Why solar?

The numbers add up for solar power, whether you're in Seattle or Albuquerque

Posted by Edward Mazria (Guest Contributor) at 11:27 AM on 19 Feb 2008

Read more about: energy | renewable energy | solar voltaic power

The New York Times published an article yesterday titled "Silicon Valley Starts to Turn Its Face to the Sun":

"This is the biggest market Silicon Valley has ever looked at," says T. J. Rogers, the chief executive of Cypress Semiconductor, which is part-owner of the SunPower Corporation, a maker of solar cells in San Jose, Calif.

"The solar industry today is like the late 1970s when mainframe computers dominated, and then Steve Jobs and I.B.M. came out with personal computers," says R. Martin Roscheisen, the chief executive of Nanosolar, a solar company in San Jose, Calif.

Why all the excitement? You need only look at a few numbers and a graph to get the picture.

sun vs. use now

Seventy-six percent of all electrical energy produced in this country is used to operate buildings.
The average residence in the U.S. consumes approximately 42.7 KBtu/SF/YR of delivered energy and the average commercial building about 85 KBtu/SF/YR.
Between 384 KBtu/SF/YR (Seattle) and 667 KBtu/SF/YR (Albuquerque) of solar energy is delivered free to every square foot of roof in the U.S. Between 365 KBtu/SF/YR (Seattle) and 520 KBtu/SF/YR (Albuquerque) of solar energy is delivered free to every unshaded south wall (south-facing surface) in the U.S. Or, to put it another way, between 749 KBtu/SF/YR and 1,187 KBtu/SF/YR of solar energy is delivered free to two surfaces of every building in the U.S.

For story: Why solar?
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Huge amount of rooftop PV potential

According to "Tackling climate change in the U.S." by the American Solar Energy Society,

The rooftop area, and therefore potential space for PV in the United States, is very large. Two previous estimates of the total available roof space for PV in the United States are 6 and 10 billion square meters, even after eliminating 35% to 80% of the total roof space due to shading and inappropriate orientation [6,7]. The lower value also does not include certain industrial and agricultural buildings. While fairly rough estimates, these values provide some idea of the potential resource base. Assuming a typical PV system performance of 100 watts per square meter (W/m2) (equivalent to an average insolation of 1000 W/m2 and a 10% AC system efficiency), this rooftop area represents a potential installed capacity of 600 to 1000 GW. At an average capacity factor of 17%, this installed capacity could provide 900-1500 terawatt-hours (TWh) annually. This represents about 25% to 40% of the total U.S. electricity consumption in 2004.
6. Chaudhari, M., L. Frantzis, and T. Hoff, PV Grid Connected Market Potential under a Cost
Breakthrough Scenario, Navigant Consulting, Inc., 2004. Available at www.ef.org/documents/EFFinal-
Final2.pdf
7. Potential for Building Integrated Photovoltaics, International Energy Agency, 2001.

by Jon Rynn at 11:43 AM on 19 Feb 2008

Southern Sun

I am currently soaking up 20 kW through the south wall of my solar home on this brilliant sunny day near Seattle. Not one penny spent on silicon pv cells, nor exported to Silicon Valley. Smart solar is a lot cheaper than natural gas.

by sunflower at 11:51 AM on 19 Feb 2008

The bigger they are

Solar voltaic technology is still very immature. It is far over hyped. Inevitably there will be disappointment in when they discover that their PV system only produces electricity for five and a half hours a day. Homeowners would be far better off investing in solar water heaters, and ground source heating and cooling systems, that will deliver real real efficiency, and CO2 savings.

Eventually the limitation of PV will become obvious, and people will be disappointed, and PV will take a hard tumble. The bigger they are, the harder they fall.

Charles Barton

by Charles Barton at 11:54 AM on 19 Feb 2008

Wrong again, Charles

Had you a basic understanding of how grid-tied residential and commercial systems work, you wouldn't write that 5.5 hours of daily sunshine will come as an unpleasant surprise to buyers of these systems. 99% of the photovoltaic systems being integrated around the world use the utility grid as a battery of sorts, requiring no onsite storage or batteries, and nullifying any negative effects of non-constant sunlight.

You are correct, however, in stating that solar is presently an immature technology. The massive benefits being reaped by its current deployment are nothing when compared to what the near future holds given decreasing manufacturing costs, silicon price reductions, and new technologies currently being commercialized.

I suggest you gain a better knowledge of solar technologies prior to writing such strong opinions in the future.

by Alex 77 at 12:23 PM on 19 Feb 2008

better knowledge

I suggest you gain a better knowledge of solar technologies prior to writing such strong opinions in the future. - Alex 77

Alex what is the point of having solar electricity if you are going to get your electricity from the grid? I understand the Grid system. You are basically selling electricity to the power company at a low price, and then buying it back at a higher price. As for the source of my information about solar, can you suggest a better source than solar buzz?

Charles Barton

by Charles Barton at 12:38 PM on 19 Feb 2008

Solar naysayers

The solar naysayers might want to read Scientific American's latest analysis, A Solar Grand Plan. The gist of it is:

A massive switch from coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear power plants to solar power plants could supply 69 percent of the U.S.'s electricity and 35 percent of its total energy by 2050.

Unless you can cogently refute the analysis, you shouldn't be so quick to write off the technology. Full article at: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan

by leaperz at 1:31 PM on 19 Feb 2008
[ Parent ]

Help me here

I like in a place where we get maybe 280 days of sunshine a year at latitude 26 but I've priced some solar-electric units and each array or box seems like $10,000. Two or three would be required to do the job right but no way I can afford that much as a Joe Six-Pack. So the price pay-back seems like 30 years or something as compared to just paying the coal and gas burners (the electric companies).

For about a thousand bucks I can make me a redneck solar water heater no problem, all depending if I want an expensive rainwater collection cistern or what I can clean-salvage.

So My point is that sure, lots of energy out there, lots of stuff you can buy, but can you afford it especially in a recession? Heck man, some of my brothers went back to burning wood up north it was so bad this winter. /sammie

Onward through the fog

by Sam Wells at 5:48 PM on 19 Feb 2008

Sam, that's why

the the berkeley policy of providing the money up front for solar installations, paid back by the savings, is the best -- maybe only -- way to go forward to get this off the ground.

by Jon Rynn at 7:22 PM on 19 Feb 2008

One thing to consider

90% of all the Solar in the US is owned by 1 Utility.

-David Ahlport

by GreyFlcn at 8:47 PM on 19 Feb 2008

This is one of the best cost calculators

http://findsolar.com/index.php?page=rightforme

Try it. The caluculator automatically assumes you only want to replace 50% of your use so the default answer you get is only half of the cost.

The bottom line is that solar is very expensive and the cost varies greatly depending on where you live and how much sunshine you get. Replacing the energy consumption of today's 3000 square foot homes with solar will never be economically feasible.

We need admirable designs and examples of homes that are solar powered and affordable. We need to start thinking out of the box. I touched on this concept here:

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/1/21/112339/239

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

by biodiversivist at 9:00 AM on 20 Feb 2008

the money is being spent - just not on you

Lots of good comments, here. The bottom line about up-front costs and payback time is simple. Your tax dollars are being used to build, maintain, and supplement giant, wilderness-killing power plants owned by utilities (solar/wind "farms"), instead of being used to build, maintain and supplement modest, clean, individual-owned power plants which save our wilderness instead of kill it.

We need to INSIST that our legislators (Federal, State and Local) divert that money BACK TO US so we can build a safe, reliable, DECENTRALIZED generation system which does not destroy the environment like the Utility-Scale plants do.

100% buyback programs AT PEAK RATES (that's when we are producing, right?); Berkeley/San Fran style capital loans paid back through property taxes, combined with large subsidies from our government WOULD ONLY PUT US LEVEL WITH UTILITIES, who have been able to buy off our legislators so they can socialize all their costs and privatize all their profits.

Are you a stalinist sucker or do you believe in democracy? Call, write and email and demand these policies NOW or we will all find ourselves meeting the New Boss (Big "renewable" Energy), same as the old boss (Big Fossil Energy), and losing millions of acres of Federally-owned wilderness in the process...

the greenest energy is that which you needn't ever produce.

by stopgreenpath at 11:01 AM on 20 Feb 2008

ADVERTISING POLICY

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