The real truth of Solar Power?

[deronmoped]

I read this article and they broke down the pluses and minuses of Solar Power, it looked extremely bleak. I realize Solar Power is being over sold, but this article makes it look way worse.

http://carbon-sense.com/2009/07/04/solar-realities/

Here are some conclusions of the article:

1) Solar is 25 times more expensive then nuclear.

2) Solar would emit 20 times more CO2 then nuclear.

3) Solar would use 400 to a 1,000 times more land area then nuclear.

4) Storage for a Solar option would be enormous, 90 days of storage would be 24,000 km2.

5) The cost of Australia's power and one day of storage would be 20,000 billion.

One thing I did not know was they said minimum output is what Solar needs to be measured on for economic viability.

If this is all true, the greens are really trying to pull one over on us. Sure we can replace all of our generating capacity with green energy

Deron.

 

[csmarr]

It is a very biased report.

"4) Storage for a Solar option would be enormous, 90 days of storage would be 24,000 km2"

Guess what. If the sun stops shining for threee months electricity use will not be a problem. I wonder who paid for this study.

 

[TPA]

But of course you already know Deron, that the greenies will never allow more nuclear plants built here, even though that's the only power source the greenies will allow in France. Our own President will not allow new nuclear plants here, but continues to state that Iran has a right to them. All the concerns that the greenies have regarding nuclear have been reduced to near zero concern, even the waste problem has found a way to be resolved.

If you get the greenies to go on a tirade about their cause, the shouted conversation eventually comes around to their real concern. The US has too much power, the people there are too fat and lazy, they consume too many resources...etc...

global warming, alternative power, green movement, its all about getting the US to voluntarily give up its power. All the treaties we are asked to sign mandate that the US make impossible changes while the worst offending countries are exempt. The US is required to remove all coal plants and ban all nuclear power production while China gets no heat for building two new COAL power plants per week ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6769743.stm ).

If the energy bill that passed the House of Rep. last week passes the Senate this fall, then solar power will be considered downright cheap, and that is, after all, the goal.

 

[deronmoped]

It is a very biased report.

"4) Storage for a Solar option would be enormous, 90 days of storage would be 24,000 km2"

Guess what. If the sun stops shining for threee months electricity use will not be a problem. I wonder who paid for this study.

Yeah, I did not get why they gave a three month option for storage. The only things I can think of are, the sun may not shine for a couple of weeks, they have to have down time figured in for solar maintenance, a buffer for a sever storm (100 year storm) that may wipe out miles of panels, a strategic military reserve. 90 days is a lot of back up though, I would think it would be possible to get by with way less.

Then again, what if you had a few things happen at once. A freak windstorm wipes out miles of panels while you have large arrays in another area down for maintenance.

Deron.

 

[deronmoped]

But of course you already know Deron, that the greenies will never allow more nuclear plants built here, even though that's the only power source the greenies will allow in France. Our own President will not allow new nuclear plants here, but continues to state that Iran has a right to them. All the concerns that the greenies have regarding nuclear have been reduced to near zero concern, even the waste problem has found a way to be resolved.

If you get the greenies to go on a tirade about their cause, the shouted conversation eventually comes around to their real concern. The US has too much power, the people there are too fat and lazy, they consume too many resources...etc...

global warming, alternative power, green movement, its all about getting the US to voluntarily give up its power. All the treaties we are asked to sign mandate that the US make impossible changes while the worst offending countries are exempt. The US is required to remove all coal plants and ban all nuclear power production while China gets no heat for building two new COAL power plants per week ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6769743.stm ).

If the energy bill that passed the House of Rep. last week passes the Senate this fall, then solar power will be considered downright cheap, and that is, after all, the goal.

Everything points to nuclear being the only way to solve all the issues, yet it is not being considered. Just goes to show you how political our power issue is.

Deron.

 

[velowatt]

Mr. Lang uses data from a single solr farmin Australia, and dismisses the ability to store energy in batteries. It is hard to evaluate some of his assumptions since we don't know the technical specs of the solar farm, or whether that facility is typical for a solar generation plant. He describes energy storage by pumping water into a hydro reserboir for release when the sun is not shining, which would be a massive project indeed for an entire nation's electricity supply.

I do doubt that an industrialized country's entire electricity output could be replaced by solar power using currently available tech. Solar generation seems cost-effective in smaller local projects which capture limited amounts of power (heating water for home use, producing local electricity that does not have to be transported long distances on transmission lines). Current technology may limit solar energy as an adjunct way of producing power near where it is consumed, but installing many small (and less expensive) projects could add up to a significant amount of energy generation. The costs of installing solar systems are declining and (depending on where you live), may actually be cost effective for individual home owners, especialy if integrated during construction. There is a lot of roof space available in most towns that could be used for power/heat generation. Combined with other generation facilities (wind, hydropower, tidal generation, nuclear, geothermal) could be a big dent in use of fossil fuels.

I think there has been a significant investment in Europe (esp Germany) in solar generation. There must be some data on the cost effectiveness. Advances in technology (increased PV effeciency, better ways to store and release heat energy, conservation efforts) may skew the econmics toward solar generation in the future. One would expect the cost of PV equipment to decline as its adoption increases, and that fossil fuel will generally become more expensive as world energy demand becomes greater. Future solar plants may work better than the one described in the article, and may be capable of storing large amounts of heat energy without building massive reservoir/dams.

I have never been a fan of nuclear power, since they do not seem to have solved the nuclear waste issue, and I live in an area which was "stung" by a huge bond default for a string of nuke plants - WPPS project- that never got built, leading to a huge bond default in the '70s that electricity ratepayers in Washington State are still paying for. Still, it is a technology that does not produce greenhouse gasses, so may still be an important option.

It will be key to examine the total costs of generation projects over their lifetimes- the costs/environmental damage of uranium mining, fuel enrichment. security of fissionable material, waste processing and storage, plant maintenance and decomissioning, the costs and CO2 emssions for solar panel production and maintenance as well. I am not convinced that wholesale adoption of nuke power is cost- effective at all.

 

[dogman dan]

duhh, of course 100% of anybodys power is expensive to do with just solar. Ask anybody living completely off grid about that. That's why they set up the house to use 10% of what a normal suburban house does, and aren't runnin 1000 watt tv's and 500 watt nintendo setups. Few of us really want to live like that, but it shouldn't stop us from doing some percentage of our power needs from solar or wind, or hydroelectric, which ever is best for the area. It's gonna cost us later when the next oil price bubble comes along anyway. Solar photovoltaic power is actually pretty close to the cost of power in my town right now. But the cost of the LOAN on the equipment is the killer that breaks the deal. The government tax break just makes it break even, but who's got $30,000 in cash laying about to buy the panels. A program where the government bought you a 2kw grid tie inverter and let you buy panels one by one would be nice.

 

[dogman dan]

Just a couple more things to rant about.

Who's gonna put a solar farm in a place where the sun might not shine for 90 days?

Since it's been 25 years since the last nuclear plant in the US was built, are they using prices from 25 years ago? I bet it costs 125 times more to build one today.

Gas turbines make a great backup for solar or wind power. Essentially jet engines with generator on em, they can be fired up on demand in minuites. We need more of em allready anyway for when everybody sits down and turns on an ac and a tv at the same time. They could run on biofuel if the have to.

 

[spinningmagnets]

A "straw man" is a debating device where I define the problem on my terms (which by implication, cannot be changed) and then show why your solution is much worse than the status quo methods. Allow me to attempt an example...

I'm going to buy a 4-cylinder diesel VW (but isn't diesel fuel is 10% more expensive per gallon than gasoline?)

Yes, but it gets 50-MPG instead of 30-MPG. (the diesel option costs $5,000 more, you won't break even during the lifetime of the car on 15% fuel cost per mile savings, right?)

If the cost of fuel stays under $3/gallon you are right, if fuel goes to $6/gallon, I will do just fine. (fuel price spikes are always temporary)

Maybe, but if fuel is rationed by the gallon [like in WWII] I can get 20% farther than the gasoline version with my allotment. (even a diesel will wear out, more expensive to replace)

I can either move close to my job, or get a job close to my home so I will drive very few miles, plus now I can commute most days on an E-bike, I can make it last 20 years. (If theres a war in the middle east, there may be no fuel available to the public at all)

I can burn used cooking oil, or new vegetable oil. (using vegetable oil hurts global food supplies, and de-forests the Amazon for farms)

The military needs diesel, they are aggressively pursuing making bio-diesel from algae, jatropha, and other sources, soybean and corn oil is not the only way. (If this is true, why doesn't everyone move close to their job, and buy a 50-MPG diesel and an E-bike?)

I dunno, why did so many people buy a bigger house than they need, use an adjustable-rate mortgage, and buy a new car every 3 years?
Make it a diesel/plug-in hybrid and the numbers are insanely good.

The numbers on this PDF are cooked to lead you to an "obvious" conclusion. It may not be cost-effective to send solar-PV through the existing grid to homes burning energy at their current rate.

Not hard to cut power usage in half with just a little effort. Put PV panels on the roof, theres a new film that acts like a light-funnel so panels don't need to track. Charge a $5,000 vanadium redox battery that doesn't wear out. Charge the battery with a small diesel-gen when theres no sun for a few days. Add a wind-gen where allowed.

Nuclear? crooked politicians and mob-controlled unions ruined most projects. The new pebble-bed low-pressure helium reactors are safe. The old reactors (and existing coal plants) evaporate a huge amount of water to cool the outside of the condensers, but the new GT-MHR's use air-fans. Nuclear waste? Don't bury the spent fuel, re-enrich it just like the military does to warheads every 7 years.

The horse-lobby tried to stop the common man from buying cars at the turn of the century with the British red-flag laws. Instead, small car companies thrived in the US while England made the Rolls-Royce. Don't be the horse-lobby...

 

[deronmoped]

In the next month or two, I will be installing a small photovoltaic system on my parents house off the grid in the mountains.

Everyone brings up getting subsidies when installing solar. Some one has to pay the full cost, when it becomes nationwide there is no passing on the cost to someone else, everyone will see the increase in their energy bills. My parents will get no tax write offs, too bad, because it would be nice to pass some of the cost onto other people.

We will be starting off with a minimum number of panels and build it up from there. Pretty much everyone around my parents house have backup generators, some people run them almost every day, we have been using generator power because we could not afford the initial cost of the solar.

Something else no one mentions is upkeep. I remember when there was a big push to install solar hot water systems. I now see most of those systems are no longer working. Frozen burst pipes, torn off during a re roof and never reinstalled, busted panels up on roofs, to expensive to fix... What will happen when you need to fix a leak on the roof or re roof your house, what about the electronics breaking down after ten years, a tree branch busting some panels, the worker on the roof breaks a panel, a remodel... It's nice to buy the sales pitch that this system will last you twenty five years, but we all know reality, if you every owned a house, you know it will be on your list of things to take care of every so many years.

What I'm thinking that this article points out to me is, green energy is just a flash in the pan right now. The countries that stick with traditional power generation will be leaving the US in the dust. They will have cheaper power for decades to come and will be able to out compete us in the world marketplace. In other words, our companies will have another reason to move production off shore, besides cheap labor.

Can you imagine trying to air condition a photovoltaic powered house

Deron.

 

[Lock]

I see it's time for another Three Mile Island...
Anywhooo Ontario just put off a nuclear buy for the time being. Press reports said the gov thought they could build for $2,907 for each kilowatt of capacity, while one expert was quoted as saying the real cost of nuclear capacity is about $7,000 for each kilowatt, and rising...
tks
lloK

 

[Tiberius]

There's a good discussion of all this here http://www.withouthotair.com

Its a book by a Cambridge physics professor which the author has made available on line.
There's a nice bit where he stands accused of being either pro- or anti-nuclear. Neither he says, I'm just pro-arithmetic.

There's also a section on the tricks with numbers that the various lobby groups get up to.

Nick

(with no apologies for posting the link again)

 

[Lock]

There's a good discussion of all this here http://www.withouthotair.com

HAHA... "Twaddle emissions..." Thanks Nick!

 

[RTLSHIP]

Most people already figured solar power, on a vast scale, remains uneconomic. On a small scale, such as running a few gadgets, it's more feasible.
I was surprised to read that solar produces more pollution than nuclear. Nuclear is a waste disposal problem. Waste has to be store safely for years and years. Nuclear Waste vs. Solar pollution

 

[spinningmagnets]

Now there is talk about "cradle to grave" carbon footprint by the anti-solar lobby. The straw man argument goes like this "The factory that produces solar-PV panels emits "X" amount of pollution and uses "Y" amount of coal-electricity to produce them, then "Z" amount of carbon is released using fossil fuels to transport them from factory to wholesale distribution centers"

The argument presumes that all solar panels will be the same type forever, made the same way forever, last the same length of time, and will always have centralized production with no regional manufacturing. The truth is, it can be...but it doesn't HAVE to be.

Personally, I am a fan of micro-solar-ORC (freon steam). I'm told the efficiency is terrible, but then, again...the fuel is free, yes?

 

[Lock]

If John Casey is correct about his 2008 "RC Theory" of solar fluctuations:
"...we have only a few years to prepare for before 20-30 years of lasting and possibly dangerous cold arrives."

Caseys outfit here:
http://www.spaceandscience.net/index.html

So less solar to go around. How much less exactly I'm not sure...
tks
loc

 

[julesa]

John L. Casey
Director, Space and Science Research Center

Mr. Casey has accumulated over thirty years of professional experience spanning a wide variety of technologies, industries, and international endeavors, to include performing important services as a space policy advisor to the White House, and Congress. He has been a consultant to NASA Headquarters performing space shuttle and space station analysis. He has led teams conducting commercial spaceport design world wide, as well as performing rocket launch studies for the Department of Defense. His experience also includes being a former space shuttle engineer, military missile and computer systems officer, advanced rocketry and commercial space developer. He has an extensive executive management background in the start-up and financing of high technology companies. He has a BS degree in Physics and Mathematics and an MA degree in Management. He was also past Chairman of GFSD, an international charity that provided aid to women and children in Iraq and Afghanistan. You can contact Mr. Casey directly at mail@spaceandscience.net

Wow, a BS in Phys and Math, an MA degree in Management, thirty years of vaguely referenced experience, and not one other resume on the web site. LOL Doesn't look like much of a "Research Center." This guy's a fruitcake. :lol:

 

[Lock]

This guy's a fruitcake. :lol:

hehe...yah yah. He mentions NASA work, but even NASA says:
http://climate.jpl.nasa.gov/causes/

Solar irradiance

It's reasonable to assume that changes in the sun's energy output would cause the climate to change, since the sun is the fundamental source of energy that drives our climate system.

Indeed, studies show that solar variability has played a role in past climate changes. For example, a decrease in solar activity is thought to have triggered the Little Ice Age between approximately 1650 and 1850, when Greenland was largely cut off by ice from 1410 to the 1720s and glaciers advanced in the Alps.

But several lines of evidence show that current global warming cannot be explained by changes in energy from the sun:

Since 1750, the average amount of energy coming from the Sun either remained constant or increased slightly.
If the warming were caused by a more active sun, then scientists would expect to see warmer temperatures in all layers of the atmosphere. Instead, they have observed a cooling in the upper atmosphere, and a warming at the surface and in the lower parts of the atmosphere. That's because greenhouse gasses are trapping heat in the lower atmosphere.

Climate models that include solar irradiance changes can’t reproduce the observed temperature trend over the past century or more without including a rise in greenhouse gases.


tks

 

[Lock]

"...solar variability..." Anyone know any theory on why our star has hiccups?

 

[julesa]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_variability

 

[Lock]

Yes, but WHY

 

[spinningmagnets]

The north pole ice is shrinking,...but the same people who document this refuse to discuss the south pole growing. The difference? the side that faces deep space radiation (sometimes called cosmic rays). Perhaps a coincidence, I don't really know...you decide.

http://www.iceagenow.com/Growing_Glaciers.htm

 

[TPA]

Nuclear is a waste disposal problem. Waste has to be store safely for years and years. Nuclear Waste vs. Solar pollution

Once again waste free nuclear power is not impossible (search 4th generation nuclear power). My understanding is that the technology has been around for a while (wish I could find a source for that) but has remained unused.

This is an interesting article ( "There Is No Such Thing as Nuclear Waste" ):
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123690627522614525.html

The supposed problem of "nuclear waste" is entirely the result of a the decision in 1976 by President Gerald Ford to suspend reprocessing, which President Jimmy Carter made permanent in 1977. The fear was that agents of foreign powers or terrorists groups would steal plutonium from American plants to manufacture bombs.

....but, but, but...that's the way we've always done it! :lol:

 

[spinningmagnets]

Soooo...the US shouldn't have waste-free nuclear, but in order to be regarded as less imperialistic, we should mind our own business concerning N. Korea and Iran making and selling nuclear material? Perhaps we should submit a "sternly worded" protest to the UN?

 

[Cackalacka]

Everyone brings up getting subsidies when installing solar. Some one has to pay the full cost, when it becomes nationwide there is no passing on the cost to someone else, everyone will see the increase in their energy bills. My parents will get no tax write offs, too bad, because it would be nice to pass some of the cost onto other people.

Frankly Moped, I would rather have the government subsidize your parent's vacation home, than subsidize a nuclear plant. Not that I'm against new-generation nuclear technology (NIMBY/Yucca Mt notwithstanding.) It's because your folks won't <likely> take those government kick-backs to fund dubious 'scientiferific' 'think'-tanks whose mission statement involves spouting erratic propaganda, aka bullshit. For example, the Carbon Sense Coalition.

Can you imagine trying to air condition a photovoltaic powered house?

Well Moped, I can. I have a good friend with a similar-sized, modest houses, both built roughly around the same time-period. On this balmy July afternoon, if you were to walk into either house, you'll notice they are both room temperature; both have computers that are usually on, both have TV sets with DVR, both have refrigerators and washer/dryers.

The principle difference between his house and my house is, he spent some time installing PV and solar-water heaters on his domicile. Mine doesn't have that fancy hippy shit; but what it DOES have is a white envelope that comes to the mailbox every month, asking for $180.

Hell, I got a note from the power company YESTERDAY, asking me if I wanted to participate in a voluntary (for now) program: for $25 of free power a year, if I gave the power company the ability to 'infrequently' shut off my AC during times of peak power demand. Curiously, those times of peak power demand occur when there is plenty of sunshine and everyone has their AC units on. Why, it's almost as if, in the real world, using photovoltaic electricity to offset (or in the case of my friends house, completely eliminate) the need for grid-power to run the modern devices installed in our homes makes a lot of sense.