I am very fearful to tread into this discussion...
I'd like to make one point on the solar cell and power plant comments. We have two kinds of power plants in the country. The "big ones" that are in the gigawatt range, and smaller ones in the 50 to 100 megawatt range that are called "peaking plants". The big ones can be nuclear, natural gas, and coal. The peaking plants are just about all turbines. Roughly speaking, a single engine on a 747 can make about 50 to 100 megawatts. Peaking plants have been around since the 1970's, when there were some on barges in New York City. I've seen some in California. The best one I've seen is called a "co-gen" plant. The steam that's left from making electricity goes to a food processing plant right next to the generator and it uses the steam to cook vegetables. Very good efficiencies there.
As the name implies, peaking plants are used when at peak demand times. Because they are smaller and due to their turbine based construction, they can be fired up quickly. In the California market, the ISO can use these plants to buy peak energy to keep things going. Being less efficient and because they don't run all the time, the electricity they make cost more than juice from a "big plant".
A second problem in the country is an aging power distribution system. The northeast is running way to close to capacity. Here in the southeast, things are better but growth is burdening the system. Adding more capacity cost money.
Now I'm putting about 7.7 KW (DC, about 5KW AC) of solar cells on the house. During peak summer loads, they will about meet my cooling needs. If lots of people put solar cells on their houses, the peak demands we see during the summer could be met. Because of the distributed nature of it all, the distribution grid would not be taxed as badly as it currently is. So my claim is that as a renewable source, solar has a place in the world. Peaking plants cost more to run, so the price parity point is a lot closer for this use. Distribution cost are lower, with some bookkeeping problems as to who "gets" the savings and how does that factor into a cost analysis. I can put these on my house because of tax subsidies that make the break even point less than 10 years (including cost of loss of use of the money). I'd like to thank everyone here for helping me with the cost of this project! From a capitalist point of view, the decision works for me given the current economic climate. Like the payback time on good insulation, it makes economic sense for me. Other energy industries get tax breaks, so it's OK that solar gets them too. Don't flame me about government control via tax breaks. I stopped taking payments from the feds for not growing crops on my land. I never intend to do so, and I feel I can't complain on the one hand if I'm taking money in the other because it's "free".
So this is an economic problem. Solar cells have a valid place in the world. When the sun is shinning, consumption goes up for air conditioning. As the technology matures and volumes go up, tax subsidies will be less important. Peaking plants and new distribution networks are expensive, which means there is a different price parity point than the "dollar per watt" holy grail often quoted for solar. Note that there is also a practical limit on how much solar makes sense because you still need energy when the sun doesn't shine. Solar is part of a very complex answer.
What _really_ upsets me is this:
We can spend $200 billion to bail out a bunch of greedy and stupid bankers. If we took that same money, we could put 2KW (DC) of solar on about 25 million homes, for a capacity of 33 Gigwatts (AC). Lots of jobs there, we could also require 50% US content in the systems. So we could build less peaking plants, and possibly less big plants too. This works because electric demand goes up when the sun is shinning in many parts of the country. The people who could make this happen are the people that could and should have come up with a 35 or 40 year mortgage that allowed better choices in home building, such as good insulation, windows, and even the solar panels. But these clowns were too busy making money to work on real long term solutions. This makes me sick.
This is a very small example of one of many areas, but it shows how hard it is to wrap ones head around problems and solutions. Reading the threads, there is a lot of common ground where everyone could work instead of arguing about who is right. Energy efficiency, availability of fuels, cleanness of fuels are all good problems that we can work on now, and in a generation things will be better. Save liquid fuels with their higher BTU to weight ration for mobile use (like tractors!). Energy independence is a good goal. Making energy can't be outsourced like manufacturing, so it provides jobs. If other countries can figure out nuclear, why can't we? I visited an island in Sweden this summer that had lots of wind power. The island exported power during the summer. That solution worked for them, and will work in a few other places. Smallish islands in the ocean have lots of wind. Note that this island in Sweden is not full of oil or coal, so they have a different economic factors when making their decisions. They did the analysis and did what was right for them, why can't we?
So I don't have many answers, but I see a lot of solutions that are worthy of focus no matter who is right. I suspect there are people on the extremes of both sides of this issue who would be terrified to find good actions that can be taken independent of their beliefs. Not much political power in being practical. So keep the discussions civil and work on the common ground we have. A nation divided is vulnerable.
Pete
