In New Jersey, Solar Sells

http://www.enn.com/alt.html?id=228

New Jersey will never replace Florida as the Sunshine State, but business leaders and government officials are hoping to make this the Solar State.

Helped by incentives and rebates, the solar business is hot and getting hotter in the state, said M. Todd Foley, director of business development and external affairs for BP Solar, a division of BP plc, the international energy giant.

"New Jersey's solar program is a model for the nation and the world," Foley said Monday at a solar seminar at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark. "New Jersey is one of the fastest-growing markets in the United States."

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This is no longer a boutique business, said Mark Warner, president and chief executive of Sun Farm Ventures Inc., a Flemington company that does solar installations. "It's for anyone with a sunny roof."

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sun (I have a very sunny house so I was surprised) and the right direction for my roof to qualify for the NJ solar rebate program which is one of the best in the country. He said 90% of the people in my town he sees will not qualify for the rebates because of the strict guidelines for eligibility. I'd have to cut down old growth trees to qualify, and still might not, that just doesn't make sense. Without the rebate program here which pays for everything but 10K of the costs we could not afford the 75K pricetag for converting to solar on the grid. Lots of people in my town would do solar, we are an inner ring suburb about 10 miles from NYC if the rebate program was more inclusive. I hope they change the requirements a bit to allow more willing homeowners and businesses to take advantage of the program here.

I think I'm going to have another consultant come and give me a second opinion on my home. I really want to do this.

I thought you wanted it, you paid and got it. Not that you had to qualify to get it. Keep us posted as I'm in the same area as you and thinking along the same lines. Maybe Peak Oil will prod them to loosen up the guidelines some.

I recently had BP quote me over the phone on a solar system for my house. Quotation: $80,000 for 10,000 watts.

I can go to Home Depot on Route 1 in Princeton any time I'd like to get a lecture on the subject. I think I'll skip it.

There is one home in my area out of many thousands that has a PV system. It is a "solar demonstration" home. The owner, needless to say, is rich.

Johnson & Johnson installed a few thousands of watts, getting a huge tax break and covering the rest of the loss as a PR expense. It PR report in the newspapers had the usual "enough to power x hundred homes" neglecting as usual the illuminating prepositional phrase "during the day."

I would say that New Jersey does in fact pretty much reflect the status of the PV industry, nationwide and worldwide.

To steal a line from Macbeth:

"All full of sound and fury, signifying nothing..."

Solar power has important niche applications, but it isn't going to shut one fossil fueled plant anywhere on earth. Not in our lifetimes anyway.

That $80,000 quote was the before rebate price - the after rebate price for a 10 kW BP system in New Jersey is $27,500.

http://www.bp.com/modularhome.do?categoryId=4320&contentId=7004540

If one is a profligate energy hog and spends >$3000 a year on household energy, one might need a 10 kW PV system.

Most energy efficient homes, however, would require a <3 kW system (which would cost <$10,000 after NJ's rebate).

Pah-thetic

A 10 kW system is largest that BP offers - it is a McMansion Supersized system.

If one needs a system that big, one uses an enormous amount of electricity and one is a major contributor to mercury/ozone/acid rain/greenhouse gas emissions.

Note: the largest residential PV system in NJ is 15 kW (and it is on a McMansion).

$80,000 is the BEFORE rebate BP price - $27,500 is the AFTER rebate price.

Anyone can go on BP Solar North America's website and do the calculations themselves...(use the Solar Savings Estimator)...

http://www.bp.com/modularhome.do?categoryId=4320&contentId=7004540

(Princeton NJ's zip code is 08540)

I call bullshit.

Then again, maybe he can. Maybe he can tell us.

n/t

Then again, like Jack Burton, I was not put on this earth to "get it."

I just get a kick out of some of the posts here - perhaps someone can defend him/herself????

But I doubt that they have the courage...

Almost $50,000 off the quoted price, where does that money come from?

We're all going to pay for this project, one way or another. Regardless of what energy sources we choose, it will be trillions of dollars. That is to say, tens of thousands for every adult and child in the country.

The debate will be about exactly how many trillions.

New Jersey utilities are required to buy back 70% of the cost of residential PV systems.

No taxpayer money involved.

New Jersey recently had to cap the annual amount spent on school PV projects - demand outstripped the money available...

pass that cost on to their customers. Just sayin, I think no matter how you slice it, we the people end up footing the bill. Which is reasonable, since ultimately we're the ones who use the energy.

Perhaps at current levels of development, these costs may be absorbed, but to do this deed for real, I don't see how we can avoid paying somehow. No organization can just absorb a trillion dollar cost.

(including co-generation) and ~$25 million a year (max) for PV.

New Jersey's target is 90 MW of new PV capacity by the end of 2008.

The program (like other programs proposed in Maine and California) will ultimately reduce the cost of PV and the need for new power plants (peaking, intermediate and base-load). All of which will save ratepayers money in the long run.

And doing nuclear "for real" won't cost trillions????

ChimpCo's Nuclear 2010 program alone will cost taxpayers $6 billion for three new nuclear plants - it makes California's and New Jersey's programs look like bargains...

As usual the "numbers" such as they are, come out of thin air, but I have linked the real numbers elsewhere and will link them here again.

http://www.njcep.com/media/redo_program/2004_CORE_Totals.xls

Since a typical nuclear plant puts out roughtly 1000 MWe, this would be the equivalent of the three nuclear plants mentioned costing $57 billion dollars. Acknowledging the tiny heads of solar twits, and using their pie-in-the-sky $76 million number, here is how you do that math: 76 million/4 megawatts =

Given that the PV constituent, the weakest of all solar schemes, operates sporatically, the number is much, much larger than $57 billion of course.

As for the one trillion speculation, I simply note that there is not one anti-environmental anti-nuclear activist who seems to have even the faintest idea what numbers mean. Given their demonstrable weakness in this area - they seem to have been in the bar during much of the seventh grade - we can't really be expected their paranoid daydreaming speculations about trillions, billions, quadrillions or whatever to be taken seriously.

There is one number that needs to be applied to these immoral twits: zero.

For instance: 6/57 = ?

You don't know?

I didn't think so.

By the way, do you know what percentage of New Jersey's power demand 90 megawatts (goal, as in promised, as in daydreamt) represents?

You don't?

I didn't think so.

If one knew how to do mathematics one could theoretically calculate it from this data:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/at_a_glance/states/statesnj.html

They all will. And so, any linear combination of them also will. If there is anything I am confident of, it is that replacing fossil fuels is a multi-trillion dollar project. It does not matter how we do it. Wind, solar, nuclear, bio-diesel, or any combination. It will be trillions to do it.

Now, exactly how many trillions, my powers of estimation could never guess. But I'm confident that I've got the right order of magnitude.

I'm also of the opinion that conservation measures, and lifestyle changes, still leave us in the trillion-dollar range. Partly, that is because conservation measures also cost money to deploy, up-front. They obviously pay for themselves over time, but that does not get around the up-front cost.

Of course, we should implement conservation measures to the fullest extent possible. My intuition is simply that it will still be a trillion-dollar class of project, regardless.

That's the problem with what I feel are technocratic solutions to our energy problem. They cost "trillions of dollars" and often times create a whole new set of problems. Obviously there are certain things that can only be dealt with in a very complicated way. This is true. But nine times out of ten the best solution is often the simplest one, and the one most easily implemented by individuals. Alot of times over developed, overly expensive methods of "conservation" and "Recycling" end up being wasteful doo dads.

I also resist the assertion by many around here that somehow "conservation" has done nothing to change things. I would argue that there is no real conservation at all in America (hybrids and curbside recycling programs do not conservation make). Many of our houses for instance (and this is true of cities as well) rely off of mechanized water systems as opposed to using such systems as a last resort to supplement rainwater collection and integration of houses into the water cycle. Or the use of various lo tech building materials (cob for instance) to make houses that require far less in heating and cooling, if any at all. Etc, etc.

I don't think such lo tech solutions are a pancea to everything, but I'm mildly leery of techno-prophets who promise a world of too cheap to meter energy from ANY energy source (be they nuclear, solar, wind or otherwise). And if I am against nuclear energy, its because I don't want to do what many nuclear proponents promote, which is to keep this beast, which is unsustainable in a bajillion other ways, FROM running. Hooking in nuclear power is not going to stop poor water usage, desertfication, and a myriad of other problems. it will also not confront the inequalities that are social and political that led to the current situation, and will lead back to it again if they are allowed to stand unchanged.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

When you request a quote through the BP website, you get a callback from a BP representative - not an "independent out-of-state contractor."

I urge everyone to go to the BP Solar website and request a quote themselves.

There is no need for BP to employ "out-of-state contractors" as there are more than 90 certified solar companies in New Jersey participating in the rebate program.

As you have to enter your zip code before requesting a quote, the BP rep instantly knows whether your state has a rebate program.

The BP rep will NOT tell you you need a 10 kW PV system "because it only works part of the time". Most homes would not have enough roof area to accommodate a 10 kW system anyway.

BP sells grid-intertie PV systems that run your meter backwards during the day, "banking" the output of the PV system, and homeowners receive cash back for any electricity they sell to the grid in excess of their own usage.

Again, the system does NOT operate 1/3 of the time. Homeowners are credited with the power the generate during the day for use in the evening hours or during periods of inclement weather. (note: most PV modules produce ~60% of their rated output on a typical cloudy day).

A 10 kW PV system in NJ would produce >1500 kwh in the month of June. In addition to the electricity homeowners sell to the grid, homeowners are also awarded a Solar Renewable Energy Certificate for every 1000 kWh of electricity they produce. These are sold on regulated markets and homeowner receives the proceeds from the sale of the SREC (currently ~$160).

The after-rebate cost of a 1 kW PV system is $3000 - well within the means of anyone with a job in New Jersey - it ain't just for rich people.

...and finally...

"I repeat: "Solar only" anti-environmental anti-nuclear activists are people of extremely dubious ethics. These are people who are willing to kill to satisfy their own ignorance. Let's make no mistake; these days a "head in the sand" ("head in the Silicon Dioxide") approach to energy is very much the same as murder."

This statement goes beyond (the usual) infantile name calling that is commonplace among pronuclear types on this forum.

Someone owes someone an apology...

"a 1000 MWe power plant that costs $7,714,586,555.56 in out of pocket dollars. This mind you, is after a huge government subsidy amounting - if this particular bit holds true again noting the 1/3 of the time operating schedule - $16,531,725,688.89 for each 1000 MWe installed."

The total installed cost of 1000 MW of PV in NJ is $7.7 billion not $16 billion. Fudging the numbers is not allowed in the real world.

This compares favorably to the last 2 nuclear plants actually built in the US (Watts Bar and Seabrook), which came in at $7 billion a piece.

...and let us not forget that ChimpCo is giving the nuclear industry $6 billion in subsidies to build 3 new nuclear plants.

"massive" subsidies indeed...

It's more of the same.

For the record, three nuclear plants at 6 billion dollars would be the equivalent of 3 1000 MWe plants. 6 billion dollars divided by 3 is 2 billion dollars per plant. This is about what an average plant should cost. Given that nuclear fuel is too cheap to meter, the equivalent of gasoline at less than $0.01/gallon, this is a bargain indeed.

Although my last post was deleted, apparently on the grounds it was too amusing for words, my calculation allowed for the existence of night and clouds. I linked to the historical Princeton, NJ weather to show that indeed clear sunny days are relatively rare here, and therefore it was dubious at best to claim that solar cells would actually produce what the frauds representing these systems as viable solutions to our energy and environmental crisis claim they are.

To sell the solar fantasy, people use power "ratings" for their cells. Moreover, being frauds, they go on to use these "peak" rating numbers to calculate costs.

They don't want the customer to know about night, or clouds, but the customers aren't fooled. Almost all solar plants are installed for the purpose of making the owners seem like good guys. None are installed because they are incredibly economical.

This should tell you something. You can install solar capacity and be thought of as a good guy, and gets lots of praise. Why then, is solar capacity so weeny after 40 years of endless hype? If it were really affordable, wouldn't people do it to be thought of as "good guys?" Would we really need to dance through all kinds of rebates and tax plans and other shell games? No. People would do it merely because it made sense.

Let's see if I am a liar when I point out that solar production costs are much, much, much higher than advertised.

My numbers in the deleted post linked average Princeton weather (number of cloudy days from the weather service). I estimated that solar power would actually operate at 30% of its peak rating. Was I unfair or was I overly generous?

Let's see:

A more useful number is not actually rated capacity, measured in watts but is rather the energy output rated in kilowatt hours. Since a watt is a joule/second, and there are 3600 seconds in an hour, and kilo means 1000, a kilowatt-hour is 3,600,000 joules.

Nuclear power plants in 2004 delivered a record 789 billion kilowatt hours. http://www.nei.org/index.asp?catnum=2&catid=106


This is the equivalent of 2.18 exajoules (an exajoule is 10^18 joules). Dividing this by 31,557,000 seconds (approximately) in a year we see that nuclear power plants delivered (delivered, not rated, mind you) an astonishing 68,500,000,000 watts (68,000,000 kilowatts, 68,000 megawatts, 68 gigawatts) of electrical power on a continuous basis, when the sun was down, when it was snowing, raining, cloudy or bright.

Here is the largest solar installation in PA, rated a rather pathetic 75 kilowatts, or the equivalent of 0.0075% of a single1000 MW nuclear plant:

http://www.powerlight.com/company/press-releases/2002/6-14-02-pennsylvania.shtml


This "plant" is on the Johnson and Johnson site in Spring House, PA, a short drive from Princeton, New Jersey. The weather there is pretty much the same there as it is here.

The delivered power? A spectacular 78,440 kilowatt-hours. Converting to joules (multiplying -gasp- by 3600 and then 1000) we get that the total delivered power is 282 billion joules. Dividing this by 31,557,000 seconds in a year, we see that the actual delivered from this "plant" is about 9,000 watts or 9 kilowatts.

Thus the "efficiency" of this solar system is a whopping 9/75 or 12%.

Thus I have been overly generous when I stated that the price of solar systems should be inflated by dividing them by 0.30 (assuming a 30% efficiency.) The efficiency is actually experimentally determined here by looking at this operating solar plant: It is 12%.

Now, I have no illusion that "solar only" twits have any conception of numbers. This is exactly why they are able to be "solar only" twits in the first place: They can't do math. They can't use or understand numbers at all. Usually they make them up. One number is as good as another in their world.

But let's take their number du jour, 7 billion dollars for "1000 MW" solar plant. Looking a delivered power rather than rated power, a 7 billion dollar "1000 watt" (heh, heh) system actually costs 7 billion dollars divided by 0.12 or $58,000,000,000. In case you lost track of the number because of all the zeros after the 8, thats 58 billion dollars, for a single theoretical plant that is about 1/4th the capacity of New Jersey's existing nuclear capacity.

No wonder nobody shuts down nuclear power plants to install solar systems. No matter how cool you might seem for saying "solar" rather than "nuclear," even Bill Gates couldn't afford this.

Not even Bill Gates.

If solar worked it wouldn't need a subsidy to just have the promise, not the delivery mind you, of equal one nuclear plant.

Let's recap:

Zero nuclear plants have been shut down because of cheaper solar power.

Zero.

Zero.

Zero.

Zero.

Any mindless fool can promote solar power, because everybody loves it because it sounds so good. Note that saying something sounds good is nothing like saying something is good. Even the infamous Yugo automobile once sounded good. (A war in Iraq sounded good to some people, but it wasn't good and isn't good for anyone without Halliburton stock.) If solar power were so great, everyone would use it, and no nuclear plants would be under construction. This is because nuclear gets bad (scare mongering) press and solar gets good (risk ignoring) press. I can say from experience that people wince when you say "nuclear" and they all nod enthusiastically (if stupidly) when you say "solar."

In spite of all the favorable press and wishful thinking, more than four decades of it, we still have to create all kinds of links for promises of tax breaks that might create 3000 megawatts.

Big deal, coal boys. Big deal.

As it is - and we can delete this truth as much as we want but we cannot change it - the proposed, planned and under construction nuclear plants are almost 100 gigawatts. This is over a factor of one million greater than the largest so called "solar plant" in PA, the Spring House plant.

Over 361 gigawatts of nuclear power plants now operate, 440 reactors world wide.

Where are 100 gigawatts (peak of day, sunny days, no clouds) ordered, under construction, proposed?

"Solar only" radiation paranoids can't produce one place this has happened, just like they can't produce one person who has been killed by the storage of "dangerous nuclear waste." Not one. Zero.

Zero. Zero. Zero.


Let's repeat that:

Zero. Zero. Zero.

Big deal. Zero.

Cost of Seabrook 1 = $7 billion

Cost of Watts Bar 1 = $7 billion

Cost South Texas Nuclear Project = $15.6 billion for 2 plants (~7.8 billion per plant).

These were the last 4 nuclear plants built in the US (1990's).

Those are the real numbers.

The statement that new US nuclear power plants will cost "only" $2 billion completely delusional and false.

Here are a list of Powerlight's PV installations in NJ, including the 500 kW array at Johnson and Johnson in Titusville NJ.

http://www.powerlight.com/newjersey/index.shtml

This one company *alone* has installed 4.3 MW of PV since NJ's program began.

And a picture is worth 1000 words. Here is the Rancho Seco (CA) reactor that was shut down by its operator (SMUD) and replaced with PV arrays ...

http://www.eere.energy.gov/solar/utility_scale.html

NJ's solar energy program is wildly popular among school districts...

http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=25006

end of argument

The cheapest solar panel I can find is $3.62 a watt.
http://www.ecobusinesslinks.com/solar_panels.htm

The U.S. consumed 3.839 trillion kWh of electricity in 2002. That is 3,839,000,000,000,000 watt-hours.
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/us.html

Arizona averages 6 sun hours per day. Now lets say Arizona never has clouds. That is 2,190 sun hours per year.

Now if we divide 3,839,000,000,000,000 by 2,910 to figure out how much electricity we need to generate, we calculate that 1,752,968,036,529 watts need to be produce during each hour of sunlight. If we multiply this by the $3.62 per watt, it costs us more than $6.345 trillion.

Of course solar panels lose efficiency over the course of their life. They are usually guaranteed to generate 80% of their capacity after years. If we multiply 1.25 (the spare capacity) by 0.8 (efficiency in twnety years) we get 1, so the cost is really more than $7.9 Trillion.

Now let's talk batteries. Let us be generous and say we only have to store the electricity for 24 hours. That is 21,476,712,328,767 kilowatt hours we have to store.

Im using these batteries as it is simply the first website I found and it is the biggest battery:
http://store.solar-electric.com/suca2k.html

Remember now, Watts = amps x volts. So that can store 3,543 watt-hours of electricity. 21,476,712,328,767 / 3,534 = 6,077,168,175 (can't have a half a battery, remember; have to round up). We can get 12 of these for $6,900. 6,077,168,175 / 12 = 506,430,681 x 6,900 = Nearly $3.5 trillion.

So far we are at $11.5 trillion dollars.
Battery inefficiency is not factored in.
Energy growth is not factored in.
Loss over transmission lines is not factored in (These panels are in Arizona).
The cost of charge controllers are not factored in.
The cost of converters are not factored in.
The cost of supply and demand is not factored in.

The estimated GDP of the U.S. in 2004 was $11.75 trillion. This project would cost just as much as the United States earns in an entire year with what I calculated so far. But I'm bored now and want to browse the rest of DU before I go to bed.

What yall fail to factor in is the fact that your numbers include the upfront cost without amortization. Now I'm no math whiz but I'll bet if you divide all your numbers by 20 years or so, you'll find the true costs per year/per watt.

While you are at it, you whiz kids, give us a true evaluation of the nuke costs. I kinda figure it has been done - by the prospective nuke plant builders - and when they see the numbers they say: NO way. That's why so few plants are being privately financed. But we do see privately financed solar, eh? Besides, the sun IS too cheap to meter.

I guess the figuring has been done.

The total world wide capacity being added: 120,000 Megawatts.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/reactors.htm

Now, if we're talking whiz kids, where are the solar plants that are comparable?

I strongly suspect that "solar only" advocates talk loudly and carry no stick.

If solar were so great - the volume of the capacity would equal the volume of excuses, evasions, misrepresentations, distortions that accompany all the magic dancing.

The solar only crowd is selling coal. They may not be smart enough to recognize what they are doing - clearly they aren't - but ignorance does not excuse the consequences of ignorance.

So YOU should be the one proving that nuclear is more expensive than solar.

I hardly think that 2 megawatts is equal to 943 Megawatts. It says right in the caption that the solar plant's capacity is 2 megawatts.

It doesn't mention what the capacity of the closed plant was, possibly to avoid pointing up exactly how stupid the word "replacement" is.

This is pretty typical of greenpeace math. Fuck the other 941 Megawatts. Solar is magic. This solar plant is not a "replacement." In fact, it only delivers 2 megawatts for very, very, very short periods. It is just a demonstration of the people who voted (based wholly on misunderstanding even the most basic technical realities) to shut this plant demonstrating that they like to lie to themselves.

Oh well, these are the same people who elected an action figure steroid crazed Repuke to be their governor who offers, as his excuse for his policies, the claim that he doesn't speak English.

The other 941 megawatts from the closed Rancho Seco is coming from coal and gas. It is helping to kill the planet.

It is also illustrative that in Greenpeace math we "select" the last four nuclear plants to demonstrate that nuclear energy is "expensive."

Over 100 plants operate today. These plants were being built in the era where Greenpeace type stupidity was taken seriously. I was a participant. We shut Shoreham by demonstrating that LILCO could not evacuate Long Island whenever it wished. Now, it happens that Long Island would never have had to be evacuated had Shoreham operated, and that now, with global climate change, Long Island will certainly have to be evacuated, or large portions of it. The last nuclear plants in the United States were built when interest rates were over 10%. They were deliberately delayed by specious objections, rasing their costs enormously.

We made sure the price was high and then complained that it was high.

We, and I include myself here because I was active against Shoreham, were poorly educated - illiterate actually - assholes. We killed people for no good reason.

My activity here and now is to expiate for my sins.

It is useful to note that in spite of all the whining and crying from people like me, the Seabrooke Unit #1 unit was finished anyway. I've been to Seabrooke many times. Nothing is dead there, in spite of all the dramatic claims made by protestors. Recently the plant ran a record 490 days without a refueling shutdown, which was the shortest ever recorded at 25 days.

The plant produced 9,276,288 Megawatt hours in 2003, and operated at 91% capacity, producing 7% of the region's electricity.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/at_a_glance/reactors/seabrook.html

I further note that the "capacity" in all of the magical links about the popularity of solar power here in New Jersey gives the peak power in (megawatts) and not the delivered power. Even under these pathetic and misleading numbers there is merely a pathetic 4 "megawatts." We note that 4 of these magical plants are owned by Johnson and Johnson company units. Johnson and Johnson probably has an accountant who can creatively expense these losers. The total number of "plants" is equal 0.4% of a single nuclear plant for just one hour a day on a sunny day.

Finally, let's look at one of the websites linked, the one about Titusville, New Jersey (where both my son's go to school at Bear Tavern Elementary School, just down the road from the Jannsen facility.) http://www.powerlight.com/newjersey/index.shtml. The cost for the 500 kW plant, after zillions of tax breaks, incentives, and blah, blah, blah intended to avoid the fact that this is a public relations scam? $229,000 for 515,000 kilowatt-hours (not peak capacity - but kilowatt hours). The cost of this highly subsidized fantasy in production cost? A whopping $0.44/kilowatt hour, roughly ten times larger than either a typical coal or nuclear plant. No wonder they use a pie-chart to break down costs. If they used real numbers, they would scare the shit out of anyone who knew anything about energy.

Note that this lauded and praised solar capacity about which so much pathetic jaw-boning is going on is producing 0.0055% of the capacity of Seabrook's single completed unit.

Big deal.

Here is a link giving the cost of electric power in the US: $0.066 delivered in the US in 2003:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/electricity.html

Now, we are expected to applaud a power system that produces power at nearly 7 times the cost that existing plants (including nuclear plants) can deliver retail?

I'm looking for volunteers to increase their electric bill by 7 or 8 times. Any takers?

If solar power really worked, we wouldn't need all these web sites jumping up and down lauding well, not much, almost nothing in fact.

Now, if someone can get me to believe that 2 is the same as 943 or that 4 is the same as 3800 (total nuclear capacity in New Jersey) they may get me to end the argument. Of course, they might have to shoot me in the head to reduce my math skills to their level.

Actually these arguments are on the level of "Bush is the same as Gore." They are nonsense, made by people on the same general intellectual and moral level, people on the same dishonest level as say, Ralph Nader or someone of that self-serving paranoid ilk.

SMUD shut down an unreliable dysfunctional and (too)expensive-to-operate nuclear reactor and REPLACED it with reliable PV.

Rancho Seco = 0 MW

PV 1 and 2 = 2 MW

2 > 0

SMUD made the right decision and its on-going PV program is wildly popular - unlike its defunct nuclear power program...

http://www.solarbuzz.com/News/NewsNAGO258.htm

July 6, 2005

Sacramento, CA, USA: SMUD Adds Funds to Solar Program

Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) solar rebates are so popular with customers that the utility added another $150,000 in rebates to meet the demand.

The program, PV Pioneer 2, provides financial incentives for contractors to pass on to customers. SMUD is also marketing the program and provides customers a list of approved contractors to seek competitive bids. Since January, SMUD has referred more than 400 customers to contractors.

PV Pioneer 2 is one part of SMUD’s long-term vision for solar technology. The program kicked off in January and by April the initial $350,000 of incentive money was exhausted. SMUD approved an additional $150,000 to keep the program going.

SMUD provides $3.00 per watt in rebate money, saving the customer about $6,000 on the installation of a typical 2-kilowatt system, which can sell for about $16,000. The customer owns the system and the power generated by it. SMUD credits the owner for any excess power the customer does not use and feeds back to the grid.

<more>

those homicidal maniacs!!!!!

those immoral baby killers!!!!

twits and morons!!!!!

:rofl:

The state rebate programs were worked out in a bipartisan manner between legislatures and state utilities.

The homeowner actually purchases the PV/hot H2O system with their money (and in some states gets a tax deduction on taxes he/she actually paid) and the cost of these systems is a known quantity.

The rebates do NOT use tax dollars - and in most states these programs are funded on the order of millions of dollars per year (or less).

In the case of ChimpCo's nuclear subsidies, the nuclear plant operators will use tax dollars - $6 billion worth - to build these plants.

The process was entirely corrupt. The nuclear industry lavished millions of dollars on GOP candidates and were rewarded with billions in subsidies in return.

These subsidies will cover "cost overruns" during licensing and construction - and there are NO incentives or penalties to avoid these overruns.

These utilities can - and will - take as much money as they can from the taxpayers...

...then charge ratepayers as much as they can for the electricity these reactors produce.

It's fucking scam.

No evasion changes that.

Very few of these cusomters who find this "wildly popular," as popular as steroid hydrogen hummer boy, are shelling out $16,000 apparently, since $500,000/6000 = 83 two kilowatt systems rated at peak, noon on a sunny day. If the systems produce 25% efficiency, twice what they apparently produce in New Jersey, they will each year they will produce 1.31 trillion joules at a total cost of 5.00/kw-hr (including subsidy.) So it turns out that we gave subsidies to 83 rich families. This is a winner.

Rancho Seco running at a (terrible) 60% efficiency, would have produced 1.8 X 10^16 joules, probably at about 1/100th the cost of the silly solar hyped plant. Since 1.31 trillion joules is not even a significant number in subtraction here, we have, given that coal at 25,000kJ/kg 1.8 X 10^16/25,000,000 = 710,000,0000 kg of coal being burned and dumped into the atmosphere for each year Rancho Seco doesn't operate.

There is no time to count the sulfates, nitrates, mercury, uranium, etc being added to our atmosphere, the subsidy we pay with our flesh. Some of these subsidies will accrue to the lungs of people without health insurance, something the 83 wildly popular rich families probably don't worry about.

I'm sure that those who do Greenpeace math, who applaud what's "popular" don't give a rat's ass.

Like Bushies, they find murder a matter for giggling.

:cry:

SMUD did the right thing when they dumped Rancho Seco for PV (and other renewables and conservation).

Currently, <7% of SMUD's electricity comes from coal-fired power plants (down from 15% in 2002).

I know there was a lot of talk of this during the California energy crisis a few years ago, that they were installing natural gas turbines to get more electricity.

How much electricity was replaced by PV, and how much by natural gas?

Even embracing the peak load lie that the installed capacity is the same as the actual capacity, the installed PV is 2% of nuclear capacity. Shedding the lie and recognizing that the delivered power is actually on 15% of the peak loading, the capacity is actually less than 0.3%.

Boo hoo indeed.

For the record, natural gas is not a renewable. I know that anti-environmental greenhouse gas promoters don't understand any chemistry at all, but natural gas is a dangerous, polluting, greenhouse gas system.

I know that the anti-nuclear global climate indifferent crowd can't understand the integers any more than they understand high school chemistry, which is explains how they can claim that "conservation" made up the capacity of the Rancho Seco plant, but here is the California electric energy demand profile using historical and projected data:

http://www.energy.ca.gov/electricity/STATEWIDE_CONSUMPTION.PDF

We see that California's electric demand in 1990 was 238,000 gigawatt-hours (roughly 0.857 exajoules) and that in 2004 it was 286,000 gigawatt-hours (roughly 1.03 exajoules). Now, again we recognize that Greenpeace people don't understand the comparison of two integers, and thus are able to qualify this 20% increase in demand as "conservation." People with a modicum of a mind recognize however that almost all of this growth came not from the magic daydreams of the doublespeak "Million-solar-roof-rich-folks-subsidy that-they-won't-be-bothered-to-use bill," but by dumping even more carbon dioxide, methane, methanol, formaldehyde, formic acid and god knows what else into the atmosphere.

Here is a table for California electrical energy production by type over the last several decades:

http://www.energy.ca.gov/electricity/electricity_generation.html

Boo hoo: Solar electricity production in California has actually DECREASED despite much lying to the contrary by people who have no clue about energy. This is probably because it really doesn't work and really isn't economical, not now anyway. As of 2003 it was a minuscule 759 gigawatt hours, down from the a peak of 860 gigawatt hours in 2000. Whatever. In any calculation using three significant figures, solar capacity doesn't even show up on the map: It is effectively non-existent despite all the chanting to the contrary - even in the "SUNSHINE STATE."

Natural gas is another matter, however. We see that the consumption of burning natural gas to generate electricity in California rose from 76,000 gigawatt hours (274 petajoules) in 1990 to 91,000 gigawatt hours (328 petajoules) in 2003.

How much carbon dioxide does this represent?

Here are the conversion factors for energy to mass calculations for natural gas:

Heat content of natural gas: 3.9 x 10^3 Joules/cubic meter of gas
Conversion of cubic meters to moles: 44.6 moles = 1 cubic meter of any gas.

http://www.shodor.org/succeed/enviro/labs/burningff.html

Rancho Seco was rated at 943 Megawatts. If it operated at 80% of capacity, it would produce roughly 24 petajoules (exajoule = 10^18 joules, 1 petajoule = 10^15 joules)

Thus each year that Rancho Seco operates and is displaced by the burning of natural gas (because the solar capacity doesn't register in significant figures when you use the real capacity as opposed to the "peak power rating") 24X10^15/3.9X10^3 = 6.10 trillion cubic meters of gas must be burned to replace it.

Now, this will go over the heads of the greenpeace crowd because they are scientifically illiterate, but using the figures for moles and the molecular weight of carbon dioxide (to which methane ideally burns in a 1:1 molar ratio) of 44, we see that 6.1 X 10^12 m^3 * 44 grams/mole * 45 mole/m^3 = 1.2 X 10^16 grams, or 12 trillion tons of carbon dioxide are injected into the atmosphere each year that Rancho Seco is shut.

A similar calculation will show that in spite of the ridiculous claim that "conservation" has reduced California's demand for electricity since the shutting of Rancho Seco, California was actually dumping 27 trillion tons more carbon dioxide from natural gas burning electrical plants alone into the atmosphere in 2003 than it was in 1990, even if - as is not the case - power plants converted natural gas into electricity at 100% efficiency. This increase could have been reduced by almost half simply by leaving Rancho Seco open.

I guess, in the age of Bush and Greenpeace, the best lies are big lies.

Once again, even a cursory examination of the numbers shows that the anti-environmental anti-nuclear greenpeace scientifically illiterate crowd simply doesn't give a shit about global climate change. They seem to get off on climatic instability. It gives them an excuse to drink (and maybe smoke) themselves even in to further insensibility, one imagines.

I am glad I'm not smoking what they're smoking.

Let's state this to be clear: These calculations show that - because we all bear the burdens of global climate change - every single human being on the planet is thus suffering because of the closing of Rancho Seco, not just the stupid Californians who voted to close it.

Now, do us a favor and calculate the complete costs of the 440 nuclear plants using your formula below, copied from your post. Please do include all subsidies, decommissions, etc. while not forgetting what the costs will be for containing the waste for thousands of years.

"A more useful number is not actually rated capacity, measured in watts but is rather the energy output rated in kilowatt hours. Since a watt is a joule/second, and there are 3600 seconds in an hour, and kilo means 1000, a kilowatt-hour is 3,600,000 joules.

Nuclear power plants in 2004 delivered a record 789 billion kilowatt hours. http://www.nei.org/index.asp?catnum=2&catid=106


This is the equivalent of 2.18 exajoules (an exajoule is 10^18 joules). Dividing this by 31,557,000 seconds (approximately) in a year we see that nuclear power plants delivered (delivered, not rated, mind you) an astonishing 68,500,000,000 watts (68,000,000 kilowatts, 68,000 megawatts, 68 gigawatts) of electrical power on a continuous basis, when the sun was down, when it was snowing, raining, cloudy or bright.

Nuclear power is producing 20 percent of the world's electrical energy and has been doing so for decades. Clearly it is economic. Clearly it works.

If it didn't it would have done what Ralph Nader and other morally vapid assholes said it was going to do back in the 1970's: shut down.

Now, I am acutely aware that the solar only crowd can't do calculations of any kind. That's why they are what they are, energy illiterates.

Now a member of this class is asking me to do calculations for them with all sorts of vague nonsense.

If the "subsidies" you claim exist, identify them yourself. Divide them by the units of energy produced and do what solar only illiterates never do: Compare them to the alternatives.

Now I know that we will get all sorts of made up numbers, like this gem, "Yucca Mountain will cost $100,000,000,000." I have already taken this crap out of the hat bullshit make believe figure from a mathematically challenged twit and divided by the cost of power produced and came up with 0.02/kw-hour, next to zero.

Now, I regard 100% of the "solar only" twit crowd as fossil fuel status quo conservatives. Not one of them can deliver more than vague promises about 10% or 20% "renewables" in some far off decade. Moreover, they are so intellectually and morally devoid of self respect, they ignore that they have been doing this for more the forty years with little or no result.

I am trying to stop global climate change. It is bad enough to fight republican ignorance. So called "Green" ignorance is even worse because it is such clear doublespeak.

Once you have produced numbers that indicate 1) You understand energy calculations, energy units, efficiencies and so on, 2) you are able to do mathematics, 3) you are able to assemble and understand data, 4) you understand physics... and so on... we can discuss your results:

Then I will question whether the war in Iraq is a subsidy. Whether air pollution is a subsidy. Whether the rivers destroyed by coal ash is a subsidy. Whether global climate change is a subsidy.

Moreover, I will do it with numbers, just as I always do.

If you're too weak to produce your own numbers, don't bother me.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

Just for instance.

I really can't see any reason to do more such calculations. It is very clear that if such a calculation wasn't understood the first time - or even recognized for what it is - there is no reason to assume that another such calculation would be of any use. Very clearly there is on the part of some readers a clear lack of competence to address the what exactly such calculations mean.

It appears that anti-environmental anti-nuclear activists can't make sense of energy units. I have demonstrated quite clearly that the (highly subsidized and otherwise questionable) cost of the solar plant in Titusville - very near to my home in fact - is an astronomical $0.44 kilowatt-hour. I could easily demonstrate that the capacity loading factor of PV solar systems in New Jersey is around 12% by appealing to links - provided by the anti-environmental anti-nuclear activists themselves that this is the case. To what end? The "solar only" crowd would simply blissfully and blithely blather on about "500 kilowatts" of solar capacity - in spite of the clear statement that the "500 kilowatts" actually produces 515,000 kilowatt-hours in a full year.

Anti-environmental anti-nuclear activists seem to feel that I owe them responses to their vague assertions. In fact, I owe them nothing. Although I am very much a highly political person, I am not running for office. I don't have to find a diplomatic means of expressing my contempt for ignorance. I simply present the truth as I see it - using the tools of simple calculation using simple equations and simple arithmetic.

If someone can demonstrate that my calculations are wrong - they are are free to do so. (Occasionally I do make mistakes - and sometimes I point them out myself.)

Usually, though, the results I obtain are not directly challenged on scientific grounds. Instead the response is to change the subject to my obnoxious personality. Now, I freely concede I am indeed obnoxious, but this has little bearing on the truth or falsity of what I say. These things are clearly demonstrable. For example either it is true that 515,000 kilowatt-hours is the equivalent of approximately 1.85 trillion joules or it is not. Either one can demonstrate that this is equivalent to an annualized average power output of 58.7 kilowatts or it is not. It makes no difference with respect to truth or falsity whether I phrase reference to these facts in the following way: "Anti-environmental anti-nuclear activists are idiots because they claim that '500 kilowatts' of peak solar ratings are the equivalent of 500 kilowatts of nuclear power because they can't calculate the 12% capacity loading capacity."

I note in passing that "solar only" anti-environmental anti-nuclear coal apologists do not respond to my requests. For example, I frequently ask them to demonstrate a case where a person has been injured or killed by the storage in the United States of what they call "dangerous nuclear waste." The question is never answered. I get responses of various types - usually responses that change the subject - or raise some other specious unproven balderdash, but I never get a response that demonstrates the alleged "danger." At best, the question is addressed by asserting that someone somewhere someday will be injured by so called "nuclear waste." This however is soothsaying and thus is the province of faith and not of reason.

One can argue with a dunderhead from the religious right all day about issues of genetics, paleontology, taxonomy etc, etc and still get an assertion in response that "God created the earth and all living things including man in seven days," just as if one had made no response whatsoever. I have observed with absolute clarity that an argument involving physics, chemistry, biology or whatever about the risks of nuclear power will obtain exactly the same sort of response. Religious nutcases sometimes say "God said it; I believe it; and that settles it," as if this were somehow supposed to be impressive. Similarly radiation paranoids effectively say "nuclear power is dangerous because I say it is." They don't back their assertions up with any kind of data or by a demonstration of calculation or any such thing.

For instance, I hear sometimes about "radioactive emissions" from nuclear power plants as if this were a serious issue. In fact, if people do face risks from living near nuclear power plants they are very difficult to observe, giving some insight to the magnitude of such risks. Given that we know many millions of persons have died from air pollution, it should be a no brainer that the first energy generation issue that should be addressed is coal and not nuclear. Sometimes, about 5 or 6 times a year, I link this site from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory about the emissions of radioactivity from coal plants: http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html

Usually the response is either non-existent or incoherent.

Now, there is so much balderdash and misrepresentation from the "solar only" crowd, that I do not have the time or responsibility to address all of it. I pick and choose what nonsense to address at my leisure. I am under no obligation to respond to grade school taunts and challenges like this one: "Are the nuclear twits here are so afraid they may be wrong, that they can't produce the same kind of numbers for alternatives that they do for the nuclear nonsense?" If someone thinks I am wrong, it their responsibility and not mine to so demonstrate it. I have, in fact, made mistakes in calculations here but I have never had such a mistake pointed out by one of my weak minded detractors. Usually I have to point out the error myself. Even when I point out the existence of such an error - and challenge my detractors to find it -they cannot do it.

This speaks volumes.

I think I know why, .... really the numbers would be so astrnomical as to make no sense the average person. And, excepting yourself, of course, we here are all just about average.

Dangerous Nuclear Waste: You seem to be making a case that there is no danger from nuclear waste. You are wrong. If you can't see the danger it must be because your blind to the matter. So be it.

Thanks for realizing, at least, that you are obnoxious. But you should realize that your case is clouded by such a presence, and that your insistence of absolute correctness is therefore shattered along with any remaining confidence in your argument.

You quoted my badly wriiten question:"Are the nuclear twits here are so afraid they may be wrong, that they can't produce the same kind of numbers for alternatives that they do for the nuclear nonsense?"

Allow me a rewrite: "Are the nuclear twits here are so afraid they may be wrong, that they can't produce the same kind of numbers for nukes that they do for the alternatives?"

In closing I will say that sunlight has killed many people, and using your logic, it is anti-human, eh? LOL

I more or less expected - in fact predicted - that the response would be like this:

"Dangerous Nuclear Waste: You seem to be making a case that there is no danger from nuclear waste. You are wrong. If you can't see the danger it must be because your blind to the matter. So be it."

Usually a religious argument contains some precious gem "like you must be blind..." when referring to a rational view of - insert here - (Jesus, nuclear waste, Buddha, Mohammed, Reverend Sun Myung Moon, Scientology, blah, blah blah) "...because I say so."

For people who appeal to rational analysis rather than religion, the adjective "dangerous" is usually accompanied by evidence of injury or death. Once again the anti-environmental anti-nuclear crowd is unable to provide this evidence. Once again they take refuge in pointing out - with their normal penchant for the irrelevant - that I am obnoxious. Big deal. This has no bearing whatsoever on the question of the alleged "danger" of so called "nuclear waste."

I note that for what seems like the nine millionth time the evidence for the so called "danger" in nuclear waste is that people who know next to zero about the subject are afraid of it. People who are not irrationally afraid of nuclear materials remain completely unaffected by so called "nuclear waste" because well - there is very little real danger.

Now I am irrationally afraid of heights, but I am not calling for demolishing the Empire State Building or even five story walk up tenaments - mostly because I can distinguish an irrational fear (mine in this case) from a rational one.

This is the big problem with anti-environmental anti-nuclear coal apologists: Irrationality. Such irrationality probably has some bearing on their poor ability with even basic mathematics.

Appealing to one's own parochial and irrational fear is a very weak - and self serving - reason to kill people. Let's be clear: apologizing for coal is going to lead to lots of deaths, maybe even billions of deaths.

I am not laughing out loud. Nothing is very funny these days, especially not all the insipid giggling at murder from George W. Bush on down to the local Greenpeace lunatic.

No, I am not laughing. In fact, as usual, I am feeling contempt.

Number of US reactors canceled since 1973 >100

Cost of last few nuclear reactors built in the US = ~$7 billion.

Yup - they're "economical".

That's why the nuclear power industry needs $6 billion in taxpayer subsidies to build new reactors.

Thanks to the GOP and George W. Bush they might even build one.

I welcome the chance to see just how "cheap" these new reactors will be and how many billions in taxpayer subsidies it will take to complete them.

When taxpayers actually see the screwing they're getting, it will bring nuclear power to its well deserved end.

And I disagree, those that advocate for nuclear power support the the fossil-fuel status quo. Even if ChipmCo builds 3-6 new plants it will not off-set the decline in US nuclear capacity when older plants retire between 2010-2020.

In contrast, installation of grid-connected PV is expected to reach 240 MW per year by 2010...

http://www.solarbuzz.com/News/NewsNACO330.htm

The majority of them still think Saddam Hussein attacked the World Trade Center. Some of them think that the war in Iraq is part of a war on Terror. Some of them believe the world was created in 7 days. Some are scientologists. Some of them think that 2 megawatts of solar power at noon can replace 943 megawatts of nuclear power that runs all day.

Large numbers of Americans bought giant SUV's and plastered them with "Support or Troops" refrigerator magnets. They developed important industrial machinery like the Hummer. They denied the existence of evolution. They denied the existence of global climate change. They elected a religious freak run by a badly shorted out automaton as their president.

They filled their graduate schools with foreign students since there was no one in their own country who could either read or think.

They exported their best technology after equipping their competitors with the best minds.

They decided that Brittany Spears marriage was more important than the Cassini mission. They made great sport about deciding the overall important point of whether a brain dead woman's husband could remove her feeding tube.

They marvel for weeks on end about Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes and can't spend ten minutes thinking about the rising seas or what is happening to their atmosphere.

They killed hundreds of thousands of people over a paranoid hallucination that a bankrupted insane dictator was trying to kill them.

They created reality shows in order to divert themselves from reality.

They rejected science in order to get meaningless bullshit accumulations or MBA's as we affectionately refer to them in the business world.

They decided to make the profitability of Halliburton the highest meaning of their flag.

They tore up their own constitution, over 200 years old, and recommended their citizens wrap their houses with duct tape.

Right here at DU, some of them, apparently driven insane by irrational fears of radiation, decided that comparisons of numbers, whether integers, rationals or irrationals, have no meaning.

Is it any wonder that there are no nuclear power plants in the United States? This is ostrich land. Thank good their digging out the coal and distributing its ashes into their lungs. They'll have pits to sink in and places to bury their heads. Maybe these dolts will die faster than everyone else in the process.

This is a culture of pathetic religious dogmatic fools, muttering unsupportable rosaries that are variations on this theme:
"Nuclear power is too dangerous." Maybe the residents of Florida while their state is inundated with hurricanes and rising seas, will collectively qualify for the Darwin award.

http://www.darwinawards.com/

Nuclear plants are built in cultures that are intellectually and economically expanding. They are not built in new third world countries. Of course they are not being built in the US.

It is interesting to note that the old people left from the time that the United States was a vibrant, secular culture are still running the old nuclear power plants. Production rose since 1973 from 100 billion kilowatt hours to 800 billion kilowatt hours.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/nuc_reactors/reactsum.html

One has been hearing for some 30 years about the impending demise of the nuclear industry from a bunch of drunks with mirrors and chunks of silicon. In that time the nuclear industry increased its production by 800%. The drunks, of course say that they can do the same thing, but generally they are too confused to actually deliver on what they say. They are the worst of Americans and American are pretty damn bad.

...are high cost and low efficiency. At a maximum angle, the sun delivers, on a clear or even hazy day, 1 kw / square meter of energy. Now even at sixty degrees latitude, it would give half that (500 W / m^2). This rule would apply to Iceland or Norway, but not to the U.S., where an angle of 40 degrees latitude (32 in California) would be acceptable. Now lets do some math:

Average sunny energy at peak: 1000 W * cos 40 degrees = 766.04 W / m^2.

Of course, it isn't noon all the time, so you find the average daytime angle. This requires some calculus. the angle of the sun versus time is also sinusoidal. Take for example the average sine wave. It has a peak of 1, and the integral of the positive part (the integral of sin (x) from 0 to pi) is 2. In our time situation, the average is two, the time is pi, and the peak is one. So the average of sin(x) from 0 to pi is 2 over pi.

Similarly, since our energy available is just a multiple of sin(x), the average energy is peak energy times 2 over pi. Doing some more math, that figure is:

487.68 W / m^2.

Now, about weather. It is not clear and sunny all the time, but it is at least half of the year (haze also counts with the 1000 W figure). I don't know what to do with this figure. Even in overcast conditions, half of the sunlight is available. In a torrential downpour, 200 - 300 W / m^2 are available (peak, direct, not counting latitude or averages).

I don't know where to go with this. I think that 360 W/m^2 would be a very safe assumption for average power. Remeber, I am very conservative on my estimates (engineer in training), allowing for a good factor of safety (in this case, additional power).

The average day is 12 hours long, but because of some reflection issues, lets say a panel's day is 11 hours, or even 10 hours long. This gives: 3.6 kW-hrs per square meter of panels per day.

Now, if someone wanted to go all-out, and cover their entire roof with panels, we will say a conservative estimate for roofing / floor area (it is really the floor area that counts, due to additional angles and flux) at 80 m^2. That is a house 33 feet long and 27 feet wide (fairly small by today's standards).

That gives 288 kW-hrs Per Day. Of course, solar panels are not 100 percent energy efficient, so there would not be 288 kW-hrs per day available. With today's crappy efficiencies (10 percent), there would be 28 kW-hrs per day of electrical power available, which could run an energy-efficient home. Let's say technology takes this up to 55 percent. That would give 158.4 kW-hrs of energy per day. A power-load house, which has electric heating, large electric vehicles, a few wasteful computers and a home entertainment system would use, say, 90 kW-hrs per day.

That means there would be about 60 kW-hrs per day excess electricity generated per house (not 68, due to efficiencies of inverting the power and storing it), and probably (due to my extremely conservative generation and extremely liberal use estimations) a crapload more.

And I haven't even considered the area (and potential generation) of large factories.

Of course nuclear power would be important. But with a large-scale solar plan, it would have the importance of a swing-producer (for hurricanes, construction work, transportation, making more PV cells, etc...)

My best info so far is that ~800W/M2 sunlight reaches the earth, most of the US gets 3-4 hours equivalent of full daylight a day, and commercial PV is ~10% efficient at converting light into electricity. I understand lab prototypes can achiece 50% efficiency, but PV efficiency falls off at high ambient temperatures.

My question is 1) how accurate is my info, and 2) how efficient are residiential solar water heaters? Does anyone have similar info for water heaters?

You can start here: http://www.fsec.ucf.edu/solar/APPS/SDHW/dhwsave.htm

Solar thermal is extremely cost effective; Definately in a different league than PV.

Getting a solar water heater is an excellent idea to reduce energy use.