Solar prices are about to go up

[mrybas]

Originally Posted by newhaul

I wonder what their hurricane procedures are. Seems all it would take is a real bad winter to sink the whole project.

There's been a wind farm off Block Island (same area) for years. The blades shut down at a certain speed. Not sure if they feather to reduce wind resistance. But with the huge cost of setting up a wind farm, I'm sure the engineers designed it to withstand hurricane force winds.

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by mrybas

There's been a wind farm off Block Island (same area) for years. The blades shut down at a certain speed. Not sure if they feather to reduce wind resistance. But with the huge cost of setting up a wind farm, I'm sure the engineers designed it to withstand hurricane force winds.

feathering would make sense

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by mrybas

The problem is likely your house. A small home, well designed and insulated, with efficient lighting should certainly be able to be powered by solar. I live on my boat with 700 watts of solar providing nearly all of the power. Most houses are bigger than my boat, but so are their roof tops.

my old home had 200 watts which ran it ok. My new home currently has 200 watts rigid mounted on rails and 200 watts deployable flex panels. Still seeing if its enough if not I will be adding my own wind farm . ( An airx 400. ) now if I could trust a powerwall on the boat I would be miles ahead.
( also to expensive for me)

[zboss]

Originally Posted by SV THIRD DAY

Bingo...more Crony Crapitalism on display.

We will have to disagree here. Yes, solar should get subsidies because it's an actual growth business. The ROI from a subsidy investment by the USA is through the roof (as it were). It's been the biggest job growth industry since the dot.com bubble.

Coal, Oil, and so forth are only growth industries in other nations. By reducing the solar panel subsidy, the prices of panels go up, lowering demand. We can agree on that right? If your are not getting your power from solar you have to get it from somewhere... mainly coal, oil, and natural gas. Coal is a huge money sucker and they need all the money they can get. If they free up funding from solar they can dump it into coal. Coal gets the subsidy, the price to produce coal goes down and the companies stay viable.

All while keeping the balance sheet steady.

Trump to Increase Subsidy for Coal Mining on Federal Lands

[SV THIRD DAY]

Originally Posted by zboss

Yes, solar should get subsidies because it's an actual growth business.

So you or the Government gets to pick winners and lowers in the economy...oh ya...that has a great track record and will work out well for Tax Payers. In California they can't sell some houses now because the solar lease SCAM put more debt into their Property tax bill for the solar than they can sell their house for...they are scrambling now to end/fix that fiasco. It's the 2008 Housing Fiasco all over again, all because someone came up with the bright idea that Government needed to subsidize an industry that was giving it campaign contributions.

[CarlF]

Sorry for the thread drift, but offshore wind is at least tangentially associated with cruising. And it gives me an excuse to attach the coolest "hard aground" video I've ever seen.

Windfarms have taken damage in several cat 5 hurricanes in China. There were some bent blades. A couple of towers fell over. But it was quickly repaired. A busted wind tower is cheap compared to an offshore oil platform sinking in a hurricane. You're always going to have some damage in a Cat5. Wind farms seem to do better than most things.

The blades do feather. You need to do this for thunderstorm gusts too. They also now have the wind towers talk to each other so that when one is hit by a gust it tells all the towers downwind to feather before the gust gets there.

It's hard for people in the US to realize how much money (and jobs) is going into offshore wind elsewhere in the world. The experience has driven the price down. Germany just approved two wind farms with no subsidies. That's why the huge new Massachusetts and New York wind farms are being built by European companies. They will do it cheaper and better. Embarrassing that the US can't compete. When Massachusetts opens in 2025, it's expected the electricity will cost $0.12/kWh - about the average cost of other forms. The next wind farms to be completed in 2029 will be $0.079 kWh. Of course, solar is cheaper. It's already under $0.02wWh in some places. But the sun isn't out all the time so you need other energy sources. Storage is still very expensive.

To get an idea of the money going into this, here's a video of a ship that Maersk built that can only do one thing - run aground to make the last mile connection of offshore wind to the grid ashore. This whole thing apparently is just to save putting a splice in the cable. Cool video. It puts a whole new light on running aground:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8rhG265esk

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by zboss

We will have to disagree here. Yes, solar should get subsidies because it's an actual growth business. The ROI from a subsidy investment by the USA is through the roof (as it were). It's been the biggest job growth industry since the dot.com bubble.

Coal, Oil, and so forth are only growth industries in other nations. By reducing the solar panel subsidy, the prices of panels go up, lowering demand. We can agree on that right? If your are not getting your power from solar you have to get it from somewhere... mainly coal, oil, and natural gas. Coal is a huge money sucker and they need all the money they can get. If they free up funding from solar they can dump it into coal. Coal gets the subsidy, the price to produce coal goes down and the companies stay viable.

All while keeping the balance sheet steady.

Trump to Increase Subsidy for Coal Mining on Federal Lands

your linked article was written by an actor that also teaches a class in creative writing of fiction and poetry at johns hopkins university, And this makes him a good political analyst?

[a64pilot]

Efficiency is the key to energy savings.
Electric cars shift the power from gasoline to the grid, and don’t forget transmission losses, they are not insignificant.
As far as hybrids causing pollution due to the battery banks and rare earth magnets used in their motor / generators, don’t forget those are recycled, not because some government mandates it, but because an entrepreneur can make a buck doing so, they have value and are sold.
If some Jackass in sitting in the left lane is going slow, that is because there is no driving discipline in the US, it is not due to the vehicle. I usually pass them in my Prius in the right lane, the left lane is the SUV and pickup lane.

I say again, if you really want to make Solar work or save energy etc., make it so that it makes economic sense to do so, without government intervention.
The Government on one hand will subsidize “Green” companies, and on the other hand make it so that full size pickups and SUV’s do not count for CAFE standards?

Meanwhile the poster child for Solar and carbon neutral uses how much power for his house per month?
https://www.snopes.com/politics/business/gorehome.asp
Al Gore’s monthly energy consumption would power a cruising boat for years, don’t you think?


We won’t know how much Solar power costs until it is no longer subsidized, this is true for everything of course not just Solar power

[decktapper]

Originally Posted by james247

My president isn't doing this. As a cruiser I won't be visiting America ie USA until you get a new president who can see beyond his p.......
And realise that there are a few climate issues in the world. Good luck

Good Thank you and we will not miss you.

[SV THIRD DAY]

Originally Posted by decktapper

Good Thank you and we will not miss you.

The hilarious thing is that the Obama and Trump haters are just opposite sides of the same coin. It's funny to watch really....sad...but funny as each side thinks they have the moral high ground, while both standing in quicksand.

[daletournier]

Originally Posted by SV THIRD DAY

So you or the Government gets to pick winners and lowers in the economy...oh ya...that has a great track record and will work out well for Tax Payers. In California they can't sell some houses now because the solar lease SCAM put more debt into their Property tax bill for the solar than they can sell their house for...they are scrambling now to end/fix that fiasco. It's the 2008 Housing Fiasco all over again, all because someone came up with the bright idea that Government needed to subsidize an industry that was giving it campaign contributions.

Free markets, where did they go? Yep, the government knows best, central planning that's the way!!!! History shows these things end badly.

I use Tesla as an example regularly, never made a profit, burns through crazy amounts of cash, heavily subsidised and has a market cap almost as big as GM, yet sells very few vehicles relative to GM, these subsidies distort markets.
But hey let's keep the free money tap on.

[Island Time O25]

If you study the big picture - no major economic transition was implemented without some massive gov't involvement.

Rail tracks were not built by free market but by coercive gov't power of eminent domain as well as gov't largesse in providing access to vast tracks of Federally and State owned lands. To wire the country electrically we needed a massive ROW/eminent domain intrusion into the property ownership rights. To switch from horse buggies to autos we needed not just gov't mandated eminent domain takings but also direct gov't involvement in building roads, bridges etc. Or do you think that all the roads in the 20th c were build by the magic hand of free market? How's the gov't support of the next major switch i.e. to renewable energy is different?

BTW does anyone here thinks it be a good idea if every road, bridge and intersection were privately owned and operated under a myriad of different private standards? Would the economy and our lives benefit from such free market approach to a commonly used resource? Why is energy, a commonly used resource, should be any different? I would rather put all of our political resources and criticism into cleaning up our government and protecting the voting public from the influence of lobbyists and special interest groups, which cleansing would do infinitely more good than subsidizing another expiring industry. Think of the gov't in the early 1900s worrying about dwindling profits of the horse sellers and putting up barriers to auto manufacturers and road building.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

The Prius I have had since 2010 has returned on average over 50 MPG, which is its MPG rating.
100% of its power is from gasoline. Just from its fuel consumption alone being half or less than average it’s tough to not make a case for it being eco friendly.

Thats worse MPG than I thought they had. Our 2005 Corolla 2l diesel does 55 MPG (imperial gallons), that's using diesel and diesel in Europe (except UK) is usually a lot cheaper than petrol, I start to realize why I see very few prius on the road here.

A bit more on topic,
EU introduced tariffs on solar cells from China some years ago. No idea if the tariffs are still there but it never made much of a difference since almost all cells was and still are imported from Asia regardless of brand.

[CaptTom]

Originally Posted by rwidman

The pollution is just moved from the city to some poor rural neighborhood where the city dwellers can't see or smell it..

Yes, but there are other factors. For example, what if you charged the electric car using solar power? Or for that matter, any off-peak power from wind, hydro or nuclear? A lot of energy is wasted idling a large gasoline engine, which is sized for the maximum power needs of the vehicle. If you get rid of the engine (or use a smaller one, as in a hybrid) and only use the power you need, it's a lot more efficient.

Originally Posted by rwidman

The problem is, the general public doesn't care about efficiency. They take off from a traffic light like a bat out of hell then drive up to a red light and hit the brakes at the last minute..

How about getting rid of the traffic lights? Then we wouldn't have to keep racing to beat the next one.

The whole idea of traffic lights has been taken to an extreme. I've spent probably years of my life sitting at red lights, with no-one coming the other way. Apparently cities and towns don't hire Mensa candidates to do their traffic analysis. It seems like every time there's an area with back-ups or slow-downs, the solution is to put up a light and cause even more back-ups!

I could go on about pointless stop signs. Don't get me started.

Originally Posted by mrybas

There's been a wind farm off Block Island (same area) for years. The blades shut down at a certain speed. Not sure if they feather to reduce wind resistance. But with the huge cost of setting up a wind farm, I'm sure the engineers designed it to withstand hurricane force winds.

Yes. They feather the blades and rotate the nacelle to minimize wind resistance. It's a very complex engineering, environmental modeling and programming process. Fascinating stuff. If I were at the other end of my career I'd be signing up to work on wind turbines. Plus the view from the top..wow!

[skipgundlach]

OT warning...

Originally Posted by CaptTom

Clip...



How about getting rid of the traffic lights? Then we wouldn't have to keep racing to beat the next one.

The whole idea of traffic lights has been taken to an extreme. I've spent probably years of my life sitting at red lights, with no-one coming the other way. Apparently cities and towns don't hire Mensa candidates to do their traffic analysis. It seems like every time there's an area with back-ups or slow-downs, the solution is to put up a light and cause even more back-ups!

I could go on about pointless stop signs. Don't get me started.

clip....

At one point in my life, when I actually had a job, I lived about 25 miles from where I worked. I used a road which had a 4-way stop at nearly every intersection.

Over the 4 years I lived in the first house in the area, intersections went from stop signs to traffic lights.

At every change, an exact 5 minutes was added to my commute. What started as a 30 minute drive turned into a 90 minute drive.

I don't know about pointless or useless stop signs, if you live in a busy area, but I can say for sure that lights didn't work as well.

Other areas use roundabouts which, while they slow the flow vs a straight-through drive, allow for all levels of congestion to move smoothly at whatever speed works...

We now return you to your regular programming, arguing about the price of solar