Finally, Some Good News

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WholesaleSolar.com, a website focused on sales and distribution of solar-power products, is currently selling grid-tied solar arrays for residential customers at roughly $6000 for the entire array. the array itself can range from 2kW to 3kW, which is enough to power a typical American home almost constantly. The math works out to a price range from $2.80/Watt to $2.20/Watt, which is almost 25% less than it costs to install a brand new coal-fired power plant.

What this also means is that for less than a $500 monthly payment (for only 12 months), the average American can now afford to purchase solar power for their homes more easily than they can purchase a new car.

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Why the hype surrounding Texas is just that…

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UPDATE: It was brought to my attention that this post may have a good point against Mr. Bell, but my frothing anger toward Texas as a whole isn’t quite clear. In order to clarify why I’m directing attention toward the state and not one single man, I’ve written an article and posted it in the Miscellaneous section of this site. Here is a link.

Three days ago, Forbes released an article by Larry Bell, a professor at the University of Houston making the following claims:

  1. Global warming is a hoax
  2. The renewable industry is corrupt.

Ok. Texas, the gloves come off right now.

First off, it’s rather difficult for me as a man of science to chew anything delivered to me by anybody from a state that actively denies the existence of evolution. Darwin came up with it in the 1800’s, it’s nearly 200 years later and only the only part of the world still questioning whether evolution is correct is the American South. In fact, it’s the evangelical pressure from the people within Texas that are pushing their Christian beliefs onto the other states, demanding that their creationism is just as much a part of history.

So right from the start, Mr. Bell, I question your scientific integrity and outright challenge your credentials as a scientist, based on the fact that you are a product of an archaic education system that places biblical teachings in higher priority than factual teachings. Whittling it down to terms that someone from Texas can understand: You believe the earth is 6000 years old which is provably incorrect, therefore your opinions and everything that comes out of you is invalid.

Since I myself am actually a scientist and a mathematician, allow me to slam you with some factual evidence, as I never say anything that I can’t back up with facts and other sources (like a REAL scientist should).

The Forbes article claims that renewable industries often neglect “hydropower” as a renewable resource. This is a diversionary argument aimed to pull attention away from solar and wind, making things look as if hydropower is a totally viable option for everyone. In the turn of the century, during the Great Depression, the United States actually devoted quite a bit of energy and funding toward creating a hydro-electric power generation system to power the country. However, at the time, the EPA didn’t exist, and entire valleys and forests (some containing small towns) were submerged under water for the “greater good.” I grew up next to a man-made lake that still has the un-demolished buildings of the mining town they flooded in order to make the reservoir.

So not only are the creations of hydroelectric dams harmful to the environment, there is another small problem that Mr. Bell forgot to take into account: there are only so many rivers in the US that can be dammed, and we have pretty much already created them where we can. It’s simply not possible to just keep building hydroelectric dams, as there are not enough rivers or locations suitable for placement. Therefore, this suggestion is either meant to distract people from solar and wind or to willfully misinform people, neither of which is beneficial to the population.

The next misstep Mr. Bell takes is attacking Federal subsidies in regards to solar power, claiming:

“Solar power, like wind, is a natural, free source of energy— provided that public subsidies and customers of high-priced electricity cover the costs. In the U.S. the main federal subsidy currently pays for 30% of the cost for a residential system. Then when other subsidies are added, as much as 75% of the cost can be covered.”

This statement simply is not true. The federal subsidy program that paid for up to 30% of the array was set in stages, each stage ending every year as more and more solar is installed. Ten years ago, the amounts might have been as high as 30%, but nowadays, you’re lucky if you can get 10% of your array paid for by a state entity. So basically, there are no longer as many subsidy programs or options to take advantage of, because solar power has gotten so incredibly cheap to install.

How much cheaper? It’s actually cheaper than coal to install. Here is a link to an article about a coal-fired plant looking for permitting permission to build. The plant is designed to produce 300MW of power and cost about $1.1 billion. That comes out to an installation cost of $3.67/Watt. For comparison purposes, residential solar installations run typically $3.00/Watt, and utility scaled solar installations are now competing for business at $1.50 to $2.00 per Watt.

Now the reasoning behind this old man’s rambling’s become clear. He’s a pro-coal, pro-fossil fuels Texan who believes that renewable energy industry is “corrupt” because it uses the Federal subsidy system in a way that he doesn’t approve of.

So how should the Federal subsidy programs be used according to Mr. Bell and like-minded people? Well it should go toward fossil fuels, naturally, because according to Mr. Bell, we don’t subsidize natural gas or coal or anything, right?

Image of Energy Subsidy Report, from eli.org, the Environmental Law Institute.

Actually, in the past decade, more Federal subsidy money has been paid toward fossil fuels than toward all other renewable options combined. This is at the same time that gas companies are making record profits every year, and also at the same time that large international corporations are paying record lows in taxes.

The real achievement here is the fact that despite the unfair subsidy payments being doled out toward fossil fuels, despite the silicon shortage of the 90’s, despite the decades of misinformation from Conservatives purchased by the Oil companies, and despite the bad PR from the Solyndra debacle…solar power is still thriving at such a rate and has now become so super-competitive that not even coal can compete with solar.

I should have expected as much from a state that doesn’t understand evolution. If you’d have taken the time to learn about how life develops, you might have seen this coming. Bacteria has been studied for decades, and after we understood that penicillin and other drugs could destroy bacteria, we learned that leaving penicillin in the environment all the time, making a harsh and unlivable environment for the bacterial cultures only provided the stepping stones for certain strains to eventually develop an immunity toward penicillin and other antibiotics. By slanting the environment in such a way that only the really strong survived, new “superbugs” have evolved to fight humanity’s attempt to destroy and prevent bacteria from growing. Just as the same unfair challenges in a penicillin-rich environment bred incredibly powerful, unstoppable bacteria, the unfair and slanted challenges that the solar industry has had to face has tempered this industry to be able to weather out any storm.

And for the record, it will only take 23.25 square miles to power all of LA with solar power, not the “thousands of square miles” as you stated. That value is using thin-film modules at 10% efficiency, with an average Los Angeles load of 6GW at any given time, and an average irradiance of 1000W/m2. If we used silicon modules, the efficiency jumps and we only need 15.44 square miles.

I mess with Texas…and I laugh as I do it.

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American-Based Solar Company First Solar looking for work in Developing Nations…

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Corrected from before.

CORRECTION: The previous version of this post incorrectly stated that First Solar was planning on taking its business to China. This was a misquote from the original article, which was explaining that First Solar intends to take their business to countries that are not heavily subsidized, such as China. Rather, countries in Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East are likely candidate countries that have abundant solar resources that do not offer government subsidization.

Due to the way in which the United States Federal Government unequally subsidizes solar, natural gas, and coal, First Solar, one of the largest and most successful solar manufacturing and installation companies is looking overseas for a foothold in more profitable lands. In addition to creating jobs overseas, First Solar made a move that cuts me personally, as they laid off their research and development teams. Some 100 people in Santa Clara, many of which were colleagues and friends of mine, are now out of a job, thanks to their hard work and devotion toward developing the very technology that First Solar is now turning around and selling to other countries.

I’m reminded of the old Greek tale of the Brazen Bull, in which a metal-worker was hired to build an elaborate torture device by the king, only to become the very first torture victim the device was used upon while demonstrating how it was to work. But where the king of Greece at the time was fabled to be a tyrant, First Solar made this decision from simply a 15% revenue drop in the 2011 fiscal year. That’s it.

Apparently, 15% profit loss in a single year is enough for a major company in the U.S. to “call it quits” and shift its major business foundation to foreign soil. From the articles I’ve been finding, this decision isn’t even based on dwindling demand for Solar, but merely a dwindling government subsidy system that is no longer pouring milk and honey straight into First Solar’s gaping revenue-hole. Considering that the company made over $3-billion this year alone, it’s hard to fathom how these conditions are so bad.

On top of all of this hypocritical behavior from major companies such as this (claiming to be “creating jobs” then firing American workers), the major frustration point that I see is that First Solar’s plan is doomed to fail.

Please, anyone from First solar reading this, I challenge you to contact me and prove me wrong…

China is currently in the process of purchasing a large number of solar-modules for its own use, as well as making several module-manufacturing facilities on its own. Almost all of these plants are directed toward creating modules that use silicon-based solar cells, which are about four to five times as energy-efficient as thin-film modules (which is what First Solar is trying to peddle). As a result, the price of silicon modules has dropped while their relative efficiency has slowly increased.

First Solar’s claim is that they “hope to make modules in the $1.40 to $1.50 per Watt range.” However, silicon-manufacturers are already achieving that manufacturing cost, while at the same time producing products that gather many times more energy. Wholesalesolar.com sells silicon modules at roughly $1.30 to $1.50 per Watt, by comparison.

If I want to install a solar array in order to power my facility, I’ll need to buy five-times the modules from First Solar as I would from say…Sanyo, or Sharp, or some other silicon module-manufacturer. Now, if the thin-film modules were five-times cheaper, then this still doesn’t add up, because I’ll also need five times the steel framing to hold up the modules, five times the wiring to connect the modules, and five-times the maintenance from these frameless-glass panes snapping like peanut brittle in the wind.

Here’s a mathematical example:

Say I want to build a solar array and I’m trying to measure the cost in terms of major components: modules, steel, wiring, and other (such as inverters, labor, etc.). The purpose of this is to show how much the module’s efficiency effects the costs. Let’s take the first letters to represent each group of cost, m for modules, s for steel, w for wiring, and o for other. I’ll add a capital T in front of the variables for the thin film equation. So for comparison, the two costs for a system are as follows:

Cost for normal system: C                            Cost for Thin-film System: TC

C = m + s + w + o                                       TC = Tm + Ts + Tw + To

Now, we can assume that the rate-costs of steel, wiring, and everything else is the same, and the amount is only based on the efficiency ratio of thin-film modules to silicon modules. Since a silicon module is about 20% efficient and a thin-film is at best 5% efficient, the ratio of efficiencies, N, is equal to this:

N = efficiency of thin-films / efficiency of silicon modules = ~5%/20% = 0.25

Given this ratio, we can then set the thin-film material values based on the ratio. A forth of the power output requires four times the materials to create an equally-producing array. Therefore:

Ts = 1/N * s = 4s

Tw = 1/N * w = 4w

To = 1/N * o = 4o

There are now only two remaining unknowns to solve in this system of equations, so we need another condition. Since the goal of this example is to compare how much additional material costs are involved by switching to thin-films, the next step is to set the two parent equations equal to each other. This allows us to solve for what the thin-film modules need to have their prices set to in order to break even with a standard silicon module in terms of cost and production. This is the same break-even point that the customer would see. Setting the equations of cost equal to one another:

C = TC

m + s + w + o = Tm + Ts + Tw + To

Since we solved for Ts, Tw, and To, we can substitute:

m + s + w + o = Tm + 4s + 4w + 4o

Now we solve for Tm, the cost of the thin-film modules in terms of the costs of the rest of the array.

m + (s + w + o) = Tm + 4(s + w + o)

m –Tm = 3 (s + w + o)

Therefore:

Tm = m – 3 (s + w + o)

Ok, so what does that mean for the average person? In order for the thin-film modules to break even in terms of the customer’s costs, their total cost must be equal to (or less than) the cost of conventional modules, MINUS three times the cost of the rest of the array and labor. In a typical commercial or utility-scale solar array, the modules make up roughly 50% of the entire cost of the array. I’ll use this to then deduce that for the rest of the typical solar array, all other equipment, wiring, labor, and steel…also makes up the other 50% of the array. That allows us to set (s + w + o) equal to m.

Tm = m – 3m

Anyone with experience in Algebra can now see how screwed up this is getting…

Tm = -2m

When the final comparison is reduced, we see that in order to “break even,” a solar customer wishing to use thin-film modules would have to somehow acquire them for negative money…

To put this in more everyday terms…I wouldn’t install thin film modules on any array I build, even if the modules were given away to me for free. In fact, even if free, I’d still take a loss. First Solar would have to pay me twice the cost of conventional modules just for me to break even using their product.

Therefore, choosing to go with thin-film modules results in more materials needed to erect the same amount of power harvesting ability, which means that it’s mathematically impossible to save money as a customer by switching to thin-film technology. The problem is…both modules are almost the same in terms of end-cost to the customer.

So now that we have established the “real reason” that First Solar is hurting for revenue (which…really, they’re not), we can more clearly understand First Solar’s rationale…they’re desperate. Incidentally, this is also pretty much the same reason that Solyndra went out of business, as their modules produced about half the power of a normal silicon module, at only four-times the cost.

The ultimate reason that I say that their plan won’t work is their decision to stick with their thin-film CIGS technology until the very end. This was a brilliant move in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, when silicon was extremely expensive and hard to buy, but now that the pricing bubble has collapsed, sticking with CIGS is financial suicide.

I’m sorry First Solar, but your product is inferior in terms of efficiency and it mathematically doesn’t make sense to purchase from you (I have had to explain this to several of my employers throughout my career). Your decision to flail around the world, helplessly trying to catch your last breaths of business has only gathered the attention of smaller business entities like me. It’s been like this for years, you just never took the time to look up and re-assess your surroundings.

 

UPDATE: Since I am kind of a math-enthusiast, I took the time to re-solve that example I did above for all possible variant conditions of thin-film efficiency as well as module-cost. Suffice it to say, without a significant change in the solar market, thin-film technology is pretty much hosed.

The graph above shows the same resultant coefficients that represent the ratio (Tm/m), or the “relative cost of thin-film modules” divided by the “cost of conventional silicon modules” necessary for the two technologies to break even. Basically, a positive fractional number, like 0.67 implies that thin-film modules would have to be sold at a 33% discount compared to conventional modules, assuming thin-films produce on average 35% of the energy of silicon modules AND those same silicon modules happen to cost 85% of the entire array installation.

A value of zero indicates conditions in which thin-film modules would have to be given away for free in order for the customer to break even. That means that the negative values are conditions in which the module manufacturer would have to pay the customer to take the modules off their hands.

The highlighted red square shows roughly where the thin-film module industry currently stands, and the arrow indicates the direction that the industry is heading…notably that of more efficient thin-films and cheaper modules overall. The only ways that thin-film manufacturers have a chance of staying in the game is if they either very quickly find a way to boost their module’s output efficiency, or pray to the sun god that silicon becomes scarce again.

 

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How do Space and the Internet have anything to do with Solar Power?

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Good question.

Space technology and space-related development have both been closely tied to the development and employment of solar power technology. Ever since the creation of NASA and the first Mercury missions, we have been using some form of photovoltaic technology to power our satellites and other vehicles where conventional batteries, fossil fuels, and fuel cells aren’t a practical option. Almost all of the modern space-faring vessels humans have manufactured have solar panels installed somewhere on them. For a while, there were even plans on lining the inside of the Space Shuttle’s cargo bay with solar panels in order to help maintain power on longer missions. What’s even more amazing is the new creation of Hall Effect Drives, and Electronic Thrusters that require only electricity to power them, providing a thrust by which space-vehicles can maneuver.

Image of Hall Effect Thruster in operation, courtesy of Wikipedia.org.

These new thrusters have been theoretical for almost 40 years, but only thanks to recent materials science developments and enhancements in super-conducting materials, we are now able to manufacture small working models. These thrusters burn up a lot of power for only a small amount of output, however. Nearly 2 kW is required to power a single thruster, which only provides about 80mN of force, which is equivalent to about the weight of three pennies stacked on the palm of your hand. It’s virtually nothing, but when applied over a constant time frame over several months, the force adds up and can increase the velocity of a satellite by about 8000 meters a second (~17,000 mph).

NASA is proposing to place several small “towing” vehicles in orbit, designed to tow low-flying orbital objects into higher-level orbits, using nothing but electricity provided by the sunlight that’s already available. This proposal would allow many companies requiring geosynchronous orbits or escape-velocity to be able to conserve an impressive amount of fuel, which also allows companies to build smaller rockets and larger payloads. So considering that space-faring technology is now becoming more dependent on solar power, combined with the augmentation of electronic population, it’s not a very far stretch of logic to discuss space-related topics and technology.

As for Net Neutrality and internet-related topics, much of modern solar-power technology actually requires the internet to function properly. In the past 10 years, focus from “how much possible power can I get” has shifted toward the new concern of “how well is my system running now?” As a result, technologies making it easier to simply look up the performance of your solar array have been developed, all of which pretty much require the internet in order to transmit the data.

Glu-Networks, Fat Spaniel, Power One…all of these companies are centered around acquiring performance monitoring data and transmitting it onto a web-page for their customers to see. Their entire business livelihood revolves around sending massive amounts of data across the internet on a pretty-much constant basis. There is in fact, an entire sub-industry of companies within the solar-power industry as a whole who are all very nervously watching to see what will happen with Net Neutrality.

You see, once limitations on content and traffic priority are established, it’s these companies that are going to immediately take the hit. If they’re not blocked out of doing business entirely, they’ll have to fork over a fortune to other companies such as Verizon and AT&T in order to be given preferential access for their data.

Gone are the days where a single industry is isolated on its own, impervious to the changes and effects of other industries. Now that the entire world is tied together through the digital framework of the internet, what happens to the net effects EVERYBODY, in every facet of life. The same goes for space-travel. As it becomes more and more privatized, we’ll start seeing more and more innovation and more wide-spread adoption of these technologies, as well as new rules and limitations on our freedoms. I’ll do my best to filter things through a solar-only lens, but I’ll be sure to keep an eye out for other important topics that crop up from time to time.

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A Clear Example of Distortion: Keppler-22b

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Being a scientist and practiced astronomer myself, I found a particular note of interest when I had heard that NASA had released news that their Kepler mission to search for exo-planets, or planets orbiting stars in other solar systems had recently provided results. The “big news” from NASA was that the satellite had successfully done what we designed it to do: it found an exo-planet in the habitable zone of orbit, where liquid water might exist.

That’s it.

This actually isn’t all that great of a discovery, as it’s not even the first planet we’ve found in the habitable zone…it’s only the first one we found using the Kepler Satellite. At this moment, we think that this planet is a rocky-cored planet and not a gas giant, but that’s just getting confirmed. The only particular point of interest about this tiny speck in the night sky is that we think it statistically has a chance of having liquid water. This one possible planet so far, out of 2,326 exo-planets so far discovered. With the exception of Kepler-22b and 54 others, the rest of these exo-planets are all gas-giants, or have orbits that are well outside the range of human habitability.

Ok, so now that I’ve correctly established the factual base of information, in the past 24 hours, I’ve noticed that while the numbers seem to stay the same, the facts around them seem to be changed as one news group re-posts, and reposts the same information.

Here is a link to the original article, posted by NASA. This is where I gathered all of my information, straight from the source. Take special point and search the page, as the words “life” and “alien” do not even exist on the NASA article. The article even goes so far as to specify that out of the 2,326 planets surveyed, only 54 of these planets orbit near enough to the habitable zone to be candidates, but require further study of their orbits to confirm.

Here is a link to the Washington Post’s take on the NASA release, which discusses mostly facts on the matter, but does open the article to the question of “are we alone?” While I feel that out of most of the articles out there, this may be one of the most accurate reports, it appears to have been partially written by Roger Hunter, the Project Manager for the Kepler Mission.

Here’s where things start getting distorted. In an article from Space.com, the words “could harbor life” occur on three separate occasions, one of which is claiming to quote NASA (which, remember, I just showed how they never mentioned it). The world “alien” appears eight times in this article, being used in contexts from discussing “alien worlds” to “intelligent aliens.” Here’s a quote:

If intelligent aliens were studying our solar system with their own version of Kepler, after all, it would take them three years to detect our home planet.

Wow…so clearly, the author of the article posted on Space.com is more of an idealist/romanticist about the idea of aliens than an actual pragmatic scientist attempting to impart factual information. This on its own probably wouldn’t be too much of a problem, as the audience of Space.com appears to be mostly comprised of children learning about space in general and UFO enthusiasts.

Where this does get rather concerning, however, is when the article is instead used as the source of fact-finding from a major “news” site. Foxnews.com posted this article about the Kepler-22b discovery, which references only the space.com article, and nothing else. Here, the word “exo-planet” is completely replaced by “alien-world,” a term that implies that intelligent aliens are actively living on said planet. A quote from this swill:

Virtually all of the alien planet candidates discovered by NASA’s Kepler space telescope may turn out to be the real deal, a new study suggests.

That’s literally the first sentence of the article… it just gets worse from there.  I know that many of you out there are already aware of the kind of distortion that goes through Foxnews.com, but as someone who is capable of catching these patterns and clearly laying them out, I feel that I have a responsibility to make it clear to those who don’t have access to the correct information, or who don’t have the education necessary to see through the misinformation.

So there we have it, in a single day, the story went from “a single possible rocky-planet that might be able to sustain liquid water” to “hundreds of alien planets.” Until we start taking the time to really dig through the bull to find the correct facts, and as long as we allow people to distort the truth without any repercussions, then every step that humanity takes will always be second-guessed, impeded, misguided, and ultimately backward in direction.

UPDATE: After another 24 hours, MSNBC decided to follow in the footsteps of Foxnews.com. I’ve linked to the article from MSNBC that also only quotes from Space.com, and gets their wording incorrect. The only major news organization to get it right is apparently CNN, which (like me) gets their facts straight from the NASA mission page.

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