Solar photovoltaic technology encounters the problem of thermal fatigue where performance (efficiency) declines over time. Eventually the technology has to be replaced and the expired technology often becomes e-waste. Progress is being made to reduce thermal fatigue in photovoltaic technology . . . some manufacturers have a long way to go in this regard. Solar PV has merit in cities where solar PV windows may be installed in office towers and PV siding may be installed on to the walls of the same builds.

Very well said comments, you are right on about the economics of solar and storage.

But you see, governments and some business people are more optimistic about gambling - that over time there will be breakthroughs in storage you talk about. With deliberate government intervention to make new solar PV generation viable today, they HOPE that over time by having them participate commercially now in supplying the grid, businesses and research institutes will spend much more on the R&D to lower their costs, and also achieve storage breakthroughs. The electrification of vehicles in the automotive world is also pushing R&D to find the same storage breakthroughs.

You’ll notice that in Ontario the government intervention is massive with the most lucrative subsidies (grid feed-in tariffs) on the planet for solar generation. But also, Ontario is in parallel injecting much more taxpayer’s money into greater numbers of research and development projects at universities and in businesses for R&D in these areas.

I grant you it is a huge gamble, breakthroughs are never guaranteed. But it's no different than buying lottery tickets. R&D never guarantees winning but never winning is guaranteed if you don't have the commercial activity now that spurs continuous spending of money on R&D.

I hope it is self-evident that the Sun does not shine at night. That is why it is not an economic proposition. Automatically the capacity factor is 50% or less. But we do use electricity at night. So the product is not available when needed 50% or more of the time. If you made an investment in a GIC that paid only when the Sun was shining I think you would quickly more your money to something that made money 24 hours a day. In Northern climates where much of the high electricity demand is the Sun shines even less than 50% of the time and capacity factors are around 30% which means your "investment" only generates money 30% of the time

It surely is quite obvious why solar PV technology does not attract investors. It is not an investment. It will always lose money however creative the financing.

No amount of creative financing can change that fact. The three guys with a good idea need an idea to make the Sun shine at night and on cloudy days in the middle of winter at -40 Centigrade to make this particular invention economically viable.

I firmly believe that making the Sun shine at night is not possible and consequently making money at solar PV is also impossible unless some nitwit with more money than sense thows cash at it. Those people are called Governments. And of course the money they waste is not theirs. It is yours and mine. malcolm

Even with such a massive subsidy there are only a few takers. While the efforts are laudible and done I am sure with all good intention the basic fact is that solar PV is not economic even at 8 times the going rate for power.

Surely that gives you a clue as to why private investors are simply not interested. The technology does not make money. It loses.

Malcolm

<1> Solar PV generates energy at the most valuable times of the day and year. That is, daytime in the summer. The value of that energy is much greater than a 24x365 average price. At least double depending on the market.

<2> Solar PV is consumed pretty much where generated. Line losses are therefore negligible as are transmission costs. Further, often solar PV is generated behind the meter. That means that the user is not only offsetting the energy, but also all of the transmission charges, capacity and perhaps even some ancillaries.

The notion that solar PV is limited because the sun doesn't shine at night is misleading. The sun is shining brightly during the peak hours of the year. The sun does shine to some extent during cloudy days, which also tend to be lower load days. Until solar PV reaches market penetrations above 20%, storage should not be a limitation.

This is not to say that solar PV is economical yet. I am only pointing out that it is closer than people seem to think. $0.40/kwh is very expensive, but nowhere near 8x.

Those are both good points. But it seems that the consumer doesn't benefit from either of them. Without real-time pricing, the consumer won't be advantaged by such a timely energy source. And the consumer is also unlikely to be rewarded by the utility by lowering transmission demand.

The bottom line (I think) is that utilities really don't want any of this. They'd really rather just have demand go up so they can be paid by the public to build more plants and more transmission lines.

Your point about the consumer not benefiting from lowering of transmission demand is misdirected. If the kwh are generated behind the meter, then the consumer does not have to pay for either the energy or the t&d since both are billed (mostly) on a per kwh basis.

Can it be said any better than that?

At what cost would PV be reasonable? I found some used panels for sale at $2.75 per Watt. Assuming $3.75 installed, plus the gov't rebate %30, the payback might be 5 years or so, if you could get something close to retail value from the excess electricity. But you really can't, at least not in the U.S.

I think at $2-3 per Watt installed, they start to get interesting. I appreciate the better value of solar thermal, but it's just a heck of a lot less convenient. With PV, you just stick them on the roof.

I think the situation could be improved at ~0 cost by allowing mortgage mods to pay for them (The Gov. sure bailed out the banks - so they kinda owe us...) and having the utilities be a little less backward about buying power. Even a huge effort would result in just a tiny penetration. Plus, the utility still gets the connect fee for the homes anyway, even though they don't have to provide any power for them anymore. (I'm not talking going overboard like Germany or perhaps Ontario, just a little bit better to make the things reasonable.)

Concerning financing, we have completed a report making recommendations for Canada - http://www.envint.ca/files/Final%20Report%20March%2020%202009.pdf. This is for small-scale, but the same mechanism (governmental green bonds) could also be used for larger installations. We have not heard that government here has adopted this no-brainer solution so far.

I was surprised to hear American Electric Power announce a major commitment to CO2 capture today. -So out came the old slide rule. I used one pound of “my” coal, 90% carbon and 10% hydrogen, to do some arithmetic. My one pound of coal, about the size of a potato, makes about 15 pounds of flue gas occupying about 200 cubic feet containing 3.30 pounds of CO2 and 15% CO2 by volume. The flue gas treater would have to process something like 20,000 times the volume of our pound of coal.

Further, under TOU billing, where it exists, the consumer reaps much larger benefits than under flat rate billing since the sun is typically shining during the highest priced hours of the year. My sense is that the considerable value of this has not been captured in the financial analysis.

Your notion about mandating banks to lend for this is just the sort of nonsense that got the banks into trouble in the first place. If it makes financial sense, then it should be allowed, even facilitated. However, they should not do it because "they kinda owe us". "They kinda owe us" a return to prudent lending practices.

Martin: I agree with Don that using subsidized financing like your "green bonds" only muddies the situation. It is far from a no-brainer. Further, I question the analysis by NREL on grid parity by 2020 if only because the government has been notoriously bad at prognosticating, especially about energy. Before accepting their pronouncements, I want to know in detail how they came to that conclusion, especially what assumptions they used.

James Carson, RisQuant Energy

China, already by far the largest user of coal, has publically announced huge increases in the use over the next six years. Their many new coal burning plants will be needed far into the future. India, the third biggest user, is greatly increasing coal mining, importation and use. These increases swamp the cuts that developed countries (I don’t like that expression) can make.

China has clearly told the world to get on board in reducing population, not merely slowing population growth - the drum I have been beating for decades. It’s such a taboo subject that even China’s announcement barely gets mentioned by our media.

Remember Kyoto? Coal usage has gone up 68% over 1990.

I find it ironic that global leaders and the public gladly accept the deaths of thousands of miners around the world (along with the serious long term health effects on tens of thousands of others) while at the same time crying foul at the emissions from coal plants whose effects are minor by comparison.

As Don notes coal usage is going dramatically up - NOT down - as some would have you believe and its use will continue to increase despite all the bafflegab at Copenhagen.

But this post is about PV solar and coal has nothing much to do with that...or does it? One of the facts missing from the calculation of PV cells is the amount of energy (mostly electrical) that goes into the manufacture of a solar panel compared to the amount of electricity produced over its useful life. I suspect that the ratio of energy in to energy out is not very good. And of course since most of our electrical power is coal based the manufacture of solar panels very likely increases CO2 emissions...the reverse of what all the enviro gods claim.

Malcolm

You missed my point entirely. Of course it is obvious that the Sun does not shine at night but the importance of that is the "investment" one makes only is making money half of the time....or worse in Canada. If you are banking on making a killing in the summer time only you would be better off starting up an ice cream stand. Much more profitable and very dependable.

So one could make money by selling at premium rates when the Sun does shine in the summer and gouge the poor souls who want to keep cool at those times. But that is based on the erroneous assumption that the Sun is always shining when the grid need the power. Not always the case. And when it is not the case (cloudy day very hot and sticky) solar may not be able to produce. It is not temperature that makes people crank up the AC it is humidity and that often occurs on cloudy days.

So as an investor (and I am one) why would I invest money in a plant that only operates and makes money a few months a year when I could invest the same money in one that runs 24 hours a day 7 days a week and make money all the time.

The day I see Warren Buffet sinking a billion or two into solar panels then my money will go in right after. Until then I'll stick to investments that make money not lose it.

I really cannot envisage any one of sound mind wanting to pay even 20 cents per kilowatt hour from solar when they can buy the same product at 4 cents. May be the solar kilowatts are better quality. But for all those who believe this nonsense please "invest" away. I will gladly take your money and I have some swampland in Florida if you are interested.

Malcolm

There's lots of valid stuff to complain about PV, but the EROI is not one of them. Let's try to put this one to bed (yet again). The energy payback is about 4 years.

www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/35489.pdf

Regarding the economics, I see your point; and I'm going to be the last one to advocate the economics of solar PV. And relying on gov't subsidies is pretty dodgy.

On the other hand, I do see it a bit strange how our (U.S.) gov't spends so much money to access overseas oil fields. Shouldn't that at least go into the price of oil? And like you said, the mining of coal is more directly problematic than its long term GHG implications.

I think if we played the "remove all subsidies" game, solar PV would probably move forward compared with other choices, especially if one considered the huge cost in individual metering and hook up for residential homes. Throw in the environmental issues (GHG) and they win even more. Add the implications of PHEVs (which use gasoline at the rate of 30-35 cents per kW-hr) and they become a stronger force still.

Sweden occupies the presidency of the European Union at the present time, and while a great Swedish firm (Saab) is about to go into the tank, the moronic Swedish prime minister is at the environmental circus in Copenhagen, running his mouth to ignoramuses from every corner of the universe. The US is just as bad, with useless wars in two countries that have ruined the lives of countless innocent people.

What does that have to do with the present exercise? It has everything to do with it. The TV audience wants wind and sun, and they should be given it - in MODERATION - and while these item are being slowly installed, it should be explained to them in great detail by people as smart as those who made the above comments that they are not going to get what they think they are going to get for their money. That's naivete of course, because even in this country (Sweden), with one of the most literate populations in the world, it can't be explained to a sizable slice of the population (that includes several of the highest energy bureaucrats in the country) that their preferred energy choices make absolutely no economic sense at all.