Ferdinand E. Banks says

Thirty percent of the Japanese electricity was supplied by nuclear. In twenty years that will probably be fifty. You mention subsidies. About 45% of Swedish nuclear capacity is nuclear, while probably more than 50% of energy (KWh) is nuclear. No subsidies have been involved. Taxpayers, as a group, have gained jobs and welfare rather than paid subsidies. Of course, some academics are too dumb to appreciate this, but that often is the case-

Jim Beyer says

Jennifer Zajac says

Jim raises a good point: From my understanding of solar heating, it would take a tremendous amount of water to create such a utility-scale solar heating facility as you suggest, which would need to be piped to the Mohave Desert or similar location.

Wouldn't the costs associated with the water resources alone make solar heating too costly? I'd be interested in your response.

And thank you for writing this article. Regardless of how people view the costs associated with solar, the bottom line is that solar prices have declined over the decades.

More work is needed to drive down solar costs further. Our options for utility-scale generation are looking very limited right now. We need policies and technology development to diversify generation resources.

James Malinowski says

constantin robitu says

bill payne says

http://www.prosefights.org/nmsea08232011/nmsea08232011.htm#nate

Handyman Bobby Bridgewater is touching up our house and garage roofs.

I will ask his opinion of solar panels on roofs. :-)

Video interview with New Mexico rancher on Willard High Lonesome wind ranch, not farm, may interest readers?

http://www.prosefights.org/wind/willardwind/video/20110910121006.wmv

http://www.prosefights.org/wind/wind.htm

bill payne says

http://www.prosefights.org/roofleak/oldtime/audio/110913_004.mp3

David Lackstrom Lackstrom says

Herschel Specter says

Now contrast this with rural areas in less developed nations, much of which does not have an electrical grid and while the electricity demand is small, every electron is precious. Here, it would be better to install small wind turbines as part of a pre-packaged mini-utility with enough electrical out put, with some energy storage, to provide irrigation, refrigeration, communication,lighting, cooking, and water purification. Renewable energy would be far more economical than building a large nuclear plant and a grid to deliver this energy to millions of decentralized users.

So let nuclear power be the energy of choice where there is a grid, especially in urban areas and let renewable energy serve rural areas beyond the grid where it is more economical.

Incidentally, although the amount of greenhouse gases released per person in rural areas, like in rural India and rural China, is small, the aggregate amount is large because we are talking about billions of people. If one is concerned about climate change pusue both renewable and nuclear energy, each to its best application.

Herschel Specter mhspecter@verizon.net

Tom Tamarkin says

John Plodinec says

bill payne says

This is a concern.

http://www.prosefights.org/nmsea08232011/nmsea08232011.htm#nate

And enjoy.

http://www.prosefights.org/wind/willardwind/video/20110910121006.wmv

Anumakonda Jagadeesh says

Periasamy Kandasamy says

Even while comparing the Apples with Cherries, he is not able to really justify how he can add the decommisioning cost of Nuclear Reactor which is going to be 3.5 Bn( even assuming that number is correct !) after about 75 years, now itself and say it is OK with Solar heating ?

Let us not give much credence to such people who do not seem to have a broader understanding of the subject.

Ferdinand E. Banks says

In the first chapter of my forthcoming energy economics textbook, I tell the unlearned how they should think about nuclear. Think about it in terms of what happened in the United States during WW2. I started engineering school in Chicago during the war - and was kicked out because I failed everything - but that school was basically one building and a Student Union and some outhouses. But Engineering graduates from that and similar institutions built a navy and air force larger than all the other navies taken together, and of course the air force was just as impressive.

The last time Professor Banks visited that campus in order to have a few laughs at the thought/memories of the fools who expelled me, it was a very large operation. When the time comes the kind of people who constructed that navy and air force will construct an optimal energy structure for the US. That, ladies and gentleman, is economics. Of course, some changes will have to be made in the education system, but as we said in the army, that is duck soup. In addition, it might be necessary to elect presidents who can add and subtract.

Karen Blanchette says

Ferdinand E. Banks says

Of course solar and wind are not going to do what many of its advocates think. Lies and misunderstandings are the words I use in my book. The same thing is true with oil and gas in the US. Somebody owns a plot of land on which there is a little oil or gas, and the next thing we here is that they have more than iin the entire Middle East. That of course is about stock/share prices.

I have been called a nuclear shill on this site. I dont really care what they call me, but here in Sweden, where nuclear has accounted for a sizable share of this countries prosperity, the ignorance of the anti-nuclear booster club would - if I made a habit of becoming depressed - cause me to drown my disgust in champagne - cheap champagne of course.

Bob Amorosi says

What is more likely to evolve over time is two growing trends:

The first is individual customers investing in solar PV on their rooftops to sell power back into the grid during daytime hours. This is happening all over Ontario today with the lucrative grid feed-in tariffs the Ontario government offers to attract them. And it should grow in numbers as the up-front investment costs of solar continue to drop as they have been doing.

The second trend will be for some customers investing in a combination of rooftop solar PV and one or more other micro-generator options - in some attempt to get off the grid completely or at least partially. The other generation options are likely to be solid-oxide natural gas fuel cells provided its technology becomes practical and affordable, and/or geothermal, and/or large batteries to store solar PV energy for night use. Batteries hinge on its technology continuing to make progress in increasing efficiencies / energy densities and lowering costs, driven by the intense R&D in batteries happening today serving the emerging market for electric vehicle batteries.

The second trend however is obviously more expensive than the first trend for up-front investment, and is therefore likely to take a very long time for large numbers of customers to jump into. Those pursuing either of these trends will likely still keep their grid connection as an intermittent backup supply long after getting their own micro-generation up and running. So yes we will still need large central grid generation like nuclear and natural gas indefinitely, it just won't need to grow as fast as it did in the past.

Jim Beyer says

So if I could avoid some power use (say for air conditioning) using Solar PV at $2 per Watt, the payback would be 13,300 hours, about 2-3 years worth of use. Not too bad.

Don Hirschberg says

It is as if we still can’t recognize the problem. The leak gets bigger so our solution is to bail faster. It should have been obvious a hundred years ago, but has been plain as the nose on your face for fifty years.

Bob Amorosi says

I see more and more rooftop solar PV's sprouting up all the time. And not just for residential customers, it's showing up on many of our newer lighted highway message signs too, among other things.

I sometimes chat with my next-door neighbors about what it would take for them to consider investing in a rooftop solar PV system. Our local distribution utility company has brought it to every customer's attention during the past year by publishing their rules and procedure regulations for getting these installations grid-connected. My neighbors most often have said it boils down to payback time as their number 1 factor, and a close number 2 is retrofitting it onto your existing house and electrical panel wiring without too much disruption to the house.

I even have a friend who sells real estate for a living tell me that customers for brand new houses are now asking routinely whether a builder is offering a solar PV system as an option when buying the house. Clearly it would get paid for by simply adding it to one's mortgage loan since this way it would be buried in the house's purchase price.

So indeed there's a lot of awareness and growing interest in solar PV with the average consumer out there now.

Michael Keller says

Considering the dismal solar radiation in Ontario, I simply do not see how it makes any economic sense. I think a better investment would be more insulation and a high efficiency furnace

As to solar water heating, I live in Kansas and I have not seen a single installation here. Seems to me, that is a tipoff that the concept really does not make sense when going head-to-head with conventional methods. Perhaps it may make sense in sunny California, but not in here in tornado alley with our subzero winters.

Ferdinand E. Banks says

There are undoubtedly places in the the US where solar PV makes sense. What people like the nutter who was raving about environmental matters on the Swedish TV last night wants people to believe is that it makes sense everywhere. He undoubtedly inflluenced a number of people, especially people who wanted to shack up with him.

I haven't taken an interest in psychology or psychiatry since I left the army, where I had an interest forced on me by some of the craziness I witnessed, but unless I'm mistaken , that environmental jerk was worried that people who had access to nuclear would have it much better than people who did not have nuclear. I wont go into this in depth, but one of those latter persons was a student of mine from a so-called developing country, who believed that everything impressive in Sweden had been stolen from his country.

Bob Amorosi says

Ontario pays 80 cents/kwhr feed-in tariff to rooftop solar PV systems under 10kW output capacity, and 64 cents for ground-mount systems under 10kW. The prices drop for systems greater than 10kW output, and then drop lower again greater than 500kW, with he lowest price level being 44cents for a ground-mount system over 500kW.

BTW solar radiation is only dismal up here in the winter months. During the summer we get plenty enough to get several kW off an average residential rooftop setup. And summer is when demand peaks are at their highest levels in the afternoons when everyone's AC is running on hot day.

Bob Amorosi says

Incidentally the lucrative Ontario feed-in tariffs for solar PV are being reviewed every 2 years by the government, and will be adjusted upwards or downwards as they feel necessary. The prices are to be in effect for periods of up to 20 years to give investors plenty of time to get a payback on their initial investment.

Prices have already been changed once recently when at first the ground-mount systems received the same prices as rooftop setups, but then the government decided ground-mount systems deserved lower prices because among other things ground-mount systems have the distinct advantage over rooftop ones in that they can be easily redirected to track the sun's position to maximize output. Rooftop setups cannot do this very easily and thus cannot make as much income from the tariffs over the course of the year.

Over time these lucrative tariffs are to be removed of course but by then the government's prediction is there will be a very large number of installations. They expect by then the initial investment costs will have come down substantially for solar, and customer billing rates will have increased substantially on the grid to the point subsidies will no longer be needed to continue to attract solar investors. I guess time will tell if this comes true or not.

Michael Keller says

Bob Amorosi says

Many people in Ontario agree with you Michael. Personally I believe prices for power are going to go up substantially also over the next 20 years, but not just in Ontario, and not just due to any particular government's policies or attempts to drive them up. The only question is - how much are they going to go up relative to inflation in the economy.

Just wait for it Michael. Even where you live, in 10 years or less from now we will have hundreds of thousands, or more, of electric vehicles charging from the grid every hour of the day, utilities will be forced to replace many aging grid infrastructure assets and refurbish existing large central generating stations, and even close some of them down like coal plants because their environmental taxes / penalties are too costly. The money to handle all this must come from somewhere. So unless the feds in Washington are prepared to give huge handouts to utilities, I'll bet your prices for power will go up just as much as ours do in Ontario.

Don't get me wrong here, I don't relish or favor these trends. But I don't know who else has buckets of money to pay for all this either. Certainly governments won’t because of the crushing debt loads they are currently under pressure to deal with.

Jim Beyer says

I believe your comments on the prices paid for feed-in tariffs are misguided. I don't disagree with your math, but I disagree with the impact. We had a row about this in Michigan about 5-10 years ago (whether to have feed-in tariffs, use the electricity to offset grid use (net-metering), etc.). To me. it was all a tempest in a teapot. Let's say, for instance, that a utility DID pay 80 cents per kW-hr for solar electricity that was generated. Assuming 40% at rated performance, a Watt of panel would generate 3.5 kW-hr, and thus cost the utility $2.80. The question is, how many grid-tied panels are actually in place? In Michigan, state-wide (it's not a small state) we have something like 1-5 MWatt installed of residential solar PV (or wind). It actually is probably much less than that. So say 2MW. That means $5.6 million paid out per annum. Again, probably less than that, as some panels may be off-line, etc.

This is against a total electricity revenue (for the state) of perhaps $10 Billion. A drop in the bucket. These programs will not "drive the price of power thru the roof". There's is simply too little installed capacity.

What they DO do is give us experience in the use of residential power production, distributed power production, off-loading grid use (because the power is consumed locally) metering techniques, etc. All good stuff to figure out, for the future.

I appreciate your concern about paying too much for power using expensive generation (solar PV) but I reject the alarmist spin you gave to the consequences of these programs. They do not have a foundation in fact.

Bob Amorosi says

Down the road, who knows how much of the grid's revenue will be coming from renewable sources. But I believe it will be many years yet before it becomes anything significantly substantial, and by then consumer rates will have gone up for all the other increasing cost reasons I mentioned above, and probably more perhaps.

The electricity industry is not the only one BTW that governments distort the playing field amongst competing interests to foster competition or to favor the gradual adoption of a new technology over another existing one. It happens all the time in manufacturing and service industries with a myriad of taxes or tax breaks, low-interest government loans, research grants, border duties, etc.

Scott Brooks says

The upcoming new nuclear designs are cleaner, less expensive, use passive cooling with salts or metals, use less uranium, use thorium, one type can burnup the wastes of 2 and 3 gens, and are much safer. Reactors and fossils get much less subsidies then solar or wind.

It's time to stop thinking in 20th Century terms and step up to the 21st Century concepts. Neither wind nor solar can effectively be integrated into the grid, it's for those who live in the outback or boonies and have deep pockets. That's not the mainstream.

Michael Keller says

Further, the underlying premise that renewable energy can actually affect global warming is complete nonsense; the meager capabilities of green energy pale in comparison to global CO2 levels, while the science of climate remains very uncertain at this time. Rather than relying on a flimsy and disingenuous basis for deployment, the objective of renewable energy should be to beat the competition on price. In my opinion, the market place and technology will find a way for that to happen, when and where it makes sense - as observed by Professor Banks.

If the objective is to substantially reduce CO2, then increase the efficiency of energy generation and use. Such a strategy is not only very effective, but puts more money in the consumer’s pockets, which directly helps the economy.

As the emerging debacle in US solar energy once again demonstrates, mischief inevitably results whenever politicians & government attempt throw massive amounts of money around while attempting to unduly influence markets, as driven by crony capitalism (a.k.a. securing campaign contributions).

Bob Amorosi says

It's called “socialism” Michael. By ensuring those few selected individuals profit, the producers of the technology those individuals invest in tend to do more business, and by extension continue investing in their technology's R&D to lower costs and improve efficiency etc. etc.

I know, I know, socialism is a bad word in much of America. But if governments left it to the electricity marketplace to foster new technology by competing on price alone, those few selected individuals would lose money for many years before making any profits, if any. The timeframe to make a return would be far too long and hence scare off those individuals from investing in the technology to begin with.

BTW investors considering putting up their money for building large new central nuclear plants are plagued by similar problems in America; few have the appetite to bet on decent returns on their investments when they have to wait many years to get them in light of all the uncertainties about nuclear construction costs, plus all the political forces against them, etc. etc. etc. Too much risk or too much time to get a decent return tends to scare away most investors. So guess what, only socialism i.e. only governments are in any position to distort the market to favor building new nuclear plants. Too bad that is not happening in America these days because we need at least some nuclear for the future.

Michael Keller says

The government bankrolling nuclear power is really not that much different than the government bankrolling renewable energy. In both cases, the marketplace does not fundamentally favor the technologies.

Jim Beyer says

Bob Amorosi says

Given today's state-of-technologies and the prices we consumers are paying from traditional generation sources, I will agree with you Michael. I have more news for you though, so do governments who are manipulating the marketplace agree with your statement. They are fully aware it. But you are missing their whole point - they are helping to foster new technology R&D by enabling its commercialization financially today. Sure they are gambling on it becoming more price competitive many years from now, but then every investor who puts money into R&D is gambling, it's never a sure thing.

Ferdinand E. Banks says

Where nuclear is concerned, I don't trust the market. No sir, I don't trust young careerists on Wall Street and incompetents like Dr Chu. What is going to happen in this old world of ours is that China is going to construct another hundred reactors, and this will supply a world-beating industry.

I woud elaborate on this, but I hear hungry guests arriving.

Michael Keller says

As to nuclear, like renewable energy, works in some places but not in others. Ultimately, nuclear energy needs to move well beyond a mid twenty century technology and become a 21st century solution. In other words, it must become more efficient and more cost effective or go the way of say, the IBM typewriter.

Jim Beyer says

Basically, global warming was figured out when scientists sought an explanation of why Venus was so hot. They didn't seem to buy Velikovsky's theory that it was a recently captured comet.

I do note that even given global warming is real, it's not clear what the best path forward should be. It not necessarily dropping everything for renewable energy, for example.

Michael Keller says

Bottom line is we simply do not know what the ramifications (if any) are of man dumping CO2 into the air.

Rather than running around in a state of panic attempting to deploy pretty poor solutions to a potentially mythically problem, I advocate a broad solution that attacks the root of the actual problem, namely energy consumption. By increasing the efficiency of energy use and generation, CO2 is significantly reduced as a happy byproduct, with this reduction much greater than can be achieved by inappropriate deployment of "green energy". This common sense approach puts more money in our pockets and that improves the economy.

Jim McBride says

I think we should be using thermal solar, at least as a preheat for household use. Problem is the cost of maintenance. I don't believe the 3-5 yr maintenance cycle is realistic for the average north american home. When you take into account the freeze-thaw cycle, the labor costs of maintenance probably make it uneconomic. Note that MTBF of most household infrastructure is more like 15-20 years, designed for about 30 years.

Note that you already see wider deployment in the sunbelt, but mainly for heating swimming pools and other luxuries where failure is tolerable, and system maintenance on an annual basis is expected.

Jim McBride says

I'm also a fan of nuclear, and I wish there were more out-of-the-box thinkers on this, but nuclear as a thermal source for chemical processes (including liberating oil shale) ought to be under consideration.

If rationality suddently took hold, I think we would retire all 15+ year-old thermal plants and build a new fleet of combined cycle coal.

Len Gould says

Jim Beyer says

Your global warming/climate change critiques are not even logically consistent. If I were to refute global warming (but still stick with known facts), I'd accept that CO2 levels have risen a large amount due to human influence (namely, burning coal, burning trees, not replanting trees). I'd accept they MIGHT be some evidence of warming causing issues, like the Arctic ice pack dissolving, coral bleaching (due to higher CO2 levels in the water and higher temps of shallow water areas) and some other stuff. I'd note the HUGE supply of CO2 currently stored in the ocean's water, and it's odd multi-hundred thousand year cycle that we don't much understand. I'd accept that researchers finally figured out where half the extra CO2 produced was going (it's going into the oceans). I'd note that major climate changes (ice ages) seem to occur at a more rapid pace than some of these CO2 processes. I'd note some concern that we've raised levels higher than they've been in 800,000 years, whereas ice ages occur about only every 26,000 years (Milankovitch cycles).

So I'd be left with the notion that perhaps something COULD happen, perhaps even dramatically (it's done so in the past) but as to the WHEN and the precise HOW, that seems very uncertain. So I'd view climate change as a muddled concern, not an imaginary thing, but something very difficult to act upon. I would accept that should dramatic climate changes occur, it would be devastating (and expensive) to our economic system and our society.

Since oil is problematic in politics and supply, I move to get away from that. Coal too, may peak soon, and it is problematic to greatly increase supply. As you mentioned, increases in efficiency are win-win-win, so we should pursue them as well. The problem is how to nudge the market to do what best for it 10-20 years from now, but not necessarily in their 5 year time frame. I'd encourage efficiency (not done so now, as they are paid to SELL energy and paid MORE to sell MORE energy....) and alternatives. I'd not try to pick winners, but encourage diverse efforts, to see what works. I'd rein back coal, because it DOES produce a lot of CO2 and does not have a wonderful long-term future in any case. I'd be tepid about Nat. Gas as well, as it is nearly as difficult to store as electricity (!), and, for some reason, has a long history of booms and busts. I'd investigate alternatives (solar and wind) but with my eyes wide open, and note that, in the least, these have to be tied with some kind of sheddable demand. The possibility of PHEVs as a sheddable demand might make some sense.

Michael Keller says

Jim Beyer says

I respectfully disagree. I don't think building a bunch of coal-fired plants is wise at this point, though it might be the easiest path to "affordable" energy. Just because we don't understand completely means that we should avoid it entirely. Efficiency sounds great, but in the end, it's a cost issue as well. Plants are pretty darned efficient now, given the costs. [It's true that old plants may be less efficient, but revamping/replacing them is itself a cost issue.]

Ferdinand E. Banks says

But the TV audience didn't comprehend. The liars and fools went to work and told them that it would be better with wind and solar and this and that. The engineers and managers know better, and they are dragging their feet, hoping that the audience will eventually understand. Which they might.

As for Dr Chu, he should be fired and I should be offered his position. Before getting down to work however I would review all projects being dealt with by his foot soldiers and probably a number of those ladies and gentlemen would have to to hit the bricks. Of course, maybe they could do what I want them to do, which is to understand how to add two plus two, and use this wisdom in energy matters, in which case they could probably stay. Probably.

But let's be honest shall we. People are not becoming wiser in energy matters. Their attention spans are overloaded. There is a good reason for this, however it is something to discuss after the cognac has gone around the table a couple of times.

Len Gould says

Jim Beyer says

I mostly agree, though the managers and engineers in Japan didn't know enough to spend a few million dollars to put their generators on stilts. Time and time again, "safe" nuclear power experiences stupid gaffes that function only to scare the public away from it further.

It would be great if you replaced Dr. Chu. Maybe I could be one of your deputies! If I was, I suggest a heart-to-heart with the American people over nuclear waste storage. We gotta get that addressed. In my opinion, it's far easier to monitor a few square miles of storage space than both poles of the globe melting away. (Though that seems to be opening up new oil drilling sites, so maybe it's all part of a grand plan....)

I agree that people aren't becoming wiser about energy, but I think there's a flip side too. The stodgy energy industry cannot deal with change. Any change. The present world (in general) is changing much faster. How does one commit to a major power plant (with a 50 year lifetime) when the demographics in a region (plant closings, population migration) can change drastically in 15-20 years?

Just saw a good program about Steve Jobs. He saw opportunity in the chaos of the recording industry (downloads) and made a mint on it (iTunes). Here we are facing limits to oil use (peak oil, rising demand) and the electrical industry could become the new energy providers for our transportation industry! This is a once-in-every-two-or-three-hundred-years opportunity. Do they work towards doing that? No. They instead push for top-down control of our electricity use. Idiots.......

Malcolm Rawlingson says

However where I think your arguments fall off the rails is the location of the solar heating installation. Location as they say - is everything and this is very true of solar heating systems. In California, Arizona, the Sahara, Mediterranean - sure it makes sense. In Canada and most of the north and northeastern USA it does not.

I speak with valuable and direct experience on this matter as I once was the proud owner of an indoor electrically heated swimming pool which was fitted with a solar water heater on the roof. In the summer in Canada it worked admirably well with the electric heater only cutting in a few times on cloudy days. In the winter it was a complete wash out. Indeed the harsh winters in Canada played havoc on the system and for most of the winter the panels were completely covered with snow and ice. The perilous job of removing the snow and ice from the roof to make the panels operate o0n sunny days in the winter (there are a few) almost caused me serious injury when I fell off the roof (fortunately into a bank of snow).

So my experience with solar heating of hot water is that in Canada (Ontario) one would be very fortunate to get four or five months of useful output and from about October to April one can bank on getting not much heat output at all.

Which of course is why I heat my hot water with gas and why any one in their right mind in a cold climate would be wise to do the same. The incremental cost of the gas used for heating hot water is just a few dollars a month and it would be impossible to recover the cost of a solar hot water heating system that would not work in winter time in a reasonable time frame. Your analysis does not hold water when the same comparison is made to gas.

The other significant flaw in your argument is that you do not take into account the amount of water available and the recovery time. I have a family of 6 adults at my house all of whom take showers. Both gas and electric systems can input a lot of energy in a short space of time to recover the temperature of the hot water tank and maintain it at a comfortable temperature. Unless you live in a very hot climate it is unlikely that solar energy can recover the water temperature in a reasonable time. In other words even if the dollar costs are the same people will pay for convenience. If the solar hot water tank keeps running cold folks will not be inclined to use it - a major reason (in my humble opinion) why they have never really caught on in Canada and the north eastern US or in cold climates anywhere for that matter.

If they do not produce enough hot water in winter time then you need to have BOTH a solar system (for the summer) AND an electric or gas installation for the winter time. Now you have incurred - for the sake of argument - double the capital cost to get the same result. Therefore it is twice as expensive. The fuel may be free but the capital costs sure are not.

In Arizona - go for it. In Canada - forget it.

Malcolm

Malcolm Rawlingson says

This is of course a simplistic comparison but it illustrates that the reduction in CO2 can be accomplished by simply using our energy resources more effectively and it should be efficiency - not government induced market distortions that dictate how the energy resource should be used.

As I noted above, the use of electricity to heat hot water is very wasteful whatever the energy source used to make the electricity. We burn mostly coal or Uranium at a thermal cycle efficiency of no more than 40% to boil water to make steam to turn a turbine to turn a generator then ship the electrons hundreds of miles to a hot water tank somewhere to make hot water. How stupid is that!!!

As previous posts will attest - I am no advocate of global warming - however it is vitally important to use our energy resources far more wisely and efficiently than we do now. That will have a far greater impact on the quality of life on this planet than sending thousands of global warming experts to exotic and far flung corners of the planet in CO2 producing jets aeroplanes to discuss the latest questionable research in fully air conditioned buildings.

Malcolm

Malcolm Rawlingson says

Malcolm

Len Gould says

Malcolm Rawlingson says

I have absolutely no doubt that solar hot water in California, Arizona, Nevada and possibly even British Colombia are good candidate locations for the economic application this technology and furthermore would be the only system you would need. In not so sunny Ontario and many northern states in the USA hot water heating in winter would require supplementation (read twice the capital cost) with gas or electricity.

Now ground source heat pumps have a different set of economics. The average price for a system in Ontario is well over $45,000 and while they certainly do work (and year round too - my main objection to roof top solar in cold countries) the economic case is non existent. As a case in point my total gas bill including delivery and the product taxes included is about $1500/year. Therefore at zero interest it will take me 30 years to repay the capital cost and (unless the price drops dramatically) practically rules ground source heat pumps out. Note that they also provide cooling but in my case I do not have (or want) air conditioning so it is a moot point although it may be of importance to others.

I do agree (and advocate) the use of distributed gas fired generation using fuel cell technology and I think that all utility companies need to watch this sector very closely as it has the potential to completely destroy their market economic model. As the price and efficiency of these devices improves and they become more like household appliances providing electricity and hot water people who have natural gas supplies available will switch to these systems and disconnect from the grid. From a consumer perspective only one standing charge is required (for the gas supply) and the cost of electricity produced by these machines will be lower overall that the cost of grid supplied electricity. People often confuse the price of the commodity with the actual price they pay for the service and the product. The true cost of a kilowatt hour of electricity is the amount you pay divided by the number of kilowatt hours used per month....not the cost printed on the bill.

So in summary I fully agree with you there are other technologies to produce hot water without using electricity and in some climates clearly the way to go...in others clearly not.

Malcolm