Obama Awards Nearly $2 Billion For Solar Power 514
crimeandpunishment writes "President Obama says it's time to heat up solar power, and he's willing to spend a big chunk of federal money to do it. Saturday the president announced the government is giving nearly $2 billion to companies that are building new solar plants in Arizona, Colorado, and Indiana. The president says this will create thousands of jobs and increase our use of renewable energy."
Is that a lot? I'm not sure. (Score:5, Interesting)
What is the total cost of install and operation for 50 years for the solar project? What is it for a nuclear plant? A coal fired plant? The solar power plant likely has a higher construction and installation cost, but it likely has a lower operating cost.
I don't know the answers to the questions I'm raising -- but I do think that simply asking "That's $20,000 per home?" isn't the question which yields the most useful answer.
P.S. It's a loan guarantee. $1.45B is the upper limit on how much it will cost the taxpayers. The lower limit is $0.
What a mistake (Score:5, Interesting)
Likewise, Geothermal has minor amounts of funds. Yet, we are on the edge really getting it cheap. Why? Potter drilling and Foro Energy. Both are working on spallation approaches to drilling (hydro and laser). In addition, there is a REAL simple and relatively inexpensive way to get to geo-thermal. Basically create tax breaks, or even subsidies, to continue drilling down on dry wells. Many wells are exploratory and will be dry wells. These are typically at around 8-10K feet. But, we offer up breaks/subsidies to continue down to hot areas so that the well is not a total bust for the drilling company. Most of the Geo-thermal area is around 12-16K. That is expensive if you are starting from the surface. But if you are starting from a well at 5-10K, then it is relatively cheap. And from the drilling companies POV, they would very much like to make money in places that they drill. If they can not have oil/natural gas, they will be excited to have 10-50 MW geo-thermal power.
Re:$20,000 per home? (Score:4, Interesting)
Even thin film panels generally last >15 years (and they are still working, really, after that, just not putting out as much power.)
Mono-Si generally is in the 20-30 year range.
As far as replacement costs go, 15 years is a very long time now that the Si crunch is over, so the panels that replace the ones that are installed today should be considerably cheaper. Solarbuzz tracks Mono-Si retail prices here [solarbuzz.com].
Re:$20,000 per home? (Score:3, Interesting)
Erm... you and title = fail.
How the hell is a LOAN = "gives money to" ?
The bank loaned me half-a-million to buy my house, they sure as hell didn't GIVE me half a million and if I don't make my payments on that loan you can bet your short-and-curly's they'll take my house.
Government loans to help large projects with long-term profitability get founded is not unusual in the world and has on many occasions been critical to getting projects done. Corporations have a massive problem justifying a short-term large expense with slow long-term profits.
But such projects can be important investments in needed infrastructure, so governments find ways to help justify it. One way which America did with most telephone companies was to say "spend the money - and we'll give you a monopoly on selling telephone services"... how did that work out for you ?
Now "here's a LOAN, that way the expense is ALSO long-term just like the profits so you have no reason not to do it and you have access to the capital" may actually be a MORE free-market solution to a problem the free-market is utterly incapable of solving without intervention.
Somebody has to make the investment for any large infrastructure project to happen. Individuals - want to be sure of a return in their lifetime. Corporations want to be sure of a return at the next stockholder meetings. That leaves pretty much -government.
There is one OTHER way - that is when you live in a culture that things doing awesomely cool projects for the hell of doing it is so great that everybody will be happy to invest KNOWING they will never see a return. England once ruled half the world because they thought like that. They built great bridges and ships and towers not because there was any chance of making money but "for queen and country".
America simply won't build a great bridge (or solar power station) for President and Country - it doesn't fit in your culture's way of thinking at all. So you get to choose HOW government will intervene, not IF... unless you choose to never again make any noteworthy progress as a nation in the fields of engineering and infrastructure (in case you were wondering THAT is a very efficient way to become a very poor nation very very fast).
Re:Can somebody say (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't think we went to war over the bali incident, and they don't bomb your skyscrapers as much when you stop killing their families for oil.
Jobs created? (Score:5, Interesting)
Now the economy is not a zero sum game, so it may still sometimes be a good idea to have the government redistribute money to projects that will benefit the country or humankind in the long term, e.g. where those projects wouldn't obtain funding otherwise because the benefits of the project are external and won't be enjoyed directly by the person undertaking the project. Perhaps this project will do that, and perhaps in benefiting us all it will even indirectly create many more jobs than those that are directly necessary for carrying out the project. What I'm puzzled by is just the idea that the direct employees of the project represent "jobs created" when a similar number of jobs would likely exist anyway if the project never existed. I guess the most you can say is that jobs have been created in one state/town/place by removing a similar number of jobs from other states/towns/places, and that is a benefit to the place that is receiving those jobs. So a politician presenting such a project will want to focus on the benefit of jobs created in one place and downplay the harm of removing those jobs elsewhere.
Re:Can somebody say (Score:5, Interesting)
If it were the answer, it would already be happening. That 2 billion just created a solar energy bubble.
You are naive. What incentive does any major energy company have to abandoning the oil resources they have already invested billions in? Imagine it's any other company. Hell, imagine if Microsoft decided to invest all of their money in clean, reusable, open source code and make windows apps perfectly compatible with the Linux kernel. Would their windows sales go up or down?
Now imagine BP knowing that any breakthrough in clean energy technology enormously devalues their leased rights to oil fields and capital investments in equipment. In fact, if the breakthrough was big enough, BP would then be sitting on a pile of lawsuits waiting to happen. Are you, as BP, going to gently hold the hands of companies plotting your demise, or buy up clean energy companies, bury the technology, and spread FUD about climate change?
Yeah. Now you're thinking like a real CEO. Fuck the world: I want money.
Re:Can somebody say (Score:3, Interesting)
If it were the answer, it would already be happening. That 2 billion just created a solar energy bubble.
You are naive.
What you've shown in your entire post is that the above was correct. Solar is not the answer when you have large corporate interests whom are against changes to the status quo. By investing the $2 billion the government is usurping those interests and providing capital to those companies who are not dependent on oil remaining the dominant energy form in the US. Now, debating whether or not solar was the right technology to invest in, that's the real question.
Solar Power as part of your 30 year mortgage (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:$20,000 per home? (Score:4, Interesting)
I never said that.
I SAID the free market struggles with projects that have very high initial capital expenses and very slow profit. When it's going to take 20 years to make your money back it makes no sense to invest it.
And NONE of the money made THAT was has happened WITHOUT politicians.
Moreover we could argue that the greater majority of wealth created by such projects NEVER go to the investers, it's made in the form of every penny saved by a million commuters with better transport, every restaurant having an extra customer because a tunnel under a channel brought more tourists, every child that can study for a few hours more and get into college because he has light after the sun sets.
THAT kind of profit is felt by ALL of us, but the guy who made the big investment gets no MORE of it than we all do (most such projects that WERE privately funded has historically CONSISTENTLY gone bankrupt - the British side of the channel tunnel project was already bankrupt years ago until they got government loans, the French side which was a public enterprize is doing well all this time).
The only way we KNOW of to successfully fund high-cost projects where the profit is benefit to society as a whole rather than to the people who actually invest the money is to SPREAD the investment over everybody - and in our society, as it stands the only practical system we HAVE for doing that is called "Taxes'.
Only an American could honestly convince himself that paying a bit of his income so EVERYBODY (including himself) can have a better life is somehow a LOSS for him.
Re:Can somebody say (Score:1, Interesting)
That is the broken window fallacy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window [wikipedia.org]
That somehow spending money after bad is a good thing. We can take this money and spend it because this other thing is broken and it will somehow make us richer for it.
All it does is drag the problem out. Maybe it softens the blow but only makes us pay for the problem over the longer term. In many ways the crash of last year was an 'echo' of 2000. Because Bush did not let the market crash then either. No one was bitching much when they were getting 300-800 dollar checks. But where did that money come from? All it did was drive prices up and ignored the actual fundamental problems that hedge funds were creating. They just moved onto other markets (housing and oil). They currently are doing the same thing to gold and silver but no one seems to care.
No one believed me in 2000 when I said due to the way the government is handling this, and the policies enacted by the Clinton administration, and continued by the Bush admin, there will be a decent size crash 6-9 years from now. You can look at every crash and there is always an echo. The echo is caused by the gov stepping in and trying to fix the first issue by throwing money at the problem.
When the 1997-1999 congress removed the barriers to create great depression type crashes we ended up with 2 of them. It is only *NOW* that we are thinking of putting those rules back into play.
In 4-5 years we will have another echo crash. That is because *THIS* administration has thrown too much money into the system. It will probably be in healthcare and gold. Gold futures is right now today being used to hedge the bet against these huge (now risky) loans the government is making.
We are today spending money that our great grand children havent even made yet. Cash for clunkers is a prime example of that. Those cars would have been off the road in 10-15 years anyway. Cars like that do not last. Eventually it is more expensive to fix them than it is to buy another clunker. For example how many 40s/50s/60s/70s/80s era cars do you see driving around, not many. It has disrupted an entire supply chain that grew naturally for a good 10-15 years. What about all the little mom and pop garages that made money on fixing those clunkers? The junkyards that made money selling used parts. The parts stores that made new parts for those cars? Oh and now they will need to raise their prices to make up the shortage because of the lack of sales on that stuff. Never mind the people that can not afford new cars anyway now cant get a reasonably priced used car. As the prices of used cars has gone up because the supply of them has gone down dramatically. I was pretty shocked when I priced out my car to sell last year. It had actually gone up in value. But the reasons were pretty clear as to why.
That is the broken window fallacy in play right there...
Re:Can somebody say (Score:3, Interesting)
Gretchen Peters: Seeds of Terror - BookTV [c-spanvideo.org] start at about 37:00.
The Taliban have this bogus justification that they explain to farmers that they persuade or force to grow poppy. Islam, of course, bans any use, traffic, or trade in narcotics or alcohol. So, their justification for it is that it's OK because because this is a jihad against the infidels and we're selling the drugs to the infidel west. But as I said before, very little Afghan heroin actually reaches the United States. It's about 70% of the heroin sold in Europe and the UK comes from Afghanistan. But the vast majority of Afghanistan's drug crop ends up in - stays in Afghanistan, or ends up in Pakistan, Iran, central Asia now; countries like Kazakhstan have huge huge heroin problems. So it's a totally bogus argument - completely hypocritical.
If you have time, I recommend the whole thing. Your post has motivated me to get her book from the library, so thanks.
Re:Can somebody say (Score:5, Interesting)
Solar power is economical. Costs for solar are close to the costs for nuclear. We don't have more solar power is because coal is cheap, not because solar is expensive. At some point, you just have to bite the bullet.
Terrestrial solar? (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't get why we aren't doing more with space-based solar. I'm no physicist, but it seems like you should be able to launch 4 or 6 fairly-equidistant satellites with solar collectors into orbit somewhere around the equator, and you have fully fault-tolerant/redundant 24 hour a day power that you can beam down to regional distribution points via microwave, which then uses the existing power grids to get it where it is needed. This provides a big enough chunk of the required energy for the planet, and OPEC countries become just competing providers, not a defacto energy monopoly bloc that they are.
Then we can move on to having wars over something else, like clean water, the next limited, mismanaged resource.
If you thought that solving the oil problem would stop wars, think again. We're human - we're really good at killing other humans. It's our thing, yo. In light of that, my dream is that one day, our wars, instead of being about tragic-yet-understandable resource management and distribution, are about utterly ridiculous things. I hope my kids or grandkids are around when Fox News is trying to pin the great Boxers vs Briefs vs Commando war (World War 6) on the Clinton Administration. Or maybe Al Jazeera reports that the Big Endians are regrouping after a deadly surprise attack by the Little Endians in the Where-to-break-open-your-eggs war that is now going into its third year in Southeast Asia.
Maybe, just maybe, in the year 3019, future generations will have a war over whether we should execute Dick Cheney with a firing squad or by hanging. Yes, he'll still be around then, causing mischief. If you don't like it, then YOU get off your ass and find the rest of the horcruxes.
But I digress - space-based solar beats the pants off terrestrial solar, what with no silly clouds and atmosphere to get in the way, not having to worry about a lack of sunny days, and a host of other reasons I can't think of right now.
Can some smart person of science who actually knows what they are talking about comment on whether this is a crazy argument?
Re:Can somebody say (Score:1, Interesting)
How about not subsidizing anything and simply taxing the bad, the stuff you want to go away? That way you do not favour any particular development or any particular firm, but ALL and it becomes a FREE MARKET instead of what it is today.
If you want a FREE MARKET in non-carbon energy sources, you have to tax the emissions of carbon based technologies. Everyone subsidizes them as they are allowed to pollute our waters with mercury for free, like it didn't have an economic impact.
Oh wait, this involves a bad word, tax. Apparently in the US and Canada using he word tax gets you politically linched, even if it makes sense and would save taxpayers money. In Canada an election was basically lost over new "taxes"
http://taxshift.ca/carbontaxes
of course there are people that just "don't get it" and post stupid editorials,
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/editorial/story.html?id=d8b09ec3-9707-48cd-b3da-8620511a901f
They "don't get it" that who pays is not trucker, it's their customer. Those then keep passing the cost along *up* the chain. Ultimately who pays is the customer who gets that money back, and amount of money they pay in tax is determined by what choices they make. Products requiring less trucking will simply be more profitable. Maybe local farmer can get more money for selling local produce locally than getting it trucked 7000 miles. Now that is a radical idea.
Re:What a mistake (Score:3, Interesting)
Basically, the coal plants that generate about 100-200 MW and were built between 1940-1970 (the vast majority) have LOADS of acres. Now, if you build out the collectors on the land, and use them to heat the water before the final boost, you can cut emissions and fuel use by around 15-20% on average (for the west, it would be closer to 25-30%). Imagine if we cut our electric emissions by around 10% WHILE CUTTING COSTS. That is a significant incentive. Just have to get companies doing it and lowering the price of collectors. Once the collectors are being built, then the full size plants like Az's become CHEAP to do.
Re:Can somebody say (Score:1, Interesting)
Solar power isn't as PROFITABLE as fossil fuel based power generation......YET.
However, and very importantly, solar has one obvious advantage that no one has yet pointed out.
Unlike gas, coal, petroleum, nuclear, hydroelectric, and geothermal sources, solar is at least SCALABLE in 3 dimensions. It just depends on where the collector happens to be. Silicon is fairly abundant, but not exclusively needed for power generation, a solar thermal unit can accomplish power generation if employed correctly.
To a lesser extent, bio-mass and wind generation are also scalable in a 3 dimensional context, but the efficiencies involved are a bit less than solar can manage, and are a bit less certain in the long run.
OK (Score:2, Interesting)
Ya it's useful. I used to be in the biz and sold a ton of solar hot water heaters, and worked on several air heaters as well, residential and commercial. As to absorption cooling, correct again, that is how a lot of ammonia gas RV (or remote cabin, etc) refrigerators work, I have three of them (all small though).
I just think decentralized solar power, of any type, is just spiffy beyond belief. anything to get the homeowner away from the monthly "bill" that can never be paid off. That and superinsulation of the home are the best bets for personal alt energy independence. I work on this stuff a lot for myself, this is how I "invest", no wall street scam stocks or put your grandchildren into debt government paper for me, useful and practical tangibles only. Trying to get as independent as possible. We've made a huge hit on the grocery bill with extensive gardens, a greenhouse, etc. We switched to stored solar-wood-for heating and haven't used any propane for heating for three years now. I have some solar PV but not enough to replace everything, like a lot of folks waiting for it to drop a scosh more in price, that's all. Went mostly retired a few years back and my income dropped like down to 25% of what I was making, so everything I do has to be on the ultra cheap. I rotate around, this year will be lots more insulation, next year, something else.
I see a lot of greenies rag on suburbia, on the contrary, I think stand alone suburban homes with a decent yard (and a good internet connection so if possible telecommuting) are the best compromise for most people, has the most potential. You *can* do solar PV and thermal and have a decent garden etc, and eventually the solar PV carport or garage for the electric ride. Can't do any of that in town in some apartment, you stay tied to "the man" forever and ever. We live further out than suburbia on a big farm, yesterday we had the "all our own stuff" fourth of july cookout, our own beef, chicken and bass, veggies from the garden, etc. tres cool, good eats. Fresh picked watermelon and sweet corn and tomatoes just can't be beat.