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I'm not saying he
was right, but you must agree that he and his advisors feel
so.
If PV is an
"obvious source of power for the future" in America, why are we exporting
it for use today in Germany & Japan?
Mr.
Mahridge wrote they have "aggressive solar power programs", to somehow
justify our export of a product that we needed yesterday to
fight "aggressors" that targeted
California.
In October of 1999
I saw a NIST display for their patented PV water heating system. A
poster had a graph projecting a "near term" PV-cost of
$2,000/kW. After decades of hype & research, I thought the
definition of "near term" meant a couple of years or so.
BUT if we
create short supplies and high prices by exporting 75% of our PV production, will "near term" ever
arrive?
Based upon Mr.
Mahridge's story, had there been ZERO exports of solar arrays there
would have been an extra 3,000 megawatts to help mitigate rolling blackouts in
California.
BUT the Clinton
Administrated approved the export of about 75% of our PV production in
1999; thereby exporting 2,250 megawatts of clean power, which was, in fact
replaced by some very expensive, dirty
power. According to a chart held up by Senator Feinstein on TV,
a mere 4% annual increase in electricity use in California from 1999 to
2000, I believe, was accompanied by a whopping 700% increase in
rates.
So it would appear
to a novice in PV power that neither Democrats nor Republicans want the fruits
of NREL's research. If they did, one
could argue that export restrictions would have been applied to
protect limited production and research funded to boost
production for export of PV power.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2001 10:04
AM
Subject: FW: [GBlist] CA-Look to the
Sun!-NYTimes 4/25
Are
you saying that George Dubya was right to stop research funding for an obvious
source of power for the future?
I'm guessing for the time being there's more of a market elsewhere for
solar because A) energy costs are even higher than here, and B) delivery
systems to the heart of the Amazon, China, etc haven't been created
yet. As
US costs rise, so will the interest in alternatives. Even my 60-year old
mother-in-law mentioned an interest in solar panels the other day. My
75-yr old father-in-law heard about some Lottery winner that invested some of
winnings in a solar grid that's powering some of his neighbors, and he's
getting paid to do it. I met with a builder, and he brought it up
too. So
people not normally paying attention are starting to pay attention. And that's
a good thing.
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