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

[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 ?

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[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

 

[OmCheeto]

Om where's that chart from ?

EIA and me.

http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/
Coal
6.2 Consumption by sector
CSV file
Renewable energy [wind & solar]
10.1 Production and consumption by source
CSV file

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

Where on Earth did you come up with 98 Quad?
(google google google)
Ah ha!
https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/content/energy/energy_archive/energy_flow_2013/2013USEnergy.png

That's all energy. I thought this was the electrical energy thread.

But that is an interesting chart.
Looking at the right hand side, I see:

Rejected Energy: 59.0 Quad
Energy Services: 38.4 Quad​

If "Rejected Energy" means what I think it means, it almost reminds me of my very first picture I posted here at the forum.

Of course, I didn't understand what that meant at the time, which is why I asked the question. But being a PF regular, it kind of sank in, after a few days.

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.

Given that rooftop solar has no moving parts, I can't imagine much maintenance.
Unless of course, you invest in cheap junk.

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

I don't read much book stuff nowadays.
Mostly, I just google.

 

[OmCheeto]

...
I worked thirty+ years in a nuke plant with two big fossil units adjacent

I only worked for 4 years in a "nuke" environment. Incredible stuff.

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

old jim

As I've said before, when my dad passed away in ≈2005, I inherited four of his 50 watt panels.

Until you have at least one of these "tinkertoys" for your own, you will never realize how truly amazing they are.

PF is saturated with solar PV experiments that I've done over the years.

ps. Just got a call from my boater friend, who wanted to know if she should buy a new 1.5 watt solar panel from Harbor Freight for $15, as a battery tender, even though, she and I picked one up at a garage sale for $2, last week, which I promptly fixed. (It had wiring problems)
Analyses to follow.

 

[OmCheeto]

ps. Just got a call from my boater friend, who wanted to know if she should buy a new 1.5 watt solar panel from Harbor Freight for $15, as a battery tender, even though, she and I picked one up at a garage sale for $2, last week, which I promptly fixed. (It had wiring problems)
Analyses to follow.

...I think there's an internal, intermittent, unforeseen, "distribution" problem.

ie. Don't hold your breath...

[edit] Now I know why the previous owner ripped the power cord out, in frustration.

 

[nikkkom]

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.

The OP' author (me) does not propose that we actually do generate all 100% of US energy with solar. I merely say that it can be done, it's technically possible.

 

[Baluncore]

The OP' author (me) does not propose that we actually do generate all 100% of US energy with solar. I merely say that it can be done, it's technically possible.

Jim Hardy is tagged as the OP author. Am I now confused or are you?
We appear to have different interpretations of the words "practical" and "possible".

 

[OmCheeto]

Jim Hardy is tagged as the OP author. Am I now confused or are you?
...

Maybe Greg is allowing, um, what did they call sock puppets in the olden days?
(googles mind)
Nom de pleurs?
(googles internet)
Yes!

 

[anorlunda]

I'm afraid that Jim and I didn't make it clear at the start. 100% solar was not meant to be a serious proposal, merely as a thought experiment to carry it to the extreme to see where it leads.

It is part of being open minded to give some laymen ideas fair consideration rather than dismissing them our of hand.

I worked hard to make the financial estimates. Of course there are many considerations other than money, but a forum post can't be a 50 page study report.

 

[rbelli1]

There is a difference between possible, do-able and logical to do. Jim is asking whether it would be something we could accomplish and would be workable if we wanted to. Not necessarily if it is the best thing to do.

BoB

 

[mheslep]

... I merely say that it can be done, it's technically possible.

Cost aside, no proposals for the storage required have been made in this thread that conform to the existing supply of raw materials.

 

[jim hardy]

Title asks

...is it practical ..' and that was my original question
and nikkom deserves credit for planting the thought in Nuclear thread,

honestly i have been surprised by some of the numbers .
I have more respect now for rooftop solar

old jim

 

[Baluncore]

I have more respect now for rooftop solar

This post was powered by rooftop solar. It is 1PM here and overcast, but I am still running the property and pushing a spare 1200 watt onto the grid.

[Edit]: Unsubsidised installed cost of panels here is now about AU$1000 per kW, even if that was to produce only 4 kwh per day, they will keep doing that for 20 years. That is 29200 units @ $0.22 = $6425 worth of power per kW installed at an original cost of only $1000. For me that is economic.
At the moment I sell my excess power to the grid during the day. I get power back at night for the same price I sold it. The unused excess pays the network maintenance component of my connection.
When the network buy price drops to 33% next year, I can justify a storage battery and disconnection so as to save network maintenance fees. They will have priced themselves out of the market.[end edit]

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

Yes.
Lieutenant “Neville Shute” Norway was an engineer who designed airships, (R100), and aircraft, (Airspeed Ltd), then worked for the Department of Miscellaneous Weapons Development during WW2, while he became an author. I think his best book is “Round the Bend”, which introduced a new interpretation to the discipline of quality control, well ahead of it's time. "Slide Rule" is well worth a read for Engineers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round_the_Bend_(novel)

 

[Dr. Courtney]

Nice discussion. Thanks to all the contributors.

Just like all resources, there are production challenges, storage challenges, and distribution challenges.

I think the free market would sort out most of the issues, if government would get out of the way.

 

[Salvador]

Yes Nikkkom and started arguing about other alternative energy producing ways instead of nuclear in my at first scientific and then rather philosophical thread in the nuclear engineering section so he might as well consider himself the OP along Jim.And frankly that doesn't change anything but just to let you know in case someone is wondering about it. If someone is interested in RBMK design points , nuclear reactor scare and and the end a glimpse of world history and politics in my opinion then he or she can check out that thread.

As for free market I don't praise it as much as others.It's not the free market that will save us from energy problems.It's the scientific and technological breakthrough and also some common sense and much needed higher living morale and adapting to times that can only save us from were we are heading.
Our energy storage technology is the way it is for example not because the government is standing in the way or else , but because physics is the way it is and we don't know any better as of yet.the free market can help to spread the technology once it's there.And also once it's affordable.Solar is affordable already it's rather that it's not usable everywhere.
But as technology progresses we may have solar panels incorporated into our backyard grass , our building facades , our roofs and some of that is done already.
Also I have read about the idea of extraction of Earth's heat even though I am not fully sure about the feasibility of such adventure.

In any way we should atleast aim to have as much from renewables, that in case we have problems of getting the new major large scale energy production ways into operation before the current ones run out, that we atleast have a backup for some of the most important of our needs.

 

[mheslep]

Nice discussion. Thanks to all the contributors.

Just like all resources, there are production challenges, storage challenges, and distribution challenges.

I think the free market would sort out most of the issues, if government would get out of the way.

Government, IMO, is most in the way of nuclear power in the US, if the 3x or 4x price difference between China and the US is any indication.

 

[mheslep]

This post was powered by rooftop solar. It is 1PM here and overcast, but I am still running the property and pushing a spare 1200 watt onto the grid.

[Edit]: Unsubsidised installed cost of panels here is now about AU$1000 per kW, even if that was to produce only 4 kwh per day, they will keep doing that for 20 years. That is 29200 units @ $0.22 = $6425 worth of power per kW installed at an original cost of only $1000. For me that is economic.

Net present value and discount rate?

At the moment I sell my excess power to the grid during the day. I get power back at night for the same price I sold ...

Which is a rather large subsidy paid by the non-solar neighbors. The fuel portion of the typical electric bill is only a couple cents per kwh. The balance of the bill goes to all that grid infrastructure, running or not.

A few batteries can't cover a full disconnect from that grid for the average residence.

 

[jim hardy]

[Edit]: Unsubsidised installed cost of panels here is now about AU$1000 per kW,

That sure beats the current estimates of $3 to $6 / watt in US.
http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/details/beitrag/us-installed-solar-pv-costs-continue-to-fall_100016490/
http://www.pv-magazine.com/fileadmin/lbnl_us_installed_costs_by_year.jpg

Hmmm stumbled across a nifty NREL site that figures numbers for your address if it's in the US
http://pvwatts.nrel.gov/pvwatts.php
here's what it says for a hypothetical 4kw system for my houseit's a cool site !

If i converted clothes dryer and water heater to propane i might break even in non airconditioning months. My winter heat is a wood burning fireplace plus a small propane gas heater .

Even at $2.50 a watt it'd be a $10,000 investment
to unplug from grid i'd have to add BIG batteries , and maintain them
and give up airconditioning or use the little diesel generator i keep for emergency backup (and wear it out...)

Myself i think i'd rather collect solar to heat water directly , eliminating that 3.5kw load
and have a couple hundred watt panel & battery for 12V DC lights and a TV when power is off
use the diesel generator's starting battery...that way it'll stay charged...

Rooftop solar looks to me affordable for DIY'ers. As OM points out , the parts are getting cheaper. (Google returns panels for $1 a watt.)
But it doesn't replace the grid or central station generators. Yet.

Electric company still enjoys economy of scale and delivers energy dirt cheap.
I cut firewood mostly to retain some semblance of physical strength . You swing an 8 lb splitting maul for an hour and you too will appreciate that steam turbine somewhere out there, sending you hot water by wire.

old jim

 

[jim hardy]

Also I have read about the idea of extraction of Earth's heat even though I am not fully sure about the feasibility of such adventure.

I stumbled across this talk by a geophysics fellow working on that idea
i think you might enjoy it

in some places it works well

 

[anorlunda]

As for free market I don't praise it as much as others.It's not the free market that will save us from energy problems.It's the scientific and technological breakthrough and also some common sense and much needed higher living morale and adapting to times that can only save us from were we are heading.

Sorry, but I disagree. Electric power infrastucture is capital intensive. It requires huge capital investments from people who are free to invest instead in Apple, or Google, or entertainment, or gold, or anything or nothing.. It is the investors who must be convinced, not technologists, not government, not the public. Government can create obstacles and incentives (which IMO mostly backfire), but in the end it is private investors who determine the direction of our energy future.

Many people believe that public utilities use only public money. In most cases, that's not true. They too must raise massive capital injections from the private market to finance their bonds

If the public wants a more direct say in our energy future, they must instruct their pension managers to redirect their funds into the energy industry. The public can also stop consuming so much energy via substantial (even drastic) changes in life styles.
.

 

[jim mcnamara]

@anorlunda -

US electric utilities fall into these groups:
IOU - investor owned
Municipal - owned by a local government
Cooperative - "owned" by the consumers funded with Federal money as very low-rate loans.
All of risk of ownership is, IMO, relegated to the insuror of the loan - the NRECA,
not the consumers.
Transmission cooperatives like TriState provide transmission services for places with huge territories
and few customers.

This page has all of the detailed data. Knock yourself out, there's stuff there I never even knew existed.
http://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/
Specifically note that IOU's which tend to be urban, have the most electric services by a long shot.

Most of the IOU and municpals have a relatively large meter/mile of distribution line. Ex: 40 electric
meters per mile of distribution.

Cooperatives are kind of a loss leader in terms of profitability. They have
often got horrible values, from the efficient use of resources point of view.
Rio Grande Cooperative in the Big Bend area of TX had less than 1 meter per
mile. (an aside): They also had the distinction of the worst transmission line
- Old Leaky was the eponym. It had terrible line loss statistics. Needless to
say, Rio Grande Cooperative is the poster child of why rural electrification
only happened because of government intervention.

Based on the above post I do not buy everything anorlunda said about growth in the industry. For 90% of it, sure.
As a set of fully applicable statements. No way.

 

[OmCheeto]

...

Hmmm stumbled across a nifty NREL site that figures numbers for your address if it's in the US
http://pvwatts.nrel.gov/pvwatts.php
here's what it says for a hypothetical 4kw system for my house

it's a cool site !

I am seriously envious of your Nov-Feb stats:

Solar Rads ( kWh / m2 / day )

Mo___Ol Jim___Ol Om
Nov___3.65____ 1.69
Dec___3.04 ____1.38
Jan____3.46____1.79
Feb___4.18_____2.83​

My sister talked me into finally building a solar thermal collector last summer, which had been on my mind for, gulp, 7 years.

Total cost: $100
Theoretical output: 1500 watts

I'm glad it started raining when it did, as looking at it now, I can double the output for only $10.

But getting back to your 4k system, that would totally supply my summer needs

_______Om's________4k
_______Summer___system
Mo____kwh/mo___output
May___620________497
Jun____412________552
Jul_____420________597
Aug____415________574
Sep____520________507
Oct____356________298​

The winter months though, is why I really appreciated your link.

...
old jim

I would expand on the rest of your comments, but the whores of summer are knocking on my door.
(We get about 3 to 4 months worth up here...)