Idiotbuster

China's Green Stimulus: A-Power, First Solar May Get Big Chunk

Photovoltaics is a great energy source, but we will move up the food chain to concentrated solar power (CSP) by means of thermal energy. We will make heliostats made of highly reflective aluminium to bounce sunlight toward tall towers with steam turbines at top. Heliostats capture close to 100% of potential solar energy as opposed to photovoltaics at around 15%. The suspecting reason we are not rushing toward CSP is because aluminium is energy intensive to produce and we will need hundreds of millions tons of new aluminium to coat heliostats. The annual world aluminium production is only 30 millions tons. Nobody is enthusiastic about building more new energy intensive aluminium smelters or seeing aluminium prices going up like copper did...

First Solar Earnings: Eight Points About the Solar Industry

First Solar may sound overpriced but it is worth only ten billion in stock while Exxon Mobil is worth $300 billion. Sure, First Solar is much smaller than Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Conoco, British Petroleum, Dutch Royal Shell, and many others worth over trillions of dollars altogehter.. Yet analysts had the gall to downgrade First Solar while time is of utter importance.. We cannot afford to wait another minute or hour... The rich and powerful are watching solar traders and act against them in bids to wipe them out so that they can have it all to themselves in their own tier of economy.. If the solar traders wait, the rich will move in fast and price them out... The SEC ought to know that ...

First Solar Earnings: Eight Points About the Solar Industry

I find it interesting that an utility from San Diego is still locked in horns with property owners and environmentalists over the powerline issue that will go about 160 miles to San Diego from the solar megawatt farm.. It is not going to work , yet they are fighting just for the sake of fighting.. San Diego can install more and much smaller solar farms all over the local towns where the powerline is much closer and easier to hook up. San Diego can do deals with towns like Barstow , Needles, and Yuma for instance to do their own local megawatts installations , instead.. Time is of essence.. We are wasting time and money on lawyers... Seek the least resistance first and worrying about the bigger dreams for later... what are we waiting for.. Why cannot we go between the biggest solar farms and the rooftop solars?? Why are we going to the exrtremes of the issue only but never down the middle roads?? There are many choices to make. We chose to work on unworkable choices and ignoring the middle of the road choices that is mostly likey to succeed. We dont want solar as long as I see and understand it.. We want to see oil prices going up to $200, $300 a barrel.. We are not even serious about putting Big Oil & Gas in a can permanently.. Big Oil and Gas had cost us millions of jobs that no longer exist because of insufficient supplies of oil and gas in the better times.. We have to move to different sources of energy like solar in a big way and fast... not next year.. I mean now this minute!!

First Solar Earnings: Eight Points About the Solar Industry

Many people have no concept of what a watt of electricity means... They dont know how many watts a HDTV consumes.. or a central air condtioning system... or a stereo system or a power tool or even a night light.... They are not interested in knowing the boring facts or the fun facts as David Letterman like to fool around with... It seems that they are afraid of possibly getting an electical shock if they read the back of an applicance for the boring data on the label...

First Solar Earnings: Eight Points About the Solar Industry

Our govenment is adding too much unnecessary liabilities that they are already used to the famed "Third Rail " shocks... We are getting so numbed from repeated electric shocks from failing to keep our promises any longer. Our governemntr is laying off workers, too. Not only the businesses... Our liablilites are way over our heads, yet we continue to finance the war in the Afghanistan and financing rooftop solar installations to the hilt... I compare this to shrinking cereal boxes as Andy Rooney like to call it in "Sixty Minutes" . Candy bars are shrinking, etc.. I wonder about milk gallon jugs shrinking by a few ounces in the future?? Our government is using evasive political practices nowadays. at the same time chasing the latest sexy politcal issues like rooftop installations that will not make any dent at most... only a couple of coal powerplants at cost of billions of dollars..

First Solar Earnings: Eight Points About the Solar Industry

I built my own array of solar heliostats made of aluminium foil glued on masonite boards mounted on posts to reflect sunlight back to the northern sides of my house. As you should know that practically all of the northern sides of houses in the Northern Hemisphere never saw the Sun because the Sun is always in the southern sky even in the high noon during wintertime. I cut my utiility bills with my crudely built array of solar heliostats.. I posted it on Youtube.com. It has to catch on but only a few thousands viewers so far.. General Electric can mass produce better versions of my solar heliostats, but GE prefer to make energy guzzling turbines of all sorts to appease the fossil fuel industry. We have yet to make a sizable dent in our demand of fossil fuels like down 50% outright.. We are down only a few percent points mostly thanks to the slow economy. We made energy conservation sound big with CFC bulbs and Energy Star postings on new appliciances to kee the public feel good about themselves..

First Solar Earnings: Eight Points About the Solar Industry

First Solar is still making only a gigawatt worth of solar modules a year in several factories yet it is the biggest solar player . Altogether, the solar industry is still managing only five or so gigawatts a year which is still a drop in the bucket... There is still no announcements of new solar factories for months ... Too much posturing and waiting for stock options to expire and traders losing money before going ahead.. What kind of a game are they playing??

First Solar Earnings: Eight Points About the Solar Industry

Our government spent billions on affordable housing and what we get?? Toxic assets! Our government is not interested in cost and productivity. I am not saying that our government ought to stay out of the housing business, but our government has more important obligations than to artificially lowering the true costs of doing business. For solar industry, our govenment has to be much more patient with solar rooftops that can wait.. I rather see our government forge ahead with more megawatt installations first until the cost of a solar watt comes down close to a dime a watt. I think it is far more important to keep oil prices from going up much sooner than to create jobs just for the sake of creating jobs at any cost. Oil prices is too dangerous to play politics with voters who want rooftop installations.. Way toooo dangerous!! As of now only the wealthy benefits from solar rooftops... Not the laid off workers who had nothing to do with energy issues.. We need more energy sources FAST!!! TO RESTORE ECONOMICAL RECOVERY FOR ALL WORKERS NOT THE RICH ROOFTOPPERS...

First Solar Earnings: Eight Points About the Solar Industry

If we are too slow with solar installations through roof tops, then oil prices is certain to go up again much sooner.. I am so appaled to find no sense of urgency about keeping fossiil fuel prices down.. I am still not impressed with weekly reports of oiil inventories as such.. I am still not impressed with dozens of full oil tankers with nowhere to unload ... It doesnt take much of an economical pickup to soak them up all. Laid off workers are paying the price while we sit on economy and waiting for the oil to fill up ... and focusing too narrowly on solar rooftops alone.. There had been too few megawatt announcements here and there. Dont we understand that we really need TERAWATTS NOT GIGAWATTS OR MEGAWATTS OF SOLAR.. I say this again...TERAWATTS THAT IS IN TRILLIONS OF WATTS NOT MILLIONS OR BILLIONS... YES, TRILLLLIONS OF WATTS!! It is no joke here.. Again, to the "Aflac" crowd out there..."TERAWATTS!!!'

First Solar Earnings: Eight Points About the Solar Industry

I have suspicions of the wealthy . I suspect that the wealthy want to hold on fossil fuel stocks like Exxon and Peabody coal at the same time going slow on solar stocks with rooftop installations and draining the coffers of the government... The weatlhy is still not ready to give up oil and coal stocks.. They want secure investments and will do all they can to keep oil and coal stocks going for as long as possible .. I stop listening to experts a long time ago... I am thinking for myself so why cannot you, too.. Ignore the experts!! They are speaking for the benefits of the wealthy not you...

First Solar Earnings: Eight Points About the Solar Industry

I am a strong advocate of solar photovoltaic primarily for megawatt installations not rooftop installations. Rooftop installations is not ready for prime time... Solar modules is still not a commodity yet. Solar modules is still too expensive and cloaked with governmental deifict spending... Government is cutting other programs to spend on roof top solar that benefit the wealthy alone. Solar prices had come down enough to make it affordable for local municipal installations with cooperation with local utilites. We need to act fast to head off ever higher fossil fuel prices unless we are content to stop our economy growth in order to avoid increasing demand on fossil fuels. Our demand has not fallen down enough even in the face of slow economy. We are still paralyzed and unwilling to kick start our economy out of fear of inflating oil prices much sooner than past cycles. I consider solar rooftops as a luxury that the wealthy can afford themselves without any government assistance. I just dont understand why towns of 1000 to 100.000 in population cannot adopt their own mutlimegawatt solar projects themselves with bond financings and modest government assistance. Bond financings is the way to go to help the solar industry succeed in the first phase of many phases of growth in the future. We can only cross fingers and hope that we will be able to attain a dime a watt cost structures in the future. First Solar is the first to attain below a dollar a watt cost which is remarkable. Many other competitors will do the same. We have to watch labor costs for now and make the biggest bang out of every buck by going megawatt installations first and center of all!! This is the first phase to go.. now! We will have rooftop solar much later not now! They dont have to move out in the desert to install megawatts there... Local municipals can do the jobs themselves for their own keep.. Lets put a solar roof over every town for all not the weatlhy alone..

First Solar Earnings: Eight Points About the Solar Industry

Roof top solar installments is slow and costly with too many trips back and forth to complete each installation as contrary to megawatt solar installations. Megawatt installations has its own problems as well , because new powerlines will be needed to string over NIMBY property owners and "shoot in feet" environmentalists who sought to protect the pristine land from the unsightly powerlines. We didnt seem to have the same problems with wind turbines which is a bit odd, probably it was too late then . I am eyeing to local municipalies and small towns out in the boonies that already have powerlines nearby oten less than one mile away. All they need to do is install own power substations to hook up to the high voltage powerlines. During daytime, we can shut down oil, coal and gas powerplants altogether. Voters can be asked to approve municipal bonds to finance local megawatt projects to keep local jobs around.. I still maintain that rooftop solar will displace a couple of coal powerplants at most for the time being until solar comes down much further in price toward something like a dime a watt. We have a long way to go ... We are still charging $2-5 a watt with government's deficit in blessings...It is still not realistic to start drumming up for more rooftop solar until we establish a big enough solar industry that can build dozens of gigawatt worth of modules annually. We are not even there yet.. We are still dragging our feet and still listening to analysts and pundits downgrading solar stocks..

First Solar's Ultraviolet Earnings

I see a possibility in local municipalities that can find a few spare acres to install solar panels and sell electricity to the local utility for modest revenues. They can sell municipal bonds and apply for some federal and state assistance to finance a few megawatts that can pay $100-500 hourly to the municipal coffers as long as the sun shines. Or maybe new independent utilties will be formed to purchase properties and install solar panels and sell to local utilites. So far, it seems that $145 oil barrels failed to scare us up enough to act right away even though oil had fallen down again. It seems to me that most of us are thinking that we can afford to wait until we are hit with ever higher oil prices before we are convinced enough to throw in the towel. We will be piling ever more debt than ever. What we dont understand is that we should take advantage of low oil prices to start acting than later. This is not how capitalists think and behave. They are just too content to let oil prices go up to profit on before moving on to alternate energy. They dont care about people losing jobs, homes, cars, dogs and cats ... They just dont care,,

First Solar's Ultraviolet Earnings

We are not going to make any dent with only rooftop installments. They will only displace a couple of coal powerplants at best. We need raw land where cattle roams to install far more solar panels. Ranchers and farmers are not interested so far.. They dont want them on their properties. Where in the heck do we put them?? Rooftops is nice and exciting , but will not get us far with stock prices.

First Solar's Ultraviolet Earnings

The real problem with alternate energy is that they will eat up a lot of real estate .You will need something like 25 square miles of solar panels to generate equally with a coal fired powerplant or a hydropower dam or a nuclear reactor. Wind power is almost as bad as you can see them dotting all over.. The biggest wind turbine can power 2000 to 6000 households while wind blows. When wind stopped blowing, it stops and go. A coal powerplant with small footprint can power 500,000 to 1,000,000 households constantly. We havent even counted skyscrapers, factories, street lighting, retail stores/warehouses, etc. We are talking about a lot of solar and wind power to install and we are already talk about oversupplies of solar, DUH?