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
Sorry tldr
However, the article does highlight one important aspect of solar power: insolation. The other is timing demand for when the sun shines. In the northeast, demand for energy spikes when insolation is at its lowest: in the dead of winter during the night. In the southwest, demand spikes when the sun is brightest: middle of the day in the summer.
This simple analysis alone should be enough to convince northern clime dwellers to avoid solar and for southern clime dwellers to give it some serious thought.
The tldr version: if supply and demand are properly aligned, solar is a good option.
Average residential electrical power consumption is 30 KWh/day. A factor of 6 (think of it as usable sun hours) is typically used to size arrays. So we need a 5 KW array. The most efficient production panels are 21% and produce about 20 watts per square foot (335 watts for a 61″ x 41″ panel), thus we need about 250 sq ft of panels on a roof. Not much!
If we switch to LED lighting and upgrade appliances we can probably get closer to a 3 KW array.
If we have space to put it on a tracker we get an additional 30% so we only need a 2 KW array, which takes only 100 sq ft.
The panels are about $2/watt for 21% efficient ones, or $0.79/watt for 15% efficient ones (if you have the space for more panels). Figure $2k for grid-tie inverters, cabling, and hardware, and $2k for installation. So about $8k for a system that should produce all the power you need.
For residential, we feed our excess into the grid during the day, and it is reasonable to assume that the power company can provide power at night when the array is not producing.
Keep in mind that PV costs will continue to come down, they have been dropping remarkably.
Average power rates are now at about $0.14/KWh, or roughly $150/mo. Here in California Tier 5 rates are about $0.35/KWh, so the payback is even quicker. Don’t forget the tax credit too.
“I estimate the cost of building a system to power today’s economy with energy from the sun at about $65 trillion.”
Unfortunately that money ad a whole lot moar has been earmarked to bailout Goldman Sachs and JPM in 2016 … and it’s of course nowhere near enough. Uncle pseudo ‘Capitalism’ needs YOU!
But seriously, that was a good start on a sensible economic discussion of practical solar and if it can be done. I would add that it will not be done all at once in a grand scheme any more than all the roads or dams were built all at once. Solar must constantly prove itself (even if it has) plus the cheaper energy options are almost always going to be more economically expedient so solar essentially is unnecessary, for quite a bit longer yet.
This is not necessarily true everywhere though. I come from a counry that has benefited enormously from cheap coal and zero nuclear for all my life, and its brilliant. However for China their engineers have decided this is not a viable option for them. So in on country its fine, in another it may be ecologically (but not climatically) desasterous. If so then China would have vastly greater incentive to develope and make cheap solar implementations first. If they can outcompete coal and put us out of business then good on them, we’ll buy Chinese solar panels to celebrate.
But the idea that al countries must do the same global plan and follow the same path is clearly not going to work. Countries muct do what is economic and the greenish have to grow upand be patient and realise that energy transitions have historically taken the best part of a century. As I see it, it’ll be like any other energy transition (think 70 years) and it’s barely begun.
However, quite often waiting can be cheaper when it comes to new technologies, early adopters suffer the ghreatest risks and cost burdens. Anyone who has bought a brand new CPU means you pay a massive premium to get not very much improvement, but if you waith 18 months you’ll get it for a few bucks. This appies to many advanced technologies.
And as you say, the panels are getting much more efficient … soon. So why buy inefficient panels first, or even high efficiency panels soonish at extreme prices, when we can wait and get it all vastly cheaper?
Well will thus greatly benefit from moreattractive cost:benefit tradeoffs and harm taxpayers with subsidies far less, and still “save the planet” (if we assumed it was somehow endangered), so why not wait, if carbon is not the outrageous bogeyman that we were massively and falsely scared with?
Because choosing to wait for a better tradeoff and proceed more carefully to develop the technologies is a valid option (and potentially wise on many levels) if we simply put aside the endless greenish propaganda and emotional blackmail and guilt foisting. Plus the political environment would be vastly less conflicted in the event it was actually affordable and competitive.
What’s the rush?
Having said that, I find solar such a compelling technology and idea and I understad perfectly the attraction of the idea. It will come, but I don’t think its time has come, at least not for most countries.
So I’ll watch the Chinese and see what they decide is good for them and which way they must go, as they perhaps have the greatest imperitive to transition to renewables.
hmm …. if only China were not also as debt-ridden and criminally corrupt as Goldman and JPM? … eh? … what marvelous things they might then do. But a great contribution and thanks, as I see it market-economics and capitalism could address the transition issue and its dynamics most capably …. unfortunately crony capitalism put it in cement boots and tossed it in the east river.
2c
What will power the construction of this facility? How much co2 will be spewed into the atmosphere building it? Would this new power source ever pay back the co2 debt burned in construction? It takes an incredible amount of energy just to melt the silicon for making the wafers used in solar panels. Solar in it’s present form must be the dirtiest power there is!
It is like corn ethanol all over again only on a much bigger scale and much worse. Why should we be burning over a gallon worth of fossil fuels to make a gallon of ethanol? I
I bet it would take 50+ years worth of coal burning that must be burned up front to build this power plant before it ever produces any electricity, how does this make any sense? We will be accelerating the co2 levels tremendous rate. What is saved?
Sorry for the typos, I did proof read that, but pasted the draft instead – doh.
Keep in mind that for the 12 months through April 2014, the electricity produced from wind power in the United States amounted to 174.7 terawatt-hours, or 4.25% of all generated electrical energy. That is pretty significant, with more on the way.
Any practical energy solution will be a combination of wind, solar, hydro, natural gas, and probably nuclear, and fossil fuels.
lighthearted response @RGB
People who live in cold climates don’t tend to be dependant on the grid. That is to say, when the power goes out we don’t die. 😀
The longest stretch without grid power that I have seen during winter is a few weeks, no casualties. Most homes in Maine, even those that use primarily oil/gas/electric heat, have a wood stove. And wood is not in short supply in most forrested state in the country. As many Mainers do, I have a camp deep in the woods with no running water or electricity. The primary use of the camp is to spend the winter months hunting, fishing, and trapping. We call it ‘roughing it’, it translates to ‘fun’.
Education system that has dumbed down the voter base enough to vote in a House and Senate dumb enough to vote for the tax money to waste on this idea.
Off Topic: But, if anyone is interested in real life off grid try to find a copy of the movie “Dead River Rough Cut”. You will be entertained.
rgbatduke says:
July 31, 2014 at 5:46 am
“…it will simply become cheaper to build houses with their own PV array on the roof as standard practice, amortize the cost into the mortgage, and drop the cost of electricity to the owner from $200+/month for power purchased from the grid to $100 in their mortgage.”
This transfers the capital asset along with the maintenance and insurance costs from the power company to the home owner. The “$100 in their mortgage” is for the capital asset. Any idea what these maintenance and insurance expenses add to the “$100 in their mortgage?”
“One thing is certain. Eventually we homo sapiens will consume all of the planets supply of carbon”–Hydro carbons?
The USGS says that the worldwide inventory of methane hydrates is 10,000Tg.
As we use hydrocarbons, more “Carbon” is being recycled as hydrocarbons, and rising up from
below. For an understanding of this process, read Thomas Gold’s book “The Deep, Hot Biosphere.”
I notice several posters adding alternative schemes. So, please indulge me while I add a couple of my own pie-in-the-sky thoughts.
1. Orbiting mirrors. Rather than orbiting PVCs converting the sun’s rays and then sending this power to earth, we could simply orbit mirrors which would reflect the rays to numerous earth stations (as heat) for centralized conversion to electricity. In orbit, the reflection would be near 24/7 (except when the mirrors were directly in front or in back of the earth).
Some problems might include:
*Clouds blocking the heat, although I expect the clouds would be “burnt” away.
*Anything in the line of fire (birds, planes, etc) also would be burnt away
*That much extra energy has got to cause environmental changes
*If you miss the targeted heat collector, the concentrated heat would represent a lot of friendly fire (pun intended), although – for good or evil – that’s a potential weapons system
2. Indirect solar through temperature reservoirs. A couple of insulated holes in the ground (say 15’x15’x15′) could store more than enough heat in the summer and cold in the winter to provide for heat, air conditioning, & refrigeration for a typical house, plus generate some electricity using a heat engine between the two reservoirs.
*I expect the costs to be quite high compared to other energy available today, although as the government makes energy unavailable at any price, this could become an alternative worth trying.
Please stop laughing; I’m just thinking outside the box.
I wonder why people think that the sun can’t be blocked for a Country or Continent, place a solar umbrella in geosynchrous orbit and it can block the sun easily enough.
As to using Space based Micro Wave energy, that is asking for major disasters, a Sci Fi book was written about exactly that scenario.
Perhaps this is moving off topic, but it may be relevant because Ethanol is an energy source we can easily grow in the US.
In June 2004, the U.S. Department of Agriculture updated its 2002 analysis of ethanol production and determined that the net energy balance of ethanol production is 1.67 to 1.
Even the most pessimistic assessments of ethanol’s energy balance acknowledge that ethanol is an improvement over petroleum-based fuels. Using the same analytical methods employed by some ethanol critics, Michigan State University’s Bruce Dale calculates the net energy of petroleum to be -45%, compared to the -29% that Pimentel and Patzek find for ethanol. In the worst-case scenario, burning ethanol is still more energy-efficient than burning gasoline.
There may be more current data somewhere….
Cellulistic is even better if we can ever get that working.
Figuring that generatingefficiency will be doubled over the next 100 years and that economies of scale will halve the cost while demand quadruples, it looks like US energy needs can be supplied by solar (without consumable backup) with 2000 plants, each with 25 square miles of panels interconnected on a national grid. If we don’t get started today, it will be too late! Where’s AlGore when you need him?
From the post:
“3. Available to everyone. No country can seize control of the sun and deny it to others.”
Except that China is cornering the solar PV manufacturing market, and the rare earth substances that go into them.
And then there’s this:
“In order to adopt solar power on a large scale today we must confront four problems associated with the technology.”
There is a fifth problem – that of pollution associated with mining these minerals. As long as it’s in someone else’s back yard, eh? /snark (see: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/aug/07/china-rare-earth-village-pollution )
richardscourtney “It is hard to imagine a system which did not have severe risks.”
Perhaps you’re right; I didn’t work it out. What I believe they had in mind was 60 130-km^2 rectennas spaced an average of 300 km apart with a peak (central) power density of about 25 mW/cm^2 and 0.1 mW/cm^2 at the outside of a 1-km fenced-off buffer zone. That may have its risks, but to me it’s not self-evident how severe they’d be.
But, again, this is Buck Rogers stuff.
Louis LeBlanc says:
July 31, 2014 at 9:46 am
And if I flap my arms fast enough, I too could fly from Atlanta to London carrying two bags of luggage and a laptop PC and an in-flight meal ……
To those who are talking about space-based solar arrays: The cost of launching an object to geosynchronous orbit using the Atlas V is on the order of 27 000$/kg.
The short answer on tracking and understanding solar energy competitiveness in a dynamic sense is to routinely follow the quarterly updates from Sunpower and First Solar. These two players are closest to normal profits without subsidy in the renewable energy space. Their subsidies at this point are derived from the financing costs of the large projects. Everything else in this sector amounts to noise and wrong directions in public policy. Solar without subsidy today and in short-term projections comes from utility-scale projects with major cost reduction business plans in both panel and balance of system costs. The BOS costs are the harder portion at this point. As for battery storage, this sector is still too early to judge but $10 per kwh capital cost is a stated production goal. That sector needs two more years to clear the due diligence fog and look at the production-level costs.
One more thing-
The Russians became the largest producer of hydrocarbons by understanding that they are not fossil fuel and teaching their geologists this fact. They explore and produce hydrocarbons based on the knowledge that more is continousely rising up from great depth.
The sunlight absorbed by the Solar Panels in such large scale would increase the total heat trapped in the atmosphere/earth, thereby would increase Global Warming !
Quote,” richardscourtney says:
July 31, 2014 at 6:50 am
Joe G:
Your post at July 31, 2014 at 6:35 am says in total
Why wouldn’t we just put solar panels on rooftops and have people be power independent? Augment the solar with wind, which can also be on rooftops- small wind turbines (heck people do that with old fan blades).
If you think it is a good idea to be “power independent” by using solar and wind to supply your home then disconnect from the grid and try it. Please report back on the result of being totally dependent on wind and solar.
Richard.”
I am happy to say that I have already participated in a 10 year real life experiment of living off the grid and relying on solar and wind power in the Southern Arizona Desert. I have to admit that the refrigerator and cooking stove were run off of propane because those two things are a huge drain on a small PV/wind lead acid battery storage system. Also, having a hot shower in the morning/at night in the winter was always something to be desired because of relying primarily on a solar water heater, but after several years of dealing with that we broke down and got a propane water heater and plumbed that in with the solar water heater.
As far as how well the PV/wind setup was able to provide sufficient power for a 1500sqft home with a family of 4, it handled the demand 95% of the time but there was always a two week period every year during the monsoons that we had to run a generator to keep the lead acid storage batteries from being drained too low and damaging them (the strong wind during the monsoons regularly burned up brushes/motors and became too labor intensive to keep in operation so we discontinued use after a few years and several redesigns). Note: this was the older style DC setup (think 1985 style PV’s) with a single DC to AC transformer on the primary output after the batteries instead of the newer units that have the DC to AC transformers built in. It should also be noted that most of the house was wired for DC so the transformer wasn’t really that big since it only had to power things like a TV, hairdryer, mixer, etc. and anything that could be rewired from AC to DC easily was converted.
My takeaway from the whole experience (thanks Mom and Dad for the great memories and unforgettable experiences that make up a huge part of who I am today) was that a mixed energy supply can be very efficient in providing for all necessary power demand in a home, but to rely solely on PV and wind, even with a large storage capacity, you are still at the whims of nature and will come up short at some point. Also, the amount of maintenance on the system was quite regular in order to make sure we had power when we needed it; it was definitely not a plug and forget about it kind of setup.
-Matt
Typo, that was supposed to be $160 per kwh capital cost
We already have solar panels over a considerable portion of Earth’s surface, and great battery storage capacity. Trouble is, we can’t control the battery system. It keeps or sends heat whenever it damn well feels like it. It is just a matter of time before someone makes a 007 movie about the terrorist bastard that cooks up a scheme to rid the polar regions of ice caps via “death ray satellite guns” to let out all the heat from the battery storage unless we all send them 1.9 megagazilliontrillion dollars.