Guest essay by Philip Dowd
Whenever the subject of renewable energy comes up, the conversation usually turns to solar. You hear statements like: “The world receives more energy from the sun in one hour than the global economy uses in one year.”[a] You then ask yourself; “Why can’t we just capture the energy from the sun and solve our energy problem that way?” Why not, indeed?
Let’s suppose that we convert the entire American economy to “all-electric”, and we produce all of the electricity to power it from a solar facility. In other words, we stop burning carbon and capture the sun. What would this solar plant look like? How much would it cost? We can get a ballpark answer to both of these questions with a few assumptions and some simple calculations.
First we need to know how much electricity our solar power plant must generate. An analysis from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory[b] divides the US economy into four sectors – Residential, Commercial, Industrial and Transportation.
Total demand for energy from these sectors (in the box) is about 70 quadrillion BTU’s (or “quads”) per year. So, our solar power plant must reliably deliver the electric energy equivalent of 70 quads to run the US economy for one year, or 56*1012 Wh (56 Terawatt hours) of electricity per day[c].
Our solar facility would consist of a photovoltaic (PV) panel and a battery. (There are other forms of solar power, but PV is good for this purpose.) The PV panel would generate enough electricity during the day to power the economy and charge the battery, and the battery would power the economy at night. Our task is to calculate:
1. The size of the PV panel
2. The size of the battery
3. The cost of the whole thing.
The Photovoltaic Panel
Let’s assume the following:
1. The PV panel would be spread out in the Southwestern states, because that is the sunniest place in America[d].
2. We build in a 50% safety factor to handle any contingency
If we start with demand of 56 Terawatt hours of electricity per day and add a 50% safety factor, we find that we will then need a system that can produce about 83 TWh/day[e].
The easiest way to estimate the footprint of a solar facility of this size is to look at the operating experience of existing solar power plants. Here are several examples [f].
Facility Location Electricity Output/sq meter
Nellis Nevada 150 Wh/day
Beneixama Spain 160
Serpa Portugal 90
Solarpark Mühlhausen Bavaria 68
Kagoshima Nanatsujima Japan 170
The sample shows that actual output is in the 70-170 Wh/day per square meter range. If we assume 150 Wh/day-sq m for our power plant, then its foot print would be about 210,000 sq mi[g].
The Battery
For the battery we will use technology known as “Pumped Storage”[h].
This method stores energy in the form of potential energy of water, pumped from a lower elevation reservoir to a higher elevation reservoir. In our example, electric power from our solar facility produced during the day would be used to run the pumps and fill the upper reservoir. Then, at night, the stored water would be released through turbines to produce the electricity that would run the night time economy.
This is proven technology. “Pumped storage hydro (PSH) is the largest-capacity form of grid energy storage available. As of March 2012, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) reports that PSH accounts for more than 99% of bulk electric energy storage capacity worldwide, representing around 127,000 MW”h. There are about 50 pumped storage plants with more than 1,000 MW of capacity in operation around the world[i] .
In 2009 the United States had 21,500 MW of pumped storage generating capacity[j]. Many of these plants were built during the 1970’s and have therefore been operating for more than 30 years.
Two good examples of pumped hydro electric energy storage in the U.S. are:
1. The facility at Ludington, Michigan[k] is built on a bluff overlooking the east shore of
Lake Michigan. It was constructed in 1969-73.
2. The Bath County facility[l] is located in the northern corner of Bath County, Virginia, on the southeast side of the Eastern Continental Divide, which forms this section of the border between Virginia and West Virginia. It was constructed in 1977-85 and is currently the largest pumped storage facility in the world.
Here are the relevant specifications (from this spreadsheet[m] ):
Capacity Capital Cost Stored Energy Footprint
(MW) ($2014/W)[n] (GWh)[o] (Acres)
Ludington, MI 1,872 0.98 25.5 1,000
Bath County, VA 3,000 1.40 43.0 820
For the purposes of this anlysis, we assumed that the night time energy demand would be about half of the daily demand, or 41 TWh. If we fulfilled this requirement with pumped storage, we would need about 1,000 facilities like Bath County , VA, or about 1,640 like Ludington, MI[p] .
If we assume the average footprint of these facilities to be 1,000 acres, the total footprint would be about 2,600 sq mi[q] for the Ludington option and 1,300 sq mi[r] for the Bath County option.
Note that for the sake of simplicity this analysis does not include a factor for energy losses during the charge/discharge cycle. Overall, the pumping/generating cycle efficiency has increased pump-turbine generator efficiency by as much as 5% in the last 25 years, resulting in energy conversion or cycle efficiencies greater than 80% (MWH, 2009)[s]. Including this factor does not materially change the result.
What Would It Cost?
Assuming today’s technology and today’s costs, this power system would cost about $65 trillion to build.
The PV Panel
Utility-sector PV systems larger than 2,000 kW in size averaged $3.40/W of capacity in 2011[t]. The capacity of a solar power plant that could generate the required 83 TWh/day of electricity would be about 17 TW[u]. The installed cost of our facility would therefore be $3.40/W times 17 TW or about $60 trillion.
The Battery
If we use the actual construction costs of the two PSH projects above, the Bath County option would cost a total of about $5 trillion and the Ludington option would cost about $3.5 trillion[v].
A few comments
1) Putting the PV power facility in the Southwest makes sense from a solar energy point of view because this is the sunniest part of America. But, this strategy has two problems:
a. The Southwest, defined as southern CA + the southern tip of NV around Las Vegas + NM + the panhandles of TX and OK, constitutes about 400,000 sq mi[w]. Our facility would therefore cover about 50% of it!
b. If a major storm covered most (or worse, all) of this, electrical output would drop dramatically and the whole country would suffer.
2) Putting our PV power plant in the “Southern states”, defined as southern CA + southern tip of NV around Las Vegas + all of NM + all states east to the Atlantic Ocean, alleviates the storm risk scenario but puts much of the panel in states that are not as “sunny” as the Southwest, and so our PV power facility would have to be larger to account for that. Even without this expansion it would occupy about 22% of it[x].
3) Some people would say that much of the land in these states is “empty”; but others would say that it is wilderness or grazing land or farm land. It’s safe to say that either the Southwest or the Southern States strategy would provoke some real push-back.
4) PV Panels on houses. There are about 89 million houses in the US[y]. If the owners of every one of them installed 1,000 sq ft (e.g 20 ft by 50 ft) of PV panel on their roof, the total area would be about 3,200 sq mi., a small percentage of the needed area.
Additional Construction Costs
Building the solar power plant is not the only cost of capturing the sun.
1) Electrifying the economy. We simply assumed at the beginning that the entire economy has been “electrified”, so that all energy is now supplied in the form of electricity, but this in itself would be an enormous project. By far the largest part of this would involve the electrification of the transport sector. The chart above shows that transportation is the largest user of energy (38%) and that almost all of it comes in the form of petroleum. Electrifying this sector would mean abandoning the internal combustion engine and converting to electricity all cars, buses, trucks (especially tractor-trailers), ships, and the entire railroad network.
2) Re-building and expanding the entire national electrical grid. Today power plants are located close to the user. Major cities, e.g. Chicago, are surrounded by a network of power plants[z]. Our new solar system, however, would locate the power plants where the sun shines the most. So, in theory, much of it would be located in the Southwest, which is the sunniest part of America. This means that the solar-based grid would be much larger than present because it must transport electricity much larger distances, for example, from Arizona to New Jersey.
3) Developing a computer network to control the whole system, the so-called “smart grid”. The solar grid must be able to react to changes in the weather. Suppose we adopt the Southern States strategy. Further suppose that on Monday the Southwest is clear and the Southeast is cloudy. On that day huge amounts of electricity must move generally west to east. Then suppose that on Tuesday the Southwest is cloudy and the Southeast is clear. On that day huge amounts of the electricity must move generally east to west. This will be happening every day as weather systems move across America. The grid and control systems to handle this do not, today, exist.
Compare the “Solarization” of America With Other “Mega-Projects”
America is certainly capable of successfully sustaining large projects over long periods of time that require solutions to major engineering problems. Three examples are:
1. The Manhattan Project. The project to build the first atomic bomb spanned 1942-1946 and cost about $26 billion in 2014 dollars[aa].
2. Project Apollo. The project to put the first man on the moon spanned 1961-1972 and cost about $130 billion in 2014 dollars[bb].
3. The Interstate Highway System. This project was authorized in 1956 and was completed in 1991, 35 years later, at a cost of about $500 billion in 2014 dollars[cc].
These are three very successful projects. What were the keys to their success?[dd]
1. A perceived threat or reward that leads to public acceptance. The Manhattan project and Apollo project were both responses to perceived threats, which compelled policymaker support for these initiatives. The interstate highway system was perceived as an enormous jobs program that would also produce a big jump in economic productivity.
2. A clear goal. Each project had a clear goal – build the bomb, put a man on the moon by end of 1969, build the interstate highway system.
3. Government money that ensures success. All three projects were funded by government. For example, the Manhattan Project consumed about 1% of the federal budget during its life, and Project Apollo consumed about 2% during its life.
How does our solar project score on these three success factors?
1. Perceived threat or reward. Climate change and/or exhaustion of fossil fuels. But, does the American public buy in to this? Recent polls suggest that it does not.
2. A clear goal. Electrify the US economy and generate the electricity with a solar-based system. But, whereas the interstate highway system (for example) generated huge benefits to Americans, it is not clear if there are any near-term benefits from, for example, converting transportation from carbon to solar-produced electricity.
3. Government money to ensure success. The government’s role in all three projects was to provide the funding. But, given the public’s lack of support, the huge amounts of money required, and the fiscal shape in which governments at all levels find themselves, governments today are in no position to fund this entire project.
What To Do?
In order to adopt solar power on a large scale today we must confront four problems associated with the technology.
1. The sun is a relatively low density energy source. Even in a sunny place like Arizona, it delivers only about 200 W/sq m over an average day[ee].
2. Today’s PV panels are inefficient at converting this energy to electricity. A typical low-cost PV panel will convert only 15-20% of the sun’s energy to electricity.
3. Intermittency. The sun shines for only about half of the 24 hour day, and is often obscured by clouds.
4. Cost. The construction cost of a solar PV facility is about $3.50/W vs about $1.00/W for a gas-fired power plant[ff]. Furthermore, whereas a gas-fired plant produces electricity 24/7 rain or shine, a solar plant produces electricity only during the daylight hours.
The efficiency of PV panels continues to improve, and panels with 20% efficiency are coming onto the market[gg], but the theoretical limit of the PV technology in use today is 31%[hh], and getting there has been agonizingly slow. More research is required to improve the efficiency of PV panels and any other technology that converts the sun’s energy to electricity.
The sun’s intermittency issue requires development of grid scale electricity storage systems that are sufficient (in this example) to power the entire economy during the night. Many new technologies are currently under development. As with PV panel efficiency, more research is required to develop these new technologies for electricity storage.
The capital cost of PV power plants is falling as the cost of PV panels drops. Today, PV panels cost about $.74/W, one one-hundredth of the cost in 1977[ii]! But the PV panel is only one component of the total cost of a complete solar power plant. The so-called “non-module” costs, e.g. inverters, mounting hardware, labor, permitting and fees, overhead, taxes, installer profit, etc, now make up at least two thirds of the total installed cost[jj]. Further reductions in total cost will require significant reductions in non-module costs. The total cost of a PV power plant today is still about four times the cost of a gas-fired equivalent, and it generates electricity for only half the day.
Finally, as with any energy plan, we must continue to work on energy efficiency. The chart above shows that of the 70 quads of energy supplied to the economy, about 47%[kk] of them are “rejected”, i.e. lost. Improving energy efficiency (BTU/$ GDP) is a must, regardless of the way forward.
A Final Comment
The intent of this exercise is to arrive at a ballpark estimate of what it would take to stop burning carbon and “Capture the Sun”. There is obviously a large margin of error, plus or minus, in all of it. One thing is certain. Eventually we homo sapiens will consume all of the planet’s supply of carbon. Long before that time we must develop an alternative to burning that carbon.
It’s a good bet that solar will eventually be a major part of our energy equation. The good news about the sun is that it is:
1. For all practical purposes an inexhaustible source of energy.
2. Free.
3. Available to everyone. No country can seize control of the sun and deny it to others.
But, it is also true that solar power today supplies only about two tenths of one percent of the energy to run the U.S. economyb. It is easy to see why when we compare the economics of solar with other options. In the exercise above I estimate the cost of building a system to power today’s economy with energy from the sun at about $65 trillion. Doing the same thing with gas-fired technology would cost about $4 trillion[ll], about 6% of the cost of solar.
Remember that this whole exercise has used today’s technology and today’s costs. Both of these should improve over time, but until they do the business case for a major push into solar does not look good.
REFERENCES:
[a] ”Solar Energy, A New Day Dawning?”, Nature 443, 19-22 (7 September 2006) doi:10.1038/443019a; Published online 6 September 2006
[b] Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory – https://missions.llnl.gov/energy/analysis/energy-informatics
[c] 70 x 1015 BTU/yr = 1.9 x 1014 BTU/day = 56 x 1012 Wh/day = 56 TWh/day
[d] http://www.currentresults.com/Weather/US/average-annual-state-sunshine.php
[e] PV Panel Capacity
Desired output = 56 TWh/day
50% safety factor raises this to 83 TWh/day
[f] Power Plant Footprint
Nellis Powerplant (Nevada) = 30 GWh/yr on 140 acres = 150 Wh/day per sq meter, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellis_Solar_Power_Plant
Beneixama (Spain) = 30 GWh/yr on 500,000 sq m = 160 Wh/day per sq meter, http://www.solarserver.com/solarmagazin/solar-report_0109_e.html
Serpa (Portugal) = 20 GWh/yr on 600,000 sq m = 90 Wh/day per sq meter, http://www.withouthotair.com/c6/page_48.shtml p48
Solarpark Mühlhausen (Bavaria) = 17,000 kWh/day on 25 hectacre = 68 Wh/day per sq meter, http://www.withouthotair.com/c6/page_48.shtml p41
Kagoshima Nanatsujima (Japan) = 22,000 households @ 3,600 kWh/household on 1.3 million sq m = 170 Wh/day-sq m http://global.kyocera.com/news/2013/1101_nnms.html
[g] Required output = 83 TWh/day so this divided by 150 Wh/day-sq m = 210,000 sq mi
[h] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity
[i] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pumped-storage_hydroelectric_power_stations
[j] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectric_power_in_the_United_States#Pumped_storage
[k] http://www.consumersenergy.com/content.aspx?id=6985
Ludington Pumped Storage Plant, Ludington, MI
[l] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_County_Pumped_Storage_Station
[m] Some examples of pumped storage facilities. All can be found in Wikipedia:
[n] The equation here is Capital Cost at time of construction x adjustment for inflation ÷ Capacity
For Bath = $1,600 mil x 2.6 ÷ 3,000 MW = $1.38 /W (inflation adjustment is for the period 1981 – 2014)
For Ludington = $315 mil x 5.8 ÷ 1,872 MW = $0.98 /W (inflation adjustment is for the period 1971 – 2014)
For inflation adjustment use this site: http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/
[o] The equation here is Capacity x Time to Empty Upper Reservoir
For Bath = 3,000 MW x 14.3 hours = 43.0 GWh
For Ludington = 1,872 MW x 13.6 hours = 25.5 GWh
[p] The equation here is Demand ÷ Stored Energy
For Bath = 41 TWh ÷ 43.0 GWh = 953 or about 1,000 “Bath-like” facilities
[q] 1,640 x 1,000 acres x 0.0016 sq mi/acre = 2,600 sq mi
[r] 1,000 x 820 acres x 0.0016 sq mi/acre = 1,300 sq mi
[s] http://www.hydro.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/NHA_PumpedStorage_071212b1.pdf
[t] http://newscenter.lbl.gov/news-releases/2012/11/27/the-installed-price-of-solar-photovoltaic-systems-in-the-u-s-continues-to-decline-at-a-rapid-pace/
Original Source is: Tracking the Sun, an annual PV cost-tracking report produced by the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
[u] http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/tech_cap_factor.html
According to this chart, the capacity factor for solar power plants installed so far in the U.S. is about 20%. Therefore, the Capacity of a solar plant to power America would be = electricity demand/day ÷ 24 hrs/day ÷ 20% capacity factor
= 83 TWh/day ÷ 24 h/day ÷ 0.2 = 17 TW
[v] Capacity of pumped storage = night time demand ÷ 12 hrs = 41 TWh ÷ 12 h = 3.4 TW
Capital cost for Bath = $1.40/W, so Bath option CapEx = 3.4 TW x $1.40 ≈ $4.8 trillion
Capital cost for Ludington = $0.98/W, so Ludington option CapEx = 3.4 TW x $0.98 ≈ $3.3 trillion
[w] An estimate from Google Maps
[x] NV+AZ+NM+TX+OK+LA+MS+AL+GA+SC+FL ≈ 1 million sq mi according to Wikipedia
[y] US Census Bureau http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acsbr11-20.pdf
[z] http://www.eia.gov/state/maps.cfm
[aa] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project
[bb] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Apollo#Program_cost
[cc] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System
[dd] Analysis in this section is based on this article by Deborah D. Stine, PhD, now at Carnegie Mellon University: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL34645.pdf
[ee] MacKay, Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air, p46
[ff] U.S. Energy Information Administration, Updated Capital Cost Estimates for Utility Scale Electricity Generating Plants”, April 12, 2013, http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/capitalcost/, Table 1
[gg] http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/20/idUS110444863620110620
[hh] Shockley-Queisser limit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shockley%E2%80%93Queisser_limit
[ii] http://www.economist.com/news/21566414-alternative-energy-will-no-longer-be-alternative-sunny-uplands
[jj] http://emp.lbl.gov/sites/all/files/LBNL-5919e.pdf, graph on p14
[kk] From the chart on page 1:
Total energy to drive the U.S. economy (in the box) = 69.5 quads
Total energy input = total energy output
Total energy output = rejected energy + energy services = 32.5 quads + 37.0 quads
Therefore rejected energy = 32.5 / 69.5 = 46.8%
[ll] 83 TWh/day required to run the economy
Assume the capacity factor for these gas-fired plants = 90%
Then capacity = 83 ÷ 24 ÷ 0.9 = 3.8 TW
Cost to build = 3.8 TW x $1/W ≈ $ 4 trillion
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Grey wrote: “Why do people always ignore, the cost of land and the cost of money, Interest payments alone would exceed any fuel cost.” The EIA (Energy Information Administration) actually studies this sort of thing. Turns out that most technologies require land and money. You can learn more about the comparative costs of various power plants here: http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/electricity_generation.cfm
Wayne writes: “As for solar, I have done the analysis both myself and had professional help – the problem with current technology is that the panels and the batteries require replacing before the costs have been recovered so solar requires constant re-investing, and no cost recovery, at least in my location. If it were feasible at my latitude, 52 40, I would have been off the grid long ago. I personally think I will be long deceased before solar is economic at household scale without a grid tie. But even with a grid tie, it does’t pay at this time.”
Wayne, come visit us down here in California some time. If Solar isn’t economic for you, you don’t have to use it. Down here, Solar is economic at household scale, and our population densities are high enough that grid tie makes sense. Turns out that most of the population of the world doesn’t live as far north as you do. Meanwhile, you’ve got hydro already built. Feel free to use that.
cesium62 says:
…compared to bird deaths from cats, power lines, windows, pesticides, automobiles, …
Well, that makes windmills A-OK, then.
It’s amazing how so-called “enviromentalists” can justify slaughtering birds in return for highly subsidized, über-expensive, unreliable wind power…
…not to mention that windmills disproportionately kill raptors.
cesium62:
At August 1, 2014 at 2:50 am you answer a question from Grey Lensman at July 31, 2014 at 10:00 pm; i.e.
Your answer implies that such costs are assessed and links to a US government forecast of energy costs from various power plants.
I fail to find any mention of “cost of land” and “cost of money” in that link. Please say where you think they are.
Also, the link assesses cost of solar energies with inclusion of subsidies, so its estimates are a function of what it claims will be government subsidies. True costs are total coasts; true costs are not total costs less subsidies.
Richard
Boris Gimbarzevsky says:
August 1, 2014 at 12:30 am
The fact that watermelons seem determined to destroy every hydroelectric dam in the US is so insane that one can only make sense of it if one views “environmentalism” as an anti-life religion.
Boris, I suspect it’s more a case they have this psychological ideal of ultimate natural perfection which can only exist if that unnatural component, the human and their technology, are eliminated from consideration and their version of natural perfection.
The obvious antidote to their grotesque version of perfection and implicit assumption that humans are not natural, is to point out that;
(a) Humans and every scrap of technology and the physics and chemistry of materials, are in fact 100% natural.
(b) That we are the best current example of natural adaptation and survival of the fittest and thus have every right to alter our required environmental niche to suit and serve our survival and requirements and species natural character and inclinations;
(c) In which niche we have the capacity for insight and benevolence to the extent that we both protect and immensely enjoy nature, plus permit such people to walk and talk as freely as they wish and hope they’ll, in time, make at least a partial recovery, or become less traumatized and rejecting of our stunning natural emergence.
“It’s a good bet that solar will eventually be a major part of our energy equation…”
No.
Solar is a stupid way to try to make a static source of big power output over a large service area – as your model amply demonstrates. You could show the same truth for wind power generation just as well if you are so inclined.
Need to intermittently pump a bit of water into a remote water trough for livestock? Well then a solar rig might be just the thing. But if you want to serve a civilization you better come up with something that works on rainy days [and nights], is distributed and redundant, is cost efficient [in dollars, land use and quality of life impacts], and made of upgradable, long service life, components.
Rational men of the future will look back at us and marvel at the long gap between developing the theory of nuclear power generation and its ubiquitous use… and rightly consider us fools.
“What Would It Cost? Assuming today’s technology and today’s costs, this power system would cost about $65 trillion to build.” ~Philip Dowd
Excellent article. As with all Broken Window economic actions, part of the cost of coercive action to transform the energy sector must include the value of the coal plants, hydro, working home electric meters, etc. which would be unnecessarily destroyed.
From cesium62 on August 1, 2014 at 2:32 am:
Clearly this shows you have a fundamental problem with the definitions, as clearly we overwhelmingly do not rebuild, do not demolish and scrap the old while replacing it with the new, usually in the same location.
Instead we repair, either fix broken bits and swap them out for working bits, and enhance, when two lanes become four or a new sewage treatment plant can handle 40% more volume.
The closest example of rebuilding infrastructure is when phone service switched to primarily fiber optics, which started decades ago, and is still not complete as local economics still makes copper to the user more cost-efficient. It also saved the telcos money, without government subsidies or mandates.
The closest example of continuously rebuilding infrastructure is cellphone service, where they scrap the old tech to implement (and endlessly hype) the newer faster standards. But that is reaching the natural limit where nearly all users find their service to be fast enough, now they want the same but cheaper.
Next you say:
This shows a near-complete disconnection with reality. Utilities will increase efficiencies to increase profitability, provided the technology is time-durable, what they install today will still be usable and similar to what they will be using several decades from now, for the payback period can be decades. That is their sustainability, transformers that aren’t replaced every few years to comply with ever-stricter efficiency requirements, and grids that remain up and running at suitable capacity for years without disruption.
“Sustainable” is a goal pursued only for itself. It runs counter to prevailing economics and expectations of reliability, offering no real benefit besides the word itself.
So we will not be rebuilding, and there is no overriding reason for it to be “sustainable” short of government mandate, therefore neither shall happen.
The key takeaways include probable snd intrinsic limits to efficency improvement. If PV has a maximum 50% improvement, and costs are 14X gas-powered today – 1/5 future costs are still 3X gas -we can expect solar to remain a niche supplier WITH SUBSIDIES unless we cripple our economy (as it is).
A good upper limit analysis.
“Eventually we homo sapiens will consume all of the planet’s supply of carbon. Long before that time we must develop an alternative to burning that carbon.”
Not true. Now that we know that the Earth’s core is a supernova remnant and that it produced natural gas and petroleum constantly, it is indeed a renewable resource. It is no joke that wells drilled in Texas in the 1940s are still productive today. A lot of well that went “dry” are now being found to have been recharged by gas and oil from below.
Zeke says:
August 1, 2014 at 5:31 am
“What Would It Cost? Assuming today’s technology and today’s costs, this power system would cost about $65 trillion to build.” ~Philip Dowd
Excellent article. As with all Broken Window economic actions, part of the cost of coercive action to transform the energy sector must include the value of the coal plants, hydro, working home electric meters, etc. which would be unnecessarily destroyed.
“From which, by generalizing, we arrive at this unexpected conclusion: “Society loses the value of objects unnecessarily destroyed,” and at this aphorism, which will make the hair of the protectionists stand on end: “To break, to destroy, to dissipate is not to encourage national employment,” or more briefly: “Destruction is not profitable.””
~Frederic Bestiat
_________________
Where were all of this government’s learned economists when POTUS implemented his infamous “Cash for Clunkers” scheme?
Richard courtney
The fallacy of overpopulation derives from the disproved Malthusian idea which wrongly assumes that humans are constrained like bacteria.
_____________________________________
No Richard.
The reality of overpopulation comes from the average house size in the UK decreasing by 60 % in 70 years.
It comes from house ownership being out of the question for most young people.
It comes from having to stand on the train to work.
It comes from not being able to get on the Manch-London train at any cost.
It comes from having to eat mono-culture foods, because they are the only foods that will feed the world.
It comes from going to a small lonely beach, and finding that 15,000 other people have had the same idea.
It comes from going on a bank-holiday break, and not getting further than 20 miles due to traffic.
As you know in your own heart, Malthus was right, and any organism that cannot control its own population does not deserve to call itself civilised.
Ralph
Here is how much of its electricity California got from renewables yesterday:
http://content.caiso.com/green/renewrpt/DailyRenewablesWatch.pdf
Solar was about 4% on the day. In the cooler spring, solar was as much as 8% per day. It is, however, expensive electricity, and would not be there without subsidies and the AB32 mandated renewable portfolio standard. Right now, even in sunny and expensive California, solar is appropriate for niche applications such as powering irrigation and daytime uses such as electricity for public schools, and for heating and air conditioning.
It is worthwhile to review all these figures about once per year, I think. I thank Philip Dowd for his input.
Re Rossi & the E-Cat:
http://www.e-catworld.com/why-i-believe-in-the-e-cat/
“””””…..Unmentionable says:
August 1, 2014 at 2:48 am
george e. smith says:
July 31, 2014 at 3:08 pm
Every time I do this calculation, I get to the same conclusion. It takes too much damn energy to make solar panels; doesn’t have anything to do with cost.
—
Ignoring deterioration losses for the moment, if you mad 1 million solar panels to provide the energy to manufacture another million, you can then use that 2 million panels to manufacture 4 million. The energy input hurdle you describe exponentially approximates toward zero, doesn’t it?…..”””””
Well, Unmentionable; it sounds as thou YOU have a solar panel system, that is so efficient, that using just HALF (50%) of its total energy output, it is able to replicate itself (or you are able to replicate it). Remember ALL of the materials and other paraphernalia, required, are out there in the universe, in their natural (in situ) state, and you solar PV energy is THE ONLY THING you have to go and get them. (and provide for whatever workforce (and their families)) you need working on the project. ALL other energies (and personnel (and their families)), are currently unavailable as they are occupied doing other stuff; which they are consuming existing energy supplies for.
You really don’t understand what zero-based budgeting is, do you.
NOTHING, that currently exists, but in situ raw materials, are available to you, unless you use YOUR energy to get them.
NO! one of your solar systems cannot build two more of them, before consuming all its energy output.
If it could, it would already be doing that.
You have to raid other people’s resources (energy/money) to get even your one solar panel system.
It is not sustainable.
But what the world has now, was all built without subsidies from any extra-terrestrial sources of energy, (sun excepted) or help (from et) or et knowledge we are not privy too. We home grew it all ourselves, starting with figs.
Any large scale “solar farm” as part of an “alternative energy” system, must be entirely cleared of human habitation; then fenced and guarded day and night. Well some drunk Friday night rednecker, will drive through there in his pick’m up truck, popping your solar panels for fun.
All that “waste desert land” in the American south West, is mostly Indian (Native American) reservation land. So you are going to :displace tens of thousands of people, once again, for your poppy-cock schemes ??
Get real.
I like Fred Singer’s query best:
“Who is going to clean, 30,000 square miles of solar cells ?? ”
See Scientific American Jan 2008 front cover story, for such a “serious” proposal.
ralfellis:
re your post at August 1, 2014 at 10:36 am .
It is an historical fact that Malthus was wrong. And what I or anybody else wants to know “in their heart” does not and cannot change that.
As I explained in my post at August 1, 2014 at 12:53 am which was addressed to you and is here, the real foreseeable problem is population decrease; n.b. not population increase.
The Malthusian idea is wrong because it ignores basic economics and applies a wrong model; human population is NOT constrained by resources like the population of bacteria in a Petri dish. There is no existing or probable problem of overpopulation of the world by humans. And claims of ‘peak oil’ are nonsense.
Expensive and intermittent power sources such as solar and wind would be adopted if that were economic. Total collapse of industrial civilisation would be required before that were the case because it requires cessation of fossil fuel production.
Richard
I’d be the last in the queue to be a national solar panel salesman…. BIG ERROR!
Solar panel prices are now more like $0.40/Watts. Not $3.40/Watt. And this price is for household volumes.
I’m now wondering about the overall honesty over everything else now…
+richardscourtney
I disagree. Already in Africa the wildlife reserves are squeezed. Lake Victoria is also drained for agriculture and Kilimanjaro is almost devoid of ice due to massive deforestation.
The UK cannot feed itself with 60M arable acres and 70M people. Same for many other European countries. BP stated 53.3yr’s of the black stuff left — at this rate. The land use required to grow instead of mine energy will cause the loss of billions of people.
In the UK so much land has been surfaced and roofed. Normal rainfall results in Noah moments (flash floods) which they put down to climate change in my town of Wigan.
Man lives in the best bits of land just like man first took the best and easiest oil. The scraggly bits of land and energy cause great discomfort and cost. Far more land is required to survive well.
Your home would be the #1 consideration to save on resources long term if energy resources were tough to get and expensive.
Andyj says: August 1, 2014 at 2:42 pm
– – –
Did you read the footnotes provided ?
http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2012/11/27/the-installed-price-of-solar-photovoltaic-systems-in-the-u-s-continues-to-decline-at-a-rapid-pace/
“””””…..Andyj says:
August 1, 2014 at 2:42 pm
I’d be the last in the queue to be a national solar panel salesman…. BIG ERROR!
Solar panel prices are now more like $0.40/Watts. Not $3.40/Watt. And this price is for household volumes.
I’m now wondering about the overall honesty over everything else now……..”””””
So where can I go out and purchase, say a 3 KW (peak) solar panel system, for $1,200 (cash & carry).
What would be the air mass 1.5 solar conversion efficiency of this system’s PV cells. I don’t want to use up acres for some low efficiency array.
Not interested in rebates, or subsidies or tax breaks; just a fair arms length purchase transaction. I can install it and plug it in myself.
I can say that people who lecture about population increases are totally silent about simply controlling the borders. Also, people only live on about 3% of the surface of the land.
In agriculture, as much as 5 times the amount of food is being grown on less land. There are some European countries who have attempted to determine if they could feed themselves if imports failed. This is possible for many only with the intelligent use of herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides. Those who are banning the use of these in Europe are often the same characters who are saying that these countries “cannot feed themselves.”
This crowd can be expected to profit from forcing countries that have successful crops to decrease their yields with organic practices, and thus become reliant on imports. For example, “Scotch malt whiskey is made from two key ingredients: barley and water. To be Scotch Whiskey, the spirit must mature in oak casks in Scotland for at least three years. Barley is affected by a range of diseases that can cause considerable damage and loss of yield and quality. More than 90% of Scotland’s barley acres are treated with fungicides. Policymakers in the EU have developed new rules regarding the use of pesticides which is reducing the number of active ingredients available for farmers to use. Reduced availability of fungicides for Scottish barley farmers threatens the Scotch Whiskey industry.”
http://pesticideguy.org/2014/06/19/high-quality-scotch-whisky-depends-on-fungicide-use/
The killer stroke.
Nuclear overall is about 4-5 times cheaper and takes up very little space.
There is no business case for solar. There is a huge business case for nuclear.
That’s why we have anti-nuclear ‘greens’ .
‘Green’ means ‘lets get the government and taxpayer to subsidise something that we dont want and dont need and dont have do do efficiently’
Its a lot easier to fund green groups and get government money than it is to build a competitive nuke.
Andyj:
re your post at August 1, 2014 at 3:02 pm.
“Disagree” all you like, but reality is what it is. Humans inhabit a small part of the fifth of the planet which is not covered by water. And people flock to the most desirable places where humans have been most successful, but that is not a Malthusian overpopulation problem.
Malthus was wrong and, therefore, there is no possibility of overpopulation problems, but declining population is a foreseeable problem: I explained all this in this thread here.
There is no need for wasteful and environmentally damaging use of solar power and wind power because there is no foreseeable shortage of fossil fuels. And if such shortage did occur then alternatives to fossil fuels would be used so there never will be a need to promote and/or subsidise adoption of some perceived alternatives.
Richard
ralfellis says:
August 1, 2014 at 10:36 am
As you know in your own heart, Malthus was right, and any organism that cannot control its own population does not deserve to call itself civilised.
—
Malthus and disciples of doom made points, the points were counter pointed and the observational evidence is the counter-pointers were right, and Malthus was more or less almost completely wrong.
One of the things the current neo-Malthusians never take into account, or rather can’t stand to hear the truth of, is the forests and corals regrow and that rivers reflow and that soil regenerates and that waste can be recycled, and economic dynamics makes the once unaffordable and regarded at “impossible” or impractical, actually affordable and commonplace.
I’m not a natural-born optimist. In fact I’m quite doubtful about probably too much, but I also don’t ignore the fact that damaged and degraded things do improve, and impaired systems do repair themselves, or at least adjust in net beneficial and viable ways. The tendency to doomish collapse is in fact always and everywhere being counter-acted by natural and cultural action that easily militates and overwhelms the factors of collapse processes and renders doomish fretting irrelevant and thoroughly (and annoyingly) time and resource wasting.
Not always of course, but close enough. Yeah, bad stuff can overtake us, but so what? Stop the planet and get off? No, we don’t work like that. We do need people who dwell on what could go wrong but we’ll never make decisions and choices on the assumption that we’re all screwed and are out of viable options.
Look around, we don’t work like that. We’re confident we have an almost unlimited series of options available, and it’s entirely possible that we do.
Energy supply is hardly our most pressing issue either, it’s just one component where we constantly redefine the envelope of the possible and it’s very clear that we are nowhere near the limits of that process. We’re actually at least many generations away from a true physical energy crisis (if one is even still possible, I have my doubts about that too). What we have is economic and political crisis, pretending to be an energy crisis.
But yeah, I could do with a few billion less humans in the interim, I can’t blithely ignore the boom-bust cycle of populations in nature, and I can’t be 100% sure that technology has made a fundamental difference.
But I won’t live in fear of us dieing as that’s beyond stupid – we ARE dieing! lol! So what? Why the hell are people in this generation and time both fear to live, and are apparently terrified to die?
Now that really doesn’t compute. I’ve never understood why the doom-ridden fear the inevitability of their death, so much, and to such an unbalanced extent, that they pointlessly become totally preoccupied to the extent they become survivalists, and all they can think of is causing to not survive any person invading their bunker. lol!!
Look, I’m not that attached to living, it’s been great fun, but I’m not going to assume the worst and destroy living and my options, just on some mission to survive living, when I won’t. lol!!
OK, I better stop there, slopped coffee on my desk between giggling and writing that last sentence … I should have braced this thing a bit better when I built it.