Energy Investors make choose solar over coal because it actually costs LESS in some markets

and it's of course a lot more competitive when you factor in all of the externalities along the mine to boiler path for coal.

 

Industrial sized solar has many economic advantages over retail. In addition to the economies of scale, they also benefi from (near) ideal solar siting.

I have often cited, as an example of a retail installation in grey western Washington vs a similar installation included in a industrial sized installation in sunny eastern Wa. The net cost per watt out of the system is likey to be about double in the latter.

While I am strong advocate for PV, teaching people the real economic lessons are difficult.

Icarus

 

The solar my utility is putting in is much more expensive per kw than natural gas or wind, even with the 30% federal subsidy. In places like california where the sun is better and the wholesale prices of electricity higher solar makes a lot of sense. The thing that really makes pv pay off is it is installed on roofs and individuals and businesses do not have to pay extra for the real estate.

When you look at coal and the likely costs of implementing current and future regulations, it looks like a very bad investment, even without externalities. This is one reason gas and wind are expanding but coal is fairly flat.

That is exactly it. If you have better sun like in eastern Washington or the Mojave desert the pay off of industrial solar is much better. We do need to get the grid set to move the power from the good solar to the customers though

 

I still like my old idea.
http://priuschat.com/forums/environ...heir-own-roof-best-location-those-panels.html

 

I'd cover my roof in PV if I could afford it. Anyone want to sub me £9,000?

 

According to the article..."Electricity from coal costs about 7 cents a kilowatt hour compared with 6 cents for natural gas and 22.3 cents for solar photovoltaic energy..." which is I think the typical USA situation. I know they say solar will be half the cost (11 cents?) by 2020.

I can see if you were a country with boat-loads of sun and you had to import coal as the only option, there may be an interesting solar option. I do not think the article is trying to say this makes economic sense for a generic USA situation.

Rather some sunny countries, if they do a long term plan and assume solar will become much cheaper in the future, then they might conclude solar is the economic viable option to go in 2020. However, they need to wait to 2020 to build the plant because it is still more expensive today. Or hedge their bets and build some solar today as a trial, that's a victory for solar if it happens.

 

Sunny areas of the country produce 2 kwh/watt*year. If utility electricity is 12 cents/kwh then an installation that cost $1.8 a watt can be paid off in 10 years with 6% financing.

I can see panels + inverter hitting $1.5 a watt. Regs + Installation is going to have to plummet.

 

The difference however is that coal and natural gas don't begin to come close to paying their environmetal cost. Coal mining, heavy metals, CO2, hydro cracking just to name a few.

Driving through Butte Mt. the other day, I was reminded of the equation. For 100 years the took the copper, and the profits out of town. Now a century later, the taxpayers are left with a billion dollar bill for the environmental clean up.

Similar examples exist all over the country, pocket the profits and stick the populice with the bill sometime later. The price of carbon from coal and natural gas burning will be paid by our grandchildren, while the price of our solar installation are (mostly) paid by us.

 

That blog does not accurately portray prices. Natural gas has fallen about half of its peak price of a few years ago.

OILNERGY: natural gas price (NYMEX Henry-hub)

The cost of new coal power plants will go up every year though and are bad investments. This is not because of the price of the fuel, but the price of cap and trade of the emissions. A new coal plant is a very large risky investment, which is why not many are being built or planned in the united states. The estimates of a new advanced coal plant, the cheapest you can build in the united states, is around 11 cents per kwh.

http://www.netl.doe.gov/coal/refshelf/ncp.pdf

If you go to page 18 it shows how new united states coal capacity is dwarfed by natural gas and wind. If you read through you will see a great number of planned coal projects are being killed. Slide 16 shows that there is a great deal of coal being built, but that is in china. Solar is not mentioned because it is so small in the united states.

[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country"]Solar power by country - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]
Germany had 9.8 GWp solar in 2009, the US only had 1.6 GWp. In Germany in 2011 they only have 2% of the grid as solar, in the united states it is well less than 1%. The problem is cost at the utility level versus gas and wind.

Coal does not make any sense for new plants. As shown in the slides above natural gas and wind are the big plants. CCS on gas may cost 3 cents a kwh. Even with that added it still is much cheaper than solar. In west texas non-subsidized wind costs 2.5 cents more than gas electricity, so perhaps the subsidies do make sense on wind.

 

I'd love to see the subsidies for fossil fuels go away at a minimum. That's probably the most effective way to start taxing them. Get rid of the damn subsidies. It's funny though. CO tried to do that 2 years ago and of course the commercials that ran incessantly against doing that called it a tax, which struck a cord w/conservatives. If it had been billed as ending a gov't hand out the outcome would have been different. It's amazing how ignorant people are. They really have no clue and that's mainly because they just dont' have the time or energy to understand energy issues (oh the irony). So it just comes down to who has the most money to pollute the airwaves with propaganda/rubbish. <Sigh>

 

Absolutely. One of the biggest problems with coal mining is MMS which after the gulf spill is still not reformed. Coal mines are often bid in no bid contracts at prices too low, then MMS does not enforce environmental regulations.

I'm not sure what the law was, but these subsidies distort the market. Luckily there are over riding price pressures against new coal plants.

The first step with coal is to retire the 40+ year old in efficient high polluting plants. Instead of this we have set up a system where these will go on until cap and trade of SO2 Nox and hopefully soon mercury makes them too expensive to upgrade.

 

It was actually a NG subsidy. The state loses $321M/yr due to this particular tax credit. I can't remember the details, but special interest groups started saying that the resolution was a tax on energy (this was a ballot initiative so it went to a general vote) not the end of a gov't subsidy. The measure lost by a fair, but not massive margin.

 

Again, here in CO Xcel is shutting down 1 or 2 old (and pretty small) coal fired plants. Another couple are being converted to run on NG. This is being appealed by the coal companies who have pointed out that armageddon will descend upon us the moment this happens, but I'm pretty hopeful that the appeal will fail.

 

Interesting post Austin, but it does show 2010 was banner year for US coal projects. The slow-down after 2010 could well be temporary, attributed to the economic slowdown, bottom falling out of nat-gas price, and everyone waiting to see what EPA does with CO2 regs. Except for the unknown EPA rules, and assuming some compromise, I see no economic hurdle for conventional coal fired power plants (but educate me if I missed something). I know the NE (North Eastern) states I've lived in all support it. Especially with nuclear prospects possibly taking a hit post 2011 Tsunami, all bets on future base load power generation winners are off right now I would think.

 

I thought those coal company people only came out in England. I'ld love it if you would post some of their arguments on why to keep a polluting plant running. They are even closing down old plants in pro-coal china.

 

dup

 

The main takeaway is that most of the coal plants that have been proposed have been cancelled. There are still many plants planned for 2012 and 2013 that are likely to be built. The economic slow down did not slow down the need for more electricity, but two things spurred more gas and wind. In the 1990s congress did away with a very bad piece of legislation that favored coal over natural gas, since then most new capacity has been gas. The price spike of gas slowed this down and got new coal proposals, but as gas prices staying in the neighbor hood of $4 natural gas is a winner. Wind has been proven economical, but does need subsidies or regulation to compete with gas. Iowa now has 15% from wind, texas 8% and these numbers are growing. If natural gas gets anouther price spike people may again plan more coal.

In a deregulated environment base load kind of loses its meaning. Gas can most easily handle demand changes and spikes. I agree that nuclear is most likely off the table, but only one new nuclear plant is being built, and most of the expansion is in 2016 and afterward. It is much cheaper to build a new gas power plant than a new coal plant given the current pollution control requirements and cap and trade and the proposed mercury requirements. Then you need to estimate how much fuel will go up during the life of the plant and possibilities of new regulations. Most finance people are not attributing a new price spike to natural gas, and without that the coal construction and decommissioning look like a bad investment. Now if you add the risk of future regulation, and I believe that is high, new coal does not make much sense. The numbers work out differently if there is no gas lines to get to the plants as is the case in the NE. Also if a company is decommissioning or more likely mothballing a coal power plant they can use their credits for the new plant and it becomes viable.