8 ms·

We don't have abundant solar power because of financing, not science

47 points by BvS 15y ago

jdwhit2 15y ago
Solar power is a classic disruptive technology. It currently does not meet the mainstream market's needs in terms of: - availability - cost per MWh - suitable locations (close to established high voltage power lines) Each of these factors is being steadily improved over time. And once solar technology meets the mainstream market's expectations for energy production, incumbent producers will need to retreat their offerings into a vanishingly small market for those needs not met by solar.
- stretchwithme 15y ago
  I think we'll know its disruptive when it actually disrupts something. On its own, without subsidies and other crutches. And that may have happened with special assistance, as many other disruptions have. But its still not a sure thing. There may be other technologies that might have gotten there first. But since we've biased investment in solar so much, such alternatives may never develop. We did something similar with the automobile in the US, giving it advantages and subsidies like free roads. Is it any wonder that more efficient ways of getting around withered?
  - Volpe 15y ago
    What were the more efficient ways (of getting around)?
    - benton 15y ago
      Subways.
    - stretchwithme 15y ago
      Mass transit is what I had in mind. Personally, I prefer the car. But if I had to bear all of the costs of using a car directly, and urban sprawl were not so preferred by planners, mass transit would be my choice more often. This is especially true at rush hour. Most highway construction happens just to serve rush hour traffic, a time when mass transit is at its most efficient. If these subsidies did not exist, mass transit would be much more widely used. There'd be many more choices and there'd be no need to subsidize mass transit. We actually have subsidies to counter the negative effects of other subsidies. Getting rid of all subsidies would be better and allow people to make the right choices for them with fewer negative side effects.
      - jdwhit2 15y ago
        I remember reading an opinion here on Hacker News not long ago where it was suggested that in the future with self-driving cars we don't all need to own a car. Instead a car could come and pick us up and drop off at the destination. Do you think that this micro transportation (instead of mass transportation) option could be environmentally friendly?
        easp 15y ago
        Microtransport works against energy efficiency to the extent that empty vehicles are moving around unoccupied. On the other hand, if they achieve higher utilization, then that is offset to some degree by better utilization of the embodied energy required to manufacture the vehicle. Further, if self driving vehicles are well coordinated, they could achieve higher utilization of roadways, which would require less land and less concrete and steel to carry the same volume of people. Also, they would potentially be able to operate with more optimal acceleration and breaking.
        stretchwithme 15y ago
        Before you can compare things on an environmental basis, you have to be comparing things that are equivalent. I could compare rubbing a lamp to taking the subway in environmental terms and the lamp comes out way ahead. It just takes more walking to get places with the lamp method. If you do wish to compare two things, you probably should include the cost of your time and the environmental impact you would have during that amount of time. You also want to consider the actual impacts of building the transportation systems, whether its rail or road. It would be infinitely easier for you if each process involved were taxed according to its impact. Then the costs would be included in the price you pay and you could decide according to what works best for you.
      - Volpe 15y ago
        Oh right, but mass transit has hardly withered. There are probably similar numbers on the mass transit systems as there are in cars (in most cities).
  - easp 15y ago
    You don't have to look far in the US to see that PV solar is winning against grid-connected power. I don't know the exact shape of the niche, but it seems to be a combination of relatively low power needs vs the cost of bringing grid power to the location. Safety lighting and monitoring or communications seem to be common applications. And I'm talking about utilitarian applications, not places where the PR value of appearing "green" gets factored into the equation. One place I've seen things like this are is path lighting in parks or campuses that are run of batteries charged by a solar panel. In the past, they would have pulled power to the location, and the solar option wins out because of lower up-front costs.
    - kstenerud 15y ago
      In Japan, most of the country (well, mountain) roads are illuminated by street lights charged by a PV panel on top. All 4-way stop intersections also have a blinking red light embedded in the road, once again charged by a PV cell.
      - anamax 15y ago
        > In Japan, most of the country (well, mountain) roads are illuminated by street lights charged by a PV panel on top. That tells us that the cost of getting power to those locations dominates the cost of power used at those locations. Other locations have different characteristics.
        kstenerud 15y ago
        "Other locations have different characteristics." That's rather obvious. I'm talking about places where it works well in Japan, along the same lines as the parent talking about places where it works well in parks.
        easp 15y ago
        Yes, and the point is that there are market niches that would either have gone unserved, or would have been served at greater expense because there was no suitable alternative that are now being served by PV solar. This what the start of disruption looks like (though by no means speaks to how far it ends up going)
firemanx 15y ago
Ultimately, the problem with solar, wind, and any other "periodic" or localized generation method is storage and distribution. I live in an area with incredibly cheap power due to hydro dams that generate well in excess of what we need. However, there's only so much we can do with that excess in terms of efficiency of generation because it costs so much to send that energy long distances. In addition, you have the obvious periodic nature of solar and wind, which mean that not only do you have the distribution problems, but you also can't just flick it on and offset a bunch of peak load or burst demand (such as when hospitals "turn on" in the morning). You could have 100% efficient solar technology, and it wouldn't change much the economics of green energy because of the physical nature of problem. Thus, you need to change how we deal with the physical nature, and thus the economics themselves by improving the technology in other places. I work for a startup which is building a combination of efficient storage infrastructure and a distributed software system to help manage the heuristics of controlling supply and demand with this storage system and generation technology (including solar and wind, but also traditional generation as well), helping to do things like smart "time shifting" of energy supply. Since superconductors are still a ways off, and even with them it doesn't change the nature of periodic generation, I think storage technology is likely the most important area for investment in the immediate future (and not just because that's where my paycheck comes from :) )
- estel 15y ago
  On the other hand, and from what I remember from a conversation with someone who works on the UK National Grid, Solar and Wind power have the advantage of predictability; which in many ways is just as important as availability for large-scale power infrastructures. (That's short-term predictability, generally < 1 hour). As they've been saying since the 1950s, fusion is only 20 years away to solve all our problems anyway.
  - firemanx 15y ago
    Oh, I don't mean to imply that solar and wind are entirely unpredictable (I was hoping my comments about hydro would cover that), but they aren't always predictable when and where you need it. One of the problems for BIG infrastructure (say, hospitals and apartment buildings), is that they often have their peak demand almost instantaneously in the morning - often before the sun comes up. For solar, that means you can't directly address this peak demand without some way of shifting that generation capacity. But, as you say, unlike some of the arguments over the years trying to prove that solar is untenable, I think it's predictability, combined with additional advances elsewhere, will indeed push us toward a better future, at least until that "fusion" stuff gets around to being feasible :)
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
T_S_ 15y ago
It's not financing. It's the fact that we don't have a carbon tax. Price carbon near the cost of sequestration and you will see plenty of money invested in alternative energy. Anything else keeps the decision making in the hands of the central planners. Ask Gorbachev how well that worked.
- baddox 15y ago
  So, you're admitting that the problem is financing. You're just proposing one way of incentivizing financing.
  - spenrose 15y ago
    I am not sure why y'all are arguing. Either a carbon tax or better financing would help.
    - T_S_ 15y ago
      They both help reduce climate change? Not sure. Without a carbon tax you could burn 100 tons of coal to make a "green device" and nobody would know the exact figure. With it, you don't even need to do the calculation. It's in the price.
  - T_S_ 15y ago
    No. The article is a coded call for subsidies of solar through "improved" financing. Subsidizing a specific activity means the government picks the technology. A carbon tax would bring all the same benefits and would not have the government deciding which technology to favor. For example there is a competing technology called "smaller houses". A carbon tax would promote that and leave the choice in private hands.
- fdschoeneman 15y ago
  So wait, it is your argument that with a carbon tax, solar panels become economically viable? I'm not sure I buy that. Under this scenario, solar would have to be competitive with other forms of energy generation such as nuclear, and that isn't going to happen. Ever. Even the Obama administration is behind nuclear plant expansion.
vilda 15y ago
Very common problem with similar optimistic analysis is that they compare end-user price (includes taxes and distribution costs) with the price of solar panels (no installation and maintenance costs). In reality, you have to calculate additional costs when dealing with unpredictable sources. Either you have to have 100% backup in traditional source or you have to conserve the energy (usually below 50% efficiency).
- InclinedPlane 15y ago
  Indeed. You have to buy land. You have to pay architects and engineers to design your plant. You have to build facilities. You have to hire people to run it. You have to maintain it. And eventually it'll be decommissioned, which works out to an effective operating cost.
shmulkey18 15y ago
"Researchers at Queen’s University in Canada have compiled a comprehensive study of solar power plants and found that improvements in financing, and industrial streamlining could allow for the technology to become as cost-effective as traditional electrical sources. In other words, a much larger part of the globe could currently reach grid parity if cheap loans and better supply chains were available." In other words, solar photovoltaics are not yet affordable without technological improvements in the supply chain and without subsidy in the form of below-market financing. I'm glad we've cleared that up.
andrewpi 15y ago
I wonder how the failure of Solyndra fits into this thesis.
- jfager 15y ago
  Solyndra failed because its secret-sauce technology couldn't get cheap enough fast enough compared to the plummeting cost of photovoltaics. So it fits pretty well.
  - spenrose 15y ago
    We've only heard of Solyndra b/c the big-oil/big-coal GOP needed a talking point. Solyndra is what they came up with.
    - jfager 15y ago
      That's only true for people who don't follow the solar industry. They got their loan in March 2009 (http://cleantechnica.com/2009/03/21/fremonts-solyndra-wins-first-doe-funding/ http://cleantechnica.com/2009/03/21/fremonts-solyndra-wins-f...), filed for IPO in December (http://gigaom.com/cleantech/solar-tube-maker-solyndra-files-for-potential-300m-ipo/ http://gigaom.com/cleantech/solar-tube-maker-solyndra-files-...) and cancelled it in June 2010 (http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/solyndra-ipo-cancelled http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/solyndra-ipo-can...), and all three events were relatively well-covered.
- joeag 15y ago
  Solyndra's tech didn't use polysilicone. Which was great when polysilicone prices were high. When the prices went down, the vast majority of panels that used polysilicone got much cheaper and Solyndra couldn't compete. Solyndra's circular tube technology also was problematic because it was designed to work with reflected light from the rooftop and in real world conditions when the roof got dirty you lost a lot of reflected light. So really, it doesn't.
ryanmarsh 15y ago
Wrong, we don't have abundant solar power because of science, not financing. Go build something using solar power, the technology just isn't there, but most importantly neither are the physics. I spent a couple of years building an industrial product that ran off of solar power. We are in the sun belt, which is a region of the U.S. that has the most sun relative to the rest of the country. What I learned is that solar power is a joke. There just isn't enough solar energy arriving at the surface of the planet to make it worthwhile to use. It's a fantasy, get over it and invent something new, like a 600cc nuclear reactor.
- spenrose 15y ago
  Wow, what a completely misinformed comment. Start here: http://energyselfreliantstates.org/content/solar-grid-parity-101 http://energyselfreliantstates.org/content/solar-grid-parity...
  - ryanmarsh 15y ago
    No, your article is misinformed. The article does not discuss the total cost of generating power from solar panels, namely, cost of batteries and their regular replacement, panel cleaning, and the cost of the amount of land required for enough panels to generate 50 Kwh (avg) per day. This also does not consider that you need 7 times as many panels to generate the same amount of electricity on a partly cloudy day as you do on a clear summer day. It is much worse in the winter months. I dare you to prove me wrong, not with an article of someone's estimation, but real field work.
    - saturn 15y ago
      Instead of dismissing people's optimism with an impossible-to-refute "argument from field experience", why not write up some of your hard-won lessons so interested people can educate themselves? I'd be very interested in an account of real world PV solar costs and hurdles by someone who's been there, done that.
fdschoeneman 15y ago
We don't have abundant solid gold toilet seats because of financing, not science, either. Now this isn't to say that there is no market for solid gold toilet seats. Surely, I'd buy one, if the cost was the same as a regular toilet seat. But it isn't, now is it? Yes yes, I know this will kill my Hacker News karma. Deduct away.
joeag 15y ago
Finance is the most important issue for solar adoption, especially for distributed generation. For residential customers there is very little reason not to invest in generating your own power from rooftop solar, unless you don't plan to be in your house for 5-7 years. Even then there are studies that show you can get your money back from increased resale value. Think of solar like this - why would you not want to independently produce your own power and escape the clutches of your local utility company? In most states in the US, utilities are monopolies and although they are regulated, they employ thousands of lobbyists to influence those who regulate them. The result, predictably is annually escalating electricity rates. The utilities raise rates to build new plants, transmission lines, increase management and employee salaries, and lately in California, cover underfunded employee pension costs! Unfortunately, without a finance option available, you have to come up with a big chunk of money to install a system (essentially pre-paying for 7 years worth of electricity up front). So, if you can finance the system over a reasonable period of time so that you don't have to pay for the entire system upfront, it makes makes it much easier to pull the trigger on purchasing a system. Of course, if you can afford to pay for it upfront, it makes even more sense.
Diogenes 15y ago
1. Bullshit. 2. you all are better at math than I am, so I won't bother to point out the obvious.
JerkyTreatz 15y ago
Solar is not a viable means for today's energy consumption, and it certainly won't be a viable means for tomorrow's energy consumption. The energy race has been decided already, and the only answer to fossil fuels is Liquid Floride Thoriam Reactors (LFTR). It's an alternative form of nuclear energy that has been around since the Manhattan Project. Unlike the current nuclear power plants of today, it is impossible for a nuclear explosion to occur, there is no waste generated (well, there is about 1% waste, but the waste generated is actually a very rare metal NASA uses to power deep space satellites), and Thorium (the equivalent to Uranium) is 1000x more abundant than Uranium. LFTR will be the worlds core energy source within 30 years. China is the only country actively developing a LFTR program- if it comes to fruition, they could be the power suppliers of tomorrow. Learn about it in 5 minutes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9M__yYbsZ4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9M__yYbsZ4
nradov 15y ago
A friend of mine founded a start up to finance solar power. http://www.clearspotenergy.com/ http://www.clearspotenergy.com/
InclinedPlane 15y ago
Solar power on its own cannot supply base load electrical power. Period. Full stop. Only in combination with an extensive power storage infrastructure could such a thing be possible. Constructing such things would easily cost as much, or more, as constructing all of the necessary PV plants. Moreover, very substantial changes to the national power grid would also need to be undertaken. At the best possible costs this work would easily exceed what it would take to build enough fission power plants to provide all of the base load, and that isn't happening with any degree of rapidity either.

47 points by BvS 15y ago

Solar power is a classic disruptive technology. It currently does not meet the mainstream market's needs in terms of: - availability - cost per MWh - suitable locations (close to established high voltage power lines) Each of these factors is being steadily improved over time. And once solar technology meets the mainstream market's expectations for energy production, incumbent producers will need to retreat their offerings into a vanishingly small market for those needs not met by solar.

stretchwithme 15y ago
I think we'll know its disruptive when it actually disrupts something. On its own, without subsidies and other crutches. And that may have happened with special assistance, as many other disruptions have. But its still not a sure thing. There may be other technologies that might have gotten there first. But since we've biased investment in solar so much, such alternatives may never develop. We did something similar with the automobile in the US, giving it advantages and subsidies like free roads. Is it any wonder that more efficient ways of getting around withered?
- Volpe 15y ago
  What were the more efficient ways (of getting around)?
  - benton 15y ago
    Subways.
  - stretchwithme 15y ago
    Mass transit is what I had in mind. Personally, I prefer the car. But if I had to bear all of the costs of using a car directly, and urban sprawl were not so preferred by planners, mass transit would be my choice more often. This is especially true at rush hour. Most highway construction happens just to serve rush hour traffic, a time when mass transit is at its most efficient. If these subsidies did not exist, mass transit would be much more widely used. There'd be many more choices and there'd be no need to subsidize mass transit. We actually have subsidies to counter the negative effects of other subsidies. Getting rid of all subsidies would be better and allow people to make the right choices for them with fewer negative side effects.
    - jdwhit2 15y ago
      I remember reading an opinion here on Hacker News not long ago where it was suggested that in the future with self-driving cars we don't all need to own a car. Instead a car could come and pick us up and drop off at the destination. Do you think that this micro transportation (instead of mass transportation) option could be environmentally friendly?
      - easp 15y ago
        Microtransport works against energy efficiency to the extent that empty vehicles are moving around unoccupied. On the other hand, if they achieve higher utilization, then that is offset to some degree by better utilization of the embodied energy required to manufacture the vehicle. Further, if self driving vehicles are well coordinated, they could achieve higher utilization of roadways, which would require less land and less concrete and steel to carry the same volume of people. Also, they would potentially be able to operate with more optimal acceleration and breaking.
      - stretchwithme 15y ago
        Before you can compare things on an environmental basis, you have to be comparing things that are equivalent. I could compare rubbing a lamp to taking the subway in environmental terms and the lamp comes out way ahead. It just takes more walking to get places with the lamp method. If you do wish to compare two things, you probably should include the cost of your time and the environmental impact you would have during that amount of time. You also want to consider the actual impacts of building the transportation systems, whether its rail or road. It would be infinitely easier for you if each process involved were taxed according to its impact. Then the costs would be included in the price you pay and you could decide according to what works best for you.
    - Volpe 15y ago
      Oh right, but mass transit has hardly withered. There are probably similar numbers on the mass transit systems as there are in cars (in most cities).
- easp 15y ago
  You don't have to look far in the US to see that PV solar is winning against grid-connected power. I don't know the exact shape of the niche, but it seems to be a combination of relatively low power needs vs the cost of bringing grid power to the location. Safety lighting and monitoring or communications seem to be common applications. And I'm talking about utilitarian applications, not places where the PR value of appearing "green" gets factored into the equation. One place I've seen things like this are is path lighting in parks or campuses that are run of batteries charged by a solar panel. In the past, they would have pulled power to the location, and the solar option wins out because of lower up-front costs.
  - kstenerud 15y ago
    In Japan, most of the country (well, mountain) roads are illuminated by street lights charged by a PV panel on top. All 4-way stop intersections also have a blinking red light embedded in the road, once again charged by a PV cell.
    - anamax 15y ago
      > In Japan, most of the country (well, mountain) roads are illuminated by street lights charged by a PV panel on top. That tells us that the cost of getting power to those locations dominates the cost of power used at those locations. Other locations have different characteristics.
      - kstenerud 15y ago
        "Other locations have different characteristics." That's rather obvious. I'm talking about places where it works well in Japan, along the same lines as the parent talking about places where it works well in parks.
      - easp 15y ago
        Yes, and the point is that there are market niches that would either have gone unserved, or would have been served at greater expense because there was no suitable alternative that are now being served by PV solar. This what the start of disruption looks like (though by no means speaks to how far it ends up going)

firemanx 15y ago

Ultimately, the problem with solar, wind, and any other "periodic" or localized generation method is storage and distribution. I live in an area with incredibly cheap power due to hydro dams that generate well in excess of what we need. However, there's only so much we can do with that excess in terms of efficiency of generation because it costs so much to send that energy long distances. In addition, you have the obvious periodic nature of solar and wind, which mean that not only do you have the distribution problems, but you also can't just flick it on and offset a bunch of peak load or burst demand (such as when hospitals "turn on" in the morning). You could have 100% efficient solar technology, and it wouldn't change much the economics of green energy because of the physical nature of problem. Thus, you need to change how we deal with the physical nature, and thus the economics themselves by improving the technology in other places. I work for a startup which is building a combination of efficient storage infrastructure and a distributed software system to help manage the heuristics of controlling supply and demand with this storage system and generation technology (including solar and wind, but also traditional generation as well), helping to do things like smart "time shifting" of energy supply. Since superconductors are still a ways off, and even with them it doesn't change the nature of periodic generation, I think storage technology is likely the most important area for investment in the immediate future (and not just because that's where my paycheck comes from :) )

estel 15y ago
On the other hand, and from what I remember from a conversation with someone who works on the UK National Grid, Solar and Wind power have the advantage of predictability; which in many ways is just as important as availability for large-scale power infrastructures. (That's short-term predictability, generally < 1 hour). As they've been saying since the 1950s, fusion is only 20 years away to solve all our problems anyway.
- firemanx 15y ago
  Oh, I don't mean to imply that solar and wind are entirely unpredictable (I was hoping my comments about hydro would cover that), but they aren't always predictable when and where you need it. One of the problems for BIG infrastructure (say, hospitals and apartment buildings), is that they often have their peak demand almost instantaneously in the morning - often before the sun comes up. For solar, that means you can't directly address this peak demand without some way of shifting that generation capacity. But, as you say, unlike some of the arguments over the years trying to prove that solar is untenable, I think it's predictability, combined with additional advances elsewhere, will indeed push us toward a better future, at least until that "fusion" stuff gets around to being feasible :)

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

T_S_ 15y ago

It's not financing. It's the fact that we don't have a carbon tax. Price carbon near the cost of sequestration and you will see plenty of money invested in alternative energy. Anything else keeps the decision making in the hands of the central planners. Ask Gorbachev how well that worked.

baddox 15y ago
So, you're admitting that the problem is financing. You're just proposing one way of incentivizing financing.
- spenrose 15y ago
  I am not sure why y'all are arguing. Either a carbon tax or better financing would help.
  - T_S_ 15y ago
    They both help reduce climate change? Not sure. Without a carbon tax you could burn 100 tons of coal to make a "green device" and nobody would know the exact figure. With it, you don't even need to do the calculation. It's in the price.
- T_S_ 15y ago
  No. The article is a coded call for subsidies of solar through "improved" financing. Subsidizing a specific activity means the government picks the technology. A carbon tax would bring all the same benefits and would not have the government deciding which technology to favor. For example there is a competing technology called "smaller houses". A carbon tax would promote that and leave the choice in private hands.
fdschoeneman 15y ago
So wait, it is your argument that with a carbon tax, solar panels become economically viable? I'm not sure I buy that. Under this scenario, solar would have to be competitive with other forms of energy generation such as nuclear, and that isn't going to happen. Ever. Even the Obama administration is behind nuclear plant expansion.

vilda 15y ago

Very common problem with similar optimistic analysis is that they compare end-user price (includes taxes and distribution costs) with the price of solar panels (no installation and maintenance costs). In reality, you have to calculate additional costs when dealing with unpredictable sources. Either you have to have 100% backup in traditional source or you have to conserve the energy (usually below 50% efficiency).

InclinedPlane 15y ago
Indeed. You have to buy land. You have to pay architects and engineers to design your plant. You have to build facilities. You have to hire people to run it. You have to maintain it. And eventually it'll be decommissioned, which works out to an effective operating cost.

shmulkey18 15y ago

"Researchers at Queen’s University in Canada have compiled a comprehensive study of solar power plants and found that improvements in financing, and industrial streamlining could allow for the technology to become as cost-effective as traditional electrical sources. In other words, a much larger part of the globe could currently reach grid parity if cheap loans and better supply chains were available." In other words, solar photovoltaics are not yet affordable without technological improvements in the supply chain and without subsidy in the form of below-market financing. I'm glad we've cleared that up.

andrewpi 15y ago

I wonder how the failure of Solyndra fits into this thesis.

jfager 15y ago
Solyndra failed because its secret-sauce technology couldn't get cheap enough fast enough compared to the plummeting cost of photovoltaics. So it fits pretty well.
- spenrose 15y ago
  We've only heard of Solyndra b/c the big-oil/big-coal GOP needed a talking point. Solyndra is what they came up with.
  - jfager 15y ago
    That's only true for people who don't follow the solar industry. They got their loan in March 2009 (http://cleantechnica.com/2009/03/21/fremonts-solyndra-wins-first-doe-funding/ http://cleantechnica.com/2009/03/21/fremonts-solyndra-wins-f...), filed for IPO in December (http://gigaom.com/cleantech/solar-tube-maker-solyndra-files-for-potential-300m-ipo/ http://gigaom.com/cleantech/solar-tube-maker-solyndra-files-...) and cancelled it in June 2010 (http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/solyndra-ipo-cancelled http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/solyndra-ipo-can...), and all three events were relatively well-covered.
joeag 15y ago
Solyndra's tech didn't use polysilicone. Which was great when polysilicone prices were high. When the prices went down, the vast majority of panels that used polysilicone got much cheaper and Solyndra couldn't compete. Solyndra's circular tube technology also was problematic because it was designed to work with reflected light from the rooftop and in real world conditions when the roof got dirty you lost a lot of reflected light. So really, it doesn't.

ryanmarsh 15y ago

Wrong, we don't have abundant solar power because of science, not financing. Go build something using solar power, the technology just isn't there, but most importantly neither are the physics. I spent a couple of years building an industrial product that ran off of solar power. We are in the sun belt, which is a region of the U.S. that has the most sun relative to the rest of the country. What I learned is that solar power is a joke. There just isn't enough solar energy arriving at the surface of the planet to make it worthwhile to use. It's a fantasy, get over it and invent something new, like a 600cc nuclear reactor.

spenrose 15y ago
Wow, what a completely misinformed comment. Start here: http://energyselfreliantstates.org/content/solar-grid-parity-101 http://energyselfreliantstates.org/content/solar-grid-parity...
- ryanmarsh 15y ago
  No, your article is misinformed. The article does not discuss the total cost of generating power from solar panels, namely, cost of batteries and their regular replacement, panel cleaning, and the cost of the amount of land required for enough panels to generate 50 Kwh (avg) per day. This also does not consider that you need 7 times as many panels to generate the same amount of electricity on a partly cloudy day as you do on a clear summer day. It is much worse in the winter months. I dare you to prove me wrong, not with an article of someone's estimation, but real field work.
  - saturn 15y ago
    Instead of dismissing people's optimism with an impossible-to-refute "argument from field experience", why not write up some of your hard-won lessons so interested people can educate themselves? I'd be very interested in an account of real world PV solar costs and hurdles by someone who's been there, done that.

fdschoeneman 15y ago

We don't have abundant solid gold toilet seats because of financing, not science, either. Now this isn't to say that there is no market for solid gold toilet seats. Surely, I'd buy one, if the cost was the same as a regular toilet seat. But it isn't, now is it? Yes yes, I know this will kill my Hacker News karma. Deduct away.

joeag 15y ago

Finance is the most important issue for solar adoption, especially for distributed generation. For residential customers there is very little reason not to invest in generating your own power from rooftop solar, unless you don't plan to be in your house for 5-7 years. Even then there are studies that show you can get your money back from increased resale value. Think of solar like this - why would you not want to independently produce your own power and escape the clutches of your local utility company? In most states in the US, utilities are monopolies and although they are regulated, they employ thousands of lobbyists to influence those who regulate them. The result, predictably is annually escalating electricity rates. The utilities raise rates to build new plants, transmission lines, increase management and employee salaries, and lately in California, cover underfunded employee pension costs! Unfortunately, without a finance option available, you have to come up with a big chunk of money to install a system (essentially pre-paying for 7 years worth of electricity up front). So, if you can finance the system over a reasonable period of time so that you don't have to pay for the entire system upfront, it makes makes it much easier to pull the trigger on purchasing a system. Of course, if you can afford to pay for it upfront, it makes even more sense.

Diogenes 15y ago

1. Bullshit. 2. you all are better at math than I am, so I won't bother to point out the obvious.

JerkyTreatz 15y ago

Solar is not a viable means for today's energy consumption, and it certainly won't be a viable means for tomorrow's energy consumption. The energy race has been decided already, and the only answer to fossil fuels is Liquid Floride Thoriam Reactors (LFTR). It's an alternative form of nuclear energy that has been around since the Manhattan Project. Unlike the current nuclear power plants of today, it is impossible for a nuclear explosion to occur, there is no waste generated (well, there is about 1% waste, but the waste generated is actually a very rare metal NASA uses to power deep space satellites), and Thorium (the equivalent to Uranium) is 1000x more abundant than Uranium. LFTR will be the worlds core energy source within 30 years. China is the only country actively developing a LFTR program- if it comes to fruition, they could be the power suppliers of tomorrow. Learn about it in 5 minutes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9M__yYbsZ4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9M__yYbsZ4

nradov 15y ago

A friend of mine founded a start up to finance solar power. http://www.clearspotenergy.com/ http://www.clearspotenergy.com/

InclinedPlane 15y ago

Solar power on its own cannot supply base load electrical power. Period. Full stop. Only in combination with an extensive power storage infrastructure could such a thing be possible. Constructing such things would easily cost as much, or more, as constructing all of the necessary PV plants. Moreover, very substantial changes to the national power grid would also need to be undertaken. At the best possible costs this work would easily exceed what it would take to build enough fission power plants to provide all of the base load, and that isn't happening with any degree of rapidity either.