The Democratic polling firm of Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Associates at the request of the “Vote Solar Initiative” organization polled some 400 Los Angles residents and found according to an Aol Energy blog posting:
“The vast majority of Los Angeles residents are demanding more renewable energy, especially solar power, according to a new survey. Around 87 percent of voters want solar energy to generate more electricity and 79 percent welcome more wind power. Around three out of four voters (76 percent) say the solar power should be generated from rooftop panels.”
Aside from a pro-solar organization hiring a liberal Democrat polling organization to fashion a poll to get them the answers they wanted, the poll results show how far removed from reality are the LA citizens. They are clamoring for more government intervention which is what has given California the 3rd highest unemployment rate in the country, the 9th highest electricity rate and the 3rd highest gasoline cost. It’s the poorer people that are suffering the most. This will be made even worse as the price of electricity continues its climb as they force in more uneconomical solar based production and drive out much lower cost fossil fuel production. This conclusion is also dawning on the Germans according to the Global Warming Policy Foundation: “The current funding of Germany’s green energy transition is anti-social, according to a new report by the Institute of the German Economy. The economic burden due to the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) is up to 10 times higher for low-income households than for high-income households.”
The preliminary 2012 Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) estimates for levelized costs per kilowatt-hour in 2017 are 15.7 cents for a photovoltaic solar plant and 25.1 cents for a thermal solar plant. That is far more expensive than the 6.7 cents per kilowatt-hour for conventional combined cycle natural gas and the 10 cents per kilowatt-hour for conventional coal in those same EIA estimates. Also, the EIA inflates the cost of coal by the equivalent of $15 per metric ton of carbon dioxide emitted to represent the difficulty of obtaining financing for coal plants. Further, it does not appear that the EIA levelized cost for conventional combined cycle natural gas plant is getting credited for the lower price of natural gas resulting from fracking shale.
The survey also said that:
“Most voters believe Los Angeles should create 1,200 megawatts of power from the sun, which is LADWP’s percentage of the state goal of 12,000 megawatts of local clean power by 2020.”
And they inform us that 1200megawatts is enough to power 260,000 homes. The calculation for number of homes powered is suspect as it is varies from solar power promoter to promoter. Without power storage, some other source of electricity most likely from a fossil fuel powered source is necessary because the lights would go out on these homes at night when the sun is no longer shining. So much for reducing carbon emissions. I wonder if California Air Resources Board (CARB) has put that in their solar energy calculations?
More on Solar cell reliability, etc. in my next posting on this topic.
cbdakota
Climate Change Sanity 