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The High Costs of Solar Electric Power by

Promotion of solar power generation is booming. After analyzing a few of these announcements one is left with quite a few questions. Why are solar farms built when financial data clearly show that solar power is still the most expensive electricity generation technology available?

Solar power plant developers and marketers obviously know that they need to lower costs. Cost reduction is, however, expensive and takes time. Many new enterprises have been formed and want to become profitable when the big construction boom in solar power plants will hit the road. In the meantime they must pay bills, advance their technologies, and stay alive.

There are two major technologies for solar energy conversion. One approach is based on the conversion of sunlight into heat and using the heat for the generation of steam. This concept has progressed to a relatively high readiness level. Electricity production with steam is a very mature technology. Remaining technical risks, therefore, relate exclusively to the design of the thermal concentrators or parabolic mirrors that optically transfer thermal radiation to a heat transfer medium and to the design of the heat receiving transfer and steam containment surfaces.

The other technology is the direct, photovoltaic conversion of sunlight into electricity. This technology will most likely become the dominant solar electric power generating technology – eventually. The big question for investors and for marketers is the uncertain duration of “eventually”. Converting sunlight directly into electricity is much more elegant and will almost certainly become less expensive than thermal conversion – eventually.

Very recently, IBM proposed a third concept, a kind of a hybrid approach. In this concept, the sunlight is concentrated onto a solar panel. This approach reduces panel area and saves lots of expensive silicon. But it generates another problem. The concentrated sunshine creates very high surface temperatures on the solar panel. To save solar panel area and make the solar panel price competitive, one must cool the surface of the solar panel very efficiently to prevent it from melting and destruction.

Installing highly effective cooling loops and providing a low temperature cooling medium presents a new set of technical challenges and costs. We will have to wait and see how IBM will solve these issues.

Present production costs for generating electricity with solar panels are hovering around $0.50 per kWh. This compares with an average US retail price for electric power of $0.095/kWh. Right now, solar power does not yet make economical sense.

All renewable energies share this distinction. None of the available technologies using renewable energy can compete with the cost of electricity generation from coal.

This is also one of numerous examples where free markets perform poorly. The technologies for generating electricity with solar power, wind power, marine power, and geothermal power are very well understood. What is missing is the industrial hardening of these processes and related hardware. This process of moving a technology from the demonstration plant stage to a more dependable and less costly mature system status is the most critical, costly, and dangerous step when developing industrial systems, which must operate uninterrupted 24/7 for thousands of hours on end.

The US cannot reduce its carbon dioxide emissions and cannot achieve energy independence without employing renewable energies for electric power generation and for the critical production of liquid transportation fuels.

At present, a respectable number of windmill farms and solar panel farms are being installed. Forward thinking industrial and public entities take the liberty to impose hidden taxes on the consumers of electric power in industry, in commercial enterprises, and in homes.

Solar power does not make economical sense, yet. However, by providing an income guarantee for investors, the crucial hardening and cost reduction phase of full size solar farms will be shortened tremendously.

There is one inherent danger in this approach. The consumers of electricity pay for this most crucial development phase while other participating parties make out handily. Effective controls for avoiding unproductive duplication of certain types of solar farms are sorely missing.

Duplication of experience is much less valuable than gaining broad experience from competing technologies and installations. Well engineered solar power farms can indicate their readiness for more widespread applications after a couple of uninterrupted, full capacity, generation campaigns. At completion, qualified technology leaders can begin to compete and can drive down total system installation costs by a variety of cost reduction measures.

Where are we now? A random sampling of recent announcements of solar farm installations reveals that system installation costs are in the $3000 to $7500 per kW installed capacity. These plant costs loosely translate into a cost of producing electric power at $0.30 to $0.60 per kWh. This very unfavorably compares to the cost of electricity generation by any other technology.

These figures do not yet contain the costs of energy storage. As long as solar power constitutes only a very small fraction of overall electric power generation, the additional costs of storing intermittently produced electric power are not yet of concern. If the US is going to depend significantly on the intermittent production of electricity from solar power and wind power, it must begin to develop storage technologies for huge amounts of electric energy. Frequent brownouts due to lack of wind and sunshine are unacceptable in advanced economies. Intermittent, renewable energies and electric energy storage are inseparable. This is a technology field where inventors, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists still can shine.

Dr. Hemsath recently published the book: CLIMATE CHANGE – GOLD RUSH OR DISASTER? For 50 years he has worked as scientist, process engineer, Corporate Vice President of R&D, Company President, CEO, and Inventor. He holds more than 60 US Patents. He is working on a new book: “THE SOLUTION FOR ENDING GLOBAL WARMING AND CLIMATE CHANGE”. Go to http://www.thermalexpert.com
Article Source: Sustainable Living

The world has an energy problem. The supply of the main source of energy, the oil, is gradually running out. The use of oil, coal and other fossil energy sources is polluting the planet with greenhouse gasses that are capturing heat from the sun rays in a dangerous degree.

But also most alternative energy sources give problems for the environment. Some of them take up vast areas of land, like bio-fuel production, extensive solar cell plants and wind mills. Extensive use of croplands to produce bio-diesel, methanol, ethanol or other bio-fuels can cause a chronic hunger catastrophe. Others, like nuclear power stations can accidently destroy the environment of vast areas and potentially kill millions of people. Also leakage from deposits of nuclear waste can give the same effect. But nuclear power is very clean if everything goes well.

As it seems, there is no easy or elegant political or technical solution to the problem. The problem must be challenged with a clever combination of several means.

An important module in the solution is energy economization. Where it is possible one must use engines, technology and logistics that utilize the energy as effectively as possible. One must also stop using energy on activities that do not result in any added comfort, do not give gain of any sort, or give only marginal resulted value. By using the energy sources more effectively, the World’s energy need will perhaps drop by so much as 30%.

Then the use of oil and coal must be replaced with all kinds of alternative energy sources, but no alternative must be used in such an extend or such a way that it cause new problems.

One part of the solution is using bio diesel or other bio-fuels made of waste from croplands. In the process of converting the waste to fuel, the content of minerals in the waste can probably also be extracted and sold as fertilizers. But it is unethical to grow crop just for making bio-fuel, since that can cause food shortage and rise of food prizes.

Use of solar energy to make electricity will be a great part of the solution. Theoretically every roof and outer wall in the world can be covered by solar cell panels, even though it will not be estheticly or practically possible to go so far. Wastelands that have little other value can also be used to mount large solar cell plants. There is however a limit on how much solar cell panels you can mount before the environment is disturbed.

Much more electricity can be produced by wind-mills than today, but there is a limit on the number and extent of wild-mill parks you can set up before the environment is heavily disturbed. In areas like Denmark and Northern Germany the disturbing effects can already be seen clearly.

In many areas the waves in the sea or the stream of tide water can be used to produce electricity in a commercially economical fashion, but again there is a limit on how far you can go in building wave or tidal power plants before you destroy the environment.

The wind can also be used more directly, as it were in former periods. Sails can be mounted on large ships, especially on large cargo carriers. However, the sail rigs will probably look quite differently than those of the old vessels, and be operated automatically by computers.

Many countries have special natural energy resources that lend themselves to easily exploitation. Geothermal energy is one of these. Iceland is extensively using geothermal heat directly or to produce electricity. This technology can probably be extended for use in areas where the geothermal heat is somewhat more hidden, but still relative close to the surface.

Heat pumps are installations using a reversed refrigerator technology to carry heat from the outside environment to the inside of a building where it is concentrated to a higher temperature. The heat can then be used for warming the building or other applications. Heat pumps need some electricity to work, but extract more energy from the outside that they consume. More extensive use of heat pumps can give a great amount of the energy needed for heating,.Heat pumps can also be used to fetch geothermal energy of low temperature and concentrate it to a higher temperature without digging very deep.

Hydroelectric power plants using the natural fall of water from high to low areas have long been a major source of electric energy, and many of the existing plants can be made more efficient. To some extend new plants can also be built, but there is a limit also on this technology before the impact on the environment gets too heavy.

Unfortunately it is not possible to avoid using more nuclear power than today if the energy crisis shall be solved. There are however new developments in this area that makes nuclear power less dangerous. Scientists are right now developing a new type of reactors that will use thorium as a fuel and that will be work subcritically. The reactions in these reactors cannot go out of control. The waste also will cease to radiate after some hundred years, and not many thousand, so the storing of waste will be less problematic. But still there will be waste that must be handled safely.

Most alternative energy sources produce electricity, but it is not always practical to use the electricity directly. It is however possible to use the electricity to produce hydrogen, and the hydrogen can then be used as a clean fuel in applications where electricity does not fit.

In the long run, use of fusion power will probably be the permanent solution. But commercial fusion plant will probably still not be available in the next forty years.There is however a joker that might show up to be salvage of the world’s energy problem, namely cold fusion. This seems to be a real phenomenon, and not a misunderstanding as many thought and still thinks. But one does still not know if this phenomenon can be used practically to produce useful energy.

Author, Knut Holt is an internet marketer and consultant focusing at technical, health and scientific items. To find items like car equipment, remote control models, airsoft guns, chemistry sets, electronic kits and components, microscopes, binoculars, night vision instruments, music instruments, computers, PDAs and more: http://www.mydeltapi.com Also health advices, fitness products and natural products to treast diseases, please visit:http://www.abicana.com
Article Source: Articles Sustainable Living

From: Renewable Energy

For anyone that lives in Wilmington, DE that is wondering if you can get solar energy grants, the answer is anyone can get a grant for solar power if you qualify. In order to find out if you qualify for a grant for geo energy, you need to take time to do your own research on this subject. This article is going to provide as much information as possible, but more research will be required to find out for sure if you can receive a grant.

Many people know that solar grants serve a really good purpose because the more renewable energy sources that can be installed and used; the better it is on the planet. They also allow many people to start using solar power that wouldn’t be able to without the grants. Not to mention the amount of money people will save on their electric bills every month.

These grants are being issued by the government for many people because they are starting to realize how important this is to the economy and to the problem of global warming. With solar power, the effects of global warming are reduced because they are not dependent on expensive fuels that pollute the air around you.

When searching for information about this subject, always take time to learn as many tips on grants as possible. This will help you determine more easily if this is a grant that can be used for helping you get the solar power needed to power your home’s electricity. The internet is the best place to go for researching this subject because there is a lot of useful information to be found.

Besides using the internet, in the United States, the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy or the EERE is your best place to call for information on solar grants. They will be able to provide much needed information because they are involved in many strategies that will help to increase the use of renewable energy.

Always take time to check with the state that you live in to find out what their requirements are for receiving a grant for adding solar energy to power your home. Each state may vary on the requirements, so always check this before trying to get any grant for solar energy. Don’t just assume that you can’t get solar energy grants until you have taken the time to do the research to determine this for sure.

Wise Power Systems, Inc. is a full service supplier of consumer-sized wind and solar power installations. We are located in Wilmington, Delaware and serve customers in the Mid-Atlantic region. For more information, go to http://wisepowersystems.com or all Bill Rawheiser at (302) – 351 – 4613 or e-mail at williamr@wiseps.com