Here is an interesting statistic and projection: Sometime in 2006, China surpassed The United States in PV panel production. They have been DOUBLING their production every year since 2001. At that rate, they will produce enough panels to supply all the power the world uses by 2021. By the next year, they will be producing more PER YEAR, than the entire world used in the previous year.
You need to look at Germany, not just Maine's tiny place in the equation. Maine has less than 1% of its power coming from solar. The needs for grid improvements change greatly from adding a fraction of a percent to 10%. There may more resistance to going to 10% solar in maine versus germany though. That growth will replace less expensive natural gas generation. By all means for maine to get to 5% solar, it could do this with minor grid improvements. For a state like texas, it would be a massive undertaking, and require grid upgrades to go from the sunny, west to the populated east. Texas in the ERCOT grid is doing these improvements. From approval, to actually being built and implemented the improvements will take more than a decade. In many ways this is easier at ERCOT. It only required approval from the state of texas. The improvments for say connetecut and NY require federal and many state government politics. So yes slow process that will take over 2 decades to make the grid improvments and for solar prices to fall. Solar is less than 1%. There are key grid and regulatory hurdles. In germany in 20 years most estimates are solar will still be bellow 25% of energy. How do you think in 20 years the US will go from less than 1% to replace over 30% of coal. Its like expecting the D student in 8th grade to graduate high school 2 years early. Its an educated opinion. Look back 20 years and people were acting like the country would be solar by now We both want more solar, but I am looking at how entrenched coal interests are on the east coast, and how much easier the transistion will be coal -> natural gas + renewables with the politics of the country, than coal to solar. Most households want to be able to buy food and health insurance. They may be still underwater on their mortage and at risk of losing their home, and you expect them to add to their debt. For most families putting solar up simply is not a priority. Some specifically don't like the idea. As I said, if you take a realistic look at transition we shouldn't be building new nuclear plants either. There will be a big fight though if you want to shut down coal fast and force much of america to buy more expensive power tomorrow. Drive down to kentucky or west virginia and hang out at the bars and ask the same question. I don't think you will like the answer.
Thanks for the belittling. The issue here was not in any way related to it being in Maine. Solar was a CURE for grid problems. If there was still a nuke plant within 5 miles of here, IT would NOT have fixed the problem. If you don't have any reason why this is not a prevalent condition, then solar is needed in many more places. Since you haven't shown that local solar requires more grid improvements than nuclear, and since it is directly contrary to both theory and experience, how long it takes reflects a need for MORE solar. Solar prices have ALREADY fallen. Massively. You might want to check for yourself. That is completely wrong analysis. If we need 2 terawatts of power (to make up a number) to replace coal, than we need 2 terawatts of solar or 2 terawatts of nuclear. The current percentage of the existing grid is COMPLETELY irrelevant. The ONLY thing that matters is how quickly 2 terawatts of power can be built and power delivered to customers. If we got cold fusion working cheaply tomorrow, would that mean since it was currently 0% of the grid that we should ignore it? There are, of course, other ways of doing this. There are companies here, which install PV on people's houses and sell them power at lower rates then there currently paying. No up front costs. This makes it EASIER for those people to buy food, so you should be in favor of it. Plainly, if the proposition is financially viable then SOMEONE will find a way to extract money from it. Which they are. Fortunately, I am not required to live my life as proscribed by bar dwellers in Kentucky. The "we're too stupid to do the right thing" excuse is not much of an argument, and frankly if that the best you have, I am not interested in the argument.
No effort to belittle you or maine. You simply seem to be ignoring the scale to get a high percentage of solar. Even though the population of Austin's MSA is about the same as the population of maine, our solutions don't scale well to texas (we are only the fourth most populous metro area in the state), and the country is adopting renewables much more slowly than the state of texas. Some things look good on small population sizes, like maine's biomass, but trees to people are much higher in maine versus NY. Your solution to grid problems have everything to do with it being a tiny proportion of the grid. At very small levels, diversity of power sources. So yes looking at maine instead of germany misses the key point. There is a much infrastruture needed to go from 5% - 20% solar. What is the maine solar goal? Is it going from less than 1% to 2% or 3%? If that is it, can you understand the difference. I most certainly was not advocating nuclear in maine. I was in fact saying if we are alright with a long time horizon - 40 years to reduce fossil fuel we should not be building much more nuclear in this country. My problem is the solar single solution can be fast, even though this has not been done anywhere. Reducing pollution means grid improvements, efficiency improvements, and yes more natural gas and wind and not just a single solar push. Many have been advocating solar above all else, and it trails far behind wind and natural gas at reducing coal pollution. Certainly if you want to pull out the coal plants by 2035, solar will require more grid improvements than nuclear. I am fine with the grid improvements. I think the east coast is far behind texas as far as that goes. But when government advocates no fossil fuels, the nuclear and solar industries have their hands out. You simply can't push solar in 0 time. If you could the germans would be doing it instead of building coal to temporarily supply power as they shut down nuclear plants and add wind and solar. One portfolio solutions have not worked anywhere with more than an arbitarily small population. How quickly has california built 2 tera watts of solar? They arguably have the best economics and government incentives for it. To replace 2 terrawatts of coal though you need about 4 terrawatts of solar and something to back it up (batteries and/or natural gas). You need to replace the hours. For solar we give it about 50% peak, for wind 15% peak. I have stood in the way of expanding nuclear in texas, since IMHO we have time to improve the grid, but we also voted to improve the grid and pass the costs to business and utility rate payers. OK so why aren't you at 10% solar? Instead of complaining to me that we should be all solar, tell me why we aren't there? Solar is subsidized in this country. Government regulations make it more expensive, so some parts of government make it worse (building codes, approvals, obscure regulations) even as other push it. Austin solar is subsidized about 60% with the utility helping with regulations, which is getting some built (3% by 2020, we will likely have 32% from non-solar renewables by then solar is the most expensive.), but most regulatory bodies will not pass that much cost onto other customers. When you get maine up to 5% solar, lets talk again about how you don't need grid upgrades. You asked why it would take a long time. You are talking about solar replacing coal for the country. I would prefer we had wind/natural gas/solar/geothermal in a mix replace it fast, and prefer solutions for the nation. Your argument is the country can go solar fast, but you are going to ignore the coal states. Well to me that just means you are wrong about time scale.
Just fyi, the new bloomberg renewable outlook came out a month ago. Solar to add more megawatts than wind in 2013, for first time | Bloomberg New Energy Finance What looks like a good article for renewables really is that solar is passing wind because wind has dropped caused by changing regulations.
What an astounding amount of condescension, unsupported assertions, and strawmen. Not even worth responding to.
Again, I don't mean to be condescending. If some of the facts are insulting, confront the facts. You act as if I am pro nuclear and anti-solar, but that is the opposite of everything I have written. If it helps you use this challenge. Get New England 20% solar in 20 years (ME, NH, VT, CT, MA, RI). That should be much easier than the country (WV, Kentucky, Indiana, etc). We have challenged Texas to be 20% wind and solar before then (2025), but most of that is the great surplus of hot air, and we have been working on it longer. Going all solar quickly is not an easy solution. I just was pointing out some pitfalls.
