Talk:Solar power in the United States/Archive 1

Growth section doesn't add up

 * There is currently at least 400MW of thermal solar power online today
 * SEGS -- 354MW
 * Nevada Solar One -- 64MW
 * Carrying this forward at 40%/year until 2025 would give more like 122,000MW of thermal solar power online, not 6,600. If 6,600MW is 2% of production, then 122,000MW is closer to 40%
 * At the moment, solar thermal seems to be growing at quite a bit more than 40%/year. There is currently well over 2000MW of announced as due to come online in the next four years.  40% growth per year on 400MW would mean more like 1200MW in new development in four years.

IMHO, the paper seems to overstate the projected growth of PV as well. Thermal is generally cheaper per watt and so might be expected to grow more quickly. But so much of this depends on prevailing energy prices, ongoing research (public and private), tax breaks, public attitudes, government initiatives, etc., etc., that I'm not sure there's much value in trying to project out 17 years anyway. Perhaps it would be better, and more in the spirit of an encyclopedia, to chart growth of the various forms over the past few years and leave it at that. -Dmh (talk) 18:01, 8 September 2008 (UTC)


 * In fact, the 8:2 ratio of PV to CSP already seems off. I see less than 100MW of PV power projects on the list.  The MSRI is aiming for 3000MW by 2017, but it's not clear how far that's gotten, and again, compare it to 2000MW of CSP by 2012.  On the other hand, PG&E's recent announcement of 800MW of PV power in SLO county is clearly significant.  I certainly don't want to get into a PV vs. CSP war here.  Any kind of affordable, clean, locally-produced energy is fine with me.  Rather, I'm concerned that:
 * Growth of solar power in general looks to be quite a bit faster already than the study cited suggests
 * The 8:2 ratio of PV:CSP is already way off the mark (this is a pet peeve -- say "solar" and most people will think "panels", even though most solar energy isn't generated that way. And then they'll say "too expensive" and "won't work when the sun isn't shining", both of which are off the mark, especially with CSP).
 * It's hard to project exactly how solar power, or the PV:CSP mix will play out, as there are a lot of fairly unpredictable factors involved and the two technologies have different characteristics and are (probably) suited to different applications. -Dmh (talk) 14:31, 9 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Except that SEGS technology has been stagnant at 354 MW for ten years now, with not 40% growth, but with 0.00000% growth. I would wait 3 years before trying to predict the ratio between PV and CSP. 199.125.109.31 (talk) 16:19, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Only 100 square miles to power the US?
Are you kidding me? Why would you allow such a ridiculous statement in the opening paragraph, with no citation? This "fact" comes from a paper presented by a solar power manufacturer who just so happens to sell the necessary equipment to make this happen! It comes with a caveat that the entirety of the US power grid would have to be replaced with DC equipment, and then all our electrical appliances would have to be remanufactured.

http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/991/

This comment should be stricken from the article, or added later on with proper explanation. If some "Expert" doesn't do it, I will. Star-quality rating indeed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.237.195.59 (talk) 19:02, 30 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Occasionally people confuse "100 square miles" (which of course is 10 miles by 10 miles) with 100 miles square (which is 100 miles by 100 miles, or 10,000 square miles). The latter is closer to the area required, and in fact the article is correct in stating "92 miles square". However no change to electrical appliances is involved in using HVDC transmission lines - the conversion to and from DC is done by the utility, and there is no change in type or level in the AC that is delivered to the consumer. For long distances HVDC is far superior to AC. Also under development are superconductor transmission lines. 199.125.109.62 (talk) 21:45, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
 * since it confuses alot of people, it might be better to put it as 10000 square miles as thats a bit easier to comprehend.24.228.24.97 (talk) 00:00, 15 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Or, since it was removed from the article many months ago, we can ignore it. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 00:03, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Availability section stuffs the numbers
There were some problems with the availability section. The section was cherry-picking numbers from a DOE paper without defining what was really meant by an "accessible" resource. The article did not mention that the "accessible resource" quantity was predicated on the assumption that cost was no object. In other words, if solar power plants, among other things, cost nothing to build and nothing to maintain.

The article used peacock wording to compare solar to coal, but did not use the more realistic predictions from the paper, that placed economically recoverable coal reserves as being much greater than economically recoverable solar energy. That's just as well because this paper, being nearly 20 years out of date, made its predictions based on $38bbbl oil and probably whatever technologically-outdated photovoltaics were available then. The world has changed a lot since that was written, it would be best to cite a more recent source...and to use economically rational numbers, not theoretical maximums.

And the section also didn't mention that 95% of the report's projected "accessible" solar power was biomass/biofuels as well as municipal waste. In other words, corn-based ethanol, switchgrass, woodchips and the like would be counted as solar power, and utterly dwarfed the PV/solar-thermal potential. Since biofuels have their own article, we should reduce those available solar numbers by 95%, or better yet use a recent source. Geogene (talk) 00:52, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Merging notice on the main page
Support merge. I agree that these two articles should be merged with Solar power in the United States being the main one. Plenty of countries have solar power in XX articles, but only the US seems to have Photovoltaics in XX. What's covered in that article can easily be a section (or multiple sections) within the main Solar power in XX article. TimeClock871 (talk) 09:21, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Solar power in the United States
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Solar power in the United States's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "de": From Renewable energy in the United States: FPL Commissions DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center From Wind power in the European Union: Wind energy in Germany – overview From DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center:   

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 08:14, 18 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Fixed. Johnfos (talk) 08:26, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

resource
'Solar-coaster' hits as sun sets on federal subsidies by Wendy Koch in USA Today 99.35.15.199 (talk) 00:49, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
 * See related Get the Energy Sector off the Dole. 97.87.29.188 (talk) 21:00, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and PACE
As I read it, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac fail to understand how the PACE program works. They seem to think that "if the property-owner defaults, the PACE lender would be repaid before Fannie or Freddie". What happens if the property owner defaults is to some extent unknown, as it is my understanding that no one with PACE financing has defaulted on their mortgage, but here is in point of fact what would happen. The bank takes over the home, the PACE payments are interrupted until the foreclosure takes place (the defaulting homeowner ceases all payments, utilities, taxes, and mortgage payments). The bank becomes responsible for utility and tax payments until they find a buyer. During this time very little electricity is used, but the photovoltaic panels continue to run the meter backwards, (unless the bank shuts off the breaker or the utility removes the meter) providing free electricity to the utility which normally is under no obligation to pay for it. If Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac wanted to do something constructive they would require utilities to reimburse banks at retail rate for the electricity produced during this time. Then when the bank finds a buyer, the new buyer is obligated to pick up the remainder of the PACE contract along with the obligation to pay taxes and utilities. If the bank fails to find a buyer, and stops paying taxes, the property is sold at a tax auction and the bank and Fannie Mae & Fannie Mac lose out on their original loan, but pick up a new loan from a new buyer (most tax sales go to investors, who then sell to a new buyer with a new loan). The balance due on the PACE contract is the original balance minus any payments that have accrued. PACE contracts are only paid out of electric bill savings, averaged over a yearly basis, and since a few months to a few years of payments may have been lost during the foreclosure (shortened if the foreclosing bank makes any of these payments, which as mentioned above if Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were on the ball would be compensated by the electricity not used and sold to the utility). While the bank may be unable to sell any of the unused electricity, the bank will likely have the obligation of making PACE payments as a part of the taxes owed, but should not be asked to make up any missed payments, because of how PACE is structured. These payments, though, are far less than what a bank loses anytime a foreclosure occurs. As mentioned, no foreclosure of a PACE customer has occurred, so FM & FM are totally shooting in the dark, and in my opinion, have picked the wrong target, due to a total lack of understanding of how the program works. Any references discussing this would be appreciated. It sounds like FM & FM are under the mistaken impression that in a short sale the back taxes get paid first (correct), the PACE loan gets repaid (false), and then the bank and FM & FM get paid last. The main point is that the PACE loan simply gets recalculated to determine the payment rate for the new homeowner and there is absolutely no impact on FM & FM. PACE loans are designed to be paid back long before the life of the panels, so losing a year of payments during a foreclosure is no big deal. Apteva (talk) 00:29, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

FEED-IN TARIFFS IN THE US
There's no such a thing like FIT in the US. This reference should be either removed or corrected

As in the case of California, effective July 24, 2013, the AB 1969 Feed-in Tariff (FIT) program is closed. The program has been replaced by the SB 32 FIT program, featuring the renewable market adjusting tariff (ReMAT).

California Update on F.I.T. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chicchon (talk • contribs) 20:37, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Article reorganization proposal
The article is becoming cumbersome, and a lot of the more useful information (like current capacity and generation) is migrating toward the bottom of the page. I'd suggest cleaning this up to provide a more useful article, maintaining focus on the core issue of the article, which is specifically solar in the US, not an examination of solar in general. Before working on that, I wanted to see if there's community feedback for moving this article in these directions:

1. Using "Coal Power in the United States" as a better model for general layout and content - focusing on trends and solar generation up front and then moving to the more nuanced issues. 2. The article should immediately move into a chart of solar generation by year following the intro. This is the most pertinent info a user probably wants - how many KwH were generated, and what percent of the total does that represent? 3. The capacity charts are useful, but they are completely confusing and cumbersome. They could be redone to provide a clearer picture of their data. The PV capacity chart is insane and horrible. And who created charts with time shifting between the X and Y axis and running backwards?? 4. It seems like the list of existing and proposed solar plants should be deleted from this article for conciseness. It's interesting information that should be linked to, but including it in this article creates a confusing avalanche of data that isn't immediately understandable. The link to the clean, concise tables should be sufficient. The main drawback is that the existing tables are global. So does it make more sense to list all U.S. plants in this article, or create a table that is specifically PV plants in the United States that is linked to?

I'd open the conversation for 30 days for recommendations on these clean-up suggestions, and any others. At the end of August 2015 I'll look at the feedback and determine if there's support for doing a major edit that would result in info that flows a little better than what we have now. With the growth of solar output, this article is pretty important. Davey1107 (talk) 18:39, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

The 2 charts in the growth section are inconsistent
Thre are 2 charts in the Growth section.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Solar_Electricity_Production.svg

And

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Monthly_Solar_Power_Generation.svg

According to their title they show the same thing, Solar energy in the US per month, but the numbers are different by magnitudes.

Probably the first one is the errornous one, that shoud be per year. I remove that one until it is fixed.

ARticle is so out of date it's misleading
This article is so out of date it's misleading - there are items about 2011 installations! People coming here for information are likely to be fooled by all the very old material. I'm going to slash and burn, in hopes that it can be updated.- DavidWBrooks (talk) 14:05, 10 May 2020 (UTC)


 * I started but ye gods, this article is a mess. It should be rewritten from top to bottom. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 14:13, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
 * There was a lot of history in the 1970s on solar power, which is missing from the article.--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 03:56, 3 August 2021 (UTC)