The Way Humans Get Electricity Is About to Change

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-23/the-way-humans-get-electricity-is-about-to-change-forever

by chollida1 • 11 years ago

223 221 11 years ago

bloomberg.com

josefresco• 11 years ago

inetsee• 11 years ago

The article was so optimistic, right up until the sixth section: "The Climate Is Still Screwed".

disposition2• 11 years ago

Like driving down an endless highway where you can see a huge crash well down the road but you fail to lift your foot off the accelerator.

frandroid• 11 years ago

The part that shocked me (and prefaced section 6) is the chart in section 2: these are all _additions_ to the current energy grid. We're still adding so much coal when we should stop building these plants right now.

Not to mention the continued development of Canadian tar sands, which falls outside the electricity generation equation but is still part of the global emissions picture.

PhasmaFelis• 11 years ago

The next few decades are gonna be a great time to say "I told you so." :-/

merpnderp2• 11 years ago

19 years and 6 months with a statistically insignificant temperature trend. UAH 6.0 brings the UAH data inline with the RSS data. As the years go on, catastrophic warming seems less and less likely - or at least so the hard satellite data says.

http://images.remss.com/msu/msu_time_series.html

mturmon• 11 years ago

Any few decades would be a great time to say that. You just have to pick the right predictions of yours to say "I told you so" about, and be silent about the incorrect ones.

txu• 11 years ago

"The lifetime cost of a photovoltaic solar-power plant will drop by almost half over the next 25 years".

Can someone explain how big of an impact this is?

pjc505• 11 years ago

I'm confused as to whether that means "if you build a plant today, your de-amortized annual running costs will fall" or "in 25 years time, the projected lifetime cost of a solar plant will be half of what it is today". The latter is .. not useful today.

hyperion20102• 11 years ago

Decentralized solar might work in some places, but we have a long, long way to go before our existing grid can start to make use of it. We still need old school generating capacity (read: nuclear) to serve peak demand.

The other reason solar has become so attractive is because the spinup time is so much lower than for other traditional sources.

durkie• 11 years ago

Batteries (like Tesla's PowerWall) are an increasingly-relevant option for peak loads.

I was also under the impression that most peaker plants are likely to be natural gas fired and not nuclear -- as in, easier to build, and less of an investment to recoup if something better/cheaper comes along for peak loads.

mikro2nd2• 11 years ago

Except that nuclear plants do not serve peak demand in any way, unless by "peak" you mean something other than the electrical supply industry means by that term; nukes are by nature very much baseload generation, taking days and weeks to spin up and synchronise. Pumped storage, gas turbine, large-scale hydro,... those are peak supply generation that can be brought onstream in minutes to hours to meet peak demand.

hyperion20102• 11 years ago

And don't forget the good old diesel generators that are the last line of defence when all other capacity is maxed out.

matdrewin2• 11 years ago

It'll be a while before it is cheaper than the hydro-electricity we generate here in Quebec.

But yeah, anywhere else it makes sense. Also wonder how cost effective it is in harsh climates where there is less sun.

fweespeech• 11 years ago

But it never has to be cheaper than hydro-electric. ;)

It just has to be cheaper than pure coal/natural gas/etc. plants.

matdrewin2• 11 years ago

Well I'm not sure about never. I'm sure it's going to happen someday, it's just going to take longer.

As for your 2nd comment, I thought I had covered that with: "But yeah, anywhere else it makes sense."

yxhuvud• 11 years ago

Well, it is never going to be cheaper than existing hydro-electric.

It could well be cheaper than installing new capacity.

cmsmith• 11 years ago

This article does a pretty good job of synthesizing why I'm fairly optimistic about climate change despite believing the scientific models. I think that there is an austerity/flagellant meme within environmental circles that states that we have sinned against the environment, and unless the solution involves a heroic self-sacrifice (a la Kyoto protocol) then we cannot be saved.

In reality, all power is solar power, and innovation and market forces will eventually make it more efficient to skip the fossil-fuel middleman. The process could be accelerated by a carbon tax, but it will happen either way.

Responding to the 'Climate is still screwed' point, once we're on track to stabilizing emissions, geo-engineering methods that were dismissed as stopgaps can always be used to hold the climate over for the next century.

JoshTriplett2• 11 years ago

In reality, all power is solar power

If you're going to use that metaphor, then really, all power is nuclear power, since that's how all that solar energy is generated.

redblacktree• 11 years ago

It's also not entirely true. There is energy emitted by the earth as well.

infogulch• 11 years ago

You mean, to be more specific, that all power is nuclear fusion power. Actually, yes. When fusion reactors are available they'll cut out the middleman again -- and this middleman will be solar.

But to be fair, the sun will remain the largest fusion reactor humans can access for quite some time so solar may continue to be relevant while we are close to it.

spenczar52• 11 years ago

Not quite - tidal power is purely gravitational, and doesn't rely on nuclear forces at all.

fleitz2• 11 years ago

All power is energy, except for matter which needs to be converted into energy.

pjc505• 11 years ago

This is a bit like saying that the people causing panic over Y2K were unwarranted because everyone checked their systems and sorted it out in advance. If nobody had panicked about it, then nothing would have been done.

Solar has become economical at least partly because the subsidies are working, by causing economies of scale in manufacturing, novel process technology, etc.

(However, the single biggest solar development that's a byproduct of the silicon chip industry is the reduced kerf diamond wire saw used for cutting ingots with the minimum of waste)

henrikschroder• 11 years ago

Agreed, appealing to people's conscience to buy the more expensive, but more environmentally friendly option doesn't work at scale, because only the upper-middle class can make that choice consistently. Most people cannot afford it, and won't make the choice.

But once the most environmentally friendly choice is the cheapest choice, then, as if by magic, everyone will switch.

Car pollution too high? Make electric cars cheaper to buy and own,and everyone will switch.

Coal power plant pollution too high? Make solar power plants cheaper, and everyone will switch.

Meat industry pollutes too much/uses too much water/is unethical? Make synthetic meat cheaper, and everyone will switch.

VLM• 11 years ago

I would agree with and extend your remarks that humans tend to be slightly more adaptable than they are usually given credit.

A century ago it was utterly unthinkable that people would drink milk in any format other than quart glass jars delivered daily to a little airlock on the side of the house. My neighbors ancient brick house still has their milk delivery door! Now a days people get their gallon of antibiotics and growth hormones in plastic gallon jugs that last a week or so. Turned out to not be a big deal. Humans adapt, its just what we do.

Can't run a grid at night? Well, then don't. Or more likely a KWh at noon will be a 100th the cost of a KWh at midnight, maybe less. Not being able to run my clothes dryer at 3am sounds a lot like the astroturfers who claim the universe will end if they can't drive their SUV 800 miles daily so no one should be permitted to buy electric cars.

adrianN• 11 years ago

I would be very wary of Geo Engineering approaches. Our models of the global climate are really not complete enough to risk setting of some weird feedback loop by trying to undo the damage we already did. The safest bet is stopping carbon dioxide emissions as soon as possible to avoid catastrophic warming.

I don't believe that the market will do that quickly enough on its own, as the costs of climate change are not accounted in the profits of burning fossil fuels. We really shouldn't burn enough coal to make extracting the rest more expensive than renewable energy.

Lynbarry• 11 years ago

The problem with this is that once we've reached a "perilous level of global warming", it is quite possible that there is no way back.

The 2 degrees target seems to be already out of reach and everything beyond that gets closer and closer to being unpredictable. Of course no one knows what exactly will happen anyway. But as an example: If the arctic permafrost starts to melt methane gets released into the atmosphere which further accelerates everything [1].

I would not hope on some not-yet-existing or not-yet-usable technologies to fix everything we're messing up now. The "eventually" when finally everyone stops using fossil fuels because other kinds of energy are cheaper might be just too late.

[1] http://grist.org/climate-change/2011-12-05-the-brutal-logic-...

netcan8• 11 years ago

This is where geo-engineering can come in. I think climate scientist will be much more comfortable discussing it if it seems we are on track for fixing the underlying causes.

There are bunch of different ideas, most of them involve directly interacting with global temperature by reflecting energy back to space. Injecting sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere for example, mimics how some volcanic eruptions cause temporary cooling. Another is massive scale cloud seeding over the oceans.

One of the scariest things about these ideas is how cheap could be are. What happens if Canada decides it would really prefer a milder winter and sprays the hydro dioxide up there like a bunch of unruly mounties? Then they cut it out and Uzbekistan do the same.

vixen99• 11 years ago

So on which climate sensitivity estimate are you basing your comment, and why are you choosing it in preference to others?

A compilation of at least 30 published studies based upon satellite and ocean observations demonstrate climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 levels after all feedbacks is only about 0.5 C, which is ~7 times less than the 3.2C claimed by the IPCC AR5 modelled mean estimate.

gherkin0• 11 years ago

The problem with this is that once we've reached a "perilous level of global warming", it is quite possible that there is no way back.

IIRC, there have been significant periods in prehistory where there were no ice caps, and technically we're currently in the middle of an ice age [1]. That's not to say that the effects of global warming won't cause severe stresses on our current ecosystems and civilization, but it's an overstatement to say "there's no way back."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_glaciation

pyre3• 11 years ago

In reality, all power is solar power

The Earth's molten core is not solar power.

dreamcompiler2• 11 years ago

It's gravitational power, which also powers the sun.

Sir_Substance• 11 years ago

In reality, all power is solar power

Uwot. Geothermal? Fission?

arca_vorago• 11 years ago

My main issue is that electricity prices are not going to reflect the reduction in costs to the consumer, and instead, between stagnant companies fighting decentralization via corruption of local politics and big monopolies taking over, electricity will be high as ever.

A good example is my local town, where the city council are all bought out, don't even rely on the single electricity provider because they live in a different part of the city, but still keep voting on jacking up prices more and more all while the electrical company that was originally a publicly owned company, (pushed private by our congresscritter), is probably the most hated entity in town for it's shady business practices and constant rate hikes.

(For example, last summer they said they underbilled in May, but didn't catch it till June, and then added the new "back-owed" charges at the new rates in July, one of the hottest times of the year, handily raking in tons more money than they would have. No one did a thing because all our politicians are corrupt. Of course this is in one of the most conservative towns in America, where everyone pays jingoistic lip-service to "family values" like "honesty", but when it really comes down to it we're just as bad as the beltway.)

pakled_engineer• 11 years ago

Public isn't much better, here in Canada the corrupt kleptocrats running my province clean out the profits of the public hydro corp which disappear into general revenue, so the corp has to increase rates every year as they have no way to save any income, and are increasing filled with more crony management positions with sky high salaries.

cfsc3• 11 years ago

This article doesn't mention some serious problems that affect power grids reliant on renewable energies:

1 - The grids becomes vulnerable to the weather. There's no solar energy at night and it's greatly reduced in cloudy days. Wind power is unpredictable and closely matches the output of hydraulic power, so that the two sources can't complement each other. You can check Brazil in recent history to check the effects of droughts in the power grid. In the end there is a need of conventional power plants always ready to backup the grid when the renewable energy is not available.

2 - The majority of losses of the power distribution network are on the last mile, when the voltage is lower and the current is higher. If every house and electric car become consumers and providers to the grid, most power movements occur in the low voltage networks. There's also the issue of batteries storing energy for later consumption. Lithium batteries have a 80%-90% efficiency storing energy.

3 - Since we are talking of the environment, rare earth metals have a very pollutant and energy intensive extraction process which in most cases is not accounted in the environmental cost of solar panels.

Replacing the majority of energy production by renewable energies will result in an net efficiency loss. I would rather support a balanced production with nuclear (fusion?) power plants providing the fixed needs of the grid and renewable energies making up the rest.

bane• 11 years ago

I think we'll see a companion industry for base-load energy storage following pretty fast. Musk's companies are already in on some of this, but I think it will take more forms than just electro-chemical batteries: for example, kinetic or thermal systems can be scaled up quite large and can provide fairly steady base-load ready power.

If this fails, we'll probably still see energy storage taking off in the consumer space as devices are built to simply assume intermittent power...everything will basically have an UPS that will just carry it through to the next time the power is on. We see this already in many places with low development, mobile phones are the preferred access to the internet, personal home generators are common, people keep banks of car batteries around and charged so they can watch the TV or keep the fridge up and running.

If we knew our current base-load systems were going away in 50 years, humanity could engineer solution to keep modernity around.

AngrySkillzz• 11 years ago

Seriously though, I don't understand how our entire grid has made it this far with no storage. All the electricity used in the US is produced at basically the same instant.

Flywheel storage systems would be a great idea to supplement renewable energy, or even to supplement our current electricity generation technologies. Peaking plants are crazy expensive and most of the time base load pretty greatly exceeds actual usage; it would be great to be able to store some of that energy and use it instead of a peaker.

oldpond2• 11 years ago

I would rather support a balanced production with nuclear (fusion?) power plants providing the fixed needs of the grid and renewable energies making up the rest. I agree on the fusion part. The NIF has been strangely silent about their project for the last year or so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility

Phlarp• 11 years ago

NIF is always strangely silent, because they don't exist to drive progress towards fusion based electrical power generation, they exist to validate and test miniaturized nuclear weapon designs.

elektromekatron10• 11 years ago

Saying that you would prefer fusion is lovely, but it is not currently on the table.

athenot2• 11 years ago

Fusion is still in development, but the goal is definitely for it to become a major player.

http://www.iter.org/mach

dougmany• 11 years ago

I am curious about your third point. From my understanding solar panels are 99% sand. I searched around a little and all I could find is that the thin film type need Tellurium. The rarity of Tellurium is comparable to that of platinum. The standard crystalline type do not. Maybe someone else can expand on this.

pjc505• 11 years ago

They don't need a lot of Tellurium, and that's only for the "thin film" cadmium-telluride ones. Most are mono- or poly-crystalline.

There's quite a few nasty intermediate chemicals: http://www.solarindustrymag.com/issues/SI1309/FEAT_05_Hazard... - but the responsible manufacturer will recycle them on-site.

"Rare earth" supply concerns usually means neodymium for magnets. In any case, most of them could be extracted from aluminium mine tailings ("red mud") at moderate expense.

ChrisGranger• 11 years ago

He might be referring to gallium arsenide.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallium_arsenide#Solar_cells_a...

grecy2• 11 years ago

I don't disagree with your points, though here are a few counter-points:

1. Nuclear is vulnerable to the weather too. [1] I can't find a link right now, but I'm quite certain a number of plants in the southern US have been off for a long time due to lack of cooling water.

2. Once each house is producing approximate what it's using, there will be very little movement of power over the grid, so it makes no difference that it's low voltage, high current.

3. Agree 100% - we need to invent better solar panels and more wind.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/health/20iht-nuke.1.578848...

elektromekatron10• 11 years ago

France had to shut down several reactors in the 2003 heatwave due to the river water getting too hot and had to try and cool some of them by spraying water on them from the outside.

http://www.rense.com/general40/reactors.htm

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/aug/12/france.nuclear

Ygg24• 11 years ago

Nuclear is vulnerable to the weather too.

Technically true. Practically, not as much. Solar/Wind power is several magnitutdes more vulnerable to weather than nuclear.

There is a huge difference that you're out of power because a heatwave is hitting your country, and that you're out of power because it's been raining all day or there wasn't enough wind.

comrade1• 11 years ago

Something I don't understand about fusion, doesn't it also produce radioactive waste? Does the containment system get irradiated with high-energy neutrons?

Ok, I looked it up myself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power#Waste_management

It does produce nuclear waste, but with a short half life. The waste is more radioactive than fission waste, but will be pretty much gone in 500 years.

Since it does produce radioactive waste, could fusion also make large areas of the earth uninhabitable like fission when there's an accident?

I used to prefer fission and fusion research but seeing what happened in chernobyl and fukushima I had seconds thoughts, and now seeing how well renewables are doing I don't care for fission and fusion any longer.

Funny story, in Switzerland they release water from mountain reservoirs during the day to produce electricity and sell the surplus to France and Germany at a high price, and then at night they buy nuclear-produced electricity from France at a fraction of the cost and pump the water back up into the mountains to repeat the process the next day.

antimagic• 11 years ago

Fusion accidents are much less likely - they need to be constantly supplied with new fuel for the reaction to continue. If they get hit by an earthquake / terrorist attack / other emergency, the natural tendency of the system is to stop moving things, including the fuel, which means that the source of energy is immediately removed, and the danger with it. At worst the reactor itself may get destroyed, but containment techniques should guarantee minimal radiation escaping to the environment.

Fission on the other hand requires a large quantity of fuel just to get the chain reaction started, so if things go wrong, you'd better have a robust cooling system, because nothing is going to stop that fuel from producing lots of waste heat. The fuel melts and escapes containment, radiating surrounding groundwater and the general environment. Even without catastrophes, fission results in lots of irradiated coolants and 'spent' fuel that is still hot enough that it needs to be stored in water for years after it leaves the reactor.

knodi123• 11 years ago

what I don't get is, isn't "highly radioactive" waste dangerous because it puts out so much energy? So..... maybe we should just plop that waste back into a fission reactor, then?

cfsc3• 11 years ago

There are some experimental IV generation Fission Reactors, which burn the entirety of the nuclear fuel leaving just lighter radioactive elements with shorter half-life. Regarding safety, the Molten-salt Reactor also of IV generation, allows for non catastrophic failures since if the reaction goes out of control, the salt solidifies and stops the reaction instead of exploding by the increased pressure. The downside is that reactor becomes a radioactive rock.

SovietDissident2• 11 years ago

3 - The rare earth mining operations in China which provide the raw materials for solar panels, batteries, and many other electronics products are reportedly quite filthy and require massive energy (diesel trucks, processing plants, etc.) http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/rare-earth-m...

The push for renewable energy would not be possible at its current scale if it weren't so attractive to the political elite (and subsidized as well), for the shortcomings you mentioned. Fossil fuels and nuclear simply better fulfill the role of consistent, cheap, plentiful energy. Unfortunately, even though nuclear is quite safe, has very few emissions, and emits a ton of energy, it takes a Herculean effort to get federal approval to build a plant.

mikeash7• 11 years ago

Fossil fuels are massively subsidized by being allowed to pollute without paying for the consequences. They are not cheap when you account for the externalities they're allowed to impose.

The decision to allow fossil fuel users to poison us all is a political one and it's pretty much the only reason renewables are even still a question instead of being the obvious answer.

pjc505• 11 years ago

The modal emissions from nuclear are low, but the safety worst-case is a circle many square kilometers in diameter rendered uninhabitable (Fukushima) or damage to farming across a continent (Chernobyl).

mattmanser• 11 years ago

Nuclear quite obviously isn't 'quite safe' and I say that as a general supporter. Chernobyl and Fukushima show it's not entirely safe. There's a risk with nuclear, even in the safest reactor.

Who knows what might happen in the future to force a country to run a reactor dangerously, budget cuts, government changes, national unrest, wars, sabotage.

There's always going to be a % risk of something horrible happening. And of course, there's the waste.

outworlder2• 11 years ago

What about the raw materials for "conventional" power plants?

torgoguys2• 11 years ago

Re: 1-I support balanced development (yes, including nuclear, but I get why some don't like it), but solar is AWESOME to pair with central electric production. It actually HELPS out with this issue. Very hot, sunny days is when there is peak power consumption. It's also the peak of solar production and can help avoid utilities having to spin up the (very expensive) temporary peaker plants.

Re: 2-Again, depending on how you look at it, solar helps with this, at least for homeowner rooftop production. If I'm producing my own electricity on-site, the utility company electricity never has to step-down voltages and move that last mile. I'm not using it (or I'm using less of it) so the energy coming from a central power plant never has to come down the "last mile" to me! Feeding back in is where you've got a bit of a point, but it's not really worse than with central production. In general distributed generation is going to be vastly more efficient (from the perspective of line losses) than central generation. Also, why bring up batteries? You don't need batteries to produce solar. If you have extra power, most people are feeding it into the grid, not batteries.

Re: 3-Agreed. Creating the panels is in general a very energy intensive process (in ways unrelated to the rare earth components), not to be ignored. It takes time for an "energy payback" if you will, but it's there. And the panels are very long-lasting.

jdmichal• 11 years ago

Also, why bring up batteries? You don't need batteries to produce solar. If you have extra power, most people are feeding it into the grid, not batteries.

Because feeding back to the grid is only a sustainable solution when a minimal number of entities are doing it. What happens when the majority of entities are feeding back to the grid? Where is all that energy supposed to go? The answer, of course, is storage.

And this isn't just some made up problem either; it happens right now with a different solution. There's a huge slack in power demand at night. Sometimes enough that the power providers will offer deep discounts to bulk buyers to get rid of excess supply. So you see some industries that use massive amounts of power, like aluminum refineries, shift to mostly night operations. But shifting demand around will only help so much.

Now, while distributed generation is fine, I don't think distributed storage is going to work. Storage cost (both economic and ecologic) and efficiencies are simply much better scaled up.

mikeash7• 11 years ago

How does wind power match the output of hydraulic power? Hydro generation can be turned on and off pretty much at will. The only limitation is that the level of your reservoir can't drop below a certain level. But the reservoirs are huge and typically operate far away from the minimum level. Hydro plants are a perfect complement to anything because of this. Unless the region suffers a years-long drought, you can operate the hydro plant at will, and turn it on whenever your less reliable stuff isn't operating. Add a pump and you can even operate it as a gigantic battery. The only problem with hydro power is that there isn't enough of it to run everything. If there were, we wouldn't even think about running anything else.

Losses become less important as things move to renewable. Who cares if your storage batteries lose 20% of your solar power to inefficiencies? That's energy that you were going to just radiate back into space otherwise. If solar becomes really cheap, that just means you slap on some more solar panels and call it a day. And don't forget that solar production matches up well with peak electricity consumption, and transmission losses are small in the common case where production and consumption are co-located.

amorphid• 11 years ago

Hydro is produces little C02 but causes other problems.

http://www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/energy-and-you/affect/hydro.h...

cfsc3• 11 years ago

I will give you the example of my country, Portugal. We have very rainy winters and the reservoirs usually get full. At some points the entire production of the country is provided by hydraulic power (minus the base coal plants that can't be stopped). With rain usually comes a lot of wind. The eolic energy is sent to the Spanish grid for free, since the energy needs are meet by the hydraulic energy alone. In summer, we have very dry weather and the reservoirs are used just for top the demand of peak hours. The wind is irregular and more prevalent at night. Now we are retrofitting some dams to allow pumping, so the excess wind power at night is used to pump water back into the dam. This process unfortunately only has 60 % efficiency. My main point is, for the price of all those eolic towers, pumping dams and gas power plants that backup the renewables, we could build a more reliable nuclear fission power plant at a lower price.

cossatot2• 11 years ago

There are two main issues with hydroelectric power (the power density of the two are not easily comparable as their is too much spatial variability in each):

1) Ecosystem disruption (inundation of land as well as blocking migratory aquatic species and significant changes in the downstream water temperature).

2) Almost all of the potential hydroelectric sites in the US (and much of the developed world) have already been utilized (e.g., [1],[2]). That is, capacity can't really expand much. However, the potential for pumped storage (which is not an energy source) is still high.

Wind power production is still nowhere near at capacity even though it suffers from the deficiencies relative to hydro that you have mentioned.

[1] Smil, Energy Myths and Realities (Excellent, highly recommended), http://www.amazon.com/Energy-Myths-Realities-Bringing-Scienc...

[2]: Prentiss, Energy Revolution: The Physics and Promise of Efficient Technology (not that good if you've read other books on the subject), http://www.amazon.com/Energy-Revolution-Physics-Efficient-Te...

netcan8• 11 years ago

You're right but….

I think the general idea is that moving to renewables turns the problem into a more solvable one, or a bunch of more solvable ones. It's an inherently optimistic idea, but I sort of buy it.

Grids that take more advantage of decentralized production, cleaner solar panel manufacturing (or mineral extraction). That sort of thing.

There's another big thing to add to your list: transport. It's almost all hydrocarbons. Planes, ships, cars, trucks. Same answer for this one. We'll a solar, battery, or hydrogen powered vehicles.

officialjunk• 11 years ago

I think you are forgetting about the fact that we can store energy. This will act as a buffer and not run into the problems you are describing. Of course the buffer size needs to be reasonable and we need to collect and store energy at a rate greater than or equal to the rate of consumption, but I think we can achieve now with current technology.

dragontamer• 11 years ago

Energy storage solutions are getting better, but energy storage research didn't really pickup till the 1990s.

Pumped Hydro (~80% efficiency) is still the best large-scale energy storage mechanism in the USA. Maybe in a few years Redox-Flow Batteries (Or flywheels, or Lithium, or Compressed Air, or...) will catch up to technologies from the 1960s and we can have advanced energy storage.

But for now, the vast vast majority of energy storage is basically pumping water up a hill and letting it back down at a later time. Something like 95% of the entire USA's energy storage is pumped hydro.

khed• 11 years ago

The most damning argument against using solar or other intermittent renewables as the main form of electricity generation is there aren't high eroei storage techniques. http://festkoerper-kernphysik.de/Weissbach_EROI_preprint.pdf

Retric2• 11 years ago

Bad math. If it takes 10kwh to build a 1kwh storage system that seems like an issue. However, if you use that storage system to store 1kwh every day for 20 years that's 10kwh to store 7,300 kwh which is clearly a non issue.

PS: From a cost of energy standpoint you can quickly see that at 10c/kwh all forms of energy storage are way in the black on this issue. Just by looking at their cost vs how much they store over their lifetime. But, more importantly storage is supplemental as during some of the day you’re just directly using the energy without storage.

seasoup• 11 years ago

I think we'll hit the turning point when renewable infrastructure can be built with energy and supplies that are also renewable, sort of like writing the compiler for a programming language in that language.

outworlder2• 11 years ago

You can check Brazil in recent history to check the effects of droughts in the power grid. In the end there is a need of conventional power plants always ready to backup the grid when the renewable energy is not available.

Disclaimer: I'm Brazilian

Sure, you need some conventional powerplants as backup system. However, that's much better than having them run all the time. Don't forget that conventional plants should also have their backups.

The hydroelectric dams do the heavy lifting really. We also have a nationwide energy grid, so we can reallocate resources as necessary. What we actually need is more renewables. The northeast is (almost!) always sunny. If there's not enough sun, it's usually because of rain(increasing reservoir levels) and there's wind (boosting wind power).

The north (near the Amazon forest) has an abundance of rain. The south and southeast are hit and miss, the weather is far less reliable.

With a nationwide power grid, surplus can be reallocated. In case that's insufficient, then the thermoelectric power plants can be started, hopefully running on natural gas or biodiesel. We do have a nuclear power plant, wish we had more.

The majority of losses of the power distribution network are on the last mile

Which is why microgeneration should be encouraged. Having enough local generation to offset the losses alone would be a win.

Since we are talking of the environment, rare earth metals have a very pollutant and energy intensive extraction process which in most cases is not accounted in the environmental cost of solar panels.

Sure. But what about the resources to build conventional power plants? It is not like their extraction, transportation, processing and assembly is free.

Thermoelectric power plants also release harmful gases into the atmosphere for as long as they are operating. Solar panels, wind turbines and hydroelectric dams don't do that (for hydro, I guess they'll release a bunch of methane and other chemicals for quite a while after they are constructed, due to the dead life when the artificial lake is formed).

Fusion is always 10 years away. I wouldn't hold my breath. Nuclear power plants will also require a lot of energy (and pollution!) in order to be constructed. The newest designs are a win in my book, but we can't pretend they don't do environmental damage.

Oh, almost forgot. If you are concerned about rare earth mining, then let us build more solar concentrators. They only require mirrors, no rare earths. The heat exchange medium can also be molten salts, which will retain a lot of thermal energy for the night, without using batteries. They require direct sunlight however, while solar panels will work (at reduced efficiency) even in overcast skies.

mahranch• 11 years ago

rare earth metals have a very pollutant and energy intensive extraction process which in most cases is not accounted in the environmental cost of solar panels.

Thanks to China overplaying their hand, this may be changing. Rare earths were exactly that, rare. And China was quite literally the only country you could get them from (they were the only country that was fine with dealing with all the pollution and waste. Though "dealing with" might be too liberal). They took advantage of their monopoly and used it to bully nations, as well as engage in severe price gouging. They even temporarily banned all rare earth exports to Japan (big electronics producer) back in 2010 because of a minor fishing trawler dispute.

Some countries and business got fed up with China's bullying and began looking at ways to do it cheaper and cleaner. It wasn't that it was "hard" to deal with the waste and pollution, it's that it was expensive to get everything set up and up to IAEA standards. Nobody wanted to invest that much and have China start undercutting the market again.

But China continued to play the bully and demand rose. Finally, it became worth it to open up some new mines (and reopen older ones). Both America and Australia have begun mining operations within the last few years (and meet IAEA environmental standards), and Vietnam signed an agreement to supply Japan with rare earths. Last year, a company in Malaysia was granted a license to refine rare earths with IAEA's seal of approval. They're expected to supply 1/6th the world's rare earths and virtually eliminate China's stranglehold.

kwhitefoot• 11 years ago

Rare earths are not rare; the problem is that they don't often occur in concentrated ores. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earth_element#Geological_...

Animats• 11 years ago

Unless you're making gallium arsenide cells, solar panels don't need rare earths. They're used mostly for motors.

As for rare earth mining, the US is way ahead of China in rare earth mining technology. Molycorp's Mountain Pass, CA rare earth mine is now in full production.[1] No more tailings ponds. There's a big back-end process to recover most of the water and solvents. There's a large amount of solid waste, but it's basically what was in the ground, minus the good stuff. Even the Sierra Club is grudgingly satisfied with the project.[2] The China producers have had to cut their prices drastically to compete. Molycorp is now struggling financially, and increasing output.[3] Not clear who will win, but right now there's a glut of rare earths.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id8hDUT5nHQ [2] http://www.desertreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/DR_Sp... [3] http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/03/23/what-60-m...

Abraln• 11 years ago

That is part of why I prefer tidal power. It is predictable, and because water is so much thicker than air you can get more energy than from wind turbines. They can even be integrated into hurricane protection measures (I forget The specific term).

dredmorbius3• 11 years ago

Much of the variability in solar and wind is predictable, both long term (solar generation at night or during a given season is highly preditable) or near-term (weather forecasts give very good 72-hour estimates of both load and supply). Germany's experience, documented by the Fraunhoffer Institute, are an excellent example of this. There are occasions where per-MWh prices have spiked or fallen drastically, but those are both rare (2-3X annually, for a few hours), and are almost always instances where the forecasts were in error.

The means of dealing with this are to have:

1. Dispatchable load (rather than today's dispatchable supply): high-intensity uses which can be cycled rapidly or on schedule.

2. Storage. Pumped hydro and compressed air energy storage (CAES) are the two most likely options. Synfuels -- hydrogen or synthetic gas or liquid hydrocarbons created from surplus electrical supply, are the most likely options in my book.

3. Standby capacity. Biomass, dispatchable renewable supply (hydro, geothermal), and other fuel-driven capacity (preferably carbon-neutral) seem to be the best bets. I'm pretty bearish on battery solutions in general -- they may work for standby, but the volumes and costs required for long-term supply are enormous. Fuel cell tech might be slightly better.

Rare earths aren't significantly used in solar, and only slightly in wind.

Note that not shifting from fossil fuels isn't an option. Whether due to CO₂ emissions or fuel shortages, that'll have to happen sooner or later.

Nuclear's a possible bridge but faces major long-term obstacles. Most notably that it fails of itself to answer the liquid fuels demand (though, as with renewables, synfuels driven by nuclear generation are possible).

badloginagain• 11 years ago

How do we get power at night? Batteries?

sp332• 11 years ago

Yes. Also we probably use less power at night.

lspears2• 11 years ago

I work at ShaleApps http://shaleapps.com/ a Oil and Gas focused start up in West Virginia. Investment in the industry is plummeting because of low oil prices. The price of oil is around $60 a barrel right now, but the oil sands in North Dakota and Canada are only profitable at >$100. Coal is getting killed in the US for regulator reasons, but I don't see why other countries would make the massive investment to switch to natural gas. I think coal will like be seen as the "bridge fuel" by later generations.

jacquesm• 11 years ago

I don't see why other countries would make the massive investment to switch to natural gas.

Quite a few countries have substantial natural gas reserves.

lspears2• 11 years ago

True but with a lack of certainty in demand few companies will invest to extract those reserves.

tdees40• 11 years ago

My problem with all of this is that, as renewables get cheaper, people use less fossil fuels. But this drives the price of fossil fuels down. Eventually all you're extracting is the low-hanging fruit that can be pulled out of the ground very cheaply and running tight margins on it. So you have kind of a vicious cycle. Meanwhile most people just assume that fossil fuel prices will increase inexorably. I doubt it.

In other words, absent regulation keeping fossil fuel costs high (carbon tax!), I think the shift to renewables will take longer than the optimists think.

throwaway342526• 11 years ago

Only for some types of fossil fuels. Saudi light crude costs very little to extract -- a few dollars a barrel -- whereas shale oil has an extraction cost of around $70-$90.

You're right in that the Saudis will likely never stop extracting. But there are much larger deposits in the Americas that we quite likely will never develop if solar brings down the price of energy.

ZeroGravitas5• 11 years ago

This is a good thing, in fact lower prices/profits for oil is the only way to keep most of it in the ground.

Of course a carbon tax does the same thing, as does removing the tax breaks were still paying to corporations to prospect for yet more oil.

One nice feedback loop is that as countries shift to renewables they have more selfish reasons to introduce carbon taxes to try to stick it to other countries while looking progressive.

netcan8• 11 years ago

Oil is constantly underestimated. Underestimated hopefully in most cases but underestimated nonetheless.

A - Demand for oil is notoriously inelastic. If demand drops a little, a big shift in price will "compensate." If solar starts genuinely digging into oil's market share the oil prices will drop by a lot, fast until almost the same amount of oil gets bought as before. Whatever you are assuming is the "cheaper than oil" flip point, is very likely to be too optimistic. It is likely to just be cheaper than the most expensive marginal 5%.

This is inherently speculative because economics and because real marginal costs of oil production are closely guarded secrets, but over the last 50+ years this has usually been correct. This isn't disruptive tech land where the cheaper-worser becomes the cheaper-better and wins total victory. This is substitutable commodity land where prices drop like rocks but total volume produced barely moves.

^Much cheaper power for slightly less carbon is still a good thing, but more on the prosperity front than the climate change front.

B - There is a lot of oil down there. Even "dry" wells are usually only slightly drier than they were when we started drilling them. We just got the easy oil out and then stopped. FInding oil really means finding "accessible" oil. Our methods of finding and our methods of accessing are technology too. It's advancing, like solar tech is.

This is what "fraking" is. It's a new way of accessing.

C - Speaking of fraking… It's only just begun, probably. It's happening in the states because that's where it happens to have been invented. There is no reason to think that it is not equally applicable in Russia, S. America, the Persian Gulf or anywhere else with oil.

I like the elegance of solar though, and I hope it succeeds. Decentralization seems like it can take a big part of the residential market. In rich countries, a lot of people can afford it and with between incentives, people's general interest and the real estate value (people like investing in their home), it seems like it will have a good run.

In poor and/or dysfunctional places, going off grid is always a favored option. Solar power can do what mobile phone did. Anything that relies on less infrastructure is more suitable for these places. This is an especially attractive idea. Mobile phones/modems mean that phone infrastructure is much easier to come by. Solar + battery could mean the same for electricity. Add in rainwater + home purification systems (progress here too) and all we'll need is hover cars to deal with potholes.

lukasb• 11 years ago

You make an excellent argument for a carbon tax.

netcan8• 11 years ago

No. No. I don't.

I need a Terry Pratchett philosopher to help here, but they're all in the bath.

First, the inelasticity means that a tax is a great way to raise taxes, but a terrible way to reduce use. Oil has gotten more expensive lots of times, when has it ever made people take the bus? We've seen oil price fluctuations. A tax will work just like a natural price hike. A nasty painful tax (with street protests just short of revolution) might get you a 10% reduction in emissions, maybe 30% over a really long time if your tolerance for civil unrest is above average. Probably less. Also, flat taxes hit poor people hard.

Second, a carbon tax is an almost hopeless mission. We're having enough trouble with money taxes. I mean we might be able to make carbon tax or cap-and-trade or something in that family of thing work in a country. We might even be able to get it partially functional in the EU, NAFTA or some group level. We are absolutely not ready to pull off this level of cooperation at international scale yet.

We will have cheating and defecting. Carbon tax evasion and carbon tax loopholes and carbon tax havens, or whatever the gasey equivalents of monetary tax mess are.

A great book (though slightly dated now) on climate change is "Climate Wars" by Gwynne Dyer. He's a shining beacon journalist and an ex soldier-scholar tip. He made the argument (I'm paraphrasing) that we're lucky we hit this problem now, when we have a chance of cooperating at this scale. Imagine if you had to get China, Kazakhstan, Brazil, Canada and everyone else to cooperate in the 1700s. I like the thinking, but I think he's overestimating our chances. It's straddling the border region between optimisms and lunacy.

We have spent the last 20 years trying to come up with a light weight agreement for minimal reductions in rates of expansion. The idea was, put in a framework, make it easy and painless at first. Then turn the crank. We failed! We failed at ground level, well before the point where it even starts to sting. Even though the targets were way under what we need to be targeting in order to avert disaster based on the median models (or the most lenient ones), we failed to agree on them. And, when we did agree them, we failed to meet them.

Technology is the only way out of this.

netcan8• 11 years ago

A question for one of you build-it types.

For large scale energy storage, what's wrong with pumping water up high and then making electricity on the way down. IE, make a dam. Make electricity at night. Refill the top part during the day.

philip238• 11 years ago

Some hydroelectric power plants do that, but storage is finite and it's not amazingly efficient.

netcan8• 11 years ago

If you already have a dam, why would a day or two's worth of water be troublesome?

JorgeGT• 11 years ago

Long but interesting read, with actual numbers and math: http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/11/pump-up-the-stor...

rgbrenner• 11 years ago

already exists. It's called pumped storage hydroelectricity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit...

Here's one (built in 1977.. uses power from the grid), and can produce 3000MW (stores 24000MWH): http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/08/27/2524501/hydro-pu...

Many of them were built to make nuclear plants more efficient.. nuclear plants turbines are most efficient at full power.. so they would store the water during the night (when demand is low) and then use it the next day to handle peak demand.

So they were also made to start generating electricity quickly.. the one above takes 5-10minutes.. but there are others that respond within a minute. Much faster than starting a oil-fired generator.

These account for the vast majority (90%+) of stored capacity worldwide.

There's no reason they couldn't be used to store solar/wind energy.

david-given• 11 years ago

There's a couple in Scotland, where I grew up. My school did a tour once. (The tour was uninspired and rather dull. The nuclear reactor tour was way more interesting.)

They're strictly limited as to how much they can store. Ben Cruachan (the one I visited) can generate 440MW for up to 22 hours before the reservoir empties. It's used for emergencies and buffer usage spikes; Ben Cruachan can spin up in two minutes from standby, or thirty seconds if they have some warning, and is used to provide power while the much slower reacting gas or coal plants rev up. I don't know how quickly it can pump water uphill, but it's probably a lot slower than it consumes it. Round-trip efficiency looks to be ~70%.

According to Wikipedia the UK uses about 40GW of electricity at peak, so you'd need a hundred Ben Cruachans to store enough to run the country for under a day.

Here's a picture of the upper reservoir: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/Cruachan...

See the grey border around the water? Hydro power reservoirs are ecologically pretty bad --- freshwater life isn't equipped to deal with what are basically irregular tides, and so the shorelines are always completely barren.

walshemj3• 11 years ago

But there are a limited number of sites that you can convert and whilst China can just have the army move people out at gun point.

This might be a bit controversial in western democracys I cant imagine the SNP being keen on having large numbers of glens flooded

alphydan• 11 years ago

There's an island in Spain which uses this model to produce most/all of its electricity

http://euanmearns.com/el-hierro-another-model-for-a-sustaina...

(pump water up with cheap wind energy, use the hydro when needed)

netcan8• 11 years ago

Cool!

The system has three basic components – an 11.5 MW wind farm, a 380,000- cubic-meter upper pumped hydro reservoir in a conveniently-located inactive volcanic crater at 709.5 meters elevation and a lower 150,000-cubic-meter reservoir at 56 meters elevation.

I especially like the inactive volcano part. Technology that tempts the gods.

gameshot911• 11 years ago

Re: the essentially unavoidable coming climate change - Perhaps it will be the impetus to learn how to control the climate, knowledge which in turn could be applied to making Mars more habitable? Just fanciful pondering, but cool to think about nonetheless (while also recognizing that for that impetus to exist, we're going to go through some rough times climate-wise for a while).

traviswingo• 11 years ago

With a combination of solar and energy storage overall consumption and demand can drop dramatically. Intelligent storage systems can curb demand and drastically reduce carbon footprint. I'm surprised that wasn't mentioned in the rift about cheap rooftop solar.

ThePhysicist• 11 years ago

As others have already pointed out, the article contains a lot of handwaving arguments and seemingly inaccurate claims.

So, for anyone interested in a more thorough and quantitative discussion of the problem I highly recommend David MacKay's book "Sustainable Energy - Without The Hot Air", which is available for free online:

http://www.withouthotair.com/

It contains detailed discussions of many of the problems that we would face when shifting our energy production to renewable sources and decentralizing it, and he provides a lot of data and calculations to give you a feeling of how to overcome them.

cossatot2• 11 years ago

This is an excellent book, very well reason, quantitative, and clearheaded. I do wish it was a little less UK focused (I have the same problem with many books that are US focused; it's a world problem and leaving out the BRICs is missing a lot of the story).

autokad2• 11 years ago

does anyone else have HUGE issues with their chart? it makes it seem like solar provides something like 20% of the world electricity and hydro electric is not even a mention. meanwhile, as far as I know (wikipedia) solar is only 1% of the worlds total electricity and hydro around 16%

upofadown• 11 years ago

The first chart is energy capacity additions ... which confused me too...

autokad2• 11 years ago

ah, thanks for the clarification. hmm, that seems like a stat cherry picked to suit its narrative

StronglyTyped• 11 years ago

The governments of the world will allow decentralization only to the point where it starts to cut into the tax proceeds of centralized energy. In the U.S., solar isn't going to move to rooftops, it's going to move to panel arrays on large swaths of government-owned land out west where it can still be metered and taxed.

oldmanjay• 11 years ago

This is reminiscent of the argument that marijuana could never be legalized because no one could figure out how to tax it. Different angle of attack, I suppose, but just as inapplicable to reality.

sravfeyn2• 11 years ago

This might be one of the most trivial questions, but I always tried to find the answer, failing always.

How is it that Solar energy is 'clean' and 'renewable', (or for that matter, any natural source of energy that plays a significant role on earth ecology), for if we make use of solar energy, will it not break the environmental equilibrium (temperatures, weather patterns etc) thereby making it 'unclean'? I see that using solar energy doesn't create any direct poisonous residue, but what about the unintended indirect effects? Did researchers already prove that there won'e be any effects or that the effects are far less significant than existing energy sources? (I would like to read actual research, apart from opinions/thoughts)

pjc505• 11 years ago

The amount of energy extracted, even if we were to go to all-solar, is a small fraction of the incident solar energy.

ctdonath3• 11 years ago

We used to say the same about CO2 emissions.

thedufer• 11 years ago

All renewable energy sources that I can think of are processes that used to be (Energy -> Heat) and we turn them into (Energy -> Electricity -> Heat), where Energy is gravitational potential, EM radiation, etc.

The two changes are that the electricity is sometimes stored (so we have some small amount of energy cooped up in batteries instead of out in the world as heat) and that we often move the electricity before turning it into heat. The latter probably exacerbates the heat island effect, although I wouldn't expect it to be worse than pushing electricity from other sources into major cities. The former hardly seems like a problem given that global warming is a concern.

bwanab• 11 years ago

Why would you think there's a possible break in environmental equilibrium due to solar energy. They amount of solar energy entering the atmosphere won't change. The only thing that changes is instead of the energy being wasted, it will be used to generate electricity. Conservation of energy guarantees this.

You asked for research, so here's a link from UCS. While they don't address that particular point, they do point out various potential problems. http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/our-energy-choices/renewa...

hueving3• 11 years ago

You missed the point. He meant the energy you are talking about as 'wasted'.

sravfeyn2• 11 years ago

They amount of solar energy entering the atmosphere won't change

True

The only thing that changes is instead of the energy being wasted

The solar energy that is falling on earth and that is not yet captured by the solar panels is doing a good number of direct things, such as Photosynthesis (not that Photosynthesis is stopped by putting solar panels, but one example of direct things Sun is doing), and an unknown number of indirect things such as Heating the atmosphere by scattering back from earthly-surface (causing many ecological reactions). Would you consider all these effects waste?

If we do know all these effects and also know that redirecting this solar energy into our energy needs won't significantly annihilate the effects, then it's good. I am curious to know about studies in this regard. If there are no studies and my question itself is pointless, I want to be enlightened, because I haven't had a satisfactory explanation yet.

One argument might be that, all the solar energy that's captured and used by us will also generate heat back into atmosphere and thereby not changing the ecological reactions in earth atmosphere - but I just made it up

notatoad• 11 years ago

As long as a solar panel is lower albedo than the object it's installed on, the effects you're mentioning will be an improvement over the baseline effects of human development. If you start replacing fields with solar farms you may have to worry, but for a rooftop installation a solar panel will absorb more energy than the average tar or asphalt shingle roof surface.

kuschku2• 11 years ago

Even on fields its not an issue (especially if you replace fields where sheep graze), as the sun still wanders around, and the animals can stand below the panels comfortably.

ctdonath3• 11 years ago

I've been waiting for that point to emerge, eventually used to denounce "clean renewables" by the same people now promoting them.

When scaled up to the hoped-for levels, we face the prospect of "solar strip-mining" whereby vast areas of land where sunlight used to reach ground is now blocked. How bad would it be?

Just to bracket the subject with a SWAG (corrections welcome): total USA electricity consumption is 534,938,184,000 watts. Practical maximum for solar is about 1,000 watts per square meter (a very optimistic collection & conversion rate). That works out to a minimum of 200 square miles (534 km^2) devoted entirely to solar collection, or 2,000 mi^2 for a more realistic solar efficiency. The upside is the latter is just 0.05% of total USA land area, hopefully with most of that being used on already-erected roofs.

What the climactic effect of 534,938,184,000 solar watts being converted into electricity instead of heat or photosynthesis is, I'll hope someone else figures out whilst I do lunch.

matt4077• 11 years ago

The electricity always ends up as heat.

kuschku2• 11 years ago

Nothing would happen?

Currently that amount of solar energy is converted into heat by reflection.

With solar, it would be converted into electricity, and later back into heat when used in a computer or for cooking.

hueving3• 11 years ago

Well solar is still poisonous, but only during the manufacturing phase.

fapjacks• 11 years ago

Hasn't it been on the verge of changing forever forever?

hngiszmo• 11 years ago

Who else thought the article might be about Skunk Works Fusion Reactor?

brobdingnagian• 11 years ago

How can you make projections like "between now and 2040" with a straight face? It makes me instantly lose respect for an article attempting to be serious.

titzer• 11 years ago

How to lie with graphs: use a log/log plot. In this article the GDP/capita vs the energy consumed/GDP. I know they did this to cram a lot of data onto one compact space, but it's very misleading. Overall the trend is to the lower right, which sounds great, and it's mostly straight lines. But on a log/log plot, all polynomials are straight lines.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Log%E2%80%93log_plot

Second, the energy consumed per capita is not _going down_, it's actually still going up--it's just going up slower than GDP. The fact that GDP keeps going up would also seem to be a good thing, but it isn't always, e.g. if the economy is producing superfluous goods that don't actually improve the quality of life, and if life demands ever more services for basic necessities, this is also not a win.

The simple fact remains that the total resource consumption per person is still rising. And the population is still rising, too.

TheSpiceIsLife6• 11 years ago

From the article:

So even as people rise from poverty to middle class faster than ever, BNEF predicts that global electricity consumption will remain relatively flat. In the next 25 years, global demand will grow about 1.8 percent a year, compared with 3 percent a year from 1990 to 2012. In wealthy OECD countries, power demand will actually decline.

The doubling time at 1.8% per year is 39 years.

This must be some alternate definition of the term 'flat' I was previously unaware of.

graycat• 11 years ago

Okay, let's consider some of that:

First, sure, for the usual renewables, need either storage or transmission lines across continents and/or oceans. So, assume renewables need storage.

=== Home Batteries?

For residential electric power, why have home batteries instead of grid batteries? Likely grid batteries will be cheaper due to economy of scale and also, due to parallelism and better engineering and maintenance, better reliability.

=== Wholesale Electric Prices

We need to keep in mind, for someone in the US paying their local electric utility 12 cents per KWh, that the wholesale price on the grid is surprisingly low. E.g., at

http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/update/wholesale_mark...

can see that the wholesale price is often, depending on geographic location and time, ballpark 1-2 cents per KWh.

That's a current reference, but as I recall not so many years ago the wholesale price was commonly 0.5 cents per KWh.

Lesson: In the US, electric power, the actual power itself, as generated, at the plant, and ready to put on the grid, is surprisingly cheap. So, talking about something cheaper has some challenges.

So where does the rest of the 12 cents go? Sure, to running the grid.

=== Charging for a Grid Connection

So, basically, assuming the wholesale price of 2 cents per KWh, for an electric bill of $100 at 12 cents per KWh,

     (10/12) * 100 = 83.33

dollars are for basically just the grid connection alone.

So, if you tell your electric company that you want to use their power only when there is two feet of snow on your roof, then they will have their public utility commission let them tell you that, fine, and now, the good news, your cost of electricity is reduced from 12 cents per KWh to 2 cents per KWh but, the bad news, there is now a flat fee of $83.33 per month for just the grid connection itself.

Else, ballpark, the electric company loses money, and the public utility commission doesn't much like that.

=== Rugged Rooftop Solar

Roof-top solar will need to be more reliable than asphalt shingles or will need to be replaced, say, each 10 years due just to wind and weather.

Just the labor cost for the replacement will be significant even if the panels are just dirt cheap. If they are cheaper than asphalt shingles -- terrific! Somehow I doubt that rooftop solar panels will be cheaper per square foot than shingles; ask the shingle guys -- I doubt that they are worried!

Gotta keep those solar panels in good shape. So, ballpark need a new roof each, maybe, 10 years.

=== Off the Grid!

Suppose want to have no grid connection at all. Four issues:

(1) If want electric cars, then need one heck of a slug of electric power and the grid again. Else get to drive for groceries maybe once a month. Look up the arithmetic -- e.g., for charging stations, we're talking megawatts.

(2) I'm skeptical that rooftop solar can drive whole house A/C in warm climates. Then, what about the standard summer afternoon thunder storms -- the A/C will be pulling one heck of a load out of the batteries.

Uh, a lot of the load on A/C is not to cool the air but just to condense the humidity as the air cools and keep the humidity nicely below 100%. So, even if the thunder storms cool the air, the A/C still has to remove humidity.

Sure, a totally sealed up house, no air leaks at all, an air to air heat exchanger, special windows, fantastic insulation, etc. can work wonders (if you are not over a radon source), but only a tiny fraction of houses were built that way.

(3) How to heat the house in the winter, say, the snow last winter in Boston? No sunlight to the solar panels for days. So, no electric power even to drive the pump for burning fuel oil.

(4) If want electric heat in the winter (and I believe we should hope for that), then will need the grid again, at least when have two feet of snow on the solar panels. Then for the grid, will be back to that $83.33 a month fixed charge for the grid connection.

=== Cover the US SW

So. sure, cover the US SW with solar panels. Also put wind turbines on the Rockies, all over Kansas, etc.

Assume all this is for free, both capex and opex.

Now, what will the batteries cost?

And the conversions between DC and AC?

Net, we need to hear about not just cheap solar panels but about a lot of really cheap batteries.

Also we're talking paying for those batteries -- capex plus opex -- with ballpark 1 cent per KWh, maybe less, in wholesale electric prices.

=== Tests

To me, the OP fails both the sniff test and the giggle test.

=== The Hidden Agenda

So, what's really going on?

I smell carbon taxes and, net, higher electric bills. No thanks.

=== High Speed Trains

Japan has high speed trains. So do the Chinese. So does France. Just get on board and zip to your destination -- clean, modern, quiet, smooth, comfortable, fast, safe. Right?

Wouldn't you really like to see lots of high speed trains, a nice grid, connecting all the important US cities? Pride of the US! Great for the US infrastructure! Benefits beyond ability to count! Changes everything! Why have we waited so long?

If China can build high speed trains, then surely US engineering can also. Is there something wrong with US engineering; does it need to catch up with China? Do we need to wake up US engineering? Why does the US want to fall behind China?

What to do with the carbon taxes? Sure, high speed trains, general revenues, etc.

=== Cost/Benefit Analysis

Of course, there are problems with the US Federal Government building high speed trains: About 100 years ago a lot of people saw that could build big water resource projects and make the desert bloom.

So, smart real estate entrepreneurs, buy up some cheap desert land, have the Feds build a big water resource project, make the desert bloom and that land valuable, sell the land, and retire rich, all from the generosity of the US taxpayers.

Well, that situation, I didn't actually call it a scam, was the case a few times too often, and then a law was passed about "cost/benefit analysis". Before such a project, had to add up all the costs and all the benefits "to whomsoever they may accrue" and have the benefits bigger than the costs.

Presto. Bingo. Right away that little ratio killed off nearly all the Fed funded water resource projects.

For high speed trains? In the US, nearly all projects for public transportation of people lose buckets of money and would get a grade of flat F on any reasonable cost/benefit analysis. Indeed, in a course I took, the optimal decision for the Baltimore subway, already built and ready to roll, was just to brick up the entrances and f'get about it because, even counting the capex as $0.00, the project failed cost/benefit just from the opex.

States and cities can fund high speed trains, but the Feds can't.

=== Summary

The OP is not about solar panels. Instead it's about something it never mentions -- carbon taxes.

Watch your wallet.

breakyerself• 11 years ago

Not fast enough!

The Way Humans Get Electricity Is About to Change

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