GE scraps nation’s largest solar panel plant
- Thread starter Locutus
- Start date
Exactly. And old alternators out of the junkyard (at the $25 each I bought them for and a rebuild kit is cheapcheap) are still helping to keep juice in the lines here.
For that price, I would sure as hell hope so. lol
The whole solar and wind power pie in the sky imbroglio has turned into such a fiasco.
They are both expensive, inefficient, complicated.. and both with their own environmental costs. Solar power by way of the strip mining of graphite, wind power through the immensely ugly and noisy wind farms that disfigure so many pristine vistas.
The truth is that the most efficient and environmentally effective way of producing energy is by concentrated thermal generation.. with carbon being the most available and cheapest of the alternatives at the current state of the science.
This is especially true in the wake of the collapse of the fraudulent AGW psuedo science.. and its exposure as a political fraud.
They are both expensive, inefficient, complicated.. and both with their own environmental costs. Solar power by way of the strip mining of graphite, wind power through the immensely ugly and noisy wind farms that disfigure so many pristine vistas.
The truth is that the most efficient and environmentally effective way of producing energy is by concentrated thermal generation.. with carbon being the most available and cheapest of the alternatives at the current state of the science.
This is especially true in the wake of the collapse of the fraudulent AGW psuedo science.. and its exposure as a political fraud.
And why is that? Because of the concept of profit (or is it homosexuality?).
Mine ain't. Solar power by way of the strip mining of graphite, (Carbon is the 15th most common element on Earth and 6th most in the universe)
Yeah, and you can blame those damned Dutch people for that, huh.
Meh. I'll stick with solar and water power thanks.
... in your opinion.
Yeah, Installed and with all the electronic gizmos in the basement..
Living in Alberta I see so many young people buying homes for $350,000 to $400,000 and no yard, and personally I think it's far over priced.. they are working their lives away for the bank, and many are over worked and tired.. no life, grumpy and miserable.
So I purchased a 2 acre lot in New Brunswick for $12,000, I am building a house fully finished for $120,000 basement and interior, and adding a $20,000 solar panel system and backup generator.
I should be moved in for about $160,000 total.. 1/2 what folks pay in Alberta and paid for with no mortgage.. I have a ski hill 5 minutes away.. and 1 hour to the Ocean or Grand Lake.
Trying to make it as Green as possible.. my retirement home..
Elon Musk seeks to hasten shift to solar by building factory
Dissatisfied with the performance of the global solar panel industry, Musk, the chairman of SolarCity, said the company will acquire Fremont's Silevo and build a huge manufacturing plant in upstate New York. That factory, SolarCity's first, will churn out solar panels that beat the Chinese panels now flooding the market in quality and cost, according to the company.
"Without decisive action to lay the groundwork today, the massive volume of affordable, high efficiency panels needed for unsubsidized solar power to outcompete fossil fuel grid power simply will not be there when it is needed," Musk wrote Tuesday in a blog post with his cousins Lyndon and Peter Rive, SolarCity's CEO and chief technology officer.
Musk, a self-made billionaire, has been frequently compared to Apple visionary Steve Jobs. But unlike Jobs, who primarily created consumer demand for pricey iPhones and iPads through smart design and marketing, Musk also focuses on affordability: make electric cars and solar panels so affordable that people will have no choice but to buy them.
"There are parallels between Tesla and SolarCity in that Elon wants to innovate the supply chain," said Andrea James, a Seattle analyst with investment bank Dougherty & Co. "It's one thing to innovate with the end product. But sometimes innovation needs to happen earlier in the supply chain."
Tesla's proposed $5 billion lithium battery factory could prove that very premise. Without the proposed "gigafactory," the electric car manufacturer would lack the batteries needed to ramp up car production and introduce new models that consumers can afford, according to Musk. Once ordinary drivers can afford electric cars, they will become commonplace.
"We're building the gigafactory because we can't think of any other way to scale," Musk recently told an energy forum at the company's factory in Fremont. "We either hit the sides of the Petri dish, or we build a bigger Petri dish."
But even with the factory, Musk realizes that the market for electric cars will remain small unless other automakers invest in the category. That's why he decided to give away Tesla's technology to the rest of the industry. He would rather control a smaller part of a bigger market than control a larger part of a small market.
For Musk, the same take-charge logic applies to the solar business. For the world to eventually generate 40 percent of power from solar energy, companies need to produce 400 gigawatts a year, compared with the current annual rate of 50 gigawatts, SolarCity officials say. That won't come without widespread change.
"We see solar at a tipping point," Chief Technology Officer Rive said. "Something has to be done."
So SolarCity acquired Silevo for $200 million in cash and stock, and incentives worth an additional $150 million. Silevo has developed highly efficient solar cell technology that can be made at traditional prices, Rive said. To scale up the technology, SolarCity is discussing with New York state officials plans to build one of the world's largest solar panel plants in the Buffalo area, in large part to exploit the power of Niagara Falls, he said.
more
Elon Musk seeks to hasten shift to solar by building factory - SFGate
Dissatisfied with the performance of the global solar panel industry, Musk, the chairman of SolarCity, said the company will acquire Fremont's Silevo and build a huge manufacturing plant in upstate New York. That factory, SolarCity's first, will churn out solar panels that beat the Chinese panels now flooding the market in quality and cost, according to the company.
"Without decisive action to lay the groundwork today, the massive volume of affordable, high efficiency panels needed for unsubsidized solar power to outcompete fossil fuel grid power simply will not be there when it is needed," Musk wrote Tuesday in a blog post with his cousins Lyndon and Peter Rive, SolarCity's CEO and chief technology officer.
Musk, a self-made billionaire, has been frequently compared to Apple visionary Steve Jobs. But unlike Jobs, who primarily created consumer demand for pricey iPhones and iPads through smart design and marketing, Musk also focuses on affordability: make electric cars and solar panels so affordable that people will have no choice but to buy them.
"There are parallels between Tesla and SolarCity in that Elon wants to innovate the supply chain," said Andrea James, a Seattle analyst with investment bank Dougherty & Co. "It's one thing to innovate with the end product. But sometimes innovation needs to happen earlier in the supply chain."
Tesla's proposed $5 billion lithium battery factory could prove that very premise. Without the proposed "gigafactory," the electric car manufacturer would lack the batteries needed to ramp up car production and introduce new models that consumers can afford, according to Musk. Once ordinary drivers can afford electric cars, they will become commonplace.
"We're building the gigafactory because we can't think of any other way to scale," Musk recently told an energy forum at the company's factory in Fremont. "We either hit the sides of the Petri dish, or we build a bigger Petri dish."
But even with the factory, Musk realizes that the market for electric cars will remain small unless other automakers invest in the category. That's why he decided to give away Tesla's technology to the rest of the industry. He would rather control a smaller part of a bigger market than control a larger part of a small market.
For Musk, the same take-charge logic applies to the solar business. For the world to eventually generate 40 percent of power from solar energy, companies need to produce 400 gigawatts a year, compared with the current annual rate of 50 gigawatts, SolarCity officials say. That won't come without widespread change.
"We see solar at a tipping point," Chief Technology Officer Rive said. "Something has to be done."
So SolarCity acquired Silevo for $200 million in cash and stock, and incentives worth an additional $150 million. Silevo has developed highly efficient solar cell technology that can be made at traditional prices, Rive said. To scale up the technology, SolarCity is discussing with New York state officials plans to build one of the world's largest solar panel plants in the Buffalo area, in large part to exploit the power of Niagara Falls, he said.
more
Elon Musk seeks to hasten shift to solar by building factory - SFGate
Can anyone explain why a solar pannel manufacturer needs access to the power from Niagra Falls? One would expect they would run the plant on solar power if they had any faith in their own product.