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| Solar Power Is A Scam in forum [Market-Ticker]
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Corn1945
Posts: 4167
Incept: 2009-04-30
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They knew the **** wasn't going to work. But they knew the dumb greenies would throw their money at them because it was "alternative". I bet the CEO and board are laughing all the way to the bank.
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Jubber
Posts: 14174
Incept: 2007-07-05
UK
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Is LTBR worth buying IYHO?
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“The problem with socialism is that, sooner or later, you run out of other people’s money.” Thatcher
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Throxxofvron
Posts: 10345
Incept: 2009-02-17
Hyper-Speculative Psycho-Facsistic Parabolic Blow-Off
Online
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Most People DO NOT believe Me when I tell them that Coal is available as a Nuclear Fuel Source.
I swear: They literally DO NOT believe it...
They immediately start with the 'Coal is dirty when it's burned' mantra and progress to 'dangerous radioactive waste'...
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DIONYSUS: " Thou hast no knowledge of the life thou art leading; thy very existence is now a mystery to thee. " -from 'The Bacchantes' By Euripides “During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” -George Orwell
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Bertdilbert
Posts: 2666
Incept: 2008-12-22
CA
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That is what part of cap and trade was about, to jack the price of coal energy to make green energy economical..
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Dear Euroland: Relax, Germany has a plan for your money!
Political Capital Defined: We are out of money but will tax our citizens for whatever it takes to "SAVE" the Euro.
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Alphaomega
Posts: 33
Incept: 2009-12-05
Bakersfield
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A couple of points:
1. So-called "clean solar power panels" are anything but clean. The chemicals used in the manufacturing process are very hazardous.
2. The water problems of the West would go away if cheap power became available.
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String
Posts: 22
Incept: 2010-06-01
Chicago
Banned
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Rdgdawg
Posts: 165
Incept: 2010-04-30
WI... but no brats or cheese...
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For two full years we have been trying to get funding for wind farm projects in Colorado and Wyoming... it's "just not sexy" and "too long a return on investment". And as for the $85 billion originally allocated by the gov't for Alternative Energy, roughly $20 billion has been spent, the rest....
If EVERY project were green-lit today we still wouldn't meet the DOE's mandate of 20% of all energy via wind by 2030.
Just like the gov't itself, it's all crap....
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I work hard because millions on welfare depend on me!
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Icanhasbailout
Posts: 9939
Incept: 2009-03-10
Imaginationland
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Captainkidd
Posts: 594
Incept: 2010-05-25
Pasadena, Texas
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I am not sure about stationary power plants, but in the Navy, Nukes use saturated steam for propulsion because of the use of a steam generator instead of the traditional boiler. The steam, remaining in contact with the water from which it was generated, never rose above the ~485° (at 600 PSI) temperature of the steam generator, and was therefore never capable of being superheated.
If the working temperature is 1200°F, it would seem that a secondary pass of the generated steam could be arranged through system, superheating the steam and increasing the efficiency of the turbines drastically.
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A lawyer with a briefcase can steal more than a thousand men with guns. --Mario Puzo
It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning. -- Henry Ford
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Jackl
Posts: 2237
Incept: 2008-01-17
Online
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There was an article the other day, where an American physicist stated nuclear energy in US is at least twenty years behind, and almost can't catchup with rest of the world. The opportunity to increase our productive capability and reduce the amount of current waste we have right now is more or less gone. Ahh here it is. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-02-spen....Quote:While the U.S. has sat on the sidelines, other countries, including France, Japan, the United Kingdom, Russia, India, and China have dedicated significant resources toward their reprocessing programs, Klein added.
"U.S. leadership in this area has been lost, and the underlying technological capability and intellectual capital needed to compete internationally have diminished to near irrelevance."
Reprocessing not only recovers significant energy value from spent fuel, it substantially reduces the volume and radiotoxicity of high-level nuclear waste. When the rest of the world can read the writing on the wall about energy except you. Feels pretty bad man. |
Abn0rmal
Posts: 9261
Incept: 2009-01-10
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The Navy did build one submarine with a superheater but they found out that it wasn't worth it for their application.
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Curbyourrisk
Posts: 3596
Incept: 2008-08-19
Farmingdale, NY
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Good article! Good ticker!
I have been trying to get my companyt o steer clear of solar. They seem to be married to the idea.
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Time is up.
I hate to burst your bubble, but there is no Santa Claus, the tooth fairy does not exist and American justice does not involve the courts.
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Swordsman
Posts: 95
Incept: 2009-01-10
Las Cruces, New Mexico
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Presenting Solar as a replacement for the heavy lifting use of electricity is definitely a scam. The million roofs campaign is largely a scam. That said there is a place for solar PV especially where I live. Here in New Mexico we get well over 300 days a year of totally clear sunny days a year.
I helped a friend install a 4kw system for a net cost of about $10k. For the month of January she generated twice as much as she used. She generated 560khw. In dollar terms she generated $61 of power she used and received a check for $61.
June estimates are that she will generate $100 of power and consume $120. For the sake of brevity I won't do the month by month breakdown but we estimate that her low consumption months will offset the high consumption months and she should be close to net $0 a year for power.
With the power company incentives for 11 years she will see about a 12% to 16% annual return on her investment after which it will drop to about 8%. In one years time I'll have a accurate accounting of costs and benefits.
(Disclaimer)
We did this install as cheaply as possible. Far cheaper than the average person can usually manage as I made virtually no profit on my labor and I made no profit on material. The net cost is after the federal and state tax credits. Plus there are power company incentives. So this is heavily subsidized by outside entities and the taxpayers. Had this been a for profit istall by me the costs would have been much closer to $24K plus.
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Genesis
Posts: 130807
Incept: 2007-06-26
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Right Kidd - the problem is that diminishing returns come FAST with increasing pressure. You only get another ~60F in temperature from going to 1000PSIg working pressures in a steam plant but the mechanical rigors increase materially working at 1000psi as opposed to 600psi.
Primary working fluid temperature in the LSTR at Oak Ridge (before we went retard and shut it down) was ~650C. That's ****ing HOT. The reason for the higher operating temperature is that it doesn't use water as a moderator and thus the bull**** that arises from needing a high-pressure steam plant in the core of the unit is unnecessary. This in turn means you can run a combined-cycle turbine system off it which results in MUCH higher thermal efficiency (perhaps as much as a 100% improvement in thermal efficiency over a conventional PWR) OR you can design the plant to use air-based heat exchangers. The latter means you can put the plant ANYWHERE, not just near big fresh-water sources.
Why wasn't the thorium cycle used originally? Simple - the breeding process that comes with it produces an extremely "hot" (radiologically) isotope of uranium. This makes separation of the used fuel for nuclear weapons extraordinarily dangerous as you must perform isotopic separation with effective perfection to get that **** out of there or you wind up with a nuclear core for your bomb that kills anyone that gets within 50' of it (unless they have a nice lead wall handy) before it blows up.
That, in turn makes it somewhat difficult to maintain your missiles and bombs and turns flying a strategic bomber into an interesting exercise for the crew.
Basically the thorium fuel cycle is damn near worthless for weapons production.
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I don't care if it makes sense -- only if it makes money. -- Me
Bank (n): See scam, fraud and theft. Eat a bankster -- they're low-carb.
What part of "shall not be infringed" was unclear?
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Otiswild
Posts: 5627
Incept: 2009-03-09
Inside you, the force is!
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Quote:Like, for example, the thorium fuel cycle for nuclear power. For openers we throw away - literally - more than ten times as much energy as we generate by burning coal in the form of thorium in the fuel's ash. It's actually worse than that, since the stuff is thrown away as tiny airborne particles that can be inhaled as low-level fallout. Coal burning releases more radiation in a year than all US nuclear accidents in history combined (pulled out of my ass, but sounds about right). |
Guydaley
Posts: 15320
Incept: 2007-07-10
Wyoming only ATM
Banned
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I think its disingenuous to use this as an example that solar power is a "scam". What is a scam is taxpayers money being used to support it in the form of a Department of Energy "guarantee". The venture capitalists are going to take it in the shorts which is the way it should be because the whole thing was entirely mismanaged. Mismanaged, how? Spare no expense type of management and I'd definitely like to see how the executive officers are getting compensated. Plus they didn't scale up. They started out huge which caused this: Quote:Many low-cost Chinese manufacturers, which benefit from massive government support, are manufacturing at costs in the $1.10 to $1.20 a watt range. Thin-film leader First Solar, based in Tempe, Ariz., manufactures at 75 cents a watt and aims to be at 53 cents a watt by 2014. Solyndra says its current manufacturing costs are about $3 per watt. If Solyndra was manufacturing at $.75 a watt instead of $3. I'm sure it would be an entirely different story. I'm sure locating this business where cost of labor is outrageous is a political reason. They could have bought an empty manufacturing space in the midwest for six figures and gone from there. I've seen this type of crap before, it wouldn't have mattered if it was solar, making toys or plumbing fixtures, the entire concept was doomed to fail from the beginning because politics, egos, government was involved.
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Its called creeping TEOTWAWKI. Just because it doesn't happen all at once doesn't mean it isn't happening.
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Blackswan
Posts: 5564
Incept: 2007-11-06
Just outside of Philly
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Swordsman -
My cousin installed solar panels on his roof in PA. I forget the math but it is a risk counting on state and federal tax breaks to be there and electric prices have to go up considerably for this to break even years down the road. Plus solar in the northeast makes no sense but I don't want to hurt their feelings. They spent north of $30K -- maybe even $40K on the system.
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“It’s checkmate. Everywhere it’s checkmate.”
Hugh Hendry
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Ostriches
Posts: 262
Incept: 2009-10-28
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Let's face it, Government (and the people behind the scenes and in control) do not want solutions that allot more power and control to the individual. They want and need the problems and dependency in order to maintain control.
It's what it is all about - no real solutions to keep people needy and busy and on the wheel in order to keep them under control.
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Themightymonarch
Posts: 67
Incept: 2009-06-24
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Solyndra just built a brand spanking new facility five miles from me here in Fremont, CA. Yeah, that makes sense. New facility during a time of record commercial real estate vacancy, in one of the most hostile states to run a business.
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Guydaley
Posts: 15320
Incept: 2007-07-10
Wyoming only ATM
Banned
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Quote:Solyndra just built a brand spanking new facility five miles from me here in Fremont, CA. Yeah, that makes sense. New facility during a time of record commercial real estate vacancy, in one of the most hostile states to run a business. That's what I'm talking about right there. I'll bet the plans (that includes all the engineering) alone was in the mid 7 figure range. Remember the recurring theme in Jurassic Park? "We spared no expense." Solyndra would never have happened if politics and government wasn't involved. I wonder which backstabber got attaboys for bringing this "bacon" home to his district?
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Its called creeping TEOTWAWKI. Just because it doesn't happen all at once doesn't mean it isn't happening.
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Xorbe
Posts: 161
Incept: 2009-06-23
Bay Area, CA
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Solyndra, isn't that that HUGE brand new building on 880 between 237 and Mission/680? (CA Bay Area)
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Swordsman
Posts: 95
Incept: 2009-01-10
Las Cruces, New Mexico
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Quote:My cousin installed solar panels on his roof in PA. I forget the math but it is a risk counting on state and federal tax breaks to be there and electric prices have to go up considerably for this to break even years down the road. Plus solar in the northeast makes no sense but I don't want to hurt their feelings. They spent north of $30K -- maybe even $40K on the system. The tax breaks were in place when we did the install. They probably won't be in the future so I'm not counting on any except what are here right now. I did an interconnect for a DIY installer at his home in December. 48 panels and I estimate his total costs before credits was $50K. He's generating 1800kwh a month in the winter. He has online reporting of his daily production and it's impressive. Up to 73kwh a day. |
Wrld_econ
Posts: 819
Incept: 2007-09-18
Tennessee
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Abn0rmal, I worked on a few fast attacks in the 70's and the main complaint was the thermal trail left on high temp cores. The MSW pumps could be heavily loaded to compensate but they would make the noise signature worse.
There are some material issues with boiler superheaters. I remember a Babcox and Wilcox guy showing us a supersteel tube that ran at 2000deg and 2000psi. The inside of the tube had waves in it after a few years. He also said the tubes were more expensive than the Level 1 emergency blow tubes in the subs which, IIRC, at the time were running $1000/ft.
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Stemmit
Posts: 4071
Incept: 2007-09-07
NYS
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An economic solar application is residential hot water assuming abundant sunshine. Israel is does this successfully.
Uderstand that the Ticker is about larger scale energy. Just want to clarify that solar does have real, though limited, utility.
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The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who in the name of charity and goodwill shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will execute great v
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