From the IEEE Spectrum Journal: A Skeptic Looks at Alternative Energy
It takes several lifetimes to put a new energy system into place, and wishful thinking can’t speed things along
By Vaclav Smil
In June 2004 the editor of an energy journal called to ask me to comment on a just-announced plan to build the world’s largest photovoltaic electric generating plant. Where would it be, I asked—Arizona? Spain? North Africa? No, it was to be spread among three locations in rural Bavaria, southeast of Nuremberg.
I said there must be some mistake. I grew up not far from that place, just across the border with the Czech Republic, and I will never forget those seemingly endless days of summer spent inside while it rained incessantly. Bavaria is like Seattle in the United States or Sichuan province in China. You don’t want to put a solar plant in Bavaria, but that is exactly where the Germans put it. The plant, with a peak output of 10 megawatts, went into operation in June 2005.
It happened for the best reason there is in politics: money. Welcome to the world of new renewable energies, where the subsidies rule—and consumers pay.
Without these subsidies, renewable energy plants other than hydroelectric and geothermal ones can’t yet compete with conventional generators. There are several reasons, starting with relatively low capacity factors—the most electricity a plant can actually produce divided by what it would produce if it could be run full time. The capacity factor of a typical nuclear power plant is more than 90 percent; for a coal-fired generating plant it’s about 65 to 70 percent. A photovoltaic installation can get close to 20 percent—in sunny Spain—and a wind turbine, well placed on dry land, from 25 to 30 percent. Put it offshore and it may even reach 40 percent. To convert to either of the latter two technologies, you must also figure in the need to string entirely new transmission lines to places where sun and wind abound, as well as the need to manage a more variable system load, due to the intermittent nature of the power.
All of these complications are well known, and all of them have been too lightly dismissed by alternative energy backers and the media. Most egregious of all is the boosters’ failure to recognize the time it takes to convert to any new source of energy, no matter how compelling the arguments for it may be.
An example is the 2008 plan promoted by former vice president Al Gore, which called for replacing all fossil-fueled generation in the United States in just a decade. Another is Google’s plan, announced in 2008 and abandoned in 2011, which envisaged cutting out coal generation by 2030. Trumping them all was a 2009 article in Scientific American by Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil engineering at Stanford University, and Mark Delucchi, a researcher in transportation studies at the University of California, Davis. They proposed converting the energy economy of the entire world to renewable sources by 2030.
History and a consideration of the technical requirements show that the problem is much greater than these advocates have supposed.
Read the entire article here.
h/t to WUWT reader “the1pag”
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From my own research, it seems that Thorium/fluoride nukes are by far the most sustainable and cheapest form of energy on the planet, theoretically capable of producing energy at US$0.01/kWh from an element that is as plentiful Pb; there are 1,000’s of years of this stuff easily mineable.
India will apparently have it’s first Thorium test reactor up and running from 2016 and China and Japan are also spending a lot of R&D on the technology.
America had an up and running Thorium test plant in the 60’s, but the powers that be decided that fissionable security was more important that fiscal security and put the ax to the technology. Did DC miss the memo that USSR is defunct?
Anyway, Thorium reactors have the Holy Trinity of energy: cheap + safe + abundant, but it is trumped by the Unholy Trinity of: Environmental + Protection + Agency… As long as the EPA exists, no private-sector Thorium R&D program will be seriously started in the US as the barriers to entry established by the EPA will prevent it; the EPA wants solar and wind farms. LOL!
And so it goes…..until it doesn’t…..
“Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil engineering at Stanford University, and Mark Delucchi, a researcher in transportation studies at the University of California, Davis”.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Nucleon
Of course if they ever built one a ridiculous MPE (Miles per Erg) limit would soon be set. (Maybe it would require 15% radioactive ethenol?)
“They aren’t adapted to something coming straight up or down at them at well over 100 mph, which is what tends to happen when the bird flies through the path of the turbine blades. It’s good to be sceptical but, at the same time, a little common sense will tell you that those windmills are more than capable of all that bird death.”
It is difficult to judge the speed of large moving objects. That’s why a 747 appears to float in the air. That’s also why so many folks are killed by trains going 65 mph when they appear to be doing 30. It’s an illusion of scale, and birds have the same problem. They are not accustomed to such large objects moving through the air and they misjudge the speed.
IMHO the argument against solar and wind energy is that they are an attempt to gather diffuse energy, and so they require an inordinate amount of surface area. The surface is the foundation of the ecosystem, and diffuse energy gathering is an inefficient use of it. Fossil fuels are concentrated energy and require very little surface disturbance relative to the energy produced.
I have written this before, but Greenies who dreamed of renewable energy, solar and wind, becoming large-scale technologies were betting on the price of oil and gas soaring.
Remember just a few years ago when oil was predicted to be $200 per barrel, and natural gas was to be $20 or $30 per million Btu?
If that had come true, the economics of solar and wind would be much, much better today. But, it didn’t. What happened?
Smart guys figured out how to do directional drilling with fracking, and tapped into enormous reserves of oil and gas. Prices for gas plummeted. Oil prices are a bit more complicated.
Solar and wind are doomed to perpetual subsidies, for at least as long as the oil and gas guys keep innovating.
It will be interesting to see how much longer governments are willing to waste money in such subsidies for renewables.
There ARE ways to overcome the intermittency issues of solar and wind. Solar thermal can continue to produce power at night, which is already done in California. Wind power can pump water uphill into a hydroelectric reservoir. This too is done in a few places. But, worldwide there are far too few elevated lakes near wind power farms.
The oil and gas geeks have won. As usual.
Maybe the Greenies will fare better next time, when natural gas prices rise to $30, in about 100 to 150 years. Adjusted for inflation, that will be about $300 to $500 per million Btu.
Such fun to watch the Greenies run smack into real world economics, and lose completely to the oil and gas guys.
Roger Sowell, consulting engineer in oil refining/petrochemicals 1974-2001.
Nah! It only took me a couple of weeks to install enough solar panels, batteries, inverters, and charge controllers to be able to tell the power company they can put their smart meter someplace the sun doesn’t shine. And for those who think a solar system won’t work in places where they get a lot of rain, all I can say is that ours does a good job of supplying enough power both to run the house, and charge the batteries during the day. And it does so rain or shine as long as the sun is up. We run on the batteries at night
“sustainable power” is only a question of scale. One home at a time works just fine. I don’t need to produce enough power to light the whole damn county. Just my own house.
“The ultimate justification for alternative energy centers on its mitigation of global warming” says it all: There is no justification for alternative energy, at least not in the near future.
I say: Continue to investigate, that needs prosperity to make the research sustainable.
If you tax the people into poverty there will be no more research.
My comments on the IEEE article reproduced below. I’m a Life Member of that august society.
Claude Harvey
The professor is dead right on all counts. I developed, built and operated alternate (renewable) energy plants for 20 years. I avoided wind and solar because the economics was simply disastrous to everyone but the subsidized investor. In addition to dismal capacity factor, the problem dooming them both is “energy density” that is so poor, reasonable economy of scale can never be achieved. Too much material required for too little average output. Without massive subsidies, if I GAVE you the solar cells free of charge, you still could not build a solar-voltaic central power plant that made economic sense.
Don’t forget the IED’s, and sniper fire.
Claude Harvey says:
July 6, 2012 at 7:07 pm
My comments on the IEEE article reproduced below. I’m a Life Member of that august society.
Claude Harvey
The professor is dead right on all counts. I developed, built and operated alternate (renewable) energy plants for 20 years. I avoided wind and solar because the economics was simply disastrous to everyone but the subsidized investor. In addition to dismal capacity factor, the problem dooming them both is “energy density” that is so poor, reasonable economy of scale can never be achieved. Too much material required for too little average output. Without massive subsidies, if I GAVE you the solar cells free of charge, you still could not build a solar-voltaic central power plant that made economic sense.
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And then along came Derecho …..
You’d have to give the stuff away again.
michaeljmcfadden says:
July 6, 2012 at 4:22 pm
Also think it was here that I may have seen a figure on the numbers of birds chopped up by them.
Anyone know of any particular pointers that have that information handy? I’m a bit suspicious about the bird thing because the argument just seems a bit too “convenient” (i.e. the environmental wind turbines engaged in unenvironmental bird destruction) .
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There’s no money (funding) in that. If these were hydro or fracking projects the Greens would find someway to sue to halt their progress. Solar and Wind farms get the “Green” light no matter how detrimental they are to the local ecosystems.
Now if these birds were Flying Sacramento Delta Smelts, this might be a different story;
“Environmentalists have long complained that the San Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta’s pumps, which send water to Central Valley farmers and southern California residents, trap and kill fish. In 2006 the Natural Resources Defense Council sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for issuing a biological opinion that supported pumping more water south because the agency didn’t analyze how the pumping might affect the smelt. A federal court ordered the agency to be more mindful of the smelt.
So the agency demanded that water regulators reduce pumping. The National Marine Fisheries Services joined the fun by recommending that regulators restrict pumping to protect salmon, sturgeon and steelhead too. These opinions have superceded the water contracts of farmers and resulted in 3.4 million acre-feet of fresh water flowing into San Francisco Bay each year—enough to irrigate over a million acres of land.
More than 10,000 farm jobs have been lost as a result, and regional unemployment stands at about 15%. Environmentalists blame the water shortages on drought, but even in wet years farmers aren’t getting the water they’re due.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203918304577239472081683362.html
@ur momisugly Steve P
Posted at Mr. Smil’s article:
Mr. Smil;
I’m curious as to the source of the 54% figure for all US federal R&D funds going to nuclear. Was this straight funding for nuclear power applications, or did it include weapons development, nuclear medicine, and power supplies for satellites? Otherwise, it just seem too high.
If you look here http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf01334/pdf/histb.pdf
you’ll see that the Atomic Energy Commission’s share of the federal pie bounces around 8%-15% until 1974 when the Energy Research and Development Agency took over, still around 10% and then in 1977 the Department of Energy steps in. Now, the Defense Department’s share hangs around 50% pretty consistently, but you can hardly claim it all goes toward nuclear power.
We’ll see what he has to say.
speed says:
July 6, 2012 at 4:39 pm
Nine women can’t make a baby in one month.
No, not *one* baby. But, if they are impregnated one per month, the rate of delivery is … one per month.
One woman can not deliver one per month.
I know what you are trying to say, but this is a particularly bad example (although widespread).
Dennis Cox, I’d be interested in knowing where you live.
On June 16, we completed the first year of operation of our 2KW solar installation. During that year, it produced as much power as we used, less about 10 kwh. The only reason I can think of that people in sun belt states aren’t lining up to order these installations is that nobody has any money right now. If the greenshirts really wanted this to catch on, they would be reluctant to enact stupid policies that keep us all broke.
Resourceguy says:
July 6, 2012 at 5:53 pm
I genuinely love this science site, but the energy posts leave a lot to be desired. The capacity factors listed are nowhere near reality unless you are talking about Russia and Japan where they have been known to operate nuclear reactors with half the building blown apart! These erroneous numbers make the rest of the post suspect. Sorry.
Don’t know what point you’re trying to make. The typical US nuclear power plant has been run at above 90% utilization for the last two decades. Since most of the plant cost is “fixed” cost and very little operational expense is fuel cost, they are used for base band power generation and run at capacity. Coal utilization is a little lower than what is quoted because of the low natural gas cost – whether coal or gas is used for base band power generation is a cost per delivered BTU decision.
Only base band power generation facilities would or could be used at high utilization.
Japan nuclear utilization however has been more than cut in half and is below 34%.
Well, all of those comments provide interesting insights and observations, but I still don’t understand why we must worry about anthropogenic CO2 emissions being a controlling problem with respect to CO2 causing rising global temperatures. How can 3.5 percent of annual global CO2 emissions cause so much havoc that the remaining 96.5 percent of annual CO2 emissions from natural sources can be ignored?
I’m just a farmer and have only common sense to guide me on this, seeing that no one else here seems to pay any attention to my concern. I thought that someone here would help me out on this, given that no one in the MSM does.
John Slayton says:
July 6, 2012 at 7:38 pm
“During that year, it produced as much power as we used, less about 10 kwh…”
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Really?, you must live a spartan lifestyle.
Is it possible to recharge your car, and run the a/c at the same time ?
John Slayton says:
July 6, 2012 at 7:38 pm
Dennis Cox, I’d be interested in knowing where you live.
On June 16, we completed the first year of operation of our 2KW solar installation. During that year, it produced as much power as we used, less about 10 kwh. The only reason I can think of that people in sun belt states aren’t lining up to order these installations is that nobody has any money right now. If the greenshirts really wanted this to catch on, they would be reluctant to enact stupid policies that keep us all broke.
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Yes, they are their own worst enemy. Ours too.
(1 year is not really a proof of concept. Keep your coal plant. Stockpile coal like northern states stockpile salt to treat the roads in winter, not knowing what the winter will be like. )
Sun belt states? My consumption can run about 1 MWhr (1,000 kWhrs) per month in the summer months, or about 33 kWh per day for the house which includes air conditioning (or resistive heating in the winter) plus appliances, and, I run the A/C frugally. Try more like 1.5 to 2 MWh for a larger house and with several kids and more appliances (plus more hot water usage!) … or about 66 kWh used per day. Clean, ALL-ELECTRIC house here BTW (no nat. gas).
What’s required in the way of solar cells and batteries etc for that kind of consumption in a ‘sunbelt home’ given the above requirements? Temperatures have been near 100 deg F (from both sides) now for 3 or 4 weeks running (nc Texas) …
.
Walter H Schneider;
How can 3.5 percent of annual global CO2 emissions cause so much havoc that the remaining 96.5 percent of annual CO2 emissions from natural sources can be ignored?
I’m just a farmer and have only common sense to guide me on this, seeing that no one else here seems to pay any attention to my concern
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
1. Don’t apologise for “just” being a farmer. My experience is that farmers understand a great deal about precipitation patters, cloud cover, and other issues that are important in terms of understanding climate.
2. I’m not certain where you got the 3.5% number from, I’ve seen both higher and lower. At day’s end however the exact percentage isn’t the biggest part of the issue. The issue relates to sensitivity. The alarmists are of the opinion that even small increases in CO2 will be amplified be secondary effects of changing the CO2 concentration. To date, the data seems to suggest otherwise.
Thanks for the food!
Gail Combs says:
July 6, 2012 at 6:20 pm
A lot of that was Defense budget – the Manhattan project et al. but I agree it seems a bit high.
It sounds like whoever compiled the figures believed that the entire budgets of the AEC (and successor, DoE) went to supporting nuclear R&D — which they didn’t.
u.k. (us): Really?, you must live a spartan lifestyle.
Well, actually no. Our kitchen is all-electric with normal stove, oven, refrigerator, dishwasher, microwave, toaster, coffee maker, etc. Heating/cooling is high efficiency heat-pump. Several computers, TV, a gazillion electrical gadgets. It works here because of the S. California climate. Wouldn’t work at all in northern states.
Is it possible to recharge your car, and run the a/c at the same time ?
Not sure I follow you on this question. The car is conventional gasoline, runs fine at 270K miles. I’ve considered plug-in hybrids, but if I ever replace it, it will more likely be with natural gas.
I actually agree with Mr. Smil’s general thesis, but I think distributed solar makes economic sense right now for a huge number of people, and without governmental incentives. (Best I not detail the economics again.)
I have been looking into the use of solar or wind since 1960. The reasons I am still looking into it is that it STILL has the same problems it did in 1960, – unreliable, expensive, high-maintenance, not ready for prime-time yet. But they always say that in 5-10 more years with more government help it will be more efficient, cheaper, better, etc. so I have waited for this “better” system.
Here is a well documented webpage with observations on a 3 kWh Solar Panel instalation.
http://www.csudh.edu/oliver/smt310-handouts/solarpan/solarpan.htm
Would you want this on your roof? If you live north of Washington DC you only get 75% of the energy he is getting and have to deal with scrapping off the snow in the winter. Can you climb up on your roof and clean the panels? How many users will fall off? How much to pay to have it cleaned? Will you do it in the winter? How much are the maintenance costs (More than for your furnace and air conditioner combined I would bet.) How about insurance? At latitudes north of Washington DC it would never pay for itself! It sure would make the salesmen rich though. What good are they in hail-stone areas?, Tornado areas? $45,000 paid for over 20 years is more than 200 dollars a month. And then you get to buy a new one. Now add in all of the above maintenance costs. My total electric bill for the year is way less than $100 a month. AND, you still pay your minimum electric bill and everyones electric bill goes up.
Google a “grid connected solar collector” a solar panel like this will cost more than $30,000 PLUS instlation charges. (oh, and since the government will give you 1/3 they sell them for about 50% more than they are really worth.)
Wind and solar can be made to work for RVs and boats and some residences in the sunny areas. It is almost always supplemented with a suitable generator for larger loads. A welder will not be nice to batteries. Where it will simply not work under any circumstance is industrial and commercial loads. Solar powered aluminum smelter, anyone?
An RV or residence can usually place enough solar panels on the roof to power the low loads of some lighting and appliances, even air conditioning provided they are hooked to the grid to provide the peaking power. It may well be feasible to get the sunbelt to provide enough solar and wind from residences to power those residences on average over the course of a year, but it will not have the power to supply any industrial or commercial uses.
Jim:
Texas…. Hmm. We talking Brownsville or Amarillo?
The point made is a good and valid one.
Things like solar for a central system running a country are fanciful. (And for same odd reason we are not allowed to consider hydro as “renewable”. Whats with that?)
However where I live the price of electricity has just gone up 20% – some of that due to a carbon tax. The rates are now about 37 c / kW-hr (A$ and US$ are roughly parity). The summer tariff is even higher.
So – even though the technology is silly, it now makes economic sense for me to put solar on my roof. I’ll sign the contract next week. Here, there are no panel subsidies, there is a renewable energy kickback (Which goes to the installing company not me!), and this lowers the price by about 15%. The numbers look a bit like this:
Annual power bill = $3000
Cost of solar install = $9200
Stated reduction in power bill = >65% but I will assume 50%: so power bill drops to $1500
Return on investment, per year = $1500 / $9200 = about 16%
Payback period is about 6 years. If the price of power goes up more (it is expected to rise another 10% to 20% in another year). then the return is better and the payback shorter.
There is a feed-in tariff also, which I’m assuming is worth nothing. The feed-in rate is now about 2/3 the price of just buying power, so we are not forcing the neighbours to pay for our solar indulgence (our feed-in tariffs WERE very high but have now come back significantly). Any benefit from the feed-in is, again, a bonus. Of course the other big factor here is that the generation is greatest in summer, when the a/c needs are highest and the power price is highest. This helps reduce the demand of us EVIL people with a/c which our politicians keep banging on about.
Of course, when there is no sun I have to buy power from a nice big coal plant. And this just illustrates the fallacy of central generation. Local… little bits… is finally making more sense. Just look into the numbers very carefully.
A full disconnect / battery system is also possible for home use, but vastly more expensive, and the cost of replacement batteries is significant. This might make sense when there is no grid connection available but when the grid is there, its harder to see any benefit: paybacks up around the 10 year mark are silly.