Theoretical Limit Of Solar Cell Efficiency Probably Broken

With hindsight we can that President Bush should not have pushed his DOE to approve Solyndra. And do remember that they would have approved the loan guarantee prior to Bush leaving office except that the paperwork was not complete. A few weeks after Bush left office the exact same group of people who held up funding under Bush gave the final approval when the completed application was returned.

And hindsight also shows us that Solyndra was apparently promising more than they could deliver. However this was not being questioned at the time. The conservative financial press was heralding Solyndra as a great American company that was going to play a great role in energy.

Now would a President Romney have killed Solyndra? We have no evidence that he would and are left with a large suspicion that he would not.

Mitt Romney is not a very bright nor insightful person. He hears what he wants to hear and surrounds himself with people who make noises pleasing to him. That suggests that he wouldn’t have questioned Solyndra. After all, the very wealthy Walton (Walmart) family were investors and one must stand with their rich friends (as long as one isn’t risking personal money).

Look at Mitt. He thought he was going to win the election and was ready to light the fuse on his enormous fireworks display when the outcome was announced. The rest of us knew he was loosing long before the votes were cast.

Mitt only became rich because he was a rich man’s son who was gifted with a golden goose. Other people at Bain identified a new way to make money and handed it to Mitt. He didn’t even fully understand nor have faith in the idea and demanded a fail safe net rather than taking a unique opportunity and running with it.

He hired some bright, capable people who did the real heavy lifting and the company pumped money into his account. Mitt was born on third base and bum rushed to home by the actual talent that pushed him along because he was standing in their way.

America avoided another Republican presidential catastrophe Nixon, Reagan and the Bushes did enough damage to our country. We luckily didn’t to drive ourselves totally under by making the Mitt Mistake.

Clean coal is a marketing term; it doesn’t exist.

That doesn’t make it alright.

Fukushima is going to cost Japanese taxpayers upwards of $250 billion to clean up. A broken solar panel would cost peanuts.

A bunch of people died at Chernobyl. No one has died from standing too close to a malfunctioning solar panel.

Best you don’t try to claim that nuclear energy is safe. The stuff is deadly dangerous. That’s why we have containment domes, all sorts of emergency shutdown/cooling systems, armed guards, fighter planes standing by to intercept off course airliners, etc. Not to mention millions of tons of radioactive waste, some of which will be a danger to humans for thousands of years.

hey, and when they’re done cleaning up there, maybe they could be sent out west in the US (Utah?) to clean up the massive area of toxic tailings left behind from uranium mining. after that, they could go to work at Hanford.

One of those businesses would be hydrogen production from excessive electricity during very windy times. Hydrogen can be used as back up gas for demand leveling turbines or used for transportation fuel.

This wasn’t a study to tell us how to solve the political problems of our electricity system. It was to show us that we could and that the end result would cost no more than we are paying now. Using grown up’s accounting – being honest with ourselves about what we are really paying for the electricity we now use.

And the study was limited. Hydro, geothermal, existing nuclear, power swaps with other grids were not included. Bringing in more generation variation along with load shifting would lower the cost. And, don’t forget, the study’s “2030 costs” are almost certainly higher than what wind and solar will cost in 2030. They are high for 2013 and we’ve got another 17 years of innovation to come.

Also not included was the cost of replacing our coastal cities and millions of us starving to death if we don’t stop the worst of climate change.

Switching to renewables will cause a short term spending increase. Building the railroads, the interstate highway system, the electric grid and other major undertakings cost up front money. But they all have been excellent investments which have returned their costs many times over.

An electrical system which doesn’t wreck our environment, doesn’t harm our health and gives us cheaper electricity is something worth investing in.

+1e9. I could have written that.

Incidentally I have a solar installation of exactly the same size and it is tremendous fun to run you own power plant. No noise, no smoke, no moving parts, no maintenance. And even without a feed-in tariff, very profitable. Thanks to the mass production kick started by Germany and Spain.

And the best part is that the solar haters can not have the same advantage because their religion forbids it! Losers indeed.