 | The Bullroarer - Tuesday January 8 | TOD: Australia/New Zealand | Record oil price sparks call for petrol rationing |  |
152 comments on Thin Film Solar Power - Cheaper than Coal ?
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If you want to transition to sustainable infrastructure and mitigate Peak Oil support Feed-in Tariffs. Germany's free-market system has had spectacular results.
Germany de-monopolized power generation. Hermann Scheer deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for that action.
Even if solar is a 100 times more expensive than coal. That is a minor difference. Solar is sustainable. People worry about payback. What is the payback of not having a lifeboat and needing one?
Distributed solar power generation provides economic communities with lifeboats.
what the heck, it's only money.
The odds of brownouts and blackouts from the monolithic grid is 100%.
California had them, NY had them, Oklahoma had them, etc....
What is the payback of having a lifeboat when you need one? At what price is it too expensive to stay alive?
DId I miss something in the paper today? we desperately need a lifeboat today so we'll pay whatever price, even if we don't have the money?
California power outages was manipulation.
NY has power today.
Are the lights back on in Oklahoma?
I did not quite understand the question?
If today is all that matters, thing are pretty OK.
The lights are back on in Oklahoma. Fortunately, after the ice storm, repair crews from surrounding states helped. I doubt that will happen after Peak Oil really sets in.
There was a really good summary of grid risks by Gail the Actuary.
can I have the date of when peak oil really sets in? tell me who wins the World Series that year too...or I suppose we won't have baseball then because they usually play at night. can we play baseball during the day?
the market is pricing in Peak oil right about now with high prices and people are starting to become interested in alternatives. global warming is also a concern. every time oil goes up I always hear how solar stocks go up. why is that? GM went down the other day when they announced the Volt would be put off for a little bit.
Solar power not only generates electricity during peak generation demand, it generates electricity on site during peak transmission demand. All blackouts due to high demand have occured during summer air conditioning peak, to date.
Avoiding the cost of the blackouts would have paid for the solar generation grids in places like Michigan, Ohio, New York, etc. Not just in California. It gets hot in the summer in the northeast, too.
We could have had solar power for free just by avoiding the costs of the blackouts.
On the issue of blackouts and solar; Grid-tie Solar will go down with the grid as the technical standards are currently written in the US. Grid-tie solar will help with the additional load on the grid during peak summer daytime demand. But will not function with the loss of the grid.
If you go solar grid-tie, at least go with a grid-tie w/battery back-up, then in-house solar can still function during the daylight even if the grid fails.
Some folks, out west, that install a pure grid-tie play will be disappointed that their AC will go down with the grid even if the sun is overhead.
FYI.
Grid-tied-solar if large remote solar arrays has the same failure mechanism as the grid.
That is not the result of the Feed-in Tariff. These are true economic lifeboats. They can easily operate decoupled from the grid to provide power at the point of need.
It is true that grid tie systems have to shut down in the case of an outage. This is to protect people working on the lines. But, it is not hard to include a switch that physically disconnects from the grid and allows stand-alone operation. You want to be sure you don't have loads that produce transients larger that the capacity of the array or that equipment could be damaged.
Chris
Amazingly, yes. In fact, an older friend of mine tells me she used to run over to Forbes Field after school to watch baseball. They would let people in free after the fifth inning. She was at Game 7 of the 1960 World Series, and saw Maz hit his walkoff homer.
Yup, believe it or not, the World Series was played during the day. And they let people in free after the halfway point.
The Yankees used to ride the train for three days when they played at St. Louis. Many of those players think that helped the team bond. They say planes have ruined baseball.
Leanan, Mazeroski's home run wasn't 'walk-off'. The Pirates finished batting in the bottom of the eighth and the Yankees went down in order in the top of the ninth. However, Joe Carter's home run in the bottom of the ninth in the 1993 World Series was 'walk-off' because it ended the game.
Bill Mazeroski's World Series Walk-off Home Run
Hello Leanan,
The best part of the story was how the 13 year old traded the ball back for two cases of beer--I bet his parents didn't find out about this deal until the brewskis were long gone! :0
Yes John we understand:
Capital is God, and The Free Market is the chosen path.
I read Ayn Rand when I was 16 also. Boy is Ayn Rand cool then!
You are a hero for being a complete azzhole!
Is that cool or what?
Ha! - I had a friend fairly recently read Rand for first time (he's in his 30's) - and he was all excited about her and her ideas, wanted to talk all about her, he wasn't very happy when I had the same response "yeah, read her when I was in 10th grade, thought she was a big deal with cool ideas, since I've figured out she was pretty much a nasty combo of libertarian and fascist"
it really amazes me that the "free market" has become as much of a religion as it has - despite the working model of hybrid socialist countries like those of Europe (esp. the Scandinavian countries)
besides, most of the calls for a "free market" seem to me just demands for no taxes on various corporations (or subsidies for them) - hardly a free market (as if such a beast could exist)
I've figured out she was pretty much a nasty combo of libertarian and fascist"
Libertarian National Socialist Green Party
http://www.nazi.org/
How can anyone be a Libertarian Socialist (let alone a Libertarian National Socialist) - isn't that a contradiction in terms ?
The Green part I can understand, even if Green generally tends to mean the "lower left" corner of the political quadrant nowadays - ecofascism seems to have a long tradition in Europe. But they definitely need to quit calling themselves Libertarians.
As for combining free market rhetoric with fascist ideas, I think thats called "neoconservatism" nowadays - its not really about free markets, its about power and control...
If you eat big macs everyday for lunch and dinner, and your doctor tells you you need to stop or you will have a heart attack, are you going to insist he provide you with the date you will actually have the heart attack before you stop eating them?
Brilliant, and quoted!
You have missed the point John15. Coal is massively subsized across the world through its ability to impose its externalities on the rest of the world. Remove this subsidy and renewables become viable.
what the heck, it's only money.
That is rather snarky from a man who can't identify a free market.
'even if solar is a 100 times more expensive than coal. That is a minor difference'
You don't have to be mad. but it helps!
I don't know what your electric bill is, but you must be seriously wealthy if you can contemplate paying 100 times that!
And BTW, making that a government subsidy instead of a direct payment makes no difference at all to the total cost.
Sorry about the 100 times. I was trying to make the point that payback is meaningless if the cost is complete social collapse cause by a collapse of the power grid.
In our use of solar collectors, is typically less than 7 years. We plan on a 30 year commercial system life. When solar harvesting really ramps to scale, I think that payback will become even better.
You assume that the people in power are looking (and seriously) at the long-term picture and not the near-term profits.
I'll give you a hint. They're not. If they were, climate change would scare the shit out of them. The US, and even nations who accept AGW as gospel truth, aren't that psyched up about it to cut all growth right now and pump everything into sustainable living.
And therein lies the flaw in your plan. Human nature. Don't worry, it sank communism and living peacefully too.
I do expect but am appalled at the lack of governmental leadership.
I expect a lot of people will build their own lifeboat.
"I expect a lot of people will build their own lifeboat"
Bill that takes time and money - we've been living on 18 acres for over a year and we don't feed ourselves yet! Tertiary Industry to Peasant is a big step, and there probably are more skills involved in the latter than the former.
If you are thinking of a lifeboat do it now!
I agree. The paradox about lifeboats is the more we make the more likely we will never need them.
The skills issue, "don't feed ourselves yet" is a critical one. But you have started the process of self-reliance. I think it would be good for TOD to promote a set of policies to deal with Peak Oil. My choices would be policies of self-reliance and community economic lifeboats:
Bill James- what you described is something akin to our invovlement in WWII. victory gardens are estimated to have supplied 40% of our vegetables.
What works is not necessarily new.
Militias are also not new. Generally not affective against armies, but armies require gas, horses or bicycles. They are not currently equipped for the last two choices.
What we have found in our experience is that it is easy not to use energy...
We have done away with all household appliances save the washing machine and use manual appliances instead. We only use one or two lights at a time, and we don't have TV reception out here.
Recent visits to my children over Christmas re-infoced that there is nothing worth watching on TV and that we are all overinformed with the views our corporate would be masters wish us to hear.
Our health and fitness has improved along with mental clarity and a feeling of wellbeing. I wholeheartedly support Sharon Astik and others call for millions of new farmers - although we don't feed ourselves completely we have produced many tonnes of spuds!!!
It is pretty amazing how many potatoes can be grown ;)
You know you don't just print the money and the solar panels fall out of the sky. If something costs a lot it means a lot of people have to spend time building things, digging in the ground, going to college to get advanced degrees and telling other people to do stuff all over the world to get what you want done.
Hmmm, this is how I thought that cartoon was going to end.
Heh, heh :-)
Bill,
as a German I'd like to add that unfortunately now we have an oligopoly with 4 big companies (RWE, E.on, EnBW and Vattenfall Europe) over here.
They keep raising prices all the time and there are rumors of ENRON-style manipulation of electricity prices at the energy market. Which prompts even secretaries of state to comment:
http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/0,1518,525807,00.html (in German, you can babelfish it, "river and gas" is actually electricity and gas, and "current" is electricity ;-) )
The market here isn't as liberalized as it should be.
But the feed-in tariffs for alternative energy are a big breakthrough, I have to admit that. Scheer is a hero for making that possible.
Best regards,
J. Daehn, Hannover, Germany
I believe Scheer's Feed-in Tariff's and the German peoples rallying to it should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
The proof is in the results. Germany added 4,000 MW of renewable generation in 2006. California's liberal subsidy approach added 242 MW of renewable generation in the last 5 years.
There will be issues with large scale manipulation of the grid and utilities. The transition from a regulated monopoly towards a distributed free market is likely to be long and sorted.
Thanks for the comment about Scheer as a hero. I do not think many people realize the scope and importance of the Feed-in Tariff accomplishment.
Well for me he is. I was just about to write "he saved all our (German) butts" (Er hat uns allen den Arsch gerettet). But time will tell if it suffices. Actually he and our Chancellor are featured in "50 people who could save the planet", available at the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jan/05/activists.ethicallivin...
(was already mentioned in another thread).
Angie gets the longest coverage. But actually Scheer and the Greens should have gotten it.
Solar panels have sprung up all over the country side. Farmers seem to get the message. I haven't seen many in towns.
What a pity that you cannot get the fabulous Enercon wind turbines in the US. Their story is actually one of abuse of patents and the NSA spying out trade secrets (with German help):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enercon
http://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg09891.htm
http://www.zeit.de/1999/40/199940.nsa_2_.xml
http://www.unibw.de/wow5_4/forschung/publikationen/ausgewahltearbeitenun...
The last link is from the University of the "Bundeswehr". Unfortunately only in German.
I have some concerns about Nanosolars product. I believe that the panels are only available to utilities and they are being very secretive about the product details. What is the life of these panels? Most manufacturers warrant their products for 20 years. A company that yields few details should be regarded with a measure of skepticism.