Posted on 02/22/2010 8:52:44 PM PST by NormsRevenge
LOS ANGELES The Obama administration has given preliminary approval for $1.4 billion in loan guarantees for a massive solar-energy project in California's Mojave Desert.
U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Monday that BrightSource Energy was in line for the financing help to build solar-energy plants to power 140,000 homes.
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Environmentalists want the complex relocated because they say it will harm protected desert tortoises. BrightSource has made design changes in an attempt to alleviate environmental concerns.
(Excerpt) Read more at signonsandiego.com ...
You believe the whole world will throw away all the engines to every plane, ship, train, truck and car that runs on petroleum products and replace them all? And in only a few years?
“With all of that alternate energy, it would be spinning my power meter backwards so fast that I could live off the returns.”
Not for 100K you couldn’t. It cost about 20K to put enough (20 year life span) solar cells on your roof to power the average home. Funny thing about that. That’s about the same amount you would pay for electricity from the electric company in 20 years. Not a good investment at all...
I thought they have beat the cost of solar cells with new technologies that have higher efficiencies. No such luck. And with today’s economic climate, any new technologies may be further down the road.
A little over $2 a watt. However when you need the most power is at night so you have to store it. That’s expensive as well.
“You said it...All these technologies are nothing new, just very expensive and the bottom line is return on investment.”
It’s actually worse than that... The reason prices are what they are is because that’s what people are willing to “pay” for electricity. It doesn’t matter what it costs to build them, they will sell them for what the market will bear. That’s between 5 and 10 cents a KW hour for the life of the cell.
Lets say you ot a real good buy on a large number (millions) of cells - at, say 10 cents on the dollar. What are you going to sell them for? Keep it in mind you could double your money at 20 cents on the dollar.
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