BP Solar drops thin film solar cells abruptly.

[NNadir]

Thin-film photovoltaics—with micrometer-thin semiconductor coatings on glass or metal that convert sunlight into electricity—have been poised to revolutionize solar energy for two decades. They require much less material per unit electricity yielded than conventional photovoltaics made from semiconductor-grade crystalline silicon wafers, and are also far simpler to produce.

But in November that vision of thin films soon displacing crystalline photovoltaics blew a fuse. One of the world's largest producers of photovoltaic solar cells, BP Solar (Lithicum, Md.), abruptly announced plans to cease production at plants making thin-film cells from amorphous silicon (a-Si) and cadmium telluride (CdTe). The CdTe composite is a leading contender for next-generation thin-film photovoltaics, though its toxicity is a serious drawback, and a-Si is the most commercially advanced thin-film material. Overnight, all mention of thin-film technology vanished from BP Solar's Web site, erased even from the corporate history page that had proudly chronicled two decades of research and development...

...The announcement has been all the more shocking because the overall outlook for the photovoltaics industry has seemed to be brightening markedly. Sales of photovoltaic modules grew by 34 percent in 2001, and healthy growth was expected last year, too—15-;20 percent was the projection from the research firm Strategies Unlimited (Mountain View, Calif.). Increasingly, the modules are powering not just remote villages and road signs, but homes and businesses connected to the power grid in bustling economies.

Yet growth was from a microscopic base. Photovoltaic modules made using semiconductor techniques generate electricity at three to four times the direct cost of power from coal, gas, or nuclear plants. That is precisely why NREL, BP Solar, and other technology developers have been pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into development of thin-film photovoltaics, seen as the best hope of slashing module costs and making solar power competitive on the grid.


Just a mirage?

Unfortunately, thin-film technology has fared better in the lab than in the market. Low efficiency has dogged a-Si thin films: commercial modules convert a paltry5-;7 percent of incident solar energy into electricity, about half as much as crystalline silicon modules, so twice as many panels are needed to achieve a desired output. Meanwhile, advanced, more efficient thin films have been beset with production and design problems...

...Creating films to exacting specifications over a square meter of glass proved harder than expected. And the first commercial modules, shipped early this year, fizzled after a few weeks on rooftops as their efficiency slipped from 8 percent to 6 percent.

http://members.shaw.ca/pfairley/eclips_files/Spectrum%20BP%20Solar.htm

Although I often deride the belief system that touts reliance upon solar energy as "wishful thinking," I find it regrettable that this technology failed. I agree with Larry Kazmerski, head of solar research at NREL, who believes, as I do, that solar energy can have an important syngery with nuclear energy in some places, with solar addressing peak loading.

NREL was spending $50 million dollars per year to help commercialize this technology.

Success in this endeavor would have made solar energy more accessible.

[benburch]

1. Other technologies are coming up.

And I think this is in reaction to that.

[Canuckistanian]

2. That's too bad. Thin film technology would have been cheaper

Proabably a lot cheaper.

But the Cadmium worries me too. Far too toxic to be put into homes.

[Dead_Parrot]

3. That's a shame

Hopefully it's just back to the drawingboard, rather than off to the trashcan. But there are other thin-film techs that might fare better...

[buddysmellgood]

4. This South African "breakthrough" sounds too good to be true.

http://tinyurl.com/ceezt

[Dead_Parrot]

5. Maybe it is...

I'm always leery of articles that don't actually give you any information. Probably just my suspicious mind. :)

[skids]

16. Naw, it's true.

...but it's no breakthrough. Lots of hype in that article but people have been producing these kinds of cells for years now. At best he found a tweak to increase their efficiency some.

Honda, Shell, DayStar, HelioVolt and Miasole are all making or about to make cells in that family.

[rfkrfk]

6. solar cells, fuel cells --> very old technology

this stuff has been picked over for decades
I would expect progress, if any, to be painfully slow

[Dead_Parrot]

8. Don't think I'd go that far...

...the wheel is old tech., as is the plow, the saddle, wattle-and-daub and the trebuchet.

PV ranks alongside nuclear power and semiconductors in terms of age - room for improvement, but we sort of know what we're doing.

Which it's why it's sort of depressing that it's still so fucking expensive and not improving quickly. Ho Hum.

Edit: Copied from Wikipedia:
1954 - AT&T exhibits solar cells at Murray Hill, New Jersey. Shortly afterwards, AT&T shows them at the National Academy of Science Meeting. These cells have about 6% efficiency. The New York Times forecasts that solar cells will eventually lead to a source of "limitless energy of the sun".

Nothing new there, then. :evilgrin:

[rfkrfk]

9. what is the holdup for the high efficiency stuff?

cost, operating life, efficiency goes down with operating time?
degrades when exposed to sunlight?

anybody have links to ...serious... attempts at high efficiecy cells?

I sorta don't believe the claims, sometimes

my experience with this kind of thing is...
if you hit the jackpot with an individual
piece of something that is much better than average,
in six months of use, it degrades to being just average

[Dead_Parrot]

10. That's why I'm not betting the mortgage on it

Random claims about how great PV will be are a little hollow...

[greenman3610]

7. this particular approach did not pan out

that won't stop the dozens of other pathways from
being developed.


http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/004114.html

XEROX PARC TAKES ON CLEAN, GREEN TECHNOLOGY

The Palo Alto Research Center, the storied Xerox subsidiary responsible for many of the computer world's breakthrough technologies, is making a move into clean technology and sustainable products and services. It's a watershed moment of sorts: the birthplace of today's user-friendly computing wants to be the birthplace of tomorrow's clean and green innovations.
========================
The first result of those efforts, just announced, is a partnership with SolFocus, Inc., which is developing concentrator photovoltaic systems. SolFocus aims to employ PARC technology to cut the cost of solar power by as much as half. The Saratoga, Calif., company began working in 1999 to develop hydrogen delivery systems for fuel cells, but has since turned its focus on bringing down the cost of solar "in a dramatic fashion," says the company.

[jpak]

11. Incredibly misleading post and article

What horseshit...

Shell dropped its Si and CdTe PV businesses to concentrate on CIS PV technology...

and the South Africans and Japanese are jumping into CIS big time too...

Feb 7 2006

http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=43063

:rofl:

[GumboYaYa]

12. Everyone in the industry is saying that CIS is the wave of the future.

Amorphous has a 25% decrease in efficiency withon the first year of use. While it has always been the cheapest way to get into the industry, the efficiency problems are nothing new.

[skids]

17. There's one aSi endeavor that may still pan out.

ECD ovonics has an interesting aSi cell -- triple junction at that. The advantage to them
is that they are better at collecting diffuse light. I don't think aSi decays quite
as fast as 25% anymore either.

[NNadir]

13. It is hardly surprising that the immediate response is denial.

If I was engaged in wishful thinking of the type that wanted to misrepresent a fifty year old energy technology, one that has yet to produce an annual exajoule of energy, mind you, as a solution to global climate change, I would pretend that I knew more about it than the companies that are actually doing the work.

Of course, there is a huge difference between people who talk and people who are charged with producing.

BP, a multi-billion dollar company, which produced huge positive press and heavily advertised it's presence in solar energy and made significant investments - couldn't do it.

That speaks volumes.

No one would object to the technology if it worked. No one objects to it in theory. The major objection - and the absolutely serious one - is that in the fact of the on going global climate change catastrophe, the answer is not denial, but realism. What I object to is the lie that renewable energy is in anyway in a position to resolve the crisis. To claim that we should put all our eggs in the renewable basket is is denial on the same scale of the Bushies denying that there is a problem in the first place.

This is not the first major failure of the solar PV industry to yield results on vastly inflated promises. To anyone who seriously cares about global climate change this should be sobering yet again.

To the extent that it is really available, renewable energy is acceptable and helpful, even though the external costs are generally not minimized. But renewable energy clearly is in no position to displace even fossil fuels, never mind the far safer option of nuclear energy. This is clearly true year after year after year after decade after decade.

We must face reality.

[jpak]

14. This is reality

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x45942

Deny that.

Si (and CdTe) PV modules work just fine and are produced by the thousands of MW each year.

In four years, global PV production will grow from the current 1.7 GW per year to >3 GW per year - and probably more when CIS modules hit the market.

How anyone can claim this technology has "failed" just boggles the mind.

[Dead_Parrot]

15. More reality...

At today's prices on solarbuzz, that 5GW has cost $26.7 billion. Due to Bushco making the planet rotate and those GOP clouds, the actual electricity produced by all that PV will average 1.4GW: About the same as a single French Civaux reactor. The difference being, that the Civaux reactors only cost $4.1 billion each.

Imagine what we could have done with ethanol, PHEVs, energy conservation and wildlife preservation with the other $22.6 Billion dollars. Or what we could do with the $8 Billion that, next year, will be pissed away on toys for the rich.

[jpak]

18. Better contact the Portuguese, German and Japanese embassies

and the Governors of all the US states with Renewable Portfolio Standards.

...and tell them they are making a "big mistake" with their PV programs.

:)

[Dead_Parrot]

19. Since when did reality impinge on politics?

You can also get a huge rebate for buying a SUV. It doesn't mean it's a great leap forward for the enviroment.

[NNadir]

21. It is one thing to have standards, another to meet them.

Mostly this is political wishful thinking.

Everybody can gain votes by saying they're for renewable energy. Everybody wants renewable energy to be available, even me.

My role, in the time of the global climate change catastrophe is to remind people that if we passed laws against comets, comets would be unaffected.

[jpak]

22. Maine's 30% RPS was conservative relative to contribution of renewables

in its electricity portfolio (currently ~50% renewables, >1000 MW).

There are currently >900 MW of wind power under development in the state, and a healthy and growing portfolio of landfill biogas, micro-hydro, domestic solar thermal, PV and wood heat as well.

Maine has exceeded its RPS and is well on the way to becoming the first state to satisfy ALL of electricity demand from renewables.

Dirigo etc.

Pacific Gas and Electric will soon achieve its goal under California's RPS to generate 20% of its electricity from qualifying renewables.

Currently PG&E's RP is ~30% - 12% from non-hydro renewables. They have added ~345 MW to their RP and will have another 120 MW of geothermal capacity on line soon...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x45280

So despite what the naysayers have you believe, states are achieving their RPS goals...

:)

[Dead_Parrot]

26. When you say...

~50% renewables, >1000 MW

Are we talking about "peak" power capacity for the flat earth society, or average MW? How many MWh were produced by PV in Maine?

And please stop fudging the issue by throwing in other renewables. We're discussing PV here.

[NNadir]

28. I have pointed out many times that Maine is an energetically insignificant

state.

They burn wood and they have hydroelectric capacity and low population density.

Again units of power are not units of energy.

I have noted in another thread, that the entire amount of energy produced by wind power in the United States (units of energy consisting of exajoules and not peak megawatts) barely exceeds the output of a single large nuclear plant located on a few hectares of land.

It is well that wind power produces even this much, and we all support wind power. However to suggest that windpower is a replacement for nuclear power is absurd on its face. The best it may do is to displace some natural gas use.

[Dead_Parrot]

29. Insignificant? surely not!

I mean, there's 1.3 million people there. Next you'l be claiming that the Republic of Guinea-Bissau, with 1.4 million people, isn't a global superpower...

[jpak]

32. As Maine Goes, So Goes the Nation

They are showing what can - and must be - be done.

One can wallow in one's silly nucular delusions, but the reality is that growth in renewable capacity is outstripping growth new nuclear (and nuclear upgrades) by a wide margin in the US...

...and this trend will continue far into the future...

I'm not worried at all.

:)

[Dead_Parrot]

34. Well, I am.

Even at +30% year in, year out it's still going to take solar & wind ~50 years to produce our current electricy needs (14.28 trillion KWh)- and at a cost well over $70 trillion dollars. In case you don't reaslise it, that more than the total GDP of the entire fucking planet. And we don't have 50 fucking years, a fact that keeps slipping straight past your cerebrum. You do read hatrack's posts, don't you?

People who think we can sit back and wait for wind, solar and some "to be developed" storage are doing as much for our kid's future as the fuckwits in SUVs.

[jpak]

40. Really, and nuclear is going to save us tomorrow????

That is a good one.

In 50 years time uranium supples will be seriously depleted - at current rates of consumption.

It will take ChimpCo until 2014-2017 to commission one fucking ~1000 MW nucular reactor in the US.

The US installed 2500 MW of renewable electricity capacity last year - and that number will grow by double digits - each year - between now and 2014.

And if people are so damned concerned about global warming, they shouldn't wait for the Democratic Party - or anyone else - to come to their rescue.

They should take personal responsibility for their own GHG emissions and reduce them today.

PS: I got my latest electric bill yesterday - 100 kWh for the month of February (down from 127 kWh in January). And, I used only 8 gallons of gas last month (up from 6.6 gallons in January).

I'm doing what needs to be done - unlike a lot of whiners around here...

:)

[Dead_Parrot]

42. 50 years, now?

I give up :)

The time taken to build a power plant is mainly based on nimbyism - and that goes equally for nukes, wind and hydro. The actual construction time for a GW nuke plant like the AP1000 is 18 months. Again, you're confusing politics with reality. One of those we can change.

And I only used 92KWh, so there. :P

Edit: Hang on, why are you getting electric bills? Don't you have a PV installation?

[jpak]

44. Actually I do

:)

[Dead_Parrot]

45. So why the 100KWh bill?

even I don't think solar's that crap. Or is it?

Not that I mind getting a lower bill without forking out $30k. :D

[NNadir]

46. If renewables were capable of outstripping nuclear they would stop

talking about it and do it.

For more than 4 decades this claim has been pushed, "split wood, not atoms." What do we have to show for the extravagant promises? Carbon dioxide pushing up, up, up, coal, oil and gas?

There is no renewable "trend." Waiting 5 decades for a solar exajoule is not a "trend." It is a fantasy.

Everybody else is worried, and well they should be.

[NNadir]

20. The "reality" is stated in the original article, points out why we hear %.

If I light a candle that puts out 5 watts of heat in a room with a 5 watt light bulb, I can say that I produce 50% more energy.

The reason why the failed renewable industry still talks percent speak is given in the article detailing BP's failure to commercialize this magical technology.

Sales of photovoltaic modules grew by 34 percent in 2001, and healthy growth was expected last year, too—15-;20 percent was the projection from the research firm Strategies Unlimited (Mountain View, Calif.). Increasingly, the modules are powering not just remote villages and road signs, but homes and businesses connected to the power grid in bustling economies.

Yet growth was from a microscopic base. Photovoltaic modules made using semiconductor techniques generate electricity at three to four times the direct cost of power from coal, gas, or nuclear plants. That is precisely why NREL, BP Solar, and other technology developers have been pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into development

The bold is mine. I have highlighted why there's all this talk of "percent." This is because after 50 years of development, the solar PV industry is still incapable of producing a single exajoule of energy out of the world demand of 440 exajoules. It now markets itself by appeal to its failure, the easy path of saying "percent." Percent of what, exactly?


Again, no one would object if the solar renewable finally proves itself so capable as to produce exajoules of energy, but it hasn't.

The contention that it will be prepared to produce 100 exajoules, close to 25% of world demand, is what it has been for 50 years: Poppycock and wishful thinking.

Note that the article indicated that BP had expected to make 1 billion dollars in sales by last year. The actual sales were less than 1/3 of that, and there is no indication of the cost of sales. Moreover the largest customer is pissed off.

[jpak]

23. Every energy technology started from zero - even nucular power

Again, there are 5 GW of installed PV in the world today.

In four years that will grow to ~15 GW and by the end ot the 20's, it will be in the ~100 GW range (and 100 GW in Japan alone by 2030).

Sorry to burst yer bubble, but your claims about the decline and fall of photovoltaics are just plain wrong...

[Dead_Parrot]

25. And as you pointed out in another thread...

they both started in the mid-50's. So why is PV doing such a piss-poor job of it?

[jpak]

31. Because nuclear power received orders of magnitude more federal R&D $$$

t>+tPs and than PV over the same period.

Our All-Time Greatest President - Ronald Reagan - and the asshole GOP Congress eliminated all federal solar tax credits and nearly all R&D funding for PV in the early 1980's (which has only been recently reinstated - thanks to Silly Solar Dumbocrats).

Net metering laws, solar rebate programs and renewable portfolio standard were enacted less than a decade ago in many states.

When the Democratic Party regains Capital Hill and the White House - solar will take off like it has in Japan, Portugal and Germany (and Dick Cheney's nucular giveaway program might get the axe - one can only hope).

:)

[Dead_Parrot]

35. I had no idea Ronald Reagan controlled the R&D budgets

...of every company and government research lab in every country for the last 50 years.

The USA is not the Earth.

I know Bush doesn't have this information, but I'm surprised you don't.



You're in that bit in the top centre. Most of humanity lives outside it.

[jpak]

36. You are wrong my pommy friend

The USA is the center of the fucking universe - and we control it...all of it.

:evilgrin: :evilgrin: :evilgrin: :evilgrin: :evilgrin: :evilgrin: :evilgrin: :evilgrin:

:patriot: :patriot: :patriot: :patriot: :patriot: :patriot: :patriot: :patriot: :patriot: :patriot:

[MrMonk]

30. The back of my envelope says

that there must be roughly 138 GW of PV capacity to match 1 percent of today's annual demand of 440 exajoules (I rounded to 3 digits at each step.) That's if 100% of the PV capacity is exercized. What is a realistic rate of power generation in practice, and how long will it be before the necessary amount of PV capacity has been installed?

[jpak]

33. How much of that primary energy is from oil and natural gas???

The future for those sources is pretty damned bleak right now.

Nuclear can't replace these fuels. Uranium supplies are finite will last less than a century at current rates of demand (and a much shorter period if demand increases).

Renewables can supply electricity, transportation and heating fuels and domestic and industrial heat - most what we need and want.

Renewables and efficiency are our only sustainable energy options.

[Dead_Parrot]

38. Less than a century?

you said less than ten years a few minutes ago. C'mon, get it together... :)

[MrMonk]

39. Industrial heat?

Which of your renewables is going to smelt steel or calcine cement?

[jpak]

41. For low and mid-range industrial thermal applications solar can provide

and you can't smelt iron without carbon (coke or charcoal) - but you can use geothermal or hydroelectricity to produce aluminum (and steel).

...and it would cost a fortune to calcine limestone with nucular electricity.

[Dead_Parrot]

43. chuckle...

it would cost a fortune to calcine limestone with nucular electricity

I won't ask what it would cost with PV, then ;)

[Dead_Parrot]

37. 2017, at 35% per year...

In practice, PV averages around 20% peak capacity, so we'd hit 183Gw in 2023.

[MrMonk]

24. I'm having a little trouble with the energy/power conversion.

A joule is a joule, but a watt is one joule per second. Over what time period is your 440 exajoules drawn?

[Dead_Parrot]

27. One year. nt

[NNadir]

47. When I do this calculation, I multiply...

...86,400 sec-day^-1*365.25 days-year^-1 to get 31,557,600 sec-yr^-1.

If you operate any power source, like say a nuclear power plant, continuously, you can multiply the power times the time to get the energy.

This gives the energy produced. An exajoule is 10¹⁸J.

Most nuclear plants do operate near capacity, producing energy continuously at high power for periods that run about a year and a half, after which they must shut for refueling, which can take several weeks. Many times in nuclear calculations but not all, I insert the 90% capacity figure to reflect losses in fueling time.

Solar stations and wind stations that rate themselves in "watts" are almost always speaking of peak watts, the highest output they achieve under ideal conditions. Unlike a nuclear plant their capacity is not just 31,557,600 sec-yr^-1 times their "watt" rating, but also by a measured capacity factor that depends on their type and location. Very rarely are such capacity factors above 25%, because of the intervention of weather and, in the solar case, clouds and night. When I am in an especially generous mood, I insert 0.30 as a capacity factor, although very few solar stations ever achieve that number over a year of operation.

Thanks for asking.

[Ready4Change]

48. My take on reality:

At some point, fossil fuel resources will be depleted. At some point, radioactive resources will be depleted. People debate about how long that will take, but that's just semantics.

When the non-renewables run out, we either need something to replace them, or face up to how to get by on a VASTLY reduced energy budget.

Develop solar. Develop wind. Develop geothermal, bio-fuels. Without them, in 30 or 200 years, we'll be back to animal power.

[NNadir]

49. No one objects to renewable resources.

The question posed here by this thread is are they the only sources worth pursing. The answer to that question, while it involves issues of economics and various aesthetic issues is decided on the basis of physics.

The renewable energy industry is not in any position to provide a solution to the world's serious environmental crisis, which is global climate change. To the extent that renewables help with the circumstance, they are welcome.

Unfortunately there are a subset of people who keep insisting that solar energy can not only displace fossil fuels, but all sources of energy, including nuclear energy, and not only that, do so in a time frame that represents a realistic approach to the crisis.

This religious stance is completely disconnected from reality. I submit that if we attempt to address the immediate problem - basically a problem with a vastly over populated planet - there may not be even the option of animal power in 30 or 200 years. There may, in fact, be nothing.

I am certainly not suggesting that solar research, or biofuel research or wind power be rejected or defunded. I am simply trying to be realistic about the time frame in which they can have significant import. The technology is not new. It's 50 years old. It has still failed to deliver.

[Ready4Change]

50. Part of the problem is insufficient installations.

Starting off, I agree that PV doesn't have the immediate robustness of fossil fuels or nuclear.

OTOH, PV also needs to be implemented in a different manner than fossil or nuclear sources. Nuke plants are best as relatively large point sources of energy. PV works best when distributed. Rather than taking up acres and acres for fields of PV panels, they should instead be installed on the roofs of existing structures, like residential homes and factories, and then intertied into the existing power grid. No additional land costs. No reduced green space. Almost no nimby issues, except for HOA's who don't like the appearance of PV panels on roofs.

So, help me with a comparison?

A number was given above saying that a french-style nuclear plant installation was $4.1 billion. That same amount of money could install 1KW grid intertied PV systems on the roofs of 410,000 homes. If done in my home state of Maryland, which gets an average of 3 prime hours of sunlight a day, that's 1,230,000 KWhs a day. If we apply your estimate of 20% effectiveness, that's still 246,000 KWhs daily power production.

How does that compare with the power output of the french nuclear plant? How does it compare over time? Say, 10 years?

I'm just asking about power comparisons here. Not nimby issues, nor pollution/greenhouse emissions, or maintenace costs etc... Just power.

I suspect the power from such a PV system is a fraction of that from the nuclear plant, but I don't know what fraction? 1/2? 1/10?

[NNadir]

51. Fair enough. Here is how I look at it.

First off, let's start by saying that the putative solar plants you describe ignoring economics will not compete with nuclear power based on technical issues: Solar cells are peak devices, well suited to addressing peak loads. Since these loads typically occur on hot sunny days, the solar plants will be well suited to addressing this function. Note that in the status quo this particular niche is now met by natural gas and not nuclear capacity. I note that the external cost of solar PV power is much lower than the external cost of gas power, and so, ignoring economic costs, the solar capacity is to be preferred to the capacity it displaces, gas. Note that nuclear power plants are ill suited to meeting peak loads. They do not power up all that quickly if they are in the middle of a fuel cycle owing to physics considerations, primarily an effect known as xenon poisoning and related factors.

Now let's do some relatively simple calculation comparing the cost of the installation of nuclear capacity vs the installation of solar capacity. I don't know the extent to which you are familiar with my previous calculations on this subject, but I am going to use the http://www.solarbuzz.com/ pricing as I usually do.

Today's posted price for solar capacity is $5.34/"watt", up 2 cents, where "watt" refers to the peak watt produced in a solar cell under ideal conditions, bright midday sun that shines directly on the system.

Further, I am going to up the solar figure a little bit. I've looked into this matter, and I believe that the actual capacity loading of solar PV installations is higher than 20%. Let's be generous and say that the capacity loading is 30%. Note this is means that on average, the solar system is operating for more than the 3 hours of a 24 hour day that you suggest is typical of Maryland.

Let us also say that the Civaux reactor does indeed cost $4.1 billion dollars US. The reactor is rated at 1450 Megawatts of power.

http://www.power-technology.com/projects/civaux/

All nuclear reactors are designed to operate continuously at near full power for a period of about a year and a half, after which they must shut down for a few weeks of refueling and maintenance. The regular required shutdowns end up meaning that nuclear plants typically operate at around 90% capacity loading.

For example, here is a link to the Calvert Cliffs reactors in your neck of the woods, showing how they performed in 2003:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/at_a_glance/reactors/calvertcliff.html

Unit 1 performed better than average (101.5% of capacity) and Unit 2, a little worse than average (83.5% of rated capacity.) Probably it is the case that Unit 1 was not fueled in 2003 and unit 2 was refueled, but I don't actually know for certain.

So let's say that the Civaux is typical of these figures and operates at 90% for calculation purposes.

Let's calculate: Using the solar buzz figures we see that for $4.1 billion dollars, we get $4,100,000,000/($5.34/"watt") = 770,000,000 "watts" or 770 Mega"watts" where the quotation remarks refer to the peak capacity and I have rounded to two significant figures. Now we need to multiply that figure by 0.3 to represent the claim that the capacity loading is actually 30%. We see that our solar "plant" (really thousands of distributed plants) for 4.1 billion dollars is the equivalent of a gas plant of 230 Megawatts on a time weighted basis. Note however that this plant, once in place requires no fuel: Everything is paid for. Translated into energy, the solar plant will produce in one year 7.3 petajoules.

For comparison purposes, the Civaux plant will produce, as stated, for the same 4.1 billion dollars, 1450 * 0.90 = 1300 MW of power. Translated into units of energy, the Civaux plant will produce 41 petajoules of energy, or about 5 times as much as the solar plant per dollar of capitalization. The Civaux plant will require fuel, so the cost advantage is slightly offset by this factor. However the cost of fuel in nuclear power plants is relatively trivial.

Again, we note that the PV plant and the nuclear plant serve very different functions.

For whatever reason, the actual solar energy production in the entire United States was considerably lower than the 7.3 petajoules we calculated for our imaginary solar plant in Maryland. The actual energy output for solar energy in 2004 was 0.5 billion kilowatt-hours, or about 1.8 petajoules or about 1/4 of the 4.1 billion solar "plant" we are contemplating.

http://www.plunkettresearch.com/Industries/RenewableAlternativeEnergy/RenewableAlternativeEnergyStatistics/tabid/192/Default.aspx

Solar PV power actually has quite a ways to go before it displaces much natural gas based peak power capacity. Whatever it can do however, is welcome. The global climate change crisis is unimaginably dire.