Posted on 05/05/2012 7:33:22 AM PDT by Alas Babylon!
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, 2009KNOXVILLE — 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.
[...]
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.
My above comment is actually the comments continued of the original author.
MY comments are as follows:
I HATE the FRAUD being prepetrated on us all by the greens, the driveby media, the econuts and the democrats and liberals everywhere.
Most are probably good people, and by that I mean the brainwashed rank and file who are taught this crap since kindergarten... However, somewhere up the food chain there are those who know the facts but ignore them, who are hoping to make money off the fraud, or get elected by the saps who believe it. To them I have nothing but scorn.
Some people may look at the prices and say there isn’t so great a difference that it really matters, but to industry it makes all the difference in the world. We can’t compete with other countries on labor costs, but we can compete on energy costs. By using cheap natural gas, industries like data centers and chemical plants will locate here.
Its 500,000 photovoltaic panels will generate 30 megawatts of electricity, enough, in the popular measurement, to power 9,000 homes.
So is that (like) in the daytime when nobody is home, or at night when lighting is needed?...
Oh wait...
>> It is costing about $250 million to build, significantly less than a gas, coal or nuclear power station, which can easily exceed $1 billion.
Ok. But those evil power plants still need to be built because people like lights and A/C and need to charge their Volt after the sun goes down...and that happens every day. Some days, the sun hides behind clouds too.
Solar can offset fuel costs, but not construction or O&M costs of power plants.
It isn’t just the raw extra cost of the electricity that has to be factored into the equation.
What about the collateral costs that will be incurred when businesses have to pay higher energy costs? Every item we use including food, clothing, manufactured goods, etc will go up.
Oh wait, I forgot. With all our goods and services going up because of higher energy costs, the “invisible hand” of the market will drive us to buy those goods and services from other countries like China and India who are ignoring the call for ‘green energy’.
Are we stupid or what?
You've penned a perfect summation of my feelings towards 'gang green'. I've long said that there are two kinds of environmentalists: 1.) the radicals who use the environment as a way to implement social justice ...and2.) the good hearted and naive who follow them after only reading the headlines.
As you pointed out, the culprits in much of this are the educators, many of whom fall into category 2. OUr local high school recently had a profile of their honor grad - a 4.0 student who was a judo master, a musician, a physics prodigy and already spoke two languages besides English. When asked what he thought the greatest challenge his generation would face in the future is he said, "Global Warming".
I thought his teachers should have been tried for child abuse.
Apart from having to keep conventional power sources running, a solar power plant is never finished. By the time a conventional gas fired power plant is ready to go off line, that solar power plant will have been rebuilt many times over.
In the West, the daytime load is higher, primarily due to air conditioning demand.
They degrade in sunlight. This has been known for over 30 years Lifetime of the front of the PV cellsThe plastic covering the PV cells
will not last 30 years.
at NREL(SERI).
is more like 10 years.
Thanks Alas Babylon!
How big is the battery needed to continue supplying power to those 9000 homes at night and on overcast and rainy days?
IMHO, solar power is, at best, a demonstration project. Not something that will work long term. I pray that someday we'll get there but we're not even close now.
A lot of folks talk about the price of PVs going down considerably, but this is due to the cheap crap PVs coming out of China.
I'm considering making a solar generator for times when we lose power here, but I will probably pay more for better German PVs than the Chinese crap.
I always thought the ultimate use for photovoltaics in the hot climates, would be to have the roofs of individual houses covered with solar cells and directly run the AC during the day.
Solar hot water is far more efficient. As is stored heat for cool evenings.
Photovoltaics are perfectly suited for LED lighting because it's DC-DC. What I'd really like to see is a way to supply the lighting circuits in a house from inside an existing panel with low voltage DC. It would take a fancy "circuit breaker" substitute, but I see that as doable. The "safety for as much as we think you should pay" freaks who write the NEC would have a heart attack, but maybe they'd take the money for cheaper conversions in this market.
“It isn’t just the raw extra cost of the electricity that has to be factored into the equation.
What about the collateral costs that will be incurred when businesses have to pay higher energy costs? Every item we use including food, clothing, manufactured goods, etc will go up.
Oh wait, I forgot. With all our goods and services going up because of higher energy costs, the “invisible hand” of the market will drive us to buy those goods and services from other countries like China and India who are ignoring the call for ‘green energy’.
Are we stupid or what?”
Well, our bosses will pay us more to compensate, right? /sarc
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.