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Originally Posted by Ohio
Your wind and solar dreams are only real with their infinite assumptions like snow-free and cloud-free skies with 24 hours of daylight. Your liberal idealistic bias was on full display here, but I do like solar. Where I am, unless there are heavy tax credits, which I could use, there is no way it is economically feasible.
If China and India used the coal scrubber technology we have, the world would be a much cleaner place. That's one reason why the Paris accord was scrapped. It penalized America The Clean for the sins of the world.
I like ground source hump pump technology instead of home coal. I am surrounded by clean-coal-burning power plants. Excellent use of our resources. What really pollutes the air is home-coal, because it is so dirty.
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We have already drastically changed the chemistry of the atmosphere from just 170 years ago at the beginning of the Industrial age. Today the population is 14x's what it was then and growing. Therefore even if we use much cleaner technology, 50% cleaner, even 80% cleaner we will still be increasing the CO2 levels by more than we were back then. There is no way for the Earth to return to homeostasis without a 0 emissions. We have the technology to do that, it should be a priority for us, it is a priority for many other countries who see that they cannot possibly use coal without making their cities uninhabitable.
12 months ago I checked solar and it was not economic for me as well. However, the price has fallen dramatically since then and the same company that told me we weren't economic then says we are now. Now that is looking simply at the cost of the electricity and ignoring the health benefits and environmental benefits. Likewise it is looking at the cost today, ignoring the fact that fossil fuel energy will likely rise in cost over the next 25 years.
Also this is taking into account cloudy days, snowy days, etc. They estimate the total power produced over the lifetime of the solar panels. Yes it is true that these things don't produce power at night, on cloudy, snowy days, and they produce less power in the winter than summer. This is why you need batteries, a way to store the power, and this is why you need to combine this with wind (you do get wind at night and on snowy days) and nuclear.
Currently the US is less than 2% of our electricity from solar. Since energy consumption drops by much more than that in the winter the "snowy days" argument is a straw man that is irrelevant. There are several countries whose use of wind and solar exceeds 20%. In my opinion that should be a US goal every bit as significant as trying to land a man on the moon or building highways across the country.
Germany and China both are doing a better job than we are. Both of these countries are very focused on a successful economy and they both have coal. People need to wake up, in the 1970s you could argue that this was a trivial technology, not anymore. It is growing exponentially, doubling each year, and either we embrace it as much as our space program or else we'll be importing energy from China instead of OPEC.
All we need is to eliminate the legal barriers and hurdles involved in letting people put solar on their house.
Please note, even the Pentagon realized that solar provided better national security and has a large contract for solar. In the event of a war or terrorist attack the Pentagon does not want to be crippled by a power plant being attacked. It is called "distributed energy". It would enable our telecommunications to continue to be up and running in the event of an attack. We are in an age of terrorism, just another reason why we should embrace solar.