Solar leads the pack for industry growth in 2010

[Fledermaus]

“I am thrilled to announce that the solar energy industry is now the fastest growing industry in America,” said Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) CEO Rhone Resch today at the opening general session of PV America Conference 2011 in Philadelphia.

“Let me repeat that. The solar energy industry is the fastest growing industry in America. We are growing faster than wind energy, faster than telecommunications, and, thank goodness, we are even growing faster than the mortgage foreclosure industry," he said.

The industry experienced year-over-year growth in 2010 of 67 percent, based on sales of installed solar, said SEIA spokesperson Monique Hanis. The figure is from SEIA and GTM research’s “2010 U.S. Solar Market Insight: Year in Review." “We haven’t found any other industry that grew faster,” she said.

http://www.cleanenergyauthority.com/solar-energy-news/solar-is-fastest-growing-industry-in-country-040511/

[kristopher]

1. You betcha.

Dept of Energy Myths about Solar Electricity Jan 2003

Myths about Solar Electricity
The area required for PV systems to supply the United States with its electricity is available now from parking lots, rooftops, and vacant land.

Solar electric systems are an important part of the whole-building approach to constructing a better home or commercial building. Although these systems have delivered clean, reliable power for more than a decade, several myths have evolved that confuse the real issues of using solar electricity effectively.

Myth #1
Solar electricity cannot contribute a significant fraction of the nation’s electricity needs.

Solar electric panels can meet electricity demand on any scale, from a single home to a large city. There is plenty of energy in the sunlight shining on all parts of our nation to generate the electricity we need. For example, with today’s commercial systems, the solar energy resource in a 100-by-100-mile area of Nevada could supply the United States with all of its electricity. If these systems were distributed to the
50 states, the land required from each state would be an area of about 17 by 17 miles. This area is available now from parking lots, rooftops, and vacant land. In fact, 90% of America’s current electricity needs could be supplied with solar electric systems built on the estimated 5 million acres of abandoned industrial sites in our nation’s cities.

Myth #2 ** (see footnote added by K)
Solar electricity can do everything—right now!

Solar electricity will eventually contribute a significant part of our electricity supply, but the industry required to produce these systems must grow more than tenfold over the next 10 years. In 2001, about 400 megawatts of solar electric modules were produced worldwide. According to an industry-planning document, in order to supply just 10% of U.S. generation capacity by 2030, the U.S. solar electricity industry must supply more than 3,200 megawatts per year. Most experts agree that with continued research, solar electric systems will become more efficient, even more reliable, and less expensive.

Myth #3
Producing solar electric systems creates pollution and uses more energy than the system can produce over its lifetime.

Producing solar electric systems uses energy and produces some unwanted byproducts. However, most solar electric systems pay back the energy used to produce them in about one year. Because the systems generally last 30 years, during the 30 years of a system's life, it is producing free and clean electricity for 29 of those years.
Production of solar electric systems is regulated by rigorous safety and pollution control standards. In addition, during the lifetime of a solar electric system, pollution that would have been emitted by conventional generation of electricity is avoided. For each kilowatt of solar electric generating capacity, the pollution avoided by not using fossil fuels to produce electricity amounts to 9 kilograms of sulfuric oxide, 16 kilograms of nitrous oxide, and between 600 and 2,300 kilograms of carbon dioxide per year. The annual amount of carbon dioxide offset by a 2.5-kW rooftop residential solar electric system is equal to that emitted by a typical family car during that same year.

Myth #4
Solar electric systems make sense in only a few applications.

Solar electric systems make sense nearly anywhere electricity is needed. Homes and businesses that are already using electricity from the utility, such as homes, businesses, and electric-vehicle charging stations, represent nearly 60% of the market for solar electric systems. The number of these grid-connected applications is growing because they make sense economically, environmentally, and aesthetically. Solar electric systems make economic sense because they use free fuel from the sun and require little upkeep because they have no moving parts. Every bit of electricity produced is used in the home or sold back to the electric utility for use by other customers. Solar electric systems also make sense for the environment and can blend seamlessly into the design of a building.

Myth #5
Solar electric systems are unreliable and produce substandard electricity.
Solar electric systems are some of the most reliable products available today. They are silent, have no moving parts, and have been tested to rigorous standards by public and private organizations. Many solar electric products have been tested and listed by Underwriters Laboratories, just as electrical appliances are. Warranties of 20-25 years are standard for most modules.
Solar electric systems connected to the utility grid generate the same kind of power as that from the power line. Today’s systems must meet the requirements of the National Electrical Code, the local utility, and local building codes. Once these systems are installed according to these requirements, the owner of a solar-electric-powered home has electricity of the same quality as any other utility customer.

Myth #6
It is difficult to make solar electric systems aesthetically pleasing and functional for homes and businesses.
The buildings shown here include solar electric systems serving dual functions: building structure and generation of electricity. These photos represent only a small sample of the beautiful, functional, and energy-efficient buildings being designed with solar electric components. (download for photos- link below)
In the future, people will reflect on our current solar electric technology much as we reflect on the technology of the Model T Ford: with admiration for the pioneering visionaries of the day and perhaps amusement at the technology that seems so primitive compared to what we now enjoy. Researchers believe that in the future, new physics and technologies will be developed that will greatly improve solar energy technology. As for the present day, clean, reliable solar electricity is increasingly popular with home and business owners, which helps to dispel the myths surrounding this technology.


Produced for the U.S. Department of Energy by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a DOE national laboratory
DOE/GO-102003-1671 January 2003

www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/pdfs/32529.pdf


**At the time this DOE pamphlet was written, the US was the leader in PV - now we are 5th. The global solar manufacturing capacity is now more relevant since the Republicans have successfully obstructed every policy that would have helped the industry grow here. You can see from this discussion, however, that China's manufacturing capacity is expected to hit 35GW/year this year. That compares to the 3GW of manufacturing capacity identified in myth #2.

Before 2007, China wasn't even on the radar. After Fukushima, what do you think they are going to do?

[DCKit]

2. Those talking points are eerily familiar... wonder where I've heard or seen them repeated.

To perfect the article, they should have just started with "Only Nuclear Power Can Save Us".

[CRH]

3. K&R with hope some of the nuclear 40 billion is diverted to make solar a reality. n/t

[toddwv]

4. Sun here, sun NOW!

Get read for a full frontal assault by the right-wing. Watch as the Republicans try to drop $3 trillion dollars out of the budget for alternative energy over the next 1,000 years.

[ThomCat]

5. If we could take that $1.3 Billion subsidy we give bill oil every year

for no damned reason at all, and add it to the current budget for development and implementation of solar power throughout this nation, we really could achieve energy independence.

Solar power deserves our tax dollars far more than oil, coal or gas extraction.

The paltry few million dollars that goes into the budget every year for solar isn't nearly enough. :(

[KurtNYC]

6. Solar got $4 billion in grants and another $16 billion in loan guarantees

in the USA. But the Chinese spent more and are already out producing us and cheaper. You can have live solar power at $2 / watt of capacity and that is still dropping. Storing the power for night time use is still the biggest part of the expense and batteries are environmentally crappy.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-04-04/china-buries-obama-s-sputnik-goal-for-clean-energy-use.html

[RC]

7. You just introduced reality and truth to this thread.

Somebody ain't a gonna like that. :hide:

[kristopher]

8. You see what reality that would cause this to contradict the above comments?

CBO estimate on nuclear loan guarantees

For this estimate, CBO assumes that the first nuclear plant built using a federal loan guarantee would have a capacity of 1,100 megawatts and have associated project costs of $2.5 billion. We expect that such a plant would be located at the site of an existing nuclear plant and would employ a reactor design certified by the NRC prior to construction. This plant would be the first to be licensed under the NRC’s new licensing procedures, which have been extensively revised over the past decade.

Based on current industry practices, CBO expects that any new nuclear construction project would be financed with 50 percent equity and 50 percent debt. The high equity participation reflects the current practice of purchasing energy assets using high equity stakes, 100 percent in some cases, used by companies likely to undertake a new nuclear construction project. Thus, we assume that the government loan guarantee would cover half the construction cost of a new plant, or $1.25 billion in 2011.

CBO considers the risk of default on such a loan guarantee to be very high—well above 50 percent. The key factor accounting for this risk is that we expect that the plant would be uneconomic to operate because of its high construction costs, relative to other electricity generation sources. In addition, this project would have significant technical risk because it would be the first of a new generation of nuclear plants, as well as project delay and interruption risk due to licensing and regulatory proceedings.

Note the price - $2.5 billion was to be only for the first plant. Future plants were, according to the assumptions provided by the nuclear industry, expected to have lower costs as economy of scale resulted in savings.

In fact, since the report was written (2003), the estimated cost has risen to an average of about $8 billion.

Wonder what that does to the “risk is that … the plant would be uneconomic to operate because of its high construction costs, relative to other electricity generation sources”?

Does that risk diminish or increase when the price rises from $2.5 billion to $8 billion?

With wind and solar, not such a problem at all.

Here is a Citigroup investment report where they say that over 70% of merchant reactors in UK would not have a market if they were built as planned by vendors - which means long term negative cash flow and eventual bankruptcy, and that is AFTER the nuclear industry has over the past 50 years received about 95% of all non-fossil energy subsidies. This is exactly what happened during the last bandwagon market also.
http://www.olino.org/us/articles/2009/11/26/the-economics-of-nuclear-reactors-renaissance-or-relapse

The price of nuclear subsidies is definitely worth looking at. Nuclear proponents will tell you the subsidies per unit of electricity for nuclear are no worse than for renewables. That statement omits the fact than nuclear power has received the lions share of non fossil energy subsidies for more than 50 years with no apparent payoff; for all the money we've spent we see a steadily escalating cost curve for nuclear. When we compare that to renewables we find that a small fraction of the total amount spent on nuclear has resulted in rapidly declining costs that for wind are already competitive with coal and rapidly declining costs for solar that are competitive with natural gas and will soon be less expensive than coal.

http://www.1366tech.com/cost-curve/

In other words: subsidies work to help the renewable technologies stand on their own but with nuclear they do nothing but prop up an industry that cannot be economically viable.

Another factor that truly limits the utility of the nuclear indsutry’s preferred way of framing the impact of subsidies to our understanding of the true situation is found in the report Federal Financial Interventions and Subsidies in Energy Markets 2007 Published in April 2008 published by the Energy Information Administration Office of Coal, Nuclear, Electric, and Alternate Fuels.

These /kwh numbers present the standard argument offered by the Nuclear Fission Industry and are current year production divided by this years subsidies for each power source (at least a very incomplete version of what is counted as a subsidy DOE).

The information they are trying to obscure is in the chart below where you can see that the subsidies over all this time have shown no results in the realm of mainstreaming the economics of fission reactors.


Full report: http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/nuclear_power/nuclear_subsidies_report.pdf
This shows that when we look at lifetime subsidies against lifetime production of nuclear fission power the subsidies fission has received are worth more than the average value of the electricity produced.

That's right. We paid for every kilowatt of nuclear fission derived electricity twice, once through the utility and once through the tax man.

You won't hear that from the nuclear industry.