> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of pencimen > Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2008 11:49 AM > To: Killer Bs (David Brin et al) Discussion > Subject: Re: Texas Proposes Wind Farm, McDonald's Franchise on Half Dome > > Solar is impractical. > > Is it? > > http://www.nanosolar.com/ > > more tonight
This time for sure, right? I went to the website. As I expected, it contained a lot of promise, but no hard numbers. Can you tell me what the price per kWh from these panels would be? How about just the cost per watt of capacity? California is offering 3.3 billion in incentives for solar. People who are the first online are offered $0.39 per kWh. That's about a triple incentive to the homeowner cost, and about a 10x incentive for commercial rates. It is > 20x the incentive for wind. Given those incentives, the total applications for solar were dwarfed by the first quarter of Texas wind energy that I quoted. I have no argument with the conclusion that, given enough government money, token amounts of solar power generation can be provided. The question is whether significant amounts can be provided on a cost effective basis. I've been seeing promises like the one at the website that you quoted for decades. At Solarbuzz.com, they have wide market surveys. Right now, it's about $4.80 per peak Watt, and it was about $4.36 in August, 2004. Other charts show we're lower than 12 years ago, but not much. It is possible that nanosolar will be as advertised. But, after so many decades of promises, I look to hard data...what's been done and what is being done. It is practical for the US to subsidize electricity production at 2 cents/kWh. If all of electricity production were subsidized at that rate, it would cost about 80 billion/year. But, at about 40 cents/kWh (rounding up for simplicity), we're talking 1.6 trillion a year. That's not practical. If solar is practical, why does it need such a large incentive to be used? Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
