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Clinton’s Solar Panel Plan Leaves America in the Dark
On Hillary Clinton’s campaign website, she calls for the creation of 500 million new solar panels to “power every home in America.” Voicing a strong preference for solar may win over the hearts of some environmentally conscious voters, but it should not win over their minds. A proposal to comprehensively retool the nation’s energy systems to solar power ignores a couple of very basic, yet critically important, complications.
First, every home in America is already powered. The country does not need to undergo a massive, redundant, and expensive overhaul to duplicate what has already been accomplished. Second and more importantly, this plan, if you can call it that, hinges on a physical impossibility. Solar panels cannot power homes. At least not in any way people in the industrialized world would consider acceptable. Solar power is unreliable, intermittent, and inflexible. This means solar panels are intrinsically incapable of handling the country’s home energy needs.
Energy is consumed on demand, without advance warning or notice. When anyone flicks on a light switch in their home, the unthinking expectation is that their lights will automatically turn on. That taken-for-granted miracle of convenience and standard of living is made possible through a steady and uninterrupted access to electrical energy. To ensure people always have electricity when they want to use it, power plants must use fuel sources that can continually power electrical generators. In practice, these fuel sources are limited to coal, natural gas, oil, nuclear, and hydro, and according to the Energy Information Agency those sources combine to generate 92 percent of America’s electricity in 2015.
On the other hand, renewable energy sources, like wind and solar, cannot produce power on demand. Windmills and solar panels produce energy literally as the wind blows and sun shines. Because of this intermittency, renewable energy, as it is widely known, is unreliable energy. Alex Epstein, author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, coined the term “unreliables” to replace “renewables,” as it is a much more accurate description of what they offer to energy consumers. This is not to say that solar panels serve no purpose, but we all use electricity throughout each and every day, not just when the sun is being cooperative. Imagine depending solely on solar panels for your home electricity – your access to this critical resource could be cut off by something as simple and commonplace as cloudy skies. In your homes, you cannot afford to have all your lights and appliances shut off just because it’s overcast outside.
If you think this is an oversimplified review of solar energy, it actually gets worse as you consider more details.
Daily kilowatt consumption follows a predictable pattern of highs and lows over a full day, but the amount consumed at any given moment in any given region is in constant flux. Solar, unlike traditional fuel sources for electrical energy, cannot be adjusted to meet the moment-by-moment changes in energy consumption. Even when the sun does come out and solar panels start creating electricity, there is no assurance that whatever energy produced will match whatever energy is being consumed. Solar energy cannot be ramped up or dialed down to match demand. We are stuck with whatever the weather gives us.
Worse than this inflexibility, the very nature of the rotation of the Earth guarantees that solar panels will not generate electricity when it is needed most. People need energy 24 hours a day, but in their homes specifically, they need it most when the sun isn’t shining. Home electricity consumption peaks in the early morning before people leave for work and school and again in the evening when they return home. The bulk of home energy consumption happens when the sun is not shining and peak solar production occurs when it is needed least. The graph below, created by an Australian solar energy broker, illustrates this inversion between home energy demand and solar production.
Source: http://www.solarchoice.net.au/blog/home-energy-consumption-versus-solar-pv-generation/
If you consider your own daily routines, you will likely see why this is. The average working American wakes up and starts using electricity before the sun is up. In the dark or dimly lit morning hours, people turn on lights, pull food out of the refrigerator (which has been using energy throughout the darkness of the night), use their stoves or microwaves to make breakfast, and groom themselves with any number of bathroom appliances. During the daylight hours, when solar has the greatest potential to generate power, home electricity consumption drops off because most people have gone to work or school for the day. When they return home, as the sun is setting and solar production falls off, they turn on all the lights again, use their stoves or ovens to make dinner, turn on their TVs, and use their computers to read the latest on Ricochet.
Building 500 million new solar panels could, in theory, expand solar capacity enough to handle all the daytime home electrical demand, but the true capacity for unreliable energy sources is always zero. Clinton could subsidize the solar panel portfolio to be 100 times more than what is needed, but on a sufficiently overcast day, let alone at night, they would all be for naught. A solar panel sitting in the dark cannot turn your lights on. No matter how heavily the government invests in solar, reliable and controllable sources (fossil fuels, nuclear, hydro) will always be needed to maintain steady and affordable access to energy.
Published in Science & Technology, Technology
Good question. I stuck to writing about homes because that’s what Hillary’s website specifically mentioned. I don’t have the answer for what the daily commerical consumption looks like. My educated guess, based on what I know from the industry and some quick Googling, is that commercial use will be relatively high and level through out the work day. Not every business will consume in the same way though. Office buildings will have a different demand profile from restaurants, which will be different from manufacturers, which will be different from schools, etc. I think homes behave more uniformly.
“Renewable” energy – you mean like timber?? We can always plant more trees! Promoting timber burning as a renewable would really get the environmentalists excited: burning our forests and contributing more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere (“But it’s renewable!” we could tell them)! And we could set up acres of solar panels and wind farms in all the empty space in national parks! Or, setting aside the sarcasm, if we were really serious about low-cost “green” energy we could invest in nuclear instead and work to solve the nuclear waste problem. But then we wouldn’t get to control other people’s lives while feeling smug about ourselves.
The great French scientist Sadi Carnot, writing in 1814, said:
To take away England’s steam engines to-day would amount to robbing her of her iron and coal, to drying up her sources of wealth, to ruining her means of prosperity and destroying her great power. The destruction of her shipping, commonly regarded as her source of strength, would perhaps be less disastrous for her.
For England in 1824, substitute the United States in 2016. And for “steam engines,” substitute those power sources which use carbon-based fuels: whether generating stations burning natural gas, blast furnaces burning coke, or trucks/trains/planes/automobiles using oil derivatives. The extreme hostility toward fossil fuels threatens America’s strength as a military power as much as it threatens the standard of living of our citizens. See my post Of Energy and Slavery
Minor point – solar concentrators fry birds; photovoltaic panels (the kind you would put on the top of your house) don’t, and are quite safe.
I think they are more efficient now. In Illinois they are used with rechargeable battery packs to power lighted road warning signs, mainly to avoid the expense of running a power cable I imagine.
I have a few solar powered lights on my outside stairs a nd driveway entrance. They work ok as a means to highlight where the ‘way’ is which is their main purpose. I can’t imagine even trying to power my saws, washing machine, etc. with solar panels, given current technology.
But the main problem with Hillary’s proposal is the mandate involved, same as her original health care proposal. Freedom works, mandates do not.
Another problem, seldom mentioned, is the myriad of items produced from byproducts of coal and petroleum. There aren’t any replacements available for most or all of these items. This just shows how short sighted if not uncaring our ‘leaders’ really are.
Her proposal amounts to a wealth transfer from homeowners to special interests, the solar panel companies, and should be rejected on that basis.
“More from the party of ‘No!’ The American People are tired of being told what can’t be done. VOTE FOR ME. Bwahahaha!”
The question that nobody is asking about all these “green” energy producing systems is, “What is the energy pay back?” In other works, how long will the system have to operate to produce the energy it took to produce and install the system?
Look at the graph in the original post. The area under the green curve is the amount of energy produced by the solar system. The 3 kW system produces about 10 kW-hours of energy in a day. How many kW-hours of power were consumed manufacturing and installing the system? That is the missing data. Why is it missing? Because it is a very big number when compared to the output of the device.
If we want to make informed decisions about reducing our carbon footprint, consumers need that information. Then we can decide for ourselves which option is better to save energy.
I shouldn’t post this comment. But I’m in a bad mood having been up all night with lightning flashing ominously through the bedroom window. Seems an apt metaphor for the evil coming our way.
I have a “former” friend who started a solar panel company by sucking up subsides, grants, loans – whatever. It went under after most of it went to China. I think he defaulted on the loans. But he sure got a super-duper subsidized solar home out it.
He thought we had 9/11 coming to us. Grumbled when we had to stand for the Star Spangled Banner a few days after the attack . . thought is was “inappropriate” to “politicize” a public concert. (He left a message on my answering machine that evening in the form of a query: “Was Samson a terrorist?”)
Now, my friends, he has a government contract to create a neutron detector for Homeland Security. Ya can’t make this stuff up.
Here’s my sad story. I live in Nevada – one of the few places where solar actually makes some sense. Our peak energy needs come during the summer days, when air conditioners work overtime to deal with 115 degree temperatures. We also have a lot of sunny days. Add to that the fact that politicos, led by Harry Reid, have been trying to shut down the coal-fired plants that provide our electricity (along with Hoover Dam), plus some government subsidies (which I hate, but what the hell – it’s my tax money so if I get some of it back I can live with a wrinkle in my principles). So I decided to install solar panels on my roof.
Now here is the deal we were promised by law. We would be able to use our own electricity without paying the local power monopoly (Nevada Energy) for it, and if we generated excess electricity NE would buy it at the same price it cost them to generate their own electricity. Then, last year, the Public Utility Commission suddenly changed the rules. We get no discount for generating our own power, and any excess power will be gobbled up by NE at 2 cents per kwh, instead of the 13 cents it costs them to generate it themselves. We are screwed.
So before Queen Hillary starts on her pie in the sky plans, maybe she could offer some protection to people who already installed solar. Or no one else will.
I glanced at a couple of sites on the internet for pricing on solar panels. A 50 watt panel was around $250. Even at a conservative $100/panel, 500 million panels comes to $5o trillion. Where’s that money coming from?
Larry,
This is the story that isn’t covered by the media. This is exactly what I’m talking about. Real solar that would work right now, that would save the average homeowner a decent amount of money (the payoff time v. the size of investment would be reasonably low), that would cause no additional problems (aesthetics-zoning), is being subverted by the environmental lobby.
Instead of being concerned about what is really important, Nevada Energy’s policy for people generating their own power, environmentalists are off spinning their latest fantasy project. Solar energy is being killed by the environmentalists.
Idiots!
Regards,
Jim
The environmentalists have only one criteria for any energy plan – that it won’t work. Because their real goal is to tear down our “materialistic” society. Watermelons. Green on the outside, red on the inside.
If solar power ever became price-competitive and widely available, they would turn against it. All that stuff in the original post about “renewable energy” being impractical – that’s not a bug; that’s a feature. That’s the feature.
And according to the Daily Shot, I think they’re out of cheese…..
As a regulated utility the state and the power company have agreed that the utility will get an agreed to return (but no more) on its plant (by plant I mean the distribution infrastructure required to deliver electricity to your and others homes and business which is in addition to the cost of the generated electricity). If the law you reference creates problems for the utility’s deal. The utility goes back to the state for redress, and of course prevails because the electric utility is a giant company.
In the utility’s defense, you indicated that the law required the utility to pay you its cost for power. Because the utility has deals with power producers which equal peak demand plus a reserve margin. It does not need this power and may well have to pay the producer anyway. So what you see as a savings they see as an additional cost. A cost that they must recoup from, wait for it….you.
I think maybe $50 Billion?
For this to be true the solar panels’ output, which is the area under either of the green lines in the chart would have to be equal to the demand, which is the area under the black line. So in addition to the batteries themselves, the solar panels would need to be at least twice as large as what is shown as the larger option in the chart. If that were true then theoretically enough batteries works except for there are probably still issues with cloudy days and cloudy parts of the year.
A solar panel system like is envisioned in the chart could benefit from batteries only in an amount equal to the area between the green line(s) and the black line. The homeowner in that case would still import power from the grid.
RC,
Additional free power can’t be an additional cost to the utility. However, if they have an argument that would lower the price they are willing to pay to the individual then let them make it. Let them make it explicitly and let their claims be reviewed. Let a fair price be set. I doubt that the utility will suffer much for this.
The only vested interest in having the individual power producer be forced out is the environmental lobby. Chaos is their friend and irrationality is their product.
Regards,
Jim
Lol. Yeah. I got a little carried away.
If Nevada Energy overbuilt (or overbought) its capacity, then it made a bad business decision. Yes, it paid for its fixed-costs capacity, but so did we. NE bought power plants, we bought solar panels. There is no reasonable argument, none, that fairness requires us to pay for capacity that we don’t want, use or need just to rescue NE from its bad business decision. The company is owned by Warren Buffet. Let him pay for his own bad decisions. The name for companies that make bad decisions and then want the government to force taxpayers (or ratepayers) to bail them out is “crony capitalists.”
It might interest you to know that several of the Vegas hotel/casinos are fighting desperately to break off of the NE grid, and generate their own power in-house. NE opposes that effort like it was the zombie apocalypse.
You can figure that replacing charger and battery losses will require roughly 18% extra panels.
These are the figures I used. Good chargers are mid 90% range in efficiency. A lead-acid battery usually has a roundtrip efficiency of a little over 90%.
You have to multiply these two efficiencies to get the overall efficiency, which is often estimated at 85%. Divide 1 by that and you get around 118%, or 18% extra energy output required.
You always get a little energy from a solar array even on a cloudy day, but even if you got none, you could store enough energy for 15 straight cloudy days with only 628 batteries, costing under $93,000!
(I assumed 6Vdeep cycle lead-acid golf cart batteries with rated capacity of 240 A-hour, using only half that capacity (recommended) costing $147.41 each, and average household electricity consumption of 11,000 kWh per year.)
Of course, in Portland, OR you can go more than 60 days in a row with no clear days, so plan on a lot more batteries if you live out thataway.
If you want to get a good idea of the end-to-end cost of adding solar power to a house, a really good example is the cost of a complete solar installation from a provider who has to factor in all the intangibles.
One such provider is ENMAX energy in Canada. Enmax has a service that will come to your house, install solar panels, hook up all the electrics, and integrate it all into your home wiring. They will do this on a lease basis, and at the end of the 15 year lease they come and remove it all and restore the house to the way it was (or you can pay them to keep it).
So how much does it cost? Here are your options:
For no money down, the customer can install the panels at a rate of $60 per month for 15 years.
With a $3,500 down-payment, the monthly bill drops to $16.99.
At the end of the lease, you pay $950 to have the panels taken away, or you can pay $350 and keep them.
This is a 1.3 kW package, which can be expected to produce about 1000 to 1400 kWh per year here in Alberta, depending on where you live, where your house faces, etc. That does not include the effects of snow or dirt on the panels. Just the average solar flux, roof orientation, number of hours per sunlight per year. In other words, that’s the absolute best-case scenario.
A Professor at the University of Alberta did the math on this system, and discovered that it would only provide about 12-16% of his household power. He compared that to grid power, being as generous as possible (he assumed electricity prices would go up 5% per year, and he even priced the supposed carbon savings based on typical carbon taxes. The result? Over 15 years, the system would cost him $4032 more than just buying that power from the grid. Since the system costs about $8500, he’s only getting back roughly half his investment.
And this is only half the story – the homeowner side. And it doesn’t include battery power (Tesla’s home battery is about $10,000). Not only that, but Enmax has received 2.5 billion dollars from the government to subsidize this program – without which the costs would be even steeper.
This math has not stopped the Alberta government from deciding that solar energy is our future. Because socialists don’t do math. They do feelings.
We haven’t even touched on some of the other problems with solar and wind. For one thing, if you feed the power back into the grid, you’re putting a lot of power pulses onto a grid that wasn’t designed for them. Even clouds passing over a region festooned with solar will cause power to ebb and flow as the clouds move. And because the energy is intermittent, you still need base-load power from traditional turbines to pick up the slack. Traditional power plants are most efficient when running at a high duty cycle. Since you need the full capacity for times when solar and wind aren’t available, that means you’re running your power plants at low duty cycles most of the time, which is inefficient and eats up some of your savings.
That’s why Elon Musk is pushing his home battery system – a country full of batteries could store quite a bit of energy and take the pulses off the grid in the short term. But the batteries are way too expensive, and they don’t solve the problem of what happens if it’s cloudy or calm for a longer period. Then you’ve got to ramp up the other plants anyway.
Solar is deadly. 500 million solar panels on roofs means people climbing up on their roofs to clean panels off when it snows, when they get dusty, covered in leaves, etc. Falls are one of the biggest sources of accidental death in the U.S. Get millions of homeowners routinely climbing up on their roofs, and expect thousands of deaths per year.
Grid-connected solar makes the energy supply more brittle. If you have a hurricane, you’re going to lose a lot of solar capacity right at the time you need it the most. If a major snowstorm hits, solar power is going to temporarily drop dramatically until the panels can be cleaned or the snow melts off them.
Solar power requires a huge amount of infrastructure. The energy cost of an installation isn’t just the cost of the panels, but the large amounts of steel required to mount them on a roof, the cost of the inverters, batteries, wiring, etc.
The fundamental problem with solar and wind is that they are low density energy sources. That means you need a lot of surface area to extract enough energy, which means you’re going to consume a huge amount of material building it out, and you’re going to be taking up a lot of land. That also has environmental consequences.
Dan,
The other way to look at this is that ENMAX is a form of consumer fraud enabled by the government. No product that was created solely by the free market would exist in this form. How much do you want to bet that ENMAX is making a huge profit by providing consumers with the illusion of solar power?
I have experience with selling in a sales environment polluted by such frauds. The average consumer doesn’t know who or what to believe. They are skeptical of everything you say and rightly so. I could walk in after the ENMAX sales guy was there and show them a collector system with 3 times the yield that they could buy themselves and put all of the money in their pocket. I’d even provide financing at competitive rates. They would stare at me in disbelief.
Believe me, when I tell you that it is the environmentalists who are ruining solar. Once the market is saturated with enough ENMAXs people are so confused that those who are trying to do the real job get ignored. The fraudsters make out like bandits.
Regards,
Jim
Remember that Larry’s comment indicated that the utility was required to buy excess solar power at some market rate. So if that is true it is not free to the utility it is a cost.
Ross,
I wasn’t trying to criticize Larry’s comment but react to the whole tenor of the green debate. The utilities are required to sell power at some specific rate. I don’t think the clumsiness of current public utility pricing is a relevant argument. In fact, this proves my point. If 1/1000 of the political effort put into green energy nonsense were put into getting the price structure of public utilities ready for the efficient pricing of consumer-generated power we would have had such 30 years ago.
With computer and internet capabilities as low cost as they are, the utilities could price the consumer-generated power minute by minute like the stock market. That’s incredibly easier than trying to create a storage system so you can run independently of the utility.
We have been wasting time for a long time.
Regards,
Jim
This is a scenario where politicians who want to do good over-promise and then can’t deliver leaving folks in a breach. The utility does not make supply decisions in a vacuum. They are all approved (you might say mandated) by the state regulator (normally a utility commission or public service commission) and the regulator operates via their own set of directives governed by state law. So this may well be just two contradictory state legislative efforts that are poorly coordinated and work poorly.
I am not surprised, I used to make my living building the kind of distributed generation systems the hotels might be looking at. Most of these involve natural gas fired generators of one kind or another. The high cost of natural gas from 2005 to 2009 killed that business stone dead so I moved on. Now that natural gas prices have fallen from $8/mmbtu to $2/mmbtu (wellhead) there should be renewed interest anywhere where power prices are above say $0.13/kwh retail and in some parts of southern CA it is over $0.20/kwh.
These systems, unlike solar, can adjust the load of the facility as it goes up and down and they can also provide waste heat which, through an absorption chiller can be used to provide A/C for the hotel (pretty cool IMHO).
However, it is not that easy to go completely off the grid over time. The utility will argue (with some justification) that if the hotel’s system fails (and they can for various reasons) the hotel will still expect the utility to be ready to provide the power so the utility is not relieved of its responsibility.
I agree, and that is the kind of confusion and inefficiency that I expect from government. But if the government is going to encourage citizens to sink thousands of dollars into a project based on a certain set of laws, it should not arbitrarily change those laws after the fact. If a non-governmental agent did that, it would be called fraud. For example, if I convinced you to sink thousands of dollars into buying a franchise to market my product, and promised to sell that product to you for a certain amount, but after you had bought the franchise and hired your employees I suddenly told you that I was increasing the price to ten times what I had promised, that would be fraud.