patrick.net

From Forbes:
Chinese-based SunTech, the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels, has added a third shift at its only U.S. facility. The plant, built in 2010 in Goodyear, Arizona, will now produce 15,000 solar panels a month, for an annualized throughput of 50MW.

The cheapest solar panels you can buy today are Westinghouse panels for $9,200. You get 13 panels for that price.
http://www.lowes.com/pd_359833-15399-902-11005-013_?PL=1&productId=3429034

Wow, that's close to grid parity for a self install. I'm waiting a couple of years to get a handle on the reliability of microinverters, but they certainly have the potential to upend the industry. All I've got left is east and west facing slopes, so microinverters will be in my future if I add capacity.

Matt.BayArea says

Basically it just seems to me like a big gamble. On the other hand, neither I nor my great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandchildren will be around to have to worry about it. I *do* have to deal with the effects of our current carbon-based energy economy. I hate smoggy days.

Thanks but in the 45th century your great*83 grandchildren will probably be more worried about the lead from all the cheap Chinese toys we've buried in all the landfills.

Say there's an idea! Lets bury the waste with all the millions of junked cheap Chinese toys we've imported for the past 20 years. All that lead will be more than adequate to shield against even the strongest waste for billions of years.

But in all seriousness sub-seabed disposal is likely safe enough to keep that icky nuclear waste locked away well past the 45th century, probably to the 650kth century!

Matt.BayArea says

if we store the waste, we can deal with it in a few hundred years when we're weaning ourselves off of current nuclear power technologies and utilizing something better (sustainable nuclear reactions, perhaps, or solar, or something else).

Yes but we already tried that. We spent billions of dollars to do just that. But we are not going to do that. We closed Yucca mountain without using it at all. Nobody wants to be anywhere near nuclear waste. Aside from Antarctica (another can of worms) the only place to store waste many hundreds of miles from any human settlement now or in the future is on the bottom of the ocean.

Now here's something to think about.

http://www1.american.edu/ted/arctic.htm

The Soviets used to dump huge amounts of nuclear waste, reactor parts including reactors still containing fuel and other radioactive debris directly into the oceans! They had been doing that since the 50s. They also lost several subs which are likely leaking waste and/or plutonium from the reactors, nuclear torpedoes, etc. This is on top of all the nuclear testing done by the US, the Soviets, France and others in the 40s and 50s. Those early weapons were FILTHY! Despite these horrendous environmental disasters there has been little conclusive evidence of chronic problems in sea life. There have been some problems in the White Sea from the most serious dumping (the White Sea in that area is shallow and the waste dumped VERY nasty stuff indeed) but not even enough to produce even a minor Japanese style Godzilla monster.

With all that junk already out there sub seabed disposal is looking pretty clean indeed!

Matt.BayArea says

Yes, it's not feasible to power the world with 10% efficient cheap solar panels of today. If, however, we could use already-existing technologies (currently cost-prohibited, limited by exotic materials) from lab demonstrations and apply them to large scales (every building, car, sun-exposed surface not growing plants or used for something else), then powering the world at around 60-70% efficiency does not seem so unfeasible. Not to say this is the best solution, or even feasible at present.

I'd agree with Persain CAT, that 60-70% might be out of reach. His link is a good one though -- a) most people probably assume gas engines are more efficient than they are; b) most people assume we need higher efficiency PV than we do.

corntrollio says

Matt.BayArea says

Yes, it's not feasible to power the world with 10% efficient cheap solar panels of today. If, however, we could use already-existing technologies (currently cost-prohibited, limited by exotic materials) from lab demonstrations and apply them to large scales (every building, car, sun-exposed surface not growing plants or used for something else), then powering the world at around 60-70% efficiency does not seem so unfeasible. Not to say this is the best solution, or even feasible at present.

I'd agree with Persain CAT, that 60-70% might be out of reach. His link is a good one though -- a) most people probably assume gas engines are more efficient than they are; b) most people assume we need higher efficiency PV than we do.

Yeah, interesting article I certainly learned something new. I did like the comparison to energy efficiency of other power sources.

Forget 60% it looks like even 40% would be forever out of reach on a massive consumer market basis.

I don't know about other states, but Solar Energy in New Jersey has been almost doubling every year, from 43.6 megawatts in 2007, 70.2 mw in 2008, 127.5 mw in 2009 and 259.9 mw in 2010. The figures are not in for 2011, but the carbon credit market has plummeted from over $600 to less than $200 this year, so I would expect a tripling of solar energy production. Solar is starting to have a real positive impact on meeting our energy needs in this country.

PersainCAT says

For example one post he shows that we WONT be getting 100+mpg cars

I read the 100 mpg analysis (located at http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/100-mpg-on-gasoline/ ) and didn't think it was very good. The author suggests that the maximum MPG you could get for a car that isn't a locomotive troutcar (his term, not mine, because a locomotive is very efficient for engine power and a trout is very efficient with respect to drag) is in the range of 63 mpg. He says that he thinks around 84 mpg is the theoretical maximum, but rolling resistance and similar inefficiencies would lower it by 25% to 63 mpg.

He ignores the fact that there are actual vehicles that already get more than 63 mpg now, and can get much higher at steady cruise.
The Transonic engine gets 64 mpg using gas, and can achieve 98 mpg at 50 mph steady cruise.

http://inhabitat.com/transonic-combustions-super-efficient-gas-engine-gets-98-mpg/transonicdemocar/
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/24701/?a=f

Mazda is going to sell a Mazda 2 that gets 70.5 mpg next year in Japan. No hybrid powertrain, just straight gas. That's Japan rating, not EPA or Euro. It may not translate to 70.5 mpg here, if Mazda uses it for US Mazda 2s.

http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/26613/?mod=related

Volkswagen is already targeting a 100 mpg (Euro Cycle) VW Golf in 2020:

http://www.autocar.co.uk/News/NewsArticle/AllCars/255263/

He acknowledges that diesel is more efficient, but fails to note that a limited edition Volkswagen Lupo 3L (and Audi A2 with the same engine) has already gotten a European Cycle tested 78 mpg. It's called a "3 Liter Car" because it uses 3L of diesel per 100 km. Why couldn't we use diesel to hit 100 mpg even more easily? The same engine is now being used in Skodas (Czech VW subsidiary), Seats (Spanish VW subsidiary), and the VW Polo to get 3.4-3.5L/100km (Euro Cycle): http://worldnewsrecord.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/greenest-cars-german-diesels-czech-skoda-vw-69-mpg-us-83-mpg-uk-3-4-l100km-eu-combined-average/

He also believes that only 30% maximum efficiency is possible from gas, but I read that gasoline-based HCCI engines will probably hit 40%: https://www.llnl.gov/str/April04/Aceves.html
I mentioned HCCI in another thread: http://patrick.net/?p=1147724#comment-777111