Acciona Solar Power’s Dan Kabel (left) and plant manager Robert Cable inspect a mirror array. (Mark Clayton)
New rays of hope for solar power’s future
High cost of fossil fuel and advanced technology improve this energy source’s prospects.
By Mark Clayton | Staff Writer for The Christian Science Monitor/ August 22, 2008 edition
Boulder City, Nev.
From five miles away, the Nevada Solar One power plant seems a mirage, a silver lake amid waves of 110 degree F. desert heat. Driving nearer, the rippling image morphs into a sea of mirrors angled to the sun.
As the first commercial “concentrating solar power” or CSP plant built in 17 years, Nevada Solar One marks the reemergence and updating of a decades-old technology that could play a large new role in US power production, many observers say.
“Concentrating solar is pretty hot right now,” says Mark Mehos, program manager for CSP at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Co. “Costs look pretty good compared to natural gas [power]. Public policy, climate concern, and new technology are driving it, too.”
Spread in military rows across 300 acres of sun-baked earth, Nevada Solar One’s trough-shaped parabolic mirrors are the core of this CSP plant – also called a “solar thermal” plant. The mirrors focus sunlight onto receiver tubes, heating a fluid that, at 735 degrees F., flows through a heat exchanger to a steam generator that supplies 64 megawatts of electricity to 14,000 Las Vegas homes.
Today the United States has 420 megawatts of solar-thermal capacity across three installations – including Nevada Solar One. That’s just a tiny fraction (less than 1 percent) of US grid capacity. But Nevada Solar One could signal the start of a CSP building boom.
Efforts to generate another 4,500 megawatts of solar thermal power are now in development across California, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico – all of which have the flat, near-cloudless skies most desirable for solar thermal, the Solar Electric Industries Association reports.
Photovoltaic panels that produce electricity directly from the sun’s rays work well on rooftops, but are still too costly for utility-scale power generation. Solar thermal, however, is nearing the cost of a natural gas-fired turbine power plant – making it a winner with several power companies that have signed long-term contracts to purchase solar-thermal power.
Desert land lures developers
In fact, there’s a land rush at the federal Bureau of Land Management. As of July, the BLM reported more than 125 applications to build solar power on about 1 million acres of desert, up from just a handful of proposals a few years ago.
“We think there’s a good market there,” says Travis Bradford, an expert at the Prometheus Institute, a Boston-based solar-energy market research firm. His firm sees 12,000 megawatts (12 gigawatts) of solar thermal installed by 2020 and maybe 20 times that in coming decades.
Dr. Mehos says perhaps 100,000 megawatts (100 gigawatts) could be built across the US Southwest over the next 30 years.
“You could supply the entire US with the sun power here in a little piece of the Southwest,” says Dan Kabel as he strolls beneath a row of trough-shaped mirrors. Mr. Kabel is chief executive of Acciona Solar Power, which owns the $266 million Nevada Solar One project. “As fossil fuel costs rise, this plant is unaffected. “If America doesn’t do this, if we don’t install many more of these clean solar-power systems, we’ll just end up seeing a lot more fossil-fuel plants instead.”
Still, the cost of power remains critical. Commercial CSP systems emerged in the late 1990s, only to be squashed by falling natural gas prices.
Today, as natural gas prices rise along with concerns about carbon emissions and global warming, the stable, predictable costs of carbon-free solar thermal is increasingly comforting to utilities.
“What’s different now from the ’80s and ’90s is that we have much higher natural gas prices than back then,” Mehos says. “I don’t think people foresee a serious drop in natural gas prices now. Even if they fell 30 percent, CSP would look attractive.”
The importance of tax credits
Concentrating solar technology produces electricity for about 17 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh), Mehos estimates. But subsidies remain critical to solar thermal development in both the US and Spain, two global hotbeds of CSP development. With the federal investment tax credit, or ITC, costs drop to about 15 cents per kWh – low enough to compete with natural gas.
A key feature of solar thermal is its potential to use heat-storage technology to generate power after the sun sets. Nevada Solar One is considering adding a molten-salt or similar system to allow it to supply power for several hours after sundown.
With such storage systems, solar thermal becomes even more attractive to utilities, experts say. Arizona Public Service is contracting with Abengoa to build a 280-megawatt solar thermal plant near Phoenix that will cost more than $1 billion and have molten-salt heat storage.
“Arizona Public Service really does want to put this [solar thermal] plant in because in the future this really could replace natural gas,” says Reese Tisdale, an analyst at Emerging Energy Research, a market-research firm in Boston. “They’re the first to say that once this plant is installed, the fuel is free.”
So far, US development of solar thermal is dominated by a handful of big overseas companies, including Abengoa and Acciona (Spain), as well as Solel Solar Systems (Israel), Solar Millenium (Germany), and Ausra (Australia), now headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif.
To stimulate development, Spain has deployed hefty, long-term feed-in tariffs. But in the US market, solar thermal is hanging by a thread. The investment tax credit, which covers 30 percent of a CSP facility’s cost, will expire at year’s end unless renewed by Congress. But bills to renew the ITC have been blocked eight times this year by Senate Republicans.
“What we’re seeing with all these companies lining up for solar thermal is hugely promising,” says Monique Hanis, spokeswoman for the SEIA. “But without the ITC, all of these solar thermal plants will be put on hold.”
That would pour cold water on a raft of potential breakthrough solar-thermal technologies promoted by US companies. So far this year, five US-based start-up CSP companies have gotten $419 million in private funding for their technologies, Emerging Energy Research reports.
BrightSource Energy, Stirling Energy Systems, eSolar, Skyfuel, and Infinia Corp. are start-up US companies pursuing refinements of existing technologies – and major new ones – and the funding to prove them. One of the key goals is to make mirrors and receivers more efficient in order to achieve higher temperatures – which tend to make for greater efficiency and lower cost.
BrightSource Energy, funded by Google and others, received $100 million in May to proceed with its advanced “central receiver” approach. It has refined 1990s technology to develop simpler, cheaper to manufacture mirrors that focus the sun’s rays on a tower receiver, heating water to nearly 1,000 degrees F.
By contrast, Stirling Energy Systems in April received $100 million to further develop its “SunCatcher” approach – a relatively small system in which a 38-foot dish supporting 82 curved glass mirrors automatically tracks the sun. The solar heat is focused onto a high-efficiency four-cylinder reciprocating Stirling engine. The Stirling engine uses solar heat to expand (not burn) hydrogen gas to move its pistons, which spin an electric motor with no fuel cost or pollution.
Each SunCatcher dish generates about 25,000 watts, turning about 30 percent of the sun power that strikes it into electricity, compared with about 20 percent for parabolic-mirror systems.
Although the technology has yet to be proven on a commercial scale, Stirling Energy Systems announced in June that it had applied for permits to build a 750-megawatt “Solar Two” facility on 6,500 acres of desert in California’s Imperial Valley about 100 miles east of San Diego. When complete, the plant could supply power for about 500,000 homes.
Another technology called “linear fresnel” is being pursued by Ausra, which has opened a factory in Las Vegas to build inexpensive mirrors mounted on rolling platforms. Though operating at lower temperatures, the technology could operate at costs well below current levels, some observers say.
Back at Nevada Solar One, Mr. Kabel looks out across the desert to a hulking building on the horizon – a natural gas fired turbine power plant – an arch rival power producer. But maybe not for too much longer.
“The way things are going, with our costs coming down, this valley is going to see a lot more of these,” he says, gesturing to the rows of mirrors. “Fossil fuel generation is headed one way – like the dinosaurs.”
( More stories )
Comments
2. Peggy | 08.22.08
Not only do we need to extend the Federal ITC but we also need to remove the residential cap on Fed. ITC. We need to get on with the “program” NOW with vision and informed leadership . We also need National Interconnection and Net metering Standards to facilitate adding renewable energy like solar and wind into the grid. We can’t afford petty short sightedness of the Senate Republicans right now.
3. Janice | 08.22.08
The only problem with these solar systems is the large amount of fresh water they use. In the desert that is a real problem.
4. Steve Chambers | 08.23.08
Solar has great potential to radicall alter the power generation system in the United States within the next 10 years. Combined with massive investments in wind power we can radically lower our independence on foriegn sources for our energy future while at the same time improving our economy and helping or environment. The only real obstacles to what seems like an improved future are political.
Unfortunatly what we require in terms of leadership and political will to make these changes is lacking and has for many years. It is not just the Senate republicans, although we can fool orselves into thinking that it is, it is the status quo of the current system. We need to ensure we notify our representatives how we fell and support projects like this by encouraging extension of the tax credits and other legislation that will support renewable and alternative energy generation efforts in our country.
5. Tim | 08.23.08
I definitely don’t agree with the author that photovoltaic cells are still too expensive to generate utility scale power. Why did PG&E - one of the USA’s largest public utilities - just last week buy a full 800 (eight hundred) megawatts of solar photovoltaic power (from Optisolar and Sunpower), more than 12 times the capacity of the Nevada Solar One site? I suggest you check your facts!!!
6. Alan | 08.23.08
An interesting article, however, it should be noted that the article does not at all discuss the fact the solar energy can only be generated during a sunny day. Without discussing this limitation, along with a discussion of how this fits into the daily demand for energy and/or how energy would be supplied at night or on cloudy days, the article is incomplete.
7. OneDayAtATime | 08.24.08
Some of you apparently missed the part about it being competitive with natural gas, usually used only for peaking because of cost, because 30% of the cost is subsidized! Otherwise, what you’re saying is that you’re willing to pay much more for energy as long as a substantial part of the cost is transferred to other people through the mechanism of tax credits? Pay more and have other people subsidize you? Nice folks. Glad most people aren’t that free with other people’s money.
8. dave | 08.24.08
Until full, repeatable, economical storage and distribution of energy during non-sunlit hours is a reality, this whole thing is a joke. We don’t have batteries that can hold hundreds of megawatts of power. ‘molten salt’ heat storage can’t store full power heat all night until the next day’s sun.
This means either we learn to live at night without power or we keep old fashioned coal, gas or nuclear plants turned on and running all the time, because they take too long to start and stop.
The wind doesn’t blow all the time. The sun shines only half the time. This is NOT as promising as they keep trying to tell us.
As for the commenter who thinks Republicans block this because of ‘big oil’, it’s far more likely they’re blocking it because it does not make economic sense to do these things, but the tales being told to the public never seem to mention these realities.
9. mockmook | 08.24.08
The fact that subsidies are required to have the CSP technology be profitable means there is a risk that the system gives negative energy efficiency (energy inputs for construction, transport, materials, maintenance, etc. exceed outputs).
Central (government) planning rarely allocates resources to the best use. Tax credits are central planning lite.
BTW, isn’t it time for a moratorium on articles claiming, “XXXXXX has finally arrived!!!” How about we wait for a real breakthrough before such articles? For solar, that means some newly outrageous PV efficiencies and/or new energy storage methods to facilitate constant power output day and night.
Wake me when a solar power method is profitable without subsidies.
10. Ron Nord | 08.24.08
What are some of the bills that the Republicans have blocked, is there a bill number. I don’t remember any such bill and would like to go to the Congressional Record and look them up and read some of the debates. Blocking any energy bills is short sighted when we are paying OPEC countries over $700,000,000,000 Billion Dollars for oil and they in turn are using the money in a lot of cases to kill us. Until we can economically become independent from the oil producing nations in the Middle East our country is in danger. We have to have the transition however that doesn’t break the country, any official that stops the development of energy sources should not be reelected to any office.
11. Rick Caird | 08.24.08
Peggy and Gary ask why the Republicans have blocked the investment tax credit. They both might ask why the Democrats will not allow coastal drilling. We need both. The Republicans would be quite happy to approve the ITC. They do, however, insists that drilling be included too. So, if you are going to complain, complain to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. They are the hold up.
12. John | 08.24.08
Problem is many of these solar projects will be tied up in environmental impact studies for decades. Oil, Gas Biofuel causes global warming Nuclear is..well DANGEROUS wind power kills migratory birds…and down goes an economy based on cheap energy.
13. CDR M | 08.24.08
I would like to know the details on what specifics are that are causing the “Republicans” to block this bill. Last time I checked, Speaker Pelosi ran the House and if she wanted a vote on this, she could do it. Democrats would have a field day if it was Republicans that vote no or block this. All too easy to blame the “Republicans” with no details on how it was blocked or how this credit is packaged in the bill.
14. agesilaus | 08.24.08
Ah…. I noticed that this article makes no mention at all of the 600 pound gorilla in the closet. Solar only produces peak output, in an ideal location like Nevada, for SIX hours a day. It produces reduced output for a couple more hours and of course in the winter it produces less. Get a couple of cold cloudy days and you get no output at all.
There is no way to practically store large amounts of electricity.
So the idea that solar will replace even ONE power plant is total BS. You have to keep those fossil fueled or nuke plants up and running so that they can take over when the solor plant doesn’t make power. That means keeping a full crew at these plants and the plants running in low power standby mode. Zero savings in other words.
Wind power is the same, no wind…no power. They only produce power on the average of one hour in five.
15. Sam | 08.24.08
If a power supplier can’t guarantee, with a penalty clause, how much power he can deliver, then the power companies have to build conventional plants to provide back-up service. In effect, you have double the capital outlay for the same amount of power.
When solar and wind can provide base-load power without tax grants, then we have something. This means that they are going to have to provide storage so they can meet their contracts.
16. Dave G | 08.24.08
Would one of you greenie-weenies explain to me why I should subsidize (since I pay taxes, unlike 50% of the country) your solar electric just to assuage your misplaced guilt? You tell me if you can detect when your power switches from solar to coal/gas/oil/nuclear at night.
And if ANYONE thinks that a real utility company invests in a solar or wind project because it’s profitable (without the damn subsidies), you’ve been smoking something illegal. They only do it to appease the greenie-weenies that like to sue at the drop of a hat, so they can continue to make power the profitable way (a.k.a. efficient coal/gas/nuclear). Hell, the Sierra Club wouldn’t EXIST if it weren’t for lawyers and lawsuits.
17. frege | 08.24.08
Solar power has real potential and solar thermal appears to me to be the closest to having real impact, but do not be surprised when most companies “exploring new technology” not only do not pan out, but turn out to be scams milking tax credits and fleecing gullible investors with the new new thing that is solar power.
18. jason | 08.24.08
You must know you are not telling the whole story Mr Clayton when you say that “Republicans have blocked extending the ITC eight times..”.
The political slant of the intentional omissions in this section of the article is disingenuous and highly misleading. The Republicans are not opposed to continuing the ITC program on its own. However the Democratic congress has bundled this matter with additional taxes and the repealing of other programs that have value. They have done so to make the Republicans look bad in exactly this sort of article. They refuse to allow it to stand as an independent issue.
Who wouldn’t be incredulous and angry at Republicans after reading this? How many will take the time to get the full story? You sir should be ashamed to call yourself a journalist.
19. Thomas J. Setter | 08.24.08
We need the Investment Tax Credit. Write your Senators and Congressmen. It’s the people that are going to make this happen!!!
We need to quit sending money to our Enemies.
Just as in Germany and Spain if the Gov. helps a little the Private Sector will take over and make it work.
GO SOLAR
20. Rick | 08.24.08
Gary & Peggy–because it dosen’t work without heavy subsidy. As an architect, I really wanted solar to work, so I studied it thoroughly in graduate school and even had a residential solar water heater company. But it just doesn’t pencil. I bet you have never owned or operated a business. We all studied the death out of solar at Berkeley in the ’70s, have ever since, and the unavoidable science is that environmental impact of solar (and wind) is unacceptable in the scales of capture (of the very sun and wind) the technologies require. You also ignore the important cost of long term maintenance, particularly in the desert, not to mention the duplicative infrastructure requirement–you have to hav conventional as backup. BTW, have you ever experienced the common 70-80mph desert pebble storm in NV? It takes the finish off these pretty little mirrors in about 2 minutes.
21. Bart | 08.24.08
Most posters clearly have no concept of our Brobdingnagian energy appetite, or of the pitifully meager levels of energy production from current solar technology. You would have to carpet thousands of square miles of the countryside with solar collectors to make a sizable dent in our energy budget - that would take at least three decades to do, even if it were desirable. And, then you have to consider all the uses that oil has in our economy aside from mere transportation. Look around you at all the plastics and artificial materials that surround you, all oil derived.
Solar and wind power are not the answers. For a modern industrial economy, you have to have concentrated, energy dense resources, like fossil or nuclear power. All these “alternative” energy sources will never be more than bit players on the world energy stage.
22. AST | 08.25.08
I’m all for research like this, but not for “commercial” plants based on government subsidies. How about some comparisons between this plant and a coal powered plant in the megawatts each can produce per day, week or month and at what unsubsidized cost. I don’t trust reports that read like sales brochures.
When Mr. Menos says, “Costs look pretty good compared to natural gas [power],” how good are they? How much money is received in subsidies?
I live in Southeastern Utah, and if traditional generating projects were being proposed on BLM land here, the wilderness activists would going bananas. What assurance do we have that they won’t decide at some future time that windmills and mirror concentrators like this one aren’t a blight on the landscape, a devastating injury to their “Wilderness Experience?”
This project is the Next Big Thing right now, and the media are promoting the heck out of anything that is labeled green by its backers, but I have little doubt that the people who are riding the global warming bandwagon will be on to some new cause in four or five years and why we spent so much money on such expensive solutions. Science is being politicized and sold like breakfast cereals and new cars. We should be more careful to inform the public of all the facts, not just the exciting “gee whiz” promoting of the people who stand to profit from the demands of our bien pensants.
23. Howard | 08.25.08
In rebuttle to Alan: You are very mistaken as if that were the case then you would not have large solar farms planned in the North East of the USA. Here in the UK a journalist recently experimented with home solar on the roof of his London townhouse. Even on grey English days the panels did their job.
24. wimbi | 08.25.08
Sunpower Inc. is company in Athens Ohio, which was incorporated in 1974 and makes stirling engines. Sun Power Corporation is a solar cell company in California.
The engines made by Sunpower Inc. are chosen by NASA as their new generation of very high efficiency, very long lived space power sources. They can run on solar or isotope heat, or heat from a nuclear reactor.
25. George | 08.25.08
“Big Oil” is a non-issue for electric power generation. Too expensive compared to coal. Absent regulations and subsidies for rent seeking weasels, coal would crush the competition.
http://greenecon.net/understanding-the-cost-of-solar-energy/energy_economics.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/epm_sum.html
The technology is cool, especially being able to store energy for a few hours, but the cost isn’t in the same ballpark. At a lower cost, solar might make sense to help with peak loads on hot sunny days. At a lower cost, subsidies are unnecessary and it doesn’t matter what congress does. Maybe congress should fund R&D to reduce solar energy cost instead of providing tax credits for its deployment.
26. Doug | 08.25.08
We don’t really need these solar units to replace conventional power sources like hydro or natural gas. We just need their adoption to slow our use of oil, gas and coal and make our resources last longer.
These solar units really don’t need to run at night. The peak useage of power is in the day, often on the hottest sunny days to run air condtioners. That’s when solar works the best. The right mix of solar and conventional could match our usage well.
If you really think about it, we are subsidizing oil and coal, as we aren’t fully compensated for the damage of polution or green house gases. This will become a huge issue in the next 25 years. When you start totalling the real costs, coal and natural gas become more expensive. Plus we need to conserve our natural gas. Its a key part of making fertilizer.
Would it be so bad to level the playing field and promote the development of non-poluting power?
27. Mike | 08.25.08
In response to #10 and #19, solar and wind generation have not and will not replace ANY oil use. None. If, in future, solar and wind are able to replace some portion of gas-fired base load generation AND that displaced natural gas is used for transportation or petrochemical feed, then-and only then-will all your solar and wind reduce oil usage. Understand that utility purchases of solar and wind are for two reasons-tax credits and because such purchases are mandated by various state goverments. At the per kilowatt-hour prices stated above, solar appears to be only 2-3 times as much as a modern coal-fired or nuke. I guess we should be thankful that they only produce at a 30% load factor.
29. Mo jo jo jo jo | 08.25.08
Many people bring up the issues that Solar will never replace coal or oil as a viable energy alternative and that its function only helps during Peak times.
I order for us to really evaluate the value of this building this, we should ask ourselves what would happen under differing scenarios.
A) If oil remains cheap, then we will have created a non-pollution energy structure. This would be a little more expensive due to the fact that we would duplicate energy distribution. (there are more options already stated in earlier comments)
B) If oil/gas encounter a peak price, then we will not have any alternatives and we will be forced to pay WHATEVER the cost of energy is under zero competitive options. The cost to build alternative energy sources at this point would be haphazard and Truly prohibitively expensive. We also need to consider the cost of hospital care for children who yearly suffer from asthma as a direct result of breathing air with high levels of particulate matter. Additionally, if power lines and distribution networks fail, we will have a fall back a “Plan B if you will” We should not forget the current state of our rapidly deteriorating infrastructure. (there are more options already stated in earlier comments)
Now, simply basing my opinion on those pros and cons, I would choose Option B. I have no need to focus on the politics of this, only the causal effects of our decisions.
Also, remember that oil that is not used can be re-directed to other uses. In other words all of your eggs are not in one (oil Basket).
30. AZT | 08.25.08
Do the people who are against tax credits really believe that coal & gas don’t get tax credits also? Tax credits are a way of life in modern business.
31. Sam Crutsinger | 08.25.08
re: #27 “solar and wind generation have not and will not replace ANY oil use. None.”
As more PHEV cars hit the road around 2010, solar and wind generation certainly will be displacing a substantial amount of oil use.
32. John | 08.25.08
There are several nay-saying statements that I believe are incorrect. One was that solar requires a lot of water and therefore the desert is a bad place for it. I don’t know why solar power would require a lot of water. Solar thermal can be a closed system, air cooled if necessary. PV doesn’t require any water except to occasionally clean the panels. Tanker trucks could periodically drive along the rows and spray them with water.
The problem of nigh-time and low sun can be at least partially be addressed by converting water (by electrolysis) to hydrogen and oxygen. They can be burned at night by conventional power plants. Distributed power storage is also possible with further developments in fuel cells, batteries and super capacitors. Admittedly that is still not perfected. Still, the cost of solar will steadily decline due to technical progress and economies of scale. For solar, there is no “fuel” cost at all. On the other hand prices for fossil fuels will inevitably continue to rise. It is therefore not a fair comparison to extrapolate present fossil fuel costs into the future and compare them with solar. Look at how much gas prices have increased in one year. And there are many indirect costs with fossil fuels, not the least of which is the military ventures to defend the oil supplies. Environmental clean up, carbon sequestration are others that don’t directly (yet)appear in the pump price. Also, consider that India and China are rapidly increasing their demand, with a combined population nearly 6 times ours. Their demand potential is huge. What do you think will happen to the price of a limited resource like oil under those circumstances ?
The transition to alternative energy entails many aspects. Houses and automobiles will have be designed for energy efficiency.
33. Steven | 08.27.08
Apparently all of the above commenters missed the line about Navada Solar one concidering the installation of thermal storage to allow some power generation at night. In the 90’s an experimental solar thermal power plant (solar two) produced power 24 hours a day for a week during one test. It did it by sending some of the hot fluid from the mirrors to an insulated storage take. When the sun wasn’t shinning the fluid in the storage tank was used to generate power. Spain now has several plants using this technology. It is low tech, cheap, and is 90% efficient. Solar thermal power can supply us with all the electricity we need night and day. The area required to do this has be calculated at 100 miles by 100 miles. Solar thermal power plants are now being built at a cost that is about 2/3 that of the latest nuclear power plants and coal and natural gas are getting more expensive.
34. Vicki | 08.28.08
We don’t need (and should not want) government handouts like the ITC. We need and want innovation that lowers the cost to build and run these plants. Innovations like Stirling Energy Systems and BrightSource Energy. Funding can and should come from the private sector like Google not from government handouts. The inspirations already come from God.
-Vicki-
35. Kay Deaves | 08.28.08
After reading the plethora of comments, all I can say is: clean, infinitely renewable energy is surely a goal worth striving for. If we don’t do it, what will happen when coal and gas run out? This will surely happen at some time.
36. James M. Essig | 08.28.08
Solar Thermal Turboelectic power generation can in theory supply the entire U.S. electrical power needs.
Assuming 3,000 square kilometers of concentrator footprint area and an efficiency of 33 percent at conversion of incident solar energy to electrical power output, in normal mid-day clear whether, the power generated would be about 1,000 Gigawatts or one million megawatts, essentially equal to the peak electrical power output of the entire U.S. power grid. 10,000 square miles of collector area utilizing a molten salt system to provide heat at nighttime could produce a 24 hour per day output of one Terawatt of electricity.
10,000 square kilometers may sound like at lot, but it is only the equivalent of 62 miles by 62 miles, roughly the area of the smallest state of the union of Rhode Island.
The Earth receives roughly 10,000 times more energy than the total time averaged power output of all of human industry including electrical power systems, combustion engines, gas and oil heat etc.. The entire power output of the Sun is 4 billion times greater yet than the total power falling on Earth. It is a shame that we have not yet tapped into this source in a much more widespread manner.
37. Tad | 08.31.08
Several of you have said some variation of “if solar has to be subsidized, it must be a bad idea”… pull your head out, please. Oil companies are subsidized by the U.S. Government, also, despite years of record-breaking profitability. These subsidies are for exploration - finding more oil - which Exxon et al say is too expensive for them to pay for and stay in business.
The investment tax credit, on the other hand, is a one-time upfront credit for installing the solar collectors (or wind farms), which, as the article says, is guaranteed “free” fuel for the life of the plant.
Being “competitive” with natural gas simply means a choice between continuing to pollute or turning away from funding skyscrapers in Dubai and taking care of our own business.
And honestly, all the hysteria about “dangerous” wind farms killing all of the birds doesn’t begin to counter a single oil spill (remember Valdez?), or stripped out coal mine, or neighborhood gas leak.
The naysaying and excuses are all directly attributable to one thing: Oil companies think it will destroy their livelihood if Americans stop using oil. To that I say: you still have China. And besides, we’ll never completely get away from oil. There will always be useful and market-smart applications for the stuff; but we don’t have to swim in it (or the fumes). The time for solar and wind power is long overdue - about 30 years by my reckoning.
38. Iconoclast421 | 09.03.08
It is true that tax credits are a form of central planning, but so is spending 3 trillion dollars on a war in Iraq. That is little more than a massive oil subsidy. Add up all the money we spend asserting our influence in oil-rich regions, and you will see that even a trillion dollar government spending program for solar and wind would pale in comparison…
39. fireofenergy | 09.04.08
All power tech needs tax credits, especially new (even though it is hard to say that a mirror and a steam generator is “new tech”). I bet if you searched, you would find that oil, coal, nuclear, ect all recieve some form of government help that amounts to more than 10 times that to help out solar and wind. Who in their right mind wouldn’t want to subsidize RE? (I would gladly pay a bit more for electricity if renewable). Only an idiot would prefer to send (what is it?) 700 billion per month? to OPEC! Yes there is a direct relation becuase with more juice and less gas are more e-cars and less oil wars! And more money to be spent here at home!
Besides, (aside from deadly post oil economic forcasts), it is proven that the ice caps are melting and that since they are doing so, cause what is called negative albedo. Which meens that there are more dark areas on Earth than before, thus more heating and so on. We need all these mirrors not just to halt the emmision of co2, but to offset the negative albedo by reflecting the bright part of the sky next to the sun back into space. By contrast, (I would think) less efficient, more costly, and very dark in color PV would heat the planet!
Please do my kids a favor… Quit bashing RE and promote GW reversal! All you need to do is talk about it ’till a smart person figures out the storage problem.
Any RE tech is good since that will promote cheaper mass electrical storage tech which still “IS NEW” (and will definately need subsidies)!
40. Total Solar Energy | 09.24.08
this is definitely worth looking into. The US and Spain lead the way here. Spain has plans for 60 solar thermal plants in the near future
41. fireofenergy | 10.17.08
That 700 billion figure is per year, not month, and that about negative albedo, won’t do any good until the plants are decommissioned, so that ALL the sun is reflected back into space. Forunately, for CSP, The tax credits have been passed (probably for election reasons…) and CSP is the only form of solar that can generate juice after the sun sets, with an extra large mirror field and heat resevoir, on for days!
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1. gary | 08.22.08
It is great to see us finally moving ahead with this technology. My question is WHY HAVE THE REPUBLICANS in Congress blocked the renewal of the tax credit?
“The investment tax credit, which covers 30 percent of a CSP facility’s cost, will expire at year’s end unless renewed by Congress. But bills to renew the ITC have been blocked eight times this year by Senate Republicans.”
Perhaps because they represent Big Oil? When are we going to realize that it is much wiser to operate as a family country instead of being selfish.