Is it practical to generate all US power by solar PV?

[mheslep]

Residential rooftop solar PV is ...

one of the most expensive sources of electricity in existence. In undesirable locations, it is *the* most expensive, even more than diesel engines. The 2015 US unsubsidized price (LCOE) ranged from 18 to 30 cents per kWh. And we've still not addressed storage. Utility scale solar is four to six times cheaper than residential rooftop, and avoids the cost shifting of net metering.

https://www.lazard.com/media/2390/lazards-levelized-cost-of-energy-analysis-90.pdf

 

[anorlunda]

In #26, @mheslep provided a link estimating the cost for a national 7 day battery.

But that link assumed 3TW total. I resist using total energy rather than electric energy just to keep this discussion more focused. I use 1TW instead of 3.

The link assumed lead-acid batteries. That's already out-of-date. I will use 1/2 that number for 2016 technology batteries.

 

[mheslep]

There have been several studies done to investigate a high percentage of the US grid run by renewable sources of power - hydro, solar, wind, biomass; these would seem to begin to answer the OP's question. Some of the more prominent:

National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) Renewable Electricity Futures Study, 2012, 4 volumes. They assess a variety of scenarios with renewable penetration from 30% to 90% of the US grid load by 2050. Unsurprisingly, NREL finds a large need for dispatchable power sources (i.e. reliable) in the high renewable scenario, and so they conjure up hundreds of gigawatts of new geothermal, new hydropower, and new biomass generation, a disappointment in my opinion, as it implies the US had a hundreds of GW of cheap geo and hydro resource sitting around unused.

Providing all global energy with wind, water, and solar power, Part I: Technologies, energy resources, quantities and areas of infrastructure, and materials, Jacobson and Delucchi. Jacobson is a Stanford Civil Engineering professor. Jacobson is stridently anti-nuclear, claiming it to be significant CO2 emitter by way of the large fires that would occur in the even of a nuclear weapon attack, somehow mixing nuclear power and weapons.

 

[anorlunda]

OK, here is my estimate. I rushed it a bit because this thread it getting out of control with side topics.

$\begin{array}{rlll}\\ \mbox{Value}&\mbox{Item}&\mbox{Units}&\mbox{Source}\\ \mbox{1}&\mbox{TW base}&\mbox{TW}&\mbox{link 1}\\ \mbox{1}&\mbox{TW reserves}&\mbox{TW}&\mbox{anorlunda #22}\\ \mbox{2}&\mbox{TW total}&\mbox{TW}&\mbox{calculated}\\ \mbox{\$3.00 }&\mbox{\$/watt utility}&\mbox{\$/watt all in cost}&\mbox{link 2}\\ \mbox{\$6.00 }&\mbox{\$/watt rooftop}&\mbox{\$/watt all in cost}&\mbox{Jim Hardy #2 }&\mbox{ anorlunda #20}\\ \mbox{\$3.75 }&\mbox{\$/watt weighted}&\mbox{}&\mbox{calculated}\\ \mbox{\$2.17 }&\mbox{energy storage}&\mbox{\$trillion}&\mbox{mheslep #26 }&\mbox{anorlunda #52}\\ \mbox{\$9.67 }&\mbox{total investment}&\mbox{\$trillion}&\mbox{calculated}\\ \mbox{125,000,000}&\mbox{000}&\mbox{000 "}&\mbox{US households}&\mbox{}&\mbox{statisa.com}\\ \mbox{\$77,333.33}&\mbox{333.33 "}&\mbox{investment per household}&\mbox{\$}&\mbox{calculated}\\ \mbox{\$489.25 }&\mbox{amortized 20 years}&\mbox{\$/month}&\mbox{calculated}\\ \mbox{\$60.00 }&\mbox{Utility O}&\mbox{M}&\mbox{\$/kw*year}&\mbox{link 3}\\ \mbox{\$10.00 }&\mbox{Roofop O}&\mbox{M}&\mbox{\$/kw*year}&\mbox{anorlunda}\\ \mbox{\$30.00 }&\mbox{Roofop share of distributed}&\mbox{\$/kw*year}&\mbox{anorlunda}\\ \mbox{\$55.00 }&\mbox{Average O}&\mbox{M}&\mbox{\$/kw*year}&\mbox{calculated}\\ \mbox{\$110.00 }&\mbox{O}&\mbox{M Cost}&\mbox{\$B/year}&\mbox{calculated}\\ \mbox{\$73.33 }&\mbox{O}&\mbox{M per household}&\mbox{\$/month}&\mbox{calculated}\\ \mbox{\$562.58 }&\mbox{cost per household}&\mbox{\$/month}&\mbox{calculated}\\ \end{array}$

link 1 www.eia.gov
link 2 http://www.statista.com/statistics/183635/number-of-households-in-the-us/d
link 3 http://www.scottmadden.com/insight/solar-photovoltaic-plant-operating-and-maintenance-costs/
where the source includes #n, that refers to post #n in this thread.
where the source says anorlunda, that means an eyeball guess totally without support.

The bottom line, is the cost per household, $563/month. That includes each household's share of total electric infrastructure including commercial and industrial. Whether directly or indirectly we end up paying for it anyhow.

Wearing my project manager's hat, I could easily make an argument that contingencies for such a far-out project beyond our experience base, could easily exceed estimates by 100-400%. Therefore, I could have, but did not, apply a safety factor.

Some people might think that all the costs fit into a Moore's Law type of expotential decay of future prices. That's not true because only some of the costs decline with technology (see Ahmdal's Law).

• I reran the estimate for 5 years in the future assuming panels cost half today's price, and energy storage costs 70% today's price. The answer was $486/month per household.
• I reran the estimate for 20 years in the future assuming panels cost 2% today's price, and energy storage costs 10% today's price. The answer was $378/month per household.

 

[Svein]

Just a couple of points regarding upkeep of rooftop solar panels:

• Dust
• Snow
• Dirt

The efficiency of a snow-covered solar panel is not very high...

 

[Baluncore]

The OP title question; “Is it practical to generate all US power by solar PV?” has the answer NO.
There will always be a diverse mix composed of new and old systems. At different times different systems will be selected on reasons of practicality, economics and politics.

Ok I am all for it , but since you know physics which I think you do , tell me how are you planning to make these main electricity generating plants small?

I do not need to make them small. I believe the industry that uses the power should pay the cost of running the plant. That would reduce the size of the plants by reducing the availability of subsidised power.

I live on a rock at the end of the Earth, it is shaped like a merkin, south of the Australian mainland. It is about 43° south, way down in the Roaring Forties. My PV panels face north with a slope of about 45° and so get cleaned by the frost on clear nights, or by the rain that sometimes falls here. It does snow occasionally in winter, but it does not last. Temperatures range between –5°C and +40°C.
As it is here, a state corporation owns the system and the privately negotiated industry rates are a "commercial in confidence" secret. Home owners are being charged at a much higher rate than industry and so are being pushed economically to protect themselves by abandoning the grid.

The state now pays the same for excess power generated as it sells power to the residential customer. In effect I am now actually supplying power to my neighbours who do not have PV. But we both pay the network fixed fee for access to the entire state grid.

The rate paid by the state for excess power from PV is about to fall to 33%. That is a new 66% tax on the power I supply to my neighbours. I am prohibited from running a private power line so I now have little choice but to buy a storage system and go it alone. The state corporation will then have to generate that power and transmit it across the grid with attendant losses, to get it to my neighbours house. That is not environmentally sensible.

A private power company laid a HV DC cable from the mainland to the island. The price of power on the mainland, generated thermally from brown coal, then doubled, and so the power on the island had to double because they were now tied together. My power bill doubled.

Last spring, the power company sold green hydroelectric power from the island to the mainland whenever the price was high. Our reservoirs fell to 15% of capacity. Just when the power should have started to come back, the cable failed and has been under repair now for four months. Reservoirs are at 12% and falling. We are entering a dry winter with an expected continuing drought. Massive banks of diesel generators are being installed adjacent to hydroelectric switch-yards. The aluminium industry uses 33% of all power here so it has now agreed to reduce output. The residents will end up paying the commercial compensation and the cost of all the diesel fuel used to continue refining some aluminium.

So you see, the economic and political trajectory distorts the market and results in small users subsidising the inefficient bureaucracy and corporate multinational industries. PV and lower cost battery storage is now riding into town, just in time to save us from the grid, from the bureaucracy and from the multinationals.

When the big generators are left alone, and have to cover their real power costs, they will get smaller and disappear.

It is such a pity that delaying the use of hydro power is no longer economic as storage, and so I must install batteries.
It was once such an environmentally beautiful, sensible and low cost solution.

 

[jim hardy]

I believe the industry that uses the power should pay the cost of running the plant.

That's how my former employer got started - a Florida ice company with a number of icemaking plants began selling power to residents who lived nearby. Now its stock symbol is NEE...
Economy of scale dictated central station generators and an electric grid.

Times are a'changing and that's why i started the thread.

i would think your utility could recover the cost of that diesel generation from the mainland utility that owes you the power.
My utility did something similar in their early days for a local sawmill who'd used up their inventory of sawdust fuel selling power to the "big " electric company. There was an ethic back then, "A small company should not get hurt by doing business in good faith with a big company. "

In effect I am now actually supplying power to my neighbours who do not have PV. But we both pay the network fixed fee for access to the entire state grid.

I don't understand that complaint. You and your neighbors are both connected to the grid. Should one of you not pay for the meter and poles to your house ? Were you a bigger producer they'd probably charge you by the kwh that you wheel through their lines...

 

[Baluncore]

I don't understand that complaint.

Not a complaint. An ideal situation where the trade is transparent and paperwork free. But things are about to change.

 

[Baluncore]

i would think your utility could recover the cost of that diesel generation from the mainland utility that owes you the power.

The power trading company that operates the cable purchased the power on the island and sold it at a profit to the mainland. To buy power back when prices are lower, or the storage is low, is not possible since the cable has failed, which has now made the water shortage a critical situation.
Maybe it will be working again in another month. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basslink

The state has just started an inquiry into the feasibility of laying another parallel cable. I think that will get them into trouble twice as fast.

 

[jim hardy]

To buy power back when prices are lower, or the storage is low, is not possible since the cable has failed, which has now made the water shortage a critical situation.

The power trading company that operates the cable

You guys are incurring a loss because of those guys' cable failure. You had reasonable expectation of power being available to your island from that trading company to replenish your reservoir. Contract should have obligated them to deliver. You might share part of the cost because you took on the risk...

In the case i mentioned , the local sawmill, it was just lack of experience on the sawmill operator's part that he sold all his fuel to the power company as electricity in his first season of interconnect, found himself unable to meet his own needs and was faced with having to buy back power at the much higher retail price.
In the interest of being good neighbors , a company executive gave the mill a below wholesale rate for enough power to get him through his pinch..
That event occurred in the 1930's when the depression taught businessmen the ethic 'you can only extract a small part of every dollar passing through your hands else you overload the moneymaking machine and it grinds to a halt. '
It was related to me by my mentor, who'd done the footwork at direction of that executive (both long since dead).
He was giving me that lesson about business ethics I've mentioned before - in exchange for a monopoly you incur the moral obligation to watch out for your customers' money, and your shareholders have to settle for modest but reliable dividends. He said to me: "Jim this current crop of executives doesn't understand that. They're going to wreck the industry. "
The best deal for the consumer is a benevolent monopoly, it avoids the bureaucracy and corporate raiding. Problem is keeping them benevolent.
Not long after my mentor's lecture the electric industry got deregulated to "promote competition" and the debatably 'benevolent monopolies' were no more.
We reap what we sow.
If it isn't run with bona fide good faith it's going to crash.
That's my simplistic view .

So you see, the economic and political trajectory distorts the market and results in small users subsidising the inefficient bureaucracy and corporate multinational industries. PV and lower cost battery storage is now riding into town, just in time to save us from the grid, from the bureaucracy and from the multinationals.

Well, I'm a big fan of Northcote Parkinson and the fun he pokes at bureaucracy. Even Gorbachev quotes Parkinson.
Bureaucracy is what kills economy of scale. Central stations for energy conversion can support a lot of it, though.
I'm also involved in a wind power project. It got me looking at who's funding such things. Multinationals are big into US renewables because of the tax breaks and I'm astonished at the amount and diversity of European investment here. Maybe it's considered a "safe haven" , or just a tax dodge i don't know.

At the DIY scale there's truth in what you say , but i think not on a nationwide scale. Multinationals are already in there.
Look at Anorlunda's #54. That's a lot of money . Just how altruistic is this renewables push ?

Rambling i know - this is how i come to understand other people's perspectives.
Thanks for your observations !

old jim

 

[Salvador]

i think the message here as elsewhere is plain and simple , much like with the law and criminals , you can have the best security and laws in the world as long as there will be people who will put all their effort and their own lives to make fortune on the work that other people have done nothing can stop that , in other words if someone is determined to be that way he will be.
The same goes for renewables sadly , as with every new thing that comes into the market made possible by new tech and science at first people have this enthusiasm they feel like it's going to change the whole picture and suddenly make the world brand new , (remember the enthusiasm about nuclear power in the 50's?)
But guess what you can't build a new and good house on the old rotten fundament , those people and corporations that control the most of today's world energy sector and business will use and are already using all that is in their power to also keep the same business with the new technology , I doubt the energy companies are going like " Oh cool let's make the consumers independent from us and then we all live a happy life"

My thinking is this , unless we will come up with some really new and potent technology that allows one to have a " pandoras box" in his backyard producing all the power he needs until that moment we will still be somewhat dependent on big corporations giving us what we need for a price that is unfair.
Yes some larger households and farmers with more money and area can have the beauty of solar energy giving them the lions share of their house electricity bill and maybe with wind too and maybe even with biomass and cogeneration as some have done here which I know.But in all cases to install these products requires quite some cash and most people don't have it nor they have the location to build them.The only thing I myself could afford in any real time is solar panels , but given my geographical location I have little use for them.

 

[CalcNerd]

But the existing road surface is elastic. The wheel rolls in a depression. The force on the front of the wheel is balanced against the force on the rear of the wheel. If you extract some energy, it is no longer elastic, the forces do not balance and so it costs more in fuel. If you extract energy from the roadway you must supply all that energy by using more fuel.

Consider covering the road surface with piezo transducers, but do not connect the terminals. It is elastic, has balanced forces and is efficient. If you then connect the terminals and extract some energy, all that extracted energy comes from your vehicle tank or battery.

I suspect I owe Balucore an apology. This may very well also be happening to the piezoelectric road surface and it would indeed be robbing energy from the vehicle if the effect of compression is measurable in any way. I am not sure of how elastic the surface of these roadways are. The effect would be small, but even a small effect would have a detrimental effect on mileage as Balucore surmises.

 

[anorlunda]

This may very well also be happening to the piezoelectric road surface and it would indeed be robbing energy from the vehicle if the effect of compression is measurable in any way.

If you stick with the principle that there is no free lunch when dealing with energy, then you'll almost never go wrong. Even better, without even looking at the details of a proposal you may be able to eliminate it instantly and effortlessly if you find that it would violate the free lunch principle.

Free lunch and perpetual motion are different ways to say the same thing.

 

[Averagesupernova]

Don't forget that the heating of well traveled roads that causes melting of ice would likely still occur with piezo roads. Just because you have wasted energy in the form of heat on roadways does not mean that if you concoct some way of extracting energy from said roadways that this will guarantee you eliminate this loss.

 

[Salvador]

tires on tarmac have a rather high friction so that + some vibrations with I 'm not sure what frequency probably causes the road to heat up , since transforming heat to electricity is such a pain and very inefficient.
Also as we advance newer cars have better suspensions which again tend to mitigate unwanted oscillations in the suspension and we all want smooth good new roads and you would probably not dig up an old road full of holes just to leave it that way so that these holes and rough riding combined give you some power output.
This I assume is one of those things were one doesn't need to calculate to see it's a dead end.

 

[mheslep]

Can we dispense with the solar or piezo roads discussion? It's crackpottery. No evidence at all that the road shear and compression and environmental requirements have been analyzed, much less demonstrated. Instead, a request for funding is presented.

 

[OrangeDog]

If you stick with the principle that there is no free lunch when dealing with energy, then you'll almost never go wrong. Even better, without even looking at the details of a proposal you may be able to eliminate it instantly and effortlessly if you find that it would violate the free lunch principle.

Free lunch and perpetual motion are different ways to say the same thing.

I want free lunch

 

[OrangeDog]

Can we dispense with the solar or piezo roads discussion? It's crackpottery. No evidence at all that the road shear and compression and environmental requirements have been analyzed, much less demonstrated. Instead, a request for funding is presented.

You need money to do the studies to collect the data to report the results to collect money to build the roads.

 

[Baluncore]

Can we dispense with the solar or piezo roads discussion? It's crackpottery.

Yes. The piezo roads sub-topic can be dispensed with now. I was sorry that I needed to push it, but it was the principle of CalcNerd getting a free lunch, while I had to pay for mine.
The noise and heat aspects fall under the topic of waste energy recovery. It usually costs less to prevent the loss in the first place than to recover it once it has escaped.

Efficiency dividends in the consumer community can minimise the total size of installed generator plant. We must continuously evaluate the cost over time of implementing a 1% efficiency gain as opposed to building another 1% generation capacity.

The best deal for the consumer is a benevolent monopoly, it avoids the bureaucracy and corporate raiding. Problem is keeping them benevolent.

I want to start a co-operative energy company composed of all the people of this state. The co-op will then buy the hydroelectric and distribution network that the people have already built and paid for, from the politicians who think it is a saleable asset owned by their “government”. The co-op can then cut out the sweetheart deals being done behind closed doors between government and big business. The co-op could also set realistic costs for energy sales to the cable and industrial users.

That event occurred in the 1930's when the depression taught businessmen the ethic 'you can only extract a small part of every dollar passing through your hands else you overload the moneymaking machine and it grinds to a halt. '

I model the economy as an oscillator with circulating money. There needs to be sufficient gain in the system to overcome the taxation and losses, or the oscillation will collapse. We can easily identify the losses in the financial oscillator, but it is much harder to find the fundamental source of the gain. That gain seems to be the availability of energy from our environment. Solar energy through PV is one such source of gain that might help keep the system rolling along. There are many others.

 

[Old Tele man]

Just for the "record," remember that Arizona annually experiences a summertime "monsoon" (mid-July through end-September) with sudden, abrupt, dark/cloudy skies, raining "cats & dogs," at exactly the same time that A/C-units are running most. That kinda shoots the heck out of "planned" load distributions to OTHER localities!

 

[dlgoff]

... somewhat dependent on big corporations giving us what we need for a price that is unfair.

What makes you think the price is unfair? Paid for any new power plants lately? To maintain a reliable supply of power means there must be some generation "head room" for large demands. That cost must be is figured in. e.g. to keep ones home lite while wanting a new auto made of steel, that generation "head room" is very necessary.

 

[jim hardy]

Here's hoping this works - it's a lot of typing... i don't know exactly where it's going to lead.

I had wanted to make the title ".. all US ELECTRIC power by solar " but ran into the character limit.
Anorlunda explained why industry gets a sweetheart deal on kilowatts. It costs not a lot more to run a big power line to a factory than a small one to a house. At the factory there's still only one meter to read monthly , for hundreds of times the kilowatt hours sold, so the factory's bill can be lowered by at least the the wages to read several hundred meters. (Not to mention keep them working and trim the trees underneath the wires... ) You get the idea... Plus factories often agree to cut back when power is needed for residential heating in emergencies like a blizzard. Believe it or not utilities really try to keep your lights on.

about 75% of the monthly bill is for power delivery and installed capacity costs, and only 25% for actual energy used. That is hidden from many consumers today because delivery costs are buried in the kwh energy charge, but if the utility provided backup only service (with zero energy use) zero, the real costs would have to be exposed.

He also put a number on estimated cost to go rooftop, About the same as Obamacare...$378 to $563 a month, in Post 54 .
That was eye opening for me. But i still need to digest Madden's presentations... and the NREL papers mheslep linked.

Renewables are being subsidized , sneakily IMHO, by states legislating that utilities procure a mandated percentage of their energy from renewable sources. In Colorado Excel buys it mostly from other suppliers. It's more expensive than steam but the ratepayers foot that bill. Florida Power and Light is a major windmill builder/operator out there (go figure).

As to "whoever uses should pay" , i think they already do. See the "Sweetheart deal" paragraph above and the right half of this chart: (source http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/pdf/sec17.pdf page 5 of 6 , easier to read there you can zoom)
It shows energy origin and consumption by sector with "The Grid" as middleman

Transportation gets less than 1% of its 27.5 quadrillion BTU from electric power sector, 0.275 Quads
Industrial gets 14% of its 23.3 which is 3.23 Quads
Residential gets 42% of its 11.8 , a tidy 4.96 Quads
and Commercial comes in at 52% of 8.7 = 4.52 Quads.
(that adds to 12.985 quads. May i round to 13?)

Sanity check :
Total electric sales was 13 Quads .
( quad = 33.434 gigawatt-years (GWy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quad_(unit) )
13 X 33.434 = 434 gigawatt years
seems right order of magnitude for the 1000 gigawatts installed capacity we have been using ​

Expressed as Percentage of electric sales that's
Transport 2.1%
Industrial 24.9%
Residential 38.2%
Commercial 34.8%

Hmmm . Industry isn't the biggest user.

Going to the other side of the chart, i see
feeding the electric grid 100% solar would
cut coal consumption by 92%
cut natural gas by 30%
eliminate nuclear
barely touch petroleum , down 1%

and raise renewables' 8.0 quads by the sum of the other contributions to electric sector
Nuclear's share : 100% of 8.4 = 8.4 Quads
Coal's share : 92% of 20.8 = 19.1 Quads
Natural Gas's share : 30% of 24.6 = 7.38 Quads
petroleum's share : 1% of 36 = 0.36 Quads
which adds to 35.24
making renewables 35.24 + 8 = 43.24 Quads, 44% of total energy.
The left side of chart would be green from bottom to about 1/3 way up what's now blue.
Virtually every roof in the country would get a panel
and there'd be probably a battery house on every block and one in every tall building's basement.

This came out about as i thought it would.
I hope it lends some visual perspective to the scale of things.

old jim

 

[Baluncore]

That is an interesting diagram.
The top 80% of the energy source column is fossil fuels. Only 8% is now renewable.
How can we expect that diagram to change in the next few years?
As the renewable energy sector increases, we should see a reduction in coal consumption.
As electric vehicles become more available, we should see a reduction in petroleum consumption.
Rooftop solar for some residential and commercial will reduce electricity system losses.

 

[Salvador]

@dlgoff said

What makes you think the price is unfair? Paid for any new power plants lately?

Actually yes I did pay for some new powerplants lately and so did the rest of us living here in Europe.I don't know how the doctrine is in the US but here in Europe people in the government are obsessed with green energy etc , which is not a bad thing in it's sense, rather the implementation is wrong.Let me tell you why , for example we have a law , not checked whether it hasn't been changed now but it was like this for a decade or more like that and read this closely " Every newly built biomass , cogeneration , windfarm or solar or even small Hydro plant has to have a mandatory deal from the local energy supplier and the it must be paid double for each produced KWH into the grid than ordinary large power plants like coal, big Hydro and nuclear.

I really don't know why they did this maybe to boost the green energy but here's the problem , those green plants (due to geography we have virtually no solar) like biomass and cogeneration produce very little in terms of annual power used by the state so their help to the grid is small but their revenue is big and that revenue is split between industrial consumers and households , so I even counted that an average household had to pay 5% more on their bill each month for a green energy gain of 0.0...something from that bill.
Green energy is good but the way it's being implemented is ridiculous, also all of those who built the green plants due to this law became very rich and that was already their goal and just to add they were rich before because to build such a plant requires quite some money , a typical 1 to 3 MW cogeneration plant running from leftover trees and other combustibles costs an average of 2 million Eur.typically they bring back cash after 2 to 3 years of operation due to various European parliament subsidies and also the double rate at which the energy company has to buy their energy.So without government subsidies and doubling the KWH charge these stations become useless in terms of revenue and no business man then would build them.So someone must pay the price to become greener by a small percent.
Also this means that renewables are falling into the same old money hands that already control everything from energy to production of goods etc.

So aside from these plants being weak in terms of power output they are also costly to build vs their energy output , they only become somewhat cheap once their up and running since they can use industry leftovers as their fuel.
These stations are better in terms of heat sources , since after the steam produced can no longer run the turbine it is being supplied to the local city as heating.

That being said right next to my country there is Lithuania ,back in the day they had the Ignalina RBMK reactors even with the uranium coming from Russia or maybe some of it being leftover from the USSR which we all were a par of , the electricity in Lithuania was very cheap when the reactors worked.Then European parliament being filled with scare and inability to be tough on certain matters which they are well know for begged Lithuania to shut those reactors down promising large sums of money in return simply because they are scared of everything made by Russians , the experts said the reactors were upgraded and perfectly safe also they were still in their first lifetime cycle upon shutdown, and never had ny accidents or problems whatsoever.Now they have to spend all that energy and time and effort to dismantle something that could have worked fine until it's expected lifetime and then build an new station at the site , guess what they are now planning on building a new plant at or near the site , it's like buying new clothes , trashing them the next day and then buying another pair of literally the same clothes.When i was there to visit and heard all of this it made me sort of mad to see all this wasteful thinking going on in modern times run by supposedly a very advanced and green thinking government (read Europe) So much energy and resources wasted for nothing.

Now that missing big chunk of power is partly powered by coal , congratulations to idiots running Europe , that's real green thinking.First they double the price for renewables which makes the ordinary people hate them then they shut down good reactors I wonder what's next
Also for smaller countries like mine we have this rather big Hydro power plant , actually we have three on the same river , and because we are only about 2 million people in this country we can produce our electricity entirely from those three hydro plants whose combined output is somewhere around 1700MW, so if it weren't for all the modern capitalist BS and the wrong implementation of renewables we could also have cheap energy almost as cheap as the Lithuanian's when they had their Nuclear monster back in the day.
I assume a large hydro plant counts as a renewable already.

P.S. I wonder if there ever be a chance of having transparent windows that also act as solar panels , I know many modern skyscrapers already use solar panels in their facades , places like Dubai have a really good location for such things.

 

[Baluncore]

I wonder if there ever be a chance of having transparent windows that also act as solar panels

The wavelengths of light transmitted through or reflected from the window cannot be used to generate PV energy.
If you use the blue, violet and ultraviolet for PV you will be left with a warm yellow light and infrared heat.
To thermally insulate the building you need a window that reflects infra-red. That will also block the direct heat of the sun.
You must decide on an optimum spectrum for reflection, absorption and transmission.

 

[anorlunda]

Nice work in #72 @jim hardy. At first I didn't recognize the numbers because I'm an electrical guy and I think of the electrical sector as being the 100%. It's refreshing to see it differently. I can contribute a few points.

• The 26,8 quads of energy losses in the electric sector are roughly 0.8 for power transmission losses and 26.0 because of the thermal efficiency of power plants. If we converted to solar+wind, that 26.0 quads would not be needed.
• There is a big political opportunity for gaming the numbers for political purposes. I'm thinking of the efficiency of solar & wind. Should the total energy from the sun hitting the Earth be placed in the "Primary Energy Consumption" category, and the 99% of that we don't use listed as "losses", or should solar and wind be considered 100% efficient with zero losses? Huge opportunity to game the debate. Greens want to portray renewables as a free lunch, and most of us are willing to go along.
  
  Like the piezioelectric highway, solar and wind are thought of as a free lunch, producing energy with zero side effects. Engineers know better, so that way of viewing renewables must change some day.
• There is already a huge upheaval underway in the USA energy sector -- fracking. Because of fracking, world oil prices plummeted. The price of natural gas is so low (and combined cycle power plants are so efficient) that everyone is scrambling to junk the coal plants. (Obama and the EPA will try to claim the credit for that, but it happened independent of government) Even nuclear plants are threatened by the natural gas competition, and some of them are giving up.
  
  The rest of the word is a few years behind the USA in fracking, but it will reach everywhere eventually.
  
  But the fracked gas surge will only last about 25 years, another upheaval will be required in about 20 years. Investors and pundits should be focusing on 2036 as the year in the inflection point in the future when the energy apple cart will be upset.
• Electric vehicles could alter the picture drastically. But that can't happen overnight. IMO, 20 years to replace our fleet with electric vehicles is optimistic. You can estimate the huge impact of electric vehicles using @jim hardy 's picture in #72. Just imagine that big transpiration sector block being shifted to the electric sector.
• Energy is not the only resource to be challenged, and climate is not the only symptom of over-consumption. I agree with what @jim hardy said in an earlier thread, that word population is the only permanent solution to our problems. But I'm even more extreme, IMO the maximum population of the Earth should be one billion.

@Salvador, Prices are intrinsically fair except when government interferes. When you have a wholesale energy market (like the one I used to work for), the market rules must be agreed upon by the entire community of buyers and sellers. If someone wants an unfair advantage, he/she would have to convince the people who will be cheated to approve it. But government interference overrides all that. It happens in the USA also, but not as severely as in Europe. If you want fair prices, you should become libertarian or anarchist.

p.s. I won't be reading PF for the next 3 days.

 

[Baluncore]

Like the piezioelectric highway, solar and wind are thought of as a free lunch, producing energy with zero side effects. Engineers know better, so that way of viewing renewables must change some day.

I do not understand what you mean there, nor why you group the piezoelectric highway with solar and wind energy.
The piezoelectric highway is a definite hoax, that small amount of energy comes from the vehicle's fuel or battery supply.
Solar and wind are real energy sources. What are these terrible side effects you refer to?

 

[anorlunda]

Piezoelectric makes sparks for my stove, but it has not been shown to make enough power for the grid.

wind and solar have not yet been proven adequate to scale to the size of 100% of the nation demand.

In that sense the analogy is apt.

Every energy source in history was brought to be unlimited at the start. Limitations become apparent only when they scale gets big enough.

 

[Salvador]

Well I don't need to be an anarchist in terms of how to deal with what we have in terms of our planet and resources I would be glad that the people deciding could atleast use their best part of intellect and try to suppress their naturally big EGO.
Just a few simple points .

1)If a nuclear reactor is running and is within it's designed lifetime and has no problems whatsoever , please in the name of all saints and all others just leave it be and let it work.Don't stop it simply because the queen said so or some stupid fools who can't learn basic physics became the majority of the parliament.Otherwise I see no reason why one abandons a rather clean and safe energy producing way for a coal plant until he figures out how to build a new reactor in the same place or otherwise.

2)Use as much renewables as possible and acceptable.incorporate them into buildings , put solar in deserts etc wherever they don't cause trouble or other problems arise.

3)Don't allow certain interest groups and gangs influence the market and create a sort of war for renewables , also not a wise idea to push those things down peoples throats thinking that suddenly everyone is going to be happy.You have to show the benefit of the system instead of simply allowing some rich guys build some biomass stations and then charge the rest of the society double price for their produced cheap electricity.On a more existential point , and I agree anorlunda with you, that given our current way of living and the sources of energy we use we are really getting either too much or becoming too greedy but in reality I think it's both.No solar no renewables and maybe even no nuclear as long as fission is concerned will be able to sustain such a greedy bunch of two legged crowd for long periods of time we will either run out or shortly before running out also run into extra problems with the climate which will probably require us to use even more of that same energy to compensate the loss and so we will run out even earlier than we thought.
Nor we yet or I believe in the next 100 years will be able to colonize a distant planet and use that as a backup for this world which we will have used up like an old dried up orange.

And here's the bad side even if for example we now make fusion possible and use it as our main electricity source that means the population will only continue to grow and so will our egos and needs because everytime we make something better we take it for granted and can't imagine living without it like spoiled kids.
So actually solving the energy crisis is somewhat going to create us even bigger problems because you can't just say , Ok we have reached 10 billion people of whom atleast 7 are living like greedy bastards should we now kill them off to save the planet. :D

Sorry for the harsh rhetoric but these are all issues I believe some of the participants in this thread will face themselves in their lifetimes given how fast we are speeding towards these days of time and age.

 

[Baluncore]

wind and solar have not yet been proven adequate to scale to the size of 100% of the nation demand.

Neither has petroleum, natural gas, coal or hydroelectric.
Reliability comes from diversity.
To expect anyone new technology to satisfy 100% of the national demand is quite ridiculous.

 

[Salvador]

for smaller countries with less population hydroelectric and some little coal can actually supply their whole demand and leave some extra for sell to adjacent countries.
If you need examples as proof I can give you one right now , the one I live in.Probably there are others on the list.

 

[Baluncore]

for smaller countries with less population hydroelectric and some little coal can actually supply their whole demand and leave some extra for sell to adjacent countries.

That is an idealistic analysis.
The hydroelectric lesson from here is to remain isolated so your power costs will not be tied to those on the continental grid and the water cannot be sold so easily.

 

[mheslep]

You need money to do the studies to collect the data to report the results to collect money to build the roads.

No, mountains of analysis, data and best practice already exist for road construction, built up over the last twenty centuries or so. It's now collected under the discipline known as civil engineering.

 

[mheslep]

...
As the renewable energy sector increases, we should see a reduction in coal consumption...

Unfortunately no. Solar and wind are cute at the moment and are on the increase to a point in the developed world with the aid of subsidies. But in the developing world coal is still king. China built coal plants until it consumes, by itself, half of the world's coal, and has finally leveled off as it brings a new nuclear plant online at one per month or so.

But the rest of the developing world is about to do what China did, build coal. India, the Phillipines, Africa. Renewable use in the developing world won't off set the fossil increase. See Germany. After building enormous amounts of solar and wind Germany is still building new coal plants. Germany has as much conventional power capacity (non solar, non wind) today as it did in 2002 before it started. Why? Because on more days than not Germany has moments when all of that solar and wind output combined drop to near nothing. Meanwhile, like some spoof from the Onion, it has tripled it's residential electric rates and taken to burning up half it's annual timber harvest in biomass plants.

There is only one serious way out of carbon based energy. The play has been run now several times in several places, so we know it works: France, Ontario, Sweden. Nuclear power.

 

[Baluncore]

How can we expect that diagram to change in the next few years?
As the renewable energy sector increases, we should see a reduction in coal consumption.
As electric vehicles become more available, we should see a reduction in petroleum consumption.

Unfortunately no. Solar and wind are cute at the moment and are on the increase to a point in the developed world with the aid of subsidies. But in the developing world coal is still king.

I do not dispute that “coal was king” in 2016 and will be for some time. The diagram shows 92% of coal going into electricity production and 71% of petroleum going into transportation. Petroleum provides 93% of the fuel for transportation, less than 1% is powered by electricity. As that changes we will see the changes I predicted in the USA relative consumption.
The diagram is only for the USA, it shows relative energy flows. China, India, the Philippines, Africa, Germany, France, Ontario and Sweden have not yet been, and are unlikely to be annexed by the USA, or it's grid.

There is only one serious way out of carbon based energy. The play has been run now several times in several places, so we know it works: France, Ontario, Sweden. Nuclear power.

We are not trying to find a “way out of carbon based energy” as you put it. We are actually looking to reduce the reliance on fossil fuels. Renewable carbon based energy is quite acceptable, it will be part of the mix, along with solar PV, wind and others.

Yours is a simplistic political analysis that discounts the multitude of alternatives that are together becoming available in parallel.
Your belief that “there is one and only one, and it is nuclear”, is simply a polemic belief. We actually live in a real world.

 

[Salvador]

I looked into a coal consumption chart yesterday and China is first by a large margin , then comes second -US , then something along the lines of India etc.
But basically US is using it as much as the next 4 states combined and China is using coal about twice as US.
I'm a bit lazy to do the calculations but from an eye peek it seems that the worlds two largest economies actually produce most of their electricity from coal not nuclear.
If the tables are right China basically goes all in on coal and it's nuclear capacity is like 1% of it's energy total which is like it's not even there.
The US is looking better at this point their coal being some 38% and nuclear about 20% of the total China's coal goes up to 70-80%

Also the three Baltic states were actually among the greenest energy producers a while ago atleast.When Lithuania had their RBMK 1500 units they made more than the whole countries energy demand from just two reactors.They also had a rather small coal plant in another city but it has been long shut down.Now that the nuclear isn't anymore it has to import up to 70% of it's energy.
We thankfully have these hydro plants and they combined output is a bit more than one of the 1500 reactor units which is fine for us ,
the Estonians on the other hand have a oil shale (I wonder what that is ) powerplant which gives them close to 100% of their energy but I suspect it doesn't come close to " green" or renewable as hydro does.

@Baluncore no the costs of electricity for us are no different just because we use basically hydro exclusively , the energy market is opened across all of Europe so the energy producers have to compete instead of simply putting up a fixed price that they find good for themselves.

The problem here is that diversification is rather hard because to speak of any real diversification you need those other alternative energy resources to account for some significant number of total energy usage.Now I agree that any amount is good to begin with but over longer periods to reduce global warming and simply increase air quality and the ability to sustain ourselves after oil ends we need the alternatives to be like atleast 30% some percent for each country , right now we are having what ?
those who have rivers can make about 20% hydro like Russia, China,etc and that's the biggest renewable in terms of annual percentage.All other like solar and wind come with much smaller numbers and also for only a fixed number of countries.
What I'm trying to say is that if we simply subsidize all this green energy and can make it only less than some 30% of total energy production for each country and that by itself is a dreamy number then there isn't much done at all so to speak of because still the main production means will be left fossil and still the emissions will be the same if not higher since the number of people are only getting more not less.
We still need to figure out how we supply the leftover majority portion of our energy since right now it comes from sources that both will run out and cause ourselves major damages in the long run.
The situations with alternatives is much like a dirty house were we only clean one room and that's about the best we can do , so you still get a dirty old house with one rather small room that is made new.What are we going to do with the rest of the house ?

 

[OmCheeto]

It looks as though coal is on the way out

and solar & wind are on their way in

Regarding anorlunda's cost analysis of $77,000 per household in post #54.
That does look kind of spendy. But I agree with the numbers 100%.
On the other hand, we get 30 years worth of electricity for that.
It seems to me that we started a couple of wars for about half that cost, and didn't get squat for it.

OmCheeto's Restaurant
Ice Cream __________ $2.00
Slap in the face ____ $1.00

 

[Baluncore]

Oil shale is usually a bitumen rich sand or siltstone. The shale is crushed and cooked to extract the hydrocarbons. It is fossil fuel.

We still need to figure out how we supply the leftover majority portion of our energy since right now it comes from sources that both will run out and cause ourselves major damages in the long run.

We do not know quite what the future will bring, but we do have some idea about the direction we need to move. Things will change gradually, on a generational time scale.

For example, geothermal sources are little developed. They represent a source that could be complementary and work well with solar and wind. So why is geothermal so slow in being developed? Different energy sources have different up-front costs and so different exposure to future economic unknowns. Building wind turbines, PV arrays, hydroelectric dams and geothermal stations have high up-front costs. Then once built, they have lower running costs while payment of the principal and interest are being made. On the other hand, a coal powered thermal station costs less at the start, but then has higher running costs as fuel is purchased only as power is sold. For that reason, in difficult economic times thermal stations will be preferred by economists who do not like to take risks on the prediction of future interest rates and power prices.

Old technology will pay it's way until it fades for economic reasons. The old fossil fuel industries will fall in importance as their customer base progressively migrates toward the new alternatives. How long it will take and what all those alternatives will be we can now only guess.

Does anyone remember those steam trains that once burned coal ?

 

[jim hardy]

Om where's that chart from ?

1500 trillion is 1.5 E15, and that many BTU's is 1.5 Quads,...
a drop in the 98 Quad bucket now, but ...

That does look kind of spendy. But I agree with the numbers 100%.
On the other hand, we get 30 years worth of electricity for that.

Hmmm.
Well you can maintain and run a gigawatt power plant with just a couple hundred people.
I daresay it'll take 100X that many folks to maintain the thousands of windmills or hundreds of thousands of rooftop solars required for that same distributed generation.
We'll all have friends and neighbors employed in that field..
And i don't think that's a bad thing.

Of course being an old maintenance guy i do love machinery.
And a google search shows I've posted this several times before on PF:

"There is a phase of the war with nature which is little noticed but has always impressed me. To me
there is an aura of grandeur about the dull routine of maintenance; I see it as a defiance of the teeth of time.
It is easier to build than to maintain. Even a lethargic or debilitated population can be galvanized for a
while to achieve something impressive, but the energy which goes into maintaining things in good repair
day in, day out is the energy of true vigor." eric hoffer

There is dignity in being a good worker bee. Ever read "Trustee from the Toolroom" ?

When i see the complexity of what's in those windmill nacelles and in those solar gridtie boxes the technician in me shudders...at my age i don't want to learn them.
But - there might well be positive societal paybacks from putting hordes of people to useful outdoor work, with toolboxes . Ever read "Iron John" ?

old jim

 

[DavidLloydJones]

In another PF thread it was proposed to build a centralized PV farm of 1000 gigawatts , which is the order of magnitude of US installed generating capacity. It'd cover 1/10 the area of New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada.

√ (10%of 896815 km^2) = 299.5 km per side, 186 miles per side, not far from the 150 stated earlier in the same thread.
Close enough for thought experiments.

You can't drive maintenance trucks over solar panels so the dimensions will expand to accommodate roadways.
Unless they're elevated to serve as rooftops with access from below.
Stormwater runoff from a 150 mile square rooftop will be a challenge, Phoenix area has been known to get 6 inches in a storm.
http://www.fcd.maricopa.gov/Weather/Rainfall/raininfo.aspx

It'd be interesting that's for sure.
Myself, i am far more afraid of huge storage batteries than of reactors. I wouldn't be go anywhere near them.

Maybe @anorlunda will assess the practicality of moving so much power over so much distance.

The unthinking belief in "maintenance trucks" has burdened no end of city parks with ugly and unnecessary asphalt all over the place. A couple of criss-cross tracks eight feet wide ("feet," a measure of length used in the United States and Saudi Arabia) would allow the truck now and then to bring people into where the bicycles and spare tools are kept.

Putting roofs over solar panels doesn't seem like an awfully good idea to me.

In a desert the rainwater has historically managed to take care of itself. Why would racks of open solar panels change this?

As for distance, what you do is crank up the voltage and cut down the losses. When we get smart enough we'll be shipping the stuff from the light side to the dark, all the time.

Overall I'd say that anonymous post is dopey enough to have come from a fossil fuel PR company hack.

-dlj.

 

[DavidLloydJones]

Om where's that chart from ?

1500 trillion is 1.5 E15, and that many BTU's is 1.5 Quads,...
a drop in the 98 Quad bucket now, but ...
Hmmm.
Well you can maintain and run a gigawatt power plant with just a couple hundred people.
I daresay it'll take 100X that many folks to maintain the thousands of windmills or hundreds of thousands of rooftop solars required for that same distributed generation.
We'll all have friends and neighbors employed in that field..
And i don't think that's a bad thing.

Of course being an old maintenance guy i do love machinery.
And a google search shows I've posted this several times before on PF:

There is dignity in being a good worker bee. Ever read "Trustee from the Toolroom" ?

When i see the complexity of what's in those windmill nacelles and in those solar gridtie boxes the technician in me shudders...at my age i don't want to learn them.
But - there might well be positive societal paybacks from putting hordes of people to useful outdoor work, with toolboxes . Ever read "Iron John" ?

old jim

Old Jim,

Neville Shute was always great fun, and ver-ree often right. 'Course we hope he was too pessimistic on the nuclear war thing, but his writing on the aircraft industry (and the folly of the Zeppelin and airship honchos) was great stuff.

I think your vision of local labour, doing local work, maintaining useful stuff, is accurate, sound, and mildly inspiring. Do you think that having a lot of people working close to vital, i.e. life-related, work might give society back some of the feeling of stability of agricultural times only a generation back?-dlj.

 

[jim hardy]

I don't think you meant this the way it came out.

Overall I'd say that anonymous post is dopey enough to have come from a fossil fuel PR company hack.

To what "anonymous" post do you refer ?

Physics Forums Global Guidelines
Langauge and Attitude:...

Foul or hostile language will not be tolerated on Physics Forums. This includes profanity, obscenity, or obvious indecent language; direct personal attacks or insults; snide remarks or phrases that appear to be an attempt to "put down" another member; and other indirect attacks on a member's character or motives.

Please treat all members with respect, even if you do not agree with them.

 

[jim hardy]

Do you think that having a lot of people working close to vital, i.e. life-related, work might give society back some of the feeling of stability of agricultural times only a generation back?

Yes. If you read Eric Hoffer you'll recall his reminiscences of WPA work in the 1930's and the remarkable psychological effect it had on the homeless men in the camps.

 

[mheslep]

... As that changes we will see the changes I predicted in the USA relative consumption ...

Sorry, I didn't know you were referring to only the US. So far, most change in the US has been a switch from coal to natural gas.

 

[jim hardy]

As for distance, what you do is crank up the voltage and cut down the losses.

Not until you've beefed up the lines. Recall Florida blackouts(early seventies) before the 500 KV Miami to Georgia tie ...
Look into power system Torsional Resonance(different from SSR). How many power lines cross the Rockies ?

 

[jim hardy]

In a desert the rainwater has historically managed to take care of itself. Why would racks of open solar panels change this?

It's got to be kept out of the machinery rooms. If substantial fraction of the land area is covered, stormwater runs in channels between.
When i mentioned that i had in mind TV news pictures of waist deep water in streets of Phoenix.

But thanks for your input - title of this thread is '... practical(ity)'

 

[DavidLloydJones]

I don't think you meant this the way it came out.
To what "anonymous" post do you refer ?

Not until you've beefed up the lines. Recall Florida blackouts(early seventies) before the 500 KV Miami to Georgia tie ...
Look into power system Torsional Resonance(different from SSR). How many power lines cross the Rockies ?

Jim, Or is it jim,

If we're crossing the Bering Strait it's not a matter of beefing up the power lines, it's a matter of building them right from the start. My guess is they'll be DC cables on the ocean floor, but we may have railway tunnels soon, so there's no telling.

As for water in the machine rooms, what you do is, you put the machine rooms above ground.

I had thought that post was anonymous, but I guess I missed the name assignment routine. I see nothing "foul" about calling a post dopey. I mean a zillion square miles ("miles," a measure of distance used in the United States, Saudi Arabia, and maybe Liberia...) of roof? Um, we want the sun to shine on the panels, see? That's why they're called "solar." I think.

The paucity of power lines over the Rockies is probably due to the fact that there are mountains there. Just a thought. When the numbers add up, the lines will get built. Perhaps along railway lines, who knows?

Cheers,
-dlj.

 

[mheslep]

...We are not trying to find a “way out of carbon based energy” as you put it. We are actually looking to reduce the reliance on fossil fuels. Renewable carbon based energy is quite acceptable, it will be part of the mix, along with solar PV, wind and others.

Clearly, most all man made carbon emissions today are from fossile fuels so that carbon based fuel and fossile fuel are nearly the same thing. And fortunately so until recently. The 18th century burning biomass caused the obliteration of forest cover in Europe and the American east coast. The originally heavily wooded state of Maine fell below 50% forest cover by the 19th century. It is now back above 90%; I prefer it stay that way.

...Yours is a simplistic political analysis that discounts the multitude of alternatives that are together becoming available in parallel.
Your belief that “there is one and only one, and it is nuclear”, is simply a polemic belief. We actually live in a real world.

I provided some real world examples of decarbonized power grids via nuclear (and hydro). I'm not sure why you would dismiss these as "political" with ambiguous "alternatives". There's quite a bit of literature demonstrating why solar and wind can't affordably get beyond a 1/4 or so of the power grid.

 

[mheslep]

...
I'm a bit lazy to do the calculations but from an eye peek it seems that the worlds two largest economies actually produce most of their electricity from coal not nuclear...

Currently natural gas is the largest source of US electricity, just slightly larger than coal, though the gap will surely continue to grow.

http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/images/2016.03.16/main.png

 

[jim hardy]

I see nothing "foul" about calling a post dopey.

Well there have been worse flames cast about.

Overall I'd say that anonymous post is dopey enough to have come from a fossil fuel PR company hack.

I worked thirty+ years in a nuke plant with two big fossil units adjacent
and i suffer preconceived notions of solar and wind as "tinkertoys"
which i am doing my level best to repress, and give renewables a fair shake here.
So can you see how i might be a little sensitive ? Centralized generation has been my life's work and it provided for my children. That big ol' steam turbine earned a living for hundreds of us..

I ask the same self control of "true believers" in renewables.
so I'll take your remark as a light-hearted tease not an epithet. Fair enough ?

The facts and statistics that contributors have brought to this forum are showing me another Hoffer-ism

“In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.”
― Eric Hoffer

and I'm coming to accept that distributed generation has some practical things going for it
1. decentralizes generation, which has strategic military considerations
2. trades ongoing fuel cost for ongoing maintenance cost (what maintenance man could object?... thanks OM & anorlunda)
3. retains old philosophy of generation close to consumers , ie robust electrical structure

i hope it's causing similar practical considerations in folks who regard big central power stations as "The Dark Side" .

Renewables as Tinkertoys ? Well, mankind's progress always begins with his playthings. Hero's steam engine was a toy...


old jim