All Solar, Et Al, In 12 Years?

[Restrain]

Here's the next nail in the coffin for solar. Have some members on another forum that are getting notifications that solar panels and related equipment will no longer be covered under their homeowners policy. They will have to get special riders.

 

[Randolph Kinney]

Elon Musk’s SolarCity Used Prison Labor To Build Taxpayer Subsidized Solar Panels

Elon Musk’s energy company SolarCity used multi-million dollar state tax credits to fund prison labor for its solar panels. SolarCity is a top company in the U.S. renewable energy sector, raising questions about labor oversight in green technology.

The solar panel project launched in 2012, aiming to build two of the largest installations in the state on two university campuses in Oregon. According to Grist, the sites at Oregon State University and the Oregon Institute of Technology would be built and maintained by Musk’s SolarCity, at no cost to the school.

The Oregon Department of Energy issued $11.8 million in tax credits to SolarCity for the $27 million project under a state program advocating “job creation and retention” for Oregon workers, reports Grist.

Instead of stimulating the local employment market, however, SolarCity went through an energy company named Suniva, a Goldman Sachs-backed vendor that builds solar modules in Oregon’s Sheridan Federal Prison through inmate labor. Grist reports that prisoners were paid less than a dollar an hour for their work.

Reuters originally reported on Suniva in June, highlighting that the company, one of the nation’s largest solar module producers, farmed out 10 percent of its manufacturing to U.S. prisons as part of a rehabilitation agreement with the federal government. According to Reuters, their agreement with Federal Prison Industries, also called Unicor, has allowed them to bring their manufacturing back to the U.S. from Asia.

Unicor rehabilitates inmates through the Prison Industry Enhancement Certification Program (PIE), however facilities involved in the program must be certified to ensure good working conditions and fair wages. Grist reports that the Sheridan prison was not certified, resulting in the 93 cents-an-hour wage.

Jonathan Bass, spokesperson for SolarCity responded to criticism, claiming prisoner labor was their only choice. “We wanted it to be manufactured in the U.S., and we wanted it to be manufactured in Oregon,” said Bass. He also noted that prison labor accounts for less than 1 percent of SolarCity’s installations. The tax credit they received was meant for local economic stimulation in Oregon however, which never materialized.

http://dailycaller.com/2015/10/29/e...or-to-build-taxpayer-subsidized-solar-panels/

Right up there with China using prison labor to manufacture.

 

[Randolph Kinney]

 

[Randolph Kinney]

Saving the planet can't compete: Diamonds are the new solar game in Silicon Valley

Just a decade ago, Silicon Valley had high hopes of becoming a vibrant manufacturing center by making solar panels. But price competition from abroad, particularly from China, quickly dashed those dreams.

And so the founders of Nanosolar, a large start-up that raised about half a billion dollars in its first six years, began exploring ways to build that would apply their expertise to new technologies.

A group of engineers and scientists, led by R. Martin Roscheisen, a founder of Nanosolar, announced on Wednesday that they had developed an advanced approach to making diamonds, using technology derived in part from making silicon chips and solar cells, to be used by a new company.

The first synthetic diamonds appeared in the early 1950s, and the commercialization of diamond manufacturing has grown to the point that at least 10 companies now make either commercial or industrial diamonds.

But the new company, Diamond Foundry, claims to have made proprietary breakthroughs that will make it possible to manufacture high-quality diamonds more quickly and cost-effectively than with existing technologies.

Its new approach makes it possible to “culture” diamonds at a cost that is on par with the best naturally occurring gems, according to the company’s founders. The company’s goal is to create a new distribution website to compete with existing jewelry stores, which could reduce markups and therefore be more appealing to jewelry designers.

Diamond Foundry, based in San Carlos, Calif., has a notable list of financial backers, including the Zynga founder Mark Pincus; Evan Williams, a Twitter founder; Andreas Bechtolsheim, a founder of Sun Microsystems and a founding Google investor; and Andrew McCollum, a Facebook founder.

Another backer is the actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who approached Diamond Foundry because he was concerned about some ethical issues related to conventional diamond mining, including environmental issues. Diamond Foundry will buy solar power credits to reduce its carbon footprint to zero, Mr. Roscheisen said, to help support its claim that it will offer a “sustainable” alternative to mined diamonds.

Mr. Roscheisen was a graduate student at Stanford University in the same class as the Google founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page. The pair invested in Nanosolar, his solar energy venture, which started producing thin-film solar panels in 2007. By February 2013, hindered by low-cost Chinese competition, Nanosolar had laid off 75 percent of its work force.

Diamond Foundry is not the first company to try to use the technique, known as chemical vapor deposition, to grow diamonds by depositing layers of carbon atoms in a high-energy plasma field.

According to Mr. Roscheisen, the new process will make it possible to manufacture large quantities of Type IIa diamond, a pure white material that represents 1 to 2 percent of all natural diamonds. Other manufacturers also make IIa-quality gems, but the Diamond Foundry team says it has developed a process that will be more effective at “growing” diamond material, layer by atomic layer, more quickly.

Diamonds are one of the many forms that carbon may take. Diamond Foundry researchers spent years developing a new manufacturing technique based on a plasma source with a new “shape” that is 10 times as powerful as what has previously been used by manufacturers of synthetic diamonds, Mr. Roscheisen said.

“This means we can grow 100 percent pure diamond of white color” at a rate that compares to the speed at which it is mined, Mr. Roscheisen said.

“Experts in jewelry stores and gemologists cannot tell,” he said. “There’s nothing they can see.”

There are several ways to manufacture diamonds, including the application of high pressures and temperatures, the detonation of explosives that create diamond nanocrystals and using ultrasound to create micron-size diamond crystals, in addition to the vapor-deposition approach used widely in manufacturing semiconductors and solar cells.

Wuyi Wang, lead research scientist for the Gemological Institute of America, a nonprofit group that grades gems, said that the market for synthetic diamonds was extremely competitive and that many companies were trying to improve techniques to produce the stones.

In an effort to break the control that the traditional diamond industry has over the diamond market, Diamond Foundry has created an online marketplace where it will offer diamond jewelry by well-known jewelry designers, most of them associated with Ethical Metalsmiths, an organization that encourages ethical and environmentally sound practices among jewelry makers.

It will also sell diamonds to industrial, scientific and wholesale markets. “We want to make it easy for Ph.D. students around the world to play around with diamonds,” he said.

On Wednesday, several analysts noted that when its website went live, Diamond Foundry was not listing its diamonds below the price of its competitors.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/12/s..._th_20151112&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=50329110

Good luck with manufacturing anything in California. Plasma reactors use lots of electricity. The gases used to grow a diamond (pure carbon) must contain carbon in gaseous form. 95 to 98% of the gases used are not reacted and are swept out the exhaust. Exhausted where? Into the atmosphere, hence the need for carbon credits. Being located in the Bay Area, that is very expensive.

However, the plan is to compete with the existing sources and supply of high quality diamonds. That means price. As their volume capability expands (has to in order to break even with cost), they must lower their price to take market share away from competitors. That also means the African supply will be a victim to cost cutting, how? Labor will be paid less, of course. The whole idea is to destroy the operations in Africa where the environment is threatened by mining.

As other makers of synthetic diamonds acquire the same technology (plasma reactors are not new), manufacturing will be moved offshore where labor is cheap, electricity is cheaper, regulations and taxes are more business friendly.

Nice try though.

 

[Randolph Kinney]

Corporate agenda threatens to straightjacket Paris COP 21 proceedings yet again

After 20 years of meetings and failed attempts to limit carbon emissions, annual emissions this year are 60 per cent higher that when United Nations Climate Talks began in 1990. In the lead up to this year's meetings at the "Committee of the Parties" (COP 21) conference in Paris, countries have submitted pledges in the form of "Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC)" that observers have noted will still commit the world to catastrophic levels of warming.

Reading the draft version of the Paris Agreement, many in both the mainstream and alternative press point to another impending tragedy in Paris in which "emission cuts will be voluntary, flexibility mechanisms will be continued, more market mechanisms will be proposed and accounting loopholes and techno-fixes will abound."

The idea that Paris COP 21 will be no different than the previous twenty COP iterations is supported by argument that "business-as-usual" complacency will be driven by the same corporate control witnessed at previous meetings. As John Foran argues in "Just Say No to COP 21," funding for the meeting comes from major fossil fuel companies and carbon emitters; inside the meeting rooms will be the largest corporations in the world, industry lobbyists, the global political elite who control the systems and infrastructure of globalized capitalism -- the media, the food systems, economic and trade relationships, the formal electoral processes, and so on.

If past COP meetings are any indication, says Foran, these interests will inevitably declare victory, reconfirm their commitment to a number of market-based efforts that are doomed to fail, and couch Paris negotiations as a victory for humanity that sets us on a course of complete resolution by "reaching carbon budget targets" at some far off date (say by 2050 or 2100).

The backdrop to all the attention that is focused on the Paris meetings, and regardless of the perceived "energy revolution," the global productive and consumptive system is still firmly based in fossil fuel energy and capitalist imperative that will continue to commodify and metabolize nature at an ever increasing pace. Because of their structuration within the global capitalist system, governments around the planet, including the new Canadian Liberal regime of Justin Trudeau must refuse to accept mandatory cuts in GHG emissions, must continue to open the world's "resources" to exploitation through the new corporate constitutionalism of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), and more generally, must reject any threat to continued economic growth.

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/bra...reatens-to-straightjacket-paris-cop-21-procee

Don't get your hopes up for saving the planet this time. The world leaders are in the pockets of big oil and the electoral process (democracy).

It's all for show, nothing here to see, keep moving, same as last time, more hypocrisy.

 

[Elliott]

So, the rated capacity of Crescent Dune is 110 MW, or $1,000,000,000 / 110 MW = $909 million per MW

Power Block
Turbine Capacity (Gross): 110.0 MW
Turbine Capacity (Net): 110.0 MW
Turbine Manufacturer: Alstom
Output Type: Steam Rankine
Power Cycle Pressure: 115.0 bar
Cooling Method: Hybrid
Fossil Backup Type: None


Consider:

"Capital costs for different fuels
The EIA’s findings suggest that natural gas–fired power plants are cheaper to build with overnight capital costs ranging from $676 to $2,095 per kilowatt (or kW), depending on the technology. Typically, natural gas power plants have capacities ranging from 85 megawatts (or MW) to 620 MW. (1 MW = 1,000 kW.) General Electric (GE), which is part of various ETFs including the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) and the Industrial Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLI), is the market leader in the gas turbines segment.

Capital costs for coal-fired power plants range from $2,934 to $6,599 per kW, depending on the technology. Typical coal-fired units have a capacity of 520 MW to 1,300 MW. GE and Siemens (SIEGY) are leaders in the steam turbine segment.

Nuclear plants are costlier to build, with a capital cost of $5,530 per kW for a plant with a capacity of 2,234 MW. GE, Westinghouse, and Fluor (FLR) provide engineering services for nuclear power plants."

So, a gas plant at $1,000 per kW x 1000 = $1 million per MW.

Or, a gas plant to serve Tonopah would cost $1 million x 110 MW = $110 Million compared to Solar at $909 Million. And we've yet to see the true output of Crescent Dune. The bird kill rate increases when they turn it up to full power.

 

[Randolph Kinney]

Little Support for Punishing Global Warming Foes

Thursday, November 12, 2015

Global warming advocates are calling for the prosecution of groups who disagree with them, and New York State has taken it a step further by investigating Exxon Mobil for refusing to play ball with the popular scientific theory.

But 68% of Likely U.S. Voters oppose the government investigating and prosecuting scientists and others including major corporations who question global warming. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 17% favor such prosecutions. Fifteen percent (15%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Just over one-in-four Democrats (27%), however, favor prosecuting those who don’t agree with global warming. Only 11% of Republicans and 12% of voters not affiliated with either major party agree.

After all, just 24% of all voters believe the scientific debate about global warming is over, although that’s up from 20% in July of last year. Unchanged is the 63% who say that debate is not done yet. Thirteen percent (13%) are not sure.

Among voters who believe scientists have made up their minds about global warming, one-in-four (24%) favor prosecuting those who question that theory, but 64% are opposed.

The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on November 9-10, 2015 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/pub...utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DailyNewsletter

Looks like the voters resent government punishing people for what they think as a thought crime. Too bad, eh Pete?

 

[VegasWayne]

Elliott, since the Crescent Dune plant is supposed to power 75,000 homes and only 3,000 people live in Tonopah, the high priced electricity is going on my electric bill in Las Vegas.

 

[Pittsburgh Pete]

Little Support for Punishing Global Warming Foes

Thursday, November 12, 2015

Global warming advocates are calling for the prosecution of groups who disagree with them, and New York State has taken it a step further by investigating Exxon Mobil for refusing to play ball with the popular scientific theory.

But 68% of Likely U.S. Voters oppose the government investigating and prosecuting scientists and others including major corporations who question global warming. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 17% favor such prosecutions. Fifteen percent (15%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Just over one-in-four Democrats (27%), however, favor prosecuting those who don’t agree with global warming. Only 11% of Republicans and 12% of voters not affiliated with either major party agree.

After all, just 24% of all voters believe the scientific debate about global warming is over, although that’s up from 20% in July of last year. Unchanged is the 63% who say that debate is not done yet. Thirteen percent (13%) are not sure.

Among voters who believe scientists have made up their minds about global warming, one-in-four (24%) favor prosecuting those who question that theory, but 64% are opposed.

The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on November 9-10, 2015 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/pub...utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DailyNewsletter

Looks like the voters resent government punishing people for what they think as a thought crime. Too bad, eh Pete?

I'm not in favor of going after deniers such as yourself---cluelessness is not criminal

However, your cutting and pasting apparently missed the point of the potential prosecution. What was construed as possible criminality was not their denying but holding back info that would affect their stock price--more of a potential financial crime of misleading stockholders. Not surprised you overlooked that.

 

[Randolph Kinney]

Elon Musk Is Desperate For People To Buy Solar Panels, Lowers Credit Score Required For Financing

SolarCity, the energy project of billionaire Elon Musk, plans on lowering the credit score required of homeowners to purchase their solar panels as the company struggles to boost profits after a tumultuous year for energy stocks.

Elon Musk’s cousin and SolarCity’s CEO Lyndon Rive said Thursday in an interview with Bloomberg that it will decrease the required FICO score to purchase their panels below 650 by the second quarter of 2016, opening the company’s product up to a broader, and less financially stable market. FICO scores are credit ratings assigned to consumers, with lower scores meaning greater risk that the buyer will default. The average buyer at SolarCity usually has a very strong credit score of roughly 750, reports Bloomberg.

“Today, our floor is 650 — I still don’t like that floor,” said Rive. “There should be no reason why someone who owns a house cannot get solar. You have to take away all the barriers.”

The move will add to growing criticism from industry experts that the company’s costly leases and instillation problems can’t compete within the solar sector. SolarCity’s stock has been thrashed in 2015, down almost 50 percent on the year, reports Bloomberg.

Jim Chanos, the founder of Kynikos Associates set off a firestorm when he announced on CNBC in August that his firm was shorting SolarCity stocks. The public pronouncement spurred an angered Rive to call into CNBC on-air to respond and sent SolarCity stocks tumbling 12 percent, reports CNBC.

“Solar is a transformational industry, and it’s going to be a great thing and part of it is because costs for everything keep coming down,” said Chanos. “That’s a problem if you are SolarCity, and your customers are paying you this above market prices and you hope to sell more systems.”

Chanos derided SolarCity as a “subprime” solar company as they move to lower qualifying credit ratings for their panels. Like the subprime mortgage loans of the housing bubble, Chanos points out the risk of defaults, especially when solar units are sold to customers with a below 600 rating, reports Bloomberg. Rive has pushed back on this fear saying SolarCity would not risk their companies coveted credit rating.

“SolarCity is burning an awful lot of cash, hundreds of millions of dollars every quarter, has a lot of debt and has negative EBITDA,” said Chanos, adding, “And in this kind of environment that is a very scary proposition.”

http://dailycaller.com/2015/11/12/e...s-lowers-credit-score-required-for-financing/

Looks like SolarCity is going after the FHA buyers of homes. Maybe homeowners than are underwater on their mortgage.

SolarCity also sells bonds back by their leased solar panel's revenue.

Earn up to 5.75%* on your investment
Solar Bonds are a new way to invest with earnings that are powered by the sun. They offer attractive returns and you can invest directly with no fees.** Best of all, you’re helping to support the growth of clean solar energy.

http://www.solarcity.com/invest