PV Solar - If not Florida, Where?

[SgtRock]

Greetings EEVBees:

--If not Florida, where? The story at the below link, is very typical of what happens, with nearly all government PV Solar expenditures other than research. Namely that, they did or do not provide the financial payback promised. Not in dollars, not in electrons, not in BTUs.  Fed and local money down the toilet as usual.

http://mediatrackers.org/florida/2014/07/30/solar-panels-tampa-courthouse-fail-meet-promises

"WFTS News in Tampa obtained copies of the courthouse’s electricity bills and confirmed the savings are no more than about $2,000 per month. WFTS also confirmed the panels are reducing electricity bills by only 15 to 18 percent, instead of the promised 40 percent. At $27,000 per year, it would take 45 years to recover the solar panels’ costs. Accounting for inflation, it would take closer to 50 years to recover the costs. However, solar panels have a typical lifespan of only 15 to 20 years. Also, the effectiveness of the panels decreases throughout the panels’ lifespan. As a result, the Hillsborough County Courthouse solar panels are likely to return only about one-third of their inflation-adjusted cost."

--Yes I know that the people who wrote the article are not counting almost all of the environmental impacts,and subsidies of the other energy sources especially the dastardly capitalistic coal, oil, and energy companies. But of course the governments knew all of that before they foisted this atrocity on the working taxpayers.

--Sold on the basis of cutting bill by 40% but only cuts it 15 to 17%, and the panels will be dead before they even get half way to breaking even, maintenance not included. 


"Math is hard."
Doll, Barbie - 1959  -

Best Regards
Clear Ether

[zapta]

Dave had an episode about the PV panels he installed at home. Would be interesting to have a follow up episode with the results and the economics of that installation.

[dannyf]

The whole "going green" thing is a fleecing of taxpayers anywhere.

[nctnico]

Greetings EEVBees:

--If not Florida, where? The story at the below link, is very typical of what happens, with nearly all government PV Solar expenditures other than research. Namely that, they did or do not provide the financial payback promised. Not in dollars, not in electrons, not in BTUs.  Fed and local money down the toilet as usual.

Sounds to me like someone made an error somewhere. Either in connecting the panels, the metering or simply paid too much for the solar panels. The story doesn't tell how many panels where installed so it is difficult to determine whether the $1.2 million is a good price for the panels.

[SeanB]

Probably you could have made as big or better cut in the bill by simply insulating the building better, replacing windows with double glazes ones and doing a lighting upgrade with more efficient lighting ( though I would not use LED or T5 flourescent, rather T8 in a fitting that runs the ballast cool and which directs the light to where it is needed) and by installing motion sensing and occupancy sensors to cut light when not needed along with using daylight piped in to not run lights 24/7. Along with that an AC upgrade running at a higher set point  temperature ( you do not really need to run the AC at 20C, for most places 24c is perfect and is a considerable saving) along with heat exchangers on the fresh air inlets to recover energy on exhaust air, and using natural cooling to utilise the cooler ambient morning air when possible to freshen the air. Along with large efficient HEPA filters, and a shade over the condensers to lower ambient temperatures. Painting the roof with a reflective coat or having a false reflective roof to shade the original helps as well.

This would probably cost as much as the PV install, but would drop energy use by about half. A good thing though would be to have solar water heaters though, to save even further on hot water for washing, showers and such, or to use heat pumps from the AC condensers to recover the reject heat into the building as needed. A bolt on thing that is independent of the main unit and reduces power used in all cases.

[bookaboo]

All valid points but one thing stands out to me..... $1.2million for a solar installation. What size of array is this? I can't see it in the article.

[Seekonk]

There is a story here, I say follow the money.  How do you get 1.2 million on a courthouse?

[george graves]

The whole "going green" thing is a fleecing of taxpayers anywhere.

Not true at all.



Even where I live, in the Great Pacific Northwest of the US, solar is feasible. 

[nowlan]

The largest is the 196-kilowatt solar photovoltaic system on the roof of the County’s Old Main Courthouse Building in downtown Tampa. The solar panels supply about 20 percent of the building’s energy load. This saved the County more than 300,000 kilowatt/hours ($27,000 in energy cost savings) in the first year. The solar panels also reduced the building’s carbon dioxide emissions by 225 tons. According to the Florida Solar Energy Center, this is the largest solar photovoltaic project in a downtown urban area in the nation! link


The 196-kilowatt solar photovoltaic system of 1,350 specially made solar panels was funded through the EECBG program. The solar panels will supply approximately 40 percent of the building’s energy load and is estimated to save the county more than $60,500 annually in energy costs. link

http://www.hillscty419piercepv.com/ < real time monitor.

Some nice pics, and shading issues here.

[nctnico]

I see Specially made. I smell a night at a stripclub for getting a lucrative government contract job.

[bookaboo]

There's your problem... $1.2 million for 196kW is way over budget, probably 4-6 times what should have been paid. A few pockets lined along the way there no doubt about it.

[nowlan]

Surely such a large project would go to tender, plus be audited.

You would think the Dept of Energy would have advisors/consultants who would double check if asked by local gov.

[dannyf]

You would think the Dept of Energy would have advisors/consultants who would double check if asked by local gov.

Thanks to those advisors we have great deals like A123 or Solyndra,

[dannyf]

I support everyone's rights to pay for their own solar / green energy endeavors;

What offends me is their insisting that I pay for such endeavors.

[dannyf]

The most perverse part of those "green energy" subsidies is that it is a reverse Robin hood: it is the average tax payers who struggle to pay his/her daily bills force into subsidizing the wealthy who could afford to buy a Tesla, or put up solar panels and tell their solar - generated electricity into the grid at above market prices, which is essentially another form of taxation for the rate payers.

Where is the fairness there?

[zapta]

I support everyone's rights to pay for their own solar / green energy endeavors;

What offends me is their insisting that I pay for such endeavors.

Well said.

[mtdoc]

More politically motivated clap-trap from the usual suspects.

Consider the source of this article: Media Trackers.

As usual, follow the money: " Media Trackers is primarily sponsored by the Tea Party non-profit and training group American Majority, which is funded for the most part by the Sam Adams Alliance"

For example the claim:

solar panels have a typical lifespan of only 15 to 20 years

is factually incorrect.

In reality the lifespan is much longer. I personally know people still using panels made in the 1970s

From Engineering.com  "For monocrystalline silicon, the most commonly used panel for commercial and residential PV, the degradation rate is less than 0.5% for panels made before 2000, and less than 0.4% for panels made after 2000. That means that a panel manufactured today should produce 92% of its original power after 20 years"

I have no doubt the courthouse installation in question suffered from the usual bureaucratic missteps, waste and corruption:.

Let's see 1.2 million for 196 kW = $6.12 per watt. Much more than should have been paid for an installation of this size, even in 2010. 

Of course bureaucratic missteps, waste and corruption never occurs in the heavily tax payer subsidized fossil fuel or nuclear power industries, does it?

Considering that prices have continued to drop (currently at about $3 per installed watt) and that grid parity has currently been achieved in 10 states and is projected to be achieved in all 50 states in 2016 and it's fairly obvious that this is not a fact based report.

Meanwhile in the real world, growth of photovoltaics continues along at an exponential rate.

Of course it is still all too little, too late....

[dannyf]

If you listen to the fanatics, solar or green power is the greatest since man kind and make all of us swim in money.

What I don't quite understand is that why do they always insist on me having some of it?

That part sounds like every one of those cons I have encountered.

[zapta]

From Engineering.com  "For monocrystalline silicon, the most commonly used panel for commercial and residential PV, the degradation rate is less than 0.5% for panels made before 2000, and less than 0.4% for panels made after 2000. That means that a panel manufactured today should produce 92% of its original power after 20 years"

By this 'analysis' the shingles on our roof should last forever. They don't, and so are our fence and water pipes.

[G7PSK]

Why is always assumed that the oil company's are trying to do down solar power and other alternative .
BP used to be one of the bigger players in solar and only got out as it found that it could make more money from other alternative energy sources such as wind.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BP_Solar



 

[miguelvp]

But reality doesn't agree.

http://www.thelocal.es/20140511/sun-sets-on-spanish-solar-power-dreams

http://theresilientearth.com/?q=content/germanys-solar-failure

http://www.pv-tech.org/news/spanish_solar_cuts_force_ikea_to_hand_pv_plant_back_to_the_bank

http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21587782-europes-electricity-providers-face-existential-threat-how-lose-half-trillion-euros

[zapta]

In most parts of the world the subsidies are actually long term low interest loans.

Long term low interest loans are also subsidies, and so are tax break, tax on the competition and millions of other forms.

[mtdoc]

The fundamental issue is not whether PV is a viable source of electricity production. That debate was settled long ago and the exponential growth of installed solar worldwide attests to that.

Citing some specific example where the economics did not pan out as rosy as the financiers initially projected is besides the point, whether one is referring to a courthouse in Florida or the Spanish countryside.

One could just as easily argue that nuclear or oil is not a viable energy source citing their enormous public subsidies or the multiple examples of nuclear power or oil exploration and development financial failures - the (heavily subsidized) tight oil industry implosion that is happening right now being a prime example.

Citing this or that financial miscalculation and trying to use that as argument against solar PV as a whole is just cheap and transparent political propaganda.

Bottom line - ALL current forms of energy used to produce electricity are heavily subsidized by society.  The question is which are going to be viable long term and cause the least damage to the resources needed to sustain healthy habitat for life on earth (yes, including humans).

Those predisposed to short term thinking and immediate self-interest focus on this or that short term cost and what's in it for them here and now. Some are so caught up in the false and destructive Red vs Blue political gamesmanship that they don't really seem interested in what the facts are.  Such is the reality of the current social climate...

The question is why does someone like Sgt Rock feel the need to repeatedly start these threads that have an obvious political agenda on an electronics forum?

[XynxNet]

Well here in Germany solar fails for political reasons.
- Renewables were highly subsidized, but the grid upgrade isn't.
- Grid owners were the big power companies, which had no interest in renewables. Today they aren't any longer grid owners...on paper...due to shifty business transactions.
- Subsidaries for renewables are only paid by consumers, not by the industry, which conveniently raises their visibility and present costs for the consumers.
- Subsidaries for non renewable energy production are not accounted. Furthermore they are not financed by a dedicated tax. So their visibilitty is quite low.
- Costs of non renewable energy are externalized. 'Nuclear waste management? - Tax payers childrens problem' 'Climate change due to carbon dioxid? - Not or problem. If needed we can buy co2-certificates, which are essentially government sanctioned fakes.'....

Why is it this way and why do some people sabotage every shift to renewables? Because in the good old times (2008) a conventional nuclear or coal power plant made half a billion euro profit a year... for it's owner.

[dannyf]

That debate was settled long ago

That has been a standard line they teach at the school for the fanatics,

The equivalent of it is "Doesn't compute" for the robots. Dumb and dumber.