In England, solar power makes little sense
The British newspaper The Independent has an article pointing out that solar power installations have a 100 year payback up there, and some may never pay out. I guess all that I have been trying to say with my blogs about solar power is that energy production and distribution is an analog problem, just like any other real-world problem. As I have pointed out, installing 5 dollar-a-watt panels to try and pay down electricity that costs you 13 cents a kilowatt-hour is a fool’s errand. As I have also pointed out, if you use so much electricity you are getting charged 31 cents a kwh and you can install the panels yourself and maybe get the cost down below 3 dollars an installed watt, well, then things are much more sensible. I have friends working in solar powered startups who have told me of breakthroughs that will allow them to price the panels wherever they want since the cost will be under a dollar a watt. I hope that is true but since this startup uses copper indium gallium selenide technology you have to expect the cost of the materials to rise substantially if we all start paving our roofs with the stuff.
OK, so I have tried to counter some of the hype with economics, but the article from England shows another analog problem with the suitability of solar power. If you are at northern latitudes in a country with a lot of cloud cover, then that also changes the economics of solar. Hey, I am all for PV solar, it helps my friend and my town and my industry. But you have to have the intellectual honesty to appreciate the advice of the article that points out that in England, you would be better off putting in insulation with money you would have spent on solar.
It fascinates met that people with no appreciation of economics and the markets see everything as a crisis. What no news organization seems to be pointing out is that when oil went from 22 dollars a barrel to $120 a barrel, that opened up a lot of reserves that used to be uneconomical. Here is an article about a German plant that uses plentiful cheap coal and then sequesters the carbon dioxide. If you look at the energy needs of the country, and realize that we can’t pave every square meter with PV panels, then you see that coal and natural gas will be used to make most of our energy for several hundred years. There is no energy crisis but that headline does not sell papers. Just like with every other commodity like concrete and wood and cheese whiz, when demand went up, price went up and that is creating more supply. Indeed some of that supply will be done with solar and wind, but any rational energy policy has to respect the role of fossil fuels for a couple more centuries. And I won’t get all the greenies raving by mentioning nuclear power.
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