In preparation of a very poorly informed referendum on nuclear energy in Italy – as usual the stakes are high and people are misguided by strong economic interest – I offer some hard facts on solar energy, cutting through mostly ideological thinking and only supposedly pro environmental stances, that hide selfishness and a huge not in my garden syndrome.
Incidentally, this very same approach has had Italy renounce a few years ago to its nuclear energy technology and know how, at huge costs to our society, both at the investment level, with the immediate foreclosure or reconversion of operating and running nuclear plants (one of them had just been finished the acceptance tests, Montalto di Castro) and variable costs, as the Italian industry imports its electric energy (20-30%) deficit from France and Switzerland, at huge additional cost and – guess what – mostly nuclear origin energy.
I will now expand on solar energy, by many rightly considered the alternative source of energy.
I will try to show that solar energy is the solution, just not now, not yet.
And that nuclear energy has a lead.
Interestingly, we should also consider the new developments into nucler fusion, a long and so far never fulfilled promise: an interesting and potentially revolutionary experiment has taken place in Italy in Bologna by Rossi and Focardi, an engineer and a University Professor last january. It is not at all suprising that the underlying technolgy is Italian, but the first experimental plant will be built in Greece.
Back to solar, its energy radiation power is able to produce approximately 1 Kw of power - a little over one horsepower – per square yard (or meter).
Average consumption for a western economy household is just approximately that: 1 kw.
Simple enough? Apparently all you need to do is add a 1 sqm panel on top of your roof.
Not quite. Solar panels are only 15% efficient, that is can only turn into consumable power 15% of sunlight yield, with advanced and most expensive panels arriving around 40%. Accounting for when the sun is not exactly overhead and for above mentioned efficiency losses, you need around 20 sqm (or sq yards) surface to power up one household.
The cost of setting up one of these roof home made solar panel farms is around 10.000€.
As the market value of one kwh however produced is approximately 12 c€ and there are 8760 hours in a year, you can easily compute the per year yield of you investments. I am not running the financial calculations (please feel free to do it, if you have some time to devote, it’s great eco-practice) but it should yield that you are (shadow) making around 500€ per year, implying a 5% Roi (Return on investiment).
This is prior to accounting for depreciation, as with an assumption of a life span for your cells of just 10 years the initiative goes negative and only breaks even around 20.
Solor energy is thus still so far uncompetitive to other sources of energy.
When you drive along the fields in Italy (Tuscany, Lazio, Puglia…) and you see solar farms when just months before all you could see was farmland, you are not witnessing a new economic miracle to the misery of the formerly beautiful scenar , but rather a new waste of public (thus your and my own) money.
It is just through the allocation of public funds and several forms of facilitation for the intitial investment (incentives on energy produced, tax breaks, lump sums, reduced cost of borrowing etc ) that these conventional farms are becoming solar farms.
As usual, whenever the State fiddles with the economy it is mostly likely to generate damage taht exeeds intended good.
We are thus witnessing a huge solar bubble, but not one of those visible with a naked shielded eye on our star as it flares, but rather an economic bubble, ready to burst. The rationale behind is the same old story of an entire industry and vertical value chain (the solar one) begging for and finding its way to our money in the Parliament.
And yet solar energy offers huge potential. When solar panel production costs and efficiency will increase by a factor (not so long away), that is when nanotechnology and nanofactoring will kick in their potential benefits in a few years, it will be the dafualt power source on the planet, fully replacing fossil fuels and making it possible to do away with speculation enhenced naiveties such as biofules and hydrogen (that costs more to extract, stock and transport it than it yields in terms of energy).
For the time being we’ll have to stick to (very unclean and environmentally unfriendly) coal at 0.4 € cent per kwh, nuclear energy at 2 € cent per kwh, natural gas at 4 € cent per kwh and gasoline at 12 € cent per kwh (all production costs not retail prices, obviously).
If in still in doubt remember that energy si the primary cause why countries go at war (enough to mention recent Gulf Wars I and II and our involvement in Lybia) and that China is energy hungry to fund its incredible growth.
Save the planet, save your wallet, save your life: vote for a return to nuclear energy.
