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Solar Power Makes Cents, Even in Cloudy Germany
by Stacy Feldman - Dec 26th, 2007
A German citizen notices another prize in the incredibly lucrative business of climate change solutions. In his case, it took installing seven kilowatts of photovoltaic (PV) solar panels on his roof to chance upon it:
I saw I could turn a profit...My roof has been turned into a cash machine...It's magic.
Not exactly an act of Houdini. Erik Kirschbaum’s good fortune is partly due to his own smarts -- but largely due to his pragmatic government's policy of bankrolling a climate fix for future generations.
Germany instituted a "feed-in tariff" in 2004 that requires utilities to pay anyone who installs a photovoltaic system more than twice the market rates for the electricity produced for the grid. The wise German participants are earning a steady stream of income as a result.
Here's the view from Kirschbaum's roof:
The 34 sleek black panels, measuring about 1 metre by 1.5 metres (yards) each, lie inconspicuously on the slopes of the roof as they quietly harvest enough power for two households -- and generate annual revenues of some 3,600 euros ($5,300).
In other words: Every day about 10 euros ($15) worth of energy from the sun (or even daylight) lands on the roof and is converted into electricity through the wonders of photovoltaic.
Germany's large-scale feed-in tariff was the first of its kind, and it's been wildly successful. The idea behind the financial incentive is simple: help stimulate growth in the industry so that PV electricity is equal to or cheaper than grid power. And it seems the whole of Germany has benefited. The PV industry generates over 10,000 jobs in production, distribution and installations, and hundreds of millions of euros to boot. And in 2006, Germany was the fastest growing PV market in the world.
The US ranks number four among the world's PV markets, way behind the EU, Germany, and Japan. It owes its ranking largely to California's solar-friendly policies.
So why hasn't the US soared to the top of this carbon-free energy market?
Ralph Nader, a while back, had one answer:
The use of solar energy has not been opened up because the oil industry does not own the sun.
True, but times have changed. Now that global tech giant and solar financier Google has its sights set on making renewable energy cheaper than coal, expect a big shift in America. Even this: a dollar a watt for solar, coming to a suburb near you...
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Solar Power - America's Sin
If the U.S. had chosen to be a moral people, and leaving Iraqi oil alone, and following Al Gore, decided to develop the South Western deserts, with the technology of the times - solar/thermal-molten sodium - electricity installations, for the same amount of money as that war cost, ($650 Billion), today, we would be tapping into the largest, renewable, sustainable, energy source the world has ever known. It would have paid every energy bill in the U.S.A. for maintenance fees only - FOREVER! It would be equivalent to an oil field that can NEVER run dry! Low cost electric power, and storeable hydrogen gasoline replacement from the electricity, for all!
After the millions of murders, and $650 billions of dollars, borrowed from our children’s futures and pissed away, with thousands of our own and others maimed and disfigured for life, millions of families utterly destroyed, ours and theirs, we are no closer to Iraqi oil production than the Iraqis are!
The next time you hear a blithering idiot spoiled brat, drunken, drug addicted, sociopath, rich Arabic saber dancing daddie’s boy oilman, stand at a microphone and threaten YOUR safety with someone ELSE’S weapons, remember what you lost America, remember, and weep! (also see http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan)
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