Solar is now cheaper than coal, says India energy minister

Not in Nevada, but down here in San Antonio it is lol. My power bill is way way cheaper then NV.

Of course your power bill is way cheaper in TX, than it was in NV. Nevada is located in the Mojave desert. The Mojave desert is home to the hottest place on the planet: Death Valley. Whenever a conversation about solar power comes up, there is always the cry of how solar could not exist without help from the government. At this point that may be true but Nevada is one place where the solar industry was actually killed by the government.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/1 ... rate-hike/
In 2014 the Public Utilities Commission of Nevada published a study showing that Nevada rooftop solar customers contributed more to the power grid than they cost. In Dec. 2015 the PUCV reversed itself and put the solar industry in Nevada out of business. They instituted higher rates for solar customers, and lowered the rate at which the power company buys the power generated from solar customers to below wholesale rates. They are basically stealing the power. Power that the power company put up no money to produce. They did not pay for the purchase or maintenance of the solar panels, the homeowners did. People spent thousands of dollars of their own money to cut down their electric bills, and lower their carbon footprint. The deal made sense when they bought the panels. The panels would have paid for themselves in 14 years on average. Now the panels will never be paid off. The home has actually lost value as a result of the panels. There was no grandfather clause either. Thousands of home owners got screwed.The solar industry has packed up and left Nevada laying off thousands of workers in their wake. They got screwed. Who won? Warren Buffets Berkshire Hathaway owns NV energy. They won. He won. The same hypocrite that was always whining about how he thought it was unfair that his secretary pays a higher tax rate than him, (although I never recall him writing a check making a donation to the U.S. Treasury). I think it sucks that someone spent thousands of dollars trying to better themselves, and lower their carbon footprint is getting royally screwed by this hypocritical douchebag.

The same shit was pulled in Arizona. Two of the hottest most promising solar States in the U.S. have used government agencies to kill the solar industry.

Sounds exactly like Spain, another sunny place.

More gory details here

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/ ... any-nevada

Solar panels do not function as well in extreme heat. A sunny day at 25C is optimal, anything above that and the panel loses efficiency. A sunny day in the Canadian winter could offer more energy than a sunny day at 45C in the Mojave desert

I was thinking that Canada's North would be ideal for solar power.

I agree, the low precipitation means less cloud cover and the temperatures are always below 25C. The only problem is the short days in the winter mean less light, of course compensated by the long days in the summer.

Another consideration is battery capacity which drops significantly in extreme temperatures. This could be worked around using geothermal warming if the batteries were buried deep enough since the temperature in earth increases about 1C for every 40M of depth.

Probably true. So would the Australian outback and the Sahara dessert. Except they don`t need electricity there either. Half my hydro bill is delivery charge and that only has to come from Kincardine. How much would I be paying to have arctic solar power delivered to my panel?

Probably true. So would the Australian outback and the Sahara dessert. Except they don`t need electricity there either. Half my hydro bill is delivery charge and that only has to come from Kincardine. How much would I be paying to have arctic solar power delivered to my panel?

You wouldn't. The point of solar isn't huge installations that ship juice across vast distances, but local setups for local use. And the people in the outback love electricity, makes life there bearable. But as Delwin pointed out, above 25 degrees things go south, and the outback gets a lot hotter than that.

Forgot about the winter long nights up north, just when they need juice for lighting, maybe even heating. Probably wouldn't work to try to store enough juice from the summer for that long winter.

You commie! That's like living in Kelowna and griping the grocery store only carries apples from New Zealand and Peruvian peaches, get with the program.
Wait until they get the rules to put solar on your house, feed it into BC Hydro and then buy it back in place! Or you'll end up a miserable old fart like me watching the lambs hopping about across the street and seeing only Aussie lamb in the grocery store!

That seems to be how Nevada saw it, since they destroyed the option for people to have solar on their house if they also wanted big utility electricity for back up. This is where Musk's battery would come in very handy if you life in a high insolation area - store it for when it's needed, tell the grid to fuck off.

That true about the loss of solar panel efficiency in extreme heat. However I think that the greater amount of sunny days in the Mohave desert vs. Canada was the deciding factor in the solar industries decision to concentrate their efforts for rooftop panels in the Mohave desert. That and the outrageous electric bill during the extremely long and hot summer in the desert. Someone with $450 dollar electric bills in the summer is going to be more motivated to install solar panels than someone who does not even own an air conditioner.

What is upsetting me about this story is how the public utilities commissions are not representing the people. They are a government agency. They are supposed to be looking out for the best interests of the citizens, not rubberstamping demands from the huge monopoly utility companies that they are supposed to be keeping in check. In the link that I posted they stated that the public utilities commission passed the measure with a vote of 3 to 0. Three people made this decision? Only three people gets to pass a resolution that screws thousands of homeowners, lays off thousands of workers, and kills off an entire industry. Seriously? Three people? How is that democracy? How is that government of the people, by the people, for the people? These types of decisions should be made by elected officials in the State house who are held accountable by the voters, not political hacks who are juiced into no show jobs by their connections (as in fuck up relatives who cannot keep a job in the private sector).

I read somewhere today that public officials in Michigan are being criminaly charged for the lead contamination cluster fuck. That is the type of response I would like to see in Nevada and Arizona. Criminally investigate these people. Audit their finances. I guarantee these people are living beyond their means. Anyone who knows me, knows that I am no conspiracy nut job. I do not spend my time talking about chemtrails or false flag operations. But I am stating here for the record that these decisions in Nevada and Arizona ARE fraud. These (few people) on these commissions are being paid off by the utility companies in one way or another to kill the solar industry. I live in Nevada and I have yet to meet one person (other than NV Energy spokesmen) who agrees with this decision. We have lost jobs. We have lost tax base. We were on pace to be at the forefront in solar tech. innovation, manufacturing, and installation for North America. Three people get to hold a closed door vote to kill all that? I call major bullshit and then some. The power companies know that if they can cut off the head of the industry in its hometown (where they concentrate the majority of their efforts), the rest of the industry will die without a fight. All those jobs lost. All those manufacturing and installation companies that were welcomed with open arms a few years ago, now being shown the door. All those homeowners screwed by the power company stealing their power (power the homeowner paid out of pocket to produce). All of this has happened because of three people. Three people I never voted for, or against. How fucked up is that?

That all depends. Are you talking about individuals with roof top kits or an actual solar farm?

I ask because the whole 25C argument falls apart when dealing with solar farms since solar farms don't need to use photovoltaic panels to generate power.