Solar future brightens as oil soars

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jun/16/renewableenergy.energy

Soaring oil prices have led to such a boom for solar power that the industry could operate without subsidies in just a few years, according to industry leaders. At the solar industry trade fair in Munich over the weekend, there was growing confidence that the holy grail known as "grid parity" - whereby electricity from the sun can be produced as cheaply as it can be bought from the grid - is now just a few years away.

Solar photovoltaics (PV), which convert sunlight into electrical power, have long been dismissed as too expensive to make a meaningful contribution to the battle against climate change. But costs are falling as PV production booms, and with electricity prices rising rapidly in line with soaring oil and gas prices, demand for solar panels is increasing sharply.

Germany, the world leader in PV thanks to its "feed-in tariff" support, installed 1.1 gigawatts of capacity last year - the equivalent of a large power station. It now has nearly half a million houses fitted with PV panels. The feed-in tariff pays people with solar panels above-market rates for selling power back to the grid.

"High oil prices have boosted demand even more. The market will probably expand another 40% this year," said Carsten Körnig, of the German solar industry association, referring to both PV and solar thermal systems, which produce hot water. He said his previous assumption - that grid parity would be reached in Germany in five to seven years - now looked very conservative since it allowed for only a 3% rise in electricity prices each year. In many countries increases of 20% a year are becoming the norm.

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the cost of reducing silicon from silicon dioxide is intimately connected with the cost of energy.

There are zero solar manufacturing plants that run on solar energy, just like there are zero solar promotion websites that run on solar energy.

The cost of driving big F150 installation trucks to service McMansions with solar cells is also going up.

It should be obvious that any form of extremely diffuse, mass intensive, and pollution intensive material - will not become cheaper.

In fact the solar industry - its lobbyists, its "scientists" and its promoters have all been predicting that solar energy will become "competitive" endlessly.

In fact, solar energy is not an alternative to oil, except in very, very, very, very rare systems using diesel power, and then only for a small portion of the day.

There have been brazillions of posters of the last 6 years here trying to sell "solar powered" electric cars and hydrogen cars.

Zero such cars are on the market after 6 years (and that's only here in the E&E forum) of such talk.

What will happen with solar energy - if anything happens at all - will end up looking, I expect, a lot like the biofuels fiasco. It will sound great until the scale-up is attempted, whereupon all of the previously concealed and hand-waved off objections become impossible to avoid.

I may write a diary over on the other website where I write detailing from recent scientific publications on the external cost of solar cells exactly how big the impact might be in waste dumping alone if the solar industry ever tried to get to 10 exajoules out of the 500 exajoules it now produces.

I predict the solar industry is going to end up looking a little bit like ADM looks in the "ethanol will save our cars" business.

Solarex built its "Solar Breeder" facility in Frederick MD in the 1982...

http://www.nytimes.com/ads/peoplesoft/article9.html

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Meanwhile, Solarex remains No. 1. Outsiders estimate the company's yearly revenues now run $7 million to $8 million, and Solarex says it has been profitable since 1974. It employs 380, up from 250 a year ago.

Although the company has so far declined to go public, it has begun to raise money privately. Last year, it took on three partners: Holec, a Dutch manufacturer of electrical equipment; Leroy Somer, a French electrical manufacturer, and the Standard Oil Company of Indiana. For about $860,000 each, the three companies together bought between 12 percent and 15 percent of Solarex.

The money will help Mr. Lindmayer with his latest project: what he calls a solar breeder, a manufacturing plant where solar cells are made with power that comes entirely from other solar cells. This is his answer to the breeder reactor, the advanced type of nuclear power plant that makes more atomic fuel than it consumes.

A $6 million showcase facility has already been designed for a site in nearby Frederick, Md. Using the electricity from 200 kilowatts' worth of solar cells liberally applied to its roof and facades, the plant will be able to churn out five megawatts of new solar cells each year, making it the largest solar-cell manufacturing plant in the world.

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http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1978pvse.conf..825L

Abstract

It was pointed out that a photovoltaic panel manufacturing plant can be made energy-independent by using energy derived from its own roof using its own panels. Such a plant becomes not only energy self-sufficient but a major supplier of new energy, hence the name solar breeder. The reported investigation establishes certain mathematical relationships for the solar breeder which clearly indicate that a vast amount of net energy is available from such a plant for the indefinite future. It is pointed out that if solar electric plants would be built according to the solar breeder principle, their operation as a net energy source would be automatically assured.

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:rofl:

zero manufacturing plants that ran on any electricity before the 19th century, old technology does not predict what new technology will be capable of.

It's actually energy return on energy invested (EROEI) that becomes the deciding factor.

Current silicon based solar cells have an energy payback of about 7 years. Meaning, it takes 7 years to collect the amount of energy it took to create them. With a lifetime of 30 years, they have an EROEI of about 4:1.

Newer Thin-film panels have a payback of less than 2 years and have a life of 30 years, giving a much higher EROEI. Printed panels from companies such as Nanosolar potentially will outperform thin film.

So, even if you use fossil fuels to create the first few batches of panels, these panels would still collect more energy than the fossil fuels used to create them. Put a bunch on the roof of your solar manufacturing facility (which is kind of a no-brainer) and you eliminate fossil fuels from the equation very quickly.

Energy Payback: Clean Energy from PV
Producing electricity with photovoltaics (PV) emits no pollution, produces no greenhouse gases,
and uses no finite fossil fuel resources. These are great environmental benefits, but just as we say
that it takes money to make money, it also takes energy to save energy. This concept is captured by
the term “energy payback,” or how long a PV system must operate to recover the energy—and
associated generation of pollution and CO2—that went into making the system in the first place.

Energy payback estimates for rooftop PV systems boil down to 4, 3, 2, and 1 years:
4 years for systems using current multicrystalline-silicon PV modules,
3 years for current thin-film modules,
2 years for future multicrystalline modules, and
1 year for future thin-film modules. With energy
paybacks of 1–4 years and assumed life expectancies of 30 years, 87% to 97% of the energy that
PV systems generate will be free of pollution, greenhouse gases, and depletion of resources. Let’s
take a look at how the 4-3-2-1 paybacks were estimated for current and future PV systems.

-NREL Report No. NREL/FS-520-24619

Makes even more sense to produce PVs.

:shrug:

in 1974, a team from MIT presented a lecture on solar power. They stated that, way back then, they were producing the energy for a house in Boston from the then existing solar technology switching to gas only a few days a year.

A man behind me rose during the question period and stated that he represented the Canadian nuclear energy industry and that they did not like solar energy because there was no product to sell.

Compared to other sources of energy, there is less investment in developing the technology for and equipment for solar energy, and less incentive to sell and subsidize it because once consumers have solar panels on their homes, the consumer produces the energy and no longer consumes the energy produced by the energy companies.

Oil costs a lot to produce, refine, transport and market day to day.

Nuclear energy costs a lot to produce and creates waste that we do not know how to store safely and that remains dangerous for the generations to come.

The environmental costs of oil and nuclear energy are not included in the price that we pay for them. We pay some of those costs in our taxes, and individuals pay some of the costs in shortened lives or private financial losses. Some of the costs are simply being deferred for future generations.

While the production of solar energy requires an investment, so do the building, maintenance and security for oil wells, tankers, refineries and, believe it or not gas stations and oil sales facilities. We are subsidizing oil. We do not subsidize solar to the extent we subsidize oil.

Solar energy is not the only feasible alternative energy, but it is a good one depending on the region. It would be practical here in Los Angeles where we have an abundance of sunlight.

Someone on DU suggested that solar panels are no good because they don't generate power at night and pointed to some facility that had to shut down at night. It is my understanding that the panels on homes can be connected to the grid of the local electricity utility. The home panels produce energy during the day when more energy is used. Solar panels would be particularly useful out here in L.A. during the summer when the widespread use of air conditioners overtaxes our energy resources.

Remember, as the representative of the Canadian nuclear energy industry stated at that meeting in 1974, the corporatocracy does not want solar energy because it deprives them of a product that they can sell to consumers on a daily basis. It puts them out of business so to speak.

A man behind me rose during the question period and stated that he represented the Canadian nuclear energy industry and that they did not like solar energy because there was no product to sell.

You only have to buy solar panels once.

You have to buy coal/natural gas/hydro/nuclear power every time you use it. You never own the source of your power.

It's kind of like the pharmaceutical company that would rather sell you a lifetime of pills to treat a disease rather than one pill to cure the disease.

The thing about solar is that it literally and figuratively gives power to the individual. Once a home has gone solar, the ties to large power companies pretty much evaporate. Solar has the potential to completely upset the monopoly power of these major companies/utilities. They don't like it.

If prices drop as predicted, solar will revolutionize power consumption much in the same way that the PC revolutionized the computer industry and the internet revolutionized mass communications.

nuclear fission is dead-end.
edit to add: Have a Nice Day! :)

May I suggest you tone it down a little?

destroys any credibility of your comments. It is ignorant to simply write off solar power.

By the time solar gets to the point where it can be made in large enough quantities to seriously be able to build a power site that gives the same amount of average amount of current to the grid as a coal plant at less cost. (Which requires REALLY cheap solar panels that are highly efficient and can absorb a MULTITUDE of spectrum)...

Well something else will come along and beat it. My guess it will be fusion but it could be something else.

But common! Effective solar for grid generation is decades away. It took this long to get to effective and cheap thin film solar.

that's great. I'll take it. We can then replace roofs with solar pannels to supplement whatever other techs are available. Again people who simply dismiss solar lose all credibility in my eyes.

"Ignorance Kills". Does he even realize how much he sounds like the "fundy's" he so passionately decries? :shrug: