[mustang1919]

In Germany, which is basically the leading edge of solar technology, the average solar installation is 6 KW and takes 10 hour of electrician labor to install. Even if the US were to lower its labor requirements to this level, this would still create immense employment opportunities for electricians if solar power was used to supply the entire country. Furthermore, almost all the gains in solar costs have been in hardware costs, not operating efficiency or installation costs.

Let's Do The Math.

(1) There are currently 600K electricians in the US.
(2) In Germany it takes 10 hours to install 6KW (US panels take much more labor for various reasons)
(3) There are 8 useable solar hours in a day, 365 days a year, 10 years between part replacements, 30% performance ratio
(4) The US consumes 25,000 TWh annually
(5) Electricians work about 2000 hours a year

The math:

(6) Dividing out (2) gives us 600 watts per hour of labor
(7) Multiplying out (4) gives us 8760 watt hours of use per installed watt
(8) Dividing (4) by (7) gives us 3E12 watts to install to power the entire US with solar
(9) Dividing (8)/(6)/(5) gives us 2.4 million electricians needed
(10) Finally, dividing (9) by (1) shows that this is four times the number of electricians in the US

This demand growth for electrical engineers as fossil fuels deplete may sound too good to be true- and maybe it is. Perhaps the demand for new electricians will not be met and the reluctance of Gen Y to get community college level job training will doom Western Civilization to plummeting energy production and total collapse.

But look on the bright side- if you get in on the renewables train early, there will be no shortage of work. And just maybe, with 100% sunny days 365 days a year, massive technological advance to bring installation costs down to German levels and 400% cloning of electricians and electrical engineers, it might even turn out well!

The other thing is that the US energy consumption is artificially low because it outsources manufacturing. If you consider the consumption needed to maintain current living standards then you'd need like twice as many electricians.

[Plantagenet]

Relax---its already happening in the USA.

BLS review of US solar industry

[rollin]

GE is ahead of you in this game, cutting installation costs and allowing regular electricians to do the work.
http://www.gereports.com/ge-breakthroug ... s-in-half/

[SilentRunning]

(8) Dividing (4) by (7) gives us 3E12 watts to install to power the entire US with solar
(9) Dividing (8)/(6)/(5) gives us 2.4 million electricians needed
(10) Finally, dividing (9) by (1) shows that this is four times the number of electricians in the US

It would take some doing, but I think we could train an additional 2 million electricians. There's certainly no lack of unemployed/under-employed people as a talent pool.

[mustang1919]

It would be a truly massive career field.

Solar power is incredibly primitive and labor intensive, the idea is to spread panels over a huge area of land hoping the trickles of sunlight you collect will be worth it.

[SeaGypsy]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzhzeA4VRSc

Take a lot (maybe) less than 5 hours to install these 3kw systems. (Infinia Solar Sterling)

[mustang1919]

That's the best case, promo-video requirement (I didn't even see the video make that claim actually).

So given that we really need 5 million electricians, 3/4 of the labor is required is still unskilled nonelectricians. This puts us up to 20 million people. Twice that since not everyone works full time. That's like 40 million people, a third of the overall labor force and a fiftyfold increase in the size of the construction industry.

We can get an idea of the wage adjustments that would be required to incentivize shifting people into this one narrow sector of the economy (assuming we don't just enslave all the NEETs and force them to sustain industrial civilization). First let's assume the incentive to enter a field is proportional to the natural log of wages, to account for diminishing returns. Then let's assume a labor supply elasticity of 1, which is unrealistic because inelasticities will take it below that.

So in order to achieve a fiftyfold increase in construction workers, that would require a 2.7^50 increase in wages, or equivalently, a massive reduction in everyone else's wages to move people into construction.

Industrial civilization will be impossible to sustain post-oil without slave labor, this is why ecostalinists have a point (we need the government to enslave people to ensure a green energy future).



You say everything is going to be fine but I can't imagine renewables being employed on a large scale. No other energy source is dependent on huge amounts of manual labor.

[rollin]

I must question the "10 years between replacement parts" when the typical life to 85% performance is given as 30 years for PV. Just wondering what that number represents.
How many years are giving for the total installation?

[BobInget]

In no time at all, because of two reasons, a 'previously used market will open'.*
(business opportunity?)
In most states if a home-owner performs his/her own installations no licensed electrician need
be hired. Most of the actual time installing PV's is grunt work. Screwing aluminum rails to a roof
or other structure is not, as they say nuclear science. The hardest part would be walking a steep
roof and there are guys who already do this for a living, (roofers)

*Two reasons;
1) PV's do degrade slowly losing generating capacity. (but only if you leave them in the sun)
2) PV is becoming cheaper and more efficient per square inch every year. If space is limited, many people will 'trade-up'. One will be able to double the KW's in a few years on the same platform. If someone has had solar for more then five years they have already used up their tax credits and would love to get twice the power and another tax credit. Not to mention, in five years or longer those 'old' panels' aren't putting out any like they did during that honeymoon.This kind of installation is a snap. Simply remove the old and screw the new onto existing hardware. You can also sell the business or homeowner new inverters that will also utilize the same wiring, conduit, meters. Now, you offer to buy-back, in a labor exchange, used panels and inverters you have in bed of the truck to sell to a business with a huge roof or barn.

If the idea of doing solar as a business is appealing, you should go to work for an installer for a year as an apprentice.
Also, it would be a good idea to marry a rich person who is good at filling out forms.

[Dezakin]

In Germany, which is basically the leading edge of solar technology, the average solar installation is 6 KW and takes 10 hour of electrician labor to install. Even if the US were to lower its labor requirements to this level, this would still create immense employment opportunities for electricians if solar power was used to supply the entire country. Furthermore, almost all the gains in solar costs have been in hardware costs, not operating efficiency or installation costs.

You're right, solar is niche at best compared to other electric power sources. If only there was a scalable energy source in a country right next to Germany that had demonstrated the capacity of running the entire grid, that made heat from a common material in rocks. Oh if only.

[mustang1919]

How many years are giving for the total installation?

Ten years. Note that the current rare earth solar panels are totally unfeasible and will have to be replaced by panels made by crappier, common less-scarce materials. We can take 10 years as a conservative estimate but even if you up it to 60 years the labor requirement is still massive.

FWIW the normal depreciation rate in real estate is 7% and the analysis doesn't even take into account structure/infrastructure costs.

2) PV is becoming cheaper and more efficient per square inch every year.

The theoretical limit on PV efficiency is only 5-10 times what it is now.

If space is limited, many people will 'trade-up'. One will be able to double the KW's in a few years on the same platform. If someone has had solar for more then five years they have already used up their tax credits and would love to get twice the power and another tax credit. Not to mention, in five years or longer those 'old' panels' aren't putting out any like they did during that honeymoon.This kind of installation is a snap. Simply remove the old and screw the new onto existing hardware. You can also sell the business or homeowner new inverters that will also utilize the same wiring, conduit, meters. Now, you offer to buy-back, in a labor exchange, used panels and inverters you have in bed of the truck to sell to a business with a huge roof or barn.

Germany already represents a huge advance over the US in technology and installation process. If we achieve that we still need like a 99% reduction in labor costs to make solar somewhat feasible.

Fact is despite the great benefits of solar viz preserving industrial civilization, expecting most people to install their own panels is unrealistic. The low adoption rate despite massive tax credits is an evidence of how lazy people are and how renewables will never be deployed on a large scale.

[mustang1919]

It seems I can't edit my post so I'll just make another.

The safest, and most realistic, way to preserve civilization is to reduce consumption and reduce population. If population falls low enough, it may be possible to cluster people around localized energy sources like biofuels, hydro, geo, and biomass and maintain some level of industry. There may be a few centuries in there when things are messed up, but in the best case, population will eventually fall and level out at a comfortable point.

[Dezakin]

It seems I can't edit my post so I'll just make another.

The safest, and most realistic, way to preserve civilization is to reduce consumption and reduce population. If population falls low enough, it may be possible to cluster people around localized energy sources like biofuels, hydro, geo, and biomass and maintain some level of industry. There may be a few centuries in there when things are messed up, but in the best case, population will eventually fall and level out at a comfortable point.

You are forgetting one tiny energy source that happens to run all of France's electric grid, is scalable, and can last till the sun boils the oceans dry.

[mustang1919]

Nuclear depletes. Near everything besides solar and wind depletes.

ed:

lol @ solar advocates pointing out "Solar creates more jobs per dollar than any other energy source!" as if it's a good thing.

http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5821

Renewables tend to be a more labor-intensive energy source than the still-dominant fossil fuels, which rely heavily on expensive pieces of pro­duction equipment. A transition toward renewables thus promises job gains. Even in the absence of such a transition, growing automa­tion and corporate consolidation are already translating into steadily fewer jobs in the oil, natural gas, and coal industries-sometimes even in the face of expanding production. Many hundreds of thousands of coal mining jobs have been shed in China, the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, and South Africa in the last decade or two.4 In the United States, coal output rose by almost one third during the past two decades, yet employment has been cut in half.5

I guess wind is a bit better, it supplies ten times as much power as solar with about the same employment, but that's still not efficient enough when you need 40 million solar workers to power the country.

Also wind power crowds itself out.

http://www.kurzweilai.net/wind-power-no ... al-climate

At maximum levels of power generation, there would be substantial climate effects from wind harvesting. But the study found that the climate effects of extracting wind energy at the level of current global demand (about 18 terawatts) would be small, as long as the turbines were spread out and not clustered in just a few regions. At the level of global energy demand, wind turbines might affect surface temperatures by about 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit and affect precipitation by about 1 percent. Overall, the environmental impacts would not be substantial.

If the <1% global power being supplied by wind increases precipitation by 1% that seems like there's steeply diminishing returns.

[Newfie]

It seems I can't edit my post so I'll just make another.

The safest, and most realistic, way to preserve civilization is to reduce consumption and reduce population. If population falls low enough, it may be possible to cluster people around localized energy sources like biofuels, hydro, geo, and biomass and maintain some level of industry. There may be a few centuries in there when things are messed up, but in the best case, population will eventually fall and level out at a comfortable point.

Yup, seems you have figured it out pretty well. I agree.

In temperate climes heat will be a problem.

The basic issue that humanity faces is controlling our population so that we have a reasonable ratio of available energy per person. Either that or you end up with Haiti.

I like to run thr equation backwards. Figure out how much renewable energy is available, then determine the energy needed to have a sufficient life style. Do a little math magic and you come up with a max sustainable population.

Or to ask the question yet another way...What is the OPTIMIMUM human population for Earth? Surely far below where we are, maybe around one billion. But the question spawns lots of other ideas about the value, and point, and quality of life. Interesting thought experiment. Good for Humanist, who claim to be the responsible type.

[mustang1919]

The optimum population might be less than 5% of what it is now, enough to run everything off of hydro, biofuels, and other energy sources which might become practical once population gets down to a small scale.

The minimum supportable population is about a thousand people in terms of genetic viability.

I don't think deliberate population control is necessary though. As energy costs go up, people have fewer kids. Oil depletion won't happen all at once, it'll be a gradual process over many decades and individual fertility decisions will hopefully have time to take effect before it gets too bad.

The takeaway is that living standards are not actually a function of technology. They are a function of the available energy versus individual fertility decisions. The population can adjust to the resources available. This is actually how things worked in the ancient world, it's just that fertility was high so living standards remained low.

[Dezakin]

Nuclear depletes. Near everything besides solar and wind depletes.

There's 40 trillion tonnes of uranium and 120 trillion tonnes of thorium in the crust. 200 tonnes of uranium can run a light water reactor for a year, and 1 tonne of uranium or thorium can run a molten salt reactor for a year. So what if it depletes?

At that rate, wind and solar deplete. The oceans will boil before you use up all the uranium and thorium. One might think that over several more million years we might eventually figure out nuclear fusion and space colonization, and if not, several hundred million years is a pretty good run.

[mustang1919]

Only a tiny fraction of that is actually accessible though.

http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/ ... -thori.pdf

There's about 3 million tons of thorium resources. If we run 1,000 reactors on that stuff for a few millenia we're already out.

USGS definition of "resource": A concentration of naturally occurring solid, liquid, or gaseous materials in or on the
Earth's crust in such form that economic extraction of a commodity is regarded as feasible, either currently or at some future time.

It would smooth the transition though. Thanks for bringing it up.

[Dezakin]

Only a tiny fraction of that is actually accessible though.

No its not. Resources are based on current prices, and the price of nuclear power is incredibly insensitive to fuel price; It's almost all capital. If it was the price of gold, you still would be able to make power in molten salt reactors for not much more than current prices of uranium or thorium, and a look at the ore concentrations of typical gold mines versus average crust concentrations is a good illustration; 3ppm for uranium, 10 ppm for thorium, vs .5 ppm for gold ore. It will never cost as much to mine uranium or thorium as it does gold.

Uranium and thorium are lithophilic minerals that are log normal distributed; Their depletion curves are nothing like fossil fuels.

On energy balance analysis the resource is vast. ordinary dirt has an energy density from the uranium and thorium over ten times that of coal.

You will never run out of nuclear fuel for nuclear power. If you want to predict the end of civilization, you better predict running out of something else instead.

[Tanada]

There's 40 trillion tonnes of uranium and 120 trillion tonnes of thorium in the crust. 200 tonnes of uranium can run a light water reactor for a year, and 1 tonne of uranium or thorium can run a molten salt reactor for a year. So what if it depletes?

At that rate, wind and solar deplete. The oceans will boil before you use up all the uranium and thorium. One might think that over several more million years we might eventually figure out nuclear fusion and space colonization, and if not, several hundred million years is a pretty good run.

Dezakin!
Great to see you back here on PO dot com, hope you can hang out and participate for a while!