Well, it seems the big problem there is that you buy electricity at 4.5 times the price of what you sell it for, and you seem to sell off almost all of what you make. That means you're wasting over 75% of what you generate, no wonder it seems like a bad deal. If you could find a way to use the power you generate instead of selling it and buying it back for 4.5 times as much, things would change I think. That could be as simple as starting your laundry and dishwasher as you leave in the morning rather than at night. Since I'm home all day, it wasn't a change for me to use most of our power during the day, which made it totally economical for me, even when I do my calculations based on power costs from 9 years ago, if I added in the rise in power rates here, my savings would seem even larger.

True enough about the batteries, but I only use them for backup power in outages, so they'll last a while as long as I keep them full of acid. By the time I need new ones, perhaps I can use a flywheel for storage instead. They're great, but expensive right now.

It depends on your point of view, hydro decimates river systems for about 15 years of power. Totally a worse deal than coal's significant part in global warming/climate change, in my eyes, and coal is terrible. A dam can kill a river in one season, coal takes quite a while to do it's damage. That said, coal does it's damage over a much larger area. Hard math to try to figure out, comparing the two. Here in the US, we're removing dams to try to save the last few fish species in many rivers.
Wave generation seems like it could be a promising method of power generation, you don't damage anything by capturing some wave energy. Too bad it's not seeing much advancement (that I know of).

Heh, no, I said we are capped at 5 KW/h input, our product midsummer is around 35-40 KW/h @ 8 cents per, or $2.80 paid to us (assuming no rain/clouds, winter is closer to 5-12 KW/h per day). Then from 5pm-about 6am, we buy energy back at 36 cents an hour. And as the wife and I are both working during the day, we use the bulk of our energy between 5-12pm, meaning any profit we make during the day is completely overwhelmed (eg. 20 KW/h @ 36 cents = $7.20). I live in Australia where the days of 45 cent feed in tariff are long gone (and further, it's a false economy where non solar users are subsidising that tariff for the few fortunate enough to take advantage of it).

Even with the 4 grand gov. rebate (my system ended up costing ~$12,000 AUD for 6KW), it's not likely to make the money back prior to the end of life for the panels (25 years) if electricity prices keep rising without the feed in keeping pace. Add a battery system so you can load shift from daily production to cover nightly usage (where the real cost kicks in) means that you'll be running at a significant loss over the same period, as you'll probably have to replace lead batteries at least twice over the life time of the panels. Even if hydrogen fuel cells or some form of Li Ion battery becomes far cheaper, it's still loss making for the owner, subsidised to boot and the cheap manufacturing is because the panels are produced in China where even the most efficient of factories are utilising enormous amounts of carbon resourced energy, materials that are carbon intensive to make and manufacture etc.

I'm not saying solar is bad because I want it to be, I'm saying it's very easy to sell to people to make them feel better, but like any "too good to be true" story, there's a hell of a lot more beneath the surface than most people realise.

As for nuke and hydro, yep, they have downsides, but they are the most effective sources of energy in terms of return on energy invested that we have available to us at the moment. And the damage of hydro, if it replaces coal burning facilities, might be significantly less than the damage from allowing GW to continue to run unabated.

I don't understand. If you are selling at 5kw/h during daylight, why are you seeing only slight decline in your bill? It should be near zero, if not a check written to you if you are careful to not use much at night. I went from $4-500 per month electric bills (we have an electric hot tub that sucks major juice) to $30 bills in summer, and under $100 in winter. My system cost around $40K, and I got back around $5K (and lost out on tons more because when I bought it the tax rebates didn't roll over and I didn't use them all). I live in N California, where it's incredibly foggy, and it still took under 9 years to pay for itself in savings. Had I been able to use all the rebate (like you can now, it rolls over until you use it up) it would have been a year earlier paying itself off. Since the system should last 20 years, that's a great deal, even for you at 11-15 years to pay itself off, that's still 5-9 years of free juice, and 20 years of never losing power (if you have batteries).
Another benefit is from decentralizing power production. That makes you immune from most failures or any possible attacks on the system.
I do agree, it's not a perfect solution, and not 100% pollution free, but it's a great solution for most, if done right. The carbon costs are relatively small, and a one time event.

I'm all for nuke if done responsibly, which means not on coastlines, built with failsafe design features that don't require power to halt the reaction and store the fuel, and not experimented with to get a bit more power out (which caused Chernobyl and 3 mile island as I understand it).

Hydro, on the other hand, is always incredibly damaging to rivers, which along with providing the water we need, feed what little wildlife we have left. I am against any new hydro projects and advocate removing the failing one's we have now. They are short lived under the best of circumstances, but the damage they do is often permanent.

As a person who has solar on their roof, our bills have shown a slight decline (and I live in a tropical location with no obscuring of the panels), but that doesn't offset the cost of production (both in labour and energy input which is mostly supplied by carbon based sources). I run a 6 KW/h array which is slightly overclocked as we are capped at 5 KW/h input to the grid (at 8c KW/h sell, 36c KW/h buy). I'm looking at a ROI in ~11-15 years

There are also many studies (and not just from people who are pro nuke or anti-climate change) showing that solar PV in general, and rooftop solar specifically, is small potatoes in terms of energy returns, even when considering possible future gains in panel efficiency and storage technology.

I am not bashing solar because I don't like it, I spent the money to get an array on the roof because I think we do need to do something, but I'm not kidding myself in to believing that we're saving the planet when the vast majority of solar PV going out these days is manufactured in countries that emit enormous amounts of carbon and pay people peanuts to do the work... When, as you say, solar is heavily subsidised or has rebates offered to drive take up.

Nuke is expensive, but it returns far more energy than is invested to build it. Hydro, similarly (although Cali etc shows why hydro might be a dead end in this changing world climate). We can invest an enormous amount of time in half measures, or we can do it right, at least until we crack large scale fusion power production.

If it worked as well as it's hyped to do, huzzah, happy days. But so far, the boom is mostly hyperbole. At the very least, f#ck off subsidies/rebates etc to households and instead build huge solar PV farms with helio tracking arrays which make a better return on energy invested and basically give far more bang for buck. Or sink it all in to wind and cut back on PV. It's a feel good technology with hidden baked in carbon costs that is lulling us in to a false sense of security.

While I am 100% on board with the "carbon bad, not carbon good, global warming = real, made by man and a real prick of a problem" message, the biggest fault made by people like Maher etc in prosecuting their case to the "sceptics" is reliance on bad information.

For example, the sums have been done on solar and wind, and generally speaking, wind is only borderline viable for supporting a society (and that's only if you don't add the cost of some form of buffering/storage). Solar, particularly home roof grade, is fucking awful, and essentially a waste of time compared to tracking mass production arrays. In terms of energy to build/install/maintain/remove, it barely pays for itself. Solar thermal is also more efficient (helios arrays etc), but the two best bang for buck technologies for producing massive amounts of power at a very low carbon cost are nuclear and hydro.

And they are two technologies that people seem to want to get rid of. Germany shuttered it's nuke capability after Fukushima (and added more coal capacity). Italy's solar market has fallen in a heap, France is almost carbon neutral only because it is predominately nuke powered. One of the original climate change warriors, Dr. James Hansen of Nasa, is fully supportive of nuclear power, and get's constantly lambasted by green types because they do not want nuclear power to play a part.

Refutation of solid science and willful ignorance is not solely the province of people who deny climate change, and it's no less deplorable.

I saw this the other day on the tube, and noticed that the energy produced must be far less than the energy used to pump the water to the top of the 'motor', as much of the pumped water evaporates to the atmosphere, going unused by the machine. That makes this interesting, but more as art than a useful device in most cases, unless it's installed below a natural water source, in which case why not just do micro hydro.

Yes, you did say all that, but you also said none of that is a problem, at least not one to be really worried about. To me, that sounds a lot like climate change denial 3.0, where 1.0 was 'it's not happening at all, don't panic', 2.0 was 'it's happening, but it's natural and normal, don't panic' and 3.0 is 'it's human caused, but no problem, don't panic'. All of those are arguments designed to stall, not to be correct. If I'm reading you wrong, I apologize, but I've heard that argument before from those definitely in that camp.

If the IPCC says it won't be disastrous, yes, we would disagree, because I say it already is, and so have they in their summaries of their last few reports. Just abnormal drought alone is disastrous in many places worldwide already, as is increased flooding in some areas. I did not read the entire PDF's, only what you quoted because they were only linked as downloads/files, and I don't download files from sites I don't recognize.

I linked the first google search pages that came up with water/glacial data, not the other dozen that said the same, or near the same thing, not the NOVA on glacial retreat that said the same thing, not the movie on the same topic with photographic proof of the retreats-Chasing Ice. You ignored that they did list their source for the 2/3 of Chinese cities low on water and the 50% loss of glacial mass per decade as the Chinese military and claimed they were source less so easily dismissed.
As for the diatoms and shellfish, I've seen numerous studies on them, and again just grabbed the first one that came up in a search with data. You seemed to dismiss it as well, but it's not alone. In one snail study I saw, the woman said the last few years it had become nearly impossible to get measurements because the snail shells literally turn to paste in her fingers and weighed nearly nothing! I'm glad to read now that you don't disagree that it's an issue, you only think it's not severe?

I'm not holding my breath on fusion or fission, we've heard the 'we're only 5 years away from fission/fusion' line before about as often as 'Iran is only 2 years away from having a nuclear bomb', but we can agree on wind and solar, except I say it is great for base load, you just need to pair it with micro hydro storage (pump water uphill with surplus solar/wind, then run micro hydro at night). Small solar/wind also decentralizes production, safeguarding from terrorism, and is quite cost effective. Mine paid for itself in well under 10 years.

My issue with your position is that what we do today just with CO2 production reduction won't really effect the atmosphere for 20-200 years (the accepted lifespan of 65-85% of atmospheric CO2, the remaining 15-35% takes thousands of years to be trapped) and that's only IF the ocean CO2 sink continues functioning, so we're already well past the point of avoiding moderate climate change. Without quick action, feedback loops like methane and/or ice sheets melting make the problem exponentially larger and difficult/impossible to manage at all. It may already be too late even if we cut to zero CO2 tomorrow, but it's certainly too late to avoid more, massive, unsolvable global issues if we don't even mitigate them before 2050.

Let's not get into the quagmire of global dimming from sulfur in coal actually mitigating a large part of expected global warming by reflecting sunlight. I've yet to hear a plan or study involving that variable.

I have solar now, so I'll answer.
Today, if you want battery power at home for storage of solar, wind, even micro hydro generated power, you have one real choice....lead acid batteries.
Pros (compared to lead acid)-At best, lead acids are large, unsightly, need an enclosure, need a charger, have a 1000 cycle life span, need maintenance, can't be frozen or allowed to get too hot, use acid, are expensive to dispose of, and are more expensive than this (better?) technology by almost a factor of 4. I recently replaced my battery bank of just over 1KWH for around $1200-$1400, while he's advertising 10KWH for $3500!
Cons-likely lots of 'rare earth minerals' needed, which cause massive pollution where they're refined (China), unknown rate of failure/fire, other unknown problems, and anti-renewable energy people's heads exploding trying to come up with new reasons that renewable energy sucks.

"It will wreck our economy"

Sound familiar? Any AGW denier ever uttered that line and when asked "how", they have no clue?

Let me introduce you the institution behind it: Freedom Partners. Check who is behind that. Follow the money, who has most to lose. Then try to think a tactic that will keep you floating in dollars the longest. Yup, it is to teach all your followers to keep repeating the same catchphrase..

When even there has been a great communal investment in better technology infrastructure, the economy has had a tremendous boost. Railroad, electric grid, internet. Renewable energy is just a another on that line. Burning something, destroying it to get energy is finite resource. Renewables are basically infinite. Person who sells firewood is not going to like your electric heater even when it means half of the village will not die next winter. Company that sells oil will not like infinite energy source they are not in control of even if it means half of us die. They and their kids won't be affected but you will.

"It will wreck our economy"

If something, it will boost your economy. Greatly. It is already in motion in most EU countries, Germany is at 33%. Norway is at 99%. Where i live, in Finland, we are at 25% even when half of the year most of our hydro-electric is not functional. Have ANY of those countries seen any negative, economy destroying effects? No? They all have actually benefited from them? No way, bloody communists propaganda.. Lies lies, lallaalaaa, i believe in Koch.

"It will wreck our economy"

The people behind that line of words has been behind every major block in the way of creating green energy. The will raise the cost so high it is impossible, they will lobby until it's too complicated to change anything. THEY are wrecking your economy. THEY are stopping innovation. THEY are wrecking our whole mfcking planet and you are worried about your electric bill or not having two hot showers per day.

"I have nothing against green energy but i'm not going to do anything for it."

That is you.

...hydrong,,,hydrofun...hydro*ban

I think that you will find reactors don't produce weapons grade plutonium, rather, they produce a grade of plutonium known as reactor grade. Weapons grade plutonium is upwards of 95% Pu239. Reactor grade plutonium is what is known as weapons usable, not weapons ready. This is because of the high contamination factor of Pu240, Pu241, and Pu242. These heavier breads of Pu have both high spontaneous fission rates (bad for your fission weapon), and considerable heat, enough so to make weapons fabrication a problem (is it bad when your closed weapons device needs ventilation to not melt itself). While these problems are addressable in advanced weapons platforms, outside of well established nuclear weapons programs, making weapons from them is very challenging.

The main trouble, however, I think is economics, and nuclear is forced to internalize many of their impacts where as other solutions, mainly fossil fuels, do not. That is a pretty key competitive disadvantage.

Also note that electricity is only a fraction of total power, total power includes many non-electrical uses, most notably motor vehicles via liquid fuels. When you look at solar in this light, it represents a sub-fraction of a percent. So 5% of annual solar electrical generation is only a small part of a larger energy picture, and picture which also needs to be weighted against the rest of the world for which solar provides very little power. This isn't an attack on solar, it is a bringing to light of how vast the gulf is to address climate issues with any one technology.

So I think you will find that he isn't off by orders of magnitude, rather, he was being pretty generous to the total amount of energy produced by solar and wind world wide, and climate issues and emissions are world issues.

Key World Energy STATISTICS IEA:

http://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/kwes.pdf

(I trust the IEA's numbers)

But I share the sentiment that we need to reduce coal and gas to address climate concerns. The fact that German emissions have risen for 2 years in a row is troubling to say the least. I consider France and Sweden to be better models, lower CO2 per capita and electrical prices in both cases compared to Germany, and both heavy nuclear users...with Sweden using a fair deal more hydro power than France. Nuclear and hydro are the proven heavy lifters in the area of CO2 reductions, which is why I think his criticism of environmental groups in addressing climate issues is justified as they generally oppose both.

CLIMATE CHANGE AND NUCLEAR POWER 2012 IAEA:

http://www.iaea.org/OurWork/ST/NE/Pess/assets/12-44581_ccnp2012_web.pdf

Hydro-Dipping a Buffalo Skull has been added as a related post - related requested by oritteropo on that post.

I'm wondering how much their cobalt, phosphorous, oxygen, nickel, molybdenum, and zinc cost.
What does he mean "light harvesting infrastructure"? It seemed the whole idea was it removes the need for infrastructure and allows a small setup to make enough power for a small home.
The obvious issue seems to be the cost of a fuel cell that can power a home which probably means it will not ever be cost effective over solar cells/turbine/micro-hydro and batteries/flywheel/hydro storage.
Neat though.

I am very curious on the need for coal consumption. It could just be my area - Up here in Canada, we use Hydro Electricity. Coal just seems like such a third world product. It's dirty, anti-envomental, toxic and shortens the lifespans of all who mine it.

Sure it gives people jobs, but given the choice between a longer lifespan and backbreaking labour and a shortened lifespan you would think they would be moving away from coal if possible.

And WTF is "clean coal?"