It is very rare for a solar plant of any type to run at 15% of capacity utilization: A more common measured figure is 10%. Thus to produce as much electricity as 5 1300 Megawatt gas plant that operates on 52 acres in Redondo Beach - a plant past which one can bicycle in about 3 minutes, it would require 10 to 15 billion dollars to produce as much energy as the Redondo Beach AES plant.

The difference between the putative 10 to 15 billion dollars in solar capacity, is that the solar capacity would not allow the Redondo Beach plant, which spews the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide into the planetary atmosphere in an unrestricted fashion, to shut, since solar plants are notoriously unreliable, owing to a little noticed physical event called "night."

As of 2010, the last year for which international figures from the EIA for the production of solar electricity is available, the entire world produced 27.91779 billion kilowatt-hours of solar electricity, including (for some reason that remains the province of the EIA) some tidal and wave power.

This is the equivalent of 3,100 MW of continuous average power, except solar is not continuous, or in other words, the equivalent of two large gas or coal plants, not that the avocates of solar plants give a rat's ass about shutting gas or coal plants. They would reather attack, with a great deal on unapologetic and highly toxic grandiosity, the world's largest, by far, source of climate change gas free primary energy, nuclear energy.

For 15 billion dollars, one could build 3 large nuclear reactors, which would produce 4500 MWe (for a period of approximately 60 years) that would run nearly continuously and produce no air pollution whatsoever during which they would create impressive quantities of the valuable metals palladium, ruthenium, rhodium, neodyminum, cerium, praesodymium and technetium, as well as valuable quantities of plutonium, and possibly uranium-233/

The claim is made that solar prices are "falling" because of Chinese competition.

Here is an advertisement for solar cells from Home Depot:

250 Watt Solar Cell for $390.

This is the price without an inverter, without installation, and without a contract for window washers.

In New Jersey, one would be lucky to consider that the capacity utilization would be 10%, meaning that it would be suitable to power a 25 watt light bulb for a year, if wired with super efficient batteries and a bunch of other electronic junk (not included in the price).

If you do the calculation fully, you see I might expect to see about 220 kwh out of this cell. In New Jersey, our electricity rates run about 11 cents per kwh. meaning that every year the $390 solar cell would produce about $25 worth of electricity, give or take a buck.

Of course, I could ask my government to give me subsidies, but that would be, um, wrong.

If you want to know why I think all these solar wunderkind are going bankrupt, I suspect the reason has to do with something called physics.

But let's not lapse into cursing and saying words like physics.

Have a very pleasant evening tomorrow.