The wind and solar industries in America “were dead in the fourth quarter,” said John Woolard, chief executive of BrightSource Energy, which builds and operates cutting-edge solar-thermal plants in the Mojave Desert. Almost five gigawatts of new solar-thermal projects ”” the equivalent of five big nuclear plants ”” at various stages of permitting were being held up because of a lack of financing.
“All of these projects will now go ahead,” said Woolard. “You are talking about thousands of jobs … We really got something right in this legislation.”
These jobs will be in engineering, constructing and operating huge solar systems and wind farms and manufacturing new photovoltaics. Together they will drive innovation in all these areas ”” and move wind and solar technology down the cost-volume learning curve so they can compete against fossil fuels and become export industries at the “ChinIndia price,” that is the price at which they can scale in China and India.
That is how taxpayer money should be used to stimulate: limited financing, for a limited time, targeted on an industry bristling with new technology start-ups that, with a little push from Uncle Sam, won’t just survive this crisis but help us thrive when it is over. We need, and the world needs, an America that is thriving not just surviving.
There’s one thing that solar, wind and ethanol are good at generating: Subsidies.
The fact is that we have been subsidizing the electric industry with flat rates for almost a century. Solar would compete at the peak power costs on the margin were the utility forced to show you the true hourly cost of energy. But the utility would rather hide this so as to dissuade the use of solar and thereby justify the need of a larger central coal fired power plant that will only be used 25 – 35% of the time while they get full rate recovery plus a fixed rate of return.
2..
You dont think they want to lower their standard of living, do ya?
Germany has quit it’s wind power program becuase the back up systems due to the unreliable nature of wind energy required a back up system.
Let’s not ding on the US utility companies. They are not subsidized in general, and they have very low rates. I have no connections with them, but I believe they are a real American success story.
According to the EIA 2007 prices per KWH delivered to households:
Italy — $0.25
UK — $0.22
Austria– $0.21
France– $0.16
Switzer.–$0.14
U.S. — $0.11
I say hats off to the American utilities. Left to their own devices they will keep costs as low as possible, using more nuclear power in the mode of France and Switzerland. When solar is cost effective, they will adopt more of it also. Today, solar still has a way to go.
Solar and wind power both require back-up systems for when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. The other huge problem is that the power grid is not set up to deliver power from wind farms in the Great Plains or solar fields in the Southwest to where the power is needed. Overloaded as it is, the grid would not be able to handle the load, and NO ONE WANTS high-voltage power lines running through their areas. NIMBY rules.
We’ve had, in the past, a solar unit on our roof to heat the water. Good idea.
I would just like to see the utilities be required to improve their load and capacity factors to something nearer to 75% before they are allowed to build, at rate payer’s expense, another large central generation fossil-fired power plant and transmission line. Many reports have now shown that solar (peaking as it does near the utlility peak) actually helps improve the utility load (and capacity) factor.
To understand capacity factor imagine Henry Ford builds a auto manufacturing plant and only operates at one shift. Then it is said to have a Capacity Factor of 8/24 or 33%. Now suppose Henry Ford gets a monopoly and is allowed to cover the cost of building a second plant when the first one is only being used at 33% of the time. Naturally, he raises the cost on his cars to cover the costs of the seconf plant. In a competitive market his automobile costs would be too high and he would be forced to utilize his first plant more efficienctly before building a second. But no such test is applied in the electrical industry. All the utility has to say is that it needs the additional capacity to meet the peak.
So when #1 says that all solar is just an excuse for more subsidies, I respond saying that, in fact, solar is the antidote to a bloated and inefficient electric utility system. I lived in a well documented solar house for six and one half years. We paid full price and sold the house in the face of the real estate meltdown. We made our money back plus a 22% annual rate of return on the energy equipment.