Lol. You're quoting a gold website on how gold is going to make solar more efficient.

And the answer to the first question was "Artisinal & Small Scale Gold Mining".

What percentage of gold do you think that constitutes? (it's about 12%)

How much gold do you think would even be in those solar panels? (dunno, but it's called "nano-wire sheeting" and that means not much. And, price is pretty important, so that again means not much.)

Second biggest source is coal. Thank goodness that's obsolete. If only the coal rollers would stop.

Two questions:
- do you know what latitude Germany lies at and what North American cities it's roughly equal to?
- do you speak German?

So a country with 4 times as much solar per capita as the US and where the best location is about the same as our worst location in the continental US ALMOST had some blackouts for a short time!!!!!

OMG - roll some coal!!!!

I assume the sun shines in Germany.

And Google translate does wonders - use Chrome.

Can't be that small scale if it's crushing coal's Mercury numbers.

As long as Trump doesn't trade war on solar though, there's nothing to worry about other than the utilities fighting to own it themselves as opposed to letting people own their own. Unfortunately the coal rollers are going to drag out the transition to renewables the best they can though for reasons that are hard to fathom.

Of course it can. It's very mercury intensive and, while coal is still a major source of mercury coming in at second place, it's not nearly as mercury intensive. Duh.

It's a small percent of the amount of new gold obtained (of course a smaller amount of total gold) and only a tiny amount of gold would be used in the solar panel technology that's not even a thing and probably never will be. It was an idiotic point that you got to by doing some searches for a gotcha and just posted because of your ignorance and lack of good judgment.

Seems like you ignored the meat of microbet's post, though, and that maybe you don't know where Germany is on a map:

New York is farther south than anywhere in Germany, and Germany's northernmost point is higher than Edmonton. Thus, it will be a lot more expensive than in the United States, a fact that isn't very surprising to people with basic education in geography.

He cited Tuscon's Energy grid and then just extrapolated that to "works anywhere the sun shines".

Yeah, I'll bet it's awesome in Arizona. It'll also probably be awesome on that shiny new border wall we're getting too.

Solar does work in Germany. Proof: they have solar power there. He also said it gets more expensive (because it's less effective) the more north you go, which also fits in with Germany's experience.

I'd ask "why are you lying?" but it's so commonplace that there's really no point anymore, it's obvious that you just can't argue without it.

In responding to the hazards of mercury poisoning, JiggyMac thinks it's a good point to make that artisinal gold mining contributes a lot to mercury pollution and that some gold website had a story about some possible use for nano-coatings of gold in solar panels.

That's the quality of poster we're dealing with here.

It's reasoning so dumb that it should be called Trumpian.

You use this word "lying" a lot. It does not mean what you think it means.

About as dumb as saying "works everywhere the sun shines"

And the point was that solar is coming it at under 3 cents per kilowatt hour. That happening in a location that is especially good for solar isn't really surprising.

It's not hard to look up insolation by location. From that you can determine what production you expect per kilowatt of solar installed. Tuscon is clearly one of the sunniest places in the US and gets about 1.5 times as much sun as Madison Wisconsin. So that's 4.5 cents per kwh in Madison - same situation, though they aren't yet building the huge utility installations up there.

You lie about microbet's arguments and then lie about solar not working in Germany. It works exactly like he said it does, not as well as Arizona (or even New York) because it's more northerly, but it still generates power.

That's ****ing stupid. It does work everywhere the sun shines. It's not 3 cents per kwh, but it works fine. New Jersey has the 4th most solar per capita of any state.

Where do you see 3 cents per kilowatt hour?? It's not in your link.

Also, 1.5 times the sunlight doesn't necessarily mean just 1.5 times the cost.

And Germany is not just northern in latitude, it's not that sunny in most of the country. Like Montana and North Dakota do pretty well. Bismark > Atlanta for sun-hours.

*a sun-hour is amount of light energy delivered by one thousand watts per square meter in one hour.

It was too and it was so easy to find. Just google solar under 3 cents. Or something like "record price for solar" which I check all the time to keep track.

There are other factors in cost like labor of course, but if you install the same systems in AZ and WI you get roughly 1.5 times as much energy out of the system in AZ. Very rough calculation of cost divided by energy obtained and it will be closely related to the final contract price.

Oh wait, here it is:
"Excluding the cost of storage, TEP will buy the system’s output for 20 years for less than three cents per kilowatt hour – less than half as much as it agreed to pay under similar contracts in recent years."

WTF?!? You don't get to exclude storage costs. What does it cost a consumer to get solar power vs. fossil fuel power?

You're also talking about a brand new, top of the line plant in regards to expected future benefit. What are people paying now? Stop extrapolating.

The details aside, the overall picture of prices dropping steeply is incredibly clear. Also the number of Americans employed in the industry dwarfs the number employed in coal.

It's freaking bizarre that Republicans oppose renewable energy.

Nobody opposes renewable energy - we're open to all energy. We also recognize there are trade offs.

As for jobs, you mean like Solyndra and Solar City?

Yes, like SolarCity! They employ tons of people! What on earth are you talking about??

You mean these employees:

https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/...employees.aspx

And there other financial problems:
https://seekingalpha.com/article/406...-restructuring

"It is difficult to see how SolarCity will meet its obligations without both a financial and an operational restructuring as well as possible cash infusions from Tesla."


At least you concede Solyndra was ****.

It's much easier to find info on cost per watt than kwh, but kwh is more easily understood. If you want to track costs per watt and do some math, then go ahead. Prices have dropped tremendously and continue to fall. Prices are lower than the competition in many places now and that will continue. Prices, including storage, are falling fast and will continue and are already in some cases less expensive than conventional fuels.

It's just baffling that Republicans would oppose this, but it doesn't matter. It's happening whether you oppose it or not because of market conditions and that's why capacity is rapidly increasing. Perhaps the Trumpkins will slow us down, but there will still be tremendous growth in China, India, Europe...everywhere else. And they'll get jobs too.

Congratulations on your coal rolling.