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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The solar leasing deals in AZ are interesting. I have a quote for 6500 KWH/Year for 20 years for $5K down and $20/month for a total of $9800. That is a cost of 0.076/KWH which is less than I am paying. The lessor guarantees the production for the term of the lease. Of course, the lessor recovers a good portion of the cost of the installation up front and then gets depreciation in addition to the lease payment. The $0 down quote was $63/month for a rate of 0.116/KWH. If I get my 6500 KWH/year for 10 years and then the system dies and the lessor walks away, I will have paid 0.113/KWH. Prepaying works for me because I hope not to be working for the last half of the lease.
I paid an average of 0.13/KWH last year on a plan that peaks out at 0.245/KWH during summer peak consumption times which correspond to peak solar production times. This makes solar in AZ on this rate plan even more compelling.
I’m gathering more quotes including a DIY option.
Do we all believe that solar panels will be producing at 80% capacity in 20 years?
They proposed converting the energy economy of the entire world to renewable sources by 2030.
Talk about the limits of insanity. These heavily subsidized green energies cannot exist without… heavy subsidies. On top of this crowding out conventional energy (on the margins [but with a lot of green energy, the margins become substantial]), and causing energy costs to rise for everybody, it’s just a huge down the drain money sink. It is clear that the profligate spending on green energy is a significant factor responsible for the Euro crisis. Clearly, if you tried to run the entire economy on these subsidized boondoggles, we as a nation or world would go belly up before we could count to nine.
[they had a] plan to build the world’s largest [boondoggle] southeast of Nuremberg.
Well, at least it would be near a convenient place for the perpetrators of this bankrupting farce… the be tried for crimes against humanity. / semi-sarcastic
Walter H. Schneider says:
July 6, 2012 at 8:05 pm
…… 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.
________________________________________
The whole CAGW mess is a hoax and the MSM is the propaganda arm of the “Regulating Class”
Here are some links to good articles.
POLITICS
Climate Coup — The Politics “How the regulating class is using bogus claims about climate change to entrench and extend their economic privileges and political control. – Dr David M.W. Evans, 29 Feb 2012, last updated 13 Mar 2012,”
Watch the “companion video” at Democrats Against U.N. Agenda 21 Rosa, a California government employee, explains a lot of the politics.
SCIENCE
On the Scientific side here is a smattering of good papers, articles and websites.
CO2: The Greatest Scientific Scandal of Our Time by Zbigniew Jaworowski, M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc.
Questioning the CO2 Ice Hockey Stick
Introduction to paper below: Do glaciers tell a true atmospheric CO2 story? by Prof Z Jaworowski, Prof T V Segalstad and N Ono
CO2 figures, cycle, solubility, GHG effect,
oceanic scale, and biosequestration (Lucy Skywalker’s data base)
Several more papers by Tom V. Segalstad et al @ur momisugly http://www.co2web.info/
The Acquittal of Carbon Dioxide by Jeffrey A. Glassman, PhD
ON WHY CO2 IS KNOWN NOT TO HAVE ACCUMULATED IN THE ATMOSPHERE & WHAT IS HAPPENING WITH CO2 IN THE MODERN ERA by Jeffrey A. Glassman, PhD
The CO2 Record in Plant Fossils (stomata)
Tree response to CO2 (We are/were close to starvation levels of CO2 for plants which is why C4 and CAM plants evolved)
A heck of a lot of papers and other info on plant response to CO2 at
CO2 Science
That should keep you reading for a week or so…
Terry Jackson says:
July 6, 2012 at 8:54 pm
Just looked up the numbers;
Boston averages 4.3 “sun hours” per day in summer, year-round sun-hour average is a
mere 3.0.
Tucson averages 7.4 sun hours in summer and 6.6 sun hours year-round.
Using simple trig: the winter solstice solar hours in Boston are 44% of peak summer.
The winter solstice solar hours for Tuscon are 57% of peak summer.
Boston peak summer intensity is only 94% of Tuscon peak summer intensity to begin with.
Just looking at this – anyone using solar in the north for utility power is deranged. Potential power (winter) is less than half potential power (summer) even without clouds factored in.
You might be able to make a case for Tuscon.
Walter H. Schneider – you ask “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?”“.
The answer as I understand it is that natural sources of CO2 are roughly balanced by the sinks. For example, plants emit CO2 in autumn and absorb in spring. Or the low latitude oceans emit CO2 while the higher latitudes absorb. Man-made CO2 is minor when compared to the gross natural flows, but are still large enough to disturb the balance.
However, that only addresses the CO2 flow part of the question, not the ‘havoc’ bit. There never will be any of that ‘havoc’.
I am intensely critical of CAGW, but I do think that the “only 3% of CO2 is man-made” argument is incorrect. As I understand it, the errors in CAGW are in the claimed “feedbacks”, in the lack of supporting evidence, in the failure to test, in the unequal treatment of natural factors, and in the wilful ignoring of empirical evidence.
As a member of the IEEE (and the IEE too) it is encouraging to discover that some of my peers have not lost all their marbles.
Thank you Vaclav Smill for a refreshingly sane view of our energy options!
Regarding wind turbine mortalities…I’m more alarmed about the bats than the birds! Check this out, and also the stories linked into it….hundreds of thousands of bats killed each year?? Amazing!
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/fixing-wind-powers-bat-problem
Wholesale undelivered prices of North American grid-connected electrical generating costs, are approximately:
4 cents/kWh to generate electricity from natural gas, before distribution costs, at most 5-6 cents;
13.5¢/kWh for (intermittent and therefore essentially worthless) wind power;
64.2¢/kWh for (intermittent and therefore essentially worthless) solar power.
__________________
With respect, wind power is far worse than Mr. Smil has stated.
The Capacity Factor for land-based wind power is typically ~20-25%, but it is the Substitution Factor that really measures the usefulness of wind power, and that Substitution Factor can be as low as 4% of installed peak capacity.
See Fig. 7 in http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/wp-content/uploads/eonwindreport2005.pdf
That is, for every 100 units of installed wind power capacity, you can replace only 4 units of conventional energy generating capacity.
“Wind Power – It Doesn’t Just Blow, It Sucks!”
Solar power is even worse than wind power, in that solar requires subsidies (paid by the consumer) many times that of wind power.
“Solar Power – Stick It Where the Sun Don’t Shine!”
The SciAm article in 2009 was really bad. It ignored the cost and size of the transmission line construction needed to move 10 TW of electrical power from Nevada/Arizona to the Eastern seaboard load centers. At the time I estimated it to cost at least $20T, not including the cost of new rights of way and all the WWF/ACLU/NatureConservancy/Audubon fun that would entail.
The SciAm article described a pipedream by avoiding all of the difficulties associated with a large infrastructure project. I was surprised that PhD and Nobelist Albert Gore was not a co-author. I believe he was pushing for all underground transmission, with complete changeover in 10 years.
Terry Jackson says:
July 6, 2012 at 8:54 pm
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? ……..
=============================================
Thank you, Terry. Spot on.
I’m very glad people have found a way to supply their own electricity. Good on them. But, they shouldn’t try to convince people this is a viable alternative to … well anything other than personal use. It works in some places, but not others. The cost for this is beyond most of the people in the world and for many of the ones who do possess the wealth to do so, their location is improper. I would be very interested in their cost and when they expect to recoup this cost. The solar homes I’ve experience with have a tremendous upkeep and reinvestment, but battery arrays are getting better.
I believe one mentioned scale….. and that’s true. Scale is what is impossible. The story on solar ended the other day. It’s just that most people haven’t read to the end, yet. I did a post this morning on solar, (just click on my name), but, mostly it was to encourage people to read an article.
Italy’s morass can serve as an example of this madness. Anyone remotely interested in the subject should read this…. http://www.europeanenergyreview.eu/site/pagina.php?id_mailing=292&toegang=1700002963a49da13542e0726b7bb758&id=3792 The fellow lays it out quite well.
VaclavSmil wrote “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”
Sorry, this just isn’t true. Average rainfall in Nürnberg per month during the summer is about 3 inches/month with over 150 hours of sunshine per month.
http://www.weather-and-climate.com/average-monthly-Rainfall-Temperature-Sunshine,nurnberg,Germany
I know from personal experience , as I have lived here for over 10 years. What tends to happen during the summer is that there is a lot of sunshine during the day, followed by a thunderstorm in the evening. This doesn’t count in any way as “incessant rain”, though those days might be recorded as “rainy” days.
Dennis Cox says:
July 6, 2012 at 6:57 pm
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
You don’t say where you live. I live in one of the sunniest cities in the developed world, Perth. The problem is that cloudy/rainy days are almost all in winter. On a rainy winter day, my solar panels produce as little as 5% of the electricity they produce on a typical summer day. So I am somewhat sceptical of your rain or shine claim.
There is no feasible way to store enough electricity from summer to winter to make a difference.
Vaclav Smil interviewd by Andrew Revkin. Vaclav was a sane guest on the wretched TVO/Perimeter Institute “sustainability” hoax show.
Link to the Revkin Interview mentioned above
Roger Sowell said
” 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….”
It is worth noting that the “smart guys” were mostly good ol’ boys from Texas, driven by the market. (maybe helped a little by R&D types with degrees) Whereas solar R&D has mostly been government funded.
On the critical side, Vaclav’s original article was written in 2004 and the plant was commissioned in 2005. Is there any new information on the Bavarian Solarpark PV generator which can bring some relevance to its current operation? Is it working as expected?
The coal-fired generation capacity is wrong for large base load plants. There are a number operating at over 90% particularly new ones in Australia and Asian countries (ie similar to nuclear power stations). The 65-70% applies to the smaller units in areas where most of the power is supplied by coal-fired units and reflects demand changes during the day and in seasons. The latter is similar to gas fired turbines which may be mainly on standby and have a capacity factor over the year of 10% but have a capacity factor of close to 100% when required. On the otherhand solar and wind generation may have zero capacity when required in peak times. Even hydro may have little capacity in drought times as experienced in Tasmania a few years ago. when a new gas fired power station was built (assisted by alarmist such as Flannery saying it will not rain again)
How many wind turbines were completely destroyed in last week’s storm back East? Those turbines now have an efficiency of 0% and need to be completely replaced at full cost.
Asmilwho;
Sorry, this just isn’t true. Average rainfall in Nürnberg per month during the summer is about 3 inches/month with over 150 hours of sunshine per month.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Well, based on a 12 hour day and a 30 day month, that would mean that there were 150+ hours per month out of 360 hours, leaving over half the day time hours being either rain+cloud, or just cloud. Given that it is a mid-high latitude, I’m guessing that June would feature more like (rough estimate) 420 day light hours, meaning that at only 150 hours of sunshine per month, about 2/3 of the daylight hours are cloudy/rainy. Seems to me that you’ve provided a link to information that is basically supportive of Vaclav Smil’s comment.
Archonix, a good and disturbing explanation you give (at 4:41pm) on why birds or so vulnerable to falling prey to the blades of windmills.
Shut down the monsters!
If you really want to shut down a wind turbine project, just build it in a way that offends the Kennedy clan:
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2011/07/18/248500/rfk-jr-in-murdochs-wall-street-journal-urges-abandoning-cape-wind-for-canadian-hydro-he-once-opposed/?mobile=nc
I have no particular hang up on renewable energy-the idea of sustainable energy within our control, rather than at the whim of a despot of an unfriendly political or religious persuasion, seems to me to be the hinge on which the idea of renewables-and co2 reduction-shoud be sold.
However, we should think of the maxim ‘horses for courses’. In Britain-where nowhere is further from the coast than 70 miles- we have great opportunities for tide and wave energy which is sorely neglected. Not such a good solution for land locked Switzerland. Solar panels in sunny Spain may be a great idea. In Bavaria? In Southern Britain?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-18649254
Clearly not.Hugely expensive, inefficient and pointless, for as well as trashing countryside pointlessly most of these locations will need new transmission lines to get them to centres of population.
tonyb
I spent 1966 working as a mechanical fitter in the steel rolling section at Bofors AB in Karlskoga, Sweden. Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time!
We used imported cotton waste and rags to clean up the rolling mills, whilst they were being stripped down and rebuilt every three weeks or so. The source of the cotton waste and rags was Japan. In amongst the rags there were kites and Noburi banners.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kyoto_Toji_Nobori_C0922.jpg
I rescued one Noburi, yellow with red Kanjii characters, which accompanied me upon my eventual return to England. A year later, I had the opportunity to get the Noburi translated. I entertained expections it might have been used to represent different divisions within a Samurai army, Instead, it announced the opening of the “Sunshine Water Heating Company”.
Was it a debut that turned out well? Who knows, but that Noburi, nearly ending up soaking in hydrocarbons and dirt half a world away, would not bode very well for success. With hindsight, I now suggest that that single banner’s presence in a bail of rags in 1966, presaged even then, the doom of politically correct, post normal science solar panels.
Asmilwho
All that you demonstrate with your excellent charts is that there is a modest amount of sun during summer months (5 hours per day) when power is not needed as much, and a very small amount of sun during the rest of the year at those times when it is most needed AND the level of daylight/sun is much poorer. Not forgetting of course that for very large parts of a 24 hour period there is no generation at all as night time settles over the installations
It sounds a nice climate over your way but not really suited to solar power is it?
tonyb
You don’t suppose, that Al Gore, recently off-the-public wean and needing some cash and groupies, made a movie he had no IDEA would take of as it did, exposing MANN, HANSEN, JONES, TRENBERTH, WIGLEY, others…
you don’t suppose the reason that REGLU’h AWWu’L aiN’T No GOOD No Moah, is, PEAK AWUL.
An COAL AINT NO GOOD CAUSE uh.. puLLOO’SHuN,
but ALTERNATIVE ENERGY BOY NOW – ‘AT ‘TAIR’S poWWWWerFUL soNN !!!
Because Al Gore’s personal fortune’s derived from OCCIDENTAL OIL the THIRD LARGEST OIL COMPANY ON EARTH? 2ND LARGEST IN CALIFORNIA? NAH?
MAYBE the REASON YEW AINT NEVER HERD of BIG AL GORE’S OCCIDENTAL OIL as BIG
is caWS HALF THAIR HOLDINS AINT IN – OIL. Or COAL.
THAYS IN
yeah. It never was magic treemomiturs and magical hockey stick math and magic gas
it was that about half of OCCIDENTAL OIL’S HOLDINGS are in
AL
TERNATIVE
ENERGY
GORE’s HOLDINGS in OCCIDENTAL
al
ternative
energy
AL GORE is running the biggest scam, you ever saw.
Running that terror campaign about ‘install my policies or die, in SPITE of the election?
That’s the D.E.F.I.N.I.T.I.O.N. of POLITICAL TERROR.
While Old goofy George Bush was really fighting one, Big Oil Al took the opportunity to run his own
end run around the election’s disappointing turn.
It’s criminal and has been from the beginning and it’s simply Al Gore, CRIMINAL SCAMMER.
Period.
No? Then you explain it better.
Simpler.
More perfectly.