I've been following solar for around a decade now and have yet to consider it because of it's long ROI. Sure, the technology has gotten more efficient as pointed out in the article, but a consumer's up front costs have yet to come down.
I checked again last year about installing an array on my roof. My original outlay would be in the 30-40K range with an ROI of over ten years. If you want solar to take over the world and be a viable alternative to low income families, this isn't going to cut it.
Also, does the author know there's a limited amount of lithium in the world while his projections are pretty rosy for electric, the facts don't seem to align with his assumptions:
William Tahil, the founder of Meridian International Research, a technology consultancy in Martainville, France, has argued that there simply isn’t enough economically recoverable lithium on the planet to support the auto industry’s ambitious plans. Tahil estimated that only 4.4 million tons of the world’s lithium resources can be extracted without prohibitive cost, a supply he believes will be quickly exhausted if lithium-ion batteries become a staple of next-generation cars.
So why people are focusing on lithium to herald in the new electric car revolution, we should probably already be looking beyond electric cars as a viable long term solution.
Where does it said there are pretty??
We know there are enough oil or petrol that could last 100s to 1000s of years. And there are known Lithium reserve that could last us 100s years even if we keep the current pace of development.
The problem with both is extraction cost. How can we effectively extract it that provide a profits at this current price. It wasn't until recently US mastered the technique of flasking oil we have more then what we need.
I share your concerns. I've been looking into DIY flow batteries as an alternative for middle-income groups, but that approach isn't promising so far; we're still talking five figure sums up front to store just 45kWh (rounded-off, high side of average daily US residential utilization). Unsurprisingly for those well-versed in thermodynamics, energy is just plain expensive to store; another way of putting that is fighting against entropy is monetarily expensive.
These technologies are currently only accessible to highly-determined and resourceful people (those willing to make fundamental changes to their electricity consumption patterns, or those with 2+ sigma annual disposable income to fund their individual solution), and are still not ready for mass, de-centralized adoption. Grid-scale deployments might be another story, but any talk of a mass wave of private individuals adopting this technology is not matching up with the numbers I've run.
A combination of energy conservation and energy production technologies and techniques, I can see gaining traction, but that is a long, long (2+ decades) ways off in the US (Germany is potentially leading the way here IMHO).
>>My original outlay would be in the 30-40K range with an ROI of over ten years.
So you'd be getting (saving) 4K annually from a 40K investment? Try getting that kind of return elsewhere.
Seriously though, the best solar strategy for the homeowner is do-it-yourself ground mount installs. If DIY is not your thing at a minimum get separate quotes for install and supply. The markup solar installers add to equipment is outrageous.
I checked again last year about installing an array on my roof. My original outlay would be in the 30-40K range with an ROI of over ten years. If you want solar to take over the world and be a viable alternative to low income families, this isn't going to cut it.
Also, does the author know there's a limited amount of lithium in the world while his projections are pretty rosy for electric, the facts don't seem to align with his assumptions:
William Tahil, the founder of Meridian International Research, a technology consultancy in Martainville, France, has argued that there simply isn’t enough economically recoverable lithium on the planet to support the auto industry’s ambitious plans. Tahil estimated that only 4.4 million tons of the world’s lithium resources can be extracted without prohibitive cost, a supply he believes will be quickly exhausted if lithium-ion batteries become a staple of next-generation cars.
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/1124/034.html
So why people are focusing on lithium to herald in the new electric car revolution, we should probably already be looking beyond electric cars as a viable long term solution.