I find this hilarious. Considering the several centuries of outpouring of national treasure, political power, and military might that has gone into securing oil, huge R&D budgets for nuclear (and oil) subsidized for decades and decades by powerful economies to levels dwarfing anything in solar (and let’s not even touch the “hidden” costs of oil and nuclear), to even bring up that solar has “hidden costs” is scandalous. If solar had in parallel received the societal support oil and nuclear (including fusion) have received over the last century (and beyond for oil), it would be one of, if not the, primary source of energy for modern living.

They’re looking at other materials as well, in a quest to find a ubiquitous and cheap material.

In effect, explained Grossman, this makes it possible to produce a “rechargeable heat battery” that can repeatedly store and release heat gathered from sunlight or other sources. In principle, Grossman said, a fuel made from fulvalene diruthenium, when its stored heat is released, “can get as hot as 200 degrees C, plenty hot enough to heat your home, or even to run an engine to produce electricity.”

Storing thermal energy in chemical form to make a rechargeable heat battery.

I take it that you have gone away on holidays, …

Yes 30% is exactly what I would have expected.

Then why did you raise such an obvious red herring?

Peter used a model installation that did not track

I just demonstrated that tracking does not change the conclusion.

and was located in a non optimal location, drew conclusions then extended those conclusion to the entire industry,

Do you think that basing the analysis on a more optimal location than Queanbeayan will change the conclusion?

Bear in mind that to change the conclusion we are looking to offset a 20x cost and 3-400x land area advantage to the nuclear option. Choosing a more optimal location might improve the solar numbers by a few 10s %, not thousands. Also bear in mind that to approach the scale of generation to meet demand, the industry would necessarily need to exploit sub optimal sites. You can’t just say the entire solar generation industry will reside at optimal sites.

If you disagree with this, please state why, and quantify it.

based his comparison upon a demand/feed structure that was inapropriate,

Can you please explain why the demand/feed structure was inapropriate?

made totally unrealistic assumptions on energy storage requirements while ignoring global industry experience, applied costing assumptions for which there was no evidence,

Why are the energy requirement assumptions unrealistic?

What energy requirement assumptions do you believe he should have used instead?

Can you cite the global industry experience that you believe invalidates Peter’s assumptions?

………and then he took his conclusions and applied them to an industry which was not even mentioned in his treatise.

I think you refer to solar PV vs solar CSP. Peter’s conclusions are largely associated with the nature of the resource and are common for PV and CSP. Peter did update this work with a CSP analysis here:

Solar realities and transmission costs – addendum

As you might expect, nothing changes, because the same fundamental problems of intermittency and storage are in effect.

Are there any other issues you have with the analysis? And if so, please try to state them in the specific, and in quantitative terms. Broad generalities, “industry experience”, etc., will not wash.

Where exactly did you post that link?

You don’t seem to read anything. You just skip over and go onto pour out some more assertions without reading and understanding what others are saying.

Go back up this thread to my comment at 15 May 2010 at 22.25.

Yes 30% is exactly what I would have expected. The next item is you have to recognise that a solar based system has its peak at a different time so the whole NEM’s thing is not the correct basis for evaluation. But it is noted that a midday energy peak with offpeak consumption occuring at that time might stress the cabling system in some circumstances. Then you have to demonstrate where abouts in central Australia is a 90 day continuous storage capacity required.

I’m not contesting his conclusion on PV equivalence, even though I think it is probably off with the fairies, but I am contesting his translation of those conclusions to CSP. And provided highly reliable evidence that proves that his assessment of the cost per gigawatt of baseload CSP should be in the area of 6 billion not 140 billion. That is what this is about.

All Peter has to do is demonstrate how he concluded that 1 gigawatt of baseload CSP would cost 140 billion dollars.

http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/01/09/emission-cuts-realities/#comment-65305

Don’t drag me into this. I didn’t direct you anywhere. I do believe that John Morgan may have provided you with a link to the appropriate thread.

The answer, Peter is in the SolarPaces document. Did you read it?

Bilb, I posted a reply to your comments. You obviously haven’t read it. If you read it you’ll find the replies to your comments and the answer to youyr question.

It is pretty pointless trying to hold a discussion with you until you settle down and are prepared to discuss issues, as opposed to simply throwing out unsupported assertions. I hope we can progress to a rational discussion.

Pleas follow the link to my reply to your comments, then lets continue on the “Emission Cuts Realities” thread for the reason I gave.

Lets focus on the fixed vs tracking array. Tracking has been dealt with above. It turns out, it doesn’t matter. The small additional output from a tracking array does not change the orders of magnitude of difference in cost or in CO2 abatement.

Lets quantify the difference between a fixed and tracking collector.

Data for fixed plate collectors vs tracking collectors is available for the US at http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/old_data/nsrdb/redbook/atlas/Table.html. Lets consider average insolation for August (over 30 years) for fixed collectors tilted south at the site latitude, and compare it to solar collectors that track the sun in two angles.
The insolation numbers vary according to location. Lets take the numbers for Hawaii.

The August 30-year average insolation for fixed collectors is 5.13 kWh/m^2/day.
The August 30-year average insolation for 2D tracking collectors is 6.61 kWh/m^2/day.

A tracking array in Hawaii in August does about 29% better than a fixed array. . The percentage improvement is about the same elsewhere in the US, and at other times of the year. Its probably about the same in the mid latitudes here. In particular, its probably about the same in Queanbeyan.

So Peter’s cruelly underestimated solar PV output by a factor of 1.3x. Does this change his conclusion?

Peter’s summary conclusion is,

The capital cost would be 25 times more than nuclear power. The least-cost solar option would require 400 times more land area and emit 20 times more CO2 than nuclear power.

Before going on, just note that we are going to make about a 1.3x adjustment to Peter’s numbers in favour of the solar pv option, and check whether it makes up for factors of 20-400x. We know already how this will turn out.

So, the capital cost $/MWhr would probably not be much different, since part or all of the 30% greater plant output has to be paid for with more expensive tracking collectors. And you also need to invest in dams, pumps and turbines, or a lot of batteries. And transmission. So the 30% benefit of tracking first gets eaten up by more expensive collectors, and then diluted by other major capex in the solar plant.

If a tracking system were more economical than non tracking because of the higher output, you would expect any large PV array for bulk generation of power would track the sun. Well, someone built one in Queanbeyan (the case that Peter analysed) which doesn’t, apparently. I can only guess they looked at the ROI for cheaper fixed PVs vs higher output but more expensive tracking collectors, and found power from the fixed array was more economical.

This suggests the capital costs per kWhr do not come down substantially for tracking arrays.

On the land area, suppose it is reduced by a factor of 1.3. So the solar pv only occupies 300x the land area of a nuclear plant. Does this change matters, from the original 400x factor? Frankly, I don’t think so.

Its not clear to me how the lifecycle co2 emissions have been calculated. But, to keep focus on the question of whether a fixed collector or tracking collector changes the conclusion, I’ll take the factor of 20x at face value. If the co2 emissions are reduced, the best that could be hoped for would be a reduction of 1.3x, to only 15x as much co2 as nuclear. But, since the collectors are not the only contributor to plant lifecycle co2 emissions, it won’t be that good. Its probably still closer to 20x than 15x the co2 output.

So, to conclude – is Lang’s conclusion that nuclear is far superior on the key metrics than solar pv changed if we consider a tracking array rather than a fixed array? Lets see:

- the capital cost does not look like it goes down, in fact it probably goes up a bit
- the land area might come down, but not by enough to have any policy implication, and is still hundreds of times larger than a nuclear generator
- the co2 emissions do not change enough to change any policy assessment away from Peter’s conclusion

So I don’t see how deploying tracking arrays changes Peter’s headline conclusion.

Someones figures are out. Is it yours, or theirs? It is up to you to respond by reading their document and indicating where they are wrong if you insist that your figure is correct.

@ http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/08/16/solar-power-realities-supply-demand-storage-and-costs/#comment-65812

You posted a similar comment on the John Quiggan web site. I replied; however, my post has been deleted. Luckily I posted my reply here: http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/01/09/emission-cuts-realities/#comment-65305

I would be pleased to have a constructive discussion and learn from each other. I am sure others would appreciate the discussion. We’d need to keep it rational for it to be of any benefit. If you do want to continue, can I urge you to continue on the “Emission Cuts Realities” thread. The reason is because that is the thread where all the previous papers are pulled together. http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/01/09/emission-cuts-realities/

My reading of his (Peter’s) paper is that it was not at all a competent study, and his high handed approach just pissed me off.

If I got a ‘high handed’ with my replies I apologise. However, you may want to consider whether I may have responded to your repeated ‘high handed approach’ as illustrated by your reply to my first post: http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2010/05/06/nuclear-power-the-last-post/comment-page-6/#comment-262328. Your subsequent comments continued in the same tone, e.g. http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2010/05/06/nuclear-power-the-last-post/comment-page-8/#comment-262476

I was also pissed off that you repeatedly avoided fulfilling the undertaking you made to provide the basis of your estimate: http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2010/05/06/nuclear-power-the-last-post/comment-page-7/#comment-262366

I would be happy to engage in a rational discussion with you. We’d need to slow the pace down and tackle one issue at a time. I’d suggest we should define, up front, what it is we want to debate. For example, nuclear versus CST on the basis of cost, safety and sustainability. We’d need to cover one at a time. I’d suggest we start with cost.

Peter used a model installation that did not track and was located in a non optimal location, drew conclusions then extended those conclusion to the entire industry, based his comparison upon a demand/feed structure that was inapropriate, made totally unrealistic assumptions on energy storage requirements while ignoring global industry experience, applied costing assumptions for which there was no evidence,………and then he took his conclusions and applied them to an industry which was not even mentioned in his treatise.

The upshot was that he decided that CSP with storage would cost 140 billion dollars per gigawatt and ignored the paper (linked by Fran Barlow) from SolarPaces written by a team of government backed industry developmental scientists who provided qualified proof that full baseload CSP including backup and storage can be supplied for 6 billion dollars/euros. I can demonstrate that that is absolutely supportable in several ways.

My reading of his (Peter’s) paper is that it was not at all a competent study, and his high handed approach just pissed me off.

I challenge you to analyse and find fault with Dr Franz Trieb and his colleagues, and their paper to the SolarPaces conference, which if you were following the kerfuffle at JQ you will have a copy of.