Watching the presidential debate last night, it killed me that solar power is such a partisan issue because it has so many conservative values. It saves homeowners money, so it's fiscally responsible and encourages home ownership; it helps make us less dependent on the Middle East for energy, and it's a realm where we should be able to challenge Chinaf, although they're currently taking solar power far more seriously than we are. But since the Obama administration pushed solar as a part of its platform, the right must disapprove of it at any turn.
And before I get into the details, and because I live in San Francisco and run a solar company, let's make sure that before anyone paints me as some San Franciscan, solar-company-running, ultra-left-wing-fruitcake, please know that I am assuredly not. I'm a fiscal conservative, I own a gun, and capitalism is the blood that runs through my veins. So, back off.
Back to solar. So, in addition to being naturally opposed to anything that is a critical component of Obama's campaign, conservatives also could never muster the strength to lay down the weapon granted to them because off that whole Solyndra mess, which despite having no real impact on anything at all (sometimes businesses go out of business), they use to repeatedly bash the current administration over the head like a sledgehammer. Basically, Solyndra was just a giant Rube Goldberg device that was perfectly timed to mess everything up.
Most conservative propaganda bashing solar tends to come in the form of talking about subsidies "wasting" tax payer dollars out of one side of their mouths, while simultaneous supporting subsidies for oil, gas and coal that absolutely dwarf those numbers out of the other side of their mouths. This might make more sense if there was any truth to the idea that solar couldn't compete with those (but hey, coal needed subsidies to compete a long time ago -- how easily we forget that), but there is no truth to it at all. Germany, which gets less sun than Seattle, gets a quarter of its juice from renewables. Where I live in San Francisco, you can lease a solar system on your house and pay far less for energy (especially if you have a big fat power bill). It not only competes with current grid power, but sometimes it blows it out of the water. Remember when people laughed about the idea of having a "personal computer," back when computers were $100,000 and practically the size of Romney's car elevators? When did they stop laughing? It's probably about that same time for solar power.
The other leg of conservative anti-solar propaganda is typically about "foreigners takin' all our jobs!" While I may agree we may have missed our window to be a manufacturing giant in solar because we don't put enough "oompf" behind it, solar clearly makes tons of non-exportable jobs.
When you go to the voting booths, reach deep and think about if you really believe mining coal and gas are what will make our country great 50 years from now, or whether it's doing the one thing that America is head and shoulders better than all other countries at -- innovating in industry and selling those innovations to the rest of the world.
Dave Llorens is the Founder and COO of One Block Off the Grid.
Follow Dave Llorens on Twitter: www.twitter.com/davellorens
Large megawatt scale solar panel rooftops cost closer to 2$ per watt.
thus 1GW equivalent solar costs 7B, less than the capital cost of many nuke reactors.
The solar panels needs bear zero maintenance, zero fuel, and lasts at least 30 years, and more like 100 years.
Solar panels can be recycled, not nuke reactors.
Nuke power is trillion dollar million cancer disasters, million year millions of cancers waste, and civilization ending proliferation.
Solar is forever, clean safe and cheaper.
Solar cheaper than nukes and energy source amounts: http://cleantechnica.com/2011/08/23/solar-power-intro-3-key-solar-power-points-top-solar-power-news/ Note the fossil and nuke numbers are totals, the solar wind and waste are PER YEAR!
As for 1 MW rooftop solar, you need about 200,000 square feet of rooftop and the roof must be strong enough to support the weight. Even then, you are no where close to $2 per watt.
Solar panel DO need cleaning, what is the cost of clearning 4 250 million square fee to solar panels? Also, the inverters have a limited lifespan (maybe 10 year). Your claim the solar requires no maintenance is wrong.
You figure of trillion dollar, million death accidents is absurd, not supported by any responsible organisation.
In addition, the white paper states, “Solar PV has experienced exponential cost drops year-after-year for over 30 years, with projections putting PV module costs at $.50/watt, total system costs under $2.00 per watt and output electricity at just under 6 cents per kWh – grid parity in 2014.” Today, China is leading the way on solar PV production and pricing. I had the opportunity to correspond with Dan Bedel and the first question I asked was if U.S. solar panel manufacturers can also reach grid parity or will we see China reach this first and the U.S. to follow?
He responded, “Grid parity is not a question of if, only when. Solar modules will continue to decrease in price: silicon is cheap and abundant and modules have been manufactured on a large scale for less than ten years. Grid parity is a wave, not a static point in time so more and more locations will find themselves at grid parity as solar pricing continues to decrease and electricity pricing continues to increase.”
In fact, in many states, regulations and gov fees are now half the cost of the solar system itself.
Meanwhile nukes and fossils are getting 500M$ per plant per year in breaks from the gov.
Big money corrupting our republic is the problem
That's solar.
In sunny places the average solar power is 6-7 hours.
Solar peak at the same time as summer AC load in sunny place.
Rooftop solar, parking lot solar can supply over twice the peak load, allowing charging of eletric cars. Add offshore wind,then back it all up using existing fossils peak generators running on waste bio fuels.
There's this thing called the GIRD that allows all the sun power to be used and no need for batteries or worries about electricity off hours.
Learn something before you spout.
Actual conservative values??? You must have some other conservative party in mind.
3D solar cells seek out thermal as well as light for electricity http://www.engadget.com/2012/03/28/mits-3d-solar-cells-take-cubism-to-new-energy-efficient-heights/
Self-Cleaning Solar Cell Nanocoating decreases maintenance and increases efficiency http://www.pv-magazine.com/services/press-releases/details/beitrag/self-cleaning-hydrophobic-nano-coating-for-solar-panel-glass-generating-great-results-for-nanoshell_100005577/#axzz24alu434L
The price of panels took a 30% drop in the last year... “NRG expects the cost to fall in half again in the next two years, which would make solar power less expensive than retail electricity in roughly 20 states.”
...http://solar.coolerplanet.com/News/2011123001-solar-best-and-worst-of-2011.aspx
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/solar-industry-record-quarter-tips-installing-solar-system/story?id=17201748#.UE9T9Y2PV8E
Solar power will be a mayor employer by the end of Obama's next term.
‘www.businessinsider.com/the-impending-world-energy-mess-2010-11
offers a complete education on Peak Oil, a premise accepted by both the German and American Militaries. China's food and water problems because of climate change are already limiting it's development and may have massive implications for its future stability.
Romney is for fossils and nukes because the make bigger contributions, they have 100 times the money to do so.
The fossils and nukes folks also buy gov regulations to keep green energy out of the market.
You cannot win if the gov goes against your tech.,
It does matter.
Sadly Obama is not that good either, but infinity better than the GOPT and Romney.
Germany! A northern lattitude, often cloudy country a little over twice the size of the state of Georgia but with 80 Million people, got half of its electrical energy for the month of May from solar! With our vast sunbelt stretching from California and Arizona all the way to Virginia and down to Florida, imagine what WE could do with regards to solar!
And there's plenty of wind blowing around in the Dakotas, the Great Lakes states, and over vast areas of the West! Wind power is a breeze!
According to National Geographic, China is spending $15 Billion dollars per/year on its solar energy development. If China and Germany can do it, then so can we! But I guess "conservatives" and Republicans would rather the former fascists and the communist Chinese lead the world of the future.
An order of magnitude in cost, maybe, but that's already dominated by installation labor.
It is mature.
The best commercially available silicon PV panels are a bit over 20% efficiency. An order of magnitude would put these panels at 200% efficiency. Not going to happen unless you embed a mini-fusion reactor in each PV cell.
The main issue with PV has never been efficiency. Even 10% efficient thin-film panels are efficient enough.
The issue has always been cost. And that cost has come down dramatically in the last 4 years and will continue to go down. Heck - if we in the USA could simply match the installed price of PV that Germany achieves with it's streamlined permitting and installation processes (the Germans can install residential and commercial systems for 30-40% less that what it currently costs in the USA), PV would be cost effective in nearly the entire country.
That doesn't take any additional research breakthroughs. Just streamlining the installation process and eliminating the red-tape. Work is being done in this area, unfortunately the process is slow.