Review of Forbes On-line Magazine Article “Solar Energy Revolution: A Massive Opportunity”
By: Tom Tamarkin Founder FuelRFuture & President USCL Corp
Abstract:
This paper discusses a recently published business magazine article projecting massive growth in the solar industry over the next 20 years. We have analyzed the business, scientific, and engineering backgrounds of two well-known gentlemen quoted in the article and searched for business interests that would benefit from such growth either by way of early investment and subsidy capital or long term net revenue. We have analyzed the utility industry’s need to replace an existing 440 GW of fully operational and cost effective generating capacity in light of its projected retirement of plants due to age coupled with the potential increase in demand based on partial electrification of the transportation system. We conclude with the analysis of the feasibility of powering the U.S. electricity needs by a solar-only generation infrastructure based on system components and the feasibility of extremely large volume manufacturing, capital costs and the huge land areas required.
Key Concepts:
· The cost of a solar only approach exceeds $15.27 trillion
· Moore’s Law is not applicable to the production or deployment of solar panels
· Increases in “solar cell efficiency” have little impact on land area to produce utility scale power
Important Additional Supportive Papers
Solar Power Technology & Economics
Background:
Peter Diamandis, Co-Founder & Executive Director of Singularity University, in Moffett Field, California recently wrote an article published in Forbes on-line magazine titled “Solar Energy Revolution: A Massive Opportunity” The article starts off by stating Singularity Co-Founder and Google Director, Ray Kurzweil, “projects that the U. S. will meet 100% of its electrical energy needs from solar in 20 years.” Mr. Diamandis also states that Elon Musk, Chairman of the electric vehicle company, Tesla Motors, SolarCity and SpaceX “expects solar power to provide 50% of America’s electricity in 20 years.”
Peter Diamandis is probably best known as founder of the X Prize Foundation. In 1980 he enrolled at MIT to study biology and physics where he graduated with a degree in aeronautical and astronautical engineering. In 1989 he graduated from Harvard Medical School.
Ray Kurzweil graduated from MIT in 1970 and worked closely with the famed Marvin Minsky in the field of artificial intelligence. He is the recipient of the MIT-Lemelison award in innovation, and has received the National Medal of Technology from the White House as well as the National Inventors Hall of Fame under the U.S. Patent Office. He has received 20 honorary doctorates, and honors from three presidents and is the author of 7 books. His acknowledged area of expertise is in artificial intelligence and machine learning. In 2012 he was appointed a Director of Engineering at Google, heading up a team developing machine intelligence and natural language understanding. Google has since acquired Nest Labs which developed and sells the Nest self-learning thermostat for home use.
Elon Musk received a BS in physics from the University of Pennsylvania and a BS in economics from the Wharton School. Mr. Musk is the respected founder or catalyst of Zip2, X.com-PayPay, SpaceX, Tesla Motors, and SolarCity.
Discussion & Analysis:
All three gentlemen are well educated and extremely accomplished in their fields. Mssrs Musk and Diamandis in physics & engineering; and Mr. Kurzweil in the field of artificial intelligence, computer sciences, and IT. Mr. Kurzweil is well known as a “futurist” and has an excellent record of predicting technology development paths. All three are rock solid American citizens who have spent a life time building a better future for all of us.
These track records make people assume these predictions must be true. But are they? Should large institutional investors risk substantial capital based on these predictions? Should individual and family investors bet their retirement savings on these predictions? And perhaps most importantly, should public policy and national security be based on these predictions or is further due-diligence in order? The numbers are deceptively enticing to any business person.
Since Mr. Diamandis did not reference specific statements with relevant context, an internet search was conducted to review these “quotes” and their contexts.
We start with Ray Kurzweil and a review of business and consumer publications. Many were found quoting Mr. Kurzweil to say “in 20 Years virtually all power in America will come from Solar.” The 9billion.com news publication published an article so quoting him. The article indicates Mr. Kurzweil’s predictions are based on his “law of accelerating returns” which he derives from Moore’s Law in the semiconductor industry. Moore’s law is often used to define technology development cycles and follows:
Moore’s Law:
As has been observed, over the history of computing hardware, the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years.
The law is named after Gordon Moore, co-founder of the Intel Corporation, who described the trend in his 1965 paper. Sometimes the time frame is shortened to 18 months based on Intel’s experience in increasing chip performance and speed primarily through the release of the next generation microcomputer chip.
Another article also published in the 9billion,com says:
such progress has led futurist Ray Kurzweil to project that solar technology will compete with fossil fuels, and will be able to provide 100% of the world’s solar energy by 2030. The basis of his projection is the continual doubling of solar power every two years for the past 20 years. IT professionals might recall the concept of “Moore’s Law” in reference to computer chips.
Mr. Kurzweil is a consummate IT professional. However he does not have a solid state physics background and has not concerned himself with the fundamental parameters surrounding Moore’s law. One is chip die size. More transistor junctions cannot be put on a chip unless the silicon die is increased within certain practicalities. This issue is limited by a fundamental matter of physics based on atomic issues having to do with molecular cross sectional diameters of atoms and the interaction with free electrons traveling across a gap, as well as interconnection issues.
In April 2005, Gordon Moore stated in an interview that the law cannot be sustained indefinitely: “It can’t continue forever. The nature of exponentials is that you push them out and eventually disaster happens”. He also noted that transistors would eventually reach the limits of miniaturization at atomic levels:
It is projected that the end of Moore’s law in terms of junction density will be reached no later than 2016. That is an altogether different issue than the ability to increase performance and speed of microcomputer chips based on design optimization and investment in process capability.
The use of Moore’s Law to describe the photovoltaic solar business in terms of market penetration, fabrication and marketing and the appropriateness of solar to replace grid level baseload power generation does not apply; in fact, it confuses and misleads people who are not skilled or studied in the fundamental science. There three principal reasons:
1. The appropriateness of solar to replace grid level baseload power generation. Solar in general, regardless of the collection system: – photovoltaics or PV, concentrated PV, concentrated solar driving conventional steam turbine generators and thermal — are extremely inefficient in comparison to their enormous size and cost. It has been noted that the earth receives more energy from the Sun in just one hour than the world’s population uses in a whole year. The total solar energy flux intercepted by the earth on any particular day is 4.2 X 1018 Watt-hours or 1.5 X 1022 Joules (or 6.26 X 1020 Joules per hour). This is equivalent to burning 360 billion tons of oil per day or 15 Billion tons per hour. However the earth is spinning sphere close to 7,925 miles in diameter at the equator. Thus a fairly small amount of energy falls on a specific surface and for only a few hours at a time. Details are provided in Solar Power Technology & Economics.
People often hear that up to 1,000 Watts of energy are available per square meter of surface area and that all of it can be converted from infrared and visible electromagnetic radiation produced by the sun into electricity. That is a serious misunderstanding. Even Robert Muller, Ph.D. author of “
>Physics For Future Presidents” accidentally made this mistake in his book. David MacKay uses 5-20 watts of electricity per square meter of collection surface in his landmark book “Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air,”.
We put an expert to the task of defining just how much electricity on average can be generated per square meter (1 meter = 39.34 inches.) The number is 37.5 watts, averaged over 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, factoring in historical weather factors such as cloud cover, fog, etc., and in extremely well suited areas in the Southwest United States. A detailed report has been provided based on converting the current 440 GW generation capacity plus required margins with battery storage. The required amount of square land area to collect the required power is 29,333 km2 (7,248,342 acres); that is larger than the entire country of Israel and 50% larger than the state of New Jersey in the USA – or nearly equal to all of Maryland and Delaware. It also equates to a square having sides 171.3 km in length. In practicality the required area would be much larger for allowance between panels to allow construction crews access and to periodically clean the panels as dust and dirt significantly affect conversion efficiency. This requires 29,333,333,333 (29.33 billion) solar panels and 4.4 million battery modules contained in a number 40 shipping container (40 feet X 6 feet 8 feet,) covering a surface area of 130.8 km2 or a square with sides of 11.4 km with zero space between modules. This data is presented in a straightforward fashion for nonscientists in the publication “Going Solar.”
2. Manufacturing considerations. Twenty nine and 1/3 billion is a very large number of panels to manufacture. As pointed out in “Going Solar” it would take 929 years to produce this number of panels if they could be built at the rate of 1 per second. For comprehension, today’s commercially available PV panels are standardized at 1.46 square meters and weigh about 40 pounds. Fabrication is a multistep process involving silicon crystal fabrication, cell construction, interconnection, back plane and frame. Each panel needs to be inspected, tested, and certified to meet specification.
If a manufacturing rate of 1 panel per second could be achieved, it would take 929 years to produce 29.3 billion panels one square meter in dimension. Today’s current production panels weigh approximately 40 pounds and are complicated multi-component assemblies. To be clear this analysis is based on a panel 1 square meter in size. In reality panels differ in size according to the manufacturer and customer specifications. What does not change is 29,333 billon square meters of active semiconductor solar cell collection surface area must cover a similar amount of land area exposed to the Sun.
3. Misapplication of Moore’s Law to solar cell efficiency Improvements.
The issue of solar efficiency is incomprehensible to the average person to say the least. First, available energy from the Sun’s electromagnetic radiation per a given amount of surface area is a function of many factors. This is explained in “Solar Power Technology & Economics”. Because the amount of “harvestable energy” varies drastically based on longitude, latitude, prevailing weather conditions, and day of the year a series of charts has been prepared by NREL (and others) providing a simple bottom line Watt per square meter as averaged from all these factors. This is commonly referred to as insolation.
Thus, the simple increase of solar cell efficiency does not have a proportional increase in electricity produced per square meter. In “Going Solar” the insolation number used in the analysis of a 100% solar replacement of the current U.S. generation capacity is 37.5 Watts per square meter. No amount of wishful thinking can alter this fact. Thus marginal increases in cell efficiencies have a negligible effect on the tremendous land size and number of solar panels to be manufactured. The following data sets illustrate this point.
15% “panel efficiency” This is the current state of the art for most production panels
29,333,333,333 (29.33 billion) 1 sq m panels:
29,333 km2 1 @ second = 930 Years
1,100,000,000,000 ÷ 37.5 = 29,333,333,333 sq m ÷ 1,000,000 = 29,333 km2 v29,333 = 171.3 km X 171.3 km square
22% “panel efficiency” This is the midpoint in published numbers for Silevo/SolarCity
20,000,000,000 (20 billion) 1 sq m panels:
20,000 km2 1 @ second = 634.2 Years
1,100,000,000,000 ÷ 55 = 20,000,000,000 sq m ÷ 1,000,000 = 20,000 km2 v20,000 =141.42 km X 141.42 km square
40% “panel efficiency” This is only achievable in complex 2 gap cells with special optics
11,000,000,000 (11 billion) 1 sq m panels:
11,000 km2 1 @ second = 348.8 Years
1,100,000,000,000 ÷ 100 = 11,000,000,000 sq m ÷ 1,000,000 = 11,000 km2 v 11,000 = 104.88 km X 104.88 km square
55% “panel efficiency” This is the maximum theoretical efficiency based on physics.
8,000,000,000 (8 billion) 1 sq m panels:
8,000 km2 1 @ second = 253 Years
1,100,000,000,000 ÷ 137.5 = 8,000,000,000 sq m ÷ 1,000,000 = 8,000 km2 v11,000 = 89.55 km X 89.55 km square
The Shockley-Queisser limit states that the maximum solar conversion efficiency of an ideal solar cell is around 33.7% assuming a single p-n junction with a band gap of 1.34 eV.
The maximum practical limit for a tandem or dual cell is 47%.
“The Physics of Solar Cells,” Nelson, Imperial College Press, London, 2002, page 300, figure 10.9, states that the maximum theoretical efficiency of a tandem four terminal solar cell is 56%
Solar cells work by converting sun light and infrared radiation into electricity. This involves a high energy photon striking the semiconductor portion of the solar cell and transporting electrons across a band gap boundary. For a comprehensive understanding of the physics involved see “The Physics of Solar Cells”, as posted as a screen readable downloadable PDF.
For simplicity the following explanation is offered. Visible Sunlight is composed of a broad spectrum of colors which correspond to increasing photon energy levels. The lowest energy photons come from infrared merging to visible red. The highest energy electrons come from violet and ultra-violet. The following is a graph of the visible electromagnetic radiation from the Sun.
The chart below provides a specific photon energy value across the electromagnetic radiation spectrum starting with low frequency radio waves and ending with Gamma rays. The area of interest for solar cells is in the wavelength area of 800 nm to 350 nm. This represents an energy level of 1 to 1.6 electron volts. An electron volt is a very small amount of energy at 1.60 X 10-19 Joules. One Joule is a Watt second. As can be seen it takes a strong energy flux density to make the solar cell produce useful amounts of electricity!
The amount of work done per captured photon energy flux can be increased if photons of different energies could be absorbed preferentially in cells of different wavelength band gap. If the solar spectrum could be split up and channeled into photon-converters of different band gaps, then more of the solar spectrum could be harnessed. Nelson describes this in pages 298-300 in “The Physics of Solar Cells,” Impearl College, UK, World Scientific Publishing Co. Ltd., 2003-2008. Nelson’s Figure 10.6 below shows a power available from optimized one, two, and three band gap systems.
Nelson’s Figure 1.07 below illustrates one possible scheme for exploring multiple band gaps, where sunlight is split up by means of dichoric mirrors and directed on to cells of different band gap.
Nelson’s Figure 1.08 below illustrates two and four terminal configurations for tandem cells. In either case, short wavelength light is preferentially absorbed in the top cell, and longer wavelength light in the bottom cell.
A complete copy of “The Physics of Solar Cells” may be downloaded here as a PDF.
> 
The most efficient solar cell yet produced in the laboratory is 44.7% as shown in the above graph.
Clearly Moore’s Law has no application to the use of solar cells or the production of them. The fundamental limitation is the surface area of the cell or external lenses in the case of “concentrated PV” required to intercept a specific flux density of sunlight. As shown above increases of efficiency can be made with dual cells and even three cells which have a theoretical maximum efficiency of 55%. However this requires breaking down the spectrum into discreet energy bands which are then focused on semiconductors that are spectrally “tuned” to generate maximum voltage. This requires specialized dichroic prisms or filters and lenses. It also requires exotic semiconductor materials in terms of elemental components. This technique is sometimes referred to as “concentrated PV solar.”
A more common use of the term “Concentrated PV” applies to the use of individual lenses which are used to focus or concentrate great energy flux density onto a smaller surface area of solar cell silicon semiconductor. The purported advantage of this approach is a reduction of the cost of silicon and other fundamental elements used in the semiconductor portion of the cell. This can be accomplished with lenses or parabolic reflectors. This results in a considerable price disadvantage when the cost of power per square meter is considered and the assemblies are complex and do not lend themselves to mass production; certainly not at one per second. Additional cost disadvantages of this approach are the extremely high temperature the solar cell is subjected too which must be dissipated by water cooled metal heat sinks. Whereas some advocates of this approach suggest the hot water traveling through the heat sinks has value, the fact of the matter is it does not. The water will never be hot enough to drive steam turbines for power generation and the solar sites are too far away for use in building heating systems.
Examples of a lens and a mirror concentrated PV system are shown below.
In the case of lens based Concentrated PV Panels, the use of lenses requires a separation between the lenses and the solar cells based on the focal length of the lenses. This contributes to the complexity of the structure as well as to overall weight and cost. And the fundamental bottom line is that the mirrors or lenses DO NOT increase the amount of collected sun radiation per square meter of land. If anything they significantly increase the amount of land required because of the exotic construction. As can be seen Concentrated PV is not an appropriate solution for grid level power generation.
Follow this link for an example of a government subsidized study to determine the feasibility of a concentrated Photo Voltaic solar configuration.
Concentrated Solar should not be confused with PV Concentrated Solar as it was in one popular article in the9billion site where in the last paragraph they made reference to the Gemasolar plant in Spain.
Concentrated Solar works by creating water steam pressure, or in some case vaporized salts pressure, by focusing sun rays captured by tens of thousands (or in the case of the Ivanpah project in California, 170,000+) of mirrors and focusing those beams of collected sunlight on a coil located in a tower several hundred feet high. As the liquid or salts vaporize the high pressure turns a steam generator just as in a coal or natural gas fired plant. The initial benefits were thought to be the liquid or molten salts would stay warm for some time thus “building in” natural storage capability and reducing the need for battery storage. However, experience with Ivanpah has shown this does not work and its owners recently petitioned the State of California Public Utilities Commission to allow it to produce up to 30% of its electrical energy output from natural gas. Google is a principal investor in Ivanpah as well as in a molten salts Concentrated Solar project called Crescent Dunes in Nevada. Operating experience is not yet available from Crescent Dunes.
Moore’s second law.
In the case of solar panel manufacturing Moore’s second law is of far greater significance given the huge amount of manufacturing capability needed to produce solar panels in the required multibillion quantities. In the semiconductor business which is the core of the individual solar cells on each panel, as the cost of computer power to the consumer falls, the cost for producers to fulfill Moore’s law follows an opposite trend: R&D, manufacturing, and test costs have increased steadily with each new generation of chips. Rising manufacturing costs are an important consideration for sustaining Moore’s law. This has led to the formulation of Moore’s second law, which is: “The capital cost of a semiconductor fabrication facility also increases exponentially over time.”
We have not found statements by Elon Musk providing percentage of electric power market share predictions. We have found numerous references to his vision and plans: notably, this short article of June 2014 stating that he wants to deliver 10 gigawatts watts of solar panels per year. But what does this mean? Does it mean panels will deliver 10 gigawatts of power 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to electricity users – or does it mean he wants to install 10 gigawatts of panels which are specified to deliver that amount of power under controlled STC (standard test conditions?) There is a big difference.
An examination of a Solar World Sunmodule SW 250 panel shows it to consist of 60 cells 156 mm X 156 mm producing a solar panel approximately 1.46 m2. The panel is advertised to deliver 250 Watts of electricity under laboratory STC conditions. The specification provides an IV curve– where I is current in amperes and V is voltage. Current (amps) X voltage = Watts. Their curve shows that at STC laboratory conditions when the panel is illuminated at 1,000 W/m2 it produces slightly over 250 Watts. The curve also shows that at the assumed insolation defined in Going Solar the amount of electricity is 50 Watts as defined in the insolation averages. Our precise calculation puts the true value at 54.75 Watts.
Thus the actual power generated from one panel averaged over 24 hours, 365 days, is only 21.9% of the output advertised.
Production of 10 gigawatts of power based on the STC maximum 250 Watt capability of the panels would require 40,000,000 panels to be manufactured and delivered each year for Solar City to meet its goals. At a production rate of 1 panel per second they would require 1.27 years to produce.
Production of 10 gigawatts of power based on the insolation factor of 37.5% Watts/m2 with operating panels in the real world would require 250,102,040 panels to be manufactured and delivered each year for Solar City to meet its goals. At a production rate of 1 panel per second it would require 7.93 years to produce.
This is another example of Moore’s second law at work:
SolarCity states they want to deliver 10 gigawatts of solar panels yearly. The capital required to build the process capability to manufacture at the run rate of 40,000,000 panels per year is enormous. Note this is for the solar panels only. Additional requirements apply to the electrical inverters required to convert the low voltage DC to 240-120 volts AC required by electricity users.
In actuality the number of panels required to provide 10 gigawatts of power 24 hours a day 7 days a week is much larger. The capital required to build the process capability to manufacture at the run rate of 250,102.040 panels per year is astronomical. And no consideration has been publicly stated about the DC to AC inverters and batteries required to support 24 hour, 365 day electricity generation.
Mr. Musk originally conceived the idea of solar power to market his Tesla Motors products based on “green” PR. This white paper from the Tesla Motors web site shares that vision. The business plan was developed in 2005 on a trip to “Burning Man” in Nevada with his cousins and Mr. Musk agreed to fund what became SolarCity and remains Chairman and major stockholder.
Tesla Motor’s website indicates that its Model S has a minimum range of 302 miles based on a fully charged 85kWh battery. Representative curves of range and electricity consumption in kWh are provided on their website although there are no specific curves relating to acceleration and the slope of the road meaning grade or going uphill.
Driving up hill requires considerably more energy than static elevation driving. And it relates to the velocity or speed and the slope of the hill in combination with the amount of weight in the car. The greater the load, the higher the velocity and the greater the slope, the faster the batteries drain. Add acceleration while going uphill and the batteries are drained even faster. The relationship between mass, time, slope and velocity is a complex one requiring calculus to solve and plot.
Tesla Motors website claims that a small carport sized solar panel configuration can provide enough electricity for a typical days’ worth of driving and still contribute power to the grid. Based on Tesla’s stated range of 302 miles per charge of 85 kWh, the car would obtain a range of 36 miles assuming a home solar panel system of 11.1 square meters (119.5 square feet) of panels based on the 37.5 Watt insolation factor providing 10kWh per twenty-four hours. As can be seen it would take over 8 days to fully charge the car’s batteries assuming zero use. This is opposite Tesla’s inference that the small carport solar system can support all the car’s electricity needs apart from the power grid. The cost of a 11.1 m2 solar system with batteries rated at 10 kWh (in the event a home owner wants to be independent from the grid) would cost over $10,000.
Google has been shown to have a direct and significant business interest in “green energy” and specifically solar. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested and government subsidies obtained.
Google’s Chairman, Eric Schmidt, was a campaign advisor and major donor to Barack Obama and served on Google’s government relations team. President Obama considered him for Commerce Secretary. Schmidt was an informal advisor to the Obama presidential campaign and began campaigning the week of October 19, 2008, on behalf of the candidate. He was mentioned as a possible candidate for the Chief Technology Officer position, which President Obama created in his administration. After President Obama won in 2008, Schmidt became a member of President Obama’s transition advisory board. He proposed that the easiest way to solve all of the problems of the United States at once, at least in domestic policies, is by a stimulus program that rewards renewable energy and, over time, attempts to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy. He has since become a new member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology
Tesla has likewise been shown to have a direct and significant business interest in “green energy” and specifically solar. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested and government subsidies obtained.
SolarCity also has a direct and significant business interest is “green energy” and specifically solar. It too has invested hundreds of millions of dollars and obtained major government subsidies.
It is to be expected that key personnel such as Mr. Kurzweil and Mr. Musk would be passionate in their position adopted by each company.
Cost of 100% solar PV Generation
A simple worksheet showing the system component costs for the 1100 GW solar-only generation system involves over 20 years, assuming the system has a 25-year life cycle due to solar panel degradation, and requires two battery replacement cycles, based on the life expectancy of Lithium ion batteries in ruggedized application. Labor has not been calculated due to the uncertainties of installing a system in which over 900 years are required to manufacture core components. It is obvious however, that a large work force will be required to install the yearly run rate of 31.5 million panels based on a turnout of 1 panel per second.
29.3 billion 1 m2 equivalent PV panels at $125.00 each = $3.67T
4.4 million battery modules as defined in “Going Solar” at $750,000 each = $3.3T
Steel, mounting material, and assorted electronics controls, transformers = $1.5T
Copper and Aluminum for wiring and interconnection = $50B
Land acquisition of 58,666 km2 or 14,496,368 acres at an average price of $5,000 per acre = $72,481,840,000
Steel and related construction material = $750 B
First battery change out $3.3 T = $16.59T
Second battery change out $3.3T = $20.55T (3,260 batteries per year) for 20 years
The total 20 year “overnight cost” of the system is $15.93 trillion dollars
The Utility Industry:
The United States has a current generating capacity of approximately 440 GW meaning at any point in time 440 GW of electricity are available plus a plant margin of 20% to cover maintenance, breakdowns, unplanned peak demands and other emergencies. The following chart shows estimated plant retirement based on age. The utility plant life cycle for a large 500-MW-and-up plant is 60 years meaning the plant must be designed and built to last 60 years with continuous around the clock operation and minimal downtown for maintenance.
As can be seen above the utility generation capacity is relatively stable for the next eight years. Given the regulated nature of utilities and wholesale power providers there is little incentive to invest in more plant capacity other than that required to maintain parity at 2014 levels. By 2025 a significant percentage of the nuclear generation capacity will be off-line as will much of the natural gas (and coal) generation capacity. By 2035 an additional 50 GW of plan capacity must be on-line. The utility plant licensing application to operations cycle is about 10 years. Utilities’ first choice is to have additional coal plants built to carry us through 2050 at present capacity, with a 50% increase to cover demands from the partial electrification of the transportation system. However the EPA’s opposition to coal power under the current administration creates too much risk for investors. Thus natural gas plants will be the preferred choice. The technology exists today and the cost of construction and operations fits the needed profile.
Utilities at the CEO level are not swayed by the social movement and Silicon Valley trends of “going green.” The industry is part of an annual energy industry with annual revenues in excess of three trillion dollars and is well run based on 100 years of business experience and attention to the demands of both regulators and shareholders.
In 2005, the Department of Energy in partnership with green industry firms and environmental groups issued a report partially set forth in the form of an 18 FAQ report. Roughly one half of the Q&As relate to perceived global warming based on CO2 emissions from the utility company. The chart below, produced in October 2014 indicates there has been no appreciable “global warming” over the last 18 years. It should be noted that there are serious errors in physics and the presentation of data in this Q&A. The most obvious is their statement that it will require 185,000 square kilometers to produce all electricity in the U.S. from solar and they compare that to the size of the state on South Dakota. The true number is 1/6th of that, as demonstrated in “Going Solar”.
Yet many solar companies link directly to this extremely rosy and optimistic FAQ, in so far as solar energy goes. Oftentimes, as is the case of SolarCity, this is done on an investor’s section of the web site and is meant to influence the investment community.
This detailed tutorial shows the thermodynamics of Earth’s atmosphere to have great tolerance for carbon dioxide with no increase in atmospheric, land or ocean temperatures.
The principal drivers of the “green energy” movement today are the public and political leadership’s perception of climate change. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested by industry, environmental groups and foundations to mold the need for green energy in the public’s mind and hence its leadership. However over the next few years this “green fad” will likely have dissipated.
As a matter of economics, solar is immediately disqualified as a suitable material energy source based on its extremely low energy flux density, as shown in this comparison of conventional fuel energy sources. (Scroll up for future fusion energy comparisons and scroll down for current green energy comparisons.) Today a 2.5 GW nuclear (fission) power plant can be built for 2.5 billion dollars. The entire US 440 GW generation capacity with 20% margin could be met with 212 nuclear plants sited on existing coal and natural gas plants without major land acquisition costs and for an overnight cost of $528 billion. The “giga solar plant” defined in “going Solar” would have an aggregate cost of over $8 trillion dollars, excluding the cost of construction, and the acquisition of roughly 59,000 square kilometers or 22,780 square miles needed to site 29.333 billion 1 m2 solar collection devices.
Replacing battery modules will cost $3.3 trillion dollars every 10 years — and operating costs as well as panel life cycle and MTBF are incalculable today. In a most likely scenario, the solar panels would all have to be replaced every 25 years due to the effects of solar radiation and weather.
The utility industry is “risk averse” in every sense of the phrase. No utility CEO in the country would support solar on such a grand scale. Today utilities embrace solar only because of regulatory demands and the positive PR value — and then, only for very small amounts of power, such as that supplied by First Solar and its Topaz project in CA, the Aqua Caliente project in AZ, and the Silver State North project in NV. These supply what the industry refers to as “peaking” levels of power and oftentimes a symbolic statement encouraged by the local politicians.
First Solar was the leader in installing large projects for grid level use. In a December 2012 RenewEconomy interview with First Solar CEO James Hughes, he made the following comments regarding utility grid level parity:
“Everyone wants to talk about “grid parity” – I’ve banned that phrase from the lexicon of First Solar. Electricity has value only at a point in time and a geographic place. There is no magic number that describes the true economic cost of electricity. You may have a tariff structure that describes it that way, but that is not the reality, and frankly, sophisticated power markets don’t operate like that. So you have to look at time of day, season and location to determine the true cost of power, and there are lots of times of day, seasons and locations where solar is economic today without subsidy. So our focus is to find those places, find those times of day, and find those market structures where we can apply ourselves.”
The government’s role, past, present, and future.
Over the last decade, the government has principally focused on the possibility of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (AGW) or climate change caused by man’s use of fossil fuels. This focus, in conjunction with the asserted need to stimulate the economy with “green jobs,” has led to tens of billions of dollars being invested in solar research, tax credits and subsidies. Furthermore, it has shaped government policy with regard to energy policy and the EPA’s effective cap on the construction of new fossil fuel plants and a push to limit per capita energy availability of energy as expressed in the MOU signed by the EPA and the United Nations Environment Programme.
More recently, the government has taken note of other viewpoints and the connection between green energy and financial abuse as exhibited in a recent United States Senate staff report.
The EPA must be made aware of the fact that energy demand will increase significantly as companies like Tesla Motors and Nisan Leaf begin selling statistically meaningful numbers of electric vehicles. The only current solutions to meet this demand is through fossil fuel utility-scale generation plants and the installed base of operating nuclear plants. The government should be discouraging “fossil fuel disinvestment,” as it is counterproductive to the nation’s national security, industry needs, and and economic health and growth.
In “Physics for future Presidents”, Dr. Robert Muller made note of Tesla Motors and the emerging electric car. Tesla has made great strides in its battery module since that book was first released. The fact that Tesla has achieved the range it has is of merit. One gallon of gasoline is equivalent to 36 kWh of electricity. A typical 18 gallon automobile fuel tank is equal to 648 kWh of electricity; the Tesla Model S has an 85 kWh battery module. However, all those batteries must be charged from clean, abundant, affordable, and reliable electricity.
Similarly the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee has issued a report calling for Critical Thinking on Climate Change in light of new scientific findings and inaccuracies of the IPPC predictions.
Focus should now turn to the viable replacement of fossil fuels this century simply because they are finite and the national security, and financial wellbeing of the country…indeed the entire world…depends on it. This is an issue of enormous importance, yet few policy makers are aware of it and little effort is being placed on potential (non-solar) solutions.
Public perception.
The perception of the public has been heavily influenced by the media and by the large number of “solar companies” selling home solar systems to augment grid level power: largely subsidized by government subsidies to both the solar companies and end users through tax credits and high “feed in tariffs”.
The public is largely disinterested in science and hence lacks the knowledge to properly evaluate solar’s place, but has nonetheless embraced a false solution that has a negative cash flow solution funded by their tax dollars. That level of enthusiasm poured over when a “Solar Road” project was launched on one of the “crowd source funding sites which raised over $2 million dollars for the project’s sponsors.
The solar deception (for grid level base load electricity generation)
In Mr. Diamandis’ article he set forth his concept of the 6Ds as Digitized, Deceptive, Disruptive, Dematerialized, Demonetized, and Democratized.
Solar is indeed in a deceptive phase. Much misinformation abounds:
· In Dr. Robert Muller’s “Physics for future Presidents” well publicized book he states both directly and through a contrived “ideal student named Liz” that “there is a gigawatt of power in a square kilometer of sunlight and that’s about the same as a (small) nuclear power plant.” Non-scientists would take that statement at face value. 1 km X 1 km = 1 million square meters X 1,000 Watts = 1 billion Watts or a gigawatt. A civil engineer would say “we can build that…in time.” However, in reality you must take into consideration the fact that the Sun is only shinning 12 hours per day, plus regional insolation factors, and then add in margin for maintenance, emergencies and losses in battery charge discharge cycles. Thus all of a sudden, our 1 million square meters only provides an equivalent of grid base load power of 37.5 megawatts which is 8.5% of U.S. current on-line generation capacity. For the record, “Liz” is Dr. Muller’s daughter.
· Dr. Lewis, Dr. Tsao, and Dr. Crabtree prepared a report stating “To supply the power that the U.S. consumed in 2001 (3.24 TW) with similarly efficient solar conversion systems would require a correspondingly smaller surface area, (6) A3.24TW = A15TW · (3.24/15), = 858,792 km2 · (3.24/15) = 185,500 km2. This is roughly 1.9% of the surface area (9,631,418 km2), and 2.0% of the land area (9,161,923 km2), of the U.S. (CIA 2005).”
· Neither is correct. If Lewis, Tsao, et al, were correct it would require 185 billion 1 square meter solar panels to produce our current 440GW generation capacity 24 hours a day 7 days a week. If these panels could be produced and installed at the rate of 1 per second it would take 5,886 years to complete the fabrication and installation.
· The correct required solar collection surface area is 1,100,000,000,000 ÷ 37 sq meters, made up from 29.333 billion, 1-meter-square panels, covering an area of 29,333 km2 (7,248,000 acres, or nearly the area of Maryland and Delaware combined) or a square with sides of 171.3 km long. If these panels could be produced and installed at the rate of 1 per second, it would take 929 years to manufacture 29.3 billion panels.
It is easy to see how people can become blinded and deceived, given the media exposure of the “go solar” campaign, coupled with difficulty in obtaining scientifically correct information and then analyzing it.
It is also easy to see how corporate interests and subsidy seeking are best served by letting the ambiguities remain unsettled.
And we can forgive Mr. Musk, Mr. Kurzweil and his boss Mr. Schmidt (who took this vision all the way to the President of the United States), who in turn made available huge sums of money to fund the vision. In all likelihood they simply did not calculate the numbers associated with the manufacturing run rate, necessary land acquisition, and installation issues. It is easy to be deceived when so many zeros are involved in the mathematical calculations, and that is coupled with wishful thinking.
Both Google and Tesla are making enormous contributions to our society and economy, which will require enormous amounts of clean, abundant, practical energy. Google is perfecting its “machine driven” car, using the research and expertise of Dr. Kurzweil in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Undoubtedly these cars will be electric to a large extent. And Tesla Motors is increasing sales of its electric cars and its battery production.
All those cars and batteries will place an enormous strain on our electrical generation capacity.
Google is in the business of connecting people and making information broadly available to everyone. It would be prudent for both companies to look beyond solar, wind, and the other available green energy sources — and help educate the public and political establishment, promote an informed collaborative effort to define and develop the next generation of green energy, as well as exploit those currently discussed.
To Google’s enormous credit, two of its “green energy project” scientists, Dr. Ross Koninstein & Dr. David Fork authored an article titled “What It Would Really Take to Reverse Climate Change; Today’s renewable energy technologies won’t save us. So what will?” published by the IEEE Spectrum on November 18, 2014. The article concludes with a section stating:
“A disruptive fusion technology, for example, might skip the steam and produce high-energy charged particles that can be converted directly into electricity. For industrial facilities, maybe a cheaply synthesized form of methane could replace conventional natural gas. Or perhaps a technology would change the economic rules of the game by producing not just electricity but also fertilizer, fuel, or desalinated water….”
Investor’s Business daily published an on-line article titled “Google Scientists Admit Renewable Energy Can’t Work” on November 11, 2014. The article noted “…the most remarkable admission from Google is that the technology just doesn’t work — at least not now. Two of the lead scientists on the RE<C project, Ross Koningstein and David Fork, both with Stanford, wrote the following devastating critique of the future of green energy in an article posted at IEEE Spectrum: “At the start of RE<C, we had shared the attitude of many stalwart environmentalists: We felt that with steady improvements to today’s renewable energy technologies, our society could stave off catastrophic climate change. We now know that to be a false hope….”
“Google’s setbacks in green energy were even more embarrassing when the company also had to admit it couldn’t even power its own data centers with the solar paneling it had installed. According to the company statement:
“The plain truth is that the electric grid, with its mix of renewable and fossil generation, is an extremely useful and important tool for a data center operator, and with current technologies, renewable energy alone is not sufficiently reliable to power a data center.”
Try lighting up a whole city.
Not to be out done, Tesla recently announced its Powerwall product which is available in 7 kWh or 10 kWh configurations.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration states that the average annual 2013 electricity consumption for a U.S. residential utility customer was 10,908 kilowatt-hours (kWh), an average of 909 kWh per month. Louisiana had the highest annual consumption at 15,270 kWh, and Hawaii had the lowest at 6,176 kWh. However that average figure is annualized and does not allow for peak power used on days when the clothes are dried or the air conditioner is running. Furthermore a residential electricity user who averages 909 kWh per month uses 30 kWh per day which is three times the Tesla 10kWh Powerwall. And this places even more demands on sizing the solar panel array as it must generate an equivalent amount of power (30kWh) over say five to seven hours to be available to the customer over a 24 hour period.
However it gets even more complicated and expensive, depending on one’s geographic location. Why? Because many people do not live in the sunny southwest but rather live in areas of the country which may have several cloudy days in a row. On cloudy days the solar system produces a very small fraction of its normal power. Thus, one would have to have enough Powerwall batteries to provide household power for multiple days when it is cloudy and the Photovoltaic panel array would have to be sized sufficiently large to fully charge all the Powerwall batteries. Thus a $20,000 system rapidly becomes a $200,000 system. This is a very important point because no one wants to wake up with food in the freezer thawing and being unable to cook it in their microwave oven.
As explained in our “Going Solar” analysis, the solar energy industry has detailed regional information it refers to as “insolation” which correlates the actual number of radiant watts per meter squared on a yearly averaged basis. This takes into account latitude, longitude, climatic conditions and length of sunshine per day. Generally speaking the further north one goes the less radiant energy there is, due to atmospheric absorption. Likewise, areas of fog and high relative humidity preform less well.
So in reality a considerably larger battery Powerwall is required if residential electricity users are to maintain their current standard of living and “go off grid.” A publically available report on the Powerwall explains details and a review published by the AP.
And it should be stressed that the above analysis is for home power only. It does not consider charging the batteries of a Tesla or other electric car which is described in an earlier section of this article.
On May 1, 2015, a video was published by Tesla Motors titled: “Elon Musk Debuts the Tesla Powerwall.” In the video Mr. Musk explains that Tesla company is “basically Tesla Energy” and that their mission is to replace all fossil fuels with power obtained from “the handy fusion reactor in the sky” using solar photovoltaic panels and batteries to store the power when the sun does not shine.
A Complete written transcript of Mr. Musk’s presentation is available as a PDF download
The point is made that this requires only a small land area he refers to as the “blue square.” The blue square is shown superimposed on a map and located in the Northwest portion of the Texas Panhandle. The image cannot be reconciled to the numbers we have calculated based on our analysis of the required land area.
Professor Andrew Smith of the University College London Energy Institute posted that the “Blue Square” appears to be reconciled at 10,000 km2.
Our analysis shows something very different. The fact of the matter is that 29,333 km2 of active surface area solar cells (the solid state electronic component which converts photons from sun energy into electricity) are required to provide U.S. baseload power based on 2013 generation capacity 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. This does not include the inert solar panel area nor the spacing between rows of panels to allow installation and maintenance of panels and site location for battery modules with low voltage DC to high voltage AC converters. In reality considerably more land surface area than the 29,333 km2 is required.
Near the end of the video, it is inferred that the solar panels and batteries would be installed on a distributed basis meaning on residential homes and businesses and that no large land area is needed. The article referenced and linked above points out this is cost prohibitive many times over based on today’s current electricity prices. Moreover the PV panels have a life expectancy of less than 25 years and the battery life is less than 10 years at best.
From an engineering standpoint Tesla will in all likelihood state that the best configuration is a hybrid based on the disintegration of the strong, resilient, robust, power grid regulated by public policy for the public good. Their solution would be to replace the current power grid with “micro grids” of interconnected homes using solar panels and battery packs which would average out local supply and demand. However, the power distribution system is complicated and the solar generated power must be converted from low voltage DC to much higher voltage AC power using the Tesla power pack. Such a proposal would demonstrate a lack of understanding of AC power theory and the difficulty of AC parallel circuits where power is injected at multiple points in a network. In such a configuration a tremendous amount of the home generated power injected on the “micro grid” would be lost in heat due to dynamic real time changes in power factor or reactive power considerations, and the inability to precisely match frequency and phase angles as we explain in this technical article’s “engineering challenges” associated with storage and distributed generation.
Perhaps a better use of Tesla’s “giga factory” and their management capability would be to manufacture very large battery modules needed for power grid use as discussed in the storage technologies article. That could justify investment by the utility industry and supported by the rate base under full disclosure with transparent bidding and sales contracts.
Conclusions:
· Mssrs Diamandis, Kurzweil, and Musk are all patriotic high achieving citizens.
· All three have business reasons to promote green energy based on the perceived belief that utility CO2 power plant emissions affect the climate and that in today’s world of scientific state-of-the-art solar is the best solution.
· Tesla Motors is a great company and the electric car is a great idea. However as more and more are built, we must generate much more electricity to charge their batteries. Today, setting nuclear aside due to public perception, fossil fuel electricity is the lowest cost, and most reliable.
· Solar in fact is not an appropriate utility baseload grid level solution based on cost, required land area, operational expenses, and short life cycle.
· Solar can be effective for individual corporate and a small percentage of residential customers willing to pay the high up-front costs and long payback periods.
· Unsubsidized Solar has applicability in rural areas and developing countries with low population density and extended time before they will be connected to a power grid.
· Allowing the public to develop a false sense of security, believing solar is going to meet the country’s energy demands, is neither prudent nor responsible.
· The financial well-being of the country in two to three decades depends on energy decisions that must be made over the next 2 to 5 years.
· The National Security interests of the country are not best served by solar or even the suggestion that it may be a viable solution.
· A definite need exists for a scientific breakthrough in a very high energy flux density energy source.
· A corresponding business opportunity presents itself to an entity(ies) that are willing to take the risk and fund the science, engineering, and R&D leading to such a breakthrough and subsequent commercialization. Atomic fusion is the only realistic solution to the extent we discount nuclear fission.
· On November 9, 2006 Google recorded a presentation made by Dr. Robert Busard at their facility. Dr. Busard explained the need to solve fusion before fossil fuels run out. At 2 minutes 45 seconds, Dr. Busard makes the point that most of the very bright and talented engineers at Google do not have the physics and math background to understand fusion because Google is an IT company, and hence most of its technical staff has a computer science and IT background. The Google Talks presentation is on-line.
· Google is in the business of bringing information to people throughout the world. Google should augment its investments in solar and other current green power by bringing people, knowledge, and a crowd source like a project to “solve energy” for the world as Dr. Busard mentioned.
· Google must provide honest, accurate, non-utopian, apolitical information to the public and political establishment, so that we can make informed decisions that will best serve the vital and complex needs of our entire nation – and not merely the selfish or ill-informed interests of certain industrial, political, financial or environmentalist factions.
[This essay has been updated to correct some punctuation and formatting errors along with a new more accurate spectral chart on 7/31/15]
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Thanks very much for the article.
If you’re going to recycle it–which I would very much encourage–it wouldn’t hurt to double-check some of the details. Like the 141-km square given for the 40%-panel-efficiency system. (That’s not the square root of 11,000 km^2.) And are you sure you got the comparison with, e.g., Maryland’s land area right?
Please feel free to write me at tt@usclcorp.com and/or call me at 916-482-2020 with any details, suggestions, etc. You are correct in that my original article did not mention Maryland; that was added by someone editing and I did not check his facts. Thank you for the comments and obviously any math typos will be corrected. Regards, T. D. Tamarkin
It seems to me that they’ve approached this whole solar engergy thing from the wrong perspective. Remember LCD solar calculators? I still have mine. It works great. Start small with something like a small solar panel for folks that can recharge their cell phones, iPads, etc…, Then move up to solar barbecues and such. As the tech improves, who wouldn’t want a solar powered beer cooler to take on camping trips? Where are the creative geniuses of the past who did so much more beginning with much less?
Smart Grid – BANANAS – double bananas! Everyone knows water runs down hill, most people know that electricity flows from positive to negative (actually the electrons flow from negative to positive) But very few know that you can not have the same voltage everywhere on the same grid. The electricity would not flow. With an independent, small, system with one generator and several hundred homes, a factory or so, and a school and some office building all works well. BUT, when you tie two power generators together, the one with the lowest voltage becomes a load. (that is why you can jump start a car). Now if all of your generators are on one side of town and the factory on the opposite side of town the voltage will be much higher for the homes close to the generator than those close to the power plant. Put a solar panel at the factory and when the wispy clouds float by the solar panel could become a load or more likely not even provide the voltage it generated as it is less than the voltage on the network. Throw some solar panels on random selected homes, and a wind turbine at the other axis of the plant generator axis and you have created even more problems and many of the systems will not be providing the full potential of the power they are producing. Now attach this independent network to two or three other outside generators trying to control the voltage on their network, each with all of the problems above. The Grid can not be Smart until every source of power applied to the grid has a means of controlling the output voltage of the power produced. And then you have to take into consideration how do you get all of that power from the massive solar farms in southern CA,NV, AZ to Kansas City, when it has to go past the power from the Wind Turbine farms in Texas and the Nuclear power plant in KS? Anyone with any intelligence sees that the problem becomes like the traveling salesman shortest rout problem.
[And yes I know the flow is actually controlled by VARs but explaining that here is above the head of most reading.]
“when you tie two power generators together, the one with the lowest voltage becomes a load.”
….
Wow….so when two coal fired power plants are both running full bore, one of them is a load for the other? That’s so impressive!!!!
YES THAT CAN HAPPEN!! And has caused extensive damage when the Reverse voltage protection circuits fail.
“when the wispy clouds float by the solar panel could become a load”
…
That statement shows how little you know about reality.
..
First the panels are DC, and not connected directly to the grid, so they never will be a “load”
…
Second, you should investigate the marvelous technology incorporated into grid-tie inverters.
Solar Power Advocate logic:
“my solar power system works all the time because it is attached to the “grid” and the other solar systems serve as a back up to mine”
Note : But the cost of the grid does not enter into the cost of ownership of a solar system.
“It is unicorn f@rt free. and the other solar systems are not subject to the same unreliability as my solar system”
“You see in my solar power world, reality is just noise”
” First the panels are DC, and not connected directly to the grid, so they never will be a “load”
Have you worked on any industrial size grid-tie inverters?
…
“Second, you should investigate the marvelous technology incorporated into grid-tie inverters.”
Have you Measured the leakage current of any the larger the grid-tie inverters?
Do you trust them enough to not isolate them from the “grid” when you are working on them or the solar panel leads?
usurbrain…..I guess you don’t understand the word “directly”
..
“Do you trust them enough to not isolate them from the “grid” when you are working on them or the solar panel leads?” ….. yup. I especially like the circuit breakers they have……very nice feature to use when working on the panels.
…
PS usurbrain…..ever hear of a safety item called “gloves?” They are recommended for working on any item that may be tied to equipment that has harmful voltages or currents in them.
..
Paul Westhaver…….No reply to your comment is necessary, since you haven’t made a point.
PS usurbrain
…
Ever see a bird perched on the high voltage wire on the utility poles around your home?…..They’re sitting on live wires, and the don’t seem to mind……..just saying.
@joel D. Jackson July 29, 2015 at 11:03 am
And do these new devices adjust the VARs to compensate for the lower voltage they are generating that is causing the “appearance” of a “load” on the grid” Where is that signal coming from? Does the dispatcher control every one of them or simply shut it off like he can the HW heater in some areas?
“Does the dispatcher control every one of them ”
…
Uh…no, but I think it would be best for you to start here. Now I know you might complain about the link being “wikipedia” but this particular item is not political.
…
Start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid-tie_inverter#Technology
@joel D. Jackson July 29, 2015 at 1:49 pm
I have designed and built inverters and have tested Industrial size 3 phase solid state inverters with solid state 1/16th cycle bus transfer devices (a different engineer designed the transfer portion) OR in your terms a “Grid-tie inverter” It appears you are thinking micro and I am thing Macro, and in the end all of these small devices are going to bite the manufacturers.
usurbrain ” in the end all of these small devices are going to bite the manufacturers.”
..
Funny you should say that. Please tell me how that will happen? My GTI has been functioning flawlessly now for over 10 years, and my net metering/utility billing is doing fine.
…
PS, I”ve averaged about 4 kwh per day production now for 10 years.
@ur momisugly Joel D. Jackson July 29, 2015 at 2:20 pm
If you have had your GTI for more than 10 years then you have true galvanic solation of the ac from the dc. This was done with a transformer then. In 2005 they allowed transformerless (or non-galvanically isolated) inverters by removing the requirement that all solar electric systems be negative grounded and specifying new safety requirements. This allows what we in the electrical world call “sneak Circuits.” There “safety Requirements include, among other things, basically the same thing as the GFCI in your bathroom, kitchen and other “wet” areas. You are welcome to test a GFCI by putting your hand in a full sink of water and then a screwdriver in the smaller slot of the outlet nearest your sink. then touch the blade of the screw driver. If your GTI is less than 10 years old it probably has the transformerless design. and the potential for a serious shock exists. Yes, there are other “Safety Precautions,” but I trust them as far as I could throw the bolted down GTI. The majority are all Solid State devices, and these are subject to degradation by voltage surges caused by lightning strikes that could degrade the device enough to make it lose some of its safety factor but appear to continue to operate properly. Keep in mind, most of these that you see advertised at Sams Club, Costco, Home Depot, on the internet etc are made in China.
Umm.. but power plants generate 3 phase AC not DC. They add to the grid by adjusting the phase angle and by varying the AC voltage with transformers.
Regarding the power grid it is indeed AC. Frequency and phase angle must be held precisely. Phase angle changes as a function of reactive power; i.e. capacitive and inductive components on the distribution side of the grid. See our section on Storage and related engineering challenges. This is covered specifically in “Challenge Number 3.” http://fuelrfuture.com/grid-scale-energy-storage-systems/
@ur momisugly The Original
Is this for me? Did you see where I stated [And yes I know the flow is actually controlled by VARs but explaining that here is above the head of most reading.
I was trying to keep the post at a level for the basic Solar Panel lover/installer who, in many cases, has no idea what a VAR is or how power is transferred from one area to another. The ones that think like high school physics “it flows like water in a pipe kind.” This blog is not big enough to provide an informative explanation, at least by me, as I was never an instructor of the concept, just used it, and many many years.
“But very few know that you can not have the same voltage everywhere on the same grid. The electricity would not flow.”
What?
We use AC power. The current does not flow like water down a hill.
I am not sure if you are light years ahead of my knowledge of AC power transmission, or light years behind. But what you are saying here make no sense to me.
Are you an electrical engineer?
I am not, but several of them call me when they need help with certain problems they are having, so I know that I know a little.
For electricity to flow there must be a potential difference. When you hook up a good battery to a low battery that will not start the car electricity will flow from the good battery to the low battery until they have the same (Equal) potential. Most people do not have the foggiest idea of how voltage is moved on an alternating current system. If you do then realize that I added a note at the bottom. If not then —>
However on a grid you use VARS to get power to move. One of the comments just above has a good description of how power is moved with VARS. “Challenge Number 3.” http://fuelrfuture.com/grid-scale-energy-storage-systems/
Did I miss the section on high voltage DC transmission lines that are popping up all over? (At least we stopped holding the high voltage DC ground return systems that were eating up our underground utilities and other metallic structures. )
usurbrain – that link you provided http://tinyurl.com/nabhapy makes no sense to me –
“The presence of the magnetic field is an essential requirement for the functioning of an inductive load such as a motor so the generator must supply two components of power, the “reactive power”, often called VArs (Volt Ampere reactive), to set up the magnetic fields and the “real power” to perform the work.
Specifically the reference to “real power”; so the other is imaginary as in i^2=-1 ?
@ur momisugly#$&! over 200 years ago, Franklin had a 50-50 chance, and he got the polarity labeled wrong.
AC Power. Don’t forget precise control of frequency and phase angle which changes dynamically as a function of inductive and capacitive loads…reactive power factor.
See… Tomas Edison was correct all along. We should have invested in a DC grid!
🙂
“Paul Westhaver” please see our on-line article covering storage technologies and scroll down to Engineering Challenge Number 3 (and others.) http://fuelrfuture.com/grid-scale-energy-storage-systems/ Now you know what Thomas Edison accepted the Noble prize and Tesla refused it when it was offered to both of them as a co-share…just a joke… http://fuelrfuture.com/grid-scale-energy-storage-systems/
neh. I am an ex nuclear engineer and an ex battery designer. I have a full grasp on energy storage’s state of the art. imo TREES are the best solar collector, and they absorb CO2. And the energy they store in the form of wood lasts for centuries.
Plant more trees… burn the wood when needed….repeat until infinity.
Paul Westhaver +1000 !!!!!
…
I agree with you 110%
Thank you!
Regarding the Google section of the post, there is a suggestion of a quid pro quo between Google and Obama’s team in that Google was actively holding down its tax liability of foreign earnings routed back to the U.S. via Ireland and needed a no-interrupt agreement from Washington to save billions in taxes and accomplish a near-zero tax rate. Tax liability on domestic earnings was further reduced by digging holes with taxpayer money at Ivanpah and Crescent Dunes. Due diligence on the part of DoE and Google was relaxed on both projects because what amounts to double losses to taxpayers from the campaign handshake agreement was more valuable than the project viability. Eventual loan default to taxpayers will be someone else’s problem by then. Acknowledgement of the foreign tax dodge by tech firms (aka donors to Obama) has been mentioned by Obama after the fact even to the extent of urging the EU to help close it. This amounts to a statute of limitations on a secret handshake that fleeced taxpayers twice. This is unofficially called win-the- day politics in DC and many courtrooms.
Well, I have to say right off the top that there are certain portions of the post above that are pure (your choice) bullshit or error. Here’s one:
This looks almost nothing like the graph above for solar power spectrum at the top or the bottom of the atmosphere. Does this matter? Well, if you’re going to criticize some pretty smart scientists perhaps you should publish accurate graphics instead of ones that exaggerate your point — it is easier to believe in your objectivity.
Here’s another. Will solar cells follow “Moore’s Law”? First of all, let me say that I’m something of an expert on Moore’s Law. There have been repeated predictions of the demise of Moore’s Law made over pretty much the entire time since Moore formulated it. Every time we have approached one of the “fundamental” limits proposed by people using perfectly sound, but of course limited, reasoning, something has happened to give it more legs. There is a huge economic incentive to extend Moore’s Law in a competitive market place, and “nature finds a way”, be it parallelization, reorganization, or just changing the physical basis for things entirely, as is about to happen globally for memory with Intel’s recent development of a completely new memory type that is much faster and can be scaled much smaller/denser. Oops. Moore’s Law, extended yet again.
A better way to think about this is to plot the cost of solar cells over time and not worry about why the cost decreases. Costs can decrease for lots of reasons. Economy of scale, changing phyical basis, new manufacturing methods that make “expensive” cell designs cheaper to manufacture. There is an enormous incentive to optimize cost/benefit, and will be even more incentive in the future as long as we maintain a competitive market. So here’s some historical data:
http://costofsolar.com/management/uploads/2013/06/price-of-solar-power-drop-graph.jpg
I’m not going to bother trying to fit an exponential to this, but it is pretty obvious that the cost per watt has been dropping at least approximately exponentially since the late 70s. Is this “Moore’s Law”? No, but it is an exponential drop in price per watt that empirically has been sustained for whatever reasons “forever”. Will it suddenly come to a shuddering end, as has been repeatedly predicted for Moore’s Law for computers? Maybe, sure. But — and here is the point — would smart money bet on it?
I’d have to say no. In fact, I’d say that smart money would bet that in a few years solar panels will cost half what they do now, and in a few MORE years they will halve again. Why? Who knows. Maybe new designs. Maybe more efficient manufacturing. Perhaps reduced costs in the supply chain. Maybe new materials. But however it happens, first to market will make a killing and everybody else will copy them as soon as they can, because for whatever reason there is a strong demand that is likely to only get stronger. So you can (no doubt) find learned pundits who will predict that solar cells are done falling in price. I’ve had this discussion with just this sort of pundit in online forums maybe a dozen times over the last decade. And you know what? The cost of solar cells, per nominal watt, is less than 1/4 what it was a decade ago.
Anybody want to cover a bet against it being at least half what it is now in a decade? If you believe the article above, you should be willing to give me at least weak odds…
Beyond that, I’d argue that the misrepresent the practical efficiency weakly, but that’s less than an order of magnitude mistake so we can ignore it. The one last thing that they fail to do is to compute the flat ROI for installing solar power in much of the US right now, in particular the amortization time for an investment. This is odd, since you’d think Forbes would be all about ROI and amortization times for any given investment in solar technology.
In my own direct computations (based on things like “quotes” of installed power backed by measured returns of people who have installed it, not imaginary statements about what you can and can’t get out of the sky in any given state) the amortization time for private individuals is around 12 years. With a lifetime of 20 years or more, that leaves one with a healthy, but not spectacular, ROI over 20 years. Corporate installation is a bit better (or else there are serious problems with the corporation) — they can get solar cells cheaper and use larger scale technology with better economy of scale all around. Conservatively we might guestimate 8 to 10 years amortization at 4%, at least 10 more years of pure no-fuel profit afterwards. Again, not spectacular but hardly a loss or even a break even. Solar is moderately attractive, without subsidy, right now in many parts of the US including NC.
Whether it is Moore’s Law or the last gasp of the physics and technology, if one gets just one more halving of solar cell cost over the next decade, the amortization time is going to drop to where it is essentially a mindless choice, automatic, the obviously cheapest way to get power when the sun shines, with a rapid amortization built with borrowed money followed by an extended period of pure profit. That profit may be further amplified if we estimate — reasonably — that fuel-based electrical power in general will get more expensive over the next 20 years, or, to be fair, if we have a breakthrough in fusion or in thorium fission and we start building fusion generation at 1/4 the current cost per delivered watt everywhere, it might be a dead loss and in 20 years we will have recycled almost all of the world’s solar panels. But coal will not compete with solar in any reasonable future.
It has long been my opinion that if the US starts pushing solar and wind power by essentially guaranteeing a market for five to ten years, all sorts of prices will drop as a reliable market creates both competition and economy of scale. Solar and wind may or may not be “enough” to replace fuel generation in the foreseeable future because we do have serious problems, often geographically localized problems, with generation duty cycle and reliability. Every day the sun doesn’t shine (enough to make much electricity) more than perhaps 6 hours out of 24. On any day, anywhere, the wind may not blow.
But the wind blows somewhere — wind becomes more reliable once one has a large, highly distributed capacity and a distribution system capable of moving the energy wherever it is needed. And the one thing the article did not really address at all is the unpredictability of an enabling technology, specific the possibility of building a reliable, high capacity, cheap to manufacture storage battery (or on a large scale, energy storage system). A breakthrough cannot be predicted, but people like Kurzweil understand that there is a continuous probability density of this sort of discovery in the history of science, and that it is just plain silly to base future investment on the proposition that “computers will never be smaller than large filing cabinets or faster than 1 MFLOPS unless you spend extraordinary amounts of money”. Again, where does the smart money go? Betting against the development of any critical enabling science or technology, assuming that we already know all there is to know in materials science and engineering?
Don’t make me laugh.
rgb
RGB: That last para: “The wind blows somewhere..” etc – Was that really you? (shakes head….)
What is wrong with the statement Harry? He means that there may be days with no wind in zip code 90210, but there will be some wind in some zip codes on any given day.
Not on board much with wind anymore…unless they invent a non bird chopping way to harness it.
Not worth killing the birds off for.
Wind is a form of solar anyway.
“rgbatduke” you are correct that the graph used to describe the spectral response of the sun was not accurate. Thank you for pointing that out. It has been corrected on the on-line published version of The Green Mirage and a correction will be sent to Anthony at WUWT later to replace the post on WUWT. With regard to your other points, they are best addressed privately between us via email or phone as we agree to disagree on them so far. My email address is tt@usclcorp.com and my phone is +1-916-482-2020. Here is the Green Mirage on-line as corrected: http://fuelrfuture.com/review-of-forbes-on-line-magazine-article-solar-energy-revolution-a-massive-opportunity/
I am skeptical that vast efficiency gains could be made at a reasonable cost. But, if so, then it doesn’t need subsidies.
I am entirely against windmills. They are horrific ravagers of nature. Ditto reflective solar like Ivanpah. The manufacture of solar arrays is also not without terrific environmental cost.
This stuff isn’t really “green”. One has to ask, what is the point? Why invest all those resources into something that really isn’t any better than what you already have?
Oops. Wrong link. That one is on some of the costs of making wind turbines. Here are two on pollution from solar cell manufacture.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/08/AR2008030802595.html
http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/solar-energy-isnt-always-as-green-as-you-think
I just returned from a trip to Austria, where we drove all over the country (it’s a small country:-). They have installed wind capacity everywhere. Most of the wind turbines were turning most of the time we were there, driving past them. In aggregate they were making a LOT of power. They do not turn fast enough to be a serious risk to birds AFAICT — my car is a “horrific ravager of nature” having over the course of my lifetime wiped out several doves, a few sparrows, maybe three squirrels, and a rabbit or two. Would I give up my car? Would any of us? Have any of us missed ALL the birds and the squirrels on the road, lifetime? If so, kudos to you, but roadkill along any roadway exceeds what I could see littering the ground at the feet of the wind turbines (that would be none; as I said, they spin relatively slowly and most birds could dodge them more easily than they dodge my car).
Reflective solar I’m not a fan of, but in certain locations it might work. Solar cells, as I said, are going to get built because there is a ton of money in building them. Again, there is a “terrific environmental cost” associated with building my car, my house, my clothing, my personal electronics, none of which stops me from buying them. There is an environmental cost to mining coal, uranium, thorium, rare earths, iron, copper, or to making concrete. Human life comes at environmental cost. It is balancing these costs, and real costs, that is tricky.
In Europe in general (but Germany and France and Austria etc in particular) they are strongly committed to wind power, and they have sited the wind turbines in places that the wind almost always blows fast enough to harvest power.
Are they ugly? I dunno. They’re certainly interesting. Are open strip coal mines ugly? Is a coal burning or nuclear power plant ugly? Is a solar array ugly? How about the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, horribly overbuilt, lined with power and phone lines, lined with ticky-tack housing, with giant strip malls, neon signs, billboards that are falling apart, and more? Europe (at least Austria) has way less of this than we do, and Vienna was safe enough that my 7 year old female cousin takes a tram ride with a change ALONE every day to get to and from school, and is pretty safe while doing so. In which US city could you do the same?
It simply isn’t the case that these things are all automatically “evil” or “green” or “non-green”. The world is more complex than that. I didn’t find anything intrinsically ugly in them, and they did look productive and the Austrians I spoke to seemed to appreciate the power they generate, most days, at a very low marginal cost. I did not see much solar — I’m guessing that in the winter in Austria there isn’t enough daytime to make it as good an investment.
As you (should) know, I’m not a fan of subsidies either. Nor do I support carbon trading, or huge government based pressure to “eliminate coal power plants”. However, I do think that in the long run many of the technologies being (possibly prematurely) implemented will make power that is both cheaper than coal and practically inexhaustible as a natural resource, and in the long run I think there are better things to do with coal besides burn it for power, such as use it to make concrete, or if it came to that methane or gasoline.
I just don’t agree with the top article’s final cost-benefit analysis. It is unduly pessimistic about future costs of solar cells, and unduly pessimistic about our ability to produce more of them, faster, and cheaper, as time goes by. Deutche bank, for example, projects a continuing, immediate fall in cell/panel prices to under $0.40 US/watt by the end of 2016. Given an investment that is already no worse than my substantial personal investment in high efficiency AC and heat for my house (which cost me MORE than 5 kW of rooftop capacity would have, and which has as long or longer an amortization time) how much better does it have to be before it is worth it for me to eliminate all or part of my last major monthly energy expense, semi-permanently? In my case, longer than many because the things I’ve already done have my electricity bill down to well under $150/month, amortized, for quite a large house kept very comfortable year round — R40 or so in the roof and attic, energy efficient windows and doors, and uber-efficient AC and heat. I actually have too SMALL a power bill already to amortize solar as aggressively as I would like for the whole house capacity.
Why are my personal decisions, at personal levels of economy of scale and using personally borrowed money, not reflective of the same decisions made at larger scales where one expects economies to be strictly better?
What I don’t like about CAGW is that it misrepresents the science. So does a lot of skeptical “CO_2 is better than ice cream” argumentation. What is essential is honesty — don’t oversell it with religious zeal, or poo-poo it with equally religious zeal. Lay out the facts as best as they are known and let the public make the decision that suits them best. It may be that they choose solar and wind over more coal even if coal is nearly completely harmless. The public has every right to do so. It just doesn’t need to be coerced into doing so — or coerced into NOT doing so — by misrepresentation of our state of knowledge and pictures that are either absurdly pessimistic and overblown portrayals of risk or absurdly optimistic and overblown portrayals of benefit. This is not needed (either way) and insults the intelligence of the voting public (either way).
I may be wrong in my list postings, but I’m honestly wrong and I’ve been known to change my mind. More people need to be willing to do the latter, I think.
“They do not turn fast enough to be a serious risk to birds.”
They do. Your perspective makes it look slow, but tip velocities can be 200 mph. Planes in the sky look slow, too. They’re not.
“…my car is a “horrific ravager of nature” having over the course of my lifetime wiped out several doves, a few sparrows, maybe three squirrels, and a rabbit or two.”
Not the same. Those are small, rapidly reproducing creatures. The bird slicers kill the endangered and slowly reproducing raptors and carrion fowl (which, despite the lattar being not particularly pretty, are an important part of the ecosystem). And, bats that are critical to insect control.
Make sure to check out the links. Other egregious environmental harm is being done by the manufacture of these inefficient devices, but nobody is paying attention.
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/storage/Turbine_County_Fracking_County_scr.jpg
Doesn’t this guy ever think before he comments? I’m agnostic about how much damage wind turbines can do to bird populations, but even a high-school kid could determine that their speeds do not disqualify wind turbines from being dangerous.
Maximum blade-tip speeds can easily be two to three times as fast as I hope you ever drive your car; some can reach Mach 0.3. And three-quarters of the turbine-path area can be swept out by blade surfaces moving faster than a car on the Interstate. Moreover, turbine blades attack from above and below. How does that make them easier to dodge than a car?
This is what academia has come to: because he’s a physics professor a guy thinks he can tell by taking a drive in Austria that wind-turbine blades are slow.
God help us.
They are not slow, it is true. And I have read reports which indicate that the pressure field they produce can kill birds without them even getting hit by the blades.
In the denser wind farms, it may be impossible for a large bird to pass without being killed. And they are always there…so over time they may be 100% effective in wiping out large birds.
The Altamonte Pass wind farm is said to kill huge numbers of golden eagles, as it is located in their primary breeding ground.
And some want to create a continent wide wall of these things. I was more or less agnostic about wind before these bird deaths came to my attention.
And none of this crap should be subsidized…that goes without saying.
“Doesn’t this guy ever think before he comments?”
RGB thinks very deeply, which is why I see it worthwhile to engage with him. He just hadn’t given this particular matter much thought, I believe.
Bart:
Perhaps; I had for some time indulged that notion. Dr. Brown spouted a lot of jargon that I didn’t understand, with apparent certainty in his position, and I must admit that because I usually found his positions congenial I was not as critical in considering them as I should have been.
Eventually, though, I took the time to run down a few things he was talking about, found his positions groundless, and countered with, you know, actual facts? His response to actual facts: crickets.
I sometimes criticize scientists in general. Being a lawyer, I look upon doing so as merely returning the favor 🙂 In all seriousness, though, I recognize that such a general criticism is unfair. I have had considerable experience in dealing with scientists and other experts, and despite a number of disappointments it was in many cases my good fortune to deal with scientists who were the genuine article. In those cases the scientists did not run when presented with facts; when they were wrong, they owned up.
Your mileage may differ, but that has not been my experience with Dr. Brown. So far, his behavior on this thread has been no exception.
Moore’s law is irrelevant. If the cells were free, solar would still be unaffordable. The cost of thousands of square miles of land, wiring, maintenance (somebody has to dust the panels and remove the bird droppings), energy storage (the sun sets every day), and system back up (sometimes the sun is not visible for days on end) is not supportable.
I should add installation costs. I cost me $15,000 to put a new asphalt shingle roof on my house (about 2200 sq. ft.). I cannot imagine that solar cells would ever be cheaper than asphalt shingles. Now, add electricians to that number. Electricians are paid more than roofers.
I have a new series of inventions all lined up…automatic solar panel cleaning devices. Lots of ways to do it. If they are all on racks in neat rows, it is a no brainer to come up with a way to keep them spiffy.
And as for free panels still being unaffordable…um, I would line my roof with them if they were, and I guarantee I could afford to do it. Land acquisition for my roof space will cost me zero.
And if they cost the same as asphalt shingles, which is a better deal? I have a tile roof, so I am not sure…but I suspect that the shingles and the tiles are in a tie for putting electricity in my wiring, while solar panels will begin to pay me some money back from the first sunrise after I install them.
So if they cost the same…the electricity producing solar panels are a hands down winner.
Your turn, go ahead…tell me how stupid I am. Gotta have thick skin to comment here to begin with.
This bit of conventional wisdom has been around a long time and is simply wrong. Windless days often cover large geographical areas. At 4:00 pm EST today:
http://s116.photobucket.com/user/techtipmail/media/usa.jpg.html
I would also note that low wind conditions are quite typical at the temperature extremes which happens to be when demand is at its highest. See also:
http://karman3.elte.hu/janosi/pdf_pub/npg08wind-energy.pdf
Your picture of winds is of the continental USA….
..
The Continential USA (48 states) comprise about 1.5% of the earth’s surface.
…
Got a link that covers…..oh…..say 10% of the earth’s surface?
Joel wrote:
Which by electrical grid standards is quite large.
No Joel. Perhaps you could point me to a single electrical grid that occupies “10% of the earth’s surface”. If you could then perhaps your comment would be relevant. Otherwise your just trying to obfuscate.
Eurasia comprises about 36% of the earth’s surface.
..
How about you put up a picture of the winds over that area?
So?
Because nobody that is sane would propose supplying wind energy to the US from Eurasia.
I do not think Eurasia is 36% of the Earth’s surface. The southern hemisphere is 50%. So that would imply that Eurasia is 72% of the northern hemisphere.
I do not even have to glance at a single chart or walk over to my globe collections to know this is off by a large amount…maybe a factor of at least three and maybe five.
Your exponential chart shows the price of crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells going down since 1977, however the price of aluminum (for panels) has been going up since 1977, as have copper and other panel components. And that doesn’t even drag in cost of metals and rare earths used in batteries. And as demand goes up, prices go up.
All you’ve shown is that silicon is no longer the dominant component of the price. Until photovoltaic panels get as cheap as shingles and batteries as cheap as siding, the price for solar has, as your exponential shows, plateaued out. Your exponential curves the wrong way.
lgp says: “drag in cost of metals and rare earths used in batteries.”
…
Could you please tell me what rare earth metals are used in batteries?
Joel,
IMO he meant photovoltaic cells.
Metals tend to go in long cycles. Cu and Al are nearing multiyear lows, and may fall much further.
PS, do not listen to William Devane about buying silver! If anyone bought in when he first was on TV saying too…they would be down a very large percent of their investment.
RGB,
I was beginning to think that I am the only one who is not a warmista who is not in love with this article.
It was making me woozy (still is, really) to be agreeing with Joel Jackson, but what are you gonna do?
I have a long rebuttal in my head, but I am thinking it would be a waste of time to begin to write it down.
One thing I will say. and that is you are correct about the objectivity of the author. He should not paint himself as such, or spend so much time criticizing from the point of view of the financial conflict of interest of others.
He himself is a fusion and fusion only activist, and every word of this article is intended for the purpose of promoting an agenda which is based on financing the authors own fusion project.
The low cost of solar panels is a consequence of overproduction coupled with reduction in demand as subsidies fall, rather than any engineering development. Thus, future pricing will depend on supply and demand factors which cannot be reliably determined. They may even increase once the surplus has been sold.
I often enjoy your posts but your 12 year return on SPV must be due to subsidies or a lot more sunshine than I get at 54N (~2000 hrs). I priced out wind and solar when I built my farm house in 2003. I was looking at doubling the cost of my house. I live 45 km from anywhere. It cost me $1,000 for a grid connection and $4,000 for a 12 kW propane generator for the frequent times of no grid supply during storms.
Annoyed at my recent power bills, I priced out solar last month. A grid tie system wouldn’t even pay the interest cost to buy it and there would still be grid charges. A battery system off grid is just rediculous and even the supplier said it was only appropriate of no other option was available.
Maybe with subsidies and more sun farther south your numbers are good. But up here in “sunny” Alberta the two suppliers I talked to said no go.
Shoot. Meant to reply to rgb. Stupid phone. Or maybe me.
I think you overpaid big time for your generator, Wayne. Unless that was the installed price…but still…back then it should have been way less I would think:
http://www.amazon.com/Generac-6439-Air-Cooled-Enclosure-Generator/dp/B00C2LV5PY/ref=pd_sim_sbs_86_33?ie=UTF8&refRID=1RVGYSNMVM0ZMN9J40HP
As for solar PV…up in Canada, I would not even think it makes a little sense. Too low sun angle, too much clouds, too much snow.
The math is dramatically different in lower latitudes and drier climates.
It would be a highly useful experiment for determining just what methods are, or are not, technically and economically practical in transitioning to the renewables if the US Northeast and the state of California were to adopt a renewables-only approach to managing the green transformation of their respective electric grids.
Over on Judith Curry’s blog, Rud Istvan and Planning Engineer have posted an informative article concerning the practicalities of using microgrids to enable and control renewable sources of electrical energy:
http://judithcurry.com/2015/07/28/microgrids-and-clean-energy/
Rud Istvan and Planning Engineer are skeptical of using microgrids as a technical enabler for greater market penetration of wind and solar.
Suppose we did use the US Northeast and the state of California as places for conducting a large-scale experiment in finding the best ways to adopt wind and solar. As the course of the experiment progresses, microgrids may or may not prove useful in supporting wide adoption of the renewables, depending upon what balance each region chooses to strike among energy cost, energy supply availability, and energy supply reliability.
However, someone has to be first in Going Microgrids, Going Renewables in a big way. IMHO, the state of California is the logical place to be the first pioneering region to seriously attempt it. The experiment is already half-way happening in California anyway, so it is simply a matter of pushing their experiment to Full Speed Ahead.
If a decade from now, the cost of electricity in California is 2 to 4 cents a kilowatt-hour, as the advocates of the renewables say that it would be under their scheme, then California’s voters will have been pathfinders for the rest of us in seeing what works and what doesn’t. On the other hand, if the cost of electricity in California doubles or triples over what it is today, California is a rich state and can afford the added financial burdens.
The key point here is that whether The Great California Experiment goes south or whether it doesn’t, those who are considering following California’s path into a renewable energy future will have a number of real-world data points to draw upon in deciding what works and what doesn’t when Going Microgrids, Going Renewables in a big way.
At any rate, the majority of Californians say they are on board with going renewable, and California has more than enough financial resources to cover the risk that it doesn’t all work out in the way the advocates of the renewables say it will work out. Much profit can be made in giving the customers what they say they want; and there is no shame in doing an honest and professional job of helping California’s citizens make The Great California Experiment a reality. It’s their money; it’s their choice.
With his recent Executive Order instructing all of California’s state agencies to take climate change issues into account when making public policy decisions, when doing infrastructure planning, and when making regulatory decisions, Governor Brown has given advocates of the renewables a golden opportunity to have it their way in the Golden State. They would be exceptionally foolish not to exploit the Governor’s executive order for all its worth.
Meanwhile, in direct contrast with the public policy decision California is making, a different kind of public policy decision has been made in the US Southeast to pay a near-term premium in the form of higher capital costs for their nuclear plants in trade for a highly reliable supply of electricity at stable long-term prices.
Twenty years from now, there ought to be clear evidence as to which public policy decision — California’s or the US Southeast’s — best served the long term interests of their respective citizens.
Interestingly, for a climate-sceptical old green-man like me, these figures show it is not as bad as I thought! If I just follow the simple arithmetic, and have little time to check this – but $15 Trillion over 50 years is not a lot of money – it looks like 10% of annual turnover of the electricity industry (at 0.3 T per year), and in any case 400 GW would have to be replaced over that period and financed by the industry – say 400 B at 1B/GW (optimistic for nuclear – in Britain, the proposed next nuclear station works out at nearer $5B/GW). Clearly, however, the industry could not finance this solar transition. But at say $15T GDP/yr, the US economy would be faced with a bill of 0.3T/yr or 2% of GDP (much as Lord Stern thought it would cost). Green economists seem to think this is bearable – but right now, industrial economies suffer severely if GDP growth drops below 2% – so what would zero growth over 50 years mean for the financial system?
I berate my fellow Greens not just for their AGW fixation, but also the cloud cuckoo land economics of the transition to a fossil-fuel free future. They don’t listen to either of these arguments – not because they are ‘green’, nor because they have got a new religion, but because they are politicians.
And for those of the sceptic camp that wish the Greens would get real (I wish that too), I wish you guys would wise up to nuclear issues – most particularly nuclear fusion, and put the same kind of brains into a life-cycle analysis. The fuel is cheap, the engineers need are expensive but few, BUT the materials needed to contain the plasma are rare and extremely expensive. Way back in 1976, Dr Gordon Thompson, who is I think still running the Institute for Resource and Security Studies in Cambridge (Mass), joined my research group after resigning from the UK fusion programme, which he did liken to a religious quest – and 40 years on, not much has evolved! Fusion is pie-in-the-sky.
And another request – how about a detailed exposition on US/global gas and oil supplies and depletion rates over the next 50 years? US gas supplies at current rates of depletion used to be – from memory, about 15 years, but fracking may have changed that. Oil – including tar-sands? And the global situation – with about 2000 billion barrels of oil (including non-conventional) at 30 bb/yr.current demand….comes to 70 years, so by 50 years hence, we could expect somewhat of a price hike – and the final 20 years to be very interesting times from a social and political perspective! That alone justifies public subsidy, don’t ya all think? Or are you all in favour of the free-market and its entrepreneurs deciding these things?
Hallelujah.
Thank you Mr. Taylor!
I spent a substantial portion of my young life intending to become a nuclear physicist, with the goa of assisting in fusion research.
By the time I was in college, that dream had fizzled out, and I am glad I did not spend my life chasing the very promising illusion (so far at least…I hold out the possibility that it may be doable at some point) of generating cheap and clean power from nuclear fusion.
Mr. Tomarkin, if you or anyone else is any closer to that goal than was the case twenty fie years ago, please explain it for us right here in plain language…not a reference to a website, not a link to a white paper…just a short and concise explanation of what has changed.
Please.
If you can make a case for further reading…then do so.
I’m inclined to agree with you about Moore’s law’s relevance, And, like you, the numbers didn’t come out at bad as I had thought.
But I think you’re amortizing over far too long if you’re using 50 years; solar-cell efficiency begins to degrade immediately, so the 20 years Mr. Tomarkin used may be better.
If we then use his numbers and divide his $15.93 trillion total 20 year “overnight cost” of the system by 20 years and 3.8 trillion kilowatt-hours per year, you get an electricity cost of around $0.20 per kilowatt-hour, or about two-thirds more than what we pay now, although it’s slightly less if you back out the one-time real-estate-acquisition cost. But I think that’s just capital cost, and just for generation. I’m guessing maintenance is more labor-intensive than current generation. And I’m told the (largely one-time) cost of additional transmission lines would be significant.
So, yes, it’s not as bad as I’d thought. But it still seems pretty bad.
Joe, all that assumes no improvements and no cost efficiencies and a lot of other pessimistic assumptions that may not be valid.
A point I am keen to make is that it would cost only a thousandth of that 15 trillion to test fusion. Yet, we won’t have a European test reactor until 2027.
Ian Macdonald, ITER will be late. The 2027 date for a DT test is now 2033 or 34 assuming the project moves ahead given all the international political problems. And ITER is magnetic tokomak. You may want to check this out and see other approaches and other labs and private sector entities in fusion science, R & D: http://fuelrfuture.com/innovative-confinement-concepts/
Numbers aside, one is a test which will give some information only, and if we are lucky it will be good info and encouraging. The other is not a test…it is an infrastructure.
The two are not comparable.
Regarding First Solar, the CEO’s comment from 2012 is still generally true for variability of costs. But with any pace setting industry leader in an already fast moving sector you need to keep up on conditions. Herewith,
http://reneweconomy.com.au/2015/first-solar-ceo-by-2017-well-be-under-1watt-fully-installed-19496
and
http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_28448210/buffett-scores-cheapest-electricity-rate-nevada-solar-farms
and
http://www.nasdaq.com/article/built-to-last-8point3-energy-partners-building-a-new-kind-of-yieldco-cm500754
Solar energy will always suck compared to nuclear power or hydro or coal etc.
It is great for remote locations, or space applications.
EPT$ = energy value generated during the lifetime of a solar panel.
CPT$ = cost of ownership of the solar panel for its life time (subsidies removed)
NET EPT$ = CPT$ – EPT$ Net value of solar energy.
EOT$ = energy cost by coal & oil during the lifetime of a solar panel.
COT$ = cost of ownership of oil energy conversion equipment for life of the solar panel.
NET EOT$ = EOT$ + COT$ Net Cost of fossil fuel based energy.
and;
NET EPT$ << 0;
In fact ABS( NET EPT$) < NET EOT$.
In other words, fossil fuel use is cheaper than buying and using solar panels.
So, we shouldn't be doing it for domestic use. A Watts likely got the hardware with an $ incentive so the true problem of solar is like masked in his case. I don't know for sure.
On the other hand… we are paying for the incentive anyway.
If you do the calculations for solar hot water, you’ll find using fossil fuels to heat your domestic hot water is more expensive than solar.
Double that if you heat your water with electricity
You haven’t taken into account the fact that the sun goes down and that most people don’t live at latitudes where the incident radiation is optimal, the cost of energy & mass storage and cloud cover. Solar power is efficient at noon on the equator, on a sunny day to generate low quality heat with a government subsidized collector. And people may not use the energy at night. OK
“most people don’t live at latitudes where the incident radiation is optimal”
…
Doesn’t need to be “optimal” to work well. For example, solar space heating has been used ever since glass was put into windows on the south side of a building.
Well… the obligation is on you to do the math to PROVE that heating water at night (when it is mostly needed) with solar energy is cost effective. Assertive conjecture on your part is irresponsible and a burden to you clients.
However, that does not factor in the cost of having a gas line to your house. I heat my water with NatGas. I have Gas HW, Gas furnace and no other gas appliance. For 7 to 9 months of the year my gas bill is the minimum payment. Three people with a son that takes hotel shower(no less than 20 minutes) at a rate of 1.5 per day. With the cost of gas being about a dollar or so, and the rest of the charges more than 10 times that amount. In the winter, the Hot water just help put me in the lowest gas rate. More than 75% of my annual bill is for stuff other than gas. If you were to give me the most efficient solar hot water system, I would save less than $25 a year. And after a few years the cost of maintenance would make collector rather costly. Call your local solar dealer and ask what they want to repair something on the roof. (Don’t have a solar dealer? Call an HVAC dealer and ask what it costs to have that diagnosed and repaired. It will be in the same ballpark)Few of the many “savings” for “renewable energy look only at the cost of actual Gas, or Electricity and completely ignore the many charges, taxes (St, County, muni), surcharges, maintenance, replacement, whatever. The sealed Circulating pump on a solar HW collector system costs over $250 plus man-hours to replace after (in addition to) the “Dioganistic” fee.
Paul Westhaver ……I am inviting you to come and visit my home. I think the 1000 gallon high insulated storage tank in my basement will impress you. Make taking a hot shower possible no matter how cloudy it has been in the past week.
..
usurbrain……I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that you are too frightened to climb a ladder and do something as simple as wash the panels with Windex. Yes, some people are mechanically inept, and can’t do it themselves, but then, I know that some people are afraid of heights.
Joel,
I have redundant systems in my house to back up the grid, to include both hot water and PV solar, wind, diesel and wood. But an advanced industrial society cannot run on wind and solar, or even hydro alone.
Here in the PNW, we’ve turned vast stretches into death camps for birds and bats, at huge cost in public subsidies, and all this enormous squandering of wealth and mass murder has done is interfere with optimal use of our bounteous hydro, while raising rates and transferring wealth to China, further trashing the environment in the production of supposedly Green alternatives. Give me more high quality coal, which of course is still need to back up the so-called renewables.
That tank cost money, even if it was paid for by an Obama incentive.
again…
You haven’t taken into account the fact that the sun goes down
and that most people don’t live at latitudes where the incident radiation is optimal,
the cost of energy & mass storage
and cloud cover.
Solar energy works when you ignore the cost, the unreliability, the need to modify human behavior, geographic necessity, night time, bad weather, and socialism.
1) “That tank cost money” …yup….and it’s been working fine, with zero maintenance for over 20 years. What you fail to realize is that 20 years of zero fuel costs for hot water with a family of five is a serious chunk of change.
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2) “Obama incentive” ….. Obama wasn’t around 20 years ago.
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3) “where the incident radiation is optimal,” ….guess what……it doesn’t have to be optimal to WORK!!!
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4) “Solar energy works when you ignore the cost”
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Nope… I have six 3×6 foot panels that provide space heating for my home. They sure were cost effective when heating oil was north of $3.00 a gallon. They paid for themselves in savings in less than 10 years.
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It is really a shame that you have such a negative attitude towards something that is really very inexpensive, and very easy from a “do it yourself” perspective. Maybe you should get a book and learn how to sweat a copper fitting. Or maybe install a bigger window on the south side of your home. Some people install windows purely for aesthetic reasons, you’ll find it amazing how warm sunshine is in the middle of January.
Nope Joel D Jackson, you are stubbornly and invincibly ignorant of the true costs of solar energy.
Why would I spend money on oil if I could get solar for cheaper? I am more than capable of analyzing the entire costs related to domestic energy use. I did so for my own home.
Solar power does not even come close to replacing my oil fired system. Even with obama subsidies.
If you make promises to your clients that are contrary to that, then you will get sued for fraud when your broken promises hurt their pocket books. C’est la vie!
At my last place of employment (a museum run by greenies) they had a seminar for all the local contractors promoting solar hot water heating. The presenters gave a ballpark figure for new construction installations of $10,000 (you should have seen the contractors eyes roll). As I use natural gas for hot water, heating, and our stove it is possible for me to make the necessary calculations. Since the furnace doesn’t run in the summer I can just use the most recent bills. I also have my natural gas bills going back a few years before we replaced the electric stove with a gas one enabling me to estimate how much is for water and how much is for cooking. Giving the solar hot water advocates the benefit of the doubt, I estimate heating my water cost about $28/month. That puts my break even point at just shy of 30 years without even considering opportunity costs.
Now if I consider the opportunity costs it is unlikely I will ever break even. By investing that $10,000 at a annual return of a mere 3% at the end of 30 years that $10,000 will have grown to over $23,500.
You guys are all seeming to be arguing in absolute terms…makes no sense to me.
Solar heating makes no sense in Alaska. Makes a lot of sense in Florida. My swimming pool is nice and warm thanks to my rooftop heat exchanger.
In winter if it is cloudy, I need to use my heat pump.
If it is sunny I just turn a valve and the water runs up to my roof after leaving the filter and before going through the chlorinator.
All or nothing argumentation is dumb. Sorry for saying so, but opening up your thinking.
@joel D. Jackson July 29, 2015 at 11:37 am
“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that you are too frightened to climb a ladder ” Did I say I couldn’t? Why the Sarcastic retorts? Take the chip off of your shoulder. I have been using wind for more than 60 years. (Got first place in HS Science fair in 57) and solar HW for 55. Have been on a roof several times a year and a 100ft tower often.
However the average person that is going to buy or fall for one of these systems sold from SolarCity probably doesn’t even have a ladder, thinks all black wires are ground, and has no idea how to replace a cartridge fuse let alone a GTI. They are going to PAY to have maintenance performed on their equipment.
To sell, push, Solar you have to be honest about it. Yes it works, I use it, but it has it limitations. Without the massive rebates from the feds and st gov, you will still be money ahead if you invested what you spent in the typical guaranteed annuity – UNLESS, like you or me you can repair all of the equipment your self and have access to the parts at dealers cost. And the logs/spreadsheet I keep prove that. So get off your high horse and educate people not demean them. Or, as we said in the Navy, get the hair out of your …
Unless I missed it. The production rate of solar panels will need to double very 25 years. Just to maintain that installation rate of one solar panel per second, if the life of a solar is 25 years. The battery production would have to double every 10 years.
Merlin, Don’t confuse the unicorn fantasy of solar power pie-in-the-sky with facts! How dare you!
Rules of solar power fantasy:
1) The sun never sets,
2) people only need heat or electricity during daylight (preferably 11 am to 1 pm)
3) Energy storage is infinitely available (lead storage batteries) and free.
4) There is no bad weather
5) Everyone lives on the south side of a building
6) The government pays for you solar system
7) The sun never sets, even above the arctic circle and below the antarctic circle.
8) There are no cars, everyone works from home in white Steve-Jobs-esques chairless dwellings with no children.
9) Solar panels don’t cost anything to manufacture.
yawn, the solar industry will continue to out grow any industry for decades. Good luck on your alternative investments.
The greens lost their ecological argument for using solar panels as a viable alternative energy source the first time trees were cut down to install them. That isn’t “green” – it’s lunacy.
The Original Mike M,
True, and have you every been to a semiconductor fab? Here is how the work:
There is a unicorn in a green pasture f@rting out solar collector chips.
No, I am joking! They are nasty (off-shore) chemical plants that use extremely toxic chemicals to etch, coat, mask, strip, metalize, and enclose the components. Heck, brown people in the 3rd world do that so we can live in white, childless, museums like Steve Jobs. But solar panels are…ahem… green.
Correct.
US environmental regulations would make production here of both PV cells and windmills impossible.
I have spent far too many hours in class 10 – 7, and 9 inch (this dates me) Fabs in the US, Israel, and Europe (Intel, Motorola, Microchip, TI, AMD, Phillips, IBM to mention a few.) Fun experiences to say the least. And the vapor deposition furnaces? You wont run them on solar power…
Some links:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/solar-energy-isnt-always-as-green-as-you-think
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/08/AR2008030802595.html
For a second there you had me excited that there was a unicorn left! (I paid 500 large to kill one on an African wildlife reserve because they told me it was the last one.)
The 37 watts per square meter number is optimistic.
NREL has been measuring solar energy at the ground for many years. Eg at 40 degrees north latitude a square meter will receive about 14 megajoules per day of solar energy. A 15 percent efficient photovoltaic panel will then convert those 14 megajoules of solar into 2.1 megajoules of electricity. Thats 2100000 divided by 86400 seconds per day. Equals 24 watts.
Moving that panel to the mohave desert will only increase that to 30 watts.
The annual range of power varies by a factor of 3. If you consider that you want electrical power in the winter, the panel output will only average 20 watts. Adding a 2 axis tracker will improve that back to 30 watts but then you have to add the cost of the tracking mount.
If solar photovoltaic power were competitive with grid power, then every power supplier would already be converting. They run the real world numbers and decide to build a coal plant.
A Joule is a watt*second. The author states that a joule is a “watt/second” which is a gross error that any engineer would immediately recognize as the mistake of an amateur.
“then every power supplier would already be converting.”
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That is not how it works here in the USA. The utility lobby has taken a different route. They are legislating a “tax” on people that have installed rooftop solar because they know that their quasi-monopoly is threatened by distributed generation technology.
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http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/04/25/3430835/clean-energy-solar-koch-alec/
The power companies have good cause to object to reverse metering. It is no big deal when it is a few people, but if large numbers install systems with reverse metering, and force power companies to buy back power at the same price they sell it, while those same customers enjoy having the grid for when they need it, but pay none of the cost of the infrastructure due to credits they receive from reverse metering…it is obvious that at some point this cannot work for an industry that is so tightly regulated as power suppliers.
Also, if large amounts of power are fed into the grid in unpredictable ways, it can destabilize things.
On the bright side, huge advances have been reported in modeling and real time weather reports and using computers to deal with fluctuations more effectively.
@Menicholas, our power company, Holy Cross, buys surplus solar at 50% of their selling price.
OK. That is not reverse metering then.
Some places mandate that meters run backwards when power flows from the home to the grid.
Again, the watt second issue was a typo. Thank you for reporting it as stated earlier.
“The author states that a joule is a “watt/second” which is a gross error that any engineer would immediately recognize as the mistake of an amateur.”
Chill out, dude. Anyone can make a typo.
This was a very long article. It has been reviewed by at least 25 Ph.D scientists, mostly physics majors (like me) and more than a few lawyers utility folks, and regulators. The initial article was published on-line in October 2014 and I updated it this past July. I expect given its length and the fact that it was not reviewed by a professional editor there may be a few more typos. I have already replaced one incorrect graph. I welcome all comments and suggestions at tt@usclcorp.com or you can call me at +1-916-482-2020 The article is published on-line at: http://fuelrfuture.com/review-of-forbes-on-line-magazine-article-solar-energy-revolution-a-massive-opportunity/ and corrections will be made on this on-line version as we find them. In a few days when all comments are in, I will release a new version to Anthony at WUWT for his post. Thanks to everyone who has responded.
The extra 20% output is just a bonus. There are more important reasons for siting a solar plant in the Mojave.
1 – >90% sunshine (350 sunshine days for the Mojave desert)
2 – Cheap land. A quick google finds a few lots at approx. $1000/acre.
Major disadvantage: very long power lines.
Well modern solar cells designed by people who know what they are doing, typically get from 21 to 24 Wm^-2. So your 15% number is for toy solar panels, sold by the lowest bidder.
And strangely the people who make those good solar panels see no need whatsoever to have taxpayer subsidies for their products; they are willing to stand on their own two feet.
With PV panels, solar to electric conversion efficiency is the only thing that matters (land is not free).
If you read any significant portion of Tomer’s extensive essay, just how did you reach the conclusion that the author was an amateur ??
Typos invariably lend to the incredibility of an article. I had three. (Thus I am an amateur.) 1.) 24 hours a day, 365 days a week. 2.) Watt second was styled as Watt/Second (where did that slash come form?) 3.) And in the comparison of PV efficiency’s versus surface area of active PV cells I had an correct value in the square area. All have been corrected. And I used a graph for the Sun’s spectral content which was in appropriate. That too has been corrected. The corrected article is on-line at: http://fuelrfuture.com/review-of-forbes-on-line-magazine-article-solar-energy-revolution-a-massive-opportunity/ and a downloadable PDF will be linked up tonight. I have also submitted errata corrections to Anthony at WUWT for him to correct the version he posted.
“bw” One joule is indeed a watt second and apologize for the typo. This is a long article and I am sure there may be other typos as well. For non-scientists the term watt second means one watt (in electricity one volt times one ampere) for one second. Note differentiation between energy and power units. Of line please email me at tt@usclcorp.com and provide the paragraph and line number where I allowed that typo to creep in. Thank you. Regards, T. D. Tamarkin
Greatly appreciate your article. After reading todays post on WUWT (7/31/15) on the European Renewable Energy fiasco I have coined a new term for renewable “The Green Plague.” The term seems to succinctly wrap-up exactly the aspects of the spread of this pending catastrophe of this misguided endeavor. Perhaps the title of one of your future articles.
“usurbrain”, The bottom line issue is the over 29 billion square meters of active PV surface area required to replace todays U.S. generations capacity. And no one has addressed the solar PV life expectancy nor that of batteries in a 100% solar configuration. Please see: http://fuelrfuture.com/going-solar/
What about all the ‘Weed Killer’ needed?
http://web.archive.org/web/20150421205919/http://notrickszone.com/2011/07/04/weed-covered-solar-park-20-acres-11-million-only-one-and-half-years-old/#sthash.CvxDfHjJ.dpbs
“Tesla Motors is a great company and the electric car is a great idea.”
Ha! Tesla exists on subsidies that take money from taxpayers and transfers that money into the capacious pockets of Elon Musk.
Simply search DuckDuckGo (google might be too biased to do a real search) for Elon Musk rent seeker.
“earwig42” Go to our website for this article on Tesla Motors and “Tesla got $295M in subsidies for technology it didn’t offer:” http://fuelrfuture.com/tesla-got-295m-in-subsidies-for-technology-it-didnt-offer/
Point about solar PV that I find perplexing, is how does Germany arrange to have no overcast days, ever?
https://www.energy-charts.de/power.htm
-It seems like although Winter output is less, mid-day Summer output is never less than 50% of rated max. Anyone who’s used a solar panel knows that output in overcast conditions is more like 10%, not 50%, so how do they achieve an output consistently >50% of max?
Answer: Germany does not arrange to have no overcast days, ever. Solar energy supplin in Germany is very low, see:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/Electricity_Production_in_Germany.svg
Solar has just overtaken hydro power, and is a little more than half wind and ‘other’.
Coal provides about 45% or power output, 19% hard coal, 26% lignite.
Nuclear provides about 17%.
Renewables are said in the article to be over 25% in first half of 2012.
Wind supplies 40%
Biomass is about 30%.
Photovoltaics about 16%
Hydro about 14%
Geothermal 0.015%
The totals seem to add up to 87% – the rest is presumably natural gas for power plants, and perhaps oil
Figures for total consumption of energy in 2009:
Oil 34.6%
Bituminous coal 11.1%
Lignite 11.4%
Natural gas 21.7%
Nuclear power 11.0%
Hydro- and wind power 1.5%
Others
Your chart shoes a few sunny days in a row.
We had several heat-waves in Western Europe in July. The interesting thing was that solar panels’ peak output was reduced 20 % on the hot, cloudless days.
What is the impact on albedo, if this were to be done globally, ie., if all countries sought to become fully reliant upon solar PV energy?
What impact will this have on weather patterns?
If the future of solar power is as wonderful and certain as some claim, then it is inexcusable to take money from people (ie tax) to subsidize it. The fact is, that without subsidies, in the near term solar and wind would crash, except for some of the niche uses that have been mentioned.
The markets, if freed, would efficiently direct investments and research into the various forms of energy production. No doubt if fusion is somehow someday feasible it will be developed. Meanwhile, there is plenty of coal, natural gas, and oil to get on with for decades, and maybe centuries.
No net global warming for over 18 years. Nature has spoken. CAGW is a boogyman, not a real near-term threat. Fossil fuels work, are plentiful, and are not a threat to mankind, the earth, nature, not even to Gaia.
Also, think how many birds would be spared death or horrible injuries if they could avoid being fried by solar concentrators or chopped up by wind turbines.
Isn’t it galling how we see all those sad, blackened birds every time there’s an oil spill, but never see the burned and mangled bodies of birds who run afowl, oops, afoul of “green” energy production.
The details of the cost of converting away from fossil fuel never seem to include the trade-off point where fossil fuel power is still essential to a reliable grid but is no longer profitable to operate because of erratic schedules, hot stand-by conditions, and ever increasing costs of fuel for which production is dropping as demand drops. Such things as repairs/maintenance/staffing remain constant, but the ecosystem of fossil power generation is also going to fade with time. The cost of everything associated with fossil fuel generation will go up and outages will become more frequent and longer as the skill set and profitability to maintain systems fades as careers change direction. We see this happening in the medical industry as a result of Obamacare fallout. Lack of replacement parts alone will become crippling long before the last fossil fuel generator is dismantled (assuming they’re not abandoned like aging wind turbine farms).
“dp” An excellent point and one most people simply will not acknowledge. Please see my on-line article covering this at: http://fuelrfuture.com/when-the-lights-go-out/
Wow, this is a tour de force. Don’t expect any warmists to read it. Facts are not their strong suit.
short story:
the coasts of the solar cells, installation + maintenance are amortiziced in 12 ys.
After 8 ys the efficency is sunk by 70 per cent; the market prizes for electricity have sunk too.
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the numbers may differ over time; fact is:
manufacturers of renewables don’t rely on their renewables for their productions demands.
Hans
Excellent and provocative piece Tomer – I had already found The Green Mirage from a link you provided within the last few days. Keep that linking up, please.
With the correction of a few typos and upgrading graphics, this is powerful. Here’s an update on RSS from Christopher Monckton’s – http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/05/04/el-nio-has-not-yet-paused-the-pause/
Jim Sawhill the typos were corrected and the Sun’s spectral distribution graph was also corrected. The on-line version (with corrections) is at: http://fuelrfuture.com/review-of-forbes-on-line-magazine-article-solar-energy-revolution-a-massive-opportunity/ and hopefully the version posted to WUWT will be updated tonight. Thank you for your interest and comment. And you are correct, I should replace the RSS data with Lord Monckton’s latest.
condensed:
after 40 ys subsieded development they don’t buy their sustainabiliters.
More condensed – written circa 2010:
“Wind Power – It doesn’t just blow, it SUCKS!”
“Solar Power – Stick it where the Sun don’t shine!”
Anthony – it would be great if this post was added to your reference material. This is the most cogent analysis that I’ve seen on the topic. I will be using it as reference material for years to come I suspect.
Curiously, I seem to recall that Anthony has solar power on his own roof. Perhaps I am mistaken in my recollection. So it isn’t clear that he agrees that solar power is not a reasonable amortized investment. I certainly don’t.
rgb
I have a god memory, and I recall that our host does indeed have rooftop solar.