Taxing Solar to Save Electrical Utilities

The problem with solar is that government subsidies has distorted the market hugely and pushed the cost onto conventional providers.

Forcing electric utilities to pay 10 times the cost of production for solar power ($0.30kW/hr for solar vs $0.03 for coal), or to mandate a supply amount of 'green' sources has cost billions, likely hundreds and hundreds of billions in waste paying for expensive solar and wind.

The solar panels are cut rate in price because China has little to no environmental controls in the production of the panels, little to no safety standards for the workers and little to no recourse for employees.

Every Chinese solar panel should have an environmental tax placed on it equal to the cost of a safe and non polluting production cycle. No long can western environmentalists push for what they call clean energy when they are just offsetting the pollution to China.

The EU's system of higher than market price for solar has caused a huge imbalance in their grid system. Solar can at best take up 15% of the total amount produced before it's selling daytime power at or below $0. The base load power that's needed to run the system ends up costing more as they lose out on the 10 hours of mid day profitable sales. At least in sources with low fuel costs and high construction costs, like hydro and nuclear.

The push of solar power has lead to the rise of the need for gas plants, a strategically dangerous situation given the Russian control of EU natural gas.

Even Germany that's had to grant price subsidies to it's industry because of it's costly 'green' energy plan is building more coal fired plants to make up the difference.

Reversing the subsidy of solar is a good start.

The linked article ignores that most of Australia's high cost comes from yet another failed privatization attempt of the electric utility and how investors are demanding huge returns (12%+) on the transmission network.

This isn't a case of utilities fighting a better method, it's a case of utility that will be expected to meet all demand (often by law) to cover the costs that solar is putting in their operations. If solar power users will disconnect from the grid and have no interaction with the power grid, that would be one thing. But they don't they expect that when their batteries run out they the grid will pick up the slack at the low price they offered in the past. They also expect to be able to sell their extra power they can't store (because batteries are hugely expensive) at a profit to the utility and often have laws granting them hugely inflated prices.

This is an example of short sighted 'green' government policy failing.

Concur. I'm fine with ending subsidies of solar. Let the wealthy pay for their own solar energy - that really is a reasonable policy. :wink:

If someone pays their own money for their own solar panels they shouldn't be taxed at all. This is like being taxed for the air you breathe.

Right-wing reasoning - tax them for being filthy hippies too pussified to use good ol' fossil fuels to generate their electricity.
Left-wing reasoning - tax them because we like taxing everything that fucking moves.

A plague on both their rotten houses! :evil:

Taxing sunlight? That's criminal. And for Europe, that's backwards. They need to eliminate all energy imports from Russia. Taxing alternatives is contrary to national security.

I've said before, Europe needs to re-active all their nuclear power plants. Wind, solar, tidal harness, all alternative energy sources. Everything not Russian.

The solution is not carbon tax. Here in Canada, the solution is specific alternatives.

Manitoba and Ontario have talked about selling hydro power to the Greater Toronto Area. The first deal was in the 1970s, but Ontario cancelled. They paid a cancellation fee, but it did cost Manitoba jobs. That was the Conawapa dam, but during the 1999 Manitoba provincial election, leader of the NDP promised to build all 14 hydro projects on Manitoba Hydro books, plus windmills. That was 12 new dams, expansion of one dam, and renovation of the oldest dam in Manitoba. That would have generated 5,000 megawatts of new power; power we could sell. America wants some, Ontario wants some, and he talked about making hydrogen for hydrogen fuel cell cars. Well, fuel cells never did work, but we could export power. Unfortunately construction didn't happen. The provincial NDP asked businessmen to build windmills, with an fixed price contract to buy they power. That way neither the government nor Manitoba Hydro has to pay for construction. Most of the windmills they wanted were built, but not all. They were only able to find two suckers (um, businessmen) to take the deal. One of the smallest new dams was built, and renovation of the century old dam is still on-going.

There have been problems closing a deal between Manitoba and Ontario. One problem is an argument over who pays for the power transmission line. Ontario demanded Manitoba pay for the line all the way to Toronto. Manitoba offered to pay as far as the provincial border, but Ontario didn't accept that. Ontario wants to own the line, but wants Manitoba to pay. Obviously, not going to happen. So when Paul Martin was Prime Minister, he offered to have the federal government pay for it. Great idea! But one small tweak I would like: once power starts flowing, charge it back to the utilities on a lease-to-buy plan. Once the government has recovered its cost, hand ownership to the utilities. That gets the federal government out of the power transmission business. This deal cuts through the "Gorgon Knot".

I also want development of gallium-indium-nitride photovoltaic cells. I read a paper in the fall of year 2000 about this. A US government lab called the Los Alamos National Laboratory noticed this particular semiconductor should theoretically collect the same light spectrum as the Sun, so should be extremely efficient. They looked for someone to build one, so they could test it. They went to the materials lab at the University of California in Berkeley. They made one, and did materials characterization. They found it's transparent to any colours not converted to electricity, allowing for multi-junction cells. Current high efficiency cells are multi-junction, but they use completely different chemistry for each junction. This cell can be adjust by simply adjusting the concentration of nitrogen, allowing the same chemistry for each junction. UC Berkeley calculated a two junction cell would convert 56%, three junction 64%, and 36 junction would be 72%. After they published their paper, another researcher calculated optimal junction layers: 8 junctions could convert 70.2%. So that tells me 8 junctions are optimal for this chemistry. Old cells from the 1970s converted 4%, the ones you can get at Canadian Tire today convert 6%, the ones for your cottage convert 14%. The high efficiency cells for satellites convert 29.5% (NeXt Triple Junction solar cells from SpectroLab). And a set of panels for a single satellite cost millions of dollars. So this is a massive jump! The problem is companies that manufacture cells for use on Earth don't want to pay for development. They want companies that make cells for satellites to pay, then they want to "steal" the technology. And companies that make cells for satellites have a multi-decade plan to slowly increase performance to 45%, gouging their customers with each fraction of a percent improvement. They have no intention to jump straight to 70%. So no one is working on this. It's 14 years since the paper was published, an no progress. Frustrating! It's all about greed.

I would like to see these new cells finished, and sold at the same price per panel as the current ones for cottages. So 5 times as much power, but the same price, so therefore 1/5 price per watt.

Also, develop a small device to make biodiesel. Case IH currently makes tractors and other farm equipment that operate on 100% biodiesel. What we need is a small device sized for a single farm that can convert canola seeds directly from the combine harvester into vegetable oil. Take some of the straw and ferment it to make methanol. Burn more straw to distil the methanol. Then take ash from that straw and run it through something like a coffee filter to make lye. Those are the ingredients for biodiesel: vegetable oil, methanol, lye. Then the same device would combine them to make biodiesel. All automated, and sized to fit in a shed. Add solar panels for the roof and a car battery to run the equipment. Simply dump oil seeds in one bin, straw in another, push a button, walk away. This would make farmers independent for fuel. It would also cut any tie between oil prices and food production prices.

Houses: solar panel roof using those high efficiency cells I just talked about. Plus windmill in the back yard. But a small windmill, just a couple metres diameter. Geothermal heat pump. Batteries in the basement. And well insulated, but only as well as a well insulated modern house, nothing extreme. As a backup, add a high efficiency fireplace or wood stove. CFL or LED lights to conserve power, and high efficiency appliances. Size the whole thing so the house is entirely energy independent for the worst conditions in the area where it's built. Here in Winnipeg temperature dropped to -40.4°C, -.40.6°C, and -41.0°C for three consecutive nights in January 2005. That's the last time it got that cold, and it was the overnight low, normally it doesn't quite get down to -40°. And that was according to weather reports at the time, when I check statistics now, it says the temperature got down to -39.something°C. Last winter the temperature wasn't that cold, but we had more days below -20°C than any year on record. That's daytime high, not overnight low. Ok, so build these houses for those extremes. The rest of the year these houses will sell surplus power to the grid. That way the power utility sends you a cheque, not a bill.

That works particularly well in Manitoba, because Manitoba Hydro makes money by selling power to Americans. They like people who conserve power.

One issue is the power grid is not designed to switch power flow. Either power runs from the high voltage mains down to the house voltage for your block, or the other way, not both. I'm talking about those pole transformers to provide power to your block. But if only one or two houses per block are built like this, then power will be consumed by neighbours. Power will never have to flow back up to the high voltage mains. Or if a new development constructs all houses this way, then the grid will never provide power to houses, the only transformer will step power up to the high voltage mains. So either one or two houses per block, or all houses, not anything in between.

Apartment blocks and office towers will never be able to do this. Roof is too small. So they will always be energy consumers. The utility will pay home owners a lower price per kilowatt-hour, then sell at a higher price to their customers. They will always make a profit. But this dramatically reduces dependence on coal, or other non-renewable fossil fuels. And more importantly for current situation: this would allow Europe to reduce import of Russian energy products.