Rooftop Solar Power Installations to Receive Generous French Feed-In-Tariff

This article makes about as good an argument against the use photovoltaics as one can find. (note: not solar in general, solar space heating and solar hot water actually works quite well even without subsidies).

"The hope is to make good on Minister for Energy and the Environment Jean-Louis Borloo’s promise to increase France’s supply of solar generated electricity by 400% (5,400 MW) by 2020."

At 20% capacity factor(an overestimate just to be on the safe side), those 5 400 MW of capacity are equivalent to adding a single new nuclear reactor to the 56 France already has; it's basically nothing.

The means by which they plan to achieve this is by fleecing tax payers for many times more than the cost of generating electricity by any other source(even wind + storage + HVDC).

Soylent:

Not true, 5400 MW amounts to about 5 nuclear power plants...which consume a combustible that is 1. imported 2. extremely expensive 3. dangerous.

I don't know how many billions France pays to buy foreign nuclear combustibles, but certainly a lot more than silicon.

"Soylent:

Not true, 5400 MW amounts to about 5 nuclear power plants..."

No. 5400 MW is the peak rating; what you get in Sahara at noon. Those solar panels have a capacity factor of around 20% and will provide an average power output slightly north of 1 GW, which is slightly more than single nuclear plant.

"...which consume a combustible that is 1. imported 2. extremely expensive 3. dangerous."

Uranium dioxide isn't combustible; it's fissile.

1. So are France's solar panels; it's absolutely trivial to store as many years worth of uranium because it's such a dense fuel.

2. Neither uranium nor nuclear plants are expensive. That's why they provide electricity at a cost of about 2 cents per kWh at the bus bar with full life-cycle costs included.

3. For something so dangerous it's sure is conspicuous that nuclear energy has the least deaths per TWh out of all sources of energy, even when you include poorly con.

"I don't know how many billions France pays to buy foreign nuclear combustibles, but certainly a lot more than silicon."

Is that the best you can do? The spot price for yellowcake uranium is about a $110/kg(which is several times the price payed under the long term contracts under which most yellowcake is traded). Out of 1 kg of uranium you can extract about 100 barrels of oil worth of heat in a typical light water reactor(and that's only by using 1% of the energy available in the fuel). Even if France payed the spot price for uranium of $110/kg the cost of yellowcake uranium amounts to a mere 0.2 cents per kWh at 33% efficiency(which is fairly typical). That's 165 times less than they plan to give as the cheapest feed-in-tariff to get people to install solar PV.