Agreed. Two things still need to happen for solar to take off. Costs still have to come significantly, and some of the technologies for integrating solar into conventional building materials need to pan out.
Costs have come down steadily, just not enough, and I gather that there is a growing legitimate market for off-grid applications. No one would be happier than I if the lab guys produced a silver bullet, but we’re not there yet.
I don’t have a problem with solar and possibly some day with improvements in battery tech and lower costs it will be viable. What I have a problem with is our government giving away our money in the form of loans to their friends and then forcing a woefully deficient technology down our throats and charging us for it in increased costs from power companies.
If solar is going to make it find venture capitalist to fund it for profit.
There’s around 800MW of total Nameplate Capacity for all Solar Power in the US, around as much as for one medium sized coal fired plant. If all those Solar Plants produced at their maximum, which by the way means that a way has to be found to make the Sun shine for all night as well as all day, then they could deliver around 600Million KWH of power. They actually delivered 143 million KWH of power to the grids they are connected to. This gives them a power delivery efficiency of 23.8%, effectively meaning they too can only deliver their power for around 6 hours of each day. The rolling 6 month percentage only comes in at 13.1%, or around 3 hours a day.
Again, no Power Authority in its right mind would rely on Solar Power to make up part of the power they need, and anyway, it’s such a monumentally tiny amount that it’s not even looked at, let alone taken into consideration.
I compared all these Solar plants to one medium sized coal fired plant. This coal fired plant would have delivered 576 Million KWH, or just over four times as much power, That same coal fired plant would have delivered the same power as all those Solar Plants by 11AM on the 7th of June, or in just under seven and a half days.