Get In Now: Solar Thermal Energy Investments Will Make You A Mint

So...I wonder if Silly invested in Solyndra? Possibly Evergreen Solar?

 

You all too late to get in solar and other green energy investments. Now you need to seek out IPOs of the like.

After all, China is the leader in solar and wind power equipment, not Haliburtan. Dick Cheney must be turning in his cave.

Overseas is where the emerging markets are going to be the most profitable, not the USA when it comes to energy.

Why? For a long time forigen countries outside of the USA have been paying out the ying yang for fossel fuel energy. And they are ahead in every aspect of manufacturing and implementing solar, wind, and hydro powe equipment. Why, because of the paranoia of the USA did not want them to have nuclear power. Go figure. Now it's turning around to bite the USA in the keester. Besides, nuclear power is old tech and it is very costly to manage, go ask japan who has more money than the USA.

This is the kid of stuff you peice togeather via observation, the broadcast media and your church preacher or politician will not tell you these things. This is the real deal and that is why real investors keep this stuff hidden from the masses. Because they want to be first to get in-vested. You masses can suck up the scrub stocks at higher prices, like the late commers to the califrisco gold rush.

Go fugure......

 

No, I don't prefer to invest in PV Jar jar. But then again you read the OP so you should have figured that one out. Still having trouble telling the difference between solar thermal steam and photovoltaics I see. Back to school with you son. Go learn your ABCs so you can come back and talk to the subject like you know something about it.

Are you kidding clint torres? The US has one of the largest reserves of geothermal steam and solar thermal steam potential of any other country in the Northern Hemisphere. Though I have to agree that the stupid mis-invested oil politicians will fight to their and everyone else's financial grave to keep the oldschool radioactive smudge factories churning away at the expense of the entire nation. They should simply switch over to what's coming anyway and talk Congress [who they own so that shouldn't be hard] into passing laws that they can still charge the same amount per kwh as they do now but with a fraction of the oldschool's overhead. Free energy. Pretty hard to beat that.

 

They broke ground on the Blythe project 9 months ago and now it's on hold due to Solar Trust going belly up. They were something like 70% of the projects backers AND in August they retooled the project for Photovoltaic. They scrapped the solar thermal when the parabolic mirror maker went bankrupt. It just goes to show ya, you can't polish a turd. Solar thermal is dead till they make it economically viable. Maybe it will be in the year 2100.

 

Drilling for geothermal causes earthquakes. The same excuse the left uses for not using natural gas.

Free? Do you know what earthquake insurance costs? I doubt it. Right now it's between $800 and $1800 a year with 10% of the value of the house as a deductible. What do you think is going to happen if they start causing earthquakes on purpose with geothermal drilling?

 

Solar thermal electrical power systems are cost prohibitive. They do not work at night or during cloudy or overcast days.

Consequently, they need to use natural gas generators as a backup power generation system. This fact makes their “costs per kwh” at least twice as expensive as convention power generation systems.

Nice try, Silhouette, but no cigar!

 

The difference between PV and solar-thermal is a bit like the difference between a bull ring and a stock trailer. Both are, when you look closely, full of bovine fecal matter!

 

Going Thorium (Molten Salt) is the future. It is very very similar to nuclear plants and can use much of the same technology, it just doesn't use the Uranium. For that reason, the Uranium producing countries are against it.

It is the true future. Solar is an expensive dog.

 

That argument makes no sense, if it is such a profit maker as you claim, instead of shoving it back down the oil, nuclear, and natural gas power companies would be trying to exploit it to raise their revenue and profits. They are not going to waste their current income on trying to squash something to maintain revenues on something that provides a lower return than an alternative, thats how companies fail. Facts are people are greedy and if there is a simple way to make a quick profit people flock too it, look at banks and derivatives. They flocked too them and made billions, ignoring the future consequences. The same would be done with an energy source, the oil companies cannot keep something down if the opportunity to make lots of money is there.

 

This is something both liberals and conservatives should agree with. Thorium has all the qualities of a great energy source. Research using such technology is over 50 years old, although Richard Nixon cancelled the program.

Unlike uranium, thorium cannot be used to produce nuclear weapons. The one great thing the United States could do for Iran, North Korea, and other suspected and actual nuclear weapons states is produce the technology for LFTR's here, and sell it to them in exchange for any uranium or nuclear missiles. We are one of five NPT member states allowed to have nuclear weapons. The reactors made for utilizing thorium are not a machine ready to explode. On the contrary, they require great attention to keep them working hard. Discarding of the waste is much easier than removing waste from light water reactors.

 

The country most adamantly considering thorium reactors is India. And in a bitter irony that parallels Japan's, India sits in the sunbelt and an area simply perfectly fit for solar thermal power plants. [not photovoltaics but instead superconcentrated solar energy creating steam to run turbines just like nuclear reactors]. In Japan, while sitting atop one of the world's largest geothermal reserves, its leaders were lied to and coerced into investing and relying upon nuclear plants instead of geothermal to run steam generators. Now look where they're at.

Nuclear is too expensive. We don't know what to do with the unbelievably toxic spent fuel. All they do is produce steam to run turbines. Solar thermal contentrators do exactly the same thing with zero risks, zero wastes and zero fuel costs. I realize some people have incorrectly invested their money in a dying and unbelievably stupid way to create steam but the rest of humanity isn't taking the hit for their deadly games. We have other ways of getting steam. Even if we stopped producing radioactive waste today, we'd still have centuries of problem-solving on what to do with it all. Producing one more gram of radioactive spent fuel is beyond insane. It's criminal.

 

Yes, India gets lots of sun...but...

*cut to Boeing Dreamliner flying through the hole in Silly's logic*

...they also get three to four MONTHS a year, EVERY YEAR, of daily rain and ZERO sun! (That is, of course, the monsoon season, generally June to September.)

I'll take a dozen fourth-generation nuclear power plants (thorium, pebble-bed, or fast-breeders) as soon as ground can be broken, and another dozen as soon as those are finished.

 

Nuclear power is an excellent alternative to fossil fuels. However, there is another reason why offshore drilling is likely to continue. Most of the big new discoveries lie deep beneath the world’s oceans, including in the Gulf of Mexico. For the oil companies, these reserves are worth hundreds of billions of dollars and represent the industry’s future and a valuable resource of good paying jobs ($80,000 to $120,000 per year) and a large, inexhaustible tax base for government social programs.




What alternative source of energy best summaries how we can get once and for all get away from crude oil, or greatly reduce our need for it, and break the Arabic monopoly that we are now subject to, and will enable us to once again be in control of our own economic destiny?

 

I agree. However, I think Solar Microwave is also a major part of that future. It'll take awhile to realize, however.

 

How much thorium is there in the world and where are the largest deposits located?

I thought I read there is not that much thorium avaliable in the world to power the thorium reactors of the future.

 

Ever heard of Monsoon season in India? The rains begin in June and continue into September and account for 90% of India's water supply. I suppose they are to just sit in the dark till the sun comes back out?

 

Molten Salt or liquid flouride thorium reactors require a very little amount of the material in comparison to the amount of uranium that is required for light water reactors. The United States is actual second in the world among thorium reserves at 400,000 tons.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf62.html

 

The exact figure is uncertain, but even the most conservative estimates have reserves far, far in excess of global uranium reserves. Thorium reactor designs also use less fuel to provide the same amount of power--so not only is there more thorium available, but less gets used to produce the same amount of power.

 

If you folks read the UK article thoroughly, you'd have noticed that the real problem is that with more reactors using less fuel, the waste problem would be the same or worse because lots of little reactors add up. And we still have zero clue as to what to do with all the waste we have no place for now. Some of the highly toxic radioactive wastes produced from thorium reactors, that would stack up worldwide, have half lives of over half a million years. We can't even track civilizations that have risen and fallen beyond about 10,000 years. How the hell are we supposed to leave that kind of legacy for the future? Are we really that sociopathic and soulless to poison and horribly disfigure future generations forever because we wanted our hot tubs to fire up at night on command?

So that leaves 9 months of the year that India can rely on abundant free superheated solar steam to run turbines. *crunches numbers*. SIGN ME UP FOR SHARES PLEASE!

 

And what do they do the other 3 months. Are you arguing that we have equivalent conventional generation in parallel with your solar thermal. Thats twice the overhead. I'm sorry fuel costs don't justify it.

 

Lets break this down.

The fuel coast for coal is about $25/MWh

The capital cost for solar thermal is about $250/MWh

Silhouette is arguing that to save that $25/MWh we should spend $250/MWh.

 

They use a hybrid system of coal and solar thermal. On the days the sun shines for the lion's share [9 months] of the year they get free energy. For the other 1/4 they rely on alternatives like coal or hydro. With all that water falling out of the sky and swelling rivers, seems that energy could be harvested. For the tiny portion of days in each year that fall outside either the free solar thermal steam or hydro, they burn coal.

The 21st Century will see a boon in these hybrid approaches to energy production. Every day that free energy can be used is one day less of burning carbon fuels. Nuclear is patently out of the question. We cannot poison ourselves and our offspring forever for the sake of turning on a light bulb.

Seattle is a monsoon city like much of India. They have an ingenious way to produce energy from the monsoon runoffs they get each year.

 

So to save $25MHh in fuel costs we spend $250/MWh in capital costs. Why not pay the $25 in fuel costs to save the $250 in capital costs?

 

Because we're talking about the long haul. Any power plant will have startup costs. ANY OF THEM. Nuclear is THE MOST EXPENSIVE OF ALL to construct. All others are virtually on par with each other. So since nuclear isn't an option anymore we subtract it from the equation. We are left with everything else being equal construction wise. So then we turn the comparison to fuel costs. Solar thermal is free so it wins. It's that simple. Hydro would be in the winner's circle too. Investors like things like free energy. It is much more desireable than the kinds that have to be mined from the ground, transported, refined, burned, scrubbed while burning and with wastes and environmental costs. Free energy wins hands down. The sun shines in India 9 months a year. What part of that mathematical equation can't you do that calculates for free superheated steam 9 months out of the year?

 

I bought a chainsaw, logsplitter, wood stove, and spend 1 weekend a month cutting and splitting wood on land I own and pay taxes on, but now I have FREEEE heat.

That's the free you mean, right?