And the laws should be changed, but they won't get changed as long as people keep fooling themselves into thinking its about keeping Tesla out. The dealers don't want a sales model that allows direct sales because then the other auto makers can cut them out. Its not about competition with other brands, its about their own manufactures cutting them out. Many folks won't even take time to try and understand why the laws were created to begin with. It had as much to do with consumer protection and price fixing as anything. Things have evolved.

But, it makes a lot of people feel better about fighting on behalf of Tesla, and they do deserve credit for aggressively pursuing change and using their popularity.

So, you don't care what you get for your money? Everything should get equal subsidy no matter the payback? I wonder if you've even seen credible numbers and how they are really spend and attributed.

For example, what you also don't see is the huge tax returns fed by nuclear. A typical unit pays over $10M/year in local property taxes, not to mention the large number of highly paid workers at each plant. A big chunk of solar subsidies goes to China and returns very little in tax's to the local communities.

And, if clean air is important, nuclear subsidies have produced many times the return for the dollar than wind and solar.

I think you care more about your vision of the ideal than about how wisely the subsidies are spent.

There are many ways to make a consumption tax progressive, and it is progressive by nature in that those that consume more pay more.

First, eliminating tax on food and basic necessities greatly helps lower income folks. If need be you can have certain exemptions for people with lower incomes that allows them to get a return. What really matters is what is taxed and how much.

We already tax consumption at the state level. You could argue that having a higher available spending budget from not taxing labor would increase the spending power for many even after consumption tax is added, but it all depends on what is taxed and how much.

I think the greater concern for consumption tax approach is that it could driven the emergence of a huge black market. But, since that might mostly include lower end items and benefit lower income folks, it might be an acceptable flaw.

We either have to shift our approach or move to a system where lower income folks have greater capital investments, be it in retirement or other, but that approach, IMO, drives much great risk for high end corruption.

Just looked back, because your point is valid and its good to check numbers.

The presentation does show a year over year additional production from solar at 1.8 TwH in 2013. So, you add that to total solar production, which will bias the error toward a higher capacity factor, and get about 10%. Its a reasonable approach of estimation because it is well documented that solar installation rates have not been increasing in the last few years, and is biased in favor of a higher capacity factor.

An alternative would be to find the actual capacity installed in 2013, divide by two, and subtract it from the capacity value before calculating, but I don't have that number, and it would still have error since it would assume a steady installation rate throughout the year.

There may be some margin of error there, but the number is consistent with other real world numbers. As I showed elsewhere, the top end capacity factor for PV plants in Germany is about 13%, with many close to 10%. Residential PV knocks the average down because a high number of those panels are not installed at optimal angles. So, you can nit pick over a percent or even two if you want, but if you are doing that you are making the "fatal mistake" of missing the point that low capacity factors are very real in places like Germany.

When my wife refers to me, she sometimes says 'my husband' , or 'my man'. I sometimes refer to my wife as "my wife".

Maybe there are people that need to quit trying to form complete characterizations of people based on the use of a common phrase.

Would it be a conflict for Newegg to offer this?

Did I just read that?

That does present a problem. We cannot use 3D printers to make them.

The numbers shown on the charts embedded in your link are consistent with what I was saying. Germany, overall, is worse than our NE. You can see it all together at one time right here;

https://lh6.googleusercontent....

And the actual capacity factors of German PV bear out that at best they get 3 - 3.5 hr/day (or 0.13 capacity factor). Real world data is always best.

The numbers for tilt panels are different than the numbers for fixed panels. A fixed panel basis is the standard for solar insolation and related comparisons. My numbers are for fixed panels, which make up almost all of the installations. Tilting and tracking are rarely installed.

So,presenting tilt panel numbers when they are not really being used is kind of misleading. However, even your tilt panel numbers are lower than Angelo-shpere insists exist, so I'll let him argue that point with you.

15 years is, what I would say, bearable. That is, if it proves to be highly reliable. That must include all costs, not just the initial CAPEX. If the thing will work for 30 years without complete overhaul, even longer might make sense. If high maintenance costs and a lot of down time are seen, and so there needs to be extra reserve to compensate, then the payback better be a whole lot shorter.

Sigh.

The best solar PV plants in Germany have a capacity factor of about 13%.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...

These are the plants in the best locations. That comes to an average solar insolation of 3.12 full sun hours/day. If you had 5 hours you should have closer to 20% capacity factor. I'll let you think about why they don't see 20%, and why the average capacity factor overall is 9.5%, and try to reconcile it yourself. When you get stumped, I'll gladly explain.

I think you are "insulating" yourself from reality.