FOX News Talking Out Of Their You-Know-What On Solar Energy

reply to post by ANNED


Then they need to share and stop hogging the same the same techniques/technologies that benefit those that pay their bills.

In other words, the taxpayers.

Originally posted by Dfairlite

Originally posted by ManFromEurope

Originally posted by Dfairlite
Obviously fox news is just ignorant. I lived in germany for years (returned last year). If I remember right, the average number of sunny days is between 50 and 75 per year. These people have obviously never spent much time there.

Now as for germany having a successful solar economy, that depends on what you deem "successful". If you deem having a solar plant that can power a city for those 50-75 days a year then relying on 90% oil/coal for the other 300+- days successful. Then yes, they're successful. If you deem the residents paying an electric bill of around 33 US cents per kw/h, successful. Then yes they're successful.

But I prefer my .09 cents per kw/h until the tech is actually ready for commercial use. THEN we can switch over. I got really sick of the $340-$400 electric bills with NO AC (not that you need AC, just to show how expensive that sh*t is over there).

edit on 10-2-2013 by Dfairlite because: (no reason given)

This is completely wrong.

There a no central solar power plants. The solar-powergrid is nearly completely decentralized. Even now, its about -5°C and a little bit sunny, nevertheless power is produced.

Here is an hourly updated overview of the produced energy:

Solar power data

Yesterday, it topped 8.000 MW. That is about 2 nuclear power plants!


Edit: oh, and its about 20-25 ct/kWh. Which is costly, but it does give the people/consumers some incentive to think about power-consumption and therefore power-saving.

edit on 11-2-2013 by ManFromEurope because: (no reason given)

Lol, no it's not completely wrong. The only slight falsehood was that I stated 'solar plant'. You are correct. It is MOSTLY decenteralized. There are substations all over the place. If you want to call that decentralized, so be it.

Ok.

Yes, it PEAKED at 8,000MW. peaked. in the middle of the day, when most people are away from home.. The main problem with solar energy is that it doesn't work at night and is lessened by cloudy days, this wouldn't be a problem if there was a good way to store solar power, but there's not. That day is coming though.

Well, that is a point worth of a discussion. Overall, there are peak-powerplants (eg. gas-powered, pumped storage hydro power stations etc. and of course renewal energy powerplants) and base-powerplants (like nuclear powerplants or coal plants). It is much more efficient to let those base-powerplants go through the whole of the day. But the amount of peak-powerplants which can be turned on/off rather quickly may be brought down as the amount of expected energy from wind or the sun is calculated every day anew from every major electricity-supplier so that enough energy is produced.

Storage itself IS a problem, as you would need 1.200.000 standardsized car-batteries to store 1 GWh (half the energy produced by the Hoover Dam per hour) at 12V (losses ignored). Find a way to store huge masses of electricity and the world will be yours..

Germany still relies on NINE nuclear power plants and is ramping up coal plants since they decided to shut down the nuclear power plants. that means they need to at least quadrouple their solar infrastructure to be anywhere close. As they do so, the cost will increase, until they find an economical way to store it. Green energy is not YET viable. It won't be until we can store it. it's not consistent enough.

(www.bloomberg.com...)

It is consistent enough. And, the better part of this: We are REDUCING nuclear power plants. Say "Hi", China - 29 newly built these years..

Yes it COSTS about 25c per kw/h but RWE was charging 28.5 euro ccents per kw/h which works out to be in the low to mid thrities of US cents. You can't pull a fast one on the price. I paid it for years. It just went up and up and up as solar and wind ramped up.

Yeah, and I was at fault to understand that you spoke of US cents, not Euro cents. Stupid identical names.
It is correct that the price goes up. But in fact the rise is about 3.5 cents overall for the whole of the renewable energies since introduction. The rest goes into the pockets of those suppliers.

Look, I'm all for green energy, don't get me wrong. It's just not there yet, its not yet a viable alternative. Even if it were 12-14c per kw/h I'd be all for the investment, but it's double that.

No, it is simply not that much. Look here: Wikipedias chart of German electricity price - the renewable energies are introduced by the name "EEG" summing up the costs for them.

reply to post by VaterOrlaag

It's time for Americans to wake the hell up and stop subscribing to such ignorance.

The ignorance you spew, is already flirting with extinction.

I know it's common place. I know it's asking the impossible.

But can you please not make blanket statements like this towards all Americans. It's unfounded.

Please make effort to recognize the voices from my country that are worthy of being heard, and I say this with utmost confidence that they are many!

Is your country so immune from negative scrutiny that you can point your finger so absolutely?

For those who want to pursue solar energy anyway, you can buy panels and good efficient inverters on eBay.

The inverters are quite cheap and you don't have to be an electrician to install them as they simply plug into a power point. Connect the positive and negative 12 or 24V DC wires to the inverter and you're in business!

I've had panels on my washing line for a few years now running on this system.

reply to post by Lucid Lunacy


I'm an American.

And I'm calling on OTHER Americans to reject the ignorance of Fox News.

I hope that clears things up for you.

reply to post by VaterOrlaag


Well then...

I suppose it does...

apologies if I was too slow to gather as much I have been drinking spirits.

reply to post by Lucid Lunacy


Trust me, I need a beer after reading some of these posts.

You're not alone.

Originally posted by VaterOrlaag
reply to post by Lucid Lunacy

 

Trust me, I need a beer after reading some of these posts.

You're not alone.

Trust me. Fox News is #1 in the ratings.
There is a good reason for that. Fox tells the truth about the economic BOOM in
natural gas and the economic BUST of expensive solar energy that generates
electrical power only during the day!

Solyndra was an expensive boondoggle.

Seek the truth and stop trashing Fox News.

Originally posted by VaterOrlaag
reply to post by TauCetixeta

 

And yet, the climate continues to degrade each year.

I don't care if there's an "inexhaustible" supply of the very things that have destroyed our climate and altered our weather patterns.

They are not and will never be a substitute for common sense.

So let the coal miners and oil rig workers whine. They're pawns in Big Energy's drive to ensure that the U.S goes kicking and screaming to its' grave while making the clowns that rule these companies/technologies richer at every opportunity.

Here's a noble idea. Stop depending on other peoples' oil/coal/natural gas and make a serious investment into the infrastructure necessary to support alternative energy. We are already doing that but it's a baby step. We need a giant leap forward.

What happened to the America that enjoyed competing with other nations over technological prowess?

Why the dependence on a 19th century infrastructure that has been proven from time to time to be ultimately destructive to life on Earth as we know it?

edit on 11-2-2013 by VaterOrlaag because: (no reason given)

Wrong answer. -- Let the shareholders decide. --
The numerous new Gas Turbine Power Plants are enjoying VERY LOW prices for
natural gas. We are finding natural gas in the USA .....everywhere.
Low cost natural gas translates into ......higher profit margins.
That makes the stock price go up. It's a WIN / WIN.

Stop burying your head in solar panels that generate power only during the day!

The cost of storm damage to replace
They need to follow the seasonal sun angel in the sky
The storage for residential is not cost effective.
If the solar panels were tied into a live grid maybe..

read about Enron on how easy it is to corrupt power companies. The lenghts these power companies will go to keep that status quo.

I am all for it though, I hope they can come up with a system that will cut the use of fossil fuels and Nuclear power

reply to post by SunLife


Digging up Enron?
Abundant Natural Gas is the future.
We are finding it everywhere. You just can't wish away the cheap natural gas.

I apologize if this was brought I don't have enough time to research the threads this morning, but were looking into the solar power grid tie inverter and was wondering if anyone had experiance with them?

As they claim which I can understand how it works, is that you hook a solar panel any size depending on your budget and watt's your looking for, to a grid tie inverter then plug it into to your wall. As the solar panel creates energy then transfer's it to the inverter which then flows back to the grid.

depending on the size of the setup it is suppose to either slow down your meter or make it run backwards forcing the access power back to the grid in the neighborhood. There for reducing or eliminating your electric bill.

You can buy cheap setup's on ebay raging from $200 on up to the more expensive $20,000 and more.

I can see why the solar industry isn't as good as it should, the price to go solar is outrageous and to go completely off grid would cost $10,000 to $40,000 it would take me 25 years to justify the cost's.

I looked at the power company in our area and of course if you want on the buy back plan, then you must buy and meet all their standards which one is having a warranty for 10 or more years, and that is why it can't be justified, solar system with longer warranty's are quite a bit more as with anything else. You have to buy from factory and have it installed by credible installer's which blow's the DIY idea out which is the only way to gain from it. There's alot more technical spec's you have to meet, and when added what they wanted me to buy it would cost just shy $30,000 which would take 25 years to see the difference in the pocket book!

After looking for other way's to save some green backs I saw the grid tie solar inverter setup which in theory would be a great and inexpensive "compared to the complete solar system" way to save and see it justified in the pocket book. My idea is to have one of those that would compensate just for the lighting and small appliance's with the bigger one's "washer, dryer air conditioner ect." running on grid. I added it up and in theory would slash my bill from 30 to 40 percent. The system I was looking at was a 500 watt system and was around $500 it would only take one year to see the difference from the initial investment to saving money monthly!

Once again I apologize if this was brought up already!

reply to post by anton74

You posted a link to Bloomberg. Did you happen to notice that the Bloomberg article says basically the same thing as the Fox article that I provided a link to?

No, they are not saying the same thing. At All.

Did you not read the entire paragraph? Look:

Fourth-quarter installations, which fell 66 percent compared with the previous year, show that the new system of reduced subsidies that took full effect from October is working, said Ingo Strube, a spokesman for the Environment Ministry in Berlin.

Why would they make a funny statement like that if it fell 66 percent? Because they plan ahead for these things. They have analysts and consultants who work it all out, and as it turns out - even with a 66 percent drop - they can still be on or even ahead of schedule.

That's what matters. Like I already said - renewable energies like solar don't need eternal, perpetual subsidies to sustain them - they just need kickstarts to get to a point where they become market competitive. And the Germans still feel they're right on target. That's why I quoted this part of the article before:

Still, the above-market tariffs remain at levels that allow developers to profit, while component prices have continued to drop amid an oversupply.

So just because they are no longer matching the same furious pace they were at before (which by the way, was more than double what they expected) doesn't mean it's failing.


But this is exactly what FOX News would have you believe, isn't it? That's the difference between their article and Bloomberg's, and it is a crucial one. FOX News will cherry pick whatever negative angle they can about this and use it to tell you Solar = FAIL. Meanwhile I'll say this for the 3rd time now: somebody tell the Germans then, because they don't seem to be too concerned about it.


The same thing happened with the Stimulus Bill DOE clean energy loans. I left a link from the House Oversight Committee earlier in the thread showing that they budgeted $2.5 Billion just to cover losses from expected defaults. They knew there was gonna be some fails, some bumps in the road, and they planned ahead - like any proper investor/policy analyst would do. Now they are actually projected to use up only a quarter of that budget because total fails have been significantly less than they expected, and the overall program has been a big success.


But here's how FOX News reports the story: Solyndra. Solyndra. Solyndra. Fail. Government Spending. Solyndra. Taxpayer money. Obama grrrr. Communism. Solyndra. Fail.

reply to post by mc_squared


What is the truth?

Did Solyndra fail ?
Did Solyndra hire 1,000 people and then fire them all?

Did Obama fly out there and trumpet the viability of Solyndra?
I have the YouTube video link.
Goldman Sachs saw the failure of Solyndra before it even started.

Solyndra made solar panels for $6 per watt, sold them for $3 per watt while China
was selling the exact same product for $1.50 per watt.
It doesn't take an MBA to see that Solyndra was doomed.

On the plus side, political donors received their "kickback".

reply to post by offmyrocker


No need to apologize, it's a good question.

The grid tie thing depends on where you live and whether your local (State?) government and/or power company is offering anything in regards to it. In most places it comes in the form of a feed-in tariff (FIT), but I think in the U.S. they usually just refer to it as net-metering.

Currently, without proper electrical storage a FIT program is what makes a personal solar set-up worth it because it allows you to get the most out of the electricity you generate, and essentially not waste any.

If you're looking at a small set-up for personal use - then this could suit your needs better, but just bear in mind that a 500W system is only going to produce that amount at peak times, not necessarily when you need it. But if you feel you can work with that then go for it. Shop around and see if you can find a good installer and consult with them.

Also you mentioned DIY stuff - it is possible to build your own PV systems from components, but it's still pretty pricey and I worry how durable they would ultimately be (real PV panels are laminated in a glue called EVA that insulates them and helps protect them from the elements over time).

But if you're interested in alternative ways of saving on your power bills there are all sorts of excellent DIY projects like solar-thermal and other passive heating and cooling systems that can really make a difference. Have a look at this website and see if there's anything there that might work for you:

Build It Solar (it has more than just solar projects)

reply to post by TauCetixeta


Yeah, and it also doesn't take an MBA to see that the industry is much bigger than just Solyndra. What it does take is turning off the FOX News and seeing the bigger picture.

reply to post by mc_squared


Oh yes. I remember the (investing/boondoggle) called The Big Dig - Massachusetts.
Let the private sector do the spending.
Government can't do anything right except send out Social Security checks
and run a Department of Defense.
All the rest is plagued with ........WASTE, FRAUD & ABUSE.

Seek the truth.

reply to post by TauCetixeta


Come back when you're ready to stop being a Fox apologist.

I don't appreciate you trolling any of my comments.

reply to post by VaterOrlaag


I see. Only Anti Fox News posts are welcome on this thread.
Return to this thread but only after you have been brainwashed and are willing
to trash Fox News morning, noon & night.

reply to post by TauCetixeta


Grow up.

Partisan trolling is never welcome on here. You should know that by now.

Fox News is not a political entity. It is a fake news channel masquerading as "fair and balanced". It is fair game in my eyes.