The future .... is here.

[Lord Jim]

40 years ago, I wonder what the projections were for the percentage of families in the economically developed world which would own a "personal computer"? (Or a "mobile telephone"?)

I was wondering how long it would be before someone would try to make that sort of analogy... (And I am of course prepared for it... )

Here's the problem with comparing solar power to technological gadgets like computers and cell phones, (or televisions or radios)

If you want what a computer can provide, there is no alternative to having a computer....if you wanted Uncle Miltie in your living room every Tuesday night, there was no alternative to having a television....

If you want what solar power provides, (ie, energy) there are numerous alternatives....

There simply is not the sort of "monopoly of need-meeting" in the case of solar power that drove the demand which led to the economies of scale for major technological devices that enabled their rapid expansion in our society.

[Grim Reaper]

If you want what a computer can provide, there is no alternative to having a computer....if you wanted Uncle Miltie in your living room every Tuesday night, there was no alternative to having a television....

But you can choose between a dozen different brands, they have to keep innovating to stay ahead of the competition.

The same deal applies to solar energy, they need to keep improving efficiency and affordability if they want to move beyond an infinitesimal slice of the market.

[Sue U]

At my house, we cover about 70% of our electricity needs with solar. Unfortunately, as the system works here, the electricity generated goes directly out to the grid, so we get a credit for generation rather than actually being able to run it through the house first and use it directly.

[Rick]

http://www.arkansasenergy.org/energy-in ... ation.aspx

Net Metering Rules
In April 2001, Arkansas enacted legislation (HB 2325) directing the Arkansas Public Service Commission (PSC) to establish net-metering rules for certain renewable-energy systems. The PSC approved final rules for net metering in July 2002. Legislation enacted in April 2007 (HB 2334) bolstered the existing statute by increasing the availability of net metering, improving the law's provision for the carryover of net excess generation (NEG), and clarifying the ownership of "renewable-energy credits" (RECs).

Residential renewable-energy systems up to 25 kilowatts (kW) in capacity and nonresidential systems up to 300 kW in capacity are eligible for net metering. Eligible technologies include solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal and biomass systems, as well as fuel cells and microturbines using renewable fuels. There is no limit on the aggregate capacity of all net-metered systems.

The 2007 amendments allow net-metered customers to carry over any NEG to their following monthly bill at the utility's retail rate. Any NEG remaining at the end of an annual billing cycle is granted to the utility. (Previously, NEG was granted to the utility monthly.) In addition, the 2007 amendments clarified that net-metered customers own RECs. (RECs and REC ownership were not addressed prior to the 2007 amendments.)

Arkansas's net-metering law authorizes the PSC to allow utilities to assess net-metered customers "a greater fee or charge of any type, if the electric utility's direct costs of interconnection and administration of net metering outweigh the distribution system, environmental, and public policy benefits of allocating the costs among the electric utility's entire customer base."

[dales]

As Solyndra illustrates, photovoltaic will be a challenging business to be in but with a high growth rate and a large basis ($93 Billion) it remains a very attractive area for investment and will continue to be so for some time. Installing solar systems can go a long way to reducing unemployment.

Let's toss away another $500 million of taxpayer money that netted nothing.

Let private investors pony up the cash, the govt. should not be doing this.

[Econoline]

40 years ago, I wonder what the projections were for the percentage of families in the economically developed world which would own a "personal computer"? (Or a "mobile telephone"?)

I was wondering how long it would be before someone would try to make that sort of analogy... (And I am of course prepared for it... )

Here's the problem with comparing solar power to technological gadgets like computers and cell phones, (or televisions or radios)

If you want what a computer can provide, there is no alternative to having a computer....if you wanted Uncle Miltie in your living room every Tuesday night, there was no alternative to having a television....

If you want what solar power provides, (ie, energy) there are numerous alternatives....

There simply is not the sort of "monopoly of need-meeting" in the case of solar power that drove the demand which led to the economies of scale for major technological devices that enabled their rapid expansion in our society.

Cell phones might be a better analogy than computers--after all, everybody already had telephones--and "smart phones" even better (or maybe automobiles around the turn of the 20th century?). Especially so if you consider the examples cited in the first two posts in this thread. There are places and situations where solar is already the best alternative, and those will only increase as the cost of solar comes down and the cost of fossil fuels goes up.

Of course it's being over-hyped by those in the industry; that's what industry flacks always do. But tell the truth, now, Jim--how many people in 1970 would have believed forecasts of the numbers and prices of personal computers now in use? And were you one of the few True Believers back then?

Oh, and by the way...I'm not one of the liberal tree-huggers who lump nuclear in with fossil fuels: I regard it as another (initially over-hyped) technology which may, like solar, eventually be cheap and trouble-free enough to sustain us in the long run.

[rubato]

As Solyndra illustrates, photovoltaic will be a challenging business to be in but with a high growth rate and a large basis ($93 Billion) it remains a very attractive area for investment and will continue to be so for some time. Installing solar systems can go a long way to reducing unemployment.

Let's toss away another $500 million of taxpayer money that netted nothing.

Let private investors pony up the cash, the govt. should not be doing this.

The successful countries in this field don't use that strategy. We gave up world leadership in photovoltaics when Reagan killed the US programe and wasted the money on the S&L bailout (a thousand times over) and a "star wars" system which all the physicists said was junk. Threw it away. Now we are playing catchup in a very challenging business climate.

When we believe in ourselves and bet on ourselves we win.


yrs,
rubato

[rubato]

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

The only reason Taiwan ticks up is that Taiwanese manufacturers all knew that the US was going to impose tariffs on China which gave them a small marginal edge.

The US declined during the Bushocracy because the Bushocracy all drank the "global warming is a myth" kool-aid.



yrs,
rubato

[dales]

Red China undermines world prices of solar cells by massive govt. subsidy.

[Lord Jim]

Cell phones might be a better analogy than computers--after all, everybody already had telephones--and "smart phones"

No, I'm sorry Econo, but those analogies also fail...

Yes I might have a phone in my house, but a cell phone gives me additional benefits those phones don't offer...

Like the ability to call home from a supermarket when I can't find what I was sent to get so I can't be blamed for selecting an unacceptable substitute....

Or the ability to annoy people like Joe Guy in restaurants...

And smart phones, after all, are nothing but mobile phones with computers attached, and they offer a specific and unique set of benefits ....

There is nothing specific or unique about what solar power provides. It provides "energy"; specifically electrical power, which can be used for a whole host of purposes, but which other sources provide much more cheaply...

And given the available supply of these other sources, there is no reason to believe that "solar power" is going to be anything more than a" greenie feel good' novelty energy source for the foreseeable future...

[Lord Jim]

Oh, and by the way...I'm not one of the liberal tree-huggers who lump nuclear in with fossil fuels: I regard it as another (initially over-hyped) technology which may, like solar, eventually be cheap and trouble-free enough to sustain us in the long run.

Well, I'm with you on nuclear power...

An energy source, which by the way, already produces 10% of US energy needs today despite the fact that there hasn't been a nuke power plant built in this country in 40 years....

Let's have a national "interstate highway system" type crash government-backed program for building nuclear power plants...

If we did that, we would not only create hundreds of thousands of good paying jobs in the short run, within our life times we really could reduce our dependence on foreign oil in a meaningful way and tell the Hugo Chavez's and the Ahmadinejad's and the Madrassa supporting Saudis of the world to take their oil and shove it up their ass...

[Lord Jim]

The way I look at this is really quite simple (yeah, I know, you knew that... )

I view our dependence on foreign oil, (particularly from dodgy sources; if we were getting 90% of our foreign oil from Canada, I really wouldn't think much about it) as both a national security threat, and as a threat to our economic well being...

As such, I see reducing our need for oil from these sources as an immediate imperative; not something we can lay off to being solved by esoteric methodologies sometime down the road when our grand children are collecting social security....

Which is why I support an "all of the above" strategy that is truly "all of the above", with emphasis on those energy resources that can get us out of this fix the quickest...

That means nuclear, shale coal, natural gas, and yes, oil extracted from places that aren't dodgy...

I look forward to a day where I can say, "Straits of Hormuz? Straits of Shmormuz....who gives a fuck?"

I hope to live to see the day that my son learns about our dependence on Mid-east oil in history books, the same way my daughter has been learning about the Soviet Union...

[rubato]

Red China undermines world prices of solar cells by massive govt. subsidy.

The subsidy just gives them a competitive edge to outlast everyone else, prices were driven down because many polysilicon manufacturers came on-line in 2010 and2011 which drove down costs more in 2 years than they were expected to fall in 8 years. Solyndra* got caught with no way to reduce costs fast enough to stay in the game.

TSMC is building 200MW /yr because the US tariff on China will amount to an indirect subsidy to Taiwan.

yrs,
rubato

* Solyndra made thin-film solar which is less efficient than mono- or poly- silicon. A lot of their advantage came in the higher prices of silicon.

[dales]

hope to live to see the day that my son learns about our dependence on Mid-east oil in history books, the same way my daughter has been learning about the Soviet Union...

<golf clap>

[Sue U]

The fact is that we will never be free of dependence on Middle Eastern oil until we can make a radical shift to some other form (or combination of forms) of energy production. We must convert to alternatives, but if left solely to the "free market" that won't happen until it's too late; by the time cost pressures have risen so high as to be unsustainable, there will be insufficient lead time to develop an alternative energy infrastructure.

[rubato]

The fact is that we will never be free of dependence on Middle Eastern oil until we can make a radical shift to some other form (or combination of forms) of energy production. We must convert to alternatives, but if left solely to the "free market" that won't happen until it's too late; by the time cost pressures have risen so high as to be unsustainable, there will be insufficient lead time to develop an alternative energy infrastructure.

Well that's the size of it. In this case prices have come down so much that only a small nudge can do a lot. Photovoltaic has achieved "grid parity" in Japan, Europe, Aus, and across the southern US. A colleague who had a system installed in Pleasonton Cal. (not that far south) showed me his electric bill and even in winter he got a 100% cut in the electric bill. Break-even is about 10 years for him.

Current law subsidizes oil to the tune of $40 billion a year. What kind of jackass thinks that makes sense?

yrs,
rubato

[Econoline]

Current law subsidizes oil to the tune of $40 billion a year. What kind of jackass thinks that makes sense?