Is SolarReserve Just Another Solyndra?

The CEO may not make Solyndr'a mistakes, but the solar energy business is a very dynamic and fast moving risk business.

In other words, there will be plenty of other opportunities to make different mistakes.

Their wholesale cost per kilowatt is 12 cents and that is just a fraction higher than the retail cost per kilowatt. However, they have some interesting ideas.

It will be interesting to see how their molten salt technology is accepted and whether it can compete with China's heavily government subsidized industry.

Sure we should help small companies. Loans are based on solid business plans, and the money must be paid back. They even have advice on securing, (private), venture capitol.

Solyndra was a warning that it never should have been tried in the first place. Giving away huge sums of money in the form of guaranteed loans, (free money), to people that are big political donors, to push forward a private company, based on a political agenda, is crony capitalism and political corruption on display. People should be in jail, along with the possible impeachment of a President.

sounds like the railroad carpetbaggers of the 1840's and 50's. Giving huge sums of money in the form of " public land " , and then letting the poorly built and run trains go bankrupt. They couldn't lose.

ugh

government bad

free market good

GA and thanks for the insight. I'll be keeping my eye on this.

I'm still grappling with the fact that the US government feels the need to use tax dollars to build, prop up, or bail out private entities that find themselves unable to compete in the free market.

Regardless, when the congress passed the DOE Loan Guarnatee program, they included budgeted expected failures of $2.5 billion (out of $40 billion in loan guarnatees). That's reasonable planning so not sure what all the concern is on a 1-2% failure rate.

Where are the winners?

My concern is based on the fact that we're broke. Regardless of what the idiots in congress decide, we're still paying for these things with freshly printed or borrowed money...........................this is unsustainable. Every dollar that we throw away is a big deal.

I suspect that you are somehow tied to SolarReserve and picked this up on a google search. The proof is in the pudding...................I'm not going to retract my GA, but I can promise you......................it's not going to take too many Solyndras, before the taxpayers start looking for blood. Hell, there are a bunch of "occupy", brain dead zombies, just looking for the next place to camp out. The government also claims to be behind them.

Good Luck.

Thanks AH.

I tend to get emotionally involved. When I think about Solyndra, I think about a handful of people that rode off into the sunset, knowing that the next 2-3 generations of their offspring would be just fine financially. I also imagine the people that scrub their toilets, wash their cars, clean their pools, etc., paying into the tax system that made it all possible.

I'm quite sure that the founders of Solyndra found the failure rate to be quite acceptable.

There is no real free market in energy. Can you spell O-P-E-C.

I hate to be the one country to play it straight and get left burning our furniture to heat our homes. This is a national security issue more important than the military (I assume your view is let's go free market on military protection as well and just buy it from the cheapest solution even if it's from the Middle East or China if they can do it cheaper?).

All forms of energy receive subsidies in the US and other countries , including oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear. And they have recieved these subsidies for decades at 100x what renewables are receiving. The nuclear industry would die today without the US government covering for the catastrophic insurance requirements (yes, we taxpayers pay to insure against a Fukishima here, admittedly highly unlikely). We have a long term energy problem in the US that we dealing with by short term decisions (like what's the price of oil today).

We spend $500 billion per year on imported oil. We spent $200 billion on the advanced aircraft carrier program (before the program was scrapped) in order to try and protect our interest in the gulf.

That's what's making us broke.The problem isn't Solyndra ($500 million is 8 hours worth of imported oil).

We need to find a better solution. Germany's long term political mandate from both parties is 85% renewables by 2050. They have 4 times the solar power we have and they are 1/4 the popoulation, plus they have the soalr resource of Alaska (really).

By 2050 oil will no doubt be at $500 per barrel and we'll be paying $2.5 trillion per year on imported oil. Game over.

You are absolutely correct, but please don't use Germany as an example of how we should be doing things.

We destroyed them, we rebuilt them, and now we provide the defense that allows them to spend that kind of money, (per capita), on renewables. Lots of country's defense budgets are being paid for by the American taxpayer. Let's lose them....................they don't like us anyway, let them defend themselves. People that threaten us will be destroyed within 48 hours.

We're wandering into a different subject here, but I'm all for withdrawing defense and money from all but our staunchest allies. Bye Bye, we're going to be using the money we were giving to you to build solar farms in the US. Why not?

There should only be two kind of subsidies:

1.subsidies to maintain basis necessities even in times of crisis. These activities may never become economically competitive. Even in that case, checks and balances have to be in place for avoid wasting money (and creating intimate circles of corruption) such subsidies may be used to maintain sufficient agricultural activity to be able to nourish the population in case imports are restricted due to a major crisis.

2. Seed subsidies to give new, desirable technologies a possibility to enter a competitive market. In that case the set up of all subsidies has to aim at growing the new technology out of the subsidies as quick as possible. ( I think the Germans did and are doing a good job on their feed in tariffs (FIT). With the degressive tariffs the renewable energy industry gets subsidized at ever larger quantities of power as long as the industry becomes cheaper. Ultimately, the subsidy eliminates itself when degression has reached market prices. ). The only sorry thing is that the rest of the world does not play along and the Germans are effectively subsidizing this progress all over the world at the cost of the cost of their own renewable energy industry.

I prefere the FIT squeem to loans and quaranties. Loans and quaranties first of all predefined which solutions will get a shot at commercialization. Especially in new technologies it is all but predictable what will turn out to be the best solution so the playing field should not be limited to the few chosen (Solyndra) who share the cake while the rest doesn't get the chance. Second, loans and quaranties are the gateway to corruption. They effectively take the risk out of the equation for the owner (who in that case can hardly be called investor). You can be sure, he will cash in on good salaries,and potential early earnings and he won't give a damn once bancrupcy strikes. These owners are a little group of well connected people. It defies the idea of equality and the symmetry of information, two basic pillars of a fee market and of democracy. The owners/investors are out for large profits. Let them bare the big risk! Let them have to compete with other alternatives ( yet another principal of a working market).

by using a FIT, the state defines the potential earnings and limits them to a reasonable profit. Knowing that there is a halfway predictable FIT, financing a factory for renewable energies becomes no more difficult than financing any other kind of factory project. The residual risk is well within what an entrepreneur is used to handling.

____

off topic: if the US had taken a similar approach in the middle east as after WW2 in Germany instead of constantly destabilizing the region to maintain their access to oil at gunpoint, you would have saved trillions on military expenses over the oil age. Just imagine what could have been done with that money.

As for the historical comparison, Germany should have taught us a great deal: after WW1 Germany was kept down and under control. It resented the allies (just like the arabic nationalists do nowadays in the middle east) and gave rise to the extremistic nationalistic nazi party which focused its technological potential on preparing war with radical and usually racist ideologies against the oppressors ( just like the US government wants to make us believe these days about Iran and ten years ago about Irak), they feel treat them as inferiors. The similarity is truly striking!

After WW2 instead the Marshall plan aimed at stabilizing a democratic and healthy nation that could sustain itself. Because there were no resources worth billions there was little motivation for alliances with corrupt power players who would not ever bring their country forward for the good of the population. Germany is today one of the most important countries in the world and definitely has one of the highest productivities per capita and a good quality of life for the large majority of the population. They may not be special fans of the US but there is no hatred of the US either. And that to a large extend because they have the freedom, stability and security to shape their individual opinions, instead of having a collective enemy.

no us soldier needs to patrol western Europe for US or European safety.

Thanks for the well written post Tompa.

I may be wrong, but from what I'm seeing, Germany is running the risk, (much like the US), of becoming victims of their own success. They have provided massive amounts of bailout money to Greece, but Greece does not have a viable plan in place to fix the mess they are in, much less pay the money back. Not just Greece either..............the list goes on.

Again, I may be wrong, but it seems as if the EU is waiting for Santa Claus, and Germany has pluncked a lot of money on the table in expectations of that day to arrive. I don't see it coming. Please correct me if I'm wrong.................I could use some good news.

Aside from kicking the can up the road, how are these countries going to avoid economic collapse?

Bear in mind we export almost oil as we import from the Mid East!

The reason we do not use our on oil is because we can sell it for more than what we pay for it elsewhere.

We could almost completely shut off our import of Mid East oil if we simply decide to break contracts with sales and we were willing to, as citizens, to pay higher costs.

We could also go solar, wind, and other green energy sources if we were willing to pay much higher prices for energy. People do not want to tap higher prices.

So, until you provide a solution that is about the same cost the public is saying "No Sale!" to your face.

As I wrote before, Germany is not going to be energy independent. They are negotiating with Russia right now to supply their energy needs and this will come at great political cost in the end. Germany is the economic engine of the EU and drives EU policies. Russia will have a significant investment in that political power and the ability to influence the EU because of it.

We will have to see how this plays out. There is a price for everything and just because you can attach the word "Green" to everything does not mandate that roses will bloom.

EnergyInsight:

You are evidently using the same misguided logic that many other in this country use regarding the part that imported (or domestic) oil plays in the production of electrical energy here. Burning oil contributes a miniscule share of the electrical energy production in this country. Natural gas, on the other hand, is the source of about 25% of the electricity generated in FY 2010 (see chart).

Further, your comments regarding the subsidization of the various sources of energy fuels are way off. The accompaning chart is very informative and its data is from a recognized source of factual energy-related information. While subsidy amounts may have varied in the past, they are not represenatative of the parts that the renewable resources played as they had not been widely used then. What is important is to consider the current levels of government subsidies with respect to the fraction of energy that is produced by each of them respectively. The chart indicates that, in FY 2010, solar received subsidies, per unit produced, that were over 1,200 times those provided to either coal or natural gas.

In a monthly editorial by the editor of "Power Magazine" in the December, 2011 issue, there is a scientific and fact-based analysis of the potential economic effect to Germany as the result of its plan to shut down all of its nuclear generating facilities by 2022. This analysis suggests, very conservatively, that the average cost of electricity in Germany in 2020 will be more than 6 times the same cost in the US at that time. I wonder how that will affect the industries and populace there. I'll bet that the very same people who were the most vocal in pursuading the German government to enact such an ill-conceived plan will be the first to squeal and will squeal the loudest when those realities become evident.

The accompanying chart comes from another monthly editorial in "Power Magazine" and there are numerous other articles that I believe should be read by anyone who is truly interested in facts and scientific research and commentary, rather than the hip-shooting that is prevalent in most social commentary today.

Sorry about the chart alignment. I couldn't get the 'Solar' row to stay in the body of the chart.

Unless I am completely wrong about the US subsidy scheme there is a major logical error in the interpretation of the table:

the US subsidizes the installation of solar power. Once installed there is little to no additional cost and lifetime should be superior to 25years. However, the number given in the graph divides the subsidies given for 2010 projects (which have not produced a considerable amount of their service life energy yet) divided by the net production in 2010 (so the production of all projects which did not touch subsidies in 2010).

so that number seems a shot from the hips to me (sorry, you know you kind of had that one comming ;-). )

consider that the US solar market is growing (installation in 2010 was double the installation of 2009 and about the same as the cumulative power installed prior) and considering that this year's subsidies have to be offset by about 25 years I calculate an estimated current subsidies for this emerging energy is about (775.64/25/2=) 16$/MWh.(as a comparison, the FIT scheme in Germany would subsidize the MWh of solar with about 10-20times that amount. So yes, solar gets little support so far in the states)

this is for an emerging technology, not for subsidizing the existing old stuff that is dominating the market with tax money, so that taxpayers pay less for electricity (?). Subsidies should be limited to what we want to promote, don't you agree?

as for oil not being a large part of electric production, that is certainly true in most places. However, ultimately there is an energy market that becomes ever more electrified. The only reason for the price premium on oil compared to gas or coal that I can find is how practical oil is for Mobil applications. This argument however only stays valid as long as the actual availability of fossil energy is not in question. When resources get scarse gas prices will spike again quickly (they have already been at 4time the current US price level).

I agree in one thing with you - and that even though I am no fan of nuclear power - the German political roadmap for such a quick exit from nuclear is ludicrous. Especially because the only alternative for grid stability is putting up a lot of CO2 producing and Russia depending gas turbines. I am convinced that whoever wins the next election or the one after that will just change their mind again on that.

renewables have to be pushed, but reasonably and realistically. The train is moving, help it accelerate but don't expect it to be from the east cost to the pacific before tomorrow morning.

Anonymous Hero,

I hate to break the news to you, but there is no such thing as "our oil". Oil is privately drilled and all oil is sold at "world oil" prices. "We" don't selectively sell oil at high prices and buy cheap Mid East oil prices. The oil drillers on US soil and offshore US water are US and international companies that have contractual rights and pay a lease fee to the US. Unless we nationalize (like Venezuela or others crazy countries) "we" have no control of oil prices. When oil prices go to $500/bbl that's exactly what we'll pay unless we have the military take over the oil wells on US areas.

As for renewable energy prices, solar and wind are much cheaper than building new nuclear or clean coal by far (even after conventional energy has received decades of subsidies and still do). Brazil's recent all sources bidding awarded most of the power generation to wind over natural gas. NG prices are cheap now in the US, but a one fuel strategy is dangerous as NG is a historically very volitile fuel so escalation is likely (especially if we look to convert transporation).

If you don't like Germany as an example (maybe some old WWII vets out there), how about China, Brazil, South Africa, Canada, and most everybody else including even Suadi Arabia has announced a large scale solar plan. They all see the long term risk of energy prices and oils limititations over the next 25 years and we seem happy to look for that fast "hit" acheived by the "drill baby drill" crowd. Talk about wasting billions of subsidies to boost the profits of oil companies - paid in tax breaks and tax credits. Wake up man, don't blame the entreprenuers. Your solution is really drill???

You wrote, "Oil is privately drilled and all oil is sold at "world oil" prices. "We" don't selectively sell oil at high prices and buy cheap Mid East oil prices."

I don't think that is quite true. Contracts exist for what is called oil futures, for one example. The prices for those purchases are already set and do not float with the current price of oil. The game is more complex than simply some "world oil" price that dynamically swings.

My understanding on this is somewhat limited, but I do know that sellers and buyers set contracts and prices for those contracts. I would imagine that with any contract that there may be room for adjustments, but it is not like you or I going to the gas pump and paying current market value for gas.

For that matter, even retail sales work under contract. An example would be a deal with your home fuel company to buy heating oil for your home late in the summer or "promise" to buy X amount of oil for your winter heating at a somewhat reduced price via contract.

Right now buying solar plants is a losing proposition. They simply are not cost effective. Even the solar salt plant in Nevada produces electricity at a wholesale cost that is above the average resale price.

The only way for that plant (and any other solar plants) to make a profit is for resale prices to go up considerably.

Long term this will work out (assuming some other technology doesn't butt in), but not in today's economy. For that matter, the effort that China and others are putting into solar will help make that more profitable at their expense and not so much ours.

Solar plants are much easier/faster to build and bring on line than nuclear, so letting the technology mature before diving in, particularly when there are others willing to pay those development costs, just makes it cheaper for us.

Lastly, everyone thinks solar and wind are the end of all our energy problems. That is totally false. Everything has its price and there is nothing that is anything near perfect out there. Everyone also naively thinks that energy is simply fruit they can pick off trees at their desire and it belongs to the people. It is not and it is tightly regulated by governments for geopolitical power. That will never change.

Week, the more photovoltaic kicks in, the less geopolitical games will need to be played for energy reasons.

and you are forgetting another point. Often solar is criticized for not being available at any time of the day and year. This medal however has another side. Especially in hot climates, the peak power consumption is usually quite well in accordance with the solar irradiation. Nowadays, the electricity around noon in summer is quite a lot more expensive than average wholesale prices. In other words, in many regions of the world, solar does not have to compete with the average wholesale price on aberage but a price that is quite a lot higher.

You wrote, "Week, the more photovoltaic kicks in, the less geopolitical games will need to be played for energy reasons."

Never in the history of man has energy or resources been decoupled from their rulers or governments.

There is no reason to believe that solar will ever change that because government will always find ways to regulate it.

I never mentioned the point of solar not being available 24/7, 365 days a year. The problem with solar is when it is available it still costs more than current kW/hr prices.

If that were to change I would gladly be on my roof installing solar panels out the wahoo. Even with our government subsidizing 50% of the cost it will take me 15 to 20 years just to pay off solar with the savings it provides and I live in Florida! By that time the efficiency of the panels will be lower and probably obsolete anyway.

Those same dollars put into financial investments would buy a small house in the same amount of time if wisely invested.

My only criticism of solar is that it doesn't make financial sense today. When the price comes way down that will probably change, but right now it represents a financial loss per kW/hr.

The only exception I see is for emergency power and I have been considering a few panels to provide emergency power for select reasons. However, I think there is going to be a good reason to wait because newer technology is on the horizon that will bring down the cost a little.

Be careful to rule out solar because of a particular case. Roof top mounted installations are not the cheapest way for solar. It will still take a while until we reach grid parity on that. However, on utility scale projects in southern regions it is becoming really interesting from a purely economic point of view.

you are right, that new technologies will surely make it more interesting for a home owner to buy future panels than the ones now. However, if you are better off in the financial market is a big question mark. What has been your profit over the past 10years? The average investor has lost money in that time. If you consider how much money has been poured into the market since this current crisis started, you ultimately have to wonder when inflation will kick in. It is very difficult to make money in the financial markets once a strong inflation kicks in and it erodes the money you have saved for those future panels. My bet is not in the financial market until the system has been healed.

you earlier mentioned the futures. Futures are tradable, so even if it represents a fixed contract price, this contract can then be sold on the market. Further, all marketed deals such a large quantity of futures that it effectively becomes a completely variable price, especially if you look at a time horizon of years, instead of days.

PS the first word in my last post was supposed to be a "well". Neither my spelling nor my typing is perfect and the iPads word guessing does the rest ;-)

The comparison is overall value. Constraining oneself to the cheapest (at the moment) and dirtiest source of energy is why we have a medium and long term energy problem.

As an example, the Nevada solar project price is slightly above retail prices TODAY, but has fixed contractual escalation of 1% per year for 25 years. How do you think conventional energy - oil, natural gas, nuclear, coal will escalate over the next 25 years (nukes are already out based on price)? And what about the other costs that are not included in the "electricity price" such as pollution effects on health care costs, military costs to protect our overseas oil concerns, water use (the Nevada project uses just 20% of the water that a convention fueled project uses), energy security, etc, etc.

So truly, you really believe the answer is more drilling? Great news for our friends in the Middle East. We now import more than 50% of our oil. Everytime we start to look at alternatives the prices go down to just enough to temp us back to our crack habit. If drill more oil is the best we can come up with we are destined to deeper dependency on imports, more instability in energy markets, and a future as a nation on it's back foot while others like Germany, China, India and Brazil step forward into the future. Over and out.

Your thinking short term like most others on this narrow minded conversation. Subsidies provided this year or last year for wind and solar can't be compared with 50 or 100 years of subsides provided to other mature, fully developed trillion dollar industries. Also realize that the solar project being built in Nevada that started this conversation is Unit number 1 - doesn't seem so uncompetivie when compared with 40 or 50 years of develping nukes and gas turbine projects. Costs will come down as shown in the PV market. PV is now beating all other fuels except natural gas and very competitive with natural gas. California's recent RFP has PV priced at 7.5 cents/kwh. Xcel in Colorado signed a major wind contract in 2011 with Nextera at 3.0 cents/kwh. Both of these are at fixed 1 or 2% escalation and not tied to volatile fuel escalation factors. These are current market numbers not some archaic study by a bunch of engineers (yes, I'm a PE as well). A GTCC with current natural gas prices will be priced in the 8 to 9 cents (I've built and financed 50 of 'em) but fuel escalates at natural gas prices for the next 25 years. Where will nat gas be in 10 years? 20 years? A lot higher than now if we gas dominates new build power generation and is used for transportation.

Natural gas is being touted to replace oil for transportation. Electricity is being phased in to replace oil for transportation. The energy markets for transportation and electricty will converge, and are already. That's a tired argument that oil isn't used for electricity generation. Think outside the box, man.

These tea party arguments are detrimental to US progress as the rest of the world blows by the US in advancing their energy markets and technology innovation. We can sit stagnant and watch or try and get our share of markets and manufacturing. Guess you guys are too stagnant for progressive energy ideas. I assume your still on dial up internet - it is cheaper.

In order to shed more light on PV competitivity maybe someone can answer this question for me about cost discrepancies. I took it to a separate forum spot. http://cr4.globalspec.com/thread/74969/PV-price-discrepancies I appreciate any information on the subject.

I am actively involved in bidding utility scale PV projects, both in the US and internationally and have acces to both US and Chinese panel pricing. US manufacturers (First Solar and SunPower mainly) are chasing the Chinese prices but they have to meet the market.

Panel prices are under $1.00 per watt and more like $0.90/watt. Fully installed prices are in the $2.00 to $2.20 range. This results in delivered kilowatt prices of less than 10 cents per kwh in high solar areas in the US like California, Arizona, New Mexico.

Obviously prices have dropped dramatically over the last three years. Future prices are expected to continue to trend downward.

CSP or Solar Thermal (like the SolarReserve project are higher), but the SolarReserve project has 10 hours of energy storage allowing firm energy supply in peak hours even after the sun goes down. Nevada's peak is more like 12 noon to 10PM.

In response to a previous comment about the nuclear shut down in Germany. Agree it's a bit dramatic, US fleet is very safe and reliable. But I traveled to Germany recently. Quotes from senior utility and financial execs is that public opposition to nuclear is "ferocious" with 80% public opinion calling for shutdowns - even if prices go up. Expectations are a change in government will not change that position.

That $1 per Watt figure is not for residential, I assume. I have not seen anything close to that for my home, even if I DIY. I keep waiting.

Even hitting grid parity is not going to start a sunshine rush, but in Florida FPL is building 3 plants for a total of 110 mW. That will power about 11,000 homes in Florida, but we have orders of magnitude more homes (nearly 8 million!) in the state.

For us one issue is land use. You are essentially taking out a lot of land area for a small amount of electrical output. All the green stuff that normally grows there and helps remove CO2 is substituted with silicon.

There are a few different issues involved

centralized vs distributed generation, reducing transmission losses increases efficiency. rooftop residential solar would seem to be a distributed way to reduce peak load on the larger grid. the land use issue is greatly mitigated

there are companies that will lease the equipment for a solar installation, while this may not be the best ROI, it can be a way to reduce upfront costs

I'm assuming you are referring to

http://www.fpl.com/news/2008/062508b.shtml

of course a utility would favor large centralized generation plants, it's what they do & how they make their money.

the question of what is the most efficient way overall to provide power is not within their business plan

Anonymous hero,

The panel pricing at $1.00 a watt is getting there for residential (retail markups and all, make it higher). Total installed costs are much higher due to much smaller projects versus large utility PV projects plus more complicated roof installations on residntial versus large ground mounted systems.

The land area is a weak argument for a number of reasons. Many studies have shown that the actual area required for a coal plant (facility plus coal storage, plus buffer area, plus mining operations to feed the facility) are actually equivalent to a large solar power plant (ignoring the equivalent land degraded from polution). Even if the numbers are slanted one way or the other, they are not order of magnitudes out. Regardless, lack of land is not really an issue for the US in the desert southwest (if you've ever driven between Las Vegas and Reno, or in the California deserts). Vast unused lands with millions and million of unused acres drenched by the sun. An accurate metric is that you can power 100% of the entire US demand with solar installed in a square area 100 miles on a side (obviously will take some transmission restructuring, but that's not the point of the example). That's about 9% of the state of Nevada - a state that is 80%+ federal lands that are largely unused. The other part of solar, the rooftop model, needs no incremental land just better utilization of rooftops and parking lots. Stay tuned, this isn't going to go away.

Google 'Saudi Arabia solar' and you will see big announcements from then in the last 24 hours on their soalr program. Even the largest oil producing nation recognizes they are running out and need to conserve to extend the party. In meetings with senior government official, they put their oil party at anohter 25 or 30 years before significant degradation. $500/barrel oil here we come, it's just a question of how soon.

The land use is still an issue until the coal plants or whatever are retired and the land allowed to return to its normal succession. Meanwhile, these new solar plants in Florida are new sites that being cleared.

It is difficult to really see the true cost (in dollars and environmental impact) because studies for any form of energy production fail to take into consideration the upfront costs and environmental impacts, transportation, etc.

Nevertheless, the point of that argument is not so much to debunk solar, but to at least raise the issue of the total picture, which is never presented in any argument.

It's never fully addressed with any type of power generation. We still don't have a solution to the nuclear waste issue, but are continuing to stockpile it. Ontario actually did a study on the estimated cost for the government (per person) on health care and lives lost due to pollution from coal plants. I can't remember the results, but it was signifcant (Ontario is well into a full shutdown on their cola plants).

The frustrating part is that in the last 5 years energy has become partisan politics more than any other time - why? The dems support renewables, the repubs coal, nuclear and oil - so nothing gets done. How is that good public policy? Energy solutions and advancement should truly be a bipartisan issue.

You wrote, "The frustrating part is that in the last 5 years energy has become partisan politics more than any other time - why?"

Sadly, this has been going on longer than 5 years.

The latest battle is not simply coal/oil vs renewable energy. The issues is deeper than that by a wide margin.

It should be obvious that we should not be doing only one or the other, however, the subject is often cast that way. Ideally there has to be a balance between going away from petroleum based energy to a more "sustainable" means.

The real issue at the bottom of the energy well is power. Not ergs or Watts, but political power. In the case of partisan politics, each side simply sings what they believe will get them the most votes. Neither side really gives a rat's @ss about what is really good or bad as much as what sustains and grows their power.

Of course there is always a dash of idealism thrown in the mix just for good measure, but the driving force behind renewable energy, climate change, gun control, health care, or whatever, is political power.

Most of us would rather believe in altruism on the Hill, but the reality is there is very little of that going around in political circles. Perhaps we are at an all-time low in that regard.

Is it any wonder why many people (here and other places) are so cynical about these political footballs? The subjects are so muddled in political horse poop that it is impossible to tell truth from pretense.

When that happens people either give up or radically polarize to one political pole or another. Those that tend to highly polarize are often called Useful Idiots.

Well, the debate has been fun anyway.

All the best,

Kevin Smith - CEO, SolarReserve

HI Kevin,

"SolarReserve's CEO swears that his company won't make Solyndra's mistakes" suddenly gets a more personal touch :-)

I sure hope you keep contributing your grain of salt on CR4. It is from expert knowledge like your's that these forums truly profit!

I for my part am on my way to Saudi Arabia For my next job for the reasons mentioned in this thread. It is a small world :-)

Thanks for taking the time to respond. Generally, CEOs are working many, many more hours than most would believe (ask me how I know) and your time is very, very valuable.

It has been a good debate and I am sure all of us have appreciated your insight.

SolarReserve's approach looks like it may be a good one in that it takes advantage of the ability to store solar energy off hours without batteries. I wish you success in your venture.

Thanks. I saw the google alert for this blog and couldn't resist. Yes, the hours are crazy, my wife can attest.

As I stated in the beginning, the SolarReserve project in Nevada won a 25 year contract to sell 100% of its output to the Nevada utility. That secures the revenue source for the project and secures the DOE loan guarnatee - plus about $300 million in interest payments due in addition to the loan repayment. That's a completely different model and risk profile than the Solyndra manufacturing facility. Most of the DOE loan guarnatees are for projects with similar models.

2012 will be an interesting year for energy in general, let alone renewables. My fear is that the US policy will continue to lag the rest of the world as congress remains frozen during the presidential election season. Hopefully, post election, whoever wins, we can plot a course that makes some sense as a nation.

If only Pres Obama would have done energy policy before health care, we might be in a different position.

Not sure I will be following CR4, but I may monitor from time to time.

Well, politics, for the most part, jumps on whichever wagon has the most attention. Health care was mostly an agenda for this president (my business partner is also an MD and is not very impressed with the results - I digress...).

;-)

Not bad. How much effort went into the proposal?