Solar energy is not always a fraud. If you live off the electric
grid, and you have a reasonable amount of sunshine, solar power, backed up by
batteries, can be a good option for getting a modest amount of electricity. It
will not be cheap electricity.
Solar is good for powering equipment in remote locations. It is
excellent for powering spacecraft. It is good for direct heating of swimming
pools. Passive solar in the form of buildings designed to utilize sunshine for
warmth and light can save energy.
But, do not think that it is advisable to put solar electricity
panels on your roof. Do not think that it is a good idea for your local utility
to build large solar generating farms. Political influence has created
subsidies and mandates that prop up the solar industry. The money is extracted
from taxpayers and utility customers. The solar industry positions itself as
doing a public service by preventing climate change. Even if you believe the
climate change theories, the solar industry is a negligible force against
climate change.
Utility scale solar in the sunniest climates can generate
electricity for about 7 cents per kilowatt hour (KWh). Outside of the sunny
south the cost is about 9 cents per KWh. Most of the cost is capital cost,
amortized over the life of the plant. Government subsides often cut the price
in half for users of solar electricity.
Residential rooftop solar, under the best conditions, may generate
electricity for about 15 cents per KWh. Usually the cost will be considerably
higher. Not everyone’s roof faces south and not everyone lives in a sunny
climate.
A fundamental error is to suppose that if solar could generate
electricity at a cost equal to conventional generators it would be competitive.
The leading type of conventional generator is combined cycle natural gas. These
plants can generate electricity at a cost approaching 3.6 cents per KWh, or 2
to 3 times cheaper than solar. In order to be competitive, solar has to
generate power not just cheaper than the alternative, but, as will be explained,
cheaper than the fuel consumed by the alternative.
Solar is undependable. It does not work on cloudy days or at
night. It stops working if a cloud passes in front of the sun. Yuma, Arizona,
is the sunniest city in the U.S. Even in Yuma, there are 50 cloudy days and 365
dark nights a year.
Adding solar to the electric grid does not displace conventional
generating plants. Those plants are still there. They just work a little less,
sitting idle when solar is working. The only money solar saves is the fuel that
would have been consumed by the plants that are idle because solar is
generating electricity. Natural gas plants, or coal plants, consume 2-3 cents
worth of fuel per KWh. Nuclear plants consume 0.4 cent per KWh and hydro plants
don’t use fuel. As a practical matter, to be competitive, solar has to
compete with natural gas plants, the dominant alternative to solar. Unless the
total cost of utility-scale solar is about 3 cents per KWh, instead of 7 to 9
cents, it is not going to be competitive with gas. The less-efficient gas
plants consume about 3 cents worth of fuel per KWh of electricity produced.
Residential rooftop solar electricity costs 15 cents, and usually
considerably more, per KWh. The electricity generated displaces power from the
grid. If the solar power generated exceeds household consumption, the
electricity is exported into the grid. Some electric meters may actually run
backwards if electricity is being exported. In other cases the metering will
measure both grid and solar electricity and payments will be made according to
a prearranged formula.
If markets were not distorted by political influence, rooftop
solar would hardly ever be competitive. But political subsidies and
artificially high electricity prices make rooftop solar competitive in many
places. For example, in California, many owners of large homes are charged over
40 cents per KWh in certain “tiers.”. These politically inspired rates make
solar competitive for those owners of large houses.
Just as in utility scale installations, the true value of rooftop
solar electricity is the cost of fuel consumption avoided when the solar is
operating. The result is that the utility is often effectively forced to pay
retail rates, typically about 13 cents per KWh, for electricity whose true
value is about 3 cents per KWh. The owner of the rooftop solar also loses money
unless his retail rate is in excess of the 15-cent, or more, cost per KWh.
The organization, Environment America, has published a
report: Shining
Rewards The Value of Rooftop Solar Power for Consumers and Society. This
report reviews 11 other reports by solar advocates and utilities that attempt
to calculate the value of rooftop solar to society. The 11 reports assign a
value from a low of 3.5 cents per KWh to a high of 33 cents per KWh. This wide
variation in the value of solar surely indicates that solid accounting
methodology is absent. All the reports by advocates of rooftop solar found that
the value of the electricity to society was greater than the current retail
price of electricity. The three reports from utilities found the opposite.
How do the advocates of solar assign a value to society? It is a
rather nebulous idea that rooftop solar has a value separate and greater than
its actual economic value. A favorite trick is assigning a social value to CO2
emissions avoided. This is a highly speculative and subjective benefit. Another
trick is to assume that new grid investment can be avoided or deferred because
the solar is present. But on cloudy days, to say nothing of night, solar is not
present, so how can investment in grid infrastructure be avoided?
The point of these studies is to make a case that the economic
waste of solar is justified. Once one starts claiming that a dubious climate
disaster awaits us 100 years in the future if we don’t follow the dictates of
green ideology, the door is opened to justifying any green foolishness one can
imagine.
There is a cult, inspired by computer models of the Earth’s
atmosphere, that believes that if we don’t swear off CO2, we will be struck
down by a climate disaster. The exact nature of the climate disaster keeps
shifting. It was global warming and that morphed into extreme weather. Global
warming did not work out because the globe stopped warming 18 years ago.
Extreme weather is a better disaster, because nature is always providing
extreme weather that can be blamed on CO2. The recent California drought that
turned into the California flood is a perfect example.
If the believers in the climate cult were logical, they would be
promoting nuclear power. Nuclear power is reliable, does not emit CO2, and has
great prospects for technological advance. Some of the cultists are promoting
nuclear power, but most have an anti-nuclear phobia left over from the
anti-nuclear power movement of the 1970s and '80s. Most of the cultists are
promoting solar and wind power, even though these forms of power can never
dominate the power grid and provide reliable and economic electricity.
Norman Rogers writes often about environmental and energy
issues. He has awebsite. For a more
detailed and technical analysis of solar electricity see this
article.
