The large footprint of solar is due to the fact that solar energy is very diffuse and its conversion to electricity is very inefficient, no matter how you do it. If you scale up the solar utility-scale facilities to be equivalent to a 1 GW nuclear power plant, it takes about 50 square miles of panels or mirrors to generate the same amount of electricity as an average nuclear power plant. A nuclear power plant sits on about a third of a square mile. This huge solar footprint is not entirely benign. Environmentalists are already up in arms about scraping away vast areas of the desert to build solar facilities and in the process destroying fragile ecosystems and endangering desert tortoises and other plants and animals (27, 28). The Ivanpah solar project required moving about 150 endangered desert tortoises at a cost of more than $50 million (20). And it isn’t just environmental damage that is of con­cern. Native Americans have sued to stop several large solar developments in the Western desert because they fear the huge facilities will damage sacred and cul­turally significant sites (29). Rooftop solar, of course, does not take up any extra space, but it is not able to meet the demand for electricity, even though it can contribute to some of it some of the time.

Cost

Solar power is expensive, and it is highly subsidized to encourage its use. Levelized cost is a method to measure the overall competitiveness of different technologies to generate electricity. It takes into account the capital cost, operating cost, and transmission investment over an assumed life cycle and duty cycle. According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), assuming a very optimis­tic capacity factor of 25%, the total average system levelized cost for solar PV is $153 per MWh3 (range is $119 to $248/MWh) and for CSP is $242 per MWh (range is $176 to $386/MWh). For comparison, the average system levelized cost for conventional coal is $98 per MWh, natural gas is $66 per MWh, and advanced nuclear is $111 per MWh (30).

The Ivanpah solar power tower will produce a nominal 377 MW at a cost of $2.2 billion, with a federal government-guaranteed loan for 80% of the cost ($1.6 billion). And investors were guaranteed contracts from California utilities, which will pay a premium for the electricity (20). It is just over one-third as efficient as a nuclear power plant operating at 90% capacity. If you scaled it up to a 1 GW nuclear power plant equivalent, it would cost $16 billion! A comparable nuclear power plant costs about $7 billion (see Chapter 5).

My grid-tie system cost $16,000, but my utility and the state of Colorado kicked in a combined $3 per watt for a total of $7,500 as a direct rebate. Why would a utility do this? Colorado demands that utilities get 30% of their power from renewable resources by 2020, so the utility gets Renewable Energy Credits for the electricity that I generate to help them meet the requirement. On top of the direct subsidy of nearly half of the cost, I also got a 30% tax credit from the IRS for the difference. Once I received that, my total outlay was just under $6,000. Altogether, my subsidy amounted to 63% of the cost. Not bad! And that is not the end of it. I also get a feed-in tariff from my utility for the electricity I produce at 100% of my electricity rate. But, of course, the rest of society pays that cost.

Similar subsidies occur in California and other states that are ramping up solar energy. There was an uproar in San Diego when the San Diego Gas and Electric utility filed a request with the California Public Utilities Commission to charge solar customers for the use of the grid when the utility buys back the solar energy. The utility says that its average solar power customer is subsidized to the tune of $1,100 per year by the other utility users (31).

California Valley Solar Ranch, a 250 MW solar project, received so much largesse from the federal and state governments that its cost of $1.6 billion was almost completely taken care of with total subsidies of $1.4 billion. The subsidies include federal loan guarantees, 30% of the cost up front as a cash grant, a favor­able interest rate about half of the commercial rate, property taxes waived, depre­ciation tax breaks, and favorable guaranteed rates for the generated electricity that are about 50% higher than for a gas-powered plant (32).

You can argue that all forms of energy get subsidized, including fossil fuels and nuclear as well as renewable energy, and I don’t disagree with that. But let’s not pretend that solar power can stand on its own two feet. Without these large sub­sidies, solar will likely remain a very small component of the overall energy mix because it is so expensive compared to other alternatives.

As I was writing this chapter, a political scandal was developing that will likely have consequences for the subsidies for solar energy. Solyndra, a California com­pany employing 1,100 people, developed a different technology for solar panels that did not depend on the silicon wafers that are used in most PV panels. The US Department of Energy gave them a $535 million loan guarantee to build a plant and produce the solar panels. The plant broke ground on September 4, 2009, and went bankrupt on September 6, 2011, losing half a billion dollars of taxpayer money in the process. Even closer to home, Abound Solar—a start-up company based on research at Colorado State University—developed a thin-film solar panel technology, but it also went bankrupt in 2012 (33). These solar technologies could not compete with the Chinese, who pumped $30 billion into their solar industry in 2010 alone and undercut solar panel manufacturers in the United States and elsewhere (34, 35).