The world's second-largest maker of solar batteries plans a massive increase in capacity to meet soaring demand. Bloomberg reports:
The company will raise the capacity to 6 gigawatts as early as 2014, from 1 gigawatt estimated for 2010 ...
Sharp, which lost its market-leading position to Thalheim, Germany-based Q-Cells AG last year, is focusing on expanding its solar-cell output through thin-film technology. This uses 1 percent the amount of silicon needed for conventional models ...
One gigawatt of power is enough to light up at least 200,000 households of four people in Japan ...
Yes, the United States created the solar cell industry and literally launched it into space 50 years ago. And yes solar PV is going to be one of the largest job-creating industries of the century, projected to grow from "from a $20 billion industry in 2007 to $74 billion by 2017." And yes today America has precisely one of the top ten PV plants, with plummeting market share, as the figure above makes all too painfully clear
But don't get all friggin' sentimental on me. Think of the few billion dollars U.S. taxpayers saved because:
- President Reagan gutted Jimmy Carter's renewable energy program.
- Newt Gingrich blocked President Clinton's effort to boost funding for solar PV research and deployment programs.
- Conservatives in general like John McCain and George Bush opposed the kind of funding and incentives that countries like Japan and Germany embraced.
The fundamental tenets of conservative ideology say that if countries like Japan and Germany and China make most of the PV cells it must be because they have an inherent "comparative" advantage over us. You gotta start reading your Ricardo, people. Any card-carrying conservative knows that if other countries manage to get millions of their workers' hands dirty actually making stuff, it's only because they are better at it. We're still the brainiacs who invent the technologies first and then wisely save a few pennies of the taxpayer dollars not promoting American technologies into billion-dollar American industries. We've still got all those Internet-related jobs, and it's not like the government had anything to do with that.
So please, all you progressives and enviros out there, stop your whining. The plan is unfolding as it should, indeed as it must. Do not argue with the invisible hand. People will think you're crazy.
Sure those thin films look cool. They seem like something that could generate a lot of jobs for a high-tech, high wage economy.
But don't be deceived by liberal propaganda. I have it on the very highest authority that real men (and women) who want real jobs drill, baby, drill.
This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
‘Heretic’ battles straw man
Comments
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Delay And Deny Posted 8:09 pm
05 Oct 2008
Solar cells are not advanced technology. They are technology trinkets, best made by countries skilled at creating knick-knacks. This leaves USA scientists free to advance real technology.
Oh, yea, peak oil?
http://bloomberg.com/markets/commodities/energyprices.htm ...
Even China's got oil?
http://bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20602099&sid=a4zVc ...
Cnooc Makes Oil, Gas Discovery Off North China Coast (Update1)
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Charles Barton Posted 10:42 pm
05 Oct 2008
http://www.ucei.berkeley.edu/PDF/csemwp176.pdf
Borenstein found that the installation and operation cost of a a 10 kilowatt PV installation over several decades would run from $86,000 to $91,000, and that the value of the power produced would run from $19,000 to $51,000. How can anyone make money in the PV business? In a word, "subsidies" Birenstein says, "We are throwing money away by installing the current solar PV technology."
If the PV sales are $74 Billion in 2017 so much the worse for the United States. We cannot afford the PV subsidies and reform the health care system.
Charles Barton
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GreenEngineer Posted 3:34 am
06 Oct 2008
They exist on the assumption that the retail cost of power per kWh is artificially low (which is true) due to the way that the energy and utility markets are structured.
Their value is not just in the kWh that they provide, but also in the grid capacity relief that they offer. Although their production profile is not perfectly matched to the demand peak on the grid, they do provide significant power during the period of time that the grid is most stressed, avoiding the need to run (and to build more of) expensive, dirty, inefficient peaker plants.
The cost of PV has dropped as they are more widely adopted, and will continue to do so. There was a short-term increase in price, driven by the supply-demand imbalance, but that is being addressed on the global market if not in the US. The long-term trend is for them to get much cheaper, if we continue to support the market. Supporting them now is an investment towards that end.
When I designed PV system, I ran numerous financial analyses. Without subsidies, a properly designed, sized, and oriented system would break even in about 25 years. That's not an attractive investment option for individual businesses; thus the subsidies. But neither is it the 2-4x loss that the linked study claims to show. But the other thing I learned from this is that it's really easy to pessimise the analysis -- a lot depends on making reasonable up-front assumptions. I don't have time, as I said, but I would encourage someone to examine the study and take a hard look at the author's assumptions.
Relating to my first two points, is the idea of Time Dependent Valuation of energy. The new California energy code is based on a set of TDV multipliers, which vary depending on location, fuel, and time of day and year, to account for factors like peak vs off peak demand, grid capacity, etc. The multipliers for electrical energy go as high as 20x on a watt-for-watt basis, in times and places of peak demand. I very strongly suspect that if the linked study had included TDV in their calculations, they would have found a very different final result.
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Charles Barton Posted 7:05 am
06 Oct 2008
You argue that PV subsidies are not needed to make PV profitable, but that an unsubsidized PV installation would require 25 years to repay investment costs, and thgis is unattractive to investors. A similar argument could be used to make a case for similar subsidies for nuclear power. Were nuclear power subsidized at the the same level as PVs, there is little doubt that nuclear power would be understood to be a far superior investment.
PV technology is a pathetical power generation technology that produces electricity only a few hours a day. In contrast nuclear power generators produce power over 90% of the time. If any power generation technology deserves a subsidy it would be nuclear. I am not, however, arguing for a nuclear subsidy. My purpose is to demonstrate exactly how weak the case you argue is.
Charles Barton
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GreenEngineer Posted 8:32 am
07 Oct 2008
Nuclear plants require continuous attention from a cadre of (expensive) people to continue to operate, they make waste that we don't have any idea how to deal with, they consume water at an enormous rate (heat rejection), they incur liability that no one in the industry is willing to tolerate (so they insist on waivers from the government to go with their subsidies), they require fuel which is mostly imported, there is only one company in the world that can cast the reactor vessel properly (i.e. in one piece; the company is Japan Steel). Shall I go on?
The nice thing about PV is that all the costs are paid, right up front, and then the benefits are enjoyed over time. The problem with nuclear is that you pay, and you pay, and you pay... and in the end you're left with a big pile of toxic waste (i.e. the reactor). We've done enough to terrorize our children already -- don't you think it's time we stopped?
Regarding the price of PV: There has been a supply shortage from 2004 until the present (though it should be relaxing as new plants come on line - finally). So prices have been high since then. I don't know where Solar Buzz gets their information, but I do know that as a PV salesperson from 2001-2005, I watched prices dip, and then climb as the shortage hit. I expect they'll start to dip again as new plants relieve the shortage, but we'll see -- the demand may climb to meet the supply.
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