But there is hope for the Sunshine State, as every cloud has a silver lining.

For the past half dozen years or so, the automotive industry has become pretty serious about producing electric cars that work. The new Chevy Volt (Motor Trend’s Car of the Year) and the all-electric Nissan Leaf are good examples – and they are real game changers.

But what does this have to do with the cost of photovoltaics and gasoline?

Well, it turns out that these electric cars run so efficiently on electricity that they are significantly less expensive to operate than an equivalent sized gasoline car. In fact, their electric efficiency is so good that even if the electricity is provided by solar photovoltaic cells, the cost will be much less than the cost of gasoline.

At $3.90 per gallon (the average price of gasoline in Florida for the week of May 9, 2011; the average U.S. price was $4.02) the annual cost to drive the typical new small car that gets 32.6 mpg for the 12,000 miles that the average car drives each year is $1,436. The new electric cars get 3 miles per kilowatt-hour (kWh). At today’s cost, electricity from a residential solar photovoltaic system costs 16.8 cents per kWh, so the 4,000 kWh it would take to drive the same 12,000 miles would cost you only $672 each year.

Table 1. Cash savings from driving a 2011 PV-powered car = $764/year

Okay, so I got the title of this article a little wrong, photovoltaics today are less than half the cost of gasoline, actually only 47 percent of the cost.

Compared to the gasoline-powered car, the PV-powered car saves $764 each year!  In the future, consumers will save even more since the cost of gasoline is rising. On the other hand, the cost of PV systems continues to decline.

The past four years Florida has not had a renewable energy policy, primarily because PV electricity was thought to be too expensive.

WE WERE WRONG! It’s gasoline, not PV power that’s too expensive.

Florida sunshine can power our cars, saving us literally millions of barrels of oil and keeping substantial amounts of our hard-earned capital in Florida rather than shipping it out of the state and the country to pay for gasoline.

Share/Save

Alternative energy is called alternative, until it is cheaper, but cheaper than what? – electricity out of the wall at 12 cents yesterday, 15 cents today, 18 cents tomorrow?  Are you aware that people in the U.S. pay different amounts for electricity?  The average residential retail price of electricity in the U.S. was 10.6 cents per kWh in 2007.  Florida was 11.2 cents, most southern states were about 9 cents, WV 7 cents, UT 8 cents, NY and CT about 18 cents, and CA and NJ 15 cents.  So, states that burn coal have the cheapest electricity rates. Places like Utah and West Virginia burn their own coal, so even though they get all the pollution and the greenhouse gasses, at least they get to keep all their money, unlike Florida which ships more than $25 billion out of state to purchase fuel.  Florida has already been paying more for cleaner burning fossil fuels than the Southern states to our north.  We are now paying more for natural gas than we are for coal, and that price increase is more than what is being suggested to add to our electric bills for solar energy.

New Jersey has more solar than Florida because homeowners in NJ have a Renewable Portfolio Standard, and fees (collected into a Public Benefit Fund) are used to incentivize the homeowner for solar on their roof.  If such a fund collected $1.50 on your electric bill in Florida, we could have the equivalent of California’s Million Solar Roofs Program.  Clearly $1.50 is less than the $40 a month cost of doing nothing.  While solar water heating is cost effective today, solar electricity (photovoltaics) without a subsidy is not cost effective today, but the subsidy is still less than the cost of “accelerated cost recovery” for nuclear power.  What about the jobs?  These jobs will not be in China and India, they will be done by your neighbor.  Vote Solar estimates that more than 3,800 megawatts (MW) of solar could be added by 2020 and with it approximately 85,500 new jobs in Florida. What a great way to love your neighbor.

Jim Fenton, Director
Florida Solar Energy Center

Share/Save