Nuclear engineer James H. Rust, over at the Heartland Institute, has just posted a clear, concise, factual piece refuting the claim that there’s a “dirty war” to stop expansion of solar energy in the United States. I won’t get into the stuff about the “dirty war”—which is entirely bogus, and Rust demonstrates just why—but thought it helpful to pass on just a little of the factual information about why solar has such difficulty competing with nuclear and fossil fuels. Rust writes:

In the United States, by mid-2016, the Big Three politically correct renewable energy sources wind power surpassed 75 Gigawatts, solar power surpassed 27 Gigawatts, and biofuels surpassed 16 billion gallons per year (mostly ethanol from corn). …

There are many disadvantages to solar energy because it is unavailable most of the day—availability is expressed as capacity factor defined as the fraction of total annual solar energy produced compared to a facility operating 24-hours daily, 365 days per year. Capacity factors of solar plants in Southwest desert areas are 0.19 compared to capacity factors of 0.9 or greater for nuclear and fossil-fueled electricity plants.

Other disadvantages are solar plants require vast land areas when used for utility-scale power generation (6 acres per Megawatt) and have limited useful plant lifespans of about 25 years. Nuclear and fossil-fueled power plants have small land requirements (less than one square mile for 1000 Megawatts) and lifespans of 60 years or more.

Solar electricity is more expensive than conventional electricity from fossil fuels of coal and natural gas. Subsidies are required to promote its use in the form of payments or tax credits for construction of solar systems, rapid depreciation of solar systems, forcing power companies to pay above market prices for excessive electricity production called feed-in-tariffs, mandates for use of solar energy without regard to cost, and a host of other subsidies.

The vast array of subsidies [about $150 billion in federal alone] is provided by the U. S. government, state governments, and municipalities.

The whole article’s worth the reading.

Featured image “Solar power generation” courtesy of Minoru Karamatsu, Flickr Creative Commons.