# Solar Power is Here to Stay.....



## readytogo (Apr 6, 2013)

The world's largest solar power plant is now up and running
http://www.engadget.com/2014/11/28/topaz-solar-power-plant/?ncid=rss_truncated


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## hiwall (Jun 15, 2012)

So one more instance of the government making someone do something that wastes money.


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## *Andi (Nov 8, 2009)

And we will sugar coat the problems to date ...


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## BillS (May 30, 2011)

The plant cost $2.5 billion for a plant that generates up to 550 megawatts but only during the day and only when the sun is shining. 

The cost of building the plant is about $4500 per kilowatt of capacity. The cost of a natural gas power plant is about $1000 per kilowatt. That's why nobody except liberal governments would ever build a solar power plant.


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## *Andi (Nov 8, 2009)

And we don't want to hear from the eco folks ... The bird folks are not happy ... 

But we have posted that before ... right ...


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## Tirediron (Jul 12, 2010)

BillS said:


> The plant cost $2.5 billion for a plant that generates up to 550 megawatts but only during the day and only when the sun is shining.
> 
> The cost of building the plant is about $4500 per kilowatt of capacity. The cost of a natural gas power plant is about $1000 per kilowatt. That's why nobody except liberal governments would ever build a solar power plant.


So how long does it take for the solar plant to become economical ??


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## cowboyhermit (Nov 10, 2012)

BillS said:


> The plant cost $2.5 billion for a plant that generates up to 550 megawatts but only during the day and only when the sun is shining.
> 
> The cost of building the plant is about $4500 per kilowatt of capacity. The cost of a natural gas power plant is about $1000 per kilowatt. That's why nobody except liberal governments would ever build a solar power plant.


I have worked on MANY "solar power plants" built without a penny of government money, for individuals and private businesses (not even remotely "left wing"), so you are wrong on that part. I can bring one online and pumping into the grid for half that cost per kW you mentioned with just ordinary pallet prices (not REAL bulk prices).

Of course the difference is in the ongoing costs, solar is virtually nil while natural gas is a constant money pit.

As to the O.P, of course solar power isn't going anywhere, it is an amazing technology. Heck the first panels made are still producing power, many *decades* later, without asking for a penny. Pretty much the *only* thing that could possibly stop solar cells and panels from becoming more and more pervasive is the government at this point (or the shtf, which would make existing ones priceless). Anyone who thinks otherwise is missing something, or blinded by bias.


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## hiwall (Jun 15, 2012)

> So how long does it take for the solar plant to become economical ??


Never in current conditions. 
Maybe quickly if energy prices double or triple or more but even then you would expect the cost of those panels to maybe increase also.


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## Viking (Mar 16, 2009)

Tirediron said:


> So how long does it take for the solar plant to become economical ??


Kind of like going out and buying a new high mpg car, yeah, did that in 1959 in getting a Honda CVCC, great on fuel but I still wonder just how much we really "saved". That being said, we've run solar enough to know that's its a great standby system, the only problem being the need for hefty costs for battery replacement throughout the years. Plus side, no fuel storage, minus side, not enough sun to charge batteries.


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## TheLazyL (Jun 5, 2012)

Viking said:


> ...hefty costs for battery replacement throughout the years. Plus side, no fuel storage, minus side, not enough sun to charge batteries.


I found a retirement home in Arizona. Solar with batteries. Could I physically be able to replace the batteries as I get older? And as you mention, the cost!

But then I thought why do I need batteries? Stove, refrigerator and furnace are LP. Use electric during the day and when the sun goes down, lanterns or bed time!


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## LincTex (Apr 1, 2011)

TheLazyL said:


> Could I physically be able to replace the batteries as I get older?


Of course you can.... with the right kind of tools and equipment (LOL!) just like everyone else.

As you get older, you need to think less with your muscles and more with your head when it comes to how you will do a difficult job without hurting yourself.

A small portable crane (cherry picker, engine hoist) can be used to move the batteries.


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## hiwall (Jun 15, 2012)

> A small portable crane (cherry picker, engine hoist) can be used to move the batteries.


Or a strong neighbor who happens to like some of your wife's apple pie!


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## gilacr (Dec 30, 2013)

Solar is great for the individual that wants to save on his electic bill or power his/her RV but, for mass generation, ie power plant, the big problem that the govt hasn't addressed is that our grid wasn't designed for it. The more "green" energy that is placed on that grid the less stable it becomes. And, just because it's solar doesn't mean that it's enviromentaly friendly. The oil used in mass generation solar power panels to generate steam for steam turbine generators is extremely hazardous. When you see aux operators walking around the solar fields at these power plants wearing hazmat suits it pretty much assures you they have leaks, not exactly eviro friendly especially for our aquifers.


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## Viking (Mar 16, 2009)

LincTex said:


> Of course you can.... with the right kind of tools and equipment (LOL!) just like everyone else.
> 
> As you get older, you need to think less with your muscles and more with your head when it comes to how you will do a difficult job without hurting yourself.
> 
> A small portable crane (cherry picker, engine hoist) can be used to move the batteries.


This is why I like the 6 volt golf cart batteries, they are heavy, around 60 pounds, but still compact enough to move easily. 12 volt batteries, that have enough amp hours worth buying, can be far heavier and bulky to handle.


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## Gians (Nov 8, 2012)

Sounds like the popularity of roof top solar might cause problems to the grid, not solar panel farms. It might be more about money than the structure of the grid. I can see home owners with roof top panels paying a fee to compensate for loss of revenue to the power companies. Of course it's up to them to improve the grid and not just stick it in their pockets.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/gridlocked-power-grid-hawaiis-solar-energy-industry-crossroads/ 
Solar Thermal Power plants use oil, I don't think Solar Panel Farms do. Solar doesn't make much sense for snow country but it seems to work well for sunny dry areas. California is nothing but sunny and growing drier by the day. It's also prone to earthquakes, which is one more reason you don't see any new nuclear plants going up.


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## Caribou (Aug 18, 2012)

Gians said:


> Sounds like the popularity of roof top solar might cause problems to the grid, not solar panel farms. It might be more about money than the structure of the grid. I can see home owners with roof top panels paying a fee to compensate for loss of revenue to the power companies. Of course it's up to them to improve the grid and not just stick it in their pockets.
> http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/gridlocked-power-grid-hawaiis-solar-energy-industry-crossroads/
> Solar Thermal Power plants use oil, I don't think Solar Panel Farms do. Solar doesn't make much sense for snow country but it seems to work well for sunny dry areas. California is nothing but sunny and growing drier by the day. It's also prone to earthquakes, which is one more reason you don't see any new nuclear plants going up.


Pay the power company not to use their product? Should I pay the grocery store when I plant a garden? Did I miss the satire font?

Actually solar electric does fine in the snow. The snow reflects a lot of light so you get a bonus there and the panels generate electricity better in the cold. The shorter days can be a problem and you need to keep the panels clear.


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## Gians (Nov 8, 2012)

Caribou said:


> Pay the power company not to use their product? Should I pay the grocery store when I plant a garden? Did I miss the satire font?
> 
> Actually solar electric does fine in the snow. The snow reflects a lot of light so you get a bonus there and the panels generate electricity better in the cold. The shorter days can be a problem and you need to keep the panels clear.


Yeah that line even sounded strange to me as I typed it, but I guess the idea is that if roof top solar users are still on the grid for the times they need it, that they aren't paying their fair share of costs...their calculations taken from the video, not mine. Of course you can always go totally independent and get off the grid entirely...I assume that's an option.


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## Caribou (Aug 18, 2012)

Gians said:


> Yeah that line even sounded strange to me as I typed it, but I guess the idea is that if roof top solar users are still on the grid for the times they need it, that they aren't paying their fair share of costs...their calculations taken from the video, not mine. Of course you can always go totally independent and get off the grid entirely...I assume that's an option.


Sorry, I didn't mean to jump on you quite so hard. You kind of hit a tender spot. CA has a shortage of electricity at certain times and they want to ration it. They want smart meters so they can monitor your usage and even monitor how many people are in the house. They want to be able to reset your thermostat and otherwise control your usage. Electricity production is one of the largest consumers of water in CA and with the current drought cutting back on electricity production will help there.

Now there is talk about penalizing those that produce their own electricity. Is this about profits? Control? Both? If you use too much electricity there is a surcharge for that. Now a surcharge for using too little?

Go off grid? I could get behind that. Good luck in CA with that. A woman did that for a couple of years. The week after the paper published their story the county came by and condemned her home. Sorry, I didn't save the link.


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## Gians (Nov 8, 2012)

Yeah, I guess they only disconnect you when you don't pay your bill 
Profit and control...
http://offgridsurvival.com/livingoffthegridcrime/comment-page-2/


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## gilacr (Dec 30, 2013)

Gians said:


> Sounds like the popularity of roof top solar might cause problems to the grid, not solar panel farms. It might be more about money than the structure of the grid. I can see home owners with roof top panels paying a fee to compensate for loss of revenue to the power companies. Of course it's up to them to improve the grid and not just stick it in their pockets.
> http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/gridlocked-power-grid-hawaiis-solar-energy-industry-crossroads/
> Solar Thermal Power plants use oil, I don't think Solar Panel Farms do. Solar doesn't make much sense for snow country but it seems to work well for sunny dry areas. California is nothing but sunny and growing drier by the day. It's also prone to earthquakes, which is one more reason you don't see any new nuclear plants going up.


Yes agreed only solar/thermal use oil that is then used to heat a salt bed for the production of steam. However, I would disagree about the affect of photovoltaic farms. Solar is not cabable of carrying reverse reactive power (MVARS) this places undo stress on the grid. As there is always multible dips in the system voltage. Rather than a constant 60hrz dips as low as 58hrz can be seen simply from the standared use of the grid from the consumer. Other plants such as combined cycle plants are then forced to put additional excessive ware on their equipment to compensate for this. To great of a demand could potentionaly cause the gas/coal fired turbine to trip and allow a motoring of the generator. That plant then would be down until the generator could be replaced. Then there is also the thermal increase caused by those plants. I live near two such solar farms and we have seen an ambient increase of 4 degrees. Granted it doesnt seem like much but when your average summer is normally around 115 degrees an extra 4 degrees is quite noticiable. Then you also take into account the footprint vs generation and there is a great disparity between production methods. Two GE 7FAs and a GE D11 cover roughly about 5 acreas with a production capacity of 550MWs. 5 acres of photovoltaic panels would be lucky to produce 16MWs of generation. Please, dont get me wrong I'm all for using renewable energy it's just not in my opinion plausible with our current tech for large scale generation.


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## Caribou (Aug 18, 2012)

gilacr, very informative post. Residential units don't pose those problems. Some people use the grid for their storage bank but where that has become problematic or unprofitable the power companies disallow the electricity to flow into the grid. At home the owner of the local paper is allowed to use the grid as his storage for his wind power but nobody else is. He must have a special unit or something.


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## Caribou (Aug 18, 2012)

Gians said:


> Yeah, I guess they only disconnect you when you don't pay your bill
> Profit and control...
> http://offgridsurvival.com/livingoffthegridcrime/comment-page-2/


Thanks for the videos. It sounds like agenda 21 to me.


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## Marcus (May 13, 2012)

Caribou said:


> gilacr, very informative post. Residential units don't pose those problems. Some people use the grid for their storage bank but where that has become problematic or unprofitable the power companies disallow the electricity to flow into the grid. At home the owner of the local paper is allowed to use the grid as his storage for his wind power but nobody else is. He must have a special unit or something.


He does. He likely spent the money to get acceptable (to the utility) equipment for interconnection.

http://pdf.wholesalesolar.com/Downl...nual.pdf?_ga=1.51264682.2094009788.1431225950

This paper explains most of the issues with connecting PV to power grids starting around page 28. Power Quality and Islanding are important issues to understand.

If *I* was going to install a PV or wind system, *especially a scalable system that I intended to upgrade over time,* I would install a separate identical breaker box next to the existing breaker box. That separate breaker box would be *only* for those circuits that I wished to power using the PV or wind system. As my PV or wind power generation capacity increased, I would merely remove circuits from the grid power breaker box and move them over to the other breaker box. There would be a separate ground wire run to Earth ground for each box.

My reasoning for doing it this way is very simple. As I remove circuits from the power grid breaker box, I see an immediate drop in energy cost *at the retail rate.* I don't have to worry about net metering or what rate the utility will pay me for my energy generation. Additionally, I need no approvals from anybody to do it since these two breaker boxes are isolated electrically from each other. It also takes very little time to do the changeover.


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## Caribou (Aug 18, 2012)

Marcus said:


> He does. He likely spent the money to get acceptable (to the utility) equipment for interconnection.
> 
> http://pdf.wholesalesolar.com/Downl...nual.pdf?_ga=1.51264682.2094009788.1431225950
> 
> ...


Yes he did get the proper equipment to hookup. Others did as well but the utility company decided to quit playing along. Owning your own paper gets you special consideration. I like the guy and I've seen his and other setups around town.

I really like your dual fuse box idea. Would you include a battery bank. The single advantage I can see for net metering is the ability to eliminate batteries.


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## gilacr (Dec 30, 2013)

Caribou, Having been in the industry for many years some of the issue also revolves around the cost to the utilities for tacking individual grid input. Here in Arizona APS was hot and heavy to get people to go solar primarily for new government regulations for green energy. However, they found that the cost out weighed the benefits. When you take that along with the issues that Marcus pointed out many utilities began pulling back.

I use solar for my barns, well and travel trailer but keep my home hooked to the grid. I primarily do this because of the demand of my AC. The cost of putting in a system that could handle the AC is just to great and not really doable. I have battery bank setups for all my solar systems that uses deep cycle batteries to help differ the cost of replacement batteries. I really believe that solar is a great option for the average home owner to help differ their monthly electric bill but also feel the best bet for them is to store their own power and, not try and use the grid for their storage needs. Also, in a real SHFT scenario you would loose the ability to supply power to your home after the sun goes down once the grid falls.


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## Marcus (May 13, 2012)

Caribou said:


> Would you include a battery bank. The single advantage I can see for net metering is the ability to eliminate batteries.


Yes, I would include a battery bank. I almost mentioned it in the post, but I figured people would infer that a battery bank was required for energy storage since the system isn't connected to the grid.



gilacr said:


> I use solar for my barns, well and travel trailer but keep my home hooked to the grid. I primarily do this because of the demand of my AC. The cost of putting in a system that could handle the AC is just to great and not really doable. I have battery bank setups for all my solar systems that uses deep cycle batteries to help differ the cost of replacement batteries. I really believe that solar is a great option for the average home owner to help differ their monthly electric bill but also feel the best bet for them is to store their own power and, not try and use the grid for their storage needs. Also, in a real SHFT scenario you would loose the ability to supply power to your home after the sun goes down once the grid falls.


Exactly. The other reason to have a battery bank is the relatively portable nature of the energy storage. :eyebulge: It's easier to move batteries than it is to move a whole solar system....except for a small one. A small industrial cart or even a little red wagon will be a great help.

I agree that having a solar system large enough to handle the AC is impractical. However there are two ways I can think of to partially solve the issue.

One way is an earth sheltered home. While that is totally dependent on your personal situation, a person can upgrade their existing house to slow the transfer of heat by adding insulation, upgrading their windows, and adding airlock entryways (vestibules) to exterior doors.

The second way is to have a freezer outside of the climate controlled area. Make ice and then use that ice in a forced air swamp cooler.








While it may not have enough cooling capacity to cool a whole house, it will definitely cool at least one room.


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## readytogo (Apr 6, 2013)

*Learn to be thrifty before solar power.*

I don`t have any solar power yet, is on the agenda, but I had a team of people from the electric company looking at my smart new meter a few days ago, maybe they are concern about my low electric consumption?.Ceiling fans, open windows, timers on the window air, smaller fridge, and all electronics are off when not in used, turns out that the kill-a-watt meter from home depot tells a story even if the gadgets are off, it shows consumption, hell even the new DSL gadget is a power eater. So basically the only thing on 24/7 is the fridge, and even that has an internal timer, solar power is a great thing but like everything out there if is not use properly is not worth it, many out there are not willing to let go certain gadgets or comforts and the more gadgets the more power and the more power the more maintenance and money and everything has its limitations folks including our bodies.


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## LincTex (Apr 1, 2011)

Caribou said:


> Pay the power company not to use their product? Should I pay the grocery store when I plant a garden?


It is NOT fiction.

read & weep.......

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/04/16/3427392/oklahoma-fee-solar-wind/



> The bill was staunchly opposed by renewable energy advocates, environmental groups and the conservative group TUSK, but had the support of Oklahoma's major utilities. "Representatives of Oklahoma Gas and Electric Co. and Public Service Co. of Oklahoma said the surcharge is needed to recover some of the infrastructure costs to send excess electricity safely from distributed generation back to the grid," the Oklahoman reported.


.
.


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## Caribou (Aug 18, 2012)

LincTex said:


> It is NOT fiction.
> 
> read & weep.......
> 
> ...


While it will cost people some dollars it is not as bad a deal as it may seem. If I read the article correctly only the people that sold their power to the grid were affected. The simple answer is to not sell any power back. This is a good thing.

Friends of mine purchase their power at $0.60/Kwh. They sell to the power company at $0.09/Kwh. They heat their home and domestic hot water with oil at about $7.50+/gal. They are perfectly happy to use the grid as a battery even though the same energy would greatly reduce their oil consumption. The cost of the battery bank is more than they are willing to pay.

Another problem with this setup is that when the grid goes down then they have no power as the power company shuts down their unit automatically. I would find a slightly different answer but they are adults.

I hate to agree with power companies but this time I do. They are companies and should charge for products and services. In this case they provide the service of acting as a battery. You want the tune? Pay the piper. The idea of two breaker boxes is great but there are several other options as well. If you opt for foregoing a battery bank then you limit your options and reduce the functionality of your system.


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## Viking (Mar 16, 2009)

I chose to have a system that passes 120/240 VAC through the inverter/charger, the inverter is connected to 20 series-parallel 6 volt golf cart batteries for 24 volts, 1040 amp hours. Presently I don't have my solar array mounted, but because the inverter constantly monitors the batteries charge condition the batteries are always ready for standby for emergency power. For the purpose that most of us prepare for I have a hard time considering a system that just feeds solar generated power back to the power company without having emergency power backup for when the grid is down.


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## Marcus (May 13, 2012)

Caribou said:


> While it will cost people some dollars it is not as bad a deal as it may seem. If I read the article correctly only the people that sold their power to the grid were affected. The simple answer is to not sell any power back. This is a good thing.
> 
> I hate to agree with power companies but this time I do. They are companies and should charge for products and services. In this case they provide the service of acting as a battery. You want the tune? Pay the piper.


From Linc's link:
"Last year, Arizona added what amounts to a $5 per month surcharge for solar customers, a move that was widely seen as a compromise..."

A reasonable charge will probably get by, but $20 or $30 per month would be a strong incentive for those with solar/wind to install a battery bank.



> The idea of two breaker boxes is great but there are several other options as well.


I agree. I mentioned the two breaker boxes method since it is very simple and understandable to non-technical people. Additionally, it gives the owner great flexibility in choosing what to run off the grid. Since there's only 3 wires to change for single phase 110 V, most people can do this without any help. Plus the ease of scalability is in my mind the best point.



> _ If you opt for foregoing a battery bank then you limit your options and reduce the functionality of your system._


Again I agree.

There was a thread a while back about having flexibility in your thinking when the SHTF. You also want to build in as much flexibility as possible into any systems you'll rely upon if things head south. Not just electricity or water or even sewer, but things like your food production and food storage systems need to have viable alternatives. Any single points of failure need to be identified and addressed so as to lessen future impacts. A written and well thought out go to hell plan conceived beforehand lessens the impact and stress of things like drought, pestilence, theft or any other natural or man-made disaster.


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