CA: Schwarzenegger to unveil compromise solar energy plan

Bakersfield Californian ^ | 2/27/05 | Don Thompson - AP

[pointsal]

Why am I paying a utility fee so some greenie in Malibu can have solar?

[NormsRevenge]

The Public Utility Commission would decide how electricity consumers pay into the incentive fund, most likely with a new fee on utility bills.

[NormsRevenge]

fyi

[dalereed]

It's time to quit subsidising expensive power and take the restrictions off of nukes and replace gas powered generators with nuke generators.

As far as i'm concerned all electricity in this country should be either hydro or nuke generated.

[John Jorsett]

I thought John Campbell had more sense than to sign on to attempts to force the marketplace to go somewhere it doesn't want to. Johnnie, Johnnie, Johnnie. Why have you forsaken us?

[stopem]

This Gov appears to be more/all talk no action. Has anyone else noticed?

[NEBUCHADNEZZAR1961]

Well so much for "Mr. Free-Market". I guess he didn't learn much from Gov. Davis' failed reign. Govt. can't sovlve problems, they only make them worse. What a clown.

[NEBUCHADNEZZAR1961]

Well so much for "Mr. Free-Market". I guess he didn't learn much from Gov. Davis' failed reign. Govt. can't sovlve problems, they only make them worse. What a clown.

[Fast1]

What they are not saying is the average corner gas station has the energy equivalent of 84 sq miles of solar cells.

[Carry_Okie]

BP Solar must not have paid the piper... enough.

[Brilliant]

If he were a true conservative, he'd veto it...

[FairOpinion]

most likely with a new fee on utility bills."

Just what we need -- one third of our utility bills are already fees and taxes, all we need is more.

I do wish Arnold would focus on fixing the fiscal mess of CA and leave this enviro-nut stuff alone.

But I guess we should be glad they took out the requirement to have half of all new homes use solar power.

[FairOpinion]

"The goal is to have 3,000 megawatts worth of solar power by 2018, which amounts to about 5 percent of the state's entire electricity usage at peak periods - generally hot summer afternoons when electricity is most in demand, most expensive, and when solar panels are most efficient. "

This hardly seems worth the effort.

And these same people say it's not worth drilling in ANWR, because it would only provide 25% of the energy needs of the US for the next 20-30 years.

[FairOpinion]

So where the White Knight, Tom McClintock riding to the rescue, mobilizing to defeat this idiotic bill?

We never heard from him, when there is something to be done.

[FairOpinion]

Germany's Top Solar Leader to Visit Sacramento

http://renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=23004


At a lunch-time briefing next week in California's state capitol, leading representatives from Germany and Japan, home of the world's two largest solar markets, as well as three American economists will discuss the economic benefits of growing California's solar power market while examining various proposals to increase solar power in California, including Governor Schwarzenegger's Million Solar Roofs Initiative.

The event will take place on March 1, 2005 from 12:00 to 1:00 PM in room 112 at the California State Capitol building. Senator Kevin Murray and the Environment California Research & Policy Center will host the event which will feature speaker Dr. Hermann Scheer, German Parliament and Chair of the World Council for Renewable Energy who was instrumental in passing Germany's renewable energy legislation which has caused a solar market explosion in the country. Other speakers will include: Shirley Neff, President-elect of the U.S. Association for Energy Economics; Steven McClary, MRW & Associates, Inc.; Dr. Daniel Kammen, University of California, Berkeley; Chris O'Brien, Sharp Solar Electronics. Summary of presentations will be provided at the briefing and also will be available for download at the following link.

[NormsRevenge]

lol.. nice try..

so ya knockin' everybody now,, there'd hope for ya yet. ;-)

[Boot Hill]

8	“The goal is to have 3,000 megawatts worth of solar power by 2018...The net projected savings over 10 years would be as much as $1 billion, said Campbell.”

Solar power is so economically and energy inefficienct that is now time to consider bringing criminal indictments for fraud against the manufacturers and promoters.

The Inefficiencies of Solar Power
(Based upon a horizontal PV array located at
the average continental U.S. latitude of 38º.)

ref.	source	loss (%)	power (per m2)
1.	Solar flux	-	1,368 W
2.	Atmospheric losses	45	752 W
3.	Night times losses	50	376 W
4.	Solar angle losses	50	188 W
5.	Cell conversion losses	88	22.6 W
6.	DC®AC inverter losses	10	20.3 W
7.	Net efficiency		1.5%
8.	Net energy             (per m2 per day)		0.5 kWh
9.	Value of energy     (per m2 per day)		4.3 ¢
10.	Solar panel cost               (per m2)		$530
11.	Payback period		33 years

Notes:

1.	Above the atmosphere. Compare to solar constant.
2.	Loss = atmos. absorp. + atmos. reflect. + cloud absorp. + cloud reflect. See additional references: 1,   2,   3,
3.	Necessary for calculating average daily value of energy production.
4.	Effect of solar angle on efficiency. Line 4 equals 4.5kWh per day. Compare to U.S. Average Daily Solar Radiation.
5.	Shell SQ175-PC, including specified de-rating for cell temperature and irradiance level.
6.	5kW modular, certified, grid-interactive, inverter.
7.	Line 6 divided by line 1.
8.	Line 6 times 86,400 and divided by 3.6E6.
9.	From 2004 DOE stats for average U.S. residential price.
10.	Shell SQ175-PC solar panel, $699, 1.32m2 area.
11.	Exclusive of installation, inverter, interest, etc.

---

 
--Boot Hill

[NormsRevenge]

He's been on record for a long time re: energy and California , btw.

Build nukes,, what's so difficult about that?

---

http://republican.sen.ca.gov/web/mcclintock/article_detail.asp?PID=172

Solar Sophistries

Senator Tom McClintock
Date: April 6, 2001
Publication Type: Column Print Version

Published April 6, 2001 in the Los Angeles Daily News
Ever since the back-to-nature administration of Gov. Jerry Brown, politicians of both political parties have boasted that “California leads the way” in environmentally sensitive policies. One of the linchpins of these policies has been to actively discourage the construction of conventional power plants in California, preferring such trendy alternatives as “solar power,” the direct conversion of sunlight to electricity through photovoltaic panels.

As the energy shortage has intensified, so too has the commitment to solar power. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is considering a $100 million bond to build a photovoltaic generator for the city. California already offers to subsidize half the cost of household solar panels, and $50 million of additional subsidies was recently approved overwhelmingly by the State Senate.

At first glance, the advantages of photovoltaics are intriguing. Modern solar panels use a fuel that is inexhaustible and costs exactly nothing. It is not necessary to store the power for evening use: home rooftop photovoltaic panels can pump electricity into the grid during the day when most people are not at home, run the meter backwards and cancel out the cost of drawing from the grid in the evening hours.

With advantages like these, one wonders what took the San Francisco Board of Supervisors so long to think of it – and why the world, or at least California, hasn’t “gone solar.” Photovoltaic technology has been around since its discovery by Edmond Becquerel in 1839. After many years of intense solar subsidies, less than two one hundredths of one percent of California’s power is produced by photovoltaics. What’s wrong with this picture?

In all the solar exuberance, politicians would do well to heed the old maxim, “When it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn’t true.”

Consider first the production cost. The cheapest photovoltaic panels cost $6,000 per kilowatt to manufacture, producing peak power for about one fifth of the day under average conditions. Thus, to replace the 52.8 gigawatt-hours daily output of the single nuclear power plant at Diablo Canyon would cost about $66 billion – enough to build 13 Diablo Canyons, or 22 comparable nuclear plants with today’s technology.

Just to recoup the material costs would require 26.8-cents per kilowatt-hour over the 25-year life of the facility. This compares poorly to the 3-cent per kilowatt-hour that nuclear power now costs for construction, operations, maintenance and decommissioning.

And that doesn’t include land costs. A modern photovoltaic panel produces about 10 watts of peak power per square foot under average conditions. Replacing Diablo Canyon would require 35.9 square miles of solid solar panels.

Such comparisons aren’t fair, say the solar enthusiasts. Solar cells can be distributed among rooftops, producing all the power that homes would need. Never mind that solar panels don’t work in the shade and that shading is a major factor in reducing air conditioning needs.

An average home consumes about 19 kilowatt-hours of electricity each day. To meet this demand would require a peak capacity of 4 kilowatts of solar panels, at an initial cost of $24,000. At six percent interest, that homeowner would pay $154 per month, for the 25-year useful life of the panels or roughly twice the current average monthly electricity bill.

Why then, are homeowners purchasing them? Because solar panels are heavily subsidized with taxes, which hides their true cost. Even with 50 percent subsidies, the best that solar panels can do is to match the cost of today’s expensive electricity. And the comparison is illusory, since it would require roughly $100 billion in new taxes to provide such a subsidy to every family in the state.

Solar energy has taken great strides in efficiencies in the last ten years, but then again, so have nuclear power and many other technologies. If the industry’s progress continues, someday the economics of solar energy may pencil out. But at this moment in history, it doesn’t.

The great tragedy is that politicians routinely tout the solar option as the cure for the state's electricity shortage. It is the same tragedy created when quackery diverts seriously ill patients from proven remedies until it is too late to save them. The precious time since the electricity crisis became obvious last year has been squandered with such solar sophistries, and summer now approaches with no time left to build the conventional power plants to meet the demand.

[William Tell]

FairOpinion said: "We never heard from him, when there is something to be done."

Why do you expect McClintock to accomplish things which are not supported by the majority of Kalifornians? Arnold won the leadership and now he is leading.