CLOUDS AHEAD?: The American solar industry is dependent upon a fragile matrix of government support -- state renewable portfolio standards and federal tax credits, grants and construction loan guarantees.
Image: Fieldsken via WikiMedia Commons
First of a four-part series.
"This is our generation's Sputnik moment," President Obama said at the top of his State of the Union address to Congress last week. He was expressing a vision of his administration's high-stakes campaign to help American companies claim leadership in future clean energy technologies.
Behind the rhetoric is a thrust by the administration to target federal investments in technology on ways to dramatically change energy use across the economy -- in transportation, electricity generation, industrial processes and building design. It is a bet that spending taxpayer dollars today can lead to better jobs and more secure, cleaner energy for tomorrow's economy.
It marks a fault line between the president's goals and those of a resurgent Republican Party in Congress. "Government cannot force the people to innovate, but if we can get government out of the way, American ingenuity will emerge every time," responded Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), the new chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
On two very competitive fronts -- advanced solar power and advanced automotive batteries -- the Department of Energy has already mounted a double-edged campaign. Through awards of loan guarantees, DOE is trying to shore up U.S. companies with today's technology at the same time that it targets R&D funds from the stimulus program toward "game changing" technology breakthroughs for the future. What is happening in the solar power industry offers one telling example.
First Solar, based in Tempe, Ariz., and SolarReserve, headquartered in Santa Monica, Calif., are two bright hopes engaged in the process of building a more competitive solar power industry, where the United States is a decided underdog.
Their technologies could hardly be more different. First Solar's solar cells -- the U.S. best seller -- produce electricity when sunlight strikes a thin film of cadmium telluride sandwiched between glass. SolarReserve uses solar energy reflected and focused by ground mirrors to heat molten salt to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The salt is stored in Thermos-like reservoirs and then is used to create steam to generate electricity hours after sundown, making it a leader in the budding field of renewable energy storage, industry analysts say.
They have this in common: Like the rest of the American solar industry, the growth of their U.S. operations is vitally dependent upon a fragile matrix of government support -- state renewable portfolio standards and federal tax credits, grants and construction loan guarantees.
These lifelines, created by state and federal actions of past years, have been strongly promoted as a key element of the president's strategy to hasten the conversion to clean energy technologies that can expand jobs and exports and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
But at a time of growing concern about federal spending and deficits, U.S. solar firms may be racing the clock to prove their viability.
"While proponents argue that wind is free, harnessing it into useful electricity certainly is not," said a report last year by the conservative Heritage Foundation Center for Data Analysis. "Mandating that an ever-increasing fraction of electrical power must be generated from renewable sources will raise the cost of electricity, force inconvenient and painful cuts in electricity use, and damage the economy," the report said.
Dependent on the kindness of governments
Industry leaders are frank to state their life support comes from taxpayers.
"Although the projects are economically and environmentally viable, we believe that these DOE programs are a necessary financing bridge until the financial markets in the U.S. are prepared to fund solar projects at this scale without risk-sharing with the DOE," said First Solar senior executive Jens Meyerhoff.
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25 Comments
Add CommentSure it could. The government could give them a monopoly on power. Should it? NO!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFull scale solar power plants costs at least 4x more than conventional technologies when you factor in efficiency and lifetime replacement costs. Having everyone pay 4x as much for power through the government increases our cost of living by 4x, our goods by 4x and decreases the amount of money we have to research technologies like improved solar efficiency. There is no good argument for subsidy.
"...Several years ago, putting up a 1-megawatt solar system would have cost $8 million and taken six months. Today, it may cost $5 million and be done in six weeks, "
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat works out to to about 41 cents a kilowatt hour for a an array in Phoenix financed by a independent power producer. That cost would have to be tripled to $1.20 a kwh to cover long term green storage and transmission costs.
The cost of a similar constructed mass produced skylite at Home depot is now more per sq ft than fire sale solar prices available due to the loss of Euro subsidy. With solar mass production going on for several years now that cost is not going to get any cheaper.
China builds solar to sell to suckers in the West.
Every time spent on solar is totally wasted.
Meanwhile China has announced a large scale development project on the Molten Salt Reactor which promises to deliver clean and green zero pollution nuke power enough to power the world for hundreds of years using only existing nuclear waste from highly efficient dirt cheap factory produced units 1 cent a kwh.
The utterly stupid brainless attorneys that run the US government will not spend a dime on the technology which is 100% likely to save the world if developed. That technology was invented, tested and and perfected in the US in the seventies. We even flew it around on an airplane.
The Big Oil funded Big Green movement's silly love affair with sunbeams and warm breezes kills millions every year by deferring the nuclear solution to pollution and by leading us inevitably to that civilization ending peak oil/climate crisis will kill billions more.
@Seth,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFace it Seth. Nuclear power has been at the public trough for sixty years and is still utterly depended on public subsidies and other state protections the world over.
Nuclear power has failed the world over not because of the the evil environmentalist but because it is simply not profitable.
"China builds solar to sell to suckers in the West."
Unsupported assertion. Of course this is coming from a person who thinks that the entire east coast of the U.S goes without wind for weeks at a time and offers as evidence a blog post. Spare me.
"Meanwhile China has announced a large scale development project on the Molten Salt Reactor which promises to deliver clean and green zero pollution nuke power enough to power the world for hundreds of years using only existing nuclear waste from highly efficient dirt cheap factory produced units 1 cent a kwh."
Promises, promises. Does the phrase "too cheap to meter" mean anything? The Nuclear power industry has been dangling this dream for over a half-century.
"The utterly stupid brainless attorneys that run the US government will not spend a dime on the technology which is 100% likely to save the world if developed."
Well, then I should expect the nuclear power industry to be highly attractive too investors and is such a profitable industry that it can fund its own research entirely. Oh, wait....
It is such a relief that you argue on the side of the irrational. Please please never take that road to Damascus.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI got a question for Seth. Name the nuclear power project that is now being financed entirely by private capital. I want a link directly to that project and investor. Please no more links to editorials, blogs, nuclear power lobbyists advocacy sites. Just plain old vanilla links to the two primary parties.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@Carlyle,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"It is such a relief that you argue on the side of the irrational. Please please never take that road to Damascus."
Funny thing is that you never ever detail what in the post is irrational. Funny that.
Now Seth and friends will tell you about how cheap nuclear power is but they omit the construction costs of those plants. Further what they neglect to tell you is that the nuclear industry has a bad history of vastly underestimating the construction costs. Now consider these figures:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn the 60's cost over-runs were around 150% of the original estimate. By the late 70's when the last nuclear plants were built in the U.S that cost came in at over 300% percent of original estimates. Do we see the same type of low balling the cost in contemporary times? You decide:
Finland's OLkILUOTO:
"Originally slated to cost around $4 billion (€3 billion), its price tag has nearly doubled to $7.2 billion (€5.3 billion)."
http://energydeals.wordpress.com/2011/01/30/olkiluoto-finland%E2%80%94-a-thickly-wooded-island-off-the-west-coast-of-finland-is-the-cradle-of-the-global-nuclear-renaissance-but-its-been-a-difficult-birth/
Now I happen to think that Finland has got a good rational to build nuclear power plants. It is seeking less energy dependence on Russia. However, that is a national security argument; as a economics argument it fails utterly.
South Texas Nuclear Generating Station:
"CPS interim General Manager Steve Bartley said the utility's main contractor on the project, Toshiba Inc., informed officials that the cost of the reactors would be "substantially greater" than CPS' estimate of $13 billion, which includes financing"
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/environment/article/Nuclear-cost-estimate-rises-by-as-much-as-4-844529.php
Guess where they are looking for financing from? That is right. The Department of Energy. Here something that Seth and friends will never ever mention. 25 to 50% of cost over runs are guaranteed to be paid by the DOE. Also, the DOE gives will give a tax credit of up to 125 million dollars for the first eight years of the plants running. Yet, these incentives seem not to be attracting the investors. I wonder why?
Sure. Step no. 1 is: stop subsidizing fossil fuels. Let THEIR cost rise to a market level instead of helping keep it low. The US subsidizes fossil fuel exploration, development, and use, with DIRECT subsidies and tax breaks, with far more money than all renewables combined. Step no. 2 is, place a tax on all forms of energy use that (1) accurately reflects the external costs imposed on the rest of society by use of that energy source, including but not limited to carbon generation, and (2) is directly related to the amount of carbon produced by each form of energy's production and utilization. Do that and we won't need to subsidize ANY form of energy generation--the market will be able to set the correct price for each.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPresident Obama said: NUCLEAR!!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNuke power receives no current subsidies.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe near zero east coast two week wind event came right out of a table in a greenie report saying that east coast wind could be used to provide the east coast with wind power. The zero wind phenomena just happened again in Europe's recent cold snap.
There are no official Chinese government figures showing any significant GWhr's of grid connected solar.
The too cheap to meter quote came from an ex naval officer appointed to the AEC speaking to the a buncha scifi writers in 1954 when nothing was known about nuke power.
"Too stupid to breed" is a better quote referring of course to the not so 'green' antinuke movement.
Since all of the world's efficiently run power companies are public, almost all new nuke projects are for public power.
AECL has completed 8 new Candu reactor installations over the last twenty years on time in 4 years and on budget at $2B/Gw.
http://www.cnnc.com.cn/tabid/168/Default.aspx
Private utility SCANA is going ahead at $4.5B/GW for a first of a kind reactor installation built in the USA by American attorneys with all private money despite the fact that American engineers are building the exact same facility for public power in China for 30% of the cost.
http://nuclearfissionary.com/2011/01/31/new-nuclear-construction-v-c-summer-2-3/
As usual the greenie ghoul likes to brag about the glory days in the seventies when greenie trash paid by Big Coal like former NRC commissioner Peter Bradford took over the NRC and were able to shut down the nuclear industry tripling costs with caprious regulation.
No apologies from the greenie ghoul for the hundred million folks world murdered by the subsequent Coal air pollution or the global warming crisis they created.
The Finns were so upset by the cost overruns on their first of kind EPR reactor that despite its $4.5B/Gw cost they went out and ordered two more. No doubt because that EPR install is still cheaper than coal or Russian gas, 20% or the cost of wind, and 3% of the cost of wind with long term storage and transmission cost included.
The latest EPR contract with India signed a few months ago starts with 2 EPR units at $2B/Gw when fuel costs are excluded from the contract.
South Texas is now doing fine and budgeted at $3.7B/Gw much cheaper than new coal.
http://www.powergenworldwide.com/index/display/articledisplay/6308156985/articles/powergenworldwide/nuclear/reactors/2010/10/Constellation-back-out-aftermath.html
@Seth - "Nuke power receives no current subsidies."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSorry, Seth, now you've plainly ventured into "lying" territory. The Price-Anderson Act limits liability in the case of a catastrophic accident to $9.1 billion, which is considerably less than the $600b estimated cost (grossly underestimated, given the locations of most reactors) of such an accident, which is guaranteed to be paid by the US government. If companies had to insure for coverage of the total sum, the cost of power produced would be inflated by several hundred percent.
And that's just insurance. It doesn't cover costs of construction or disposal of materials (such as the cost of the Yucca Mountain site), all of which are at least partially funded by state and federal sources.
@Trent - that's a factor you might want to introduce to your argument: the cost of demolition of plants and disposal of contaminated materials.
@Concerned...: "Having everyone pay 4x as much for power through the government increases our cost of living by 4x, our goods by 4x and decreases the amount of money we have to research technologies like improved solar efficiency."
Not necessarily. Getting a new industry off the ground is invariably more expensive than its operation at maturity. Having the gov't assist by subsidizing the start of that industry results in that "4x" value not being passed to the consumer - ergo no cost changes.
The 4x cost you refer to, even if accurate, also introduces pressure to innovate and improve. In any case, your argument is flawed - we have operated at a low cost by using fuels that are harmful to us in other ways.
"Sustainable" in this case means roughly, "Can you live with the consequences?" It is becoming clearer that using coal/petrol/etc. fuels at the levels of population we are growing up into results in an answer of "no" to that question. So while we might operate more cheaply by burning coal, we suffer damage from increased storms, losses to crops from droughts, health hazards of pollution inhalation, etc., all of which contribute to increasing the cost of living. Moving to a cleaner power source might show more cost at the reactor, but will likely result in a lower overall cost of living.
Or, if you take it to the extreme (in which we recognize that carbon fuels at our consumption rates threaten our existence as a species), will likely result in us being enabled to go on living.
T
@Seth – sorry, now you’re delving into “lying” territory. No surprise, given your inflammatory and really rather dumb rhetoric, and it’s time for you to go back and get some real facts. For starters on the subject of subsidies, the Price-Anderson Act puts a $9.1b cap on liability for nuclear accidents in the case of a catastrophic disaster. The US Government covers any remaining damages, which are estimated to be $600b in this case. Given the locations of most plants, $600b is an extremely low estimate. Were the companies in question required to fully insure against such disasters, the cost of power from such facilities would skyrocket.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is just based on the cost of insurance – there are other, equally valid points about subsidies involving construction costs, land purchase, decommissioning costs, tax breaks, provision of security forces for the facilities, and waste disposal. What, did you think Yucca Mountain was a private enterprise?
Have a seat, and wash your brain while you’re at it, Seth.
@Trent – you might want to consider adding decommissioning costs to your argument. I’m quite certain the figures you use would escalate dramatically if you took that into account.
@Concerned – the basic gist of your argument, if I read you right, is “Why would we pay more for power X (solar) when power Y (carbon fuels) comes cheaper?” Our costs are much more complicated than a simple figure of $/kwh on the utility bill.
You have overlooked the hidden costs of carbon power. Storm damages, health hazards, drought damage to crops, oceanic acidification impacts, these are all outgrowths of emitting more than 130x the carbon output of every volcano on earth combined, every year. These hidden costs elevate the cost of living in other ways. Your argument also overlooks the effect of competition on costs that occurs after an industry matures – while the cost of solar or wind might initially be higher than carbon fuels, once the industry kicks off and is subject to market pressure, those costs will be driven down by the companies responsible for the technology seeking to improve their bottom lines.
What I’m getting at is that with the population growth worldwide we experience now, the cost of carbon fuel usage is escalating to a point where the question of sustainability becomes “can we as a species survive with this model?” The answer to that is becoming more and more clear to be “no.”
T
Whup, thought I'd lost the first one. Please excuse the re-hash.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisT
Every time I see these underinformed people talk about the low cost and energy benefits of dirty nuclear power, dirty in the respect that it produces and will always produce dangerous nuclear waste that makes it a dirty bomb, makes me want to feel pity for them and start looking for a good nursing home to place them in.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo build the lowest degree nuclear power plant starts out at $10 billion and the completion in 10 years ends up at $50 billion or above and another $50 to $400 billion to store and contain the waste and has a foot print of around 70% in destruction of land to extract the ore needed to power the plant tells me that my power bill is going to rapidly increase until the government recoups the billions it spent in production.
Let's talk about Geothermal power plants: a foot print of 1.5%, starting cost at about $3 million - completed in 2 years at about $5 million, produces free electricity for 50 years before you have to replace the turbines and will produce free electricity for millions of years as long as you keep putting water down the hole and switching from hole to hole every 30 years to allow the rocks to heat back up by the core of the Earth tells me that my power bill is going to end up at almost 0 (zero). Now, why would we want to spend $50 billion to build a 70% foot print nuclear power plant when we can build a $5 million Geothermal power plant with a foot print of 1.5%? With a little research on this magazine, you can verify everything I just said.
I'm always amazed at the stupidity and ignorance displayed by the antinuke nitwit that we find on this site.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@baldy
Speaking of lies.
The US nuke industry has a $15B insurance fund far greater than the $150 million of deadly atomic bomb sized installations like LNG and chlorine storage carry - Far greater than deadly chemical plants and the cubic miles of deadly toxic forever mine tailing dumps all over the US.
It is illegal to insure against an impossible event that would wipe out the insurance co.
The nuke dump is already funded to the tune of $35B by the industry - a monstrous subsidy paid by the industry to the US government since the industry is storing the fuel itself. However all the worlds nuclear waste now perfectly contained would fill 1% the volume of the Great Pyramid at Giza which has lasted 5000 years. Not waste. It is fuel enough to power the world for hundreds of years while being destroyed in gen IV reactors.
Decommissioning costs occur 60 years in the future of a plant. If you even had grade 6 arithmetic you might be able to understand the concept of time value of money. The estimated costs are paid into a fund collected as a per kwh surcharge. This is another monstrous subsidy paid by the industry to the US government, since all current nuclear sites will always be nuclear sites and the net decommissioning cost is zero.
All costs you listed are paid by the cost of the nuclear electricity.
And Davis you are the worst of them,
There are NO working deep drilling geothermal plants in the world and there never will be. The technology doesn't exist and the costs are enormous and the earthquake risk is unacceptable.
I just gave several examples of reactors completed on time on budget for less than $2B/Gw in 4 years not the insane $50 billion and 10 years you spew. There is no uranium mining footprint in the US of any significance, the waste occupying a quarter of a football field is all safely stored and waiting reprocessing.
But you know all this and continue to spew your lies. Seek help!!!
As you say. No deep well working geothermal. Typically of alterative energy companies, Australia’s Geodynamics has received about $90M in Gov money. Drilled some wells. The fluid from the deep granite was so corrosive it ate the special well casings out within months. Just the drill rig cost $30M. Wells abandoned but still trying to make it work. Hard to find any reporting about it. These companies are good at good news spin but seem to easily find ways to burn public money.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe title asks the wrong question. The question should not be "_CAN_ the U.S. Government Help Domestic Solar Companies Compete?" (we have the resources to allocate if we wish to further mortgage my greatgrandchildren's future) but "_SHOULD_ the U.S. Government Help Domestic Solar Companies Compete?" The answer to that question, IMO, is "NO!". If the solar industry cannot compete upon its own merits then it does not deserve to continue. Subsidizing non-viable industries is NOT what the government should be doing. If some people believe that the U.S. Solar Industry requires subsidies in order to compete then those people can contribute to or invest in those industries.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is not by any stretch of the imagination right to steal from one segment of the population in order to enrich another. That is tantamount to slavery.
If solar technologies are all their proponents claim, they should be able to compete - IN THE MARKETPLACE - upon their own merits. If they cannot compete then they should die off.
Oh, and on the subject of nuclear power, where are all the greenie-weenie/global warming nuts? If you accept their premise that anthropogenic CO2 causes global climate change (which I do NOT, by the by), then you HAVE to be AGAINST nuclear power on the basis of carbon footprint alone. With all the energy it takes to mine, refine and enrich nuclear fuel to even reactor grade, unless you start with high-grade ore, the total CO2 emitted is AT BEST equal to and AT WORST much greater than the CO2 which would come from a conventionally fueled generating plant. When you consider that the CO@ load for a nuclear plant is all FRONT LOADED versus emitted over the active lifetime of a conventional facility, nuclear power looks even worse. Remember, natural processes continually sequester at least a part of the CO2 humans produce.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen all other factors are considered, it is much more EFFICIENT to use the fossil fuels that would go into powering the processing of the nuclear fuel to produce electricity directly. You are not saving anything by using nuclear power. PLUS there is the horrendous burden of safely storing the spent fuel rods.
This has to be one of the stupidest remarks from an antinuker I've ever seen.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe cost of fossil fuel required by nukes in fuel processing is a tiny tiny fraction of the energy produced by the reactor and any fossil energy used is compensated by the fossil energy displaced by the nuke power produced.
Since the cost of nuke fuel all of it imported is less than .8 cents a kwh with electricity and fossil fuel input a tiny fraction of that, are the foreign producers selling to us at a loss?
Give your head a shake.
Remove the military support now needed to stabilize oil prices and shift these funds to rooftop solar. Eliminate tax breaks for oil & nuclear & use the funds as incentives for solar development (including solar carport canopies for the coming electric car market).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEliminate all oil subsidies and shift them to rooftop solar. All of our citizens could use the extra $300-400 dollars a month (power bill) for their everyday living.
Clearly this is a person who has NOT done their homework.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMining uranium or requires a huge investment in power - either electric or internal combustion of some sort - and that means hydrocarbon fuels. The yield from a ton of pitchblend is measured in OUNCES. That is in the form of what is called yellow cake. Converting yellow cake to metallic uranium requires yet more hydrocarbon fuel. The current method of enriching the metallic uranium involves converting it to uranium hexaflouride (which is so corrosive that every surface that comes in contact with the material has to be coated in nickel - which also has to be mined, refines and fabricated) and then centrifuging it so as to take advantage of the fact that the atomic weight of U235 is slightly different from that of U238 in order to enrich the material from a fraction of a percent of U238 to > 3% - usually approximately 3 orders of magnitude increase. That process is horriffically energy intensive.
If you do you homework you find well documented articles online indicating that with high grade ore (the least common) the net energy produced is slightly greater than that used to produce the fuel. With mid-grade ore it is essentially a wash. With low grade ore (and for some reason low grade EVERYTHING seems to predominate in the universe) more energy is required to mine, refine and enrich the fuel than would be produced if the hydrocarbon fuel were simply used to power the generators in the first place.
Note: I never said anything about dollars and cents. I am talking about net electricity produced by the nuclear plant versus the electricity that could be generated by simply using the hydrocarbon fuel in the first place.
Do your research. The information is out there. I USED to be a proponent of Nuclear Power. Then I did the research.
Oh and none of this addresses the problem of storing the resulting radioactive and toxic waste for MILLENIA.
Neat. But what do we do on cloudy days? I live in south Texas where we have a LOT of sunny days. The over all good weather is why there were once so many airfields here. It's why the Air Force trains so many of its pilots here in San Antonio.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut what about in, say, the Pacific Northwest where it rains frequently (pretty much every day if what I've read/been told is true)? What to they do for power there?
Also, compare the average influx of solar energy per square meter versus the energy usage by people in the U.S. We do not have enough free land area to make it work without DRACONIAN lifestyle changes.
Plus petroleum has recently been shown to be a renewable resource. Apparently the planet makes it all the time and it is not from the bodies of dead lifeforms (I always wondered how so much biomass got so far below the surface anyway).
But back to my original thesis. What gives anyone to forcibly take the fruit of my labor and give it to another to subsidize an otherwise non-viable technology? I am no man's slave.
It's not 'fossil OR nuclear OR geothermal OR wind OR solar OR biofuels OR whatever', it's 'fossil AND/OR nuclear AND/OR geothermal AND/OR wind AND/OR solar AND/OR biofuels AND/OR whatever'.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd it'll be that way for a long time.
&Cyborgbill
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour ignorance is astonishing.
You site nonsense without any links. How could a supplier of enriched nuclear fuel sell it to a nuke plant for .8 cents a kwh when it is putting as you claim more very expensive fossil energy into that fuel than it produces in dirt cheap electricity. You need to consult your Grade 1 teacher who can help you with the logic.
The concept you are having so much trouble with is EROEI (expected return on energy invested) which ranges from 20 for ancient technology enrichment processes to 1000 for the new Gen IV reactors like India's new 500 MW unit.
" The EROEI for nuclear varies a lot depending on the assumptions you make. Realistic assessments using current high grade ores put it at over 100:1 with centrifuge enrichment and a little higher again with CANDU. With low grade ores and diffusion enrichment, it can be as low as 10 to 20:1. The world average, according to some recent figures I’ve seen, is ~50:1."
Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air - David JC MacKay
Please learn to read and think before bothering to spew such nonsense.
@electric3
There is no subsidy for nuke power. In fact in the US the government owes the industry over $50B which they have collected in funds that will never be used for storing nuke waste (stored on site awaiting recycle) or decommissioning (nuke sites will always be nuke sites with core ugrades to new tech)
Solar on the other hand receives $tens of billion in annual feed in tariff subsidies world wide.
The cost of solar on the average rooftop in the US is close to 50 cents a kwh and over $1.50 a kwh if green storage and transmission were included. If every household in the US had one installed less than 3% of US energy requirements would be met.
Nice article but means absolutly nothing. In 2009 Obama joined the IRENA organization. The organization was founded by the elite who control all petroleum fuels and is located in the middle east and funded outof Bonn, Germany. The objective is world control of renewable and alternative enery systems as they currently control all fossil fuels. The US government is throwing bones to US technology development but will not and does not believe in further developing this country's technologies that will provide affordable systems for mankind. Don't be fooled by the smiling deceit from Washington.
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