Guest post by David Middleton
1.8 MW and 4 MWh of storage… Godzilla? Not even Ant-Man.
The Brooklyn Navy Yard Cogeneration combined cycle natural gas-fired power plant generates over 150,000 MWh of electricity in a typical month.
1.8 MW with a 25% capacity factor will generate 324 MWh per month.
How could any sane person call this “monster-sized.” One typical natural gas power plant generates 500 times as much electricity as a Monster-Sized an Ant-Man-Sized “Virtual” Solar Power Plant.
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You’re all using the wrong math! Look at the dollars this turkey idea involves. That gets you to huge. Then examine the payback, including opportunity cost. That gets you to infinity.
Extrapolate to AGW to get infinite density.
New York is no stranger to whackadoodle ventures. In 1869 Scientific American promoted the construction of a pneumatic subway in New York. It lasted from 1870-1873.
“The Beach Pneumatic Transit was the first attempt to build an underground public transit system in New York City. It was developed by Alfred Ely Beach in 1869 as a demonstration subway line running on pneumatic power. As the subway line had one stop and a one-car shuttle going back and forth, it was merely a novelty and not a regular mode of transport. It lasted from 1870 until 1873.”
I’m sure they claimed it would be the model for subways worldwide. What went wrong? The leather seals didn’t last, them not having access to petroleum based plastics. For the solar project, I’ll put my money on the bird kaka and the cost of union kakacleaners.
Oh wait, there’s the issue of networking all these electrical generators and getting it to work right. I suggest going back to the wisdom of 1865 – connect all the treadmills in NY together with a system of shafts and pulleys, running down to and under the streets, pumping water to rooftop pumped storage units and finally driving a mighty 100 Watt Edison generator that he promises will be ready by 1873 and a yet to be invented light bulb. Substitute iPhone for light bulb.
And now there’s Hyperloop.
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Hyperloop
What or who will deal with the sky fried pigeons?
I thought this was passive solar. No fricassee of pigeon here.
Monstrosity in physical size, monster in expense, monstrously wasteful?
It certainly isn’t huge(yet). It’s a pilot programme- they want to give the idea(Rooftop solar with battery) a test drive. Like a “proof of principle” test. Be interesting to see how it works out.
Any and all use of Land, Sun, Wind, Fire, and Water will eventually be perpetually taxed. That is the purpose of wind and solar power generation. It certainly is not to provide “greener” power.
Wait a minute! Aren’t all these “roof-top” solar installations already using most(or all) of the power they’re generating anyway? And aren’t they “technically” connected to the grid already?
Maybe they meant “monster sized” in the context of how much physical space it wastes (or its cost)?
Oh well, land in NYC is basically worthless, like in the Navajo Desert, right?
Monster Sized
Physically yes : panels and batteries all over the place
Output no : less than 20% capacity factor from the panels and the piddly storage (would power only 1000 households using 4 kWh for one hour) doesn’t help that at all – Greens don’t understand that storage doesn’t generate any electricity on its own.
Greens hate maths because being able to do and understand maths destroys their hopeful fantasies
sorry, that should have been “using 4 kW“, not kWh
There is a lot of information they’ve not released yet.
Recruit? With what bait? What rate subsidies will NYC promise the homeowners?
Aand there are how many fully self solar powered homes out there?
leaving just how many dregs of solar power per homeowner that just might be available during the sunniest of days?
Couple that with what must be a very expensive contractor devised plan, yet to be developed connection costs, some sort of central lame battery storage idea, not forgetting the homeowner lure they haven’t told us about.
I thought they just wanted roof space and would take all the power, and then give the property owner a discount/rebate of some kind.
Con Edison? Con is right.
So what about the cost for this?
First assumption is that all of the installed equipment is meticulously maintained, with snow and ice and bird droppings and leaves and dust removed when necessary by the homeowners so that output capacity is close to predictions.
With 1.8 MW capacity and 300 homes, that comes to 6 kW AC capacity for each home.
With 4 MWhr usable storage and 300 homes, that comes to 13.3 kWhr of storage per home.
That means the Sunverge battery system for each home is probably the SIS 19.4, with 6 kW maximum output and 16.5 kWhr of usable storage for 7000 cycles.
Price is $20,000.
Or $1200 per kWhr of usable storage when new.
That needs to be tied to a solar PV system with 5 kW AC or 6 kWDC capacity.
https://www.californiasolarstatistics.ca.gov/
At the CA average installed cost of $5.28/WDC, that adds another $31,700 to the bill.
The article also says homeowners will be able to operate certain items during a power outage. This likely requires additional circuits to be added in the home that are fed only by the Sunverge battery/inverter system. Add another $3,000 for that.
Total cost per household is about $55,000.
$16.5 Million for 300 homes.
Now add in the costs on Con Edison’s side for integrating the SIS data and control into the existing distribution control system. This could easily be a $20 Million project, especially if they are designing for future expansion.
Interesting, Chris – lets take the math a bit further, shall we?
1.8 mw = 1800 kw;
NREL says NY gets between 4.0 and 4.5 kwh/m^2 annualized so:
(I make the assumption that the 1.8 mw figure is based on 1m^2 panel = 1 kw power)
1800 X 4.5 = 8100 kwh/day 8100 X 365 (days/yr) X 20 years = 59,130,000 kwh over 20 years.
$16,500,000 / 59,130,000 = $.279 / kwh over the 20 year lifespan of the panels
According to Forbes, the current electricity rate in NY is about $.25/kwh, though it’s expected to go up. The rest of the US averages about $.14, so NY is already paying extra for electricity.
All this assumes ZERO additional costs for maintenance, breakage/failure, cleaning, etc. (I also didn’t include ConEd’s costs)
I am also more than a bit leery of NREL’s 4.5 kw/m^2 annualized figure – that seems high to me, perhaps I’m not reading their map correctly? I wonder if that figure is for sunny days only or if it includes weather days? I got it at this page : http://www.nrel.gov/gis/solar.html
This is a good website for insolation data collected by NREL over multiple years for various solar panel installation types-
http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/old_data/nsrdb/1961-1990/redbook/sum2/state.html
The Central Park data for fixed tilt at latitude is 4.6 kwh/m^2/day, which basically agrees with what you found. I think it is a pretty reliable number as it is based on measured data in-situ (it is marked as a primary station site by NREL).
But it assumes the surface is never encumbered with snow, debris, dust, shadows, etc.