From: a.ashfield
Jones wrote. "If you live in a country with little coal, hydro, oil or gas, 35 cents is about average." But we don't. (not to mention LENR) So why build the Brightsource plant here? Sorry to inform you that a few places in the USA do indeed pay this rate or higher in the peak hours, even though the average is much lower. Peak hour pricing is coming, and that is when solar works best. Con Ed customers in New York pay a very high rate at peak NOW. They have over 2 million residential who pay about 28 cents per kWhr, twice the national average - but if they are large residential users, say on Long Island- the rate is over 35 cents at peak hours. Needless to say, many houses there have solar voltaic which also works out to about this cost, but at least it will not be going up. We simply cannot base important R&D decisions on the fact that coal power is cheap in most places, since that pricing does not reflect the harm done by pollution. MIT labels BrightSource as the World's smartest energy company for an important reason - they are looking well beyond the short horizon where cheap and dirty coal gets a free ride, and customers do not pay the real cost for the damage done. Jones
