Comments on: $60 Million More For Low Cost Solar Power

By: JamesWimberley

JamesWimberley — Sat, 26 Oct 2013 19:43:00 +0000

The grant to EnergySage was $0.5m. It is a bit surprising they couldn’t raise the money from venture capitalists, but it’s still very cheap.

Only 26% of the money is going to hardware (though this is supported on a larger scale by other programmes), the rest to soft costs. The impression I get from the list is that Moniz has his head screwed on right.

By: Nick

Nick — Sat, 26 Oct 2013 02:13:00 +0000

Let’s hope it works better than the nearing one Billion daollar joke of a website obamacare. It’s also a joke that it’s called affordable seeing the only numbers that actually get out.

By: Marion Meads

Marion Meads — Fri, 25 Oct 2013 21:55:00 +0000

The $16M though is for the hard costs. I can develop the comparison charts for the solar shopping for half the price. It shouldn’t cost that much with many canned software packages abound. Let us hope that those software will not favor one or few major company that chipped in some “development” costs as what happened with shopping for airline tickets. It should be more eBay-like.

By: JamesWimberley

JamesWimberley — Fri, 25 Oct 2013 21:37:00 +0000

If you read the article with more care, you would know that most of the grants reported are precisely for soft costs and grid integration, not shiny new panel technology,

By: JamesWimberley

JamesWimberley — Fri, 25 Oct 2013 21:35:00 +0000

Good article, silly headline. There’s no reason to think that a few grants for rather obvious work to lower soft costs a penny or two will have any dramatic effect. We should value such progress for what it is, not for what it isn’t.

By: Marion Meads

Marion Meads — Fri, 25 Oct 2013 20:46:00 +0000

How about much more funding for cheaper or plug-n-play solar PV installation whose savings really get passed down to end users instead of lining the pockets of installers? Solar PV manufacturing is a dead end economics. Even if they get the panels so cheap that they become free, the total installed price is the same!!!

I want the $60M back. It will not give the most bang from the buck when invested into solar PV manufacturing, but rather, that money is best spent for programs and methods that would lower the cost of installations.