Wind and Solar vs Coal, Gasoline, Nuclear

[sendler2112]

At this point it would be barely better than nothing for a simplified, Agrarian lifestyle for a much smaller total population.

If you prefer that lifestyle, then by all means, go for it. However, I have the feeling most people will want cars, air conditioning and ovens - and will be willing to pay for them as they do now.

It's not a matter of paying for it. If the best we can do for the creation of energy is an ER/EI of 4 (even 7), there will be no world economy as we have known it for the last 100 years. There will be no societal surplus left over for "money". For the division of labor. Things will be much smaller and simpler in the future (30 years).
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Here is the functional link to the EROI study.
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http://festkoerper-kernphysik.de/Weissb ... eprint.pdf
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[sendler2112]

And the link to the storage article.
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https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/article ... ivAbstract
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[billvon]

And the link to the storage article.

From the summary:

"The results show that both on-shore and off-shore wind can support the deployment of a very large amount of storage, over 300 hours of geologic storage in the case of on-shore wind. On the other hand, solar PV, which is already energetically expensive compared to wind power, can only ‘afford’ about 24 hours of storage before the industry operates at an energy deficit."

Which means that wind can support over a week of storage and still be cost-competitive, while solar can support only a day. Since a full day covers nighttime, that doesn't seem to be an onerous limitation.

And, of course, both solar and storage continue to decrease in cost (and in energy input.)

[parabellum]

My concern is the ER/EI of solar PV in Germany performing at 4:1. Other studies have it no higher than 7 worldwide.

If the best we can do for the creation of energy is an ER/EI of 4 (even 7)

That is what wiki says, backed by several linked studies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_re ... otovoltaic

A 2015 review in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews assessed the energy payback time and EROI of solar photovoltaics. In this study, which uses an insolation of 1700/kWh/m²/yr and a system lifetime of 30 years, mean harmonized EROIs between 8.7 and 34.2 were found. Mean harmonized energy payback time varied from 1.0 to 4.1 years.[12] A review Pickard reports EROEI estimates for monocrystalline silicon photovoltaics by four groups in the range of 2.2 to 8.8.[13] Raugei, Fullana-i-Palmer and Fthenakis found EROEI in the range of 5.9 to 11.8 and 19 to 39 for the major commercial PV types in South European installations

[sendler2112]

From the article:
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Most PV technologies can afford up to 24 hours of the equal
storage mix. The exceptions are sc-Si and CIGS, both of which
are already operating at an energy decit, the latter is mainly
due to its current, very rapid growth rate (>100% per year). This
suggests that PV systems could be deployed with enough
storage to back up the natural day–night cycle and the PV
industry could still operate at a surplus, supplying a net electricity
yield to society even after accounting the electricity required to deploy new generation and storage capacity.
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Which is a round about way of saying that current solar is capable of running an EROI of 1 while paying for it's installation and storage. Pays for it's own growth and nothing more.
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https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/article ... c3ee42125b
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[billvon]

Which is a round about way of saying that current solar is capable of running an EROI of 1 while paying for it's installation and storage. Pays for it's own growth and nothing more.

Right. Then after 10 years you have hundreds of gigawatts of solar at no energy cost, and it's now available for use. Its EROEI then goes way up since you no longer have to build so much - and the base that you are relying on for that energy is still all there. It's a way of bootstrapping exponential growth in solar (13% a year) without relying on external energy inputs.

[Punx0r]

I'm not sure an EROEI of 7 is the magic economically-viable number. For example, there are oil sources that are exploited below that number:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_re ... y_invested

Really, the great thing about EROEI is the calculated values are so variable that if you don't like the number given for your favourite or most-hated energy source you can just look through different lists until you find the answer you want For that reason, if a source is widely used then it's probably economically viable, despite what an EROEI calculation shows e.g. alongside mainstays like oil and coal, wind and PV installations are flying up all over the world.

[sendler2112]

Ok. Let's get busy. 5,000 500MW grid scale solar farms. And 1 million 2.5 MW wind turbines. We need all of the HVDC interconnects to go with it also. And Millions of V2G capable charge stations at home and at work. And Millions of EV's to act as battery storage. Just for the USA.
The Market is not going to pay for this transition fast enough. There needs to be a complete social commitment to get this done in time to avoid a disastrous economic disruption.

[Hillhater]

Ok. Let's get busy. 5,000 500MW grid scale solar farms. And 1 million 2.5 MW wind turbines. We need all of the HVDC interconnects to go with it also. And Millions of V2G capable charge stations at home and at work. And Millions of EV's to act as battery storage. Just for the USA.
The Market is not going to pay for this transition fast enough. There needs to be a complete social commitment to get this done in time to avoid a disastrous economic disruption.

How many EVs do you need to keep a steel mill, Aluminium smelter, or Rail network, operating overnight ?
Who is going to get in their EV in the morning only to find that the battery is empty because you ran the in house heating all night ?
No, a huge amount of fixed storage will be required
..So, Sorry, but as we say down here..."you'r dreamin', That is a fictional Jetson lifestyle !
No matter how much you twist the numbers , facts and financial forcasts, wind and solar, with or without storage, are not the energy solution for the future, there will have to be another alternative found if you want to get away from coal and gas.

[billvon]

How many EVs do you need to keep a steel mill, Aluminium smelter, or Rail network, operating overnight ?

How many tons of coal would you need to keep those steel mills, aluminum smelters and rail networks running overnight? Why, you'd need dozens of gigamines just to keep up. It's clearly impossible.

Who is going to get in their EV in the morning only to find that the battery is empty because you ran the in house heating all night ?]

Probably the same number of people who get out of bed only to find themselves freezing to death because they ran out of propane or fuel oil unexpectedly - almost none. Most people aren't that dumb.

No matter how much you twist the numbers , facts and financial forcasts, wind and solar, with or without storage, are not the energy solution for the future, there will have to be another alternative found if you want to get away from coal and gas.

You keep saying that. The world will keep moving away from coal and towards renewables.

[Hillhater]

"Impossible" you say,..Strange then, that coal, gas and Nukes have kept them going to date...proven performance , not wild speculation.

And you agree then that EV owners will not committ to using their batteries to store power for proping up the grid , ...or possibly not even their own supply,..overnight ?

The world will keep playing with solar and wind as long as dumb authorities keep paying them via subsidies and discounts etc , to do it.
Watch what happens as those financial incentives reduce, reality takes over, and the existing installed facilities reach their use by date !

[billvon]

"Impossible" you say,..Strange then, that coal, gas and Nukes have kept them going to date...

Ah, so you missed the point.

And you agree then that EV owners will not committ to using their batteries to store power for proping up the grid , ...or possibly not even their own supply,..overnight ?

No, I did not agree that that will be the case. Indeed, a great many EV owners will enjoy the savings by doing so.

The world will keep playing with solar and wind as long as dumb authorities keep paying them via subsidies and discounts etc , to do it.

And yet even places with no subsidies are now installing solar like crazy.

It's simple economics. People like cheap power. And they are willing to put up with the additional work required to get it.

[Punx0r]

Ok. Let's get busy. 5,000 500MW grid scale solar farms. And 1 million 2.5 MW wind turbines. We need all of the HVDC interconnects to go with it also. And Millions of V2G capable charge stations at home and at work. And Millions of EV's to act as battery storage. Just for the USA.
The Market is not going to pay for this transition fast enough. There needs to be a complete social commitment to get this done in time to avoid a disastrous economic disruption.

Yes, it's a staggering amount of stuff, difficult to comprehend the natural and manufacturing resources required to produce it. However, the World does this all the time - look at just the container ships pouring out of China and a lot of it's disposable consumer junk. We do have the capacity.

Who is going to get in their EV in the morning only to find that the battery is empty because you ran the in house heating all night ?
No, a huge amount of fixed storage will be required
..So, Sorry, but as we say down here..."you'r dreamin', That is a fictional Jetson lifestyle !

So some form of hot rock would be needed to store thermal energy overnight, like has been used since prehistoric times. If only we had the technology!

[sendler2112]

Learn about our energy slaves.
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http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comic/energy-slaves/
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[Hillhater]

" Phony numbers" and deception at play in the official Solar Mandate of RE in CA...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-phony- ... 1534110302

California’s energy regulators effectively cooked the books to justify their recent command that all homes built in the Golden State after 2020 be equipped with solar panels. Far from a boon to homeowners, the costs to builders and home buyers will likely far exceed the benefits to the state.

The California Energy Commission, which approved the rule as part of new energy-efficiency regulations, didn’t conduct an objective, independent investigation of the policy’s effects. Instead it relied on economic analysis from the consultancy that proposed the policy, Energy and Environmental Economics Inc. Its study concluded that home buyers get a 100% investment return—paying $40 more in monthly mortgage costs but saving $80 a month on electricity. If it’s such a good deal, why aren’t home buyers clamoring for more panels already? Most new homes aren’t built with solar panels today, even though the state is saturated by solar marketing.

The Energy Commission is too optimistic about the cost of panels. It assumes the cost was $2.93 a watt in 2016 and will decline 17% by 2020. Yet comprehensive analysis of panel costs by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated the average cost of installed panels to be $4.50 a watt for the 2- to 4-kilowatt systems the policy mandates. That is $4,000 more than regulators claim for a 2.6-kilowatt model system in the central part of the state, where 20% of new homes are expected to be built. Berkeley Lab further estimates that costs fell a mere 1% between 2015 and 2016, far short of the 4% average annual decline the regulators predict.

[jonescg]

US$4.50 (AU$6.30) per Watt for installed solar??

What are they platinum backed panels or something?

Un-subsidised solar panels in Australia are $0.59 per watt. Double it for installation - hell quadruple it.

[sendler2112]

Price quotes for grid tie systems in my area of North East USA are $3.30/ W for roof top. It would obviously be much cheaper for a contractor to do it during new constuction. Completed grid scale farms in California are still running around $3.50/W which has held steady for the last few years.
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But I agree with this new building code. Especially in a location with decent weather for solar that also uses AC in the Summer. All new buildings should have the the major roof section aligned to the Sun and be completely covered with panels. Installing during construction is obviously the easiest time to do it.
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New homes should also get internet ready smart meters for real time pricing and smart breaker panels, outlets, and thermostats for demand control. It should also be code to require an RV 14-50 outlet on the wall in the garage to accomodate a level 2 EV charge station.
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WholesaleSolar.com is shipping the parts for a cheap 5.5 kW grid tie system starting at $1.15/ W on sale now.
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https://www.wholesalesolar.com/1895120/ ... 75w-panels
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[Cephalotus]

I should have added: Let's just disregard Nuclear for now since nobody wants that. My concern is the ER/EI of solar PV in Germany performing at 4:1. Other studies have it no higher than 7 worldwide. Without any storage. Which would cut it in half. At this point it would be barely better than nothing for a simplified, Agrarian lifestyle for a much smaller total population.

Solarmoduls in Germany will last more than 20 years on average. We already have thousands of smaller PV plants working for more than 20 years without significant degradation.

Actual estimation for solr modul degradation is less than 0.2% per year, which means the solar modules could last an average 40, maybe 50 years.

After that you can recycle them, which needs significantly less energy than to produce new ones. (c-Si)

The aluminium rails used to mount rooftop PV (which also has significant Impact on EROI) could maybe last for centuries and be reused over and over again. If not, just melt them and make new Aluminium stuff. Aluminium reccyling produceds 100% perfet recyceld materials. not like recycled stainless steel or recycled (mixed) plastics.

(90% of Aluminium produced in Germany is already recycled)

So my estimation for solar PV EROI in Germany is more like 20:1 over longer periods.

[Cephalotus]

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Here is the functional link to the EROI study.
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http://festkoerper-kernphysik.de/Weissb ... eprint.pdf
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What do you expect from those nuclear addicts?

"...The numbers in Tab. 2 (data taken from Scholten et al. [23]) are calculated for 1m2 poly-crystalline
modules, for which 1.6 kg metallurgical grade Si [23] is used (embodied energy is 11 to 14 kWh/kg).
The eciency of poly-Si here is 14.4%, for the modules 13.2% because of frame cover eects, respectively
[23]. There are commercial ones with higher eciencies, but their energy demand is unknown. Dirt layers
and the conversion eciency of the inverters [24] give an additional, so-called performance factor of 75%,
resulting in an overall eciency of 9.9%. Assuming 25 years lifetime and 1,000 peak-hours (South Germany),
this gives 8353 MJ electrical energy produced...."


c-Si Wafer thickness is 180µm. So 1m² solar cells contain 180cm³of Silicium. The densitiy of Si is 2.34g/cm³, so this translates to 421g. Not counting gaps between cells and the module frames, but also not counting losses (which usually are reused).

Let's call it 0.5kg for 1m².

Average module efficiency for c-Si moduls is around 16-17%, not 13.2% (the best are around 20%)

The performence factor is included in the energy production of 1000h/year (Germany), the "calculated Efficiency" of 9.9% is even more off the real numbers.

So the numbers are off by a factor of 5-6 and this is only the stuff you can very easy search for yourself.

The athors used a source for their numbers (Scholten [23]) which was last updated in 2007 and did itself use numbers from production process that are even older. This is not insiginficant for the solar PV industry, because up to around 2004 the solar PV industry used "low quality" silicium from semiconductor manufacturing and only after 2005 signifiant investments in making solar grade silicium in dedicated factorys has undergone, which uses much less energy, because it needs much lower quality compared to wafers for microchips.

Damned liars!

[Hanssing]

What do you expect from the nuclear liars?

.....

c-Si Wafer thickness is 180µm. So 1m² solar cells contain 180cm³of Silicium. The densitiy of Si is 2.34g/cm³, so this translates to 421g. Not counting gaps between cells and the module Frames, but also not counting losses (which usually are reused).

Let's call it 0.5kg for 1m³.

....

Damned liars!

Yes, they are very anti-renewable which reads clearly in the abstract - so much thats it's cringelike to read.

However they are not that far off wrt. silicium.
A *LOT* of the Si is lost in the processing. creating wafers from ingots, grinding them, lapping them etc uses a lot of material.
So much that a total yield of 1:3 is likely.
I just recently reprogrammed a MeyerBurger Inner Diameter Wafersaw, and this has an unoptimised kerf-loss of app. 400um. That is loss per wafer from just cutting. Now ID-saws a not in use for this any more, today you would use wiresaws - but still you have a lot of material-loss form wafer-production - thats one of hte main competetion-parameters that companies like WaferWorks create a buisness from.

I have also been working with Floating-Zone silicium-growing, ie. converting poly-silicium to mono-silicium (Not for PV, and I just programmed the controlsystem), and running a machine uses around 100kW for 6 inch while producing. This translates to 15 kWh per kg - and this type of process is more efficient when its working then Czhochralsky. They cite 11 to 14 kWh/kg for poly-silicium alone - and indicates that this number could be lower - so its not like they rolled a dice.

But it seems like they "painted" the numbers a bit to match their wanted conclusions.

Regards
Hanssing

[sendler2112]

Solarmoduls in Germany will last more than 20 years on average.

Don't forget to cut your numbers in half for solar PV in Germany since the capacity factor is averaging only 11%.

[Cephalotus]

Afaik(!) there are now saws down to 100µm and Recycling not only for SiC dust but also for Si dust.

I have some numbers on energy usage but they are not published.

What has been published is the numbers for the Solarwold concern in 2015. They used (including everything) 0,52kWh/Wp.

That's not the entire production process (and also does not include inverter, glass, aluminium rails, transport and installation), but Solarworld makes/made a lot from wafer to module inhouse.

Wacker Chemie is one of the largest producers of polysilizium worldwide and they produce around 60,000t/a in Germany (who would have thought with our -oh so high- energy prices)

In Burghausen they use around 3,000GWh/a (https://www.wacker.com/cms/de/wacker_gr ... igures.jsp)

This is only one of two facilities, but they also produce other stuff than just Polysilicium

So to make it very easy lets say the electricity consumption for making 1kg of Polysilizium (solar grade and semiconductur grade!) is not more than 3,000GWh/a / 60,000,000kg = 50kWh/kg. Propably less.

You Need 6m² of PV cells for 1kWp and if you say 0.5kg to 1.6kg Si/m² this translates to 3kg to 10kg of Si for 1kWp solar power.

That would be only 150kWh tp 500kWh for 1kWp or 0.15Wh to 0.5Wh for 1Wp.

Using the numbers above with 15kWh/1kg this would only be 0.045Wh to 0.15Wh for 1Wp

Add to that the Solarworld numbers for wafer and module production and you are under 1Wh for 1Wp.

Add to this everyting else you are most likely less than 2Wh for 1Wp installed.

Btw, Wacker has ist own Chart for eneryg payback time for solar power plants and how that developed over the years

https://www.wacker.com/cms/media/public ... 416_DE.pdf (see Chart on page 12)

Wacker says it takes 0.4 to 1.5 years for a solar power plant tp produce all the energy that has been used to make them.

(This is similar to my very rough estimation from above. During 1.5 years 1Wp PV produces 1,5Wh in Germany, which would be equivalent to the energy needed for 1Wp installed (all incl.))

Let's assume a solar power plant works for 30-40 years this would be an EROEI from 20 to 100.

Easily good enough.

Wacker is maybe not "neutral" on that topic either, but I guess they now it much better than someone wanting to promote nuclear power and guessing from some old published data!

Don't believe the liars!

It's always the same with disruptive technologies. People from the old industry will tell you how bad the new stuff is as long as they are able to do.

Driving more than 20kph on a train will kill you because it is against the "human nature". Better ride on horses.

Solar EROEI is so low. Better build more nukes.

[Cephalotus]

Solarmoduls in Germany will last more than 20 years on average.

Don't forget to cut your numbers in half for solar PV in Germany since the capacity factor is averaging only 11%.

"Capacity factor" is already included in 1000h/ year in that calculation.

That's 1000h/8760h = 11.4%

cutting anything in half would be an error.

(also performance ratio is included in that 1000h/a, this is why there 75% numbers is another error. Either they don't know how to calculate, which is a quite a risky thing in the nuclear power industry, or they are liars)

Let's make it short: I only read the small solar part on that study and I say it is not worth to read anything in it. It's bullshit made to fit their own agenda which is to promote nukes.

[Punx0r]

But I agree with this new building code. Especially in a location with decent weather for solar that also uses AC in the Summer. All new buildings should have the the major roof section aligned to the Sun and be completely covered with panels. Installing during construction is obviously the easiest time to do it.
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New homes should also get internet ready smart meters for real time pricing and smart breaker panels, outlets, and thermostats for demand control. It should also be code to require an RV 14-50 outlet on the wall in the garage to accomodate a level 2 EV charge station.

I completely agree. I'd also like to see minimum standards of insulation (or shading) to minimise heating & cooling requirements.

[billvon]

US$4.50 (AU$6.30) per Watt for installed solar??
What are they platinum backed panels or something?
Un-subsidised solar panels in Australia are $0.59 per watt. Double it for installation - hell quadruple it.

Yep. Here in the US the actual cost of panels is now a pretty small part of the overall cost of installation. The majority is labor - and the majority of the labor is the permitting, approval and inspection process. That's why countries like Spain and Aus have a much lower overall installation cost.

Still, even in the US, it's only about $3.20/watt.