Comments davea0511 has made

  • Life of nanosolar panels.

    Do these things loose their efficiency after 15 years?  Silicon lasts 20 - 25, and I'm sure nanosolar has to be shorter than that.  CSP thermal lasts forever (if you can keep those darned dewar tubes from breaking).

    These are important factors that are too often ignored.  Personally I don't think solar should be evaluated on the $/Watt installed, but instead it should be evaluated the $/Watt produced (sans installation) over a 10, 20, and 30 year period.

    With those considerations I think Ausra might be at the head of the pack if they can produce electricity at $0.06/kWh like they say, not to mention their darn low installation costs for large farms.  Plus, they offer the integrated steam storage without a need for compressors (which add at least $0.02/kWh to existing Solar PV costs).On A roadmap to getting 70 percent of U.S. electricity from solar by 2050 posted 1 year, 9 months ago 42 Responses

  • Boooo! This article totally misses the point!

    No offense Adam, but the entire premise of the program has failed and continues to fail.  The premise for renewable incentives was to encourage development of promising technologies.  Instead what it has done is ignore, and even bury the very most promising technologies.

    The me give you some examples and then tell you why it's happened this way, and then tell you how to fix it:

    Example 1: Geothermal furnaces provide the biggest bang / buck for saving energy.  Their payback is around 6-10 years- AND THAT'S WITHOUT SUBSIDIES OF ANY KIND.  Also, unlike solar, most single homes could experience this kind of payback anywhere in the world. 40% of our energy costs are in heating/cooling and geothermal units could cut that consumption by 80%.  Nobody implements it though because the government has offered NO financial incentives for it.  Sure in some states you can get Uncle Same to pay half ($20K) for an inefficient solar roof, but NOTHING for geothermal.

    Example 2: For 15-20 years we've had massive proof that CSP is a magnitude cheaper than PV, so why does everyone think of PV when you talk about solar?  Why did we do relatively nothing in CSP when inefficient CSP farms were producing at $0.15/kWh for 15 years straight and can produce as cheap as $0.07/kWh if done right?!

    Giving money to less efficient technologies in hopes that they'll catch up to the more efficient ones have been depriving the truly promising technologies for decades - AND IT'S TIME FOR THE INSANITY TO STOP.

    This is what I propose: Renewable incentives should be awarded on a bang / buck basis.  It should be distributed on an award basis to those companies who can show that within a 10 year period their technology will average the cheapest $/kWh (installation cost included).  Companies who's average more than $0.10/kWh will get nothing, and the rest of the players will be prorated based on their $/kWh over than 10 yr period.

    Here's the kicker: the companies don't get the money though ... the consumers do.  You get awarded big time if you bought a geothermal furnace - resulting in a much faster payoff and a profit until you hit $10k profit.

    Then the most effective and promising technologies will rise to the top and we'll see unheard of progress as companies focus on what will make the biggest difference in the shortest amount of time.On Borenstein analysis of solar PV misses the point of California's solar program posted 1 year, 9 months ago 10 Responses