It is no secret that solar energy is a dynamic market with fierce competition among the industry’s biggest players.
Large solar farms require the use of a regulating generator to ease the power into the grid. Generators run on coal or natural gas.
First Solar presently wears for the crown for being the volume leader. The company has between 13 percent and 16 percent of the market, depending on who is counting.
Suntech Power Holdings of China follows with perhaps half that total. Sharp is a close third with sales that almost tie it for second.
It is unlikely that smaller companies will overtake these leaders in the next few years. The cost of adding enough factory space is prohibitive. Production is already at the GW level.
But jostling among these big dogs will continue. Lux Research is one firm that predicts Suntech will out duel rival First Solar to grab the market’s top spot by 2013. It is adding manufacturing capacity at a rapid pace and selling out its product line in China’s super heated solar market. Sharp will remain third.
But none of this competition will hide solar’s dirty secret. That’s because to feed solar (and wind) power into today’s electrical grids utilities must use large generators that run on coal or gas – dirty sources of energy, says energy consultant Victor Babbitt.
The problem is that solar and wind are intermittent power sources. The sun burns brightly during the midday, but a cloud can cover it in a matter of seconds and sharply up the energy stream. The electrical grid, on the other hand, needs to be carefully balanced, with energy supply and load in harmony. When the power from a solar farm surges in a short period of time (as much as 50 percent in 30 second after a cloud unblocks the sun) grids can become unstable.
That’s why regulating generator are used to ditch power the grid can’t absorb. This issue will go away when big storage batteries are in place to save the energy for later use. But until then, “green” energy requires millions of tons of CO2 to integrate it into the grid, says Babbitt in a blog post.
It is solar’s not-so-little dirty secret.
[...] The Dirty Secret Behind Solar Energy « TechPulse 360 [...]
I would say another dirty secret is the energy, clean water and toxic metals mining required to manufacture PV and then there is the issue of hazardous waste disposal at the end of panel life. It would be nice if somebody put together a study that factored in the “hidden” energy component in manufacture plus other externalities to come up with a true cost for these solar systems as well as the true net CO2 offset.
Google blog search is always great for finding new stuff! I was trying to figure out how to install an attic ventilator.. Don’t know why this one came up!
Google blog search is always great for finding new stuff! I was trying to figure out how to install an attic ventilator.. Don’t know why this one came up!