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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum
GLD 383.12+0.8%Nov 26 4:00 PM EST
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To: TobagoJack who wrote (39286)8/27/2008 7:23:42 AM
From: elmatador  Read Replies (2) of 218050
 
you grasped the SIZE SCALE. Now for the TIME SCALE. It will take a while for the solar energy abracadabra to take hold and then after that to start displacing traditional applications.

Time to displace entrenched solutions depends on two issues:
1) Cost of the solar application
2) Reaction of the competition

The competition will surely react. Anywhere you'll put a solar application you need a back up of traditional if down time is critical.
So there will be a push for small diesel generators and the existing technology gets a life extension.

Before -I'd say until 15 years ago- a new solution was easy to introduce because the decision makers were engineers. Nowadays they are business people. In this era of lean accounting it is an uphill battle to prove that a new solution is better than the existing ones.

There is a lot of convincing hat the proponents of solar have to do.

Do not forget the integration of the package. Solar must be implemented turnkey and engineers, architects are very lazy people.

Now for the ethanol displacement part:
Energy is a matrix of several sources depending on the application.

Energy for mobile applications so far has been mainly gasoline, Diesel, natural gas and avgas for aviation.

After 1973-79 oil shock entered Natural Gas and ethanol.
Now we are adding bio-diesel

Energy for fixed applications: used hydropower, coal, nuclear and oil.

After 1973-79 oil shock it started farming out coal, adding Natural Gas and oil was removed.

Fringe energy kept on the sidelines:
Wind, solar (mostly derived from space applications, Fuel cells
Electric cars, hybrid cars.

In the mean time technology progressed. Cellular added a couple of billion subscribers all over the world, and there was no push to for using solar applications.

(I had installed solar powered solar in 1987. Between Sokoto Nigeria and Birni Konni in Niger Republique)

Only now that Diesel costs and competitive pressure piled up is that it shows a promise.

How exactly solar would compete with ethanol?
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