Portland’s TriMet transit agency is spending more than $370,000 to install solar panels on a downtown building. This will initially save the agency less than $3,700 a year, and even if the savings increase over time, when interest is counted there will be something close to a 100-year payback period.
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TriMet is doing this because it had the money left over after building a light-rail line to Clackamas, Oregon. It’s not like it could have returned the money to the taxpayers, or at least spent it on improved bus service or something that has an actual transportation benefit. In Portland, image is far more important than reality.
None of the articles explain how many kilowatts the facility will produce on average. Using the data they provide and after doing the arithmetic, the installation might produce an average of 7.64 kilowatts. That works out to a cost of $48,430 per installed kilowatt of power.
If you figure the installation will run at that efficiency for thirty years, even without repairs or maintenance, each kilowatt hour will cost you an average of 18.5 cents. There are always repairs and maintenance and solar panels decline in efficiency over time, thus the cost will certainly be higher.
Unless the cost of electricity rises above 18.5 cents a kilowatt hour for a sustained period, this installation will never ever, ever, ever break even.
There must be a kickback in there somewhere because that price is much, much too high.
DS
The other thing to consider is insurance. If TriMet doesn’t self insure and they purchase insurance instead then the premiums on such a structure are going to be significantly higher than a structure not clad with solar panels. I sell insurance on the Gulf Coast and I have a fair amount of experience with how carriers treat unusual exposures like this. A premium that represents one percent or more of the replacement cost would not be atypical for such an out of the ordinary insurance exposure. I would guess that TriMet would pay $3000 or more in additional premium to insure the panels. That pretty much devours any supposed savings.
Dan, I am not sure what price you are referring to. I take an interest in alternative energy and I like to figure the cost per installed kilowatt of projects I read about. Fifty thousand per installed kilowatt is in the low range for solar projects.
Jardinero, you’re right: I’m sufficiently caffeinated and used a calculator this time. Apologies. That price is right in there these days. I presume with the lower solar resource you guys don’t have Power Purchase Agreements there, which would eliminate the installed cost?
DS
Dan, In all parts of Texas but El Paso, electrical power distribution and sale is differently regulated than other states. The power lines are maintained by a regulated servicer. Where I live, it is called CenterPoint. The servicer does not produce any power and solely maintains the lines and meters. The servicer charges a toll to power providers who use the lines.
Electricity is purchased from a myriad of providers, each with different rates and touting different benefits to the consumer. Some of these providers are pure brokers buying and selling power using Power Purchase Agreements. Other providers offer a mix of their own production and brokered power.
Dan, You might enjoy this. It’s the PR website for electric consumers in Texas. Type a Houston zip like 77006 to get some idea of rates and variety and then try a dallas zip like 75211
http://www.powertochoose.org/_content/_compare/compare.aspx
Jardinero, forgot you lived down there. That’s a cool website, didn;t know that, thanks! More things to think about now, especially wrt smart grids…
DS
That’s just the beginning of pissed away money. Portland (or Oregon in general ) isn’t exactly the solar mother load. After the Solyndra failure and continuing investigation as to what happened with the nearly 500 million dollar infusion of federal cash, you’d think government would be more weary of tampering with the energy market. Yet in March 20, 2009, the United States Department of Energy made a “conditional commitment” to a 535 million dollar loan guarantee to support Solyndra’s construction of a commercial-scale manufacturing plant for its solar panels. Solyndra also received a 25.1 million dollar tax break from California’s Alternative Energy and Advanced Transportation Financing Authority, whatever the hell that is, only 198 million came from private investors. Market conditions were cited, with conventional solar modules manufactured in China by low-cost producers such as Suntech and Yingli offering stiff competition. In September, Solyndra was raided by the FBI investigating the company. A program director at the Government Accountability Office, had found that the preliminary loan approval had been granted before officials had completed the legally mandated evaluations of the company, they didn’t even bother to investigate the company properly before giving out the loan. Among 143 companies that had expressed an interest in getting a loan guarantee, Solyndra was the first one to get approval. The company reportedly spent nearly $1.8 million on lobbying during the period the loan guarantee was under review. Solyndra had used some of the loan money to purchase new equipment which it never used, and then sold that new equipment, still in its plastic wrap, for pennies on the dollar. Former Solyndra engineer Lindsey Eastburn told the Washington Post, “After we got the loan guarantee, they were just spending money left and right”.
Ah, the right’s new bogeyman.
DS
There’s a new kind of solar panel that comes on a roll like wallpaper. When that gets sold, solar power will be the bargain of the age – but at the moment…
There must be a kickback in there somewhere because that price is much, much too high.
Well, the linked article did say that the solar panel producer was a local company.
The whole thing is really insane. Imagine justifying a capital project with a payback period of 100 years — assuming no maintenance and no interest. This is your government, though, the steward of your hard-earned tax dollars.
The Antiplanner wrote:
TriMet is doing this because it had the money left over after building a light-rail line to Clackamas, Oregon. It’s not like it could have returned the money to the taxpayers, or at least spent it on improved bus service or something that has an actual transportation benefit. In Portland, image is far more important than reality.
Randal, is it possible that there is some quantifiable air quality benefit to this project? I realize that the Pacific Northwest receives much of its power from zero-emission hydroelectric dams in the Columbia River watershed, but (presumably) some of it comes from fossil-fuel-fired generating stations.
Please understand that I am not in any way condoning what Tri-Met did, but sometimes tax dollars are spent in very strange ways when justified by “it will improve regional air quality.”
Jardinero1 wrote:
Dan, In all parts of Texas but El Paso, electrical power distribution and sale is differently regulated than other states. The power lines are maintained by a regulated servicer. Where I live, it is called CenterPoint. The servicer does not produce any power and solely maintains the lines and meters. The servicer charges a toll to power providers who use the lines.
That’s essentially the system now used in Maryland’s (deregulated) electricity market.
Electricity is purchased from a myriad of providers, each with different rates and touting different benefits to the consumer. Some of these providers are pure brokers buying and selling power using Power Purchase Agreements. Other providers offer a mix of their own production and brokered power.
Same here.
I just would love to purchase our power from a firm that offers 100% of its power from a combination of zero-emission nuclear generation, hydropower (somewhat unusual in much of the East), wind and solar.
Wow, Danny Boy’s new wet dream is Germany because Germany is the most profitable place for solar energy today.
A community college kid might think that is tough for Germany to have a solar energy industry because Germany is at a far northern latitude with very cloudy weather. But people who can use Google know that solar power relevance has nothing to do with the sun, but instead is just a product of planners and huge government subsidies.
Danny Boy’s new wet dream
…is mostly anything that’s anti progress, anti-auto, anti “carbon” based fuels. Like a good little boy, Danny is parroting everything they “taught” him at “school”, and continuing “edumacation” courtesy of the Daily Kos.
Solar panels have a very low power density, which means you need a huge array of them in order to get much of anything out of them… at a price that is going to be at least five times as much as you would pay for hydro or nuclear. Germany may be one of the largest solar providers in Europe, as a whole provides 2 percent of it’s power. In Germany they’re paying 50 to 70 cents a kilowatt hour. It’s the same in Spain and France. They’ve been pouring all these billions of Euros down a rat hole to get almost no electricity at and exorbitant price. Since they’ve shut down eight of their nuclear plants, Germany is now instantly becoming an electricity importer, ironically buying nuclear electricity from France. They’re importing three billion euros worth of electricity from France every year, and pretending they don’t like nuclear energy. At the same time, they’ve decided to phase out their remaining nine nuclear power plants by 2022. The truth is Germany is already nearing completion of 13 Gigawatts (the equivalent of about 13 nuclear plants) of fossil fuel plants, mainly coal-fired, and is planning to build an additional 10 Gigawatts of fossil fuel plants (equivalent to another 10 nuclear plants) to make up for the lost nuclear energy they otherwise would have had. Germany intends to terminate it’s nuclear power use. The renewable energy is basically just window dressing to cover the fact that Germany is planning to replace clean, non-carbon emitting nuclear energy with polluting, intensive carbon emitting coal plants. Despite having a policy to reduce their CO2 emissions by 40 percent by 2020, it’s going to increase by 40 percent if anything thanks in part to the loads of coal plants they intend to build. Some 10 GW of thermal power generating capacity needs to be built in Germany by 2020 in addition to capacity already under construction to ensure a healthy reserve margin, the German government indicated in its decision Monday to close all the country’s nuclear power stations by 2022. Highly contradictory statements compared to what Greenpeace said regarding Germany leading the way to a cleaner energy future. Why is Greenpeace helping Germany with the deception that Germany will “shift away from coal fueled power plants†and claiming that this will help Germany to achieve a 40% reduction in “carbon pollution†by 2020. It might be because Germany is one of Greenpeace’s biggest source of funding and that Greenpeace wishes the public to think this is a great victory for the environmental movement. Greenpeace is just as stupid, just as uneducated, just as undisciplined.
at a price that is going to be at least five times as much as you would pay for hydro or nuclear
Solar wholesale went cheaper than nuke in 2010, most projections today have solar at grid parity by ~2020 or so.
…is mostly anything that’s anti progress, anti-auto, anti “carbon†based fuels.
Why do they continue to lie? What’s in it for them to blatantly lie?
DS
Solar wholesale went cheaper than nuke in 2010, most projections today have solar at grid parity by ~2020 or so.
Ahh, projections! Don’t planners just love those projections? Tweak them a little, get any answer that you want! The same projections that told them that in the year 2000, we’d all live in Manhattan, take light rail and trolleys to work, and work in a “green” job.
Of course, if you’re truly far-sighted, like Oregon’s METRO, for example, then you will write a 50 year plan, and maybe even build some monuments to yourself, like a new light rail (transit) only bridge and some fancy solar panel arrays.
Why do they continue to lie? What’s in it for them to blatantly lie?
The only one who is lying is you. It’s understandable. Neither I, nor anyone else on this site, expects you to come clean about your green ideology and the underlying hatred for free market/technological progress.
I make a linked reference to authority. Though it doesn’t constitute an argument; it does provide facts salient to the above discussion:
http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/aeo/pdf/2016levelized_costs_aeo2011.pdf
Solar PV is about twice the installed cost per kilowatt as nuclear. Nuclear is only slightly more expensive than coal but nearly twice a expensive as natural gas.
Solar energy prices are quoted for sunny summer days, from 10-2, and do not include the cost of coal fired plants operating on immediate standby for the times when clouds appear.
Nuclear energy prices are quoted for 24/365.
Wind energy prices are quoted for when the wind blows enough, but not too much. The best places achieve this 25% of the time. The price also excludes the necessary coal fired plants sitting at immediate standby.
Jardinero, providing evidence is not only good, it is also not appeal to authority. ;o)
There are places in the US where PV has already passed nuke in price [Duke Energy areas, e.g.]. The IEA has just released a new publication (presentation here) that reverses its pessimism of the document you referred to – note the rate of price decline: ~7% annum & grid parity by 2020 (GE says 2016). I feel pretty good about speaking at the WREF forum this year, if I get hammered on these figures I’ll let you know.
DS
As I pointed out, solar power cost is reported as “installed kilowatt”, which 4 hours per day, 2-3 days per week, only in the clear sky summer days in somewhat equatorial latitudes.
You would have to multiply the costs by 12-120 times before you somehow equate it to 24/7/365 power sources.
But if you throw in huge subsidies for solar, than anything is possible.
That rendering looks more like a art project instead of a building, but that’s a different issue.
which 4 hours per day, 2-3 days per week, only in the clear sky summer days in somewhat equatorial latitudes.
No.
But thanks!
DS
Sandy and Dan,
The capacity factor in column 2 of the EIA report factors in what Sandy refers to. The factor for Solasar PV is about 25 percent. Even nuclear only produces about 90 percent of its rated capacity on average. I must say that the capacity factor for solar quadruples when you put the solar panels in outer space. The capacity factor for wind goes to zero when you put it in outer space.
Solar power in Portland? What’s next? Yemen declaring an economic development program based on exporting bottled water?
I understand that in a place like the PacNW the capacity is low. But implying you only generate power from 10-2 in the summer near the tropics is a fundamental misunderstanding of the topic. There simply is no evidence for such a statement.
DS
I wonder why some people gripe that they are not quoted correctly when they do the same thing to other people?
Anyway, as bad as the investment is financially for TriMet, it does get heavy subsidies from other taxpayers and gets to impose additional costs on the power company. Since Portland only gets 68 sunny days per year, you have to wonder why solar cells are placed there rather than somewhere else on the same grid.
For a city like Portland, geothermal power would probably be better with all the volcanoes in the region.
OK, let’s try this then: who quotes solar energy costs at that time, Sandy? Thank you in advance.
DS