Grid Parity

Andrew Leonard of Salon tells us that solar powered photvoltaic cells are very nearly competitive with conventional power sources in some venues.  That's mission critical.

Comments

[Rick Ballard]

Wow. A truly factual PR release... Well, maybe not "truly factual". After all “The market for PV cells is estimated to grow by 40 percent annually until 2010, and 20 percent beyond,” might indicate just a teeny, tiny bit of hype.

Kinda like "Grid Parity" achieved through passage of

... H.R. 6049 -- "The Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act of 2008," which extends for another eight years the investment tax credit for installing solar energy and extends for one year the production tax credit for producing wind power and for three years the credits for geothermal, wave energy and other renewables....

which sort of indicates that "Grid Parity Through Continuing Subsidy" while less catchy, might be more accurate.

I sure hope that conversion to PV starts in the northeast - it might cut the subsidies to mass transit through competition. Competition for subsidies, that is. Maybe putting PV panels on the windmills off Nantucket is the perfect answer?

I know that I'd like to see it tried through a few winters.

[PaulL]

If only evil Republicans weren't standing in the way.

[Rick Ballard]

Wiki Primer on PV

[Buford Gooch]

If I wear these on a hat, will it power my beer hat cooler?

[eightnine2718281828mu5]

You'll know PV's are ready for prime time when you can find a six-pack of panels regularly stocked at your local Home Depot.

[Semanticleo]

Holy Moly.

Looks as though I should re-examine my faith in solar if Maguire is buying stock in PV.

'Charley, sell my BP Solar and buy Schwin'.

Via Con Dios, George.

""Where ideas are concerned, America can be counted on to do one of two things: take a good idea and run it completely into the ground, or take a bad idea and run it completely into the ground."—George Carlin

[jimmyk]

Via Con Dios, George.

Carlin was one of the most brilliant comedians of the 20th century. But my impression is that in the 21st century he unfortunately (re?)lapsed into this kind of petty anti-American stuff such as that quoted by leo. It might be funny if there were even a grain of truth to it, but it seems to me that America is the country that takes good ideas and makes them work. Like Shockley did with the transistor, for example. Or Eastman with the camera, Ford with the automobile, and so on and so on.

[PrestoPundit]

"solar powered photovoltaic cells are very nearly competitive with conventional power sources in some venues"

This has been true for 30 years.

Ever seen a roadside phone on a remote highway?

Own a pocket calculator?

[narciso]

"Road with God" Semantic, you mean go with God, "vaya con Dios". Carlin had become very bitter in the last few years, although
he was contrarian on the question of what would happen with global warming "The Planet
will be allright, us on the other hand. . "
It was there with his military metaphors with football; and the implication of Indian
genocide. Hunter Thompson, another hipster literally bit a bullet, in his BDSaggravated
dispair George seemed to metaphorically do so. One can't help that his deriding of American institution, through systematic
deconstruction, seemingly indicting humanity
as a species; is at the heart of the political and social crisis we see today.
Letterman's dystopian rant, was a milder
form of this malady.

[Rick Ballard]

It's just a shame that today's nihilists don't take their philosophy more seriously. Checking out at 71 from natural causes after spending fifty or so years whining might lead one to suppose that his whole schtick was a bit fraudulent. He was just fortunate that Lenny Bruce ODed before he had a chance to sue him.

Bruce went out as a true nihilist should - 41 years old and whacked out on drugs. Take heed, whiners of the world.

[Semanticleo]

"seemingly indicting humanity
as a species;"

Carlin, (in the same routine you paraphrase)
identified the possible singular contribution of that species as 'plastic'.

Mayhaps you will assume the role of lawyer for the defense and cite additional human contributions to the plant and animal kingdom, as well as to the Planet's ecosystems.

[glasater]

Well if you do not believe in a higher being--you might have a rougher row to hoe:-)

[Rick Ballard]

To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: aye, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there's the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay, The insolence of office and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscover'd country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pitch and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action.--

Just remember, romantically inclined nihilist, when those fardels become unbearable, there's always that bare bodkin. Don't just whine about 'em, seize the nettle and set sail.

[Ralph L]

From Salon:
At the point of grid parity all kinds of things become possible, including the widespread introduction of plug-in hybrids
Assuming he is referring to cars, this is utter nonsense. Plug-in hybrid viability depends on the cost & size of the batteries, not the cost of the electricity. PV doesn't help there.

[Rick Ballard]

RalphL,

That's something that McCain already figured out.

I'd really rather see a promise to stack up all the caribou in ANWR and drill right through them.

[cathyf]

Great idea -- until you get hit by a hail storm...

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Great idea -- until you get hit by a hail storm...

One word, Cathy, just one word: polycarbonate.

[JM Hanes]

Semanticleo:

"Mayhaps you will assume the role of lawyer for the defense and cite additional human contributions to the plant and animal kingdom, as well as to the Planet's ecosystems."

What, plastic is not enough?

[clarice]

I heart jmh.

[Ann]

I heard Glenn Beck say he would drill through Santa's reindeer to get to oil. I think he went a little far, but I'm with Rick and the lovely Sarah Palin.

[boris]

human contributions to the plant and animal kingdom

Dogs seem to like us.

[narciso]

Speaking of hot air as a renewable resource,
I wish this were a parody, but sadly it's not:
href<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-weber/the-sleep-of-monsterpro_b_108549.html>

now I know this is the second lead on wings, and a bit player on the didactic comedy "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" but
I think even Carlin, is screaming somewhere
out there in the afterlife (I'm not going to judge what section, he's in)

[narciso]

href<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-weber/the-sleep-of-monsters-pro_b_108549.html>

[Ralph L]

narciso, here's a helpful linky link. Put the whole URL in the quotation marks.

[Skookumchuk]

First, we dig up all the oil shale and tar sands. Then we quadruple track the UP, BNSF, CN, and CP railroads to accommodate the 130-car unit trains to haul the stuff to major population centers. Then we build, oh, I don't know, say 200 nuclear power plants,

Hey - after all the eco-loonies are all starving in the dark - their grandchildren will commission murals in the Post Offices of the future a la Thomas Hart Benton showing heroic blue collar types bringing the wonders of electric power to the multitudes.

[kepa poalima]

carlin, in his routines, came off as complaining about something or another, anything and just about everything, and in an angry way. could all that anger and complaining have led to heart problems? think back to carlin's face, he looked like the grouchy old man in the neighborhood.
i laughed at a lot of his stuff, RIP george carlin, hope i don't end up an angry old guy with a bad ticker

[davod]

"I heard Glenn Beck say he would drill through Santa's reindeer to get to oil. I think he went a little far, but I'm with Rick and the lovely Sarah Palin."

I watched part of O'Reilly last night where they were discussing ANWR. They had a video of the mountains of ANWR running in the background.

You would think that by now they would be able to get a video of the correct part of ANWR, you know, the flat featureless part where they want to use 2000 acres, and then only in winter, so they do not disturb the tundra.

[davod]

1. The tax breaks are the only thing keeping most alternate projects going. They are not efficient enough to compete unless the price of energy goes up significantly.

What a great thought.

2. Solar, wind, wave, etc. can only provide energy for part of the time. Then you need a reliable form of energy for the rest of the time.

[davod]

I do not know the propriety of posting someone else's comment from another blog, but this comment on Grouchy Old Cripple. regarding Windmills and grants and tax breaks is interesting:

"Comments on: Still More On Oil
I wondered the same thing about the windmills in the Altamont Pass first time I drove through it--nice wind blowing, more than half the turbines dead. The friend I was with, a physicist at Lawrence Livermore, explained to me it was because they were broken and there was no motivation for the owners to fix them, since they had already made their profits via government grants and tax breaks for simply building them. Continued operation was an expensive hassle that wasn't worth the pissant income...

Posted by Toren at June 23, 2008 05:27 PM"

Is this a boondoggle along the lines of the ethanol scam? Are we looking at a massive increase in subsidies to keep these grids working?

[Jane]

Good Morning everyone -

Could all you polycarbonate types please figure out who is likely to emerge as the leader in the industry so the rest of us can buy stock?

You know - in your spare time...

Thanks

[HoosierHoops]

good morning all..
Mayhaps you will assume the role of lawyer for the defense and cite additional human contributions to the plant and animal kingdom, as well as to the Planet's ecosystems

hey Cleo..how is your son doing.. Did he graduate for MCRD yet? Is he at Camp pendtleton?
good seeing you again..

[HoosierHoops]

carlin, in his routines, came off as complaining about something or another, anything and just about everything, and in an angry way. could all that anger and complaining have led to heart problems?

yea the last 5 years or so Carlin had really become what i thought was a bitter old man that wasn't funny anymore...
Really sad.. I couldn't stand his rants anymore..
RIP George

9

[PeterUK]

Easy,keep printing money and buy all the Arabs oil until it runs out, go bankrupt and start the country up again in your wife's name.

[Abadman]

just a thought, what happens when all this renewable energy is on line and instead of spewing CO2 every car, house and gadget is sucking energy out of the eccosystem? I mean logically if the fractional increase to global warming CO2 causes is real wouldn't the fractional decrease from solar and wind power cause global cooling. Seems if you believe one you need to believe the other.

[kim]

Abadman. Excellent point. It amazes me that some want to go to so-called 'renewable' energy when they mean tapping the sun, the winds, and the water, which are precisely the means by which climate self-regulates. Exactly to the degree that energy is taken out of that system, that system is deranged from natural regulation.

A reasonable counter argument is that those processes have many orders of magnitude of energy more than man's needs today. Nonetheless, the unintended consequences of 'renewable' energy are felt by everyone. We are all downwind from the wind turbines.

Google Bodele Depression and see what wind farms in a mountain gap in Africa would do to the Amazon basin ecosystem in South America. Yes, I'm talking about effects on a different continent.

It turns out that wind funneled through that gap in the Sahara picks up dust from the Bodele Depression and the winds carry that dust to the Amazon Basin as well as elsewhere. It's estimated that half of the nutrients which replenish a depleted soil there in the Basin come just from the Bodele Depression. Had there been a population needing wind farm energy in Africa and had wind farms been placed in that gap, the Amazon Basin ecology would be dying a slow and mysterious death.

So even 'renewable' energy resources have really wicked consequences.
====================================

[PeterUK]

My question is,if the greens love the environment so much why do they want to plaster it with bloody great windmills?
The buggers cannot look a heartbreakingly beautiful landscape without getting the urge to cover it with machinery.

[kim]

By the way, wind power probably wouldn't cool or heat the globe; it is not actually trapping more energy on earth. But solar power does; any extra energy trapped here on earth would probably heat the earth; hence solar power contributes to global warming.'
=============================

[Rick Ballard]

"Is this a boondoggle along the lines of the ethanol scam? Are we looking at a massive increase in subsidies to keep these grids working?"

It's not like ethanol in that the Gucci loafer crowd for PV is very small and hasn't the money to rent pols as ADM et al do. The "grid parity" bit is illusion based upon subsidy at the moment, just like windfarms. It may not be in the future if the subsidies manage to bring enough production on line to actually achieve the drop in unit costs necessary for parity to be achieved.

The same can be said for goal gasification though - and it has the added attraction of being able to actually generate electricity at night. Whodathunk? An energy source which is independent of things like cloud cover and the fact that the wind doesn't blow all the time - what a marvel.

Some day I'll bet they even invent a way to split the atom and generate electricity from the energy released.

[eightnine2718281828mu5]

---
hence solar power contributes to global warming
---

Procreation is the primary contributor to global warming.

[PeterUK]

"Procreation is the primary contributor to global warming."

The answer is in your hands,offer your essence to Gaia.

[Thomas Collins]

How is your brother in law doing, Jane?

Before I went on my road trip last Thursday, I had breakfast at the Boston Harbor Hotel. As I was crossing the surface road above the Big Dig, I saw the Duck Boats driving by to get ready for the parade. I suspect your brother in law was among the drivers I saw. I hope the parade went well and I especially hope his surgery went well.

[Der Hahn]

"Procreation is the primary contributor to global warming."

Friction, baby!

[Pofarmer]

It may not be in the future if the subsidies manage to bring enough production on line to actually achieve the drop in unit costs necessary for parity to be achieved.

Well, there's the rub. Most of these technologies, solar and wind in particular, will NEVER be competitive with conventional power generation because they simply aren't stable enough. In Texas, wind power is actually DESTABILIZING the grid because of the on again, off again, nature of wind power. They used windpower to generate electricity on the great plains in the 40's and 50's and immediately abandoned it as soon as something better came along. IMHO, windpower is probably one of the MOST stupid things we are promoting. Solar might be O.K., but, currently it's cost per watt is over double conventional power, and will be for the foreseeable future, unless Nano-solar's new printing technology is workable.

[eightnine2718281828mu5]

---
any extra energy trapped here on earth would probably heat the earth;
---

That's an interesting question; it probably depends on where you put the collectors.

If you put panels on a typical dark suburban roof, there might not be much difference at all, and could in fact lower cooling bills.

Put it in the desert SW and it may have an effect depending on the reflectivity and internal heat transmission characteristics of the sand/rock you install over.

And of course the word 'trap' is a bit of a misnomer; delayed release may be somewhat more accurate.

[cathyf]

...it has the added attraction of being able to actually generate electricity at night.

Well, in fact the advantage of coal gasification (and natural gas, of course) is that you can turn it on during the day and off during the night. The major challenge of electricity generation is that power at 4pm is worth like 10 times what power at 4am is worth. There are clever things that can be done -- for example, hydro plants will sometimes use the otherwise waste electricity to pump some of the water back up over the dam during the night.

[PeterUK]

SCAM Developments International is launching a new product,Green Transportation.
This will revolutionise the way we travel.
All ships will have a tall pole with a cross piece with a large sheet hanging from it.
The wing will catch the sheet and make the ship move.
Progress!

[kim]

Yeah, I suppose that extra energy whose release is delayed sits quietly in the corner doing nothing. That energy becomes 'heat' my man, until it is released; trapped heat. Manipulating words works except with physical principles.
=====================================

[Abadman]

To me the point is that we are not smart enought to see all the possible consequences of our actions, we are just not that smart and nature is too complicated. This doesn't mean we should not try but rather that we should approach the discussion witha certain ammount of humility. Something we do not see from the MSM, Congress, Obama or McCain. I think climate scientists are getting bitch slapped by reality and instead of growing, the consensus on global warming(now climate change)is shrinking instead of growing.

[kim]

I wonder if James Hansen could see the writing on the wall when he addressed the House Subcommittee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, yesterday, and only one and a half House members showed up to listen to the Climate God. I hope he feels gagged.
==========================

[eightnine2718281828mu5]

---
Yeah, I suppose that extra energy whose release is delayed sits quietly in the corner doing nothing.
---

The interim energy can be stored as a potential.

---
That energy becomes 'heat' my man
---

In the case of rocks/asphalt/etc, it doesn't become heat, it *is* heat*.

[eightnine2718281828mu5]

Bonus question:

How does a photon produce heat?

[boris]

Photons don't exist.

From their reference frame they instantaneously move from orbital of one atom to orbital of another atom, (and vibrational bond of one molecul to vibrational bond of another) so they never eperience their own superpositional particle wave duality.

[boris]

Apply e and x as needed.

[eightnine2718281828mu5]

---
Photons don't exist.

From their reference frame they instantaneously move from orbital of one atom to orbital of another atom, (and vibrational bond of one molecul to vibrational bond of another) so they never eperience their own superpositional particle wave duality.
---

Very nice; one of the most concise explanation I've seen yet.

Of course there are other frames besides the photon's, so I could quibble with the first sentence. ;-)

[kim]

I am seen, therefore I am not?

Or, if photons didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent them.
===================

[boris]

In all reference frames photons "travel" at the same speed as measured by distance divided by delta between departure time and arrival time. There is no way to measure the speed of one directly while in "flight", and in all frames time passage for the photon itself is zero (IOW there is no frame where the photon experiencies time).

There is no way to show that the photon energy quanta didn't simply disappear from one place to reappear in another place sometime in the future. We never see it and it never sees itself so ...

[boris]

Maybe photons simply tunnel from one place to another. (through space and time)

[eightnine2718281828mu5e]

---
There is no way to show that the photon energy quanta didn't simply disappear from one place to reappear in another place sometime in the future.
---

Don't double slit experiments tell you something about how the particle interacted with its environment on the intervening path?

[boris]

Tunneling does interact with the barrier.

The double slit is easier to explain by tunneling. The disappearing photon has two possible reappear points based on destination energy potentials.

[boris]

Well more than two, the set of discrete points where the energy potential favors the tunnel.