Is California building wrong kind of solar?

[XemaSab]

Ex-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger made his way to a remote desert location last October, not far from Interstate 15, which runs between Southern California and Las Vegas. So did U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and bunches of utility executives.

All pronounced themselves thrilled to mark what they called a landmark advance in energy, the start of work on a huge solar power farm that will help meet the state's goal of producing one-third of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020.

The project, on a site near the Mojave Desert's Ivanpah dry lake, is the second-largest of six solar thermal energy projects Salazar has greenlighted to use about 12,000 acres of federal land for 30 years or more. The largest is eight miles west of Blythe, near the Arizona border and a bit closer to Los Angeles. This one was greenlighted three weeks after Ivanpah.

These two big projects will generate about 1,000 new jobs, making them a significant component of the "green" job growth counted on by current Gov. Jerry Brown. When finished, they will produce about 709 megawatts from 28,000 solar dishes and panels, enough to power about 300,000 homes year-round.

http://www.redding.com/news/2011/mar/01/tom-elias-is-california-building-wrong-kind-of/

(The gist of the piece is that rooftop solar creates as many jobs and is cheaper.)

[Vinnie From Indy]

1. Not to be a dick or anything, but

would it not have been appropriate to at least EXPLAIN why CA might be building the "wrong" kind of solar. The paragraphs you chose disclose nothing about the OP title.

Cheers!

[XemaSab]

2. I added a sentence explaining what the piece was about

:P

[NNadir]

3. In an impoverished world, particularly in California, birth of the "I hate teachers" movement

any subsidy for solar energy of any type is wrong.

Are the schools sufficiently funded? Health care needs? Mass transit?

When I lived in California, which was before my 16 year old son was born everyone was talking about how solar would save California.

In fact, when I was sixteen myself, there was lots and lots and lots of cheering for exactly the same thing.

In fact when Jerry Brown was sixteen, the same thing was going on.

What, exactly, is the point of consuming energy to "debate" solar energy? If it was so great, it would be able to run the computers, in California and elsewhere, dedicated to saying how great it is.

It can't, and that's precisely the point of why it's a horrible waste.

[Kolesar]

16. when Jerry Brown was sixteen

:puke:

[NNadir]

17. When Jerry Brown was sixteen, the linked magazine ads, put out by Bell Labs ran in major magazines.

http://www.porticus.org/bell/belllabs_photovoltaics.html



So did this one:

Basically, the dangerous fossil fuel funded anti-nuke industry, masquerading as the "solar will save us" industry is completely ignorant of history, and can't stand the purview of history.

Jerry Brown was born in 1938. If you can add and subtract - not a good bet for anti-nukes - one can learn how old Jerry Brown was in 1954.

If one can't do this calculation, one qualifies to join Greenpeace and spout hatred for the science that one knows nothing about, the science of Fermi, Seaborg, Wigner and Bethe.

Have a nice day.

[Kolesar]

19. That was embarassingly stupid for you

[NNadir]

20. What part of "when Jerry Brown was sixteen" are you in denial about?

All of it?

Why am I not surprised?

It is very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, clear that anti-nukes are too stupid to know what is and is not embarrassing.

Have a nice denialist evening.

[Kolesar]

21. Looks like you are the one who is sixteen

very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very

[NNadir]

24. As it happens, I have a sixteen year old son.

If he did math like anti-nukes, of course I would be very upset, since a sixteen year old should know a great deal about how to add and subtract, considerably more in fact, and demonstrably anti-nukes, cannot add and subtract, never mind pass a high school math class.

Happily, my son is better educated than any anti-nuke who writes here, few of whom in my opinion could pass junior high school math.

None of the denialist puerile whining that the anti-nukes do around here when their illiteracy is exposed does anything to undo the fact that the solar PV fantasy is almost 60 years old and has done essentially nothing to fight climate change.

Have a nice day.

[Wilms]

22. Since satellites have been using them a long time, I was smart enough to know solar is a baby boomer

But those Life Mag covers are a treat. Thanks.

By any chance, could you point me toward figures showing the amount of federal dollars invested into solar vs. nuclear since those magazines were published?

[tinrobot]

4. I agree we should pursue rooftop solar first.

It's hard to bribe politicians into handing over free land when you put solar on your roof. So, I guess this means more land-grabbing projects like the one in the article.

[bananas]

5. Desert solar is essential to stopping global warming.

People really don't understand the scale of the problem,
rooftop solar just won't be enough.
We need to build out as much wind and solar as we can, as rapidly as we can.

[Nihil]

6. "We had to destroy the desert to save it!"

Sounds a somewhat familiar line from certain types of troop leaders ...

[bananas]

7. These won't destroy the desert, but global warming will. nt

[tinrobot]

8. Southern California has several thousand square miles of rooftop.

Phoenix and other sunny cities are not far behind. These places also have an electrical grid in place to carry the power. And interestingly, people live directly below the rooftops who need electricity. This makes much of the power distribution happen on the scale of feet rather than hundreds or thousands of miles.

It would be a lot more efficient to put solar on rooftops first. If that's not enough, then plow over virgin desert.

[Wilms]

9. Bingo!

Something like 7% of generated electricity is lost in transmission. Local generation reduces that significantly. And it takes a load off the grid, off habitats, and takes the heat-load off of those sunny Southern CA rooftops.

A bright fifth-grader could figure this out.

[XemaSab]

23. Rooftops and parking lots

What is a graded desert but a glorified parking lot anyway?

[Codeine]

12. Nuclear power is essential to stopping global warming.

People really don't understand the scale of the problem,
silly-ass wind and solar just won't be enough.
We need to build out as much nuclear power as we can, as rapidly as we can.

[bananas]

13. No, it isn't. nt

[madokie]

18. Only to fools would that statement ring true

The rest of us just laugh at the silliness of proposing more nuclear power

[pscot]

10. Painting roofs white

would save more electricity than these solar arrays will generate. And would employ lots of unskilled workers.

[NYC_SKP]

11. Paint em white, and then stick Solyndra modules on em.

Toured their Fremont facility yesterday.

Awesome.

[Kolesar]

15. 18 percent of the light...is reflected light from the reflective, white roof below

Roughly 18 percent of the light that strikes Solyndra's tubular modules is reflected light from the reflective, white roof below. Solyndra's tubes are placed in patio ...

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/wnen-solyndra-is-cheaper-than-silicon/

super

[Kolesar]

14. building the transmission capacity...would cause them to invest billions, increasing their rate base

The other is that building the transmission capacity to carry power from faraway desert points to big cities and their suburbs would cause them to invest billions of dollars, thus increasing their "rate base" considerably. A major component of electricity pricing is the "rate of return" (yearly profit percentage) utility companies get on their rate base, the total they've spent over the last 20 years on facilities and equipment. The current estimate for building just one of the needed transmission lines — roughly paralleling Interstate 15 — is $750 million.
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that's fucked up