Discussion on:

Confessions of a renewable energy supporter

Have you thought about your tax dollars that go to pay for the health and environmental damages caused by burning coal? Burning coal drives up British health care costs.

If you're living in the US are you thinking about the hundreds of millions of tax dollars we spend each day due to the harmful aspects of coal? About how you or your employer are paying more for health insurance because of coal?

How about the tax dollars that you're contributing to American's oil wars? Close to a billion dollars a day.

What we spend right now to help mature renewable technology is an investment. We've subsidized wind for the last 30 years and now it's become one of our two cheapest new generation technologies. We just started subsidizing solar and the price is plummeting.

These are investments in our future. A future of truly inexpensive electricity.

Right now large array solar in a sunny location produces electricity for $0.154 over the 20 years the loan is being paid. But those panels will continue pumping out power for many more decades. Once the panels are paid off your electricity will cost you about $0.01/kWh.

And in a few years the 'first 20 years' of solar should drop below $0.10/kWh and work its way toward $0.05/kWh.

The same holds for wind turbines. While they are being paid off they are generating power at about $0.05/kWh. After payoff they should crank out power for another 20 years or so at something more like $0.02/kWh.

And the money you are now paying to subsidize coal will disappear.

Successful business people understand the wisdom of smart investments. Subsidies to create inexpensive solar is an outstanding investment.

....a side by side comparison of utility rates in a energy efficiency + renewables scenario for the next 50 years, compared to a new-coal/retrofit existing coal/carbon sequesteredCO2 coal/new nuclear scenario? I found such a study here:


http://newenergynews.blogspot.com/2011/11/todays-study-new-energy-saves-billions.html

As you can tell even from the article address, while there are upcharges for going energy efficiency + renewables, there are even steeper prices for sticking to the Business As Usual route of continued dependence on fossil fuels and nuclear. Add the CO2 emission issue and you can begin to understand the reasons most of Europe is investing in renewables the way they are. Doesn't mean that corruption and draconian profits won't be an issue and needs to be watched; but these issues certainly can arise in either path, no?

It sounds like the UK FIT allows the owner of the solar panels to be paid for every watt they produce, verses every watt they feed back to the grid. A more reasonable FIT would be a net usage FIT.

In a net usage FIT the monthly utility bill is straightforward. X watts of grid power used - Y watts locally produced and fed to the grid = net usage. The person owning the solar panels is then billed for their net usage. The incentive to install solar is the bottom line savings on your bill. If you install enough panels you can become a net producer and be paid by the utility at the going per watt rate they are billing.

Even though this model has the least impact on the majority who choose not to install solar it is the least used of the many FIT models.

The UK FIT model is an excessive burden on the poor and middle class who cannot afford to install solar. It simply increases the wealth of those who can afford to install solar.

Looks like some places in Australia are doing it that way--here's a link to one of their example of how it works:

http://www.solarshane.com.au/pfit.html