracking with the goalpost for now except to say I didn't address them till your post. As for your first paragraph, I'm a bit too drunk now to focus on it.
I have no problem with promoting cheaper energy. However, when it all becomes speculative and political... who do we have to trust to make the right decision with tax payer dollars? It comes back to the energy experts. If they see a cheaper alternative in the near future, they would be fools not to invest in it. As long as we have a business model that waits for government intervention, I solidly believe the growth is hampered, because they are waiting for the politicians to act. If we gave them a resounding message that the government is not going to fund their growth, then they will once again turn to what made America great. The ingenuity of hundreds of liked minded individuals, being the first to develop a big money maker.
I wonder how many rain forests will have to be cut down to help the worlds need of solar energy?
I'm not certain that you really understand the concept you're trying to peddle here. Think it through.
Darrin, I do think you're a little off here. Rain is a dense source of drinking water, at least where I live.
Now I agree that solar is not a -good- source for large scale/dense power. The exceptions I can see are in desert regions. I see it as a nice supplemental for individual building and household energy when using no more space than the rooftops.
http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/201...orate-welfare/While there is rarely a large sector in our economy that doesn’t tend to get some form of corporate welfare, nuclear power is unique in that it benefits from almost every scheme ever designed by the government to directly or indirectly subsidize an industry.
Nuclear power receives direct subsidies, loan guarantees, special tax breaks, government insurance, the government promise to assume the huge potential liability if anything goes wrong, and state-based corporate assistance. From a 2008 CBO study on Nuclear Power’s Role in Generating Electricity:If just a few nuclear plants qualified for the incentives, the most substantial one—the production tax credit—would lead to sizable reductions in those plants’ corporate income tax liability during the first several years of operation. Nuclear projects eligible for federal loan guarantees, which cover up to 80 percent of construction costs, would benefit from reductions in financing costs. The preferential tax treatment of decommissioning funds—funds that utilities are required to set aside to cover the cost of safely shutting down and securing a nuclear plant at the end of its useful life—would provide far less financial incentive because the discounted present value of the cost of decommissioning is small.These loan guarantees are massive subsidies for investors, which turn a bad investment into a “good one” by socializing almost all of the likely losses.
[...]
The largest incentives available under EPAct are a production tax credit and a loan guarantee program. The tax credit provides up to $18 in tax relief per megawatt hour of electricity produced at qualifying power plants during the first eight years of operation. (For comparison, the average wholesale price of electricity in 2005 was about $50 per megawatt, on average.)
The maximum coverage available under the loan guarantee program—a guarantee on debt covering 80 percent of a plant’s construction costs, which implies that investors’ equity would cover the remaining 20 percent—would most likely reduce the levelized cost of new nuclear capacity by about 10 percent.And to make these guarantees to protect the investors, Congress has put the taxpayers at a “very high” risk of losing money. According to a 2003 CBO analysis of a nuclear loan program:
[...]
The loan guarantee program could encourage investors to choose relatively risky projects over more certain alternatives because they would be responsible for only about 20 percent of a project’s costs but would receive 100 percent of the returns that exceeded costs.
CBO considers the risk of default on such a loan guarantee to be very high–well above 50 percent. The key factor accounting for this risk is that we expect that the plant would be uneconomic to operate because of its high construction costs, relative to other electricity generation sources. In addition, this project would have significant technical risk because it would be the first of a new generation of nuclear plants, as well as project delay and interruption risk due to licensing and regulatory proceedings.Liability caps
While nuclear accidents are rare, as we see in Japan, the potential damage from an accident could be enormous. However, Congress has made it so power companies can sleep easy knowing that above a certain cost the government will cover their damages for them. From the 2008 CBO report:
In practice, Price-Anderson subsidizes utilities by reducing their cost of carrying liability insurance. Instead of purchasing full coverage, operators of nuclear power plants are required to obtain coverage only up to the liability limit, which is currently set at about $10 billion per accident. The value of the subsidy is the difference between the premium for full coverage and the premium for $10 billion in coverage.Beyond this, the government has taken ownership of all nuclear waste from the private companies, which in theory are a liability that can cause problems for thousands of years.
State level corporate welfare
In addition to the federal government, many states also provide corporate welfare for nuclear power:
In several of those states, additional incentives that could further reduce the cost of nuclear power are under consideration. Those provisions include allowing higher rates of return for nuclear power than for other technologies, allowing utilities to recover some construction costs before plants begin operations, and tax incentives.Nuclear power isn’t viable without lemon socialism
The high investment costs, the long building time, the length of time it takes to see a return on investment, the price uncertainty of electricity and the very large potential liability simply don’t make nuclear power anywhere near economically viable. To make it an “investment” that private companies are willing to undertake requires huge government handouts and legislation privatizing the profits while socializing the losses.
WH, I'm not disagreeing. I say remove all the subsidies, and if a particular energy source is viable for profit, let the corporations build them.
Maybe you should try to apply the same effort to your career as you do here on spurstalk.........that way you will make more money and won't be so mad at the evil CEO's.
Darrin is correct, IMO. Density is an issue. Even if the cost of solar panels plummet and it's efficiency improve (at the rate it has), there's only so much space you have to place them. You also have to add that it's not just panels or wind generators that you've to deal with, but since they're temporal generators (that is, they go through lapses where they don't actually generate electricity, ie:no sun, no wind) you also have to add the cost of energy storage.
I think these systems are great for secondary power generation augmenting primary power generator types. I don't think they'll get to fill the role of primary power generators though.
Well sure, with what we see as current and near future tech, that's what most people have in mind. I don't see that as a reason to try to dismiss it out of hand.
Well this is a typical strawman argument: It doesn't solve all our energy needs, so there's no need to invest in it.
And the rain analogy is as creative and as ignorant as irreducible complexity.
Someone gets it. Rain may be a bad analogy, but that's only because the land already acts to naturally collect and funnel it into reservoirs. As I've pointed out, even in the country that invests the most in PV, it only supplements more conventional sources, and only at a very small percentage.
It would be nice if we could more easily capture energy from that giant hydrogen fusion reactor, eight light-minutes away.
I do agree with this. It won't fill a primary power need, although I don't think even the most rabid solar power junkie would say that. I've never seen anyone on the solar power sites ever make that claim.
I think it is best applied, as noted to sunny desert environments. Texas would be will suited to that as PV would produce the most power during the summer peak loads when people are running their A/C the most.
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