these negative arguments all sound similar.

first you get the gold standard comparison, whereas one bashes all the little faults of solar as though some other perfect power source exists.

then comes the tried and true nuclear. of course once all costs are added in, it goes off the charts. and yes, we can finger point at the new stuff, just like the coal people point at 'clean coal' although neither tech has a single implementation in this country and is unlikely to for many years and with many unproven facets yet to manage. heck my current power bill has a 'nuclear decommissioning fee' added on to pay for an abandoned plant.

and then come the tax credit attacks. of course it completely ignores the entire power industry runs on vasts tax rebates, credits and incentives.

but the biggest fault is when the comparison leave out the true costs of a power source. coal is cheap, that is until they want to build the plant next to your house. the drastic environmental costs start to add a bit of a kick to the costs of coal or any fossil fuel.

i'm not saying any power source is perfect, but what does help is a mix of sources suited to regional use and it is a nice benefit to our health when that source doesn't actively produce products that harm us or the environment. solar can actually work well at the local level and it requires no complicated or costly efforts in comparison to trying to erect a nuclear plant. it helps solve some problems at the same time.

also the argument that solar (or wind) needs to be backed by another power source is silly. all power sources have downtime associated with them. the grid has an appropriate mix of sources as well as active management to account for this. solar tends to operate during peak demand for that matter.

the problem with nuclear is not the tech, it is the management. it is just near impossible to manage the lifecycle cost effectively as all the different interests involved have different priorities other than nuclear power. management risk is also a huge hurdle, but if we start actively putting an accurate price on fossil fuel use, it will start to look much better.

http://www.juandemariana.org/pdf/090327-employment-public-aid-renewable.pdf

2.2 jobs are lost per "green job" created by the spanish government's subsidies. The spanish solar bubble is also detailed.

"solar power has come to grid parity point, no longer pointless!"

Why is it that the government has to step in and make ridiculous promises such as Spain's ~€0.4 per kWh in order for people to install the damned things?

First of all, let me introduce you to the concept of capacity factor. If you buy a 500 W solar panel and put it in Arizona at just the right angle you'll get an average power output slightly less than 100 W. The capacity factor is ~20%.

If you compare a nuclear plant at $4/W(fairly typical when counting interest payments, regulatory costs, decommissioning and other related costs) and a solar panel at $4/W you can't just go "Aha, price parity". The nuclear plant has a capacity factor of 90%, the solar panel less than 20%(often way less), there's at least a factor 4.5 difference in cost here and that's under very rosy assumptions.

Even if you get that solar panel down to $1/W it will still be intermittent. Each watt of solar power must be backed up by 1 W of natural gas(or hydropower, but there's not much to go around and it tends to not be in same geographical region as good solar resources).

The solar panel will only last some 20 years. A nuclear plant will last 60 years(most current plants had a design life of 40 years and have been granted license extensions to 60 years when requested. Current reactor designs have a design life of 60 years but it can probably be extended to 80 or more.)

You're still nowhere near price parity.

There will never be any storage on the grid that is sufficient for a renewables-only grid or even a renewables-mostly grid. The cost of building it would dwarf world GDP many times over even if it were possible to find enough good spots for pumped storage. Solar power will always be a little niché source and it has no place in a post-carbon grid apart from maybe running the air conditioning.

Ugly American said: "...and assume the plants will last 40 years (no civilian nuke plant ever has!)"

Calder Hall in northwest England operated from 1956 to 2003 (47 years). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellafield

Ugly American are you really an American, or do you claim to be one while posting BS that makes Americans look bad?

FYI, Oyster Creek station in NJ has been operating since Dec. 1, 1969, so it will be 40 in 8 months. It recently got a 20-year licence extension, bringing it's lifespan to 60 years. Most US plants nearing their 40th anniversary have recieved another 20-year extension.

I'm all for solar, but let's not use lies to promote it, and don't post false information while saying people should do their research.

Nevada Solar One is the 3rd biggest thermal solar plant in the world. Its finished price was $4/watt including a week's worth of thermal storage AND natural gas backup turbines.

The new coal plant the power company wants here (Ely) is budgeted $5/watt to build AND $0.70 a watt/year for fuel ($700M) and that doesn't count disposal of waste.

The new thin film solar plant here will be the biggest in the world by far and has a contract price of $1/watt.

Can you see that? $1/watt.

Inside nuclear industry contracts put their front price at $6/watt and assume the plants will last 40 years (no civilian nuke plant ever has!) and that tax payers will cover the cost of waste disposal.

So yes, there are government corruption and railroading when it comes to energy but it's the coal and nuke industry that's doing it.

Should I point out the geothermal plant in Italy that has been running for a century and SELLS it's power for $0.01/kwh?

solar power has come to grid parity point, no longer pointless! check out http://www.dmsolar.com/ for competitive price,

I don't think it needs to be that cheap to be affordable for home installation. Easily 300/400 euros would make it mainstream, only about a weeks wages.

Anyway, I just got this thought and perhaps it's stupid, but I've never seen a wind turbine with more than 1 fan. Surely they could easily stick another on the back and increase efficiency, unless they already do this.

Just found a good concept combining solar panels here http://windystocks.com/img/bluenergy.jpg

Much like corn-based ethanol in the US (one of the less efficient ways to make ethanol, but it has a really nice political constituency, so might as well keep subsidizing!), solar is going down the path of being the next best thing until we realize gov'ts should not try to pre-determine market outcomes they really don't understand through subsidies. Not only is there the efficiency issue (which is significant), there are also issue with delivering consistent loads (base vs peak) and being able to transmit efficiently to places where solar works even worse then the 'good' places. At least in the US, the grid is developed ot work efficiently where power is produced locally (like coal plants) and very poorly and inefficiently when moving electricity larger distances. There is a decent article in the MIT technology journal a couple of months back to the tree hugging nuts who are asking for sources.

The latest scam in the US is politicians now saying solar will reduce our dependency on oil, which is pretty much an outright lie as the US gets a fairly minimal amount of electricity from oil - most comes from coal and natural gas, ~20% from nuclear and smaller chunks from hydro, solar, wind, geothermal, etc.

Apparently they would have us believe that hybrid and/or electric cars can only run on electricity generated from solar sources! Solar is PURELY an environmental lobby, and there are still better environmental solutions (wind, nuclear to name 2) and 'cleaner' sources (like nat gas) which isn't perfect, but better than coal. The ironic thing is the more we switch to eco-friendly sources, the cheaper coal becomes and the bigger economic advantage places like China gets importing cheap coal (from the US) as they are building over one new coal plant per week and the more disadvantage countries that go solar are at.

Another ironic thing, is that one of the issues with wind energy in the US, is getting efficient transmission lines to the "wind corridor" (pretty much a band that runs North-south through entire US in the midwest). There apparently are a lot of environmental lawsuits when proposals to build new transmission lines to get to these areas.

Hopefully the massive debts being run around the world will make politicians take a second look at these subsidies and let an efficient solution be a large part of the equation (Ironically, if the subsidies were done by companies, or by a gov't in an industry not deemed to be 'good', there would probably be fines for anti-competitiveness by places like the EU).

Until them we'll keep pumping money into solar when it might be more efficient to just burn the money (or not print it)!

Have you published an update on your PV system recently, I'm interested to know how it has performed during winter 08/09 ?

Ok. so whats your source of infrmation? ah ya, its only personal info, no backups with sources

A solar tower :)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6616651.stm

Until solar panels are available to small scale users for under 100 euro for a 1kW @ 24v panel there is no way they will make any impact.

Daryl is quit correct in stating that without government support there would be no industry.

. . . Actually, solar power is just farming the government.

Solar panels don't provide sufficient power, for their cost, in most situations.

The only reason most solar panels are installed is government tax incentives. People get money back for installing unnecessary solar panels. If those solar panels had not been built in the first place, there would be less pollution.

Maybe in the future, solar panels will become viable in a big way. But in the meantime, the only thing driving the solar industry is tax incentives from governments. If governments have less money to waste on paying people to install pointless solar panels, fewer people will want to waste their money installing pointless solar panels.