“The sun* generates enough energy on the museum rooftop to power about 30 homes.”

Except when it doesn't shine or, in northerly latitudes, is buried in snow. Then you need a conventional energy plant to supply electricity.

That's the catch with windmills and solar generators -- they all need 100 per cent conventional back-up. So what's the point in building all these windmills and solar arrays? Why not just put money into the back-up systems which have to be there anyway.

It's all lunacy driven by the politically-correct and scientific illiterates.

one only has to look at the ISS to realize how ineffective solar panels are. Its about the size of a football feild now and only services 6 people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station

maybe they can report glaciers melting at the rate of 5 International spacestations a day so people can relate.

"one only has to look at the ISS to realize how ineffective solar panels are. Its about the size of a football feild now and only services 6 people."

Actually, it is only 6 people but it is electric heat up there and that costs enough down here on terra firma. No word on when the natural gas pipeline will be in place.

They probably generate that amount of power when the sun is shining at the most optimum conditions. If so the statement is correct but clearly intends to mis-lead.

Read the link.

Note: that would be a different "sun" than the one deniers claim is capable of altering the earth's climate

Hahaha! Good one. ALL YOUR SARCASM AND IRONY ARE BELONG TO US.

In other news, folks may find useful a recently published 4-second video summary of the
Obama Economic Recovery Plan® here.

mhb23re
at gmail d0t calm

Another bubble in the making - a green energy economy built on the economics of subsidies, rather than natural market forces. It is bound to collapse. If only we could harness leftie dreams - we could power the universe.

Those subsidies can only continue to flow if the greenback presses continue emitting pieces of paper.

The only problem with that is that the price of imports will skyrocket as the currency is debased.

Engineering by fiat. Obama's realm of fiat ends at the shoreline. Obama cannot order foreign countries to value his greenbacks as he wishes - unless he does that at the barrel of a gun.

Global BC had a story a week or two ago, detailing a 'successful' solar energy firm from Courtenay that had installed panels, and a noisy wind turbine, and how it was wonderfully putting energy back into the grid, beyond the home owners needs.

Finally, at the end of the story, they got around to the cost of install.....

$80,000 !

Of course, no mention of how unfeasible this is to 99% of the population, let alone the fact that it is not viable.

But you should be happy being 'green'

Great post, Shaken.

People without even a cursory knowledge of economics won't understand the difference between subsidy-based and market-based economics. But they will, once the inflation required to pay for the subsidies wipes out their savings and assets.

mhb

The technology behind solar panels is rapidly evolving and there is a steadily growing private market industry, without government subsidy, for rooftop panels to provide power to, for example, big box stores. These not only can, at peak solar periods, produce enough energy for the particular store at that particular time, enough energy can be produced to allow the store to actually sell power back to the grid.

It still only makes sense on a grander scale (likely not for a museum for a long time) and the energy cannot be efficiently stored up so traditional power hook-ups will still be required.

Still, this is a very real and very big deal for businesses that can afford it. There is real economic value in solar power in the right circumstances and conditions.

Solar is only about 20-30% efficent depending on technology used. So Even if the energy hitting them could power 30 homes the real output at peak efficency and perfect conditions would be enough for 10 homes, for about 3 hours during midday.

I have said it 100 times if they want to throw money at it then do a proof of concept.

Take a small town of 25,000 remove it from the Grid and power it and a surrounding 100 mile rural area for local food production from renewables, no hydrocarbons at all. So no gasoline for cars, lawn mowers, generators, service vehicles. You can use bio-fuels but no natural gas. This town should be in a mid northern latitude and include a hospital, a manufacturing sector to create what they need and emergency services. There can be no new products generated from oil distillates of any kind (oil = bad) used in any products including the renewable energy generation. They can have no new products generated from burning coal and no natural gas.

I would let them build the first 5Mw of power generation equipment off-site as a starting point and the get the town "as is".

Prove to me we can decarbonize and have it work, if you cannot work on it until it does work. All research and development done on site.

The reason is simple they cannot raise the costs of what we have to fund what we don't and use products created by and with what we want to eliminate. In their own words it is not sustainable.

Do you have an example Ted, that's great news.

really Ted.

so at about 25000dollars/house , you can get a halftime system installed on the roof of the nearest Walmart ( not allowed in Vancouver) and get electricity half the time with a generous backup from the utility grid. and save 50$ a month giving a payout of 41 years (at zero discount rate)

not to worry , if solar panels really made sense , the power companies would be all over them without subsidies.

hey folks , what ever happened to tony guitar. he used to post stuff about solar panels and compressed air cars all the time.

Those big box stores - they have flat roofs, don't they?

Next up:

Obama trisects an angle by construction and establishes values for pi, e, and the square root of two that are rational numbers.

I alway thought this would solve alot of small town power issues.
http://www.atomicinsights.com/AI_03-20-05.html

Richfisher:

I act for two very large clients who have, in their own self-interest and without government subsidy, purchased rooftop solar systems just like that, and are doing so across their national chains.

I don't crunch the numbers to see how much they save, but I trust that businesses act in their own self-interest with a view to profit. Such largescale purchases are not made with a whole lot of review and oversight and number crunching. If it was saving pennies they would not do it. If it was just for the sake of looking good to the public, there are far more effective ways to generate public goodwill with your dollars.

I raise this example not to say solar is the way to go in all circumstance, damn the torpedos, but to highlight that the market can show the way to the right and most effective use of early stage technology. I would not want the impression to be left that, just because in many areas of the market it only makes sense if government subsidizes the purchase, people think that in all areas of the market that is so.

Don't forgot too the energy required to produce the solar cells.

When I was in university I took a graduate course on silicon processing, and the professor used to delight in proving that solar cells took more energy to make than they gave back over their lifetimes.

Manufacturing and indeed solar cells themselves have improved since then, such that in the net they produce more energy than is used to make them.

But you cannot ignore the fact that energy was consumed to make them, and it's a non-trivial amount.

I have always found solar cells a fascinating idea. If you can find a way to make them more efficient you would make a small fortune.

The depressing part however is that increasingly solar cells are being manufactured overseas. So we go from buying oil from foreigners, to buying solar cells from foreigners.

How stupid can we get.

Sorry, that should obviously have read "Such largescale purchases are not made without a whole lot of review and oversight and number crunching

"How much was the electric bill before and after the Solar panel installation"

Why would anyone want to know the numbers and make decisions based on reality when we can base major decisions on fantasy and anecdotes that Suzuki and Gore tell us.

Ted, I'm calling BS on that one. Solar installations do not pay for themselves with the current technology available. The only way to make it profitable today is to collect a nice subsidy from the government for installing them.

Sorry to break it to you cal but there is a new WALMART in Vancouver. Its the old Costco on Grandview Hwy just off Boundary. It has a full grocery section and it warms my heart knowing its taking business away from the liberano owned superstore down the street.

Have a read here:


http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/research/4306443.html

one only has to look at the ISS to realize how ineffective solar panels are. Its about the size of a football feild now and only services 6 people.

yeah...but what about at night time?

Ted, Re your big box solar systems

Do you know for certain that there are no subsidies through utility ratepayers, tax credits, grants, or other creative ways our governments shuffle dollars around?

The public is all hot&bothered and salivating over solar energy, if there was even a scent of real profit energy companies would be all over it yesterday.

Solar and wind power have their uses, they will not replace other sources. They are good for people that live off the grid or on the far end of the grid where power can be cut at any time. The houses using these types of power need to be designed with the limited supply in mind.

a new walmart in fortress vancouver. thats good news to me.

though I was enjoying the idea of the lefty city council thinking they had forced a green agenda on vancouver by letting them all drive to the suburbs.

btw , I still havent figured a way to bypass vancouver city without driving to prince george and catching the ferry south. hmm,, maybe south and come up from seattle?

Jimmy Carter on steroids.

Bob:

It is an early market and many companies are all over it. In fact, that is part of the design of the RESOP program in Ontario: by trying to limit the program to smaller plants, part of the idea is to create the knowledge and expertise here, that will hopefully fasttrack technological development. Solar companies are flocking to Ontario as a result.

This is not too dissimilar to a lot of early technological development in our free market society, be it trains in the 1800s or computers at the end of the last century. None of these industries developed without government support.

Ahh... that's illuminating. So, without government largesse - er, support - we'd have no personal computers? Is that it, ted? Got a link for that?

The significant achievements of the 20th century had everything to do with the private sector and nothing to do with government: the automobile, aircraft, transistors, microchips, the PC, cellular telephones, even Federal Express... the list goes on and on. Fact is, if there is a viable commercial reason for inventing or perfecting something AND the economic system supports it, somebody will make it happen. Contrast these achievements that enrich people's lives to those "achievements" of the left: welfare, the Great Society, the "War on Poverty", the systemic destruction of the black family. Just a little bit of difference. And obama and the democrats are working hard at destroying the capitalist incentive for innovators and entrepreneurs to continue their work.

Funny how leftists find reasons aplenty for the government to take over industry and business, but when there IS a need for government funding (say, the military), they get squeamish and want to cut off the spending.

mhb

Ted- you should know if you live in Ontario, that McGinty is paying 42cents/kwh for solar on long term contract and almost 12 cents/kwh for wind. This even makes AECL white elephant nuc. plants look good!

fair enough Ted, but solars not that new, lot's of big talk for what 30 years now?

In Cobourg, near where I live, the news a few weeks ago was all about this several hundred acre solar farm which had just been built. It was expected to be able to supply all the power necessary to between 300-400 homes.

Sounds good so far.

Then they said it cost $45 million. That's $100,000 per home, assuming they're able to power 400 and not 300.

Let's assume it works perfectly, and never rusts or requires any repairs, and the homes never need any other kind of power. Let's also assume that ths solar farm can work on its own, without any laborers or overseers.

If so, the farm will make its money back in about a century. How is that a good thing? Are people just insane? I don't get it.

"In Cobourg, near where I live, the news a few weeks ago was all about this several hundred acre solar farm which had just been built. It was expected to be able to supply all the power necessary to between 300-400 homes."

Well, you're of by a factor of 10. The farm is supposed to power up to 4,000 homes, not 400. That works out to $11,250 per home, which is a lot better.

Realistically, you can set up a system TODAY for under $30,000 which will provide enough power for the average homes needs. That's not a horrible price tag, but it's not a worthwhile investment for most people. However, a big part of the cost is the inverters and controllers and batteries which are a necessary part of any generating system. Adding more panels doesn't really cost that much. So if you have a large home, or a medium sized business, the cost-per-watt drops dramatically, and if you're running a solar farm the cost is ... well, $11,250 per home :)

Of course the requests were denied, because the museum is lying and can't prove that which isn't true in the first place.

They're all lying. But that's not news to those of us who can tell when we're being bullshat.

Shouldn't that be "incapable of altering the earth's climate"?

I plan on trying to incorporate both solar and wind power into my "retirement" sailboat. The main reason being it is hard to plug in your laptop between here and Tahiti. Getting an oil tanker to stop for a couple of gallons is tough.

This seems to be a good reference on the efficiency of solar panels. http://www.amsolar.com/solarpanels.html
The panels must be facing the sun flat on and not flat on a roof to provide maximum efficiency. Efficiency is also reduced when the sun heats them up. The cheapest panels are 6 - 8% efficient and the most expensive 16%. On a perfect day at high noon you can get 160 Watts per square meter if the panel is facing the sun square on.

"without government subsidy" - Ted

You know that for certain? Care to share how? I don't believe it.

Did you know that the manufacture of solar panels releases the equivalent GHG as if they burned coal for their entire productive lifetime, and then some?

http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/10/global-warming-caused-by-solar-panels.html

"The cheapest panels are 6 - 8% efficient and the most expensive 16%."

That article is a bit dated - you can get cells now that are more efficient. Really, though, silicon cells are pretty limited. The current record for a silicon cell is 25% efficiency. Multi-junction cells, on the other hand, can reach efficiencies exceeding 40%. The next big step would be making them cheap enough to be viable for home installations. That's why thin-film cells are currently the best choice for most people - they're less efficient than the other types, but they're also significantly cheaper. In the long-term, they're expected to exceed 20% efficiency, so there's definitely some potential there.

An explanation of the math involved in solar is here:

http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/environment/solarstart.html

There's not much to add. It starts with solar fluence and explains the reduction in power due to various factors. Unfortunately, super genius solar cells won't change geometry or make the sun more powerful...

There better be wind power involved in your retirement sailboat Tex!!!

:)

We used a small solar panel worked into the forward end of the cabin to charge the battery for the radio and nav systems.

Ted, so who are these two large clients "without government subsidy " that you speak of.
Surely they are proud of their achievements.
What's with all the mystery?

Whoa, richfisher!!! Not fair! How can you ask Ted to be honest and transparent? Perhaps you didn't know he's a Liberal?

hahahahhaa! Good one BC, I'm still laughing...

If a company installs solar power it is a capital expense. It doesn't have to make sense as long as their customers think it does.

kent, what are you smoking? How does a waste of money being a capital expense matter? And why would they care about what their customers think? If the company is in the red because of foolish capital expenses, they won't be around for very long, regardless of whether their customers like the foolish expenses or not. Economics 101

1st thing that crossed my mind with ted's story "green marketing" appearance is everything. Reality is nothing.