From: everything-list@googlegroups.com
[mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of John Clark
Sent: Saturday, March 01, 2014 10:30 AM
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: The solar example of a town in Germany
On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 4:07 AM, Chris de Morsella <cdemorse...@yahoo.com>
wrote:
> It produces 4X the energy it needs just from the solar PV on the roofs of its
> buildings…. Isn’t it amazing what you can accomplish with such dilute sources
> of energy. I include the link because the pictures are pretty cool, and
> illustrate what a solar city could look like.
http://inhabitat.com/sonnenschiff-solar-city-produces-4x-the-energy-it-needs/
What can I say
What I can say is that governments can get people to build anything no matter
how ridiculous if the bribe to do so is big enough. Germany has the highest
electricity prices in Europe, partially because they're shutting down their
nuclear plants but mostly because 50% of the average consumer's electric bill
goes into subsidizing solar energy. So far the German consumer has been forced
to subsidize the solar cell industry to the tune of 100 billion euros (128
billion dollars). So what did they get out of those 128 billions dollars worth
of solar cells? They reduced the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere enough that by
the end of this century they will have delayed global warming by about 23
hours.
Clearly you have it in for feed-in tariffs; I dislike the fact that we
Americans subsidize wars for oil. I don’t know where you are getting your
figures; according to the Wiki on German feed-in tariffs
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed-in_tariffs_in_Germany> the figure is:
€0.0056 per kWh (3% of household electricity costs) – which is it 3% or 50%;
Wikipedia or John Clark?
Again from the same wiki entry" the [2012] total level of subsidy for all
subsidized sources, including wind, solar, geothermal, biowaste fermentation,
hydro, etc. was €2.4 billion. How do you get this $250 billion dollar figure
for solar PV. The entire feed-in tariff subsidy for ALL sources in 2012 is less
than 1% of the figure you quote; which indicates that there may be some
problems with the figure you are using.
The clean renewable power offset achieved by this feed-in tariff program is
estimated to have resulted in 87 million fewer tons of carbon dioxide by 2012;
the difference of burning 40 million tons of coal. Your derision does not
lessen this achievement.
Chris
Even the Germans are starting to get fed up with this nonsense and say they
will pull the plug on solar subsidies by 2018. If so then, unless there are
major technological breakthroughs, you can expect the solar industry to crash
in 2018.
By 2018 the global per unit price for solar PV will have fallen by a factor of
4 – it will have become the low cost leader for electric power generation; yet
John Clark is confident it will collapse. You are free of course to be
confident on whatever you choose to be confident in, but in order to be
convincing you need to more than announce your confidence.
Over the past 35 years of trend lines, On average, solar power improves 14% per
year in terms of energy production per dollar invested. In 2013 solar PV unit
cost was on average around $0.74 per Watt of capacity. By 2018 using this long
established cost trendline for solar PV it is possible to project that it will
likely fall to somewhere around $0.37 per Watt of capacity by 2018.
You expect the global solar PV sector to collapse in 2018 when it will be able
to sell its product for $0.37 / Watt of capacity or $370 per kilowatt. An
energy source that just requires a south facing insolated surface to be mounted
on – inside a module unit; an energy source that does not require the on-going
purchase of increasingly expensive fossil fuel. Is this the reason you are
confident that it will die? That it will be bar none the low cost electric
energy source; that it will require no fuel and will not emit (beyond the
embedded carbon footprint in its manufacturing & distribution chain) CO2; that
it will help lighten the load on national grids, which across the world operate
on the margin of collapse.
John you seem like a smart guy, but on this subject you are not thinking
clearly – IMO.
Chris
John K Clark
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