As bad as you seem to think Adams is ..
Stalin econmomy is even worse.
California shows very clearly why.....
Not only are the electric companies having problems.
Virtual all business in California is having trouble with California.
And in most cases doing like Silicon Valley ,if they can.Leaving
California....

This is absolute rubbish.  Many businesses operate under the break even
point very successfully.  Just look at most major hospitals.

More rubbish.

It wasn't the greens in CA that were the problem it was the conservative
Republicans starting with Ronald Reagan who were hell-bent on pushing
privatization.  All these idiot conservatives who didn't know the first
thing
about the electric industry were jumping up and down demandng the
'gubermint' get out of the energy business.  As a result the government
there (admittedly run by nincompoops) passed a law that mandated that
power distribution companies divest all generating capacity.  The second
that happend, all the price-gougers who had bought up all the generating
capacity in CA found they could get more money for their power by
shipping it out of state, so CA ended up with a situation where the CA
grid was short of power at the same time the generators were shipping
power out of CA.

The problem with your little Adam Smith analysis of the power business
is it makes a big assumption - that energy resources that have extraction
costs
less than what you get out of them will always exist.  It is the logic that
it costs less to extract a barrel of oil than the value of the energy in
the oil, that is why the oil companies stay in business.

With energy, what is going to eventually happen is that just about
ALL forms of it that are available will become more expensive to
extract than the dollar value of the energy itself is worth.  And the
few that are cost-effective to extract - like wind energy - may be great
for producing electricity but not good for producing a mobile
fuel.

Yet we as a specie will still need the mobile fuel.  So you are going to
see the extraction costs spread over the entire society for the benefit
of the subgroup in the society that needs the mobile fuel.

I realize this seems unfair, but this is how the automobile industry
operates
today.  What people forget all the time is that a car by itself is
worthless.
A modern car couldn't operate without a road infrastructure.  And if
the costs of road construction were soley paid for by the vehicle owners
that use the roads, nobody could afford to own a car.  Instead, road
construction costs are spread over every single taxpayer in society
whether they own a car or not.  And it's not just road construction costs
that are spread over everyone, it's road law enforcement costs as well
as a hell of a lot of other costs.

No matter what you read, it is guarenteed that gasoline, or a reasonable
substitute, will always be available at an affordable cost to the masses.
Why?
It is because the costs of converting the entire society over to some other
kind of transportation system that isn't based on private cars is too high.
Open your eyes and look around you.  Roads are everywhere and society
today is literally built around what can be done with an auto on the road
system.

Today, the extraction costs in energy for that gasoline are less than the
energy contained in that gasoline.  It is only because of that fact that
privately owned oil companies can exist at all.  But one day the energy
needed to create that gasoline will be more than the energy contained
in that gasoline, thus privately owned oil companies won't be able to
exist.  However since we sill need that gasoline, at a cost that the masses
can afford, it will still be produced.

Rws

On the electric companies ,that went broke trying to use solar....since
profit is the point of doing business.
If the business can't breakeven ,it can't happen beyond the rim of a high
dollar research project funded by
someone else's money.
So statements like" I didn't even need tax rebate/grant to pull it off ",
sound more encouraging than like projects .
Started on temperary funding 20,30,40,50+ years ago and still need help to
fly.With the promise that some day it
really,really,really will be able to fly on it own steam,if you willl just
add a little bit more to that tax rebate/grant.
I see a future a for solar direct in a fussion reactor coming faster than PV
in light plant use.
I see TDP of coal coming sooner than PV in a light plant.
I see PV panel used at railroad crossings in remote areas or similar
seconadary power source and no primary
power beyond small applications(10MW or less by Fed and State liscensing
definition).
Energy payback is part of accounting in companies ,that want to stay in the
energy business.
If the collection doesn't pay for the expenses....you are out of business.
If you aren't doing an average of 10 to 15% growth ...the customers will out
grow you.
Like in California when "Greens" were putting the brakes on a little bit of
everything energy.
Then wondering why they were running out.
A good place to look for what not do on that topic.

Ok.  This is economic payback.  A reasonable thing for an entrepreneur
to consider <g>

However, energy payback is something different, and has to do with
physics.  It's easy enough to measure in a closed system, but commercial
power generation is not a closed system - something is coming in for
free (i.e. solar radiation, high atomic weight elements...).  Where you
draw these boundaries influences the picture you draw.

Jose

Defined the problem light companies are having with solar.
As it stands wind will for a fact back pay better,in less time .Than solar.
NG was do the same agianst wind 4fold using combined cycle gas turbine.
Utah and Texas low sulfur coal gives even NG a run for the money.(Yes,
not all coals have the same sulfur content.....some are low enorgh to meet
new sulfur requirement without treatment.)

He seems to be mixing up energy and money.  Land and "Opportunity"
doesn't cost energy, it costs money.  The sun doesn't rain money, it
rains energy.

If he can find an exchange rate for energy to money that is better than
what he can achieve himself, then it makes economic sense for him to buy
the energy rather than invest in his own rig.  But can he be sure that
the deal he has today will continue into the future, when his rig would
have been completed?

Jose

private opined

There is a guy who shows up from time to time who  says that "a fully loaded"
solar power system is a net energy loss.

By that he includes _all_ costs: land, supports, opertunity and anything else
he can think of. He then seems to put the money in a bank and then uses the
capital and interest to buy energy as needed. He claims that this stratagy will
get more energy than solar.

I am not convinced.

                        -ash
                        Cthulhu in 2005!
                        Why wait for nature?

snip

Question

I have been informed? that current solar cells consume more energy in their
fabrication than they will generate in their lifetime.

Is this true?  Please comment
thanx

I am impressed.  Where do you live.  How would this system perform at
latitude 51degrees N.?  In the winter?

thanx
snip

This is open to much argument, but there are too many profit oriented
concerns that seem to be investing heavily in new facility startups for
the production of panels at today's pricing, for the panel manufacturer's
costs to be any where close to the naysayer's guesses.

The efficiency of today's DC to AC grid based inverters is very good,
typically above 92% per the State of California's very conservative
testing procedure results used to qualify for rebates. (Results on web)

I admit that the 12, 24, and even the 48 VDC systems that are commonly
used in OFF GRID battery PV solar systems usually use large diameter
conductors between the panels and the battery controllers / inverters.

However, in ON GRID systems (like my own) that do NOT use ANY batteries,
Much higher DC voltages are usually used. My own system right now at
5:00 PM 8/27/05 is producing 359 VDC power from the panels on a day
when the temperature was 103.1 degrees F.  

I use the SMA Sunny Boy 2500U inverters (4).  By the way, I produce
enough power that I have averaged getting an credit of ($2.49) for
every day since the 13th of June from my electric utility.

None, its all on my out of food production roof. It is also much more
efficient, because there aren't any line losses in transmission to
my house for what I do use, nor, is much lost in transmission to my
immediate neighbors who receive my surplus production via the grid.

Bob Gardner

I can't argue this number, I've see it before, but I don't see
hydrogen as even part of the "vehicular fuel" solution, it has NO existing
distribution, storage, or developed vehicular power plant.

Hybrid Bio-diesel vehicles using the principles proven by the Toyota, Honda
and Ford's PRODUCTION hybrid gasoline vehicles in conjunction with
urban solar PV power could work very well as vehicle fuel sources.

These Bio-diesel fuels could utilize existing infrastructure external
to the vehicle, and perhaps could be retrofitted.  Note: the railroads
are using hybrid diesel locomotives in some of the worst polluted cities
TODAY, to improve the diesels efficiencies and for pollution reduction.

We need some way to use up our existing energy supplies though.

I have to chuckle when I see solar recommended as the final solution. No one
seems to consider the amount of energy it would take to manufacture the
panels, to convert the DC to AC, to make the large-diameter/low resistance
conductors necessary to carry such small voltages, and finally, the amount
of land taken out of production because it is in constant shade.

Bob Gardner

The problem with burning hydrogen is that solar panels can't make enough of
it. To replace today's vehicular use of oil, we'd need 230,000 tons of
hydrogen daily.  Solar cells to make that much hydrogen would cover about
20,000 square kilometers.  To get this much power -- 400 gigawatts daily --  
without carbon emissions, the only cost-effective solution is nuclear
plants. And that has its own political and ecological consequences.  See
http://www.world-nuclear.org/opinion/grant.htm

Seth

I think you're mostly right for short term, but long term belongs to
hydrogen.
The problem with solar is storing the energy. Stick a solar panel in your
back yard that converts water to hydrogen, and you can store as much as you
want.

I would like to present to you the (near) future of transportation...

Diesel hybrid cars (full two-mode plug-in hybrids)
Diesel for motorcycles
Diesel (probably 2-stroke) engines for general aviation (including
rotorcraft)
Extensive use of bio-diesel

Hybrid cars (gasoline)are in production
Diesel hybrid trucks and busses are in production
Diesel motorcycles are / will be in production soon
Diesel aviation engines are in production...more are coming

Very soon we will see the first diesel hybrid passenger car in
production

Diesel for aviation or motorcycles...they have been around for some
time. Think of Junkers "Jumo" 205. Decades ago there were several
Diesel aircraft engines built by Guiberson, Packard, Rolls-Royce,
Clerget, Fiat and others. Royal Enfield (India) has had a diesel
motorcycle in production for some time. I believe it is now
discontinued.

Some diesel hybrid car prototypes...

GM's Ope Astra diesel hybrid
Citroen Berlingo diesel hybrid
VW Golf diesel hybrid (so I hear)

Some diesel aviation engine prototypes...

SMA Morane Renault MR 200 www.smaengines.com
Teledyne Continental Motors CSD-283 www.teledyne.com (Nasa GAP)
DeltaHawk V-4 www.deltahawkengines.com
Zoche 01A www.zoche.de
Diesel Air Ltd. DAIR-100 www.dair.co.uk

Some (gasoline) hybrid cars in production...

Toyota's Prius and Lexus
Ford's Escape Hybrid

Some diesel motorcycle prototypes...

Diesel Kawasaki M1030 M1 (KLR 650) F1 Engineering / Hayes Diversified
Technologies (HDT)

For third world countries a diesel motorcycle could be ideal. It is
probably very dependable and durable and relatively easy to fix. It
could be bi-fuel, meaning it could use diesel, Jet A, light heater oil
and most importantly... bio-diesel and even straight vegetable oil
(SVO). It could ne equipped with a small (max 200kg) 2-wheel trailer
and a power take-out (PTO). The PTO would mostly be for a generator
and/or (water) pump.

Picture this. In a third world country, a motorcycle travels 100km @
80kmh with 2 litres vegetable oil that they have made themselves. It
then pumps (with a pump attached at the PTO) from a deep dwell 150
litres of fresh water into a tank that's on the trailer, drives back
and delivers the fresh water to the families in the village. Later at
night, it runs to provide electricity (with a generator attached to the
PTO) for many houses in the village and to recharge the batteries. This
motorcycle and its accessories the families in the village have bought
together, with some help from some organisation like the UN.

Of note: Of course the best way to produce electricity in these often
sunny third world countries is solar panels!!