184 replies to this topic

[stocks]

Spain, China, Germany etc are finding out -- Solar energy is a gigantic waste of capital

At the bottom of the energy efficiency barrel there lies solar – the most inefficient, least reliable and expensive form of power we have. Directly converting the sun’s rays into electricity is a horribly inefficient way to generate power simply because the energy – in that form – is so disperse. The energy density, in other words, is very, very low. There is no way to change that fact, or the fact that the sun doesn’t shine all the time.

Solar power is not and cannot be a major player in the direct generation of electric power. That is the simple, scientific reality.

link

Reality Check: Germany Does Not Get Half of its Energy from Solar Panels

The rise of social media means that facts are not checked, they are retweeted. Such is the case with renewable energy in Germany, where it appears almost anything is to be believed. Last year only 4.5% of Germany's gross electricity generation came from solar panels, far short of 50%.

The "solar revolution" that has supposedly occurred in Germany is not worth the name, and is mostly just a combination of hype and wishful thinking.

Media reports on solar in Germany focus on the peak, and not on the average. The average, well, that's one tenth of the peak, but that's not even half of the story.

The worst day of the year was January 18th when solar panels produced just over 0.1% of Germany's electricity demand. This statistic has, unsurprisingly, failed to elicit any headlines.



http://theenergycoll...ts-energy-solar

[stocks]

Germany’s Economics Minister and Vice Chancellor to Angela Merkel, Sigmar Gabriel:

the country’s highly ballyhooed transformation to renewable energy is “on the verge of failure“.

Moreover Gabriel was once the country’s environment minister and a devout believer in global warming and in Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth. In the speech Gabriel tells the audience how the energy transformation is on the verge of failure:

“Those who are the engines of the transformation to renewable energies ... don’t see how close we are to the failure of the energy transformation.”

Many in attendance seemed unable to fathom what Gabriel was unloading: the heady days at the green energy feeding trough are over – live with it.”

Germany’s Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel has indicated that the country will abandon its commitment to reducing CO2 emissions by 40 percent by 2020 from a 1990 base level.

In doing so he has won the ongoing clash with his own environmental minister Barbara Hendricks over energy policy, telling her that he will tolerate no further resistance to the change of direction, according to their Speigel.


http://www.breitbart...scend-in-Uproar

Edited by stocks, 17 November 2014 - 04:01 PM.

[Rogerdodger]

WORLD'S LARGEST SOLAR PLANT -- NOT PRODUCING MUCH ENERGY...

Sun isn't shining as often as expected...

(The article makes no mention of the thousands of bird deaths caused by the heat from the mirrors.)
Problems could include getting the thousands of mirrors pointed in precisely the right direction, especially in the cool early morning, or keeping them clean in the dusty Mojave Desert.
So far, however, the plant is producing about half of its expected annual output for 2014, according to calculations by the California Energy Commission.
Operators initially expected to need steam from gas-powered boilers for an hour a day during startup. After operations began, they found they needed to keep boilers running more than four times longer - an average of 4 1/2 hours a day.
State energy regulators in August approved the plant's request to increase the natural gas it is allowed to burn by 60 percent.
Additional natural gas could also be needed to operate boilers when clouds thicken or to maintain output at the end of the day and extend the capability for power production, the company said.
"Because the plant requires sunlight to heat water and turn it to steam, anything that reduces the sunlight will affect steam conditions, which could damage equipment and potentially cause unsafe conditions," said the commission, which approved the request for increased gas use.
Fromer said it was surprising that so much additional gas is needed, adding that it "signals to me they have some very large problems that they are going to need to sort out."

Edited by Rogerdodger, 17 November 2014 - 06:21 PM.

[AChartist]

I think the problem is with the sun, the light is weird, and doesnt warm my skin

[*JB*]

WORLD'S LARGEST SOLAR PLANT -- NOT PRODUCING MUCH ENERGY...

Sun isn't shining as often as expected...

(The article makes no mention of the thousands of bird deaths caused by the heat from the mirrors.)
Problems could include getting the thousands of mirrors pointed in precisely the right direction, especially in the cool early morning, or keeping them clean in the dusty Mojave Desert.
So far, however, the plant is producing about half of its expected annual output for 2014, according to calculations by the California Energy Commission.
Operators initially expected to need steam from gas-powered boilers for an hour a day during startup. After operations began, they found they needed to keep boilers running more than four times longer - an average of 4 1/2 hours a day.
State energy regulators in August approved the plant's request to increase the natural gas it is allowed to burn by 60 percent.
Additional natural gas could also be needed to operate boilers when clouds thicken or to maintain output at the end of the day and extend the capability for power production, the company said.
"Because the plant requires sunlight to heat water and turn it to steam, anything that reduces the sunlight will affect steam conditions, which could damage equipment and potentially cause unsafe conditions," said the commission, which approved the request for increased gas use.
Fromer said it was surprising that so much additional gas is needed, adding that it "signals to me they have some very large problems that they are going to need to sort out."

More from article -- "The operation of such plants is highly dependent on weather conditions, and predicting when and how strongly the sun will shine is not a perfect science.

A little bit of inefficiency with mirrors can translate into a loss of power output ranging from small to significant, said Dr. Neil Fromer, executive director of the Resnick Sustainability Institute at the California Institute of Technology.

Problems could include getting the thousands of mirrors pointed in precisely the right direction, especially in the cool early morning, or keeping them clean in the dusty Mojave Desert.""

Theory says that solar could power the world, real world technology shows that it is NOT ready for prime time....it is completely workable and unaffordable -- when talking about large scale -- especially to the end user.

Evolution, NOT revolution.

[Rogerdodger]

The government has had plans for hundreds of years for FREE Electricity but Big Utilities have kept it secret until now.
These secret plans have just been released under the freedom of information act.
Soon taxpayers all across America will be told to go fly a kite.
Billions have been awarded for research.
(Lightening is a natural consequence of solar energy.)

Edited by Rogerdodger, 18 November 2014 - 01:09 AM.

[stocks]

Spain, China, Germany etc are finding out -- Solar energy is a gigantic waste of capital

At the bottom of the energy efficiency barrel there lies solar – the most inefficient, least reliable and expensive form of power we have. Directly converting the sun’s rays into electricity is a horribly inefficient way to generate power simply because the energy – in that form – is so disperse. The energy density, in other words, is very, very low. There is no way to change that fact, or the fact that the sun doesn’t shine all the time.

Solar power is not and cannot be a major player in the direct generation of electric power. That is the simple, scientific reality.

Renewable energy 'simply WON'T WORK': Top Google engineers

Windmills, solar, tidal - all a 'false hope', say Stanford PhDs

At the start, we had shared the attitude of many stalwart environmentalists: We felt that with steady improvements to today’s renewable energy technologies, our society could stave off catastrophic climate change. We now know that to be a false hope ...

Renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.

Even if one were to electrify all of transport, industry, heating and so on, so much renewable generation and balancing/storage equipment would be needed to power it that astronomical new requirements for steel, concrete, copper, glass, carbon fibre, neodymium, shipping and haulage etc etc would appear. All these things are made using mammoth amounts of energy: far from achieving massive energy savings, which most plans for a renewables future rely on implicitly, we would wind up needing far more energy, which would mean even more vast renewables farms - and even more materials and energy to make and maintain them and so on. The scale of the building would be like nothing ever attempted by the human race.

In reality, well before any such stage was reached, energy would become horrifyingly expensive - which means that everything would become horrifyingly expensive (even the present well-under-one-per-cent renewables level in the UK has pushed up utility bills very considerably). This in turn means that everyone would become miserably poor and economic growth would cease (the more honest hardline greens admit this openly).


http://www.theregist...gineers/?page=1

[Rogerdodger]

Remember how those new screwy lightbulbs, filled with toxic mercury would save the environment?

26% of 625,000 CFLs are going into Canada's landfills and water supply annually.

While fluorescents contain only a small amount of mercury, it is highly persistent in the environment and can get into the food chain and build up in the body, causing a myriad of health problems.

LINK

[Rogerdodger]

Sun Edison Buying First Wind Scam

"Ask yourself, why would a newly capitalized company want to acquire a debt ridden albatross like First Wind? When SunEdison Spin-Off TerraForm Power Scores Hot IPO came to market, a smell of a Wall Street bailout using another shell public company reeks. Since First Wind failed in their own IPO offering, just maybe a careful examination into the filings of these companies is warranted.

Selling shares of public companies to pension funds for eventual shorting from the house accounts of underwriting firms is a favorite strategy that if caught, only gets a slap on the wrist.

The lack of disclosure of ALL the debt for projects that cannot even satisfy minimum interest payments must less retiring the actual obligations,
is indicative of an industry that is based upon fraud and uncompetitive costs.

Wind proponents want you to believe that Wind Power Forecasting in U.S. Electricity Markets are based upon true figures of literal production that goes into the grid for actual consumer use.
Nothing could be further from the truth.

Edited by Rogerdodger, 13 December 2014 - 10:40 AM.

[Rogerdodger]

I still have not installed my solar panels, but the price I paid in 2012 is much lower than current pricing.

But there's no big hurry...unless N. Korea decides to shut down more than Sony.
So far in December our state has seen only 17% of the available sunlight due to persistant cloud cover.

Edited by Rogerdodger, 20 December 2014 - 05:03 PM.