From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Wed Dec 12 2001 - 10:14:44 MST
"S.J. Van Sickle" wrote:
>
> I don't think land or the aesthetics of land use will be a significant
> barrier to the adoption of solar power. Price, and its intermittant
> nature, are much more serious problems. If price dropped about an order
> of magnitude, though, I think it could become very attractive for a lot of
> uses (including residential). Personally, I think that solar and nuclear
> power complement each other well.
The difficulty with this handwaving is that a) solar power currently
costs two to four times the cost per kwh of other energy sources, b) the
largest components of the manufacturing cost of solar cells are energy
costs and dealing with the hazardous byproducts. You need, therefore,
for energy prices to rise to make solar cells competetive, however, as
energy prices rise, so does the cost of manufacturing the solar cells,
further pricing them out of the market. Thus, this is a very catch-22
situation that requires not economies of scale, but technologies of
manufacture that greatly reduce the amount of energy required to produce
each solar cell.
On a different note, right now is the best time in 40 years to invest in
renewable energy generation. Since renewables are so capital intensive
in up front costs (while operating costs are negligible), the cost of
renewables generation is highly affected by interest rates. With
interest rates at an all time low, it is a great time to invest in such
technology: OTEC, solar, wind, hydropower, wave energy, etc
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