harry wrote:
Solar panels,
Zero maintenance, zero fuel costs, zero costs for operators/plant
attendants.

Regular cleaning needed in polluted areas, and routine checks on safety
and installation are needed, Ancillary equipment has been shown to be
not particularly reliable, according to posts on this newsgroup.

That's for domestic PV installations. Larger installations using
tracking mirrors to concentrate sunlight on a boiler are unreliable,
very expensive, need lots of maintenance, and aren't yet proved to be
economic even *with* a massive subsidy. They also stop working at night
and have a much reduced output in cloudy weather.

No additions need to grid as power is used locally.

While being subsidised by all users via the feed in tariff. And what
about the farmers who are beginning to harvest the subsidy offered to
cover their fields with solar panels?

Zero waste products to dispose of.

Until the end of life, or while they're being produced. There is much
pollution produced and energy expended while making them. Some
calculations show that the same energy could be obtained with less
overall pollution by just burning coal or, better, natural gas. Or, with
much less pollution, by using nuclear power.

And that ignores the fact that for every kilowatt of solar PV, there
needs to be a kilowatt of surplus conventional power, ready to turn on
at the passing of a cloud.

Can be installed by semi-skilled labour on piecemeal basis.

Most work on any power station can be and is carried out by semi-skilled
labour. Mixing concrete and moving earth around isn't rocket science. To
make solar panels requires a large investment in both skilled labour and
precision manufacturing ability. The only solar panels that are made by
unskilled labour are leaves.

Zero disruption/inconvenience during installation.

You speak from personal experience, of course? Minimal, maybe, zero, no.

Owners are incited to economise on electricity use.

Yeah, they have to turn everything off at sunset.

Zero export of currency to obtain fuel supply.

Other than paying cheap Chinese labour to produce them in a vast number
of cases.

There's probably more too.

New nuclear (EDF) Finland is over budget and time by a factor of two
and rising.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley...urised_Reactor

Name a large project using a new design that *hasn't* gone over time and
budget lately.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley...tion#Economics

That page seems to be vastly understating the cost quoted in Wikipedia
for Solar photovolatic power of USD 156.9 per megawatt hour as against
nuclear at USD 112.7 per megawatt hour, both at estimated 2017 values.
Either one or the other page is wrong, and I'm betting on the one Harry
quotes.

Mainly, the paragraph's complaining about the desire of EDF to gouge the
paying public for excessive profits. Does that sound familiar, Harry?


--
Tciao for Now!

John.