oaksleeksbeans

Want Solar Panels? China Will Pick Up the Tab

Let us assume $5/watt, annual generation of 1.4 kilowatt hours (kWhs)/watt of PV and see what price of power would be required for a PV system to pay for itself it two years.

First cost: $5/watt
Cost after incentive: $2/watt
Generation per year: 1.4 kWh
Generation over two years: 2.8 kWh

Cost of power required to payback over two years:
$2/2.8 kWh = 71 cents a kWh

Electric prices are not that high, not even in Hawaii. I currently pay about 13 cents per kWh here in the Midwest.

You can be sure that power prices are far lower in China.

Will Some Solar Companies Face a Cash Crunch?

The Chinese solar firms are growing 300% a year! That is an amazing growth rate. So of course they are using lots of cash. They realize that if the grow slowly they will not survive as firms. It is a race for market share and toward efficiencies of scale and cost reductions. If they don't find their price reductions they will also need to worry more about competing solar electric technologies.

So as investors we want them to grow as quickly as possible. But of course it is a tightrope.

My sense is that the Chinese government is very supportive of growth and gaining scale needed to dominate the world market.

Am I wrong in saying that the Chinese government will provide resources to companies that start falling off the tightrope?

Relax... seems like this may be a good period to buy solar stocks.

PowerShares WilderHill Clean Energy ETF (PBW) Holdings

Hey Aquaculture - I believe you mean ground sourced heat pumps not geothermal. Speaking as a geologist, geothermal is hot water gysers etc. Ground sourced heat pumps use the stable temperature of the earth as a heat source (winter) or sink (summer) for a heat pump.

Further Musings on Solar Stocks

I recently ran some numbers on Biofuels vs Solar powered electric cars for the Midwest. The future of travel is renewable electric!

Good agricultural land produces 5 dry tons of biomass an acre per year, each dry ton can produce roughly 100 gallons of fuel per ton and if we assume cars can get 50 miles per gallon, than each acre of land could produce enough fuel to drive a car 25,000 miles per year.

About 250 kilowatts (kW) of solar electric modules would fill that same acre of land. In Wisconsin that 250 kW system would generate 300,000 kWh per year. An electric car will go at least 3 miles per kWh. An acre of solar modules could drive electric vehicles 900,000 miles per year.

Solar power is 36 times more efficient than biofuels at powering vehicles (even given Wisconsin solar resource). If we move to cellulosic ethanol from switchgrass solar power is 12 times better.

Solar power has other benefits, such as: solar power does not require land – roof tops are fine, solar module conversion efficiencies are being raised significantly (so less area would be needed per unit of energy produced), and electric cars and their batteries are in their infancy with efficiency gains remaining.

Meanwhile, biofuel crops must be harvested, transported and processed into the biofuel and sold to customers at biofuel stations. While solar power can go directly into a car’s battery with no moving parts.

Agriculture also means fertilization, tilling, soil loss, and irrigation. While solar power systems require very little maintenance and have a 30 to 40 year expected life.

Why the heck are we even pursuing biofuels???

Further Musings on Solar Stocks

Great insight on FSLR. What are you thoughts on LDK?