Solar power costs dropping, nearing competition

Variable output and intermittent availability are the Achilles' Heel of these proposals. If we're thinking of any kind of large-scale system, like 200 miles on a side, you're probably going to have to have a similar-sized storage reservoir, and that just doubles the siting issues.

Pumped storage hydro has been proposed but most often it is shot down by environmentalist objections. Not a lot of people know it, but many technology historians trace the origins of the modern environmentalist movement to a fight over a proposed pumped storage reservoir, that being the Storm King Mountain project in the Hudson Valley. And the opposition was led by stinky, ratty, flea-bitten, pony-tailed wackos like you see today. The original "environmentalists" were extremely wealthy landowners along the Hudson River valley, who objected not so much to the idea of a reservoir as to the visual pollution the transmission lines would bring to their views of the picturesque Hudson Valley. Sounds familiar? Think Teddy Kennedy and the proposed Cape Wind project. So I don't have a lot of hope either for large-scale storage systems being built anytime soon. Its all coming down to NIMBYs and NOPEs and BANANAs.

Ask people today what Storm King Mountain was all about, and 9 out of 10 will say it was a nuclear plant. Little do they know that it is something related to that darling of the environmentalist movement, solar energy. Most solar energy advocates will disavow any knowledge of the issue, but that doesn't stop the NOPEs and NIMTOOs from opposing something like it.

While I am all in favor of alternative energy sources, most of them are far too sugarcoated.

Compare 1989 vs 2004 when the earliest & latest numbers are available.

In 1989 Wind, Solar and Geothermal combined made up 0.61% of our power generation

15 years later, with all the new plants and farms, Gazillion of dollars and tax breaks for subsidizes and research, in 2004 those numbers only increased to 0.79% of our power generation. And almost all of that "BIG" gain was made by wind.

We've been hearing about how cheaper and more efficient solar panels are just around the corner for 50 years now. And with out fail, solar (and these other alternative energies) has overpromised and underdelivered every single time.

Solar will never be viable, no matter what breakthrough comes down the pike you just can't get around those pesky Laws of Thermodynamics

I didn’t consider this a ‘pie in the sky’ article. It’s simply informing folks that more research is being done by the day to make this more feasible for more folks down the line. The more arrays that are sold, the more money for the companies to do research, and as with all new technology, the ones in the first wave always pay more, while after the technology has been in use and the kinks are worked out, the next wave pays a little less, and so on.

The numbers I have seen indicate that if all of the "alternative" technologies were developed to their maximum, economically feasible potential, we'd be looking at meeting something like 20-30% of our total projected demand. We're spending decades of time and billions in research and tens of billions in tax breaks and direct subsidies on something that might meet at most a fifth or fourth of our projected needs. The larger problem remains unsolved: where do we go for the other 70-80% of our needs?

No matter how you slice it, it's going to come down to two things: find a way to use coal in an environmentally acceptable manner, or go with nuclear, or do both. With coal you can develop synfuels and gasification and perhaps address some of the transport sector needs. Nuclear can do it if we go with electric substitution for ground transport and some kind of energy carrier, hydrogen, boron, whatever. Nuclear will have to go with commercial reprocessing and actinide recycle to address the fuel supply and waste storage issues. Maybe something like the closed fuel cycle IFR concept can also make a difference.

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