Sunshine State Loves Solar

The Sunshine State loves solar, according to a new poll.

Solar showed strong support across party lines, according to the Mason-Dixon poll sponsored by the Florida Solar Energy Industries Association and the Vote Solar Initiative, both solar power advocates.

"Floridians understand the importance of having a long term strategy for for harnessing energy from the sun to power our homes and businesses," said state Rep. Adam Hasner, R-Delray Beach, Florida House majority leader.

State Sen. Burt Saunders, R-Naples, said, "We have a chance to address our growing energy needs in a cleaner, more cost-effective way that protects the environment while keeping the lights on."

The poll quizzed 625 registered voters, asking “Do you think the Florida legislature should or should not encourage investment in solar energy?” Eighty-five percent answered “should,” with 7 percent answering “should not” and 8 percent not sure. Eighty-seven percent of Democrats answered "should," along with 82 percent of Republicans.

Then the poll got down to brass tacks. Sure, solar sounds great — until you have to pay for it. The pollsters asked “Would you support or oppose having the Florida legislature encourage solar energy investment in Florida if it would cost you one dollar or less per month on your utility bill?” With cash on the line, support declined a bit. Eighty-one percent they’d be willing to pay up, 14 percent opposed, and 5 percent weren’t sure. Again, Democrats showed more support, with 86 percent willing to pay. But 78 percent of Republicans also said they'd be willing to reach for their wallets to pay for solar.

-Asjylyn Loder, Times Staff Writer

[AP Photo]

Comments

[Tino]

A dollar? One single dollar a month?

What a disingenuous survey. Let's do some math, kids:

With 8 million customer accounts in Florida, a $1/month charge will get you a little more than 1 megawatt of solar of new capacity a month. Recent large-scale solar projects are running about $7 million per megawatt, before government handouts. Over the course of a year, that's about 13 megawatts of new capacity annually.

Let's compare that to the existing amount of electric generation capacity in Florida: 61,000 megawatts (source: Energy Information Administration)

If Florida was to attempt to achieve the impossible goals outlined in the national Renewable Portfolio Standard introduced in Congress, that value would be over $100 a month per customer, not $1.

Now let's ask that question again: would you be willing to pay $50 or $100 more per month for a significant amount of solar power?

[sam]

you got it all wrong. What this group is interested in is small scale residential solar i.e to increase the amount of money available for the solar rebate so that small scale solar installers can contine to jack up the price for citizens and convince them to by the product because half of it is subsidized. The installers are including the inflated cost of installation along with the cost of the panels and screwing the government for 50% of the total cost. They are not altruistioc enough to think of large scale solar i,e 1 megawatt and above.

Using the previous argument for large scale solar, money would not be used to fully fund a 7 milion dollar project. That would indeed not make any sense. It coud be used however to help offset some of the cost to bring the price per kilowatt down to help with the purchase power agreement with the utilty. You will then have more solar.

[Karl Nurse]

The hard truth is that nothing will be
cheap. For example, we are about to start paying $9 per month (each utility
customer) to begin raising the money for $17 Billion nuke. The cheapest options are first more efficient homes
and commerical buildings (AC, hot water, insulation, better windows, etc)
and then look to long term investments
in non-fossil fuel energy.

[paminator]

Tino, your numbers look about right, although solarbuzz.com claims about $5 per Watt for installed solar photovoltaic systems right now, a little lower than your $7/W. But you missed an important fact about solar. It gets cloudy, it rains, it gets dark at night, and the panels deteriorate over time. 13MW peak of installed solar is actually about 3.3 MW on average. So its an even smaller contribution to the energy mix than you say.

With solar at $5/W, and 25% availability, the actual cost of solar is $20/W. Compare this with a $17B nuke that generates 2200MW at 95% availability, or 2090MW. That also includes, by the way, almost $3B for new power lines, close to $1B in escrow fees for waste management over the life of the plant, and $2-3B in legal fees for siting and impact studies. Even after including all that, the nuke still comes out to $8.15/Watt, less than half the cost of solar. Nuclear doesn't look that expensive after all.

[Brian]

Solar costs more upfront but non-environmentally friendly fuel sources have high non-monetary costs. They pollute and make us dependent on foreign countries for energy.

[Tino]

Brian, where are almost all solar panels produced? [hint: it's not the US]

Nice try, though.

paminator, I like your logic. However, the solarbuzz.com price index omits much of the cost of the system (inverter, batteries and other power electronics). Their index just tracks the power module price. Large scale systems are coming in at about $7, but smaller systems (like residential) are over $10 because of the additional installation costs.

[paminator]

Tino- I see your point. Solarbuzz has another calculation showing the cost per kwh amortized over the panel life, and includes the inverter, battery system, installation costs, etc. I agree with you that the $5 per Watt is only for the panels. Good catch.

[Patrick Eckert]

I installed a 5.4 kilowatt solar system with a solar water heater. I look forward to them passing Bill 308 to get the solar pv rebate. I agree, solar energy is way out of line with the production costs. I have been wanting solar for over 30 yrs. but the cost was so prohibitive. I would think over the years the costs would come down not up. Say you buy a CD player when they first came out, (fictitious cost) for $400 then in a year they come down to $100, not with solar what I needed 30 yrs ago has tripled in costs. What happened. I think we need to go solar but bring down the costs so it is even more available and it will work.

[John]

There are some good points here but there are misleading comments also... I have been studying solar over past 12 months as I'm trying to enter the market... Solar probably is not for every where.. some places wind, geothermal, hydroelectric would be better... I live in Florida, the sunshine state yet thanks to Jeb Bush we never got an effective solar and renewable energy policy.. that changed when we got a new governer.We have some government officials who get big money contributions for oil,gas, coal, nuclear .. which are influencing our government not to adopt solar and other renewables... ie the investment tax credit due to expire end of '08 .. and had $2k max for residential systems... Our solar industry has been trying to get this $2k cap removed and also get the tax credit extended to 8 years --because big projects take many years to plan.. and even consumers take time. To pay for this there has been like 3 different bills, that proposed removing subsidies that oil and gas companies got a few years ago and using money to pay for the extension--do they need it with record profits? The president and many Republicans --including my area Sen. Bill Young- voted against it!! WHY?! Spain, Germany, Japan,Carabeen countries etc are way ahead of U.S.A. on Solar/wind and renewables. Where are they made?-It all depends how you define that because silicon,glass and other materials can come from many places... Sharp has plant in Long Beach,CA .. BP Solar Maryland, First Solar Ohio. Evergreen.. I think Mass. Hemlock (silicon) based in Mich. I can tell you price for a residential systems pv about $7-9/kw installed. Prices were going up because silicon in short supply.. that now is changing as solar companies have long term contracts and more capacity coming on line. Also everything else going up too ..Aluminum, Glass,copper transport costs,etc In a sunny state takes about 7-9 years for you to save enough money for system to pay for itself..then free! if you take the money you save on your electric bill and apply monthly payments on a solar system you would save money have a lower monthly payment.. never worry about increasing electric rates over next 20-25 years! Gee you really think you will pay your utility the same over next 25 years? NOT! The panels last a long time most companies have 15 to 20 years warranty.. yes they can degrade over time but this is not much with todays tech...less then 1% a year--the performance output is part of BP solar and others warranty..but field experiance has been much less degradation. Also you cannot compare prices of a system 20-30 yrs ago to today because since then efficeincy has tripled! There has been more Research and Dupont and others in about 3 years will be able to triple effiency again! Resulting in lower cost per kw.. just like cell phones ,computers,etc Once there is critical mass companies will spend money to bring better and lower cost products to market. But we need the governments local and federal to support the industry initialy to kick things off...companies will not spend billions and billions of $ unless there is demand for the product... After 8 years we won't need any subsidy. This has already happened in Japan. Sorry this was long!

[Tino]

Sometimes this is just too easy.

2005 household electricity prices per kWh (US$):

Denmark (with a wind turbine in every backyard) - 30 cents
Germany - 21 cents
Japan - 19 cents
Spain - 15 cents

US - 9.4 cents

Since they started their massive shifts to renewable energy about five years ago, these countries have seen electric rates increase by 50%. This does not even include the additional subsidies provided to the electric companies. I'm guessing that fully-loaded electric costs are up at least 75%. US prices (driven by those evil utilities!) during that same time increased by about 10%.

Great examples.