The last Open Thread has screamed past 1000 comments, so time for a new one… (And for those who are wondering why there have been so few posts on BNC recently, well… there are reasons. I will post again soon[ish] to explain more, and discuss the future directions of this blog/website. Meanwhile, on with the productive discussion!)
The Open Thread is a general discussion forum, where you can talk about whatever you like — there is nothing ‘off topic’ here — within reason. So get up on your soap box! The standard commenting rules of courtesy apply, and at the very least your chat should relate to the general content of this blog.
The sort of things that belong on this thread include general enquiries, soapbox philosophy, meandering trains of argument that move dynamically from one point of contention to another, and so on — as long as the comments adhere to the broad BNC themes of sustainable energy, climate change mitigation and policy, energy security, climate impacts, etc.
Brave New Climate 
1,057 replies on “Open Thread 24”
I’ll subscribe to this Open Thread by asking my usual: how are we going to share our message with the lay person? Do we need to dumb it down a bit for the average Aussie?
PS: Edward, back off man! ;-) Australians are not all rushing out to get maths and physics degrees, OK? PR solutions in the real world here, thanks.
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Eclipse Now: Yes, I know that Australians and other people from everywhere are not all rushing out to get maths and physics degrees. That is why we are about to experience the 200,000 year tragedy.
As for PR, the other side has all the power. We have no means, such as money, with which to “share our message with the lay person.” We need at least several billion dollars per year to do as you wish. The only alternative that I know of is education in math and science. If there is another option, please tell us what it is.
I disagree with Craig Dilworth, who wrote the book: “Too Smart for our Own Good.” We are not too smart. We are too stupid. Dilworth says we increase technology only after being pressured to do so by a high death rate; and that the most primitive hunter-gatherers are the best off and the happiest. That would mean that we will do something about GW after the population has begun to crash. Dilworth’s prognosis seems accurate. The problem is that we have no such luxury of waiting this time. We must do the jump to the next higher level before the crash or it is all over.
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It looks as though CO2 emissions may cause some problems which have barely been addressed. I’m referring to a reduction of the percentage of O2 in the atmosphere.
CO2 results in ocean acidification which could kill off many of the microorganisms which inhale CO2 and exhale O2. We may be able to deal with global warming but if atmospheric O2 dropped very much we’d have problems with which we would be unable to deal. More research should be done on this.
Also, we need a better way to deal with the position that renewables can promptly solve all our CO2 emissions problems. As I see it, there should at least be a “plan B” position to fall back upon if we find, as I suspect, that renewables are useful only in special circumstances. The “plan B” should include rapidly building more of our most advanced current design nuclear power plants while doing more R & D to develop a better nuclear technology. Then, if renewables are demonstrated capable of doing the job, we can halt the nuclear projects and go exclusively with renewables. If, as I suspect, it is found that renewables cannot do the job, we will have a fall back position, i.e., nuclear.
It has been wisely stated that we should not count our chickens before they hatch and that we should not put all of our eggs into one basket, yet that seems to be what we are unwisely doing.
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Barry I think the problem we are having with the nuclear issue is people are still more worried about an nuclear accident than the effects of climate change on the planet. Somehow people have to get over their fear of nuclear power. I just watched this video on the NY governor’s wanting to close Indian Plant. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=te44TuIqGKk
fear still rules anti nuclear decisions. Somehow we have to show everyone that nuclear in the future is not going to be an option but is a requirement.
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Here is a clue: Reference book: “The Rise of Nuclear Fear” by Spencer Weart. The fear started thousands or millions of years ago with the fear of witches, wizardry, magic etc. The design of the human brain is very bad. See “Religion Explained” by Pascal Boyer.
“The Rise of Nuclear Fear” by Spencer Weart needs “Religion Explained” as background. A lot of modern first world people do magical thinking rather than logical or scientific thinking [not all logical thinking is scientific]. That is, they think of technology and things they don’t understand as magic. That is especially true of anything “nuclear.”
That is one reason why I say that education is the answer. You have to teach everybody that truth comes from experiments, not ancient books.
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Regarding “climate change mitigation and policy“, carbon pricing is the wrong approach and almost certainly will fail: “Why carbon pricing will not succeed” http://anglejournal.com/article/2015-11-why-carbon-pricing-will-not-succeed/
In fact, any ‘command and control’ policies that would increase the cost of energy almost certainly are not sustainable. Therefore, they are highly unlikely to succeed in delivering the hypothesized benefits of reduced climate damages. If carbon pricing is the least cost way to reduce global emissions, as is often claimed, then any other command and control policy will be more expensive. ‘Command and control’ policies are the wrong approach. The alternative that will almost certainly succeed – has been succeeding since humans first began to communicate and trade – is to remove the impediments to low emissions electricity generation technologies. The impediments have been blocking progress for 50 years: here’s evidence to support that statement: ‘Nuclear power learning rates: policy implications‘ https://judithcurry.com/2016/03/13/nuclear-power-learning-rates-policy-implications/
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What do you mean by “carbon pricing?” Do you mean a tax or do you mean fee and 100% dividend? Why are you talking about international treaty rather than taxing the carbon cost of products at the port of entry?
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We can prove that wind and solar (the only renewables that are scalable, thus the only ones that count) cannot solve our CO2 problems. Neither Germany nor Denmark, the self-appointed leaders of the movement, have been able to get their grid-related emissions even as low as 350 gCO2/kWh. Sweden, France and Ontario are comfortably below 100 grams. Joe Wheatley and Argonne National Lab have done some good work showing that the intrinsic unreliability of wind and solar makes them unable to slash CO2 emissions, as the need to follow their surges and dips requires the expenditure of fuel that otherwise wouldn’t be needed. This leads to a situation of rapidly diminishing returns as the fraction of wind and solar increases.
The problem is to get this into a sound-bite form that the public can digest.
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@freggersjr
Surely it’s rather the other way around.
Take California for instance. They have a target of 55% reduction of CO2 emissions from electricity generation by 2030, though maybe it would be better to hit this figure sooner. 55% can be achieved fastest with a mixture of local solar PV (cheap enough now and much cheaper by 2025) and wind in Wyoming (capacity factor estimated at 46% by NREL) with 800 mile transmission lines back to California.
With a 20 year lifetime the wind and solar replacements will be required starting 2030 or even earlier as some California renewables were installated some time ago. Nuclear can then be installed starting 2030 to eliminate the last 45% of emissions by replacing most wind and solar. If there is a cheap enough renewables + storage solution before 2045 then complete the nuclear under construction at that point and see what you end up with.
Alternatively, see China’s strategy which is to install all forms of low-carbon generation (hydro, wind, nuclear, solar) as fast as possible. In China’s case the total demand is still growing significantly though, so they really have very little choice.
The clear losing strategy on global warming is to do nothing until new nuclear is ready to generate starting in 2025.
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Peter Davies: Why don’t I put you on ignore? Factory built nuclear can be installed much faster than that. China can build a nuclear power plant in under 4 years.
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Nuclear power is the cheapest way for GB to decarbonise its electricity system https://judithcurry.com/2016/01/19/is-nuclear-the-cheapest-way-to-decarbonize-electricity/. This result is probably broadly applicable. And it could be very much cheaper if we remove the world, led by the US, removes the impediments that have been holding back nuclear progress for 50 years.
The results presented in the ERP analysis http://erpuk.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/ERP-Flex-Man-Full-Report.pdf show all or mostly new nuclear capacity is likely to be the cheapest way to decarbonise the GB electricity system to meet the recommended 50 g CO2/kWh target. The ERP analysis used the central estimates from the DECC commissioned Parsons and Brinkerhoff reports (17 July, 2013) here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/energy-generation-cost-projections.
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One of the arguments that is used to oppose nuclear power is that it is too expensive. However, I suspect that it has intentionally been made to expensive to expedite opposing it.
On the site 2greenenergy.com I have made many posts supporting nuclear power and repeatedly pointed out that intermittent sources of power cannot provide adequate reliable power for most large countries without huge amounts of energy storage capability which with current technology simply is not practical. The wishful thinking response is that it will surely become available. Most of the posts on that site are unrealistic. However, to their credit, they will post comments which disagree with their position.
Another site which opposes nuclear power is http://www.interfaithpowerandlight.org.
I suggest that people here make posts on those two sites to support nuclear power and explain that the limitations of wind and solar power are such that they are suitable only in certain rather limited situations.
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Freggersjr — On neither of the sites you mention can I find a place to comment.
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David,
I have left comments on both.
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Freggersjr — That provides no guidance.
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For 2green energy, goto the following:
2greenenergy.com
Then click on Blog
Scroll down to “Clean Energy Topics” under which is a list.
Clicking on anything in the list will bring up related subjects.
From the chosen subject it will be possible to select an article on which it is possible to comment.
Also, from the home page you can subscribe to the newsletter by clicking on “Subscribe to our Newsletter”.
For interfaith power and light, goto the following:
http://www.interfaithpowerandlight.org
From there one can do several things. I suggest clicking the pull-down menu “Get Involved” then navigating to “Public Policy” and “Policy Positions”.
Or, you can go directly to a page on which you can find statements opposing nuclear power:
http://www.interfaithpowerandlight.org/?s=nuclear+power
On that page, you can do a search on “nuclear power”.
For making comments, it is necessary to click on “Contact Us” on the home page. From there one can send an email. I suggest sending an email to The Rev. Canon Sally G. Bingham, the president and founder. She is a priest in the Episcopal Church. The Episcopal Church emphasizes open discussion, considering all positions, and reasoning clearly. In IPL she doesn’t seem to be following that tradition, a fact that should be pointed out to her.
I hope that this helps.
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2greenenergy is a bad web site. Renewable energy investors have often and will often loose their shirts. Wind turbines are being torn down, but I did not keep that reference.
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freggersjr: http://www.interfaithpowerandlight.org/?s=nuclear+power
is an anti-nuclear web site. SOMEbody has to plan for nuclear power because nuclear is the only option that actually works.
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It is encouraging that the churches are posing climate change as an issue for people with conscience. They may be able to guide the broad mass of public opinion as storms gather.
This site shows no intellectual basis more modern than Amory Lovins, so they have a ways to go yet. They do offer a “free download” by way of explanation, but it requires you to surrender your emaddress to a marketing organisation, so I didn’t. Developing their position requires dialogue, but as DBB implies, it is not evident yet.
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You forgot to include the URL for the web site you are talking about.
Help from religions or clerics: Beware. You don’t know what they will say next. You may know their dogma, but it is clearly dogma, not science.
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2greenenergy does permit making posts in support of nuclear power. It also permits posts which point out the limitations of renewable systems. In fact, there are several of us who often make such posts.
When I telephoned IPL I was told that they were too busy to take time to study nuclear power. My response was that they darn well better take the time to study nuclear power from all viewpoints else it made no sense for anyone to take them seriously.
It is not a good idea to ignore anti-nuclear organizations. They have considerable influence which must be opposed.
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Much research is focussing on grid level storage of electricity as chemical energy a.k.a. batteries. Many different battery designs are being proposed and tested. It is difficult to make a case against wind and solar in the realm of public opinion because most people believe that eventually we will develop grid level storage technology.
I think that those who have faith in battery technology have not considered how much storage is required. I believe we need to look at each emergent battery technology and determine just how much of the elements that compose the anodes and cathodes we need to extract from the earth’s crust in order to make the batteries we would need to make wind and solar viable.
My gut tells me that there isn’t enough recoverable lead or lithium or vanadium etc. to make enough batteries to make wind and solar viable.
I would ask that anyone with expertise in this area catalogue the different competing emerging battery technologies, list the elements associated with each battery design and determine the amount of each element that would be required to produce enough batteries to provide us with “X” number of days of storage given our current levels of energy consumption.
I have read that there isn’t enough recoverable lead in the earth’s crust to produce enough lead acid batteries to meet the needs of the US alone.
Such a reality check might serve to dampen enthusiasm for wind and solar power.
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PHILIP DE GROOT: It would be helpful to know a little chemistry. Chemical reactions are low energy per atom. That is why batteries give you 1 to 3 volts.
Also see:
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/08/nation-sized-battery/
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The problem is there are too many days of low renewable power that happen in a row. You cant store enough energy to cover these periods of cloudy weather and low wind. There are places in the world this is not a problem but in inland its a real problem.
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@Edward,
China can install a wind farm in less than a year.
The fastest way to reduce Chinese CO2 emissions is to install three of wind, solar and nuclear as fast as possible. But there are practical limits to how fast they can be deployed.
In the windiest provinces of Gansu and Inner Mongolia (North and North West) they are waiting for the completion of further HVDC lines to carry the power to the population centres in the North East. 154GW will be completed in the next few years and 26GW of these are expected to provide additional wind transmission capability in 2016 and 2017. In the meantime wind installations continue at a furious pace where the transmission networks can cope.
After the inevitable post-Fukushima Chinese re-appraisal of nuclear power safety, nuclear reactors will only be installed on the coast, at least for a while. For a totalitarian country which censors opinions there has been a very heated public debate about and demonstrations against the expansion of nuclear energy. The anti-nuclear movement viw is that nuclear is safe enough on the coast where water supplies are not in danger, but says that inland nuclear is too risky.
Although we on this site generally believe that the risk from properly-constructed nuclear is minimal, the perception of some Chinese is understandably different – and not because of the technology itself. China has notable examples of corruption where infrastructure should have been constructed to be earthquake-proof, but government officials decided to build to a lower standard of construction and pocket the difference instead. The Banquio Dam collapse and numerous schools collapses in the 2008 Earthquake are two good examples where many thousands of people lost their lives as a result of government corruption. Nuclear is only safe when built properly.
Many corrupt officials have been sacked and imprisoned in the few years since Xi Jinping took over. However, with that historical context, many Chinese may still see quick four year builds as something to worry about, rather than a cause for optimism. Hopefully, the “wait and see” attitude to inland nuclear will change to approval in a year or two once it is proven that coastal nuclear systems have indeed all been built to the correct rigorous standards.
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Edward says I forgot a URL. Since I was replying to Freggersjr above –
I suggest reading what he and DBB were saying.
He is linking us to a church movement against climate change.
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Philip De Groot, you are correct. For a run down on the feasibility of all conceivable forms of energy storage for making wind and solar viable without thermal “backup”, have a read of the following post at Energy Matters
http://euanmearns.com/is-large-scale-energy-storage-dead/
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“How cheap can energy storage get? Pretty darn cheap.”
Ramez Naam
offers a sensible discussion of batteries, indicating there is enough lithium for some time to come. Note well how inexpensive batteries have to become before one can store even a day’s worth.
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Take a look at the Li-ion batteries in your cell phone or house phone if you can (some are sealed). Note they all say 3.7V.
There is a lot of research in different battery active materials. One of these is sodium instead of lithium. Both sodium and lithium are present in sea water in quantities beyond anything we might require. However, sodium is dirt cheap to extract – you flood a shallow area with sea water then let the sun evaporate the water and you get large quantities of not-that-pure sodium chloride (otherwise known as sea salt if you are putting it on food).
Sodium batteries have a lower specific energy than lithium, so are too heavy for electric vehicles. But as grid storage batteries there is no penalty for weight and they would be fine.
However, batteries are really only cost-effective for up to a day of grid storage. Beyond that tiers of cheaper, technologies should be used to cover different periods of storage.
Storage of the hot salt used in most solar tower thermal generation in the sub-tropics. With a heat loss of 0.5 degrees C per day from the Solar Reserve tanks this is suitable for only a few days. More time than that you have to double the solar thermal heat capture capacity (not generation) just to keep the hot salt hot enough all the time.
Pumped storage hydro – great for any period of time if you have the geography for it, and even more so if you can convert existing extensive hydro behind dams to pumped hydro without having to build more dams (e.g. Norway).
Storage of renewable hydrogen produced from electrolysis from cheap wind or solar power – suitable for weeks or months of storage. Generation uses modified CCGT (cheap) or fuel cells (currently expensive). But because round trip efficiency is a maximum of 43% you don’t want to be generating more than 10% of your power this way. That’s why you need tiers of different types of storage to keep storage costs of renewable energy to a minimum by balancing the costs of the different storage media with the costs of round-trip inefficiencies of less than 100%.
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Problem 1: Have you ever tried storing hydrogen? Storing hydrogen in tanks won’t work well because hydrogen is too “leaky”. Tanks meant for methane are even leakier.
The army used to use tritium lamps as calibration lights for the sight systems for cannons. The tritium lights would be mounted at the muzzle end for the sight system to aim at. A tritium lamp is a glass capsule filled with heavy hydrogen, tritium. Sometimes the capsule breaks and must be replaced. A person at one of our repair facilities had a bucket full of broken tritium lamps beside his desk. Panic ensued when the NRC [Nuclear Regulatory Commission] found out about it because the tritium was not gone.
Glass is a sponge, not a container, for hydrogen. The person near the bucket of broken tritium lamps absorbed tritium. We had to design an alternative sighting lamp very quickly. TACOM’s license to own tritium was revoked.
When hydrogen gas touches a solid surface, it sticks. The single electrons leave the gas molecule, leaving only protons. A proton is 1/1000 the size of an atom, so the proton easily wanders through any material. If the material is a conductor, of course the electron wanders as well. The proton can exit the material at any place where it can get an electron, which is any place.
The natural gas pipelines and tanks are not perfect at containing methane. They typically leak at valves, but some natural gas tanks also expand and contract.
Problem 2: Hydrogen causes steel to become brittle. People have shipped hydrogen through pipelines for more than a century. But we don’t do it a lot because steel is a sponge for hydrogen. Besides loosing hydrogen out the sides of the pipe, you also get an easily broken pipe and lots of maintenance.
Problem 3: Hydrogen fires are invisible. You could walk into a hydrogen fire because you don’t know it is there. It has happened.
“renewable hydrogen from electrolysis”
As long as you remember:
Hydrogen leaks out of any container
Any material is a sponge rather than a wall for hydrogen
hydrogen causes steel to become brittle
hydrogen flame is invisible
the fuel tank would have to be enormous
To keep hydrogen a liquid requires expenditure of a lot of energy to run the refrigerator
There are so many practical difficulties that hydrogen is really not a good way to store energy.
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You may think energy storage is getting cheap but when you design the huge amount of storage needed to cover periods of low renewables power, the total cost of storage is still very high.
I hope those Chinese nuclear plants are high enough to not be flooded by ocean rises.
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Look more carefully at the containment building.
American containment buildings are a minimum of 1 meter [about 39 inches] thick and HEAVILY reinforced with steel. There is so much steel reinforcing rod that when you look at one under construction, you wonder where there will be any room for concrete. The containment building also has a ½ inch thick steel liner. The San Onofre reactor in California has a containment building with 6 foot thick walls, ceiling and floor.
There are no holes for water to get in on the lowest level. There is a way for the robot to remove and replace fuel bundles above the reactor level.
Sea level will not rise fast enough to do anything to a reactor. The tsunami failed to destroy the containment buildings in Fukushima.
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Please make sure you are sitting properly on a chair before you read my next post below, because I would not like to be responsible for you falling off.
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New Dubai auction solar PV prices for 800MW
And the bid? 2.99 US cents/kWh (unsubsidised).
Dubai has very cheap labour available and the price would not be quite this low in USA, Europe or Australia.
Another quote from the top link :
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No chance of falling off of chair. You didn’t include the cost of energy storage for a whole week. If you had, you would find out that renewables are still, and will always be, unaffordable at utility scale.
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Its not as much that renewables are not affordable. Some renewable energy is affordable. What is not affordable is the energy storage capacity. Grids have no way to pay for the storage which is very expensive if it contains many hours of storage. Without storage we cannot transition off fossil fuels. Thus we are at a dead end with renewables, storage is necessary, but we can’t fund the storage. There is a case for storage at homes however.
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Storage at home would double the price of your house. Very few people could afford that.
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Storage at your house might be much more attractive if you have an EV, 6 kW of solar, and take a kW of nuclear power from a contract. Look at the last page of this presentation http://egpreston.com/PrestonFeb2016.pdf The storage smooths out your daily power usage.
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Looking back in my studies I see that in addition to a zero CO2 plan for ERCOT http://ercot.com of 144,000 MW renewables plus a 50,000 MW battery with 330 hours of storage, I see there is another alternative plan I had developed that works for near 100% CO2 reduction. It is a 35,000 MW of new base loaded nuclear (IFR?) and 12,000 MW of Per Peterson’s nuclear plant with GT peaking. This is for a system peak demand of 71,000 MW.
So let’s assume the renewables costs $4/watt (some external costs such as transmission are included) for 144,000 MW which is 576 billion dollars plus 6.6 trillion for the storage (400 $/kWh) for a total of about 7 trillion dollars.
Compare that with the highest cost nuclear of $10/w for 47,000 MW of new nuclear (has GT peaking built in) capacity is about 500 billion dollars. The nuclear could cost a lot less and not likely cost more than this.
You can see that storage cost is a fatal flaw of the renewables plan. To be economic we need the storage cost to be no more than about 200 billion for 50,000,000 kW times 330 hours or 16.5 billion kWh of storage. This is a storage cost of about $12 per kWh. Elon would need to drop his promised $100 per kWh battery cost by a factor of 8. Also the batteries need to last at least 20 years. This probably eliminates Li Ion batteries. Only flow batteries can last that long and no one has any real plans for them at less than $400 per kWh. There might be a breakthrough on flow battery cost. Until there is a flow battery storage technology that costs a lot less than $100 per kWh, wind and solar are not going to eliminate the need for nuclear power to solve the CO2 emissions problem.
Gene Preston
http://egpreston.com
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And what does natural gas, of which Dubai is a major world exporter, cost them per kWh?
Dubai’s NG infrastructure, which is required to back up their flaky PV, remains in place. They will have to keep paying to maintain it in working order, ready to go. The PV won’t and cannot replace it no matter how cheap it is; you have completely missed the point.
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@ Edward Kreisch (& others)
Regarding Interfaith Power and Light and religious dogma, you may be interested to know that the previous Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Katherine Shori, had a Bachelor of Science in biology and a PhD in oceanography. I’m quite certain that she would understand the nuclear imperative but unfortunately she has no relationship to IPL.
IPL was founded by the rev. Sally Bingham, a priest in the Episcopal Church. However, as near as I can tell, she does not have a background in science and had no degree until she was past 40. Whether she is capable of understanding the nuclear imperative I don’t know. She seems to get much of her information (disinformation?) from the Union of Concerned Scientists the objectivity of which I seriously question.
In any case, IPL does have some influence and if its personnel can be persuaded that nuclear power is essential, it could make a difference.
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Here is a link to the web page of 2greenenergy.com where I have made a post:
http://www.2greenenergy.com/2016/05/03/the-race-for-clean-energy-has-several-entrants/#comments
Here is the post which I have made there:
“I see it as an exceedingly serious mistake to rely on renewable sources of power to reduce CO2 emissions to an acceptable level. As I have previously stated, even if renewable sources of power were totally free, without an adequate energy storage technology, which does not currently exist, renewables would be incapable of solving the problem. They would depend on backup sources of power which use fossil fuels and emit CO2. That problem would become inescapably apparent as the percentage of renewables increased by which time it would most likely be much too late to expand nuclear power to do the job.
“I suggest checking out the following website:
bravenewclimate.com.
“It has considerable information on both renewables and nuclear power.”
I hope others will make similar posts to that site.
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I saw no comments posted on the 2green web site.
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So if you are in a the broad band either side of the equator with modest seasonal variation in solar availability, solar is the way to satisfy the daytime peak demand. Is there anyone frequenting this blog who didn’t think that might at least become possible?
What people here have been arguing against is excluding nuclear from providing the baseload when the sun isn’t shining.
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@ Gene Preston,
Apparently I got the link wrong. Try this:
http://www.2greenenergy.com/2016/05/03/the-race-for-clean-energy-has-several-entrants/
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Carleton College in Northfield, MN, greatly favors renewable energy. They even have at least one wind generator. They seem to think that the problem of global warming can be solved with renewable energy. Considering the excellent rating of Carleton College, I find that astonishing. For more information, do a google search on “Carleton College renewable”.
When presumably well educated academics are unable to see the fallacy of relying on renewable energy, except in limited circumstances, I think that we’re in real trouble.
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Here’s the 330 MW Genex Kidston project in QLD, which will provide up to 1,650 MWh of daytime power (after storing it off-peak at night), eventually alongside 150 MW of solar capacity.
http://www.genexpower.com.au/projects/The_Kidston_Project
The storage will cost $300 million, mostly Chinese investment.
Here’s 1.1 MWh of lithium battery storage in Perth.
https://www.synergy.net.au/About-us/News-and-announcements/Media-releases/Synergy-appoint-EMC-for-Alkimos-Beach-energy-storage
It cost $6.7 million.
Simply scaling up lithium at the moment would mean equivalent battery storage would be $10. 05 billion worth. More than 33 times more expensive. Will the Chinese be keen?
Some folks may want to wait for the “plunging costs” of batteries to make them affordable, and they are welcome to try to convince me of their expected timeframe.
To pick one alternative from among many, I think it would be worth asking KAERI from South Korea for a quote on a couple of SMART 100 MW units and associated help with formulating power reactor regulations and training institutions. They are ready to build and export now, plus 60 year design life, continuous (and load following) supply, passive safety and rock-bottom emissions intensity.
Considering that we have safely operated small reactors on the fringe of Sydney for decades, I can’t help but wonder how much more complex and stringent the licencing and regulations for passively safe SMRs really need to be.
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Using physics and estimation to assess energy, growth, options—by Tom Murphy [physics professor, University of California]
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/08/nation-sized-battery/
A Nation-Sized Battery
“Running a 2 TW electrified country [the US] for 7 days requires 336 billion kWh of storage.”
So what is the cost for 336 billion kWh?
Is there enough lithium to do that? No.
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336 billion kwh at 1 $/kwh is 336 bn dollars. At Elon Musk’s best price of 100 $/kWh is 33.6 trillion dollars. At current price of 400 $/kWh its $130 trillion dollars.
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Edward, you wrote of the process of hydrogen diffusion and embrittlement of metals. By coincidence a recent WNA article describes hydrogen attacking zirconium, where a surface pattern of electrons impedes penetration by hydrogen. So it is more than a tiny proton trying to sneak through.
I think that near an electron sea, the proton readily attracts two electrons into the 1s1 and 1s2 orbitals. Bound in a potential well of only one partially shielded +1 charge, the resulting H- ion is unusually large. As its mass is still only 1 amu, it is still very diffusive, but the recurring appearance of a fat ion pushes defects into the crystal lattice, thus embrittling the metal.
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“hydrogen attacking zirconium:” That applies to zirconium. We use zirconium in reactors because zirconium is needed there.
Wikipedia: “[T]he price for unwrought zirconium metal decreased from $39,900 to $22,700 per ton.”
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“The age of cheap oil and natural gas is just beginning”
Marian Radetzki
Scientific American
2016 May 03
makes a good case that many countries will be able to frak. Scary.
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No, indeed, Edward.
And there’s little excuse for failing to understand why not.
http://investorintel.com/technology-metals-intel/lithium-ion-batteries-three-critical-mineral-constraints/
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Thank you.
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Renewable intermittent energy cannot be the major source but can fill important niche with appropriate technology.
Wind should be used for producing compressed air at a much lower cost. It can be mainly used as such using the towers, suitably modified, as storage.
Sunny side of these towers can supplement the rooftops for photovoltaic panels.
Flow batteries with low cost organic fluids can be used for storage.
Still they will only serve outlying rural areas only.
You have to sell nuclear energy to urban and industrial, the majors, only.
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Jagdish, your homework is to calculate the energy/volume of compressed air, then the volume of the typical wind-turbine tower. Divide the nominal output of the turbine by this to get a storage duration. Share your results with us.
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Two recent news items – one each pro and con nuclear
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/may/03/idea-of-renewables-powering-uk-is-an-appalling-delusion-david-mackay
David Mackay died last week. This is an interview recorded a few days before he died in which he says the UK solution has to be nuclear + CCS. He is famous for his online book Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air, though it is criticised as fiddling the calculations so the UK answer comes out as nuclear.
Not only are certain parts in Areva reactors believed to be faulty, but it looks like an enterprising employee falsified the testing records for them.
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@Greg Preston,
Batteries are the renewable energy storage solution only for windless, sunless gaps of up to a day. For the longer gaps it will be power to gas for those locations not close enough to sufficient pumped hydro storage.
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I’ve studied that scenario of only 8 hours storage. That gets you to the 50% of the energy from renewables and then you hit a brick wall and fall back on running gas generation. However a microgrid homeowner might be willing to ‘conserve’ (i.e. cut way back) when their solar and wind power does not pan out for several days of cloudy windless weather when it happens. I was talking about grid level storage to ride through most of those periods. Pumped hydro is not an option in most parts of the US. Even where there is a lot of hydro such as the pacific NW the available hydro is already tied up.
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Barbour, et al., 2016, make the point that under current market schemes, bulk electrical energy storage schemes are unattractive to private investors. This includes pumped hydro storage where, as best as I can determine, there are only 2 projects under construction in the USA, both in California.
The proposed pumped hydro schemes in Oregon, Washington state and Montana appear to be in environmental review limbo. None of the 3 are very large.
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@Gene Preston (apologies for the wrong name above),
Battery prices will be $100 / kWh in 2022 according to GM, which already has a contract with LG Chem for $145 / kWh for delivery with the Bolt EV later this year.
On these prices electric cars are likely to take off big time by 2020.
That means from 2030 around 1 TWh / year of battery storage would start to become available from used electric vehicle batteries, and this could be re-used for grid storage. What else would you use them for?
See http://bravenewclimate.proboards.com/thread/386/utility-scale-batteries?page=3 (first post by me) for my (hopefully conservative) estimate of 1.6 cents / kWh / cycle for the added costs of 24 hours (4 TWh) of USA grid second-hand battery storage.
In other words, because drivers will be prepared to spend far more money in total than the grid could afford, they will end up giving the grid huge quantities of cheap storage for what we would regard today as next to nothing.
The vast majority of time when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing occurs in gaps of less than 24 hours. With 24 hours of grid storage available you could expect to cover 90 – 95% of demand from either direct or stored renewables generation. Since the latest lowest unsubsidised bid prices for this in favouble locations are now around the 3 US cents mark this means you can get very cheaply to very high renewables penetration.
Power to gas and hydro then only has to cope with the remaining 5-10%. There still isn’t enough hydro capacity because of the maximum size of the remaining gaps of multiple days. Although the power to gas round trip back to electricity is very inefficient (say 40%), that doesn’t matter too much because it doesn’t represent that big a fraction of generation.
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Research Article: “From nuclear power to coal power: Aerosol-induced health and radiative effects” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015JD024183/full
The study estimates 150,000 deaths would result from replacing the existing nuclear plants with coal, just from air quality alone.
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Aside from the carrying cost of the hardware (per-watt, not per-kWh) and what it adds to your overhead, your total physical plant and total embodied energy, you mean.
Anything that needs a large fraction of backup (any combination of wind + solar needs 100%) is going to have the same issues. Past a certain point you are going to be better off making and storing biogas and burning it in cheap gas turbines than anything involving hydrogen.
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@Engineer-Poet
For the hydrogen storage you certainly need enough CCGT generation capacity to meet a little more than your average load, or less than this if there are industrial processes you can curtail (industrial demand response). It is the average load and not the peak load because you have 24 hours of battery storage available to do daily smoothing.
As Edward and others have pointed out this CCGT needs to be hydrogen-compatible. The US DoE are paying towards development of this and working with at least Siements and General Electric to develop such gas turbines. They will also be capable of running on natural gas. At some point it will be clear that new CCGT generation must all be hydrogen-capable.
The cost of this hydrogen-capable CCGT may be slightly more than current natural-gas only CCGT, but this is not necessarily the case if it achieves a higher efficiency as well. For the approximate costs take the US DoE LCOE costings for current CCGT. Capital cost plus fixed O&M cost is less than $20 / MWh. The best way to account for the low utilisation is just to add this amount to the average LCOE figure for the rest of the solution (since it can be configured to meet average demand not peak demand).
Hydrogen fuel cells are a second option for this long-period backup but seem to be much more expensive at present, and not as efficient. Doubtless these will get cheaper but my money is on hydrogen-compatible CCGT winning. The USA DoE will doubtless continue to back development of both options.
Fueling with biogas may also be a solution, particularly if it only needs to fuel 10% of total generation (after direct renewables and battery storage has covered most time periods). If so, well and good, but the energy return on such solutions has often been questioned. However, you still need the same capacity of CCGT as you do in the renewable hydrogen (power to gas) long-period backup solution.
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@Engineer Poet
The point about the fraction of generation from power to gas is key to the cost of this long-period gap backup. The round-trip efficiency of power to gas storage is slightly above 40%. That means you need to cost in 2.5 times as much wind or solar PV generation (energy not power so measured in MWh) as you need energy out.
If wind and solar PV were still costing $100/MWh (as one blog claimed) and you needed 40% of generation to be covered by power to gas, then 40% of your demand would need to be satisfied by $250/MWh electricity. This averages $100/MWh over all generation, and you still need to add in the $20/MWh over all generation for the CCGT from my previous comment. This totals $120/MWH before you have added in the cost of direct generation from wind and solar. In other word it would have ended up far too expensive.
But with long-term unsubsidised wind and solar lowest current bids and long-term prices now looking more like $30/MWh, and most likelyl enough used EV batteries to reduce the long-period gap to 10% then the long-period 10% gap could be satisfied by $75/MWh electricity. Spread back over 100% and add back in the $20/MWh CCGT costs across all generation and the cost of the long-period backup now adds only $27.5/MWh to all 100% of generation (to which you then add the cost of the easier 90% of generation).
So reducing the fraction of total generation from power to gas is absolutely key to controlling the costs, as is the recent reduction in the direct cost of renewables generation. It’s dependent on a major switch to electric vehicles some time over the next 10 years, but with the recent staggering reductions in battery prices ($145/kWh for the 2016 Bolt and $100/kWh by 2022 according to General Motors) this now looks likely.
I hope the method of doing the maths above is clear.
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Peter Davies still subscribes to the myth that unreliable wind and solar, in whatever forms, are $30/MWh “unsubsidised”.
That might or might not be true as a headline price, but it is a single outlier which certainly does not represent the average price or the additional and essential system cost for unreliables, as explained at length many, many times on this site and elsewhere.
Technical Subsidy #1. At least 100% overbuild in the high voltage distribution system. NB HV distribution assets are typically, eg in the NEM, greater than the capital cost of generating plant. Generously, assume only 100%, thus resulting in a doubling of the raw cost of energy. This is a simplistic under-estimate, because the maintenance and operating costs of the HV distribution system will be less, as a percentage of the assets managed, due to a combination of factors such as being longer-lived and more centralised. Thus, at least double the number we started with. S1 = 2.
Technical subsidy #2.
Capacity factors for both wind and solar are well berlow 50%. If the argument is presented that “when the wind isn’t blowing, the sun might be shining”, then a corollary is that 100% builds of BOTH wind and solar are envisaged. So, the capital costs multiply. Again, generously apply a factor: S2 = 2.
Technical Subsidy #3.
The terms of the ultra-low priced contract are not stated, however, given that non-curtailment clauses are common, then it is reasonable to assume that there is a built-in non-curtailment. An allowance must be included for curtailment payments for each form of unreliable generation. I’d suggest that, at high percentages (and we are talking a 100% system here, aren’t we?) that starts at say 25% and could end up doubling the number we first thought of. We simply cannot know, but we can be sure that it is more than zero. Again, generously, S3 = 1.25.
Technical Subsidy #4.
This one is additive, not a multiplier. PD has allowed for a cost of hydrogen-derived electricity of say 3 times the cost of the solar energy used in its manufacture. Even overlooking the fact that the gas turbines required to burn hydrogen aren’t available yet and that when they are, they will not be at competitive prices, let’s keeep this S4 = 3.0. This applies only to portion of the electricity demand – say 33%? Thus, S4 adds 3 * 1/3 = 1.0 times the number we started with, ie the tender price of $30/MWh. (NB This accepts PD’s contention that this is possible – whether via OCGT or CCGT, isn’t stated. This isn’t trivial, because the more efficient CCGT’s cannot match the rapid response of OCGT’s.)
Final cost = Tender price ( S1 * S2 * S3 + S4)
= $30 ( 2 * 2 * 1.25 +1)
= $180/MWh.
Thus, it is reasonable to conclude that an extra low tender price of $30/MWh for wholesale unreliables still represents a cost to the system above $180/MWh.
Besides which, where do the other system services come from: frequency control, fault response and all the rest, when there is no spinning reserve and no system inertia?
Talk of 100% renewables, even with 100% GT or battery backup, is an unrealisable dream, technically and financially.
Since Peter is so adamant that almost all other commentators are incorrect, I suggest that he focus his efforts on either (a) writing a paper for BNC describing his preferred system, its design and costs, complete with proper referencing, or (b) provide a reference to such a study.
The questions are not new – five years ago, on Open Thread 16, John Newlands (26 June 2011) and others asked them in relation to BZE’s zero carbon plan. We are still waiting for a believable system description that might get us to nominally zero carbon electricity. We are still waiting.
Here is eclipsenow’s post on the subject, complete with reference to John Newlands’s comment. https://eclipsenow.wordpress.com/2011/06/26/solar-flagships-disappoint-both-bze-and-bnc/
Required reading: John Morgan’s article published here almost a year back.
As far as I can tell, John Morgan’s basic analysis of practical limits to high percentage solar and wind, ie essentially the CF of the source, power remains unchallenged.
It’s past time to move on from strings of unreferenced and unlinked “facts” and back to properly structured analysis.
“I hope the method of doing the maths above is clear.” No, it is not – it was spin.
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Singletonengineer is correct, but wind and solar are worse than that. Solar “works” 15% of the time [capacity factor] and wind “works” 20% of the time [capacity factor]. Since they overlap, you get only 30% of the time covered, not 35%. So you need to start with 3.34 times overbuild and then go through the rest of Singletonengineer’s analysis.
Since wind and solar must be spread out over half the Earth or be multiplied by another 100 to avoid dead spots, you are out of money before you start. Wind and solar are nothing more than decorations.
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There are two ways of configuring utility-scale quantities of solar and wind, one good and one bad.
The bad way is to configure them to maximise the revenue or savings based on the current (defective) pricing system. That’s why Australia has mainly rooftop solar at present and wind is installed at in places where the capacity factor is so low.
The good way to configure wind and solar is to put them in places where the value is maximised instead. The means where the capacity factors are high and in the case of wind power where the generation anti-correlates with daytime solar. So, for instance, in Southern Australia you don’t put the majority of the wind generation on the coast (where there is a positive correlation withe solar generation), but instead in the north of the interior of the region where the wind power is anti-correlated. There’s a link to a document about this in the most recent wind power thread.
In Australia, as elsewhere, with the cost of lithium-ion batteries falling off a cliff, the electric vehicle revolution is now likely to be in full swing by 2025, maybe even by 2020, so meaningful quantities of used (and well looked after) batteries will be available for grid storage of up to 24 hours in a 2030 or 2035 timeframe.
Then the degree of correlation or anti-correlation between wind and solar will be less relevant but most renewable resources should still be configured for value. Any overlap can be stored and used in the short-period gaps (of less than 24 hours) covered by the battery storage. There will still be long multi-day gaps but they will represent no more than around 10% of total generation and are covered in posts above. So we will be back to sums like 40% capacity factor (CF) for wind, overconfigured by 50% + 30% CF for utility-scale solar PV, + battery storage = 90% overall capacity factor. (I’m simplifying the maths here because lithium-ion batteries do have round trip efficiency losses of 10% or so).
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@singletonengineer
Let’s be clear about the scenario I am discussing. It’s not a current time scenario. It wasn’t specifically for Australia but let’s try to relate it to Australia. Since you prefer concise posts and the 10% stored generation through power to gas is covered above let’s leave it out here.
Here is the scenario :
Renewables are installed in the places where they add most value to the overall grid. There are such places in Australia where you would expect the capacity factor of onshore wind to be at least 40%, and solar PV to be 30%. (addresses your S2 except for correlation)
Since the raw LCOE (no transmission charges) of both wind and solar continues to reduce, then for the high capacity factor places in (1) above, it is a reasonable best estimate that the global lowest bid LCOE prices will be reflected in the raw LCOE prices of Australian wind and solar above in a reasonable time frame. Say 2025.
The EV revolution kick starts 2020-25 such that second-user batteries for grid storage in the time frame 2030-35 at very low costs, sufficient to provide enough capacity cheaply to cover 24 hours of generation (though less than this will suffice for this scenario).
At this point it doesn’t matter as much what the wind/solar correlation factor is. The excess always gets stored. (addresses your S2 correlation and S3)
Now for transmission charges. Since we will be overconfiguring wind and solar in the “value” sites, the transmission lines will be long. I haven’t worked out the lengths and am not going to, but someone else can if they want. Instead going to assume the same as the Wyoming to California line we all discussed previous – around 730 miles – to deliver wind power to Australia.
If cheap storage is provided at each renewables generation site then this smooths the transmission load, enabling the line capacity (GW) to be minimised, so the addition to the LCOE added by the line transmission is as low as possible. Based on 46% utilisation of the Wyoming to California line the LCOE addition was $18.6 / MWh. With, say 80% average utilisation instead, the cost of power delivered down this line would increase be around £10/MWh due to transmission costs.
(addresses your S1)
Since we have storage at renewable generation sites smoothing the supply, we no longer need a fast response from the power to gas CCGT generation (and I did specify CCGT, not OCGT).
When all gas turbines for generation become hydrogen-compatible, then they WILL be cost competitive. In the post above I suggest adding $20/MWh to the LCOE of all power generated everywhere (direct renewables, renewables from battery, or power to gas) to cover the cost of such turbines to generate the average load. (Addresses your S4 if I have understood it correctly).
So for some very crude calculations (consider them only order of magnitude) :
90% Direct and battery renewables generation $30/MWh + $10/MWh transmission costs + $16/MWh battery costs = $56/MWh
10% Power to gas renewables input power $75/MWh (assumed sited somewhere where you don’t need extra transmission)
Average before uplifts is less than $60/MWh.
But we also have to provide a complete set of CCGT generation for the average load, costed at $20/MWh across all generation. Again this is assumed to be sited somewhere with an existing transmission line, either because it replaces existing generation (in which case we might need a gas network) or preferable because it is co-located with renewable generation locations.
Total around $80/MWh.
All very crude, so take it as an order of magnitude costing for a 100% renewable energy solution.
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Sorry, forgot that this site carefully removes all the numbering at the start of sentences, rendering the formatting pretty dire. I will post it again. Meanwhile, perhaps the moderator would like to delete the version above once the new one with better formatting has been posted below. And this post.
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@singletonengineer
Let’s be clear about the scenario I am discussing. It’s not a current time scenario. It wasn’t specifically for Australia but let’s try to relate it to Australia. Since you prefer concise posts and the 10% stored generation through power to gas is covered above let’s leave it out here.
Here is the scenario :
A Renewables are installed in the places where they add most value to the overall grid. There are such places in Australia where you would expect the capacity factor of onshore wind to be at least 40%, and solar PV to be 30%.
(addresses your S2 except for correlation)
B Since the raw LCOE (no transmission charges) of both wind and solar continues to reduce, then for the high capacity factor places in (1) above, it is a reasonable best estimate that the global lowest bid LCOE prices will be reflected in the raw LCOE prices of Australian wind and solar above in a reasonable time frame. Say by 2025.
C The EV revolution kick starts 2020-25 such that second-user batteries for grid storage in the time frame 2030-35 at very low costs, sufficient to provide enough capacity cheaply to cover 24 hours of generation (though less than this will suffice for this scenario).
At this point it doesn’t matter as much what the wind/solar correlation factor is. All the excess gets stored and used later, either stored in batteries or in power to gas.
(addresses your S2 correlation and S3)
D Now for transmission charges. Since we will be overconfiguring wind and solar in the “value” sites, the transmission lines will be long. I haven’t worked out the lengths and am not going to, but someone else can if they want. Instead going to assume the same as the Wyoming to California line we all discussed previous – around 730 miles – to deliver wind power to Australia.
If cheap storage is provided at each renewables generation site then this smooths the transmission load, enabling the line capacity (GW) to be minimised, so the addition to the LCOE added by the line transmission is as low as possible. Based on 46% utilisation of the Wyoming to California line the LCOE addition was $18.6 / MWh. With, say 80% average utilisation instead, the cost of power delivered down this line would increase be around £10/MWh due to transmission costs.
(addresses your S1)
E Since we have storage at renewable generation sites smoothing the supply, we no longer need a fast response from the power to gas CCGT generation (and I did specify CCGT, not OCGT).
When all gas turbines for generation become hydrogen-compatible, then they WILL be cost competitive. In the post above I suggest adding $20/MWh to the LCOE of all power generated everywhere (direct renewables, renewables from battery, or power to gas) to cover the cost of such turbines to generate the average load.
(Addresses your S4 if I have understood it correctly).
So for some very crude calculations (consider them only order of magnitude) :
90% Direct and battery renewables generation $30/MWh + $10/MWh transmission costs + $16/MWh battery costs = $56/MWh
10% Power to gas renewables input power $75/MWh (assumed sited somewhere where you don’t need extra transmission)
Average before uplifts is less than $60/MWh.
But we also have to provide a complete set of CCGT generation for the average load, costed at $20/MWh across all generation. Again this is assumed to be sited somewhere with an existing transmission line, either because it replaces existing generation (in which case we might need a gas network) or preferable because it is co-located with renewable generation locations.
Total around $80/MWh.
All very crude, so take it as order of magnitude costing only.
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“Australia becomes 14th member of Gen IV International Forum
Australia has been unanimously accepted as the 14th member of the Generation IV International Forum (GIF). GIF is working on advanced nuclear technologies, focused on six or seven power reactor designs expected to be commercially viable from about 2030, though several precursors have already operated experimentally. The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) will be the means of contributing to the GIF’s goals. The GIF was set up in 2001, and the technical secretariat is with the OECD’s Nuclear Energy Agency in Paris, alongside two other major international programs. One of these is the International Framework for Nuclear Energy Cooperation, the predecessor of which Australia joined in 2007.”
http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-power-reactors/generation-iv-nuclear-reactors.aspx
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Besides agreeing with singletonengineer, I must take on Peter Davies directly:
You’re ignoring the elephant in the room, and that’s the PTG system’s amortization and O&M. This is more or less a flat rate per peak watt, so the per-kWh price goes UP the less you use it.
I’m not up on the lifespan of electrolyzers and such, but given the talk about high rates of degradation of catalysts I’d guess 20 years at the outside. I’m seeing is about $1/W, and the wattage needs to be sized for the peak power rather than average (else surpluses must be spilled). The low capacity factor of wind and PV, plus the 2.5x multiplier due to system losses, means VERY high peak electrolyzer powers; at a guess you are talking at least 6x the average load, maybe more. You have $6000 per average system kW, just in the electrolyzer.
You can stop right there. It doesn’t matter if the balance of the system and all its energy is free, nuclear power is cheaper even at today’s steep FOAK prices.
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There is a thing called reserve standby that may have zero kWh usage. Its there just in case. Backup generation at a hospital is a good example. In these instances you can’t price the commodity on a cents per kwh basis. Peaking on a $/kw and base load on a $/MWh; that’s how you look at these things. Use of just one measure doesn’t tell the whole story.
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@Engineer-Poet
In the unlikely event that electrolyser prices stubbornly refuse to come down by 2035 despite 20 years of heavy R&D activity paid for by the US DoE) all you have to do is…
…use a fraction of the second-hand car battery storage to smooth the electrolyser load so operation is 24 hours per day instead of just when the wind blows or the sun shines.
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Entergy has stated that it will close two nuclear power plants in Illinois unless the rate mechanism is changed so that Entergy is not losing money by continuing to operate. I take this to indicate, once again, that simplistic rate setting based on other sectors of the economy does not work for the electrical power industry.
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I have been talking to my state legislators about this. Somebody keeps wanting to add a wind and solar mandate. http://www.nuclearpowersillinois.com
You already know what I think.
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Edward Greisch — I suggest working up some good talks for Rotary and other lunch groups. Multiply your influence by keeping it simple; rhetoric is one of the 7 muses, the important one here.
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@Engineer-Poet
Some numbers on the electrolysers. Assuming 24 hour operation through the use of battery smoothing :
Per MWh through the electrolysers the capital cost allowance is $1,000,000/(8760 hours/year x 10 years) = $3.42 /MWh approximately. If you do a discounted cash flow it ends up being slightly cheaper for a discount rate of 6.5% and your 20 year lifetime. To this you should add O&M costs.
For 10% of electricity generated through power to gas we also need to feed 10% x 3 = 0.3 of each MWh supplied through the electrolysers. So the capital cost of electrolyers adds $3.42 x 0.3/MWh = $1/MWh approximately to the cost of the average MWh supplied. Compare this with the $27.5/MWh (over all supply) to cover the costs of the renewable energy to generate the power for the electrolysers plus CCGT backup for the average level of demand.
To understand that renewable energy storage is economic you need to look at what the two-level storage hierarchy buys you. If you only look at one of these at a time you must reach the wrong conclusion.
Grid battery storage is cheap for providing power, but too expensive at storing energy for more than a day, Power to gas (electrolysis plus CCGT generation) is great at storing a lot of energy, but because of the round trip inefficiency is terrible at providing power if it has to be used for more than a small fraction of supply. So horses for courses. It is the combination of both that produces economic grid storage for renewables.
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Erratum
The first sentence of the second paragraph above should read :
The rest of the numbers are right.
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Second Erratum.
No the rest of the numbers are not right. I seem to have $3.42 on the brain, maybe because it is the final answer and both numbers end xx.42. Here’s the corrected version of the two paragraphs.
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<blockquoteEdward Greisch — I suggest working up some good talks for Rotary and other lunch groups. Multiply your influence by keeping it simple; rhetoric is one of the 7 muses, the important one here.
Edward,
Keeping two existing nuclear stations open is a very worthwhile aim, but the guys in Illinois are not going to be very receptive to a message which says they should not install more renewables. If you are prepared to compromise on your message you stand more chance of keeping the stations open.
My suggestion would be to sell a “low-carbon” mandate instead of a “wind and solar” mandate. A “low carbon” mandate would include wind, solar and existing (or new) nuclear (and is there any hydro?) and thus could be higher than a pure wind and solar mandate without doing anything different. Don’t attack new wind and solar o you will lose most of the audience. Just point out that the world is warming too fast, and that shutting existing nuclear results in more greenhouse emissions than if the stations are retained.
By limiting your ambitions you stand a much better chance of persuading everyone to keep the nuclear stations open.
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Peter Davies: I am not going to tell lies. The only opinion that matters is Nature’s opinion.
Nature does not compromise. Nature kills. We either comply with Nature or we go extinct.
I would say: Legislators shouldn’t try to do engineering. Let the engineers do the engineering. It is government’s job to set parameters like CO2 / kilowatt hour and deaths / terawatt hour. I have said that. The truth is: Most legislators are either not college educated or they are innumerate humanitologists or innumerate fine arts types. Neither type is at all able to do engineering.
Adding in a few lies about wind and solar is a no-go. I will stick to the truth. Wind and solar are ploys of the coal industry to destroy nuclear. Wind and solar do not work.
Again, Nature does not compromise. Nature kills. We either comply with Nature or we go extinct. It follows that “Compromising” with people who want wind and solar would be suicide. I am not into suicide.
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Some legislators are very well qualified and very well understand the nuclear imperative. However, that does not mean that they will vote in support of nuclear power or vote to support reductions of CO2 emissions instead of voting to mandate wind and solar power.
Even well qualified legislators see even mentioning nuclear power as the kiss of death. They are more concerned with their political careers than with anything else.
A few years ago, I had a brief meeting with Rep. Heinrich (Dem, NM), who is now a U.S. senator from NM. He had a degree in mechanical engineering. The physics required for that degree should have enabled him to understand the issue. I presented him with information on the LFTR and he seemed to understand it very well. Even so, he has been pushing for more renewables.
During a brief encounter with NM state senator Cisco McSorley a few weeks ago, I raised the issue of nuclear power. He asserted that with thermal storage, solar systems were well able to meet all electrical needs and we had no need for nuclear power. He is an attorney and I know nothing about his technical qualifications.
In addition to technical discussions, we need to involve experts in human behavior to help devise effective arguments, perhaps with the aid of focus groups. Simply being technically correct is insufficient.
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Cisco McSorley may need to be tutored in:
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/11/pump-up-the-storage/
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/08/nation-sized-battery/
McSorley may be another Peter Davies who has got his head stuck in the bannister. We certainly do need to involve the social scientists, but I doubt that they have a mass cure yet. The mass cure would also cure religion, all 10,000 of them, so you can see that it is not easy. The simplest cure may be another million years’ worth of evolution, or the experience of a population crash or both.
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PS: Congressional testimony does follow whatever the political party in charge decided before witnesses were selected. The congressman was bought.
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freggersjr: Rotary doesn’t seem like me.
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Edward Greisch — I suggest rereading the comment policy and then remembering to provide references for those matters even slightly in doubt or contentious.
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DBB: I am not sure which thing exactly you are pointing to. On legislators, go to http://www.ilga.gov/ [for Illinois] and find either house members or senate members and read their CVs [resumes’]. After you have read a hundred or so, you will realize that they are neither scientists nor engineers, with few exceptions. Could you be more specific?
http://www.ilga.gov/house/default.asp
Biography: Full-time legislator; former member of Urbana City Council and Champaign County Board; volunteered at Courage Connections (A Woman’s Fund); worked at Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center, Don Moyer Boys & Girls Club, Salvation Army Food Pantry, and University YMCA; resides in Urbana; married, has three children.
Biography: Law Enforcement Officer since 2005, born and raised in Chicago; former Kendall County Sheriff’s Deputy; Awarded “Cop of the Future” for leadership; former Champaign Police Officer; Bachelor’s Degree from Christian Bible College & Seminary, Independence, MO; Co-founded Charitable Foundation, YARN, with wife Deborah; has four children; Representative since August 2013.
Biography: Born June 13, 1954 in Corozal, Puerto Rico; member of the International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers; recipient of the American Council of Engineering Companies of Illinoisí 2011 Presidentís Legislative Man of the Year Award and the Hispanic Illinois State Law Enforcement Associationís Presidentís Award; married to Maribel, has three adult children (Luis Jr., Denise and Alberto), and four grandchildren.
Sure, some are lawyers or whatever.
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Freggersjr spoke with a US Senator: “I … LFTR … [but] he has been pushing for more renewables.” To be fair, the Senator chose to back the readily-deployable solution, RE, against the early concept, LFTR.
When the NuScale SMR becomes readily-deployable, such lobbying will be more credible. That is several years away yet, after the demo has been built and run around the block a few times.
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Peter Lang alerted us to Australia’s acceptance into the GIF, the International Forum for Generation IV reactors. Our involvement would be ANSTO, who are the high priests in the SYNROC process for permanent disposal of radioactive elements.
It coincides with a Russian proposal for uranium leasing, whereby one country or institution owns the fuel from cradle to grave. Industry guru, Ian Hore-Lacy points out that Australia could own the fuel from mine to ultimate disposal while its enrichment and processing etc could be done in a currently tooled up nuclear country. Encapsulation and incarceration would be done in Australia.
Ideally, fast reactors would only leave fission products as waste to be sent for isolation. However disposal could become much more chemically interesting if re-processing techniques moved away from wet processes that fully separate the elements, to electrolytic processes that entrain some of the actinides.
Australia has its share of fearful NIMBY‘s. However antinuclear fearmongers would have a much harder job to frighten such people about a deep geological repository in arid country, hundreds of kilometres away from any major city.
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A quick check for salt domes in Australia finds many suitable for a deep repository.
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Euan Mearns has a new post on Energy Matters: http://euanmearns.com/the-energy-return-of-solar-pv/
Ferruccio Ferroni and Robert J. Hopkirk 2016: Energy Return on Energy Invested (ERoEI) for photovoltaic solar systems in regions of moderate insolation: Energy Policy 94 (2016) 336–344 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421516301379
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I just saw this interesting statistic:
Fatalities per TWh attributable to PM 2.5, SO2, NOx from coal fired power stations in India (All plants 2008) (does not include accident fatality rates):
State Owned = 103
Centre Owned = 95
Privately owned = 82
(Ref. Table 8)
Average for India is 99 fatalities/TWh (Ref. Table 7)
Cropper, M., Gamkhar, S,. Malik, K., Limonov, A., Partridge, I., 2012. The Health Effects of Coal Electricity Generation in India. Resources for the Future
Click to access RFF-DP-12-25.pdf
Privately owned is definitely best.
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That’s a remarkable casualty rate. 99 deaths per TWh equates to 867 deaths per GWa. A gigawatt-year is the annual output of a classic 1GW nuke, or a year’s power consumption of a million Australians.
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Hi Roger,
Your are correct. To ensure your comment is not misinterpreted, the figure is consistent with other analyses for fatalities/TWh from coal, such as China 77, EU 28, US, 15, global average 60, e.g.
Kherecha and Hansen, 2013: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/es3051197#
Wade, 2012, http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/06/deaths-by-energy-source-in-forbes.html
Barry Brook et al. 2014, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214993714000050?np=y
The significance of this is that if nuclear had continued to reduce costs at the rate demonstrated up to about 1970: https://judithcurry.com/2016/03/13/nuclear-power-learning-rates-policy-implications/, and deployment continued at the rate reached by 1985, i.e. 30 GW per year, then nuclear would have avoided about 4.5 million immediate and latent fatalities between 1985 and 2015. If, however, the accelerating rate that was demonstrated from 1960 to 1976, had continued, nuclear would have replaced the equivalent of all coal and most gas by 2000.
I assert the anti-nukes are responsible for the disruption to progress. If they were objective, rational and not in denial, they’d accept they are responsible for 4.5 million fatalities, lower standard of living, less people with electricity than would have been … and a lot more.
The anti-nukes have a lot to answer for.
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Peter, are you sure that the best has not been privatised and the worst left in public hands? If so, your conclusions are suspect.
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SingletonEngineer,
I was stirring the pot. Guess I got a bite, eh? :)
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Roger,
If you notice an error in my interpretation of these numbers, could you please let me know:
“… fatalities/TWh from coal, such as China 77, EU 28, US 15, global average 60, e.g.
Kherecha and Hansen, 2013: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/es3051197#
Wade, 2012, http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/06/deaths-by-energy-source-in-forbes.html
Barry Brook et al. 2014, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214993714000050?np=y ”
Also, I’d welcome an explanation of why Herschberg’s Years of Life Lost for coal is about 60 (See last row of Table 1 and add about 1 for accident fatalities in YOLL/TWh https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283239551_Health_Effects_of_Technologies_for_Power_Generation_Contributions_from_Normal_Operation_Severe_Accidents_and_Terrorist_Threat ). Year’s of life lost should be around an order of magnitude higher than fatalities. There seems to be an order of magnitude error, but more likely I am misunderstanding what his numbers mean.
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Eclipse Now — Every reactor produces heat. Power reactors use the heat to turn a turbine. At the end the working fluid turning the turbine, usually steam, contains excess heat, called reject heat. This is removed by passing the working fluids through a condenser. This is similar to a car radiator except that rather than air cooling always, so far, water is used. This is sometimes once through river, lake or sea water. The other alternative in use is water evaporation towers.
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FireOfEnergy asks for nukes that don’t need environmental water to dump their exhaust heat. However, air can be used instead. Commercially available air-cooled condensers are installed where water is short, eg Kogan Ck PS. The fans consume about 5% of the power.
And there’s desalination. Exhaust heat could also be released to the environment through a cascade of evaporators (MED) as has already been in the BN-350 power-and-water fast NPS in Russia. The heat would eventually escape to the air from the pipefarm. Instead of being a wicked consumer of sweet water, the nuke then becomes a producer, of “power and water”.
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I hear that the biosphere is continuing to warm and am suspect of RE goals meeting the challenge in time – if at all. When ever i have the time, I’ll troll on over to “the planet is warming” pages and tell em that what most people think of RE is NOT going to solve the problem. I tell them that we need a cheap and plentiful solid state battery that doesn’t freeze or fail in hot temps (and which lasts as long as the solar panels), a GLOBAL smart power grid (which would provide power to a winter’s night from a sunny day in an instant), and most importantly, that everyone concerned MUST conclude that the growing world economy will require MORE energy than what fossil fuels currently provides (despite efficiency improvements), that they must realize that hundreds of thousands of sq km of solar coverage will be needed on top of more wind and hydro.
Or, we need to scale up nuclear in a way that is un hackable.
I belIeve the fears of it are at least somewhat valid. Sadly, though, most people don’t want either. So my “contribution” is just trying to make aware of the vastness of the clean energy challenge, and that either path is not possible without everyone concerned doing, and stressing, the energy math.
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Here’s the “Tesla” of semi trucks. Could make quite a dent in transport emissions.
http://insideevs.com/nikola-motor-company-presents-2000-hp-electric-nikola-one-semi/
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I was disappointed to note that Senator Sean Edwards has been placed no 5 on the Liberal ticket. Unless the Liberals do rather better than last time, only 4 senators will be elected.
I have placed a proposed below-the-line vote for anyone (like I) who would wish to support Sean whilst not otherwise voting Liberal.
If one were to vote Liberal above the line, it would increase Sean’s chance of being elected, but most likely it wouldn’t work, and your preference will be allocated at 0.05. Doing it my way ensures that if Sean isn’t elected, your preference is distributed 100% to your next choice. You might choose to preference Bob Day (reactionary on some issues but very supportive with nuclear) or the Xenophon group.
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One of the realities of energy policy is that certain people become recognized experts that are sought by news organizations to communicate to the public. One of the main themes of this blog is the conflict between renewables (actually wind and solar) and nuclear, which I and I’m sure most readers and commenters here favor.
The main expert on the renewables side is almost certainly Mark Jacobson. His studies in support of 100% wind, hydro and solar are really horrible, but he has a lot of influence and should not be underestimated. He is very charismatic and has very impressive academic credentials. He’s published a lot of papers with most being on things like aerosols, soot and atmospheric modeling. He’s made a name for himself with studies on black carbon. His energy papers are in contrast to this and need to be pointed out. He has an irrational aversion to nuclear energy and his proposal for wind and solar are fanciful, speculative and half baked. He’s been very good at wowing people, most notably actor Mark Ruffalo.
The nuclear side needs a good communicator to counter Jacobson and I nominate Michael Shellenberger. He’s very smart, telegenic (like jacobson) and defends nuclear in a lot of videos (and does it very well). He’s known for helping found the Breakthrough Institute and helping write the Ecomodernist Manifesto. Here’s a new video where he appears on stage with Jacobson. I thought Shellenberger was very effective:
When I posted this video in the comments of a post at the Climate Crock blog, Kevin Cowtan showed up with a tabulation of papers, citations and h values for jacobson, Shellenberger and Bjorn Lomborg:
“Mark Jacobson: 182 publications, 9656 citations, h=46
Bjorn Lomborg: 38 publications, 73 citations, h=3
Michael Shellenberger: 7 publications, 23 citations, h=2”
https://climatecrocks.com/2016/05/09/new-video-mark-jacobson-on-a-renewable-world/#comment-84159
I’d guess that Jacobson’s numbers are so high, because his papers are mostly in the lavishly funded field of climate science.
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Dr. Howard C. Hayden argues that there IS climate change but not because of human intervention. His book, “Solar Fraud” is pretty solid in dispelling the myths of solar and wind. But his book “A Primer on CO2 and Climate” denies that climate change is caused by humans and makes a fairly strong argument (in 2008) that there actually is no ‘consensus’ among climate scientists.
Comments?
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Toss it.
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Not helpful Gene. The book is extremely well argued, unlike anything I’ve read by climate change deniers, of which Hayden is not, exactly. I would like some more serious comments.
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Serious comment: You got took bigtime. Science isn’t about good arguments.
Nature isn’t just the final authority on truth, Nature is the Only authority. There are zero human authorities. Scientists do not vote on what is the truth. There is only one vote and Nature owns it. We find out what Nature’s vote is by doing Scientific [public and replicable] experiments. Scientific [public and replicable] experiments are the only source of truth. [To be public, it has to be visible to other people in the room. What goes on inside one person’s head isn’t public unless it can be seen on an X-ray or with another instrument.]
We build confidence by repeating experiments.
“Science and Immortality” by Charles B. Paul, 1980, University of California Press. In this book on the “Eloges of the Paris Academy of Sciences” (1699-1791) page 99 says: “Science is not so much a natural as a moral philosophy”. [That means drylabbing [fudging data] will get you fired.]
Page 106 says: “Nature isn’t just the final authority, Nature is the Only authority.”
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Dr. Howard C. Hayden may be a coal company or may be paid by a coal company. Dr. Howard C. Hayden is the one committing the fraud. Subscribe to http://www.realclimate.org.
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It is kinda impossible for the average person who believes that co2 is a GHG to completely discredit that fact that some 40% extra co2 in an atmosphere isn’t going to heat things up a little. Therefore, i find it useless for a scientist (or whatever this guy is) to dismiss this unless he can prove beyond a doubt that not only is surface water acidification not a concern, but that this large amount extra isn’t going to cause warming. I’ve heard people say that even a doubling of co2 won’t heat things up at all due to convection and what not, but until most the scientist sign on, i disagree.
Therefore, he probably knows nothing about solar growth, either.
Bty, Global solar energy capacity exponentiated from 6.5 to 227 MW during ’06 to the end of 2015. Despite the overwhelming clean energy challenge that lies ahead, that 40x growth makes me remain hopeful!
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The Conversation is at it again, stating South Australia can go 100% renewables with batteries.
https://theconversation.com/south-australia-is-now-coal-free-and-batteries-could-fill-the-energy-gap-59164
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David, by “hopeful” I take it that you mean 277GW nameplate, not 277MW as you wrote. That’s the first factor of 1000 error.
The challenge is not to get renewable energy up, but to get carbon emissions down. Regardless of whatever renewables are doing, it is the CO2 that is the problem and contented smiles will achieve nothing.
I suggest that you refer to a source such as the BP annual reivew: http://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy.html
A few figures:
GLOBAL OIL CONSUMPTION
2004 3870 million tonnes
2014 4211
Increase 0.8%
NATURAL GAS (Billion cubic metres)
2004 2699
2014 3393
Increase 25.7%
COAL
NB Total proven world coal resources still in the ground were reported to be 891 billion tonnes in 2014.
2004 2836 mtoe – million tonnes oil equivalent
2014 3934
Increase 38.7%
Install as much PV, wind and other unreliable so-called renewables as you like, but while these figures continue to grow each year, then we aren’t even treading water… we are all sinking together.
Since the consumption figures have increased by up to 38% in the past decade, it should be possible to reduce consumption of fossil fuels at the same rate, 38%, across the board, in the current decade, but how?
I don’t know how many percent annual increase in PV that target would equate to, or how many square miles of collectors in the next decade. Perhaps there is a more detailed post on BNC somewhere, but it is essential that we keep our eye on the goal, which must be lower global carbon emissions, by all means combined. Nothing else matters.
I commend the BP review to you – it is a mine of information and is free online.
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SingletonEngineer reminds us that “the goal … must be lower global carbon emissions”, not increased “renewable energy”. After all, the term distracts the public to a false crisis, that the world is running out of minerals to dig up (from holes, fossa).
We need our leaders to instead speak in terms of “non-carbon energy”. Even the Greens Party (in Oz) avoids naming carbon, saying “coal” instead, as if the greenhouse is filling up with coal dioxide, easily dismissed by using gas instead.
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The objective of most greens is not to stop climate change but to stop nuclear power. I have been told this a number of times by tree huggers.
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Yes. They are fake greens, working for the fossil fuel industry.
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Edit: I’m having a bad phone day – that’s supposed to be GW, got the info from IRENA (which used thousands of MW).
Hopefully, less subsidy will be needed to reach the 2%mark.
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@Peter Lang
A very entertaining paper produced by two highly imaginative Swiss academics. Thanks for pointing out this one.
Regrettably their conclusion is completely contradictory to the current minimum unsubsidised bid prices for solar PV of under 3 cents/kWh (in the places with very good sunshine). Adjusting for approximate relative insolation using the same equipment in England and Germany would give a price per kWh of 10 cents/kWh. So if the authors were right, just about every cent of this cost would have to go to the input cost of electricity. Since there are numerous other costs that single fact proves their conclusions are highly flawed.
Clearly the authors have gone wrong big time somewhere. For the benefit of those who don’t have paywall access the main flaws in the paper are summarised below:
A. The authors insist on copper-plated dual pumped hydro and CCGT backup for every 1MW of solar PV capacity.
This is a nonsense because they include costs for not only pumped hydro, but also a complete set of CCGT backup too.
So if you had another 1MW of wind installed alongside the authors would insist on both 2MW of pumped hydro and 2MW of CCGT backup. 1MW of CCGT backup would cover both sets of generation as they very rarely generate at the same time.
Backup costs and energy input should be a characteristic of the complete system. These guys don’t understand that. And they have presumably never heard of demand response either.
B. The authors cite a 2009 materials breakdowns document in the paper.
It has probably escaped their attention that solar PV capital costs have decreased by 80% since 2009. To achieve such major cost savings inevitably manufacturers have had to use less material, and process the material they do use more efficiently – thus using much lower energy inputs. This process will continue into the future too.
C. The authors attribute energy values to incoming project capital (and only incoming project capital)
EROI is supposed to be a measure of energy input. The Bank of America, or of any other sovereign state with its own central bank, can produce capital purely by printing more dollar bills. OK that uses a little energy – even holding computerised balances in the central bank uses a little energy – but not enough to go into an EROI calculation. That is just the first mistake.
The second mistake is that, if capital does have an energy value, then the capital eventually gets repaid – with interest. If you include this, the net energy input from capital overall would actually be negative.
As a serious contribution to the debate on renewable energy it isn’t worth the electrons used to produce it.
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It is ERoEI Energy Return on ENERGY Invested, not EROI Energy Return on [money] Invested.
2 later.
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Peter Davies — The Bank of America is a private bank. Dollars are Federal Reserve notes.
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David,
You are quite right and I should know better as I did actually work with the BofA in Anaheim briefly in 1991 (?) I should have said “central bank”, but was trying hard not to say Bank of England at any stage.
Thanks for the correction.
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@Edward
See http://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/energy-return-on-investment.asp for the definition.
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Hi Peter, there’s EROI and EROEI, both of which are valid concepts, but it depends on what you want to discuss. If Edward was discussing EROEI, it’s entirely irrelevant to bring up EROI. Learn the difference!
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Peter Davies does not understand the difference between EROI, economic cost and prices.
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Minimum unsubsidised prices for solar PV?? What are they?
Solar PV reverse auction bid price in Canberra, Australia are $183 to $186/MWh (18.6 c/kWh).
The prices are guaranteed by government for 20 years and escalated in accordance with prescribed escalation factors. Furthermore, they do not include the grid system costs. Graham Palmer has a excellent paper quantifying some, but not, the hidden costs for residential PV. Household Solar Photovoltaics: Supplier of Marginal Abatement, or Primary Source of Low-Emission Power? http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/5/4/1406
One of the large hidden cost costs is the costs transferred to the back up generators that must be then be transferred to consumers as higher cost of electricity.
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Eclipse Now and Edward Greisch,
EROI normally means EROEI. If you want to know the energy return of financial investment, call it E/$ (or E/£ or E/€ or E/¥ or whatever) but don’t use an acronym that’s normally taken to mean something else.
Peter Lang,
<
blockquote>”Peter Davies does not understand the difference between EROI, economic cost and prices.”
<
blockquote>
He seems to understand it a lot better than you do. His point was that if energy invested were still so high, those prices would be unachievable.
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Tower of Babel effect. Use the correct acronym or expect to not be understood. This is not English Literature where anything means just exactly whatever you want it to mean.
If AIDAN STANGER doesn’t want to spell out the correct acronym, then AIDAN STANGER is a liar.
Back to English Lit or some psychologists: If a word means its opposite, then word minus word = zero and you have no meaning at all. You can’t communicate.
So in Energy Return on dollar Invested means Energy Return on Energy Invested, you have created a Tower of Babel and you can no longer communicate. So you may as well not bother to say anything more.
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Peter Davies says:
Here are some of the subsidies in the US:
EIA, 2015, Direct Federal Financial Interventions and Subsidies in Energy in Fiscal Year 2013 http://www.eia.gov/analysis/requests/subsidy/
Non-hydro Renewable electric = $12.8 billion (253.5 TWh)
Nuclear = $1.66 billion (789 TWh)
(Note: The Federal subsidies included here are only part of the total subsidies paid by Federal Government, State Governments, local governments, tax payers, rate payers and consumers).
US Federal Government subsidies per MWh (approx.)
Solar = $280
Wind = $35
Hydro = $1.47
Nuclear = $2.10
Here is a plot comparing the subsidies (with a spelling mistake in the subtitle)
Some of the US subsidies for Solar PV amount to 28c/kWh!
Why does the PhD student continue to post such complete and utter nonsense here? Long ago he demonstrated nothing he says can be trusted.
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@Peter Lang
Peter, given you must know that solar PV prices have come down by more than 80% in 7 years, why do you quote a bid made in 2012 without informing us of the date? Surely you know how misleading this might be to others.
(The AUD and USD floated around parity in 2012.)
The minimum unsubsidised price (in US $/MWh or US cents/kWh) for solar PV is the lowest price anywhere round the world at which solar PV power has been bid seriously so far.
It has to be a serious bid – not just an auction tactic to slow down a decision for some reason which sometimes seems to happen in reverse auctions.
Signature of a contract indicates a serious bid because someone is then on the hook for making a profit on the installation at that price of electricity. An alternative proof of seriousness is that bidders had to provide a deposit which they lose if they withdraw. If the second lowest bid in an auction is only a little higher than the lowest then both bids are probably real. If the bidder is a reputable company then they probably make only real bids. A proper multi-round auction involving a lot of work for the bidders also probably indicates no-one will make a bid for which they do not intend to sign a contract.
The lowest bids and contract prices over the last couple of years for various locations can be found here. This source gives both subsidised and unsubsidised prices where relevant.
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Davies,
Because they are current prices. The contracts were awarded recently. The price of PV panels is irrelevant. What is relevant is the total system cost.
You cited no evidence, let alone and authoritative, trustworthy source evidence, for your ridiculous claim:
Your comments are highly misleading and dishonest.
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Edward Greisch,
I’m not the one who’s created a Tower of Babel. I’m just informing you of the fact that in common usage EROI has exactly the same meaning as EROEI. Furthermore, you and Eclipse are the only ones I’ve ever encountered using it with a different meaning.
I have not used the acronym EROI except to inform you that its meaning is not what you thought it was. So stop trying to create a Tower of Babel by insisting your meaning is right and the rest of the world’s meaning is wrong!
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Hi Aidan,
moving forward please be aware that EROEI is different to EROI. EROEI discussions can also be phrased as “Energy Profit Ratio” and “Life Cycle Analysis” although there can be slightly different emphasis in these phrases. But basically, EROEI is about how much net energy you get back after building the power station or drilling the well. The lower the EROEI, the less point there is in doing something.
Regards
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AIDAN STANGER: LOOK at the letters. 4 letters versus 5 letters. Can you count to 5? The fact that you have a lot of confused or intentionally confusing friends doesn’t help you.
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I always put the “E” in it just for this reason, and because i thought that without it, it would simply mean “energy returned on monetary invested”. In the old days, no one really cared about “on energy invested” because it was just fossil fuels and nuclear anyways. They both have “high returns” , at least until oil runs dry (nuclear fuel never would if closed cycle was used).
I believe that renewables, too, will achieve higher eroei despite their diffuse and intermittentcy due to advanced machine automation, nano tech and AI.
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If we’re right, and only nuclear can prevent climate change, then we’re stuffed. We’re out of time as it is, but waiting for public perception to change based on them getting ‘up to date’ with the math of this complex discussion is going to take too long and be too hard. They just don’t care. Yet. Until it’s too late.
Oh well, white skies it is!
https://eclipsenow.wordpress.com/white-skies/
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I think it will be too late to put particles in the stratosphere. People will first notice a problem when they go to the grocery store and find no groceries. They will not go to work again. They will wander off looking for food, which they will never find. This will happen between 2022 and 2040.
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I remember seeing a show portraying the future where we had no other choice but sulfur. The side effects was indeed back to destroying the ozone.
So, perhaps ceramic? or other dust would be a little more expensive but safer. I still have hoped for advanced tech building all the thin solid state batteries and solar panels for much less cost – and the same kind of automation (and/or nano technology) converting the excess co2 into limestone.
Of course, I’m still just dreaming
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Hi Fireofenergy,
Yes, I’ve heard it might be bad on ozone, but given the
However, the side-effects of the decreased Ozone layer cannot be too bad when one considers who is pushing this idea:
“Professor Paul Crutzen, winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize for his work on the Antarctic ozone hole, has proposed an emergency geoengineering solution to cool off the planet: dump huge quantities of sulfur particles into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight. His paper, “Albedo Enhancement by Stratospheric Sulfur Injections: A Contribution to Resolve a Policy Dilemma?” was published in the August 2006 issue of the journal Climatic Change. A recent editorial in the New York Times by Ken Caldeira called for more research into geoengineering schemes like this to cool the planet, proposing that 1% of the $3 billion federal Climate Change Technology Program should be spent thusly.”
http://classic.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=907
Now, dust absorbing CO2. Were you thinking of the olivine? Shuiling’s PDF says it could be about $200 billion annually.
https://eclipsenow.wordpress.com/olivine/let_the_earth_help_us_to_save_the_earth-schuiling_june2008/
This of course would be better invested in nukes and be about half the way to Dr James Hansen’s 115 GW nukes per year.
http://goo.gl/Xx61xU
But with a global economy of $70 TRILLION, a stable world governance system would surely be able to afford both fast tracking nukes and olivine and biochar and New Urbanism and walkable cities and rail and EV’s etc.
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Intermittency overcome due to advanced machine automation, nano tech and AI? No way. Unless you live in a wind tunnel or in a cloudless desert, you are going to have extended periods of no renewable power. The intermittency is too high in 99% of the world.
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The intermittentcy problem will be solved long before the fear of the nuclear problem – but i agree, it might be too late by that time.
Speaking of caves, Technology will surely surpass current tech and therefore make it easier to build ocean crossing HVDC, solid state batteries printed like thin film and, of course, cheaper and more efficient panels. NASA’s triple junction style is in the 40% efficient range and so all it takes is some way to make the single junction GaAs cells cheaper in order to almost double today’s efficiency (they’d probably last longer, too).
The main problem is that environmentalists and most all the non nuclear crowd don’t know the energy math. They don’t agree with the HVDC “bring solar from summer into winter” concept. They think a single panel on a roof and a few wind spinners (sarcasm) will power all sectors.
If RE can’t be really BIG, then there’s no sense in it. So, yes, i live in a cave where there’s too many numbers, but at least i see science progress happening at some slow pace. What I’m saying is that everyone will give up on solar by the time it’s sufficiently devEloped – just like they’ll find something wrong with fusion (once it ever gets cheaper than solar).
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Edit, I should have said “fear of nuclear” not of the “nuclear problem” because any problem with nuclear is not as bad as excess co2.
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fireofenergy: Yes. I heard again locally that some people think that nuclear power is “the work of the devil.”
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Anyone heard anything form NNadir? I’m really looking forward to his next installment.
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What a grid decision-maker wants to know is the price he will be quoted for new generation, not the price quoted in an auction four years ago. The latest price is the price on which he will make a decision and is the price reflecting the costs which will be passed on to his customers.
For that money ($183 to $186/MWh (18.6 c/kWh) at the Australian/US dollar parity at the time) ACT could probably now get twice as much generation and 24-hour power to boot, as Chile did for the Copiapa solar baseload project in the Atacama desert.
Incidentally, the grid connection cost for baseload solar is around 1/3 of the cost of that for the same nameplate capacity solar PV farm in the same place with no storage as the transmission line capacity factor will be three times higher.
The good news is that ACT will get a much better deal on solar of any type next time.
I read the article. You presumably have not, judging from your comments. Well here is a version not behind a paywall. Read it quick before Elsevier ask the site to remove it.
Click to access ferroni-y-hopkirk-2016-energy-return-on-energy-invested-eroei-for-photo.pdf
Please read it. Then go back and read my criticisms of it. And note that the materials amounts used come from 2008 source cited in the 2009 document. So they are now EIGHT years out of date (and there is more to come from me tomorrow on future solar PV use of materials).
Add the fact that one of the authors of the report failed to indicate that he works in the nuclear industry. Failure to come clean about such connections is often a prelude to cherry picking of dubious sources which is intended to produce a deliberately distorted conclusion.
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There is nothing in your 2 articles that contradicts anything I said. Those 2 articles do contradict what PETER DAVIES said.
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Peter Davies,
The latest contracted prices for utility scale solar in Australia are more than 5 times the cost of coal fired electricity. It is baseload coal solar is trying to displace, so that is the proper comparison. Then you have to 6-10 times higher total system costs for solar (at 30% penetration) http://www.energyinachangingclimate.info/Counting%20the%20hidden%20costs%20of%20energy.pdf.
It’s hopeless trying to hold a rational discussion with you. You don’t admit when you have been shown to be wrong on important relevant points and you repeatedly avoid addressing the relevant facts and continually divert to irrelevancies, such as the Atacama Desert. If you believe your cherry picked factoids are a relevant argument, then you should compare against the cost of nuclear in China, or what the cost of nuclear would be if all the impediments resulting from 50 years of anti-nuke propaganda had not occurred or are now removed.
Solar is uneconomic and unlikely to ever be viable at the scale necessary to make a major contribution to world energy supply. It is massively incentivised by government incentives, most of which are hidden such as the “must take” provisions. You and your ilk are deniers of the relevant facts and are delaying real progress.
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Why would any rational person, who is aware of the facts or capable of objective research, advocate for solar and against nuclear power, given that, demonstrably, solar is not: cheaper, safer, better fit for purpose, faster to deploy (per energy supplied, or capable of making a substantial contribution to supplying the world’s energy needs and therefore to substantially reducing global GHG emissions)?
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I want to remind both Peters that the relevant measure is carbon dioxide emissions avoided in electricity grids with only modest demand management. Price is important but secondary to emissions avoidance.
I also remind all that different regions of the globe have different resources and electricity requirements. The Atacama Desert is certainly of import to Chileans. Other deserts in other regions offer similar potential.
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How solar PV panel prices will come down to 30 US cents/Watt (from 60 cents/Watt)
There are some caveats. Firstly the manufacturer’s press release makes this claim only for sunny climes, which I would interpret as places where the solar PV capacity factor would be 30% or over. USA as a whole hit this last year. California and Australia are within scope.
Secondly, such a reduction means that the balance of system costs (up to the remote connection to the transmission line) would predominate. These are reducing also with time. In other words a halving of solar PV panel price costs is not yet the same as a halving of solar PV generation plant costs – but it doesn’t half help.
Thirdly, the technology requires accurate tracking to the sun (1%) in one axis, though the requirement on the second axis is not so tight. Because of this the technology is suitable only for commercial or utility-scale solar PV, not domestic rooftop.
http://www.banyanenergy.com
Peter Lang pointed out above that the US DoE has been subsidising solar, and particularly solar PV. He will be very pleased to know that Banyan received some of this subsidy and has put it to good use to enable a large future reduction in solar PV prices.
Banyan have designed a suitable optical concentrator which can reduce the active materials used to produce solar PV cells. Whatever the actual EROI of raw solar PV is right now in a given location, the Banyan technology has the capability to make it up to a factor of 5 higher.
The concentrator relies on lensing and total internal reflection, rather than mirrors created by silvering with aluminium, so is less subject to long-term degradation and cleaning requirements are lower.
As you can see, the light path is very carefully designed and is not going to work unless sunlight enters the concentrator at exactly the correct angle. Hence the requirement for accurate tracking in one direction. Fortunately Banyan has taken the trouble to solve this issue as well, offering a relevant product.
http://www.pv-magazine.com/services/press-releases/details/beitrag/banyan-energy-lights-pathway-to-ultra-low-cost-solar-module-manufacturing_100023257/#axzz48iBpwtSW
Since Banyan is happy to license the technology, they are also pointing out that it also enables a five-fold expansion in solar cell manufacturing capability for existing producers for very little additional cost.
To save time and electrons, for Edward’s benefit I have no shares in or connection with Banyan Energy (or Solar Reserve or any wind turbine manufacturers).
So guys, as far as solar PV is concerned you ain’t seen nuthin yet. The solar PV utility-scale price crash is not going to stop at the current 2.99 US cents/kWh which singletonengineer had so much difficulty in believing (find “low 3.99 price”) on Euan Mearns EROI thread. It is just the thin end of the wedge.
And, as Joe Romm points out, second-user EV batteries can now be picked up for $100/kWh. Because EV batteries are well looked after, they may be usable for another 10 years or 3,650 cycles as grid use is very gentle compared to mobile phones. At this price the cost per cycle per kWh is around 3 cents. Combine that with the leading-edge solar PV costs we are starting to see and you may appreciate what the renewables revolution is all about. Then project forward to 2030 when both solar PV and used EV batteries will be available in massive quantities at even cheaper prices.
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“what the renewables revolution is all about. ”
It’s about shouting as loud as you can “Look, shiny promising new XYX technology combination of stuff and things over there!”
Renewables advocates chase a mirage, and constantly rely on or just assume other things will solve the fact that solar and wind are mostly off. Look, shiny new Elon Musk toy over there! I love almost everything Elon Musk does, but his dreaming about solar is just sad. Tesla Powerwall’s have been sold as the band-aid for intermittent, unreliable renewables. But are up to the job? Eco-modernists have analysed it, and remain dismayed about the potential for intermittent, unreliable renewables because the storage would bankrupt any nation that tried to do it!
EG: If wind and solar provided just a third of Germany’s power it would cost so much money to buy just one week of storage that you could instead nuke the entire grid. Backup a third of the grid for a week, or nuke the entire grid for 60 years! If Germany was 100% renewables, the storage would cost 3 times as much for one week. It gets worse. German winters often cut renewables for many weeks at a time. Two weeks storage is 6 times as expensive, and three weeks is 12 times as much as nuking the entire grid! Remember, that does not even include buying and maintaining the wind and solar farms in the first place! Point 2 below
http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/issues/renewables/the-grid-will-not-be-disrupted
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“The numbers show that Musk’s vision of an electricity system of intermittent renewable power backed up by batteries is a pipe dream.”
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Look up the Arrhenius equation. The concentrated sunshine will make the solar cells hotter and the extra heat will make their life expectancy much shorter. Solar PV cells are semiconductors, and like all semiconductors, they are heat sensitive. You need to keep the junction temperature as cold as possible.
At higher temperature below melting, the dopants will wander around in the crystal, making the diode junction into a short circuit much more quickly. You won’t get much life out of that arrangement unless you go to extreme lengths to refrigerate the solar cells.
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