Government Subsidizing of Photo-voltaic Solar Panels and Windmills a proven failure

Government propping up selected Green Energy winners always has a result of proving them to be losers. Not one solar or wind project produces electric energy at competitive rates after tens of billions in subsidies. I say end this waste now and let science and the private market invest in whatever they think will be a competitive energy producer. What say you?

 

Hugely successful in Saudi Arabia.

 

Quantify success, they are less costly method of producing electricity than fossil fuel available in Saudi Arabia?

 

They have been using the technology since 1982.

http://www.saudigazette.com.sa/index.cfm?method=home.regcon&contentid=20130119149754

Aramco launches largest PV plant in Saudi Arabia

I got a chance to tour their research center at King Abdulaziz Center for Technology and Research in 2000.

 

You still didn't answer the question... they can afford to put their solar panels in solid silver frames if they want. Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of solar and wind but it just doesn't work, that's to say it doesn't work economically. I built my own solar panels from scratch, bought the cells on ebay soldered them together and purchased the glass and frames to create the most inexpensive system I could cost out...my efforts and cash outlay doesn't match the energy output. I also built my own windmill and installed it myself. Storage of the power at night or when the wind doesn't blow is the other problem. The battery system is very expensive and requires replacement at least every ten years...the panels every 20-25 years...the windmill, maybe the first hurricane.

I checked into the Obama Green Energy subsidy and found they would pay 60% of the total cost of the entire system but the 40% share I would have to pay was still more than if I did it myself without buying all the required items from their donors like Solyndra and others in the list of buddies. If it doesn't work at this level it doesn't work at any level because it's all scale-able.

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You still didn't answer the question... they can afford to put their solar panels in solid silver frames if they want. Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of solar and wind but it just doesn't work, that's to say it doesn't work economically. I built my own solar panels from scratch, bought the cells on ebay soldered them together and purchased the glass and frames to create the most inexpensive system I could cost out...my efforts and cash outlay doesn't match the energy output. I also built my own windmill and installed it myself. Storage of the power at night or when the wind doesn't blow is the other problem. The battery system is very expensive and requires replacement at least every ten years...the panels every 20-25 years...the windmill, maybe the first hurricane.

I checked into the Obama Green Energy subsidy and found they would pay 60% of the total cost of the entire system but the 40% share I would have to pay was still more than if I did it myself without buying all the required items from their donors like Solyndra and others in the list of buddies. If it doesn't work at this level it doesn't work at any level because it's all scale-able.

 

The Saudis have downstream manufacturing at Yanbu and Jubail.. so it VERY efficient.

I put in solar hot water panels in 1979.. 5 baths, lots of laundry and teens.. Saved us a ton of money.

 

My point was that it still cost more than street electricity no matter how efficient it's produced. I think on a large scale the least expensive way to handle the variables of too much solar in the day or likewise wind anytime followed by darkness/no wind would be to use the solar-wind excess power to pump water into a reservoir where it could produce hydro electric power in low points....a closed loop hover dam where the water is cycled over and over without a river source.

In the case of my home solar I too have a solar hot water system for twenty years now and just love it. Right now all of my excess solar-wind in the daytime gets dumped into the 80 gallon hot water tank using a 12 volt heating element to prevent the batteries from overcharging...this is such a waste since the water is already hot enough with the solar water collector alone. The only alternative at home for storage is more batteries and they just cost too much...and, connecting to the grid is cost prohibitive.

 

The Saudis have built several off grid villages .. round 1982-83.. If you Look at the hy-solar project at Kacst.. you can see how much sunlight they have in oil equivalency.

Or read about this new solar power plant on Farasan Island.

http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/10/05/170310.html

 

it's going great in germany as well.

initial cost may be more but long term cost is less once the cost of environmental damage is brought into the mix. deniers don't like factoring long term environmental costs... that's like buying a car and claiming your only cost is the initial purchase and bothering to add in interest charges, fuel, maintenance, insurance...

Projected environmental costs from CC absolutely dwarf the cost of green energy...

if cheaper is the only factor we would all be riding bicycles instead of driving cars...my bike cost me $500 and costs nothing to fuel, my truck cost $40K and a $100 per week in fuel, insurance another $200 per month, a bike is more efficient and cheaper it's not even close...bikes are still the most efficient means of transportation ever invented, how many of the denier world follow their own logic of cheaper is better and only ride bikes...

 

Don't worry. The greenies will soon take over your state and your electric utility rates will shoot through the roof. That's exactly what they want. The utility company has been granted a monopoly, and you could find yourself bent over a barrel, so to speak.

There are many places in the USA where electric utility companies are allowed to charge their consumers higher rates to subsidize (or even give away for free in many cases) "energy efficient" appliances. The greenies love to tout how these "green" appliances will pay for themselves. What they don't tell you is why. Get rid of the subsidies and electric bill price gouging, and all of a sudden these "energy saving" appliances don't seem like such a good financial investment after all.

 

Still there is no mention of costs associated with the venture. The problem with wind and solar is the variables of cloudy, night and unpredictable wind...you still have to have the power station ready to pick up the slack 24-7.

Not quite true. I was stationed in Germany while in the army and lived there for a while after retiring. The German people are very much into nature and the environment, most television viewing in Germany while I was there was nothing more than those two subjects so they are very welcoming to complements to that end. However Germany is very industrial and industry requires lots and lots of dependable power to thrive. Solar and wind cannot provide this dependability even with a smart grid. At very high costs of installing wind-solar some power plants can be shut down by transferring power from an area where the wind is blowing or the sun is shining to make up for an area where the opposite is true but none the less the odds are against uninterrupted dependable power gambling that it will always be windy or sunny somewhere. Check out this article...http://www.spiegel.de/international...ainst-subsidies-for-solar-power-a-866996.html

 

Yes, like I mentioned earlier the federal government subsidy here is 60% of total costs of installing a Green System. Someone pays the 60% incentive for you to buy something you would otherwise NOT buy. The only thing that makes sense is free market capitalism to find an alternative which doesn't require any subsidy.

 

There is quite a bit more solar energy hitting Saudi Arabia than hits most of the US, and there are a lot fewer cloudy days in Saudi Arabia than in the US. It is lot more viable in a tropical desert than in a moist, temperate area.

 

Yes, like I mentioned earlier the federal government subsidy here is 60% of total costs of installing a Green System. Someone pays the 60% incentive for you to buy something you would otherwise NOT buy. The only thing that makes sense is free market capitalism to find an alternative which doesn't require any subsidy.

 

Solar is a 100% failure, look at Spain's economic collapse, the same exact amount of money invested in the fake Renewable energy, they owe the world, 20% unemployment or more, they lost 2 jobs for every 1 job they created.

Wind Power is now driving up cost of food around the world, especially in the USA, look at California, every company that touched Green Energy has had a "division" go bankrupt.

We spend 10's of billions of tax dollars just on research in the Universities.

As far as home solar goes, on water heaters, what a joke, honestly. Who is home during the day to take showers, its in the morning, no sun. And what the ignorant housewives do not understand, is they put a regulator on the heater so you can never make your water hot, never!!! So they dial back the amount of gas or electricity your using and the ignorant believe the thousands they paid for a solar panel saved them money.

I know, my neighbor who is 78 got conned into doing it. His water is a bit above warm, forget two hot showers in a row, you get warm water, nothing more.

Yea, they save money on gas and electricity, but not because they heat the water, its because they turn down the thermostat by half.

 

Yes.. I explained that in the Hysolar project at KACST.

 

My solar hot water supplied for 5 bathrooms, lots of laundry and teens. It stored hot water in a large tank in the attic... and it saved a ton of money.

 

those that avoids the risk of failure will never have success, should we give up looking for a cure to cancer, no, we learn from the mistakes and keep on trying until we finally have success

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Sorry, the are proven failures, it is a matter of physics, anything you put up to catch the wind, wind being like water will always take the path of least resistance, no amount of research will resolve the problems of basic physics. Everything you do to convert wind energy into electricity, like better generators, will be tiny and never meet our industrial needs, never. Further those same generators powered by Nuclear Power will provide literally a million times more energy.

Solar again a proven failure, always will be, we will never recoup the 100's of billions of dollars invested, the Solar panels last maybe 10 years, all while getting weaker every year. Further they require a constant source of water, in the desert. What a waste of water in California which is diverted from producing food, I guess making a super power slave away our fortune on a failure keeps us under the thumb of tyrants.

As it is almost half of the population of California is receiving subsidies to pay for home electricity, and on top of that, Industry is moving out because of the cost of electricity.

It also takes oil to make both Solar and Wind Power, so we are using oil at a faster rate, creating pollution at a faster rate, depleting oil reserves at a faster rate. Wind Power, which is over a 1000 years old, and Solar that is around a 100 years old.

Further neither Solar, Wind, or Geothermal are powerful enough to even sustain the Industry required to make "Green" energy.

and to the ignorant who think a solar panel on your roof saves money, you should of turned your thermostat to its lowest sitting, you would of saved the same amount.

Green energy, the physically the largest electric plants in the world, producing the least amount of electricity, as well as needing replacement every 10 years, seems like a corporation in heavy industry dream, to make things that sit idle most the time. Too bad General Motors could not just produce cars that sit in a field 90% of the time, think of the profit and the advantage to our economy.

 

My solar hot water panels have lasted over 30 years.

 

Gee, I thought this thread was about industry, about commercial power. I guess people cannot or will not see past themselves.

The thread is about Photo Voltaic Solar Panels, not solar water regulators that turn down the heat on a home water heater.

Over a 100 billion dollars in bankruptcies and people claim it works, the real shortage in the USA is intelligence.

 

I was part of experimental home project, an entire home run solar power...solar heated the water, warmed the home, supplied the electrical, though still tied into the electrical/gas grid as backup yearly utility cost was $100 per year...it can be done despite what the uninformed may think...

 

hey Mr "the bottom line is cost" have you sold your car/truck and bought a bicycle yet?...

 

When I say the solar and wind subsidies should be ended it isn't that they don't work, it's that they don't work or perform economically to make them a viable alternative. I'm a tree hugger, I love alternative energy, I wrote earlier I built my own panels from scratch along with a windmill...I've built a waste oil boiler and soon hope to produce all of my electric energy not supplied by my solar and wind by burning waste oil in an environmentally friendly way. In the 70's when I first got interested in AE I built my own home with passive - active solar heat and it worked wonderfully.
I employed a southern facing glass front with a floating concrete floor sitting on top of two and half feet of granite...under the granite I installed a copper manifold to transfer the heat to the stone...built my own hot water collector with circulating pumps and circulated the water antifreeze mixture through the panel to a storage tank under the front of the house and then through the floor manifold...started heating the stone a little early in the fall and once heated the heat radiated all winter...In NC I could boil my panel in just a few minutes without circulation pump on in 10 degree weather.

I just think solar and wind are not the answer and maybe we are wasting money that could go to a better alternative.