Tags: Climate Change | solar | solyndra | climate | global warming

Hillary's Solar Panel Solution Is Half-Baked

Hillary's Solar Panel Solution Is Half-Baked
(REUTERS/Chris Aluka Berry)

By Monday, 27 July 2015 02:38 PM Current | Bio | Archive

In a YouTube video released over the weekend, the leading Democratic candidate for president, Hillary Clinton, announced that “on day one as president,” she would set “two ambitious national goals that will test our capacities.”

Said Mrs. Clinton, “First, I will ensure we hit a target of having more that half a billion solar panels installed across the country by the end of my first term.”

Your don’t even have to wait for “ambitious national goal” No. 2 to slap your forehead and roll your eyes at this example of top-down central planning at its worst.

Secretary Clinton assumes that man-made climate change is a risk serious enough to try to mitigate, and that America should try to mitigate it by reducing its carbon emissions. These are big “ifs,” but ones I will grant for argument’s sake.

Even granting those assumptions, there is a humungous logical leap to the conclusion that the appropriate policy response is setting a national target for the number of solar panels installed.



Even if one wanted, for some inexplicable reason, to prioritize solar, setting a goal in terms of number of panels installed is silly.

That measure means an inefficient solar panel that produces a small amount of energy is worth the same, for government counting purposes, as a high-efficiency panel that produces a large amount of energy. It makes no sense.

It would be like setting goals for hydroelectric power production in terms of the number of dams built — making Niagara Falls or the Hoover Dam worth as much as the tiniest beaver-dam equivalent at some small stream. It’d be like setting goals for a retail company in terms of stores opened rather than in terms of revenue or profitability.

Thinks about how most successful commercial innovation happens in history. Products catch on because they offer a better value proposition to consumers than the existing technology.

No president needed to set an “ambitious national goal” of having 100 million personal computers or smartphones or automobiles sold; businesses and individuals adopted the technology on their own because it helped them do things that they could not do before, or at a lower cost than before.

If solar offered cheaper, more reliable electricity than existing technologies, people would be putting up the panels for themselves without any government pushes or ambitious national goals.

Truth is, the technology (aided by subsidies from the Chinese government) is getting there; it’s not quite there yet, though. Installing lots of less-than-optimally efficient solar panels too quickly isn’t going to do anyone any favors; it’ll just create a problem of how to get rid of them as the technology improves.

Some people who know a lot about energy are skeptical about solar. Microsoft founder and energy investor Bill Gates said in a 2014 interview, “Solar is much, much harder than people think it is. When the sun shines, electricity is going to be worth zero, so all the money will be reserved for the guy who brings you power when there's no wind and no sun.”

In a 2011 interview, Mr. Gates said, “I think people deeply underestimate what a huge problem this day-night issue is if you're trying to design an energy system involving solar technology that's more than just a hobby.

"You know, the sun shines during the day, and people turn their air conditioners on during the day, so you can catch some of that peaking load, particularly if you get enough subsidies. It's cute, you know, it's nice. But the economics are so, so far from making sense.”

Investors and creditors have found that out the hard way; among the solar companies that have filed for bankruptcy protection during the Obama years are Satcon Technology Corp., Solyndra LLC, Evergreen Solar Inc., and Abound Solar.

Failure is part of free enterprise, of course. But where’s the justice in taxing some scientist working on some other energy technology to subsidize the solar competition?





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There is a humungous logical leap to the climate change conclusion that the appropriate policy response is setting a national target for the number of solar panels installed.
solar, solyndra, climate, global warming
Monday, 27 July 2015 02:38 PM
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