Posted on 07/31/2009 12:08:23 PM PDT by LuxMaker
Full of it? U must sell solar. Solar for electricity generation is a joke.
That new technology, nuclear, is the way to go.
Not full of it. It is expensive and takes up enormous amounts of land. I’m aware of a couple of projects near some property of mine that will take up several thousand acres for a few hundred megawatts, which is (in my opinion) stupid.
But the costs are coming down, and the way Walmart proposes to go about it makes sense. I’ll be following their experiment, as I’m sure will everyone else. If anyone can make it work it will be them. And as more people use it, the costs will continue to come down.
Solar will always be a niche source. That is its value. Use it where it makes sense. Don’t try to make it more than it is.
/johnny
Cool. Do you mind sharing your experience?
I’m opposed to the large scale solar farms that I see being built near me. I’m in favor of what you are doing, and what Walmart is doing.
It would be the ultimate irony if private enterprise, investing its own money, developed the alternative energy that Hussein is trying to ram billions of taxpayer dollars at with little success.
I’ve seen the guys who work at Wal-Mart down the way.
Pretty sure I want them with solar or wind, not fissionable material.
How much stolen taxpayer money was used to subsidize your endeavor?
Third, there's the problem of excess. If the installation produces too much power, it will means to sell it back to the grid. And this will require complex metering, and America's power grid could hardly be called high-tech or flexible.
At least here in Southern California, solar panel systems are routinely installed with the necessary electrical interface to allow pumping energy back into "the grid". In the daytime the electrical meter simply runs backwards. At night you draw from "the grid". The Southern California Edison system just looks like a gigantic capacitor. The deal with SCE is that you can zero out your electric bill but they won't pay extra if you run a positive balance. In any case it doesn't look to me like "complex metering" is a problem.
A good niche. I am going on about four days without sunshine in my area, along with a couple of million other people. How well do you think you’d do here?
One of the biggest draws on electricity is air conditioning - a need which is greatest when the sun is brightest at the location. When you’ve got acres of rooftop and a gazillion cubic yards of air to cool under it, solar sounds like a great idea. (I’ve been considering the same. My electric needs are highest when the AC comes on.)
Indeed, we've had directional as well as time-of-use metering for many decades. It's hardly complex or "high-tech". Granted, it is a bit more expensive than a simple watthour meter installed at a house, but these metering functions have been in use in commercial and industrial services for a lot longer than I've been alive. And I'm a little old.
I am not sure about this project but residential solar if you are on the grid is a joke. Consider the basics of a solar system for my home in the Denver area. A 4.2 KW system costs about $33,000 with anticipated electricity cost savings of $700 per year yielding a pay back period close to 50 years. The system seems to be a poor way to generate electricity unless you are off the grid.
Now consider the enormous subsidies. After subsidies from the power company and tax credits, the cost is under $8,000. The power company must offset your electricity usage. With artificially rising electricity rates, the system looks a little promising.
As I understand from discussions with a contractor, residential solar is a long, long way from economic viability. He said small incremental efficiency increases occur every year but he did not see any major improvements on the horizon. I understand their are technologies that will reduce the cost but not improve efficiency much.
It is simply outrageous that residential solar is given huge subsidies. It is a prime example of the waste of scarce capital on politically favored (but economically non viable) energy production.
Fill in us interested types! Been kicking around the idea too, but need some way to start small and build on it.
So what are they gonna do when it gets dark, eh?
/johnny
Easy. You shine a flashlight at it. :)
“It’s hardly complex or “high-tech”.”
Not in small quantitities, but if there was enough of it you now have a relatively unpredictable power generation source on the grid, not something that the operators generally want. Averaged over a large enough area, though, much as with wind power, it should be manageable.
Thanks - I'm strongly against any taxpayer-funded tax credits or exemptions used to steer behavior. I believe that energy options should be chosen on their individual merits and based on their true costs to the person or entity that makes that choice. I don't believe in paying for someone else's savings.
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