The climate change consensus extends beyond climate scientists

[oil pan 4]

If solar power "is so much cheaper than coal and natural gas" then why do places like California who use a lot of solar pay 3 times more for power then what I do?

Where I live we got a lot of wind, coal and natural gas.
The only cheaper power that I am aware of is in hydro power heavy areas.

Because if it was cheaper, it would be cheaper.
Right?

[RedDevil]

We've had a lot of rain lately, like a lot of short bursts and a few good nights with hours of heavy rain.
After a week or two of that my grass started to get green patches again, and now 75% of it has grown enough to get mown.
First time in nearly 3 months...

Still we do have a water deficit; the Rhine is still only trickling in, and the water in the IJsselmeer has salinated past the acceptable level for drinking water, so it cannot be used anymore. They are now bleeding it off into the sea.
(my brother-in-law once worked for a firm that built an experimental power plant that utilizes membranes to generate power from a flow of salt seawater on one side and sweet lakewater on the other. I bet that must have been halted for a while).

The cost of power varies heavily, especially with relatively low oil prices. Your coal mine can burn it locally to generate energy or put it on the road or rails for a thousand miles to a market where it competes with coal shipped in by sea. Naturally it is cheaper at the mine.

When you burn coal it will produce ash and pollution. I don't know how many measures are taken to prevent the environment from its direct and indirect effects and how much is put on top of the price to make the customer pay for it, but I guess not much.

[oil pan 4]

The coal plant near here has a bag house and scrubber.
The coal they burn is low sulfur coal brought in from Montana.

[freebeard]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

If solar power "is so much cheaper than coal and natural gas" then why do places like California who use a lot of solar pay 3 times more for power then what I do?

Why does Eugene, OR, pay twice as much for electricity as Springfield, OR, right across the river? Maybe it's the same thing?

[oil pan 4]

So solar power is more expensive because power just happens to be more expensive some places?
Ok let's pretend that's possible.

Then if it just happens to cost more, oh idk everywhere I can think of to check and some how I always only looked in the wrong place its a statical anomaly, so where is some place that relies heavily on solar power and it's cheaper than fossil fuel?
Where is the success story?
If what people claim is true and solar does cost half as much as fossil fuel then why don't we see that?

[Xist]

"You must be doing something wrong" is the default response of the weakminded.

[freebeard]

Certain values of 'cheaper', right? Who decides what has value.

Jack Rickard thinks in terms of magic rocks
EVTV Friday Show -Tesla Model S Battery Pack Solar Energy Storage Oct 1, 2017

53:16
so there it is there are no moving parts
53:21
there's no heat no friction a little bit
53:25
of heat from going back and forth no
53:30
mechanical parts it's a magic rock that
53:34
can store actually a relatively large
53:38
amount of energy for its size compared
53:42
to previous batteries it does not have
53:44
nearly the energy storage capacity
53:48
volume or weight wise that gasoline does
53:54
but we can store a significant amount of
53:57
energy in a relatively small battery and
54:01
that makes up electrically powered cars
54:04
feasible it has other uses as we will
54:10
see let's talk about another magic rock
54:16
deep photovoltaic cell this is truly a
54:20
miracle in the course of human history
54:24
it's a profoundly a life altering
54:28
miracle that will not have its full
54:33
impact known for several years but it's
54:38
coming in the these common silicon
54:43
photovoltaic cells is the Sun power 22
54:46
percent efficient solar cell

______

Xist — Projecting again?

[oil pan 4]

If it costs more then it's not cheaper.
If it costs 3 or 4 times more then it's definitely not cheaper.

[All Darc]

Area x Volume and Gulliver's Island

What these 3 have related?
A airplane. A small one...

You can increase surface area, when working with solar panels, solar photovoltaic cells. You can add more solar cells in larger vehicles, since they hage huger surface area. But while you increase a vehicle it's more close to increase the scale, instead of just surface, and surface and volume increase in very different ways.

If you double width and double lenght, you end with 4 times the initial surface area. But if you double the width, double the lenght and double height, you end with 8 times the initial volume or weight. So while you increase vehicles with larger, longer and taller models, like go from cars to trucks, the surface area for solar panels get more an more irrelevant.
That's why solar heavy trucks will not be reality even if a 99% efficient solar photovoltaics cell could be created.
Trucks could just save some little few fuel using solar panels for refrigeration, in cases the refrigeration it's required for the load.

Now let's think back in the reversal way, if we decrease the scale, the relevance of surface area for solar panels/cell and in relation to the weigh of the vehicle became more and more atractive.

That's why if you was a citizen in Gulliver's island you could perhaps have a solar airplane.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzOjhA-toN8

I wonder if this model have a supercapasitor to save energy when the solar plane cells are not well directed to the sun, or if it just lose some power for some short instants (1/3 sec or 1/2 second) when the manuever more the cells for a very less ideal angle related to the sun.

I know there is already a solar airplane, in our world (not Gulliver's Island), but it's for justone person, have carbon fiber structure, have very large wings, and the solar cells also works as part of the cover ove the wings frame, all to save weight. And very slow....

[RedDevil]

Almost all of the cost of a solar power generating plant is building cost.
A fossil fuel plant may be much cheaper to build, Its cost is mainly the fuel it burns.
If you need a lot of power fast and on the cheap you build a fossil fuel plant.
So part of the problem is initial cost.

Then there's development in PV panels. They keep getting cheaper and more efficient.
That's what is holding me back. My roof is not ideally orientated and cut up by large dormers. If I want to fully cover my electricity usage I'd have panels in 3 different orientations and partial shading. But if say 30% efficient panels get reasonably priced I could make do with only the best locations.
So I'm keeping my eyes out for a substantial price drop or an efficiency gain.

Because of our energy tax PV panels are worthwhile for almost every house owner. A colleague of mine has an installation that is projected to have a ROI of less than 7 years, assuming it covers 80% of his annual electricity usage.
We had a sunny spring and summer. It was built last February and has already produced 3500 kWh by now, so he expects to go way beyond his 4400 kWh yearly usage...