Investing in solar power, would you do it?Follow

It's called a modern pyrolytic kiln, burning with a very low oxygen mix. It generates less electric power than burning with a high oxygen mix, but with low oxygen the resultant high amounts of charcoal left behind in the kiln and subsequently scattered on farm soil as extremely effective fertiliser makes the process actually carbon NEGATIVE.

Charcoal in soil act like coral reefs in the sea. Soil microorganisms love living in it, and raise crop bulk by 300%. Win-win-win.

I could get behind this, assuming long term R&D projects still get some form of public investiture.

I'd honestly rather that a more normal tech development cycle occur. What we've seen in areas where the government does not get involved in direct subsidies is that the early tech is expensive, but those really interested drive it (by either buying the products or investing in the companies making them). As the tech advances an improves you eventually hit a magical break point where the costs come down sufficiently to increase demand enough to continue to pour money into more development, costs continue to go down, more people can afford it, and there's a veritable avalanche of public adoption. We've seen this process unfold with everything from vacuum cleaners, to washing machines, to televisions, to home computers, to cell phones and music players. There is no reason to assume otherwise with something like solar panels.


My concern is that if the government starts subsidizing the purchase of a given good too early, it ultimately retards technological development and true market success of the product. Imagine if the government had decided in 1990 to subsidize home computers. Would the continued development of faster and cheaper processors have continued? Or would the companies making home computers simply collect all the extra cash they were getting on the existing systems? The driver for improvement at that part of the development curve is to get a larger market share. To do that, they must bring costs down while improving performance. If you make todays thing profitable to a wide market, you affect the profit/development ratio in a bad way. Instead of a nice comfy curve, you end out with a flat return. Improvements wont bring much more market share for a lot longer down the line than otherwise. A lot of companies might simply stop where they are and invest their profits in something else.


Dunno. I just think that while it might take longer for initial large scale adoption, in the long run we're better off letting the normal process take it's course. If the government wants to put money into the R&D side, that's great, but I'm not a fan of subsidizing end purchases of new technology. I really do think it's counterproductive.

Anytime the government messes with the market it there can be unexpected consequences. Solar however has been getting subsidized for decades. My dad put solar panels on the roof of our house back in the mid-70's to get a tax credit. He was also managed to snag a bit more hot water for himself as, at that time, he had 3 teenage daughters in the house.

Energy isn't a normal market though. It's extremely non-elastic and it's monopolized,, despite OPEC.. or because of it, I guess. Here in Maine our most powerful lobby group is the Oil Association. Over the years they have effectively kept natural gas out of the state.

I'm just not sure that solar would ever break through that production of scale barrier without assistance.

Depending on the use, it can be very cost effective.

Check this out. About 7mins into the video they're in a lab developing plastic solar cells. They won't be big heavy sheets of glass, but flexible, pliable and workable.

I was speaking relative to the amount of power produced. As in, how much of a dent on total carbon emissions does a single person using solar panels make? It's just not that much. We'd be much much much better off spending money upgrading coal plants to newer cleaner designs, building nuclear power plants, etc than subsidizing solar panels on people's roofs.

We have improved coal plant designs available today which dramatically reduce emissions of all types (not just carbon). If we could eliminate some of the blocks preventing these designs from being rolled out, we'd put a much larger total dent in emissions. I know this is kinda off topic, and we've had the discussion before, but there seems to be a "zero emissions or bust" attitude out there, which drives us to spend tons of money on things like carbon sequestration (which will likely never be cost effective even if it can be done at all), while holding up production of "mostly clean" coal plants, which while not 0 emissions could replace existing coal plants which are quite dirty, netting us a pretty significant emissions benefit for relatively little cost.


I just think that in most cases it's best to go for a solution that is better than what you're doing today, rather than doing nothing until you've got a perfect solution in place. Odds are, you'll never get "perfect" to become a reality, and in my experience we move faster in the right direction by taking steps rather than waiting to make one big leap. To bring it back on topic, the whole "subsidize solar panels" bit is in the same vein. We'll spend relatively large amounts of money on zero emission solar panels, while avoiding spending money simply reducing the emissions from the source (power plants). Add up the total number of solar panels you'd need to effectively reduce the total emissions from one mid-sized power plant by 30% and compare it to the cost to remove blocks preventing the replacement of that plant with a newer designed one with the same emissions savings.


There are some neato things about solar panels. I still think they're not really a viable replacement just yet. If they were, we wouldn't need subsidies...

According to an article read, something I heard on the radio, or a dream I had, solar panels can be used quite effectively and at relatively little cost to heat your hot water. Supposedly this can represent as much as 1/3 of one's home heating bill, so the savings are not insignificant.

If the housing market hadn't crashed and taken all my equity with it, I'd have no problem including a solar array in my renovation plans.

Which is why Solar would be the best bet, considering how much more coal we have to burn to make up the % used and % lost from Coal to Solar. 2 Billion Watts from infrastructure alone.

Which I can't see Solar having that problem when it's local.

Yes. Great. So you surely see the value to upgrading the power plants producing those emissions, right? A single old coal fired plant upgraded to a cleaner design reduces emissions for every single person in the surrounding area without those individuals having to do anything. Spending money on each individual to assist them in putting solar panels on their roofs is not nearly as efficient a use of our money.

That's not to say that both can't happen. But I'd rather we not use government funds to subsidize the solar panels. Heck. I'd rather we not subsidize either. A lot of progress can be made in terms of cleaning up the sources for our existing power grid if we'd just remove the ridiculous (and often counterproductive) blocks in place. Power plants (in many parts of the country at least) are a for-profit operation. They'll build those new cleaner plants without a dime of government money if only the legal obstacles are removed.

But if we are thinking about subsidizing, it makes vastly more sense to subsidize in a way that cleans up the emission footprint of every single person in an area rather than one-offing each individual while keeping the rest of the folks running off whatever existing source there is. The reality is that only a smallish percentage of people who draw on the power grid every day can build solar panels. Lots of people rent, or live in apartments or condominiums. High density living does not lend itself to solar power (more people per square foot of roof space). We get all of those people by upgrading older power plants. We hit only a small fraction of the people in an area with solar panels.

Joph. What part of this paragraph makes you think I was talking about what type of activity generated the most total carbon emissions nationwide?




The two bolded sentences are the most relevant. I was very clearly making a point about the reduction of carbon emissions "per person". If you were running your own little generator and spewing fumes into the air, you'd see a significant relative improvement using a solar panel instead. The statement about power plants emissions being "exceptionally low" was very clearly in that context.


While the total amount of emissions from power plants exceeds other sources, the amount generated "per person" is certainly greatest from driving cars. Hence my follow up statement that if an individual wanted to decrease their own total carbon footprint, they'd get a lot more bang for the buck buying a hybrid or an electric car. I'm frankly not sure why you thought total emissions was even remotely relevant...

Edited, Feb 9th 2010 5:15pm by gbaji

So what? The idea behind a program like that is to get as many people as possible on the trolly with the solar panels, thus reducing the need for power generation via fossil fuels across the population. Are you really this hard up to defend yourself? Seriously?

Fine, you win. I'm not sure what but... umm... yeah.

As long as we're clear that the objective for solar panel subsidies isn't really about reducing carbon emissions, but to promote solar panel use for its own sake. That's all I was going for.

You know I'm a stickler for correctly identifying *why* we're doing something. Mostly because it's amazing how often the first assumption people have isn't really correct...