Comments on: OPINION: Jumbo-sized solar is a jumbo-sized mistake

By: JonB

JonB — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 17:07:57 +0000

And amazingly, Jigar is one of the backers of the proposed gigawatt solar farm in Namibia where even fewer people are on the grid and the argument for decentralization is even higher.

I agree with both Jigars – let’s have both centralized and decentralized solar!

By: jeff

jeff — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 23:51:51 +0000

Agreed on rooftop distributed generation… Jigar just conveniently forgets to mention Sun Edison’s substantial portfolio of medium sized multi-MW groundmounts like its 17MW here in western NC.

By: Mike Kanellos

Mike Kanellos — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 17:40:59 +0000

He does gloss over one huge issue here: local and commercial solar get subsidies too. You can argue that it is more economical because it competes against retail prices (attenuated by economies of scale etc) but he seems to trying to pull a sleight of hand here.

By: L.D. Gussin

L.D. Gussin — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 12:28:23 +0000

I’m for Mr. Shah’s advocacy of distributed PV, but his either/or argument versus utility scale solar is wrong. This is because he gets the question that solar is a partial answer to wrong. The true answer, which outside North America all the world knows, is not energy independence but climate change. In the EU, the European Commission, national commissions and NGOs (especially Greenpeace) are wrestling over plans for serious de-carbonization that integrate distributed and centralized low carbon and renewable energy sources. This reality-based work is where the innovation is happening. Germany faced the false dichotomy of local versus centralized a few years ago and decided on both. It is leading both on PV and Desertec.

The Roadmap conference strives to show people what is really happening, whether it be the cloud, becoming pervasive now, or the Internet of Things, perhaps beginning now (I was at Nest Labs for 17 months). I hope that over the next year people in cleantech and related IT will come to see that phrases like energy security/independence are FUD misdirections, and that the real, enormous question they are helping to tackle is climate change.

By: yota

yota — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 09:17:34 +0000

This article has been written in hindsight, without higher prices, these plants would not get built. Without building these plants, Solar would be a forgotten energy like the last three decades. Yest the Federal government is on tap for $40-$60 Billion in Extreme weather events, like what we have seen all year ,and are seeing right now in Texas!

By: billg

billg — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 18:50:59 +0000

it is reassuring to see someone send this clear message. The most effective solar investment (and wind if someone coud down-scale effectively) is at the point of use. No need to buy more transmission lines. The current subsidy model has this backwards. Let the energy distributors do what they want with their money while distributing this subsidy to point of use projects. It’s kind of like developing countries using only cell phones – no need for phone lines.

By: Felix Hoenikker

Felix Hoenikker — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 17:36:18 +0000

Brightsource who?

By: Joe

Joe — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 17:04:31 +0000

This is a poorly written article, that is full of hindsight, with no emphasis on how difficult it is to pass anything that opposes fossil fuels in our congress.

The three points he makes are the main points the government has been working on. Funding large projects is directly funding economies of scale for renewables (#1).

Funding large scale projects that are based on PV and not solar thermal, which many projects are switching to, is also directly supporting the upcoming micro-inverter marketplace. Power electronics are one of our best export markets (and growing too), while China can pump out the PV for next to nothing they still need all the other parts that are made in America (#2).

Every branch of the US military has already confirmed #3 in some way or another, yet you really don’t see this news because of how biased the major media outlets are (this bias goes both ways, right (Fox news) AND left (MSNBC)). Many military bases are aquiring alternative energy vehicles and installing solar for the direct purpose of security.

The topic of the article is decent, the rest is just bad with little supportive reasoning. I know this writer viciously hates subsidies, but every form of energy has been subsidized in some way since the very beginning. I agree that we should cut subsidies for all energy and see which will win, the answer is obvious to everyone involved, which is why companies are paying so much money to keep things the same in Washington.

Anyone contending that the government isn’t doing enough and is simply wasting money doesn’t really know what they’re talking about, and if they do they are poor writers with fuddled arguments.

By: solar

solar — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 01:26:49 +0000

couple of corrections.The PPA model required legislation to change the definition of a utility to exclude PPAs and recent legislation extended California’s property tax exclusion for property owners to include PPAs. Those were big changes to California law. The ROI for the PPA owners is great thanks to California ratepayers and losses to local government revenues.