Benefits Of Solar Panels Questioned In Study
Portland, OR February 21, 2008 8:51 a.m.
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downloadScientists in California released a study this week saying the cost of residential solar panels outweighs their benefits.
The findings are a PR setback for Oregon’s blooming photovoltaics industry.
But as Kristian Foden-Vencil reports, many of those businesses say the financial cost isn’t the only important aspect of generating power -- carbon emissions and pollution also need to be considered.
Over the last few years, Oregon has attracted over a billion dollars worth of investments in solar energy.
Companies like Solaicx and Solar World have set up factories here. They like Oregon’s ‘renewable energy’ tax breaks, its relatively cheap electricity, and its workforce, which is well-acquainted with silicon wafers – the material used in both computer chips and solar cells.
But, UC Berkeley's Severin Borenstein now says consumers are throwing money away if they install the current solar panel technology on their homes.
Severin Borenstein: “On a public policy basis, the money that the government and consumers pour into installing solar PV, could produce a lot more renewable energy going into other alternatives like wind power and central station solar -- those big mirror stations in the desert -- and geothermal and biomass and most importantly energy efficiency. On the consumer side, you can do a calculation of whether over the life of the panels it’s going to save enough money to pay for the panels.”
He says in the vast majority of cases residential solar doesn’t make financial sense. You end up spending about 29 cents per kilowatt hour – much more than wind power, and far more than the 10 cents per kilowatt hour coal power costs.
John Sedgwick is the co-founder of one of Oregon’s newest photovoltaic companies, Solaicx.
He's attending a conference in New York this week on the price of solar power. He concedes that there are cheaper alternatives to solar power. But he says, costs are dropping fast as new mass production techniques are developed.
John Sedgwick: “The activities around cost production are substantial and will be coming on line very soon.”
UC Berkeley's Severin Borenstein says it's true that looking only at finances misses the point. But he says wind power is more efficient than solar and has the same environmental benefits.
He says more research needs to be done into Big Solar -- to find a better and cheaper alternative to silicon photovoltaic cells.
So the question for Borenstein and other is: What’s a person who wants to reduce their carbon footprint to do?
Severin Borenstein: “None of the technologies for generating you own electricity make much sense. What you can do on an individual basis, is improve the efficiency with which you use electricity. And that means better insulation, that means replacing that 10-year-old fridge with one that uses a lot less power. It means making sure that you don’t have a lot of appliances that are unnecessarily draining power etcetera. Those are the things that people can do really do very easily to reduce their use of electricity.”
During the energy crisis of the 70's, Americans cut their energy use dramatically, simply by conserving energy.
The federal government reduced speed limits and newspapers printed cut-outs to tape to light switches saying “Last out, Lights Out: don’t be Fuelish.”
© 2008 OPB
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