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Cheap Solar Power

keith.seas.harvard.edu

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Re: Cheap Solar Power

#91

Post by agumonkey »

djrogers wrote: post #88
agumonkey wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because history made us build structures and lifestyles that require oil class energy density. We surely don't need it since we were born without. We don't need all of this. Not to that extent, we could cut worldwide transportation. We could eat less. Rethink housing. Even internet[1]. I'd like to see the time when energy will lack. Sometimes I wonder how we could rebootstrap technology in a frugal manner. Have shelt…

> just the other day I put a gif on imgur, 1Million views, a few TB of bandwidth.. Umm, exactly how big was that gif? One of those numbers doesn't match up with the other...

It's an imgur transcoded video into gif[v]. You made me doubt it was GB, but here are the stats they show:

Name: unknown Views: 1,773,652 Submitted: 2 months ago Bandwidth: 94.01 TB

http://imgur.com/k3nRmaM

Re: Cheap Solar Power

#92

Post by xrange »

djrogers wrote: post #89
xrange wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>After 6 years I will be earning $4-5k/year from it. Can you point us in the direction of a good write-up on net-metering? I'm sure different jurisdictions have different rules. I was under the impression that net metering was only good up until your yearly production was equal to your demand. Or are you saying that the $4-5k/year is at wholesale rates?

If I'm not paying that $4-5k to PG&E, and the installation costs have been recouped, then that $4-5k/yr is profit. Money is fungible - if you manage it well, you get the same net effect from preventing it's loss as you do from earning it.

Ah, got it. Thanks. Although if anyone has a good article on net metering, I'd like to read it.

Re: Cheap Solar Power

#93

Post by thrownaway2424 »

djrogers wrote: post #90
thrownaway2424 wrote: post #39

When will this "duck pricing" actually trickle down to consumers? I'm on a PG&E rate plan that charges me an incredible $0.75/kWh during the afternoons of selected days. According to the figures in the CAISO paper, these are the hours of least net demand.

>I'm on a PG&E rate plan that charges me an incredible $0.75/kWh during the afternoons of selected days. Yeah, PG&E is practically begging their customers to install solar. The biggest savings come on the days/times with the best solar potential, and dropping out of that highest tiers can be a real win.

You think so? It seems like the rate system is stacked against solar. They just made the top tier cheaper, and raised the bottom tier so that your very first joule costs more. If you had installed solar based on the savings of staying out of the top tiers, now your payoff looks less certain.

Re: Cheap Solar Power

#94

Post by evolve2k »

buovjaga wrote: post #22

Keith is one of the authors of the Ecomodernist Manifesto (2015). In the Manifesto they say: The scale of land use and other environmental impacts necessary to power the world on biofuels or many other renewables are such that we doubt they provide a sound pathway to a zero-carbon low-footprint future. High-efficiency solar cells produced from earth-abundant materials are an exception and have the potential to provid…

Ref: http://www.ecomodernism.org

Re: Cheap Solar Power

#95

Post by epistasis »

wmeredith wrote: post #53
vackosar wrote: post #24

Is solar using rare metals that we will run out of soon? So will in the end solar fail anyway?

"Limited supplies of five rare-earth minerals pose a threat to increasing use of clean-energy technologies such as wind turbines and solar panels, a U.S. Energy Department report found." Source is from 2012: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-01-05/five-rare-...

>The substances -- dysprosium, terbium, europium, neodymium and yttrium -- face potential shortages until 2015, according to the report, which reiterates concerns identified a year ago.

So, it's past 2015, apparently these shortages didn't materialize.

Re: Cheap Solar Power

#96

Post by sunstone »

homido wrote: post #56

If solar is such a good investment, why aren't power companies creating solar fields with a sense of urgency? Sure, there are a token few, but this is mainly for PR reasons or funded by grants ETC. When businesses (wholesalers and consumers) start going to solar on a grand scale, Solar will have finally arrived as a cost effective alternative. Wake me when this happens.

Wake up! It's happening already in places with lots of sun (or high electricity costs). Examples are, much of Australia, Hawaii, California and others. As solar gets cheaper the viable territory expands.

Re: Cheap Solar Power

#97

Post by ck2 »

xrange wrote: post #86
ck2 wrote: post #73

Imagine an earth 1000 years from now where countries on one side of the planet help out the other side via solar power through superconducting power cables that have little power loss over 10,000 miles. Since each side gets sunlight somewhere, no batteries needed. Of course 1000 years from now they could solve the battery problem too where each residence has its own low cost, safe storage. Or 1000 years from now terr…

>Or 1000 years from now terrorists dirty-bomb everyone. ...Well, on a more optimistic note, a dirty-bombs, while they may destroy property values and cause cleanup issues, don't really kill any more than a conventional/kinetic bomb. I think they may be one of the best-case scenarios when it comes to a terrorist strike, since the causalities will be low, but there will be a lot of "frenzy" about the invisible radiatio…

Look at all the cancer from 9/11 and that was just fine particles in the air.

Now imagine radioactive fine particles with half-life of decades.

Sure, the death isn't instantaneous. But the suffering and early death will be massive. After the US nuked Japan (twice) the real damage was to those left living for the short time afterwards and all the radioactivity an slow death.

Re: Cheap Solar Power

#98

Post by _FKS_ »

marcosdumay wrote: post #87
_FKS_ wrote: post #68

In the meanwhile, a few other sources argue that the overall ERORI (energy invested vs. energy produced) is well below a somehow 'sustainable' level. The impression I'm getting is that the day oil/gas production starts to fall due to geological limits, so will the production of photovoltaic & windmills. Please see: https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.files.wordpress.com... And: http://science-and-energy.org/wp-c…

If solar power is cheaper than coal without subsides, it has greater than 1 EROEI by a big margin, and the question is settled. Bottom-up studies suffer from a big diversity of flaws, and there are plenty of them with obvious bias both ways.

Fossil fuels are the base subsidy. It's hard to see how a manufactured product will be cheaper than fosil fuels consumed on the spot (as coal is primarly a local consumption resource). Also the economy of scale principle works here too: how can a (coal) thermal plant which feeds a region, cities, can be replaced by a collection of small scale devices that produce electricity, and pretend to be cheaper? Nothing will ever be cheaper than coal to produce electricity. There's a good reason why the industrial revolution started with coal and not with renewables (which for the record were already available in Europe for a few centuries before that - it was already widely used since the 12th century)

Re: Cheap Solar Power

#99

Post by marcosdumay »

_FKS_ wrote: post #98
marcosdumay wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If solar power is cheaper than coal without subsides, it has greater than 1 EROEI by a big margin, and the question is settled. Bottom-up studies suffer from a big diversity of flaws, and there are plenty of them with obvious bias both ways.

Fossil fuels are the base subsidy. It's hard to see how a manufactured product will be cheaper than fosil fuels consumed on the spot (as coal is primarly a local consumption resource). Also the economy of scale principle works here too: how can a (coal) thermal plant which feeds a region, cities, can be replaced by a collection of small scale devices that produce electricity, and pretend to be cheaper? Nothing will e…

If you use fossil fuels to create an energy supply, and the energy from this supply is cheaper than the original fossil fuel, that means your supply has bigger than 1 EROEI. (Unless your new supply has a subside.)

Re: Cheap Solar Power

#100

Post by homido »

sunstone wrote: post #96
homido wrote: post #56

If solar is such a good investment, why aren't power companies creating solar fields with a sense of urgency? Sure, there are a token few, but this is mainly for PR reasons or funded by grants ETC. When businesses (wholesalers and consumers) start going to solar on a grand scale, Solar will have finally arrived as a cost effective alternative. Wake me when this happens.

Wake up! It's happening already in places with lots of sun (or high electricity costs). Examples are, much of Australia, Hawaii, California and others. As solar gets cheaper the viable territory expands.

What major power companies or private organization are doing this? (besides as a tax write-off)? None that I know of sunny climate or not. Even when they are, most aren't in these climates so wake me up when solar comes there in this fashion.
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