Electricity consumers can look forward to soaring charges for electricity and blackouts if politicians continue to undermine the power grid by mandating and subsidising solar power generation.

Solar power can never produce continuous, predictable low cost power. It must always be supported by expensive power storage systems or by reliable power sources such as coal, gas, hydro or nuclear.

No matter how many millions of taxpayer money is poured into “research”, it can never solve the two fatal flaws of solar power.

Firstly, sunlight energy arrives in very dilute form, and thus needs vast areas of collectors to harvest significant energy. This results in high capital costs and much environmental disturbance. Solar power can light one 75-watt bulb for every card table of collectors (in the middle of the day only). How many card tables do we need to run the trains, factories, fridges, homes, heaters, hospitals and tools of a big city?

Secondly, the solar energy produced during daylight hours is constantly variable and unpredictable, and zero power is generated at night. As a result, solar power farms seldom produce more than an average of 15% of their rated capacity over a year and as low as 1% for a day or so.

In Australia for example, the maximum electricity demand occurs at about 6.30 pm in mid-winter in the big southern cities. The maximum solar power is generated at noon in mid-summer in clear northern deserts. If the nightly solar curfew is to be covered by solar power alone, this necessitates a vast area of collectors to provide grid power as well as charge a storage backup during the day and run it down at night. The scattered solar collectors also need a huge new transmission network. Such a system is inefficient and very costly.

More likely, however, is that the solar farms will be backed up by gas or coal power stations running on idle and wasting fuel and capital until they are needed to supply power during the nightly solar blackouts.

Solar energy has useful applications, but supplying the power grid is NOT one of them. Solar power can never supply the reliable low cost electricity needed for cities and industries. In that application, it can only exist as a subsidised and troublesome appendage propped up by serious power sources such as coal, gas, nuclear or hydro.

SOLAR POWER REALITIES
From an article by Peter Lang

Characteristics of solar power

The key characteristics of solar power are:
1. Power output is zero from sunset to sunrise.
2. Power output versus time is a parabolic distribution on a clear day: zero at sunrise and sunset, and maximum at midday.
3. Energy output varies from summer to winter (less in winter than summer).
4. Energy output varies from day to day depending on weather conditions.
5. Maximum daily energy output is on a clear sunny day in summer.
6. Minimum daily energy output is on a heavily overcast day in winter.

As an example, the Queanbeyan Solar Farm in Australia has an installed power capacity of 55 kW. The average power output over 2 years was 7.58 kW. The average capacity factor over this period was 13.7%. The total energy output and capacity factor are:

Date         Energy Output (kWh)        Capacity Factor
29/07/02   (lowest winter 2002) 10.0      0.8%
13/08/03   (lowest winter 2003) 10.5      0.8%
22/06/02   (highest winter) 212             16.0%
29/02/04   (highest summer) 288          21.9%
Average daily for June, July, August = 131.9kWh = 9%

Conclusions

1. Solar power is uneconomic.
2. The capital cost of solar power would be 25 times more than nuclear power.
3. The minimum power output, not the peak or average, is the main factor governing solar power’s economic viability.
4. The least cost solar option would emit 20 times more CO2 (over the full life cycle) and use at least 400 times more land area compared with nuclear.
5. Government mandates and subsidies hide the true cost of renewable energy but these additional costs must be carried by others.

SOLAR ENERGY COSTS & ECONOMICS
From John in Maryland, USA June 6th, 2009

As an interesting fact on solar, I had a quote done for my house in Florida for a 2.5kW array (not enough to power the whole house, about 1/3 of the average requirement). The cost benefit worked out as follows:

Cost to purchase and install: $25,000 - this yielded a return of less than 1% on investment (about 0.7%)
Federal tax credit of $7,500
State rebate of about $9,600
Yield after subsidies (if qualified) - a total net cost of $7,900 with a return on my investment of just over 6%.

In other words the state and federal governments (taxpayers) would pay $17,100 in subsidies to support an overall yield on the total investment (theirs and mine) of 0.7%.

Every scrap of the product installed is of foreign manufacture sending the bulk of the taxpayer money overseas.

As a business person, if my company invested in 0.7% return projects, I would be out of business. I wonder if that applies to the Feds and States?

However, owners of a terraced house who installed cavity wall protection would see a return on their investment in as little as three years.

The sums have been calculated by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, which has published a 'Greener Homes Price Guide'. The guide warns that many homeowners are being duped into making radical changes to their home that will not save them money and will do little to reduce their carbon footprint.

The guide is being published to help families save money after all the major energy companies increased their gas prices by up to 35 per cent, leading to customers' paying £1,400 for their annual gas and electricity bills.

Joe Martin, from RICS, said: "We all have a role to play in helping to reduce our carbon footprint, be it through changes to our behavior or by choosing greener alternatives. The reality is, however, that most people struggle with the cost, time, and effort it takes to make these changes.

"Consumers need innovation and enhanced technology to help in the fight against climate change, not just a guilt trip about living in the world we have created."

Installing a condensing boiler – frequently cited as one of the best ways to improve the energy efficiency of a home – can take 18 years to make a pay back.

The average cost of installing one of these modern boilers is £1,720, but saves on average just £95 off people's gas bills.

Insulation is the most efficient form of "greening" a home, according the guide. Improving the insulation in a loft costs just £325 and saves £60 a year.

The cost of installing cavity wall insulation in external walls varies enormously, depending on whether the house is part of a terrace or detached. For those living in a terrace the cost is just £440 on average and should knock £145 off the homeowner's annual heating bill.

HOW MANY SOLAR CELLS WOULD I NEED IN ORDER TO PROVIDE ALL OF THE ELECTRICITY THAT MY HOUSE NEEDS?

The average solar panel contains 4 cells, and each of them can produce 0.45 volts and 100 milliamps, or 45 milliwatts. Each cell measures 2 inches by 0.5 inches. In other words, with these solar cells you can generate 45 milliwatts in one square inch (6.45 square cm). For the sake of discussion, let's be generous and assume that a panel can generate 70 milliwatts per square inch.

To calculate how many square inches of solar panel you need for a house, you need to know:

1. How much power the house consumes on average.
2. Where the house is located (so you can calculate mean solar days, average rainfall, etc.). This question is impossible to answer unless you have a specific location in mind. We'll assume that on an average day the solar panels generate their maximum power for 5 hours.

The first question is actually pretty interesting, so let's work on it.

A "typical home" in can use either oil, electricity or gas to provide heat -- heat for the house, the hot water, the clothes dryer and the stove/oven. If you were to power a house with solar electricity, you would certainly use oil or gas appliances because solar electricity is so expensive.

This means that what you would be powering with solar electricity are things like the refrigerator, the lights, the computer, the TV, stereo equipment, motors in things like furnace fans and the washer, etc. Let's say that all of those things average out to 600 watts on average. Over the course of 24 hours, you need 600 watts x 24 hours = 14,400 watt-hours per day.

From our calculations and assumptions above, we know that a solar panel can generate 70 milliwatts per square inch x 5 hours = 350 milliwatt hours per day. Therefore you need about 41,000 square inches of solar panel for the house. That's a solar panel that measures about 285 square feet (about 26 square meters). That would cost around £20,000 right now. Then, because the sun only shines part of the time, you would need to purchase a battery bank, an inverter, etc., and that often doubles the cost of the installation.

If you want to have a small room air conditioner anywhere in your home then double everything.

Because solar electricity is so expensive, you would normally go to great lengths to reduce your electricity consumption. Instead of a desktop computer and a monitor you would use a laptop computer. You would use fluorescent lights instead of incandescent. You would use a small B&W TV instead of a large color set. You would get a small, extremely efficient refrigerator. By doing these things you might be able to reduce your average power consumption to 100 watts. This would cut the size of your solar panel and its cost by a factor of 6, and this might bring it into the realm of possibility.

The thing to remember, however, is that 100 watts per hour purchased from the power grid would only cost about 29p a day right now, or £106 a year. That's why you don't see many solar houses unless they are in very remote locations. When it only costs about £106 a year to purchase power from the grid, it is hard to justify spending thousands of pounds on a solar system. 

Solar electricity - http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/Generate-your-own-energy/Solar-electricity

Costs for installing a solar electricity system vary a lot - an average system costs between £8,000 and £14,000, depending on its size and type.
In general:
• the more electricity the system can generate, the more it costs but the more it could save.
• solar tiles cost more than conventional panels.
• panels built into a roof are more expensive than those that sit on top but,
• if you need major roof repairs, PV tiles can offset the cost of roof tiles

Savings can be considerable - almost 1 tonne of CO2 a year, and around £200 off your electricity bill*. A 2 kWp system could provide around 40% of a household's yearly electricity needs.

Maintenance is generally small - you'll need to keep the panels relatively clean and make sure trees don't begin to overshadow them.

Payback period = 8000 / 200 = 40 years
£8000 for 40 years @ 4% = £31518.95 interest and you’ve still got your original capital sum.