 | After The Gold Rush: A Perspective on Future U.S. Natural Gas Supply and Price | The Oil Drum | Tech Talk - The Oil and Natural Gas Around Sakhalin Island |  |
The Alternative Energy Matrix
Posted by Rembrandt on February 10, 2012 - 2:08pm
This is a guest post by Tom Murphy. Tom is an associate professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego. This post originally appeared on Tom's blog Do the Math.
Breathe, Neo. I’ve been running a marathon lately to cover all the major players that may provide viable alternatives to fossil fuels this century. Even though I have not exhausted all possibilities, or covered each topic exhaustively, I am exhausted. So in this post, I will provide a recap of all the schemes discussed thus far, in matrix form. Then Do the Math will shift its focus to more of the “what next” part of the message.
The primary “mission” of late has been to sort possible future energy resources into boxes labeled “abundant,” “potent” (able to support something like a quarter of our present demand if fully developed), and “niche,” which is a polite way to say puny. In the process, I have clarified in my mind that a significant contributor to my concerns about future energy scarcity is not the simple quantitative scorecard. After all, if it were that easy, we’d be rocking along with a collective consensus about our path forward. Some comments have asked: “If we forget about trying to meet our total demand with one source, could we meet our demand if we add them all up?” Absolutely. In fact, the abundant sources technically need no other complement. So on the abundance score alone, we’re done at solar, for instance. But it’s not that simple, unfortunately. While the quantitative abundance of a resource is key, many other practical concerns enter the fray when trying to anticipate long-term prospects and challenges—usually making up the bulk of the words in prior posts.
For example, it does not much matter that Titan has enormous pools of methane unprotected by any army (that we know of!). The gigantic scale of this resource makes our Earthly fossil fuel allocation a mere speck. But so what? Practical considerations mean we will never grab this energy store. Likewise, some of our terrestrial sources of energy are super-abundant, but just a pain in the butt to access or put to practical use.
In this post, we will summarize the ins and outs of the various prospects. Interpretation will come later. For now, let’s just wrap it all up together.
The Matrix
Would you like to know what the matrix is? Okay. I’ll tell you—in a bit. For each of the major energy hopefuls I have discussed on Do the Math, I characterize their various attributes in a three-tier classification: adequate (green); marginal (yellow); or insufficient (red)—possibly a showstopper. The scheme is qualitative, and I am sure some will disagree with my assignments. Before I go any further, let me say that I will not entertain comments griping about why I made a certain square the color I did. I won’t have time to respond at that level, given that there are 200 colored boxes in the matrix. But the beauty is, you can change the matrix any way you see fit and make your own custom version. Go buy some crayons today!. The matrix I’ve created is not without its biases and subjectivity. Whose would be?
Okay, I’ll keep the suspense going a bit by describing the fields.
Abundance: This is essentially the “abundant,” “potent,” and “niche” classification scheme reflected in the preceding posts. Green means that the resource can in principle produce far more power than we currently use and keep it up for many centuries. Red means a bit-player at best. Yellow is the stuff that can be useful, but is incapable of carrying the full load—not that we require everything to do this. We can tolerate a mix of of items, but will not get far by mixing reds together.
Difficulty: This field tries to capture the degree to which a resource brings with it large technical challenges. How many PhDs does it take to run the plant? How painful is it to maintain or keep churning? This one might translate into economic terms: difficult is another term for expensive.
Intermittency: Green if rock-steady or there whenever we need it. If the availability is beyond our control, then it gets a yellow at least. The possibility of going without for a few days earns a red.
Demonstrated: I don’t mean on paper, and I don’t mean a prototype that exhibits some of the technology. To be green, this has to be commercially available today, and providing useful energy.
Electricity: Can the technology produce electricity? Most of the time, the answer is yes. Sometimes it would make no sense to try. Other times, it is seriously impractical.
Heat: Can the resource produce direct heat? Yellow if only through electric means.
Transport: Does the technology relieve the liquid fuels crunch? Anything that makes electricity can power an electric car, earning a yellow score. Liquid fuels are green. Some may get tired of the broken record in the descriptions that follow that a particular resource does not help transportation, wanting to shout “electric cars, fool” every time I say it. But our large-scale migration to electric cars is not in the bag. They may remain too expensive to be widely adopted. Meanwhile, this does not help air travel or heavy transport.
Acceptance: Is public opinion (I can really only judge U.S. attitudes) favorable to this method? Will there likely be resistance—whether justified or not?
Backyard?: Is this something that can be done domestically, in one’s backyard or small property, managed by the individual?
Efficiency: Over 50% gets the green. Below about 10% gets red. It’s not the most important of criteria, as the abundance score incorporates efficiency expectations. But we will always view low efficiency negatively.
Okay, enough holding out—here’s the matrix (click to expand).
Yellow boxes tend to deserve explanation. It is usually clear why something would swing red or green, but yellow often has several things tugging at it. If green boxes are given a +1 score, yellow boxes zero, and red boxes −1, adding the boxes with equal weight yields the scores on the right, by which measure the table is sorted: best to worst. The only place I cheated was to give D-D fusion a −2 for difficulty. It’s the hardest thing on the list, given our decades of massive effort invested to date on D-T fusion, while D-D is too hard to even attempt.
Now, equal weighting on all ten criteria is boneheaded. But the assessment is imprecise enough not to warrant a more elaborate weighting scheme. I do not stand firm behind the order that results, and am half-tempted to monkey with weighting schemes until a more preferred order emerges. But I would be cooking the books to further match my preferences. Feel free to weight any way you see fit, and change anything else while you’re at it. Just remember. No griping.
Fossil Fuels, Compared
Note that conventional fossil fuels, matrixed-out above, score green in almost every category, except—unfortunately—abundance. The efficiency is high for direct heating (most often natural gas), and middling for electricity or transport. Coal gets no points for transportation, and natural gas is of limited use here (although the bus I’m riding as I type this is powered by natural gas, so I can’t entirely nix its transportation capability). All things considered, all of the fossil fuels get a score of 7 or 8. Note the striking gap we face between fossil fuels and their alternatives, topping out at a score of 5. One might ding the fossil fuels a point or two for their greenhouse gas contributions, closing the gap a bit. None of the options in the alternatives matrix are intrinsic carbon emitters.
Quick Lessons
Looking at some of the main trends, very few options are both abundant and easy. Solar PV and solar thermal qualify. A similar exclusion principle often holds for abundant and demonstrated/available. There is a reason why folks (myself included) like solar.
Intermittency mainly plagues solar and wind resources, with mild inconvenience appearing for many of the natural sources.
Electricity is easy to produce. We have loads of ways to do it, and are likely to pick the easiest/cheapest. We won’t necessarily get far down the list if we’re covered by things at the top end (assuming my rankings have any validity and some economic correlation).
Transport is hard. Concerns over peak oil played a huge role in making me sit up to pay attention to our energy challenges. Electric cars are the most obvious way out, but don’t do much for heavy shipping by land or sea, and leave airplanes on the ground.
Few things face serious barriers to acceptance: especially when energy scarcity is at stake.
A few options are available for the homestead. A passive solar home with PV panels, wind, and some method to produce liquid fuels on site would be a dream come true. Here’s hoping for artificial photosynthesis!
The missing category here is cost, although difficulty may be an imperfect proxy. As a result, some of the high-scoring options may more be costly than we’d like. Actually, some of the lowest-scoring options are the costliest! If you’re expecting that we’ll replace fossil fuels and do it on the cheap, you might as well learn to bawl on the floor kicking and pounding your fists, tears streaming. This is our predicament. We have to buck up and deal with it, somehow.
Individual Discussion
For each topic, the link at the beginning points to a more complete discussion on Do the Math. Here, I just briefly characterize each resource in relation to the matrix criteria.
Solar PV: Covering only 0.5% of land area with 15% efficient PV panels provides the annual energy needs of our society, qualifying solar PV as abundant. It’s not terribly difficult to produce; silicon is the most abundant element in Earth’s crust, and PV panels are being produced globally at 25 GW peak capacity per year (translating to 5 GW of average power added per year). Intermittency is the Achilles Heel of solar PV, requiring storage solutions if adopted at large scale. Solar PV produces electricity directly, which could be converted to heat or transport. Most people do not object to solar PV on rooftops or over parking areas, or even in open spaces (especially desert). I’ve got some on my garage roof as we speak (with storage), so they’re well-suited to individual operation/maintenance. Clocking in at an efficiency of 15%, don’t expect PV to vastly exceed this ballpark.
Solar Thermal: Achieving comparable efficiency to PV, but using more land area, generating electricity from concentrated solar thermal energy automatically fits in the abundant category—though somewhat more regionally constrained. It’s relatively low-tech: shiny curved mirrors tracking on (often) one axis, heating oil or other fluid to run a plain-old heat engine. Intermittency can be mitigated by storing thermal energy, perhaps even for a few days. Because a standard heat-engine follows, fossil fuels can supplement in lean times using the same back-end. A number of plants are already in operation, producing cost-competitive electricity—and heat if anyone cares. As with so many of the alternatives, transportation is not directly aided. Public acceptance is no worse than for PV, etc. But don’t expect your own personal solar thermal electricity plant.
Solar Heating: On a smaller scale, heat collected directly from the sun can provide domestic hot water and home heating. In the latter case, it can be as simple as a south-facing window. Capturing and using solar heat effectively is not particularly difficult, coming down to plumbing, insulation, and ventilation control. Technically, it might be abundant, but since it is usually restricted to building footprints (roof, windows), I take it down a notch. There will be lean days, but my friends in Maine do not complain about their solar heating comfort (with occasional propane backup). Solar heating is useless for electricity or transport, but has no difficulty being accepted and almost by definition is a backyard-ready technology.
Hydroelectric: We have seen that super-efficient hydroelectric is doomed to remain a small player (in the rubric that we maintain today’s energy consumption levels). It’s the low-hanging fruit of the renewable world, and has therefore already seen large-scale development. It has seasonal intermittency (typical capacity factor for a hydro plant is 40%), does not directly provide heat or transport, and can only rarely be implemented personally, at home. Acceptance is fairly high, although silting and associated dangers—together with habitat destruction—do cause some opposition to expanded hydroelectricity.
Biofuels from Algae: I was somewhat surprised to see this entry rank as highly as it did in my admittedly unsophisticated scoring scheme. Because it captures solar energy—even at < 5% efficiency—the potential scale is automatically enormous. But it’s not easy, at present. Dealing with slime will bring challenges of keeping the plumbing clean, possible infection in a genetic arms race with evolving viruses, contamination by other species, etc. At present, we don’t have that magic algal sample that secretes the fuels we want. Heady talk of genetic engineering pledges to solve these problems, but we’re simply not there yet and cannot say for sure that we will get there. Otherwise, the ability to provide transportation fuel is the big draw. Heat may also be efficiently produced, though electricity would represent a misallocation of liquid fuel. Can it be done in the backyard? I could imagine a slime pond in the yard, but care and feeding and refining the product may be prohibitively difficult.
Geothermal Electricity: This option makes sense primarily at geological hotspots, which are rare. It will not scale to be a significant part of our entire energy mix. Aside from this, it is relatively easy, steady, and well-demonstrated in many locations. It can provide electricity, and obviously direct heat—although far from heat demand, generally. It provides no direct help on transportation. Objections are slim to non-existent. I don’t think houses tend to be built on the hotspots, so don’t look for it in a backyard near you.
Wind: Wind is a sensible option that I imagined would float higher in the list than it did. It’s neither abundant nor scarce, being one of those options that can provide a considerable fraction of our present needs under large-scale development. It’s pretty straightforward, reasonably efficient, and demonstrated the world over in large farms. The biggest downside is its intermittency. It will not be unusual to have a few days in a row with little or no regional input. Like so many other things, electricity is naturally produced, while heat and transport is only available via electricity. I sense that objections to wind are more serious than for many other alternatives. Windmills are noisy and tend to be located in prominent places (ridge-tops) where they are extremely visible and scenery-altering. You can’t hide wind in a bowl, or you end up hiding from the wind at the same time. Another built-in conflict emerges on wind-rich coastlines, where many like to take in unspoiled scenery. Small-scale wind is viable in your own backyard.
Artificial Photosynthesis: A very appealing future prospect for me is artificial photosynthesis, combining the abundance of direct solar with the self-storing flexibility of liquid fuel. Intermittency is thus eliminated to the extent that annual production meets demand: storage of a liquid fuel for many months is possible. The dream result of a panel sitting on your roof that drips liquid fuel could provide both heating and transportation fuel. In a pinch, one could also produce electricity this way, but what a waste of precious liquid fuel, when we have so many other ways to make electricity! The catch is that it doesn’t exist yet, that it may never exist, and that feeding it the right ingredients and processing/refining the fuel may eliminate the backyard angle. Still, we all have to have something to gush over. For some, it’s thorium and for others it’s fusion, etc. This one excites me by its potential to satisfy so many purposes.
Tidal Power: Restricted to select coastal locations, tidal will never be a large contributor on the global scale. The resource is intermittent on daily and monthly scales, but in a wholly predictable manner. Extracting tidal energy is not terribly hard—sharing technology with similarly efficient hydroelectric installations—and has been demonstrated in a number of locations around the world. It’s another electricity technique, with no direct offering of heat or transportation. No unusual level of societal objection exists, to my knowledge, but it’s not something you will erect in your backyard and expect to get much out of it.
Conventional Fission: Using conventional uranium reactors and conventional mining practices, nuclear fission does not have the legs for a marathon. On the other hand, it is certainly well-demonstrated, and has no problems with intermittency—unless we count the fact that it has trouble being intermittent in the face of variable load. Compared to other options, nuclear runs a tad on the high-tech side. By this I mean that design, construction, operation, and emergency mitigation require more brains and sophistication than the average energy producer. Nuclear fission directly produces heat (seldom utilized), and is primarily used to generate electricity via the standard steam-driven heat engine, but offers no direct help on transportation. Acceptance is mixed. Germany plans to phase out its nuclear program even though they are serious about carbon reduction. No new plants have been built in the U.S. for over thirty years in part due to public discomfort. Some of this is irrational fear over mutant three-eyed fish and the like, but some is genuine political difficulty relating to the pesky waste problem that no country has yet solved to satisfaction. Nuclear power is not possible on a personal scale.
Uranium Breeder: Extending nuclear fission to be able to use the 140-times more abundant 238U (rather than 0.7% 235U) gives uranium fission the legs to run for at least centuries if not a few millennia, so abundance issues disappear. Breeding has been practiced in military reactors, and indeed some significant fraction of the power in conventional uranium reactors comes from 238U turned 239Pu. But no commercial power plants have been built to deliberately access the bulk of uranium, turning it into plutonium at scale for the purpose of power production. Public acceptance of breeders will face even stiffer hurdles because plutonium is more easily separated into bomb material than is 235U, and the trans-uranic radioactive waste from this option is nastier than for the conventional cousin.
Thorium Breeder: Thorium is more abundant than uranium, and only comes in one flavor naturally, so that abundance is not an issue. Like all reactors, thorium reactors fall into the high-tech camp, and include new challenges (e.g., liquid sodium) that conventional reactors have not faced. There have been a few instances of small-scale demonstration, but nothing in the commercial realm, so that we’re probably a few decades away from being able to bring thorium online. Public reaction will be likely be similar to that for conventional nuclear: not a show stopper, but some resistance on similar grounds. It is not clear whether the newfangled aspect of thorium will be greeted with suspicion or with an embrace. Though also a breeding technology (making fissile 233U from 232Th), the proliferation aspect is severely diminished for thorium due to highly radioactive 232U by-product and virtually no easily separable plutonium. Of the future nuclear prospects, I am most optimistic about this one—although it’s no nirvana to me.
Geothermal Heating with Depletion: A vast store of thermal energy sits in the crust, locked in the rock and moving slowly outward. Being the impatient lot that we are, we could drill down and grab the energy out of the rock on our own schedule, effectively mining heat as a one-time resource. In the absence of water flow to convect heat around, dry rock will deplete its heat within 5–10 meters of the borehole in a matter of a few years, requiring another hole 10 meters away from the first, and so on and so on. I classify this as moderately difficult, requiring a never-ending large-scale drilling operation across the land. The temperatures are pretty marginal for running heat engines to make electricity with any respectable efficiency (especially given so many easier options for electricity), but at least the thermal resource will not suffer intermittency problems during the time the hole is still useful. Given its inconvenience (kilometers of drilling), I do not know if examples abound of people having tried this for the purpose of providing heat in arbitrary (not geologically hot) areas. Public acceptance may be less than lukewarm given the scale of drilling involved, dealing with tailings and possibly groundwater contamination issues on a sizable scale. While such a hole could fit in a backyard, it would be far more practical to use the heat for clusters of buildings rather than for just one—given the amount of effort that goes into each hole (and considering short-term lifetime of each hole). I gave this technique high marks for efficiency if used for heat, but it would drop to reddish-yellow if we tried to use this resource for electricity.
Geothermal Heating, Steady State: If we turn our noses up at depletion-based geothermal heat, steady state offers far less total potential, coming to about 10 TW of flow if summed acrossall land. And to access temperatures hot enough to be useful for heating purposes, we’re talking about boreholes at least 1 km deep. It is tremendously challenging to cover any significant fraction of land area with thermal collectors 1 km deep. So I am probably being too generous to color this one yellow for the abundance factor. That’s okay, because I’m hitting it hard enough on the other counts. To gather enough steady-flow heat to provide for a normal U.S. home’s heat, the collection network would have to span a square 200 m on a side at depth, which seems nightmarish to me. But at least depletion would not be an issue in this circumstance. Otherwise, this category shares similar markings and rationale as the depletion scenario.
Biofuels from Crops: We’ve seen that corn ethanol is a loser of a scheme on energy grounds, although sugar cane and vegetable oils fare better. But these compete with food production and arable land availability, so biofuels from crops can only graduate from “niche” to “potent” in the context of plant waste or cellulosic conversion. I have thus split the abundance and demonstration in two: food crop energy is demonstrated but severely constrained in scale. Celluosic matter becomes a potent source, but undemonstrated (perhaps this should even be red). I do not label the prospect as an easy one, because growing and harvesting annual crops on a relavent scale constitutes a massive, perpetual job. If exploiting fossil fuels is akin to spending our inheritance, growing and harvesting our energy on an annual basis is like getting a real job—a real hard job. The main benefit of biofuels from crops is that we get a liquid fuel out of it—so hard to come by via other alternatives. Public acceptance hinges on competition with food or just land in general. Scoring only about 1% efficient at raking in solar energy, this option requires commandeering massive tracts of land. A small-time farmer may make useful amounts of fuel for themselves in their back “yard,” if refining does not create a bottleneck.
Ocean Thermal: The ocean thermal resource uses the 20–30°C temperature difference between the deep ocean (a few hundred meters down) and its surface to drive a ridiculously low-efficiency heat engine. The heat content is not useful for warming any home (it’s not hot). But all the same, it’s a vast resource due to the sheer area of the solar collector. Large plants out at sea will be difficult to access and maintain, and transmitting power to land is no picnic either. The resource suffers seasonal intermittency at mid-latitudes, but let’s imagine putting these things all in the tropics to get around this. Sound hard, you say? Well yeah! That’s part of what makes ocean thermal difficult! No relevant/commercial scale demonstration exists. Like so many others, this is electricity only (and this time, far from demand). Probably nobody cares what we put to sea: out of sight, out of mind. Ocean thermal isnot a backyard solution!
Ocean Currents: Large-scale oceanic currents are slower than wind by about a factor of ten, giving a kilogram of current 1000 times less power than a kilogram of wind. Water density makes up the difference to make ocean current comparable to wind in terms of power per rotor area. Not all the ocean has currents as high as 1 m/s, so I put the total abundance in the same category as wind. Maybe accessing a thicker column of water than we can for wind should bump ocean currents up a bit, but the currents are relatively confined to surfaces. But why dunk a windmill underwater where it’s far from demand and difficult to access and maintain, when a comparable power can be had in dry air? So I classify this as difficult. On the plus side, the current should be rock solid, eliminating intermittency worries, unlike wind. Still, not one bit of our electricity mix comes from ocean currents at present, so it cannot be said to have been meaningfully demonstrated. For the remaining categories: it’s electricity only; who cares what’s underwater; and no backyard opportunity.
Ocean Waves: While they seem strong and ever-present, waves are a linear-collection phenomenon, and not an areal phenomenon. So there really isn’t that much arriving at shores all around the world (a few TW at best). It’s not particularly difficult to turn wave motion into useful electricity at high efficiency, and the proximity to land will make access, maintenance, and transmission far less worrisome than for the previous two cases. There will be some intermittency—largely seasonal— as storms and lulls come and go. I’ve seen a diverse array of prototype concepts, and a few are being tested at commercial scale. So this is further along then the previous two oceanic sources, but not so much as to get the green light. There will be moderate push-back from people whose ocean views are spoiled, or who benefit from natural wave energy hitting the coast. There are no waves in my backyard, and I hope to keep it this way!
D-T Fusion: The easier of the two fusion options, involving deuterium and tritium, represents a longstanding goal under active development for the last 60 years. The well-funded international effort, ITER, plans to accomplish a 480 second pulse of 500 MW power by 2026. This defines the pinnacle of hard. Fusion brings with it numerous advantages: enormous power density; moderate radioactive waste products (an advantage?!); abundant deuterium (though tritium is zilch); and surplus helium to liven up children’s parties. Fusion would have no intermittency issues, can directly produce heat (and derivative electricity), but like the others does not directly address transportation. The non-existant tritium can be knocked out of lithium with neutrons, and even through we are not awash in lithium, we have enough to last many thousands of years. We might expect some public opposition to D-T fusion due to the necessary neutron flux and associated radioactivity. Fusion is the highest-tech energy we can envision at present, requiring a team of well-educated scientists/technicians to run—meaning don’t plan on building one in your backyard, unless you can afford to have some staff PhDs on hand.
D-D Fusion: Replacing tritium with deuterium means abundance of materials is no concern whatsoever for many billions of years. As a trade, it’s substantially harder than D-T fusion (or we would not even consider D-T). D-D fusion requires higher temperatures, making confinement that much more difficult. It is for this reason that I gave D-D fusion a −2 score for difficulty. It’s not something we should rely upon to get us out of the impending energy pinch, which is my primary motivation.
End of an Era
Not only does this conclude the end of the phase on Do the Math where we evaluate the quantitative and qualitative benefits and challenges of alternatives to fossil fuels, it also points to the fact that we face the end of a golden era of energy. Sure, we managed to make scientific and cultural progress based on energy from animals, slaves, and firewood prior to discovering the fossil fuels. But it was in unlocking our one-time inheritance that we really came into our own. Soon, we will see a yearly decrease in our trust fund dividend, forcing us to either adapt to less or try to fill the gap with replacements. What this post and the series preceding it demonstrates is that we do not have a delightful menu from which to select our future. Most of the options leave a bad taste of one form or the other.
When I first approached the subject of energy in our society, I expected to develop a picture in my mind of our grandiose future, full of alternative energy sources like solar, wind, nuclear, biofuels, geothermal, tidal, etc. What I got instead was something like this matrix: full of inadequacies, difficulties, and show-stoppers. Our success at managing the transition away from fossil fuels while maintaining our current standard of living is far from guaranteed. If such success is our goal, we should realize the scale of the challenge and buckle down now while we still have the resources to develop a costly new infrastructure. Otherwise we get behind the curve, possibly facing unfamiliar chaos, loss of economic confidence, resource wars, and the unforgiving Energy Trap. The other controlled option is to deliberately adjust our lives to require fewer resources, preferably abandoning the growth paradigm at the same time. Can we manage a calm, orderly exit from the building? In either case, the first step is to agree that the building is in trouble. Techno-optimism keeps us from even agreeing on that.
Contact
- Content: editors at theoildrum dot com
- Tech support: support at theoildrum dot com
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
We received an additional comment from Tom Murphy as an addendum to his post, as a response to earlier discussions about it on his blog Do The Math:
I know already from a prolific stream of comments on Do the Math that my admittedly boneheaded scoring scheme perturbed various enthusiasts—particularly the nuclear fans. I anticipate a similar reaction here on The Oil Drum, so let me try to clarify a couple of things first, lest there be misperceptions.
The scoring scheme should not be taken too seriously. Abundance is more important than whether something is backyard-compatible, for instance. Yet devising a weighting scheme struck me as adding unwarranted complexity and perhaps even increasing the subjectivity of the exercise. If you are so motivated, generate your own weighting scheme and change box colors while you're at it. Post it on a blog! Treat us to your biases.
Rather than fostering infighting among renewables, I hope the main points are not lost: that fossil fuels are qualitatively superior on the matrix categories, and that transportation without fossil fuels will be hard. The world is not static, and neither is the matrix. Reds can become yellow and green, with development. Greens could become yellow with depletion, etc.
Since the nuclear fans were the group most vocally disappointed in the matrix, I should clarify that I am not anti-nuclear—in that I havenever been drawn to the "no more nukes" message, don't see nuclear as inherently bad, and believe that public perception is not fairly calibrated to actual risks (but that risks are more than imagined, all the same). Rather, I am simply not as excited by nuclear as others might be. If I monkeyed with the colored boxes, I might be able to bump nuclear up several points if that were my goal, but it still won't rival fossil fuels and won't break out of the pack of alternatives. In the end, I think nuclear will continue to play role, and possibly an increasing one as alternatives are demanded. It's something we know how to do, after all, and despite its complexity it has some real advantages.
"Since the nuclear fans were the group most vocally disappointed in the matrix, I should clarify that I am not anti-nuclear—in that I havenever been drawn to the "no more nukes" message, don't see nuclear as inherently bad,.."
I do. I haven't fully absorbed the article, and don't want to go off half-cocked, but millions of folks have developed their own BAU that doesn't involve sweeping their own filth under someone else's carpet. Coal and nuclear top this list, provably. The current and future consequences of these filthy power sources should be amortized at a high rate, and the interest paid first to those who refuse to make these Faustian bargains at others' expense, at least those of us who are making a committed effort.
Addressing our collective ability to discount others' futures needs to be priority one, or we're all guilty of ecocide. Our great-grandchildren won't give a damn about your BAU, but will certainly suffer it's consequences.
"sweeping their own filth under someone else's carpet."
I agree completely. I would embrace Nuclear if the waste were stored in communities based on their percentage-use of the power generated. The end users of the energy cannot be allowed to be insulated from the consequences of their behavior.
Also, to prevent the powerful
criminalsleaders from cheating, the waste cannot be stored in poor parts of the community - it must be stored nearest to the wealthy and powerful.Maybe we should do this with all our waste. I wonder how many people would get tired of the growing piles of plastic baubles and packaging, and would suddenly find the "miracle" of bulk purchases and re-use of the plastic packaging.
If you took home the nuclear waste, why not the pollution from every other power source? I suspect if people did have to put up with pollution, they'd probably do a much better job of reprocessing the waste. You could dig a hole 30 foot deep in the backyard of every house and stick all the nuclear waste after reprocessing down there and most people would be fine with it once they get over their fear as long as none leaked.
"If you took home the nuclear waste, why not the pollution from every other power source?"
From you lips to dog's ears.
We could collect auto exhaust while driving and be required to store it on our property in big propane-like tanks...
Or, maybe we could modify this system: the producers of energy-consuming products could be forced to store some percentage of the wastes generated from their products - on the properties of the CEO, employees, and all bond and share-holders' properties.
Sounds like a plan to me. "Hey honey, my 401K doubled, but now we have to store 14 tons of waste per month in the garage..."
I don't like nuclear fission as a power source for the most part. I live in a completely nuclear free country (New Zealand). However one thing I do like about nuclear is that out of all the potential energy sources nuclear is the one which is the most realistically appraised in terms of pros/cons. Nuclear seems worse than it is relatively because the other power sources aren't exactly given the same fine toothed scrutiny and many of them are given unrealistic assumptions about cost, lives, pollution etc.
People are afraid of nuclear to the same extent that they're afraid of plane crashes because accidents are spectacular and you tend to remember them. What people don't notice is the slow attrition, even something as basic as people falling off roofs servicing solar panels and car crashes are less fearsome and yet they extract a higher toll in human lives. People also haven't been taught to fear other potential catastrophes such as dam failure such as: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam which can only become more common as climate change increases weather variability.
So in short: Probably better to consume less than build more stuff. If half the new capacity was nuclear, suddenly it'd be a lot more attractive to use less power because people rightly fear it.
Consuming less is the best option, no doubt, the question is how to make a decent life with less consumption. From everything I've read, we're at such a point of over-consumption in the west that consuming less is very often a good thing in terms of quality of life. Of course, that doesn't mean much to the poor.
The nuclear issue is that it has spectacular, LASTING effects. Theoretically you can stop doing other sorts of things and the effects will wane fairly quickly - if you stop burning coal, the health and environmental damage of coal will fairly shortly wane. With nuclear, if bad things happen you have to deal with them for decades if not generations. But at the level of consumption we're at, both create lasting harms - global warming as the ecosystem can't absorb the excess carbon and it builds up, development itself that destroys ecosystems everywhere - we've really screwed the pooch.
Ultimately, nuclear energy is more of the same. A finite, dirty energy source.
Nuclear is not terribly or immediately finite, and the serious effects are not all that lasting.
If concentrated, any high-grade "waste" is a viable source. If dispersed, it is either short-lived or low-risk -- that's the beauty of half-lives.
The trouble is that the transition from concentrated to dispersed is not a well-managed path. It's either uncontrolled, random, and accidental, or else it's purposeful but pointless storage. Reprocessing is the only reasonable path for nuclear, IMHO.
At a few hundred $B, there is a reasonable loss of life for any venture. The US gov't number is about $6M per death avoided. Every $B spent on add'l nuclear safety needs to prevent about 166 deaths, by that metric.
Once we get past the notion that human life is highly valuable, and onto the reality that energy is, I suspect a lot of options will be more palatable. Why worry about a few thousand people dying from a nuke fault if otherwise a different few thousand would freeze in the cold?
"Nuclear is not terribly or immediately finite, and the serious effects are not all that lasting.
"If concentrated, any high-grade "waste" is a viable source. If dispersed, it is either short-lived or low-risk -- that's the beauty of half-lives."
Patently false.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste
Only a very small percentage of this waste is reprocessed each year, and costs will make it prohibitive to improve upon this failure. Hand waiving, rationalizing, and minimizing over the last half century hasn't and won't change this going forward; hundreds of thousands, if not millions of tons of waste that will be left behind and remain intensely lethal to all life far longer than any human civilization or construction has or likely will endure.
I fail to see how anyone can be so casual about this crime. It just boggles the mind...
How do you know that costs make reprocessing prohibitive, especially given its been done for years in France?
On the subject of waste storage, in the current uranium based once through reactor waste stream it is the transuranic alpha emitters (i.e. Pu) that have kilo-year half lives and are dangerous mainly via ingestion or inhalation. Radium also falls into that category, but we don't label the natural occurrence of radium an intensely lethal crime, though radium causes premature deaths. The remaining fission products in the waste stream do indeed fall into to two categories: i) highly radioactive and dangerous but short lived, or ii) long lived but not very dangerous, like the potassium-40 found in every human. I mention all this because there are other known nuclear reactor and fuel cycle technologies that produce almost none of the long lived dangerous transuranics as waste. What little waste such a reactor might produce would become safe in tens to hundreds of years, not a thousand.
With a BAU cohesive future by no means a done deal should we still be entertaining Nuclear as a way forward?
I posted this a few days ago on another thread but I think it's worth reposting.
The following link is to Part 1 of 5.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnQAz7oYwQM
I apologise to the film maker in advance if I'm pointing to an illegal upload to YouTube.
The following is from the film makers own site: http://www.intoeternitythemovie.com/synopsis/
Wow great question - like the cobalt 60 canisters opened mistakenly by scrappers in Mexico and Brazil - how do we know someone will not want to melt down the stainless steel canisters 50,000 years in the future???? Boggles the mind.
Dave while I believe you are sincere in your beliefs about the dangers of nuclear waste you should pick examples that do not hint that you have little real knowledge of the subject. Using your example of Cobalt sixty if I were to take 1kG of it, half-life of approximately 5.3 years, and store it for 450 years I would have zero remaining. It would have all decayed to stable Nickel 60.
Tomswift;
Clearly, his point wasn't about Cobalt. What's inside a given cask might be any of the various 'gems' that come out of this industry, and probably many of them... (And we DO still have TWO whole lifetimes of the USA left to wait for that Cobalt to become Nickel, no?) but curious people in the future,be it crazy teenagers, scrappers or earnest Archeologists might be a little fascinated with these old powdery stone heads and see if there's some buried treasure inside. What could possibly go wrong?
i think putting the waste in "permanent" place underground makes more sense than leaving the stuff in the "temporary" place on the ground as other countries are doing...
Thank you for the details -- I'd recollected a similar post and the math is obvious, but I was of course speaking broadly. The situation now is an unstable point -- aging low-tech reactors with bulk-stored waste, versus an alternative of continual replacement with reprocessed waste. The "hot" waste should be valuable, and other compounds can be intentionally reacted as well.
All such decisions should be weighted unemotionally, but they aren't, which creates such odd dead-end realities.
I've seen a lot of "shoulds, woulds, and coulds"; been seeing them for a couple of decades now. And I don't consider vehemently pointing out what actually is as being emotional. A lot of things aren't (and likely won't be) happening that "should. All of the talk about half-lives, dispersion, naturally occurring, etc., doesn't negate the fact that humans are creating thousands of tons of highly concentrated waste, much of it deadly and with long half-lives. The poison is in the dose, and very little of this material is being dealt with other than to put it in pools and canisters and wait for someone else to fund and implement a viable solution.
Meantime, in case you haven't noticed, our hyper-complex global faux-capitalist system is in a slow death spiral, seemingly unaware of the many hard, mostly permanent limits that ever-more energy will do little to mitigate. It won't be long before our societies have neither the resources, will, nor skills to deal with this mess. This is supportable realty as I see it, and expecting that the nuclear industry will finally get their collective sh@t together regarding their waste is magical thinking on an obscene scale.
That's the truth!
I've also been hearing these things for decades; how the waste will be this, can be that, should be this, etc. However, it isn't. Will, can, should, don't mean squat when they're not done, and they haven't been done. Not only that, there are always plenty of excuses as to why it's someone else's fault that they're not done. Face it, they won't be done!
Yep. The fact that society doesn't grok energy descent or receding horizons means that moving those spent-fuel pools will be indefinitely put off, and put off again, waiting for better times and "growth" when it will be easier. That delusion provides a perfect mechanism for many or most of those ponds to eventually boil away in place. What will change it? Enlightenment of the masses to a low discount rate on decisions affecting the future? Philosopher kings? My own modified matrix would have a "suitable for safe use by committees of humans" column as a salient addition, rendering some categories moot.
I love that committee column idea!
I imagine some places will mostly get things together, and others won't, and any decision we make on this board will not prevent dangerous nukes in far-away places, or guarantee clean, safely run nukes next door. In any case, plenty of people die in other ways, and again, without power many more would die from very basic causes. Not that I don't think some of this will happen anyway, but I see no reason to worry excessively about radiation hazards from nuke plants when people today die from nuclear medicine (not to mention car wrecks, flu, smoking, and diabetes). At the point that choices dwindle, death will be forever near-at-hand.
Capitalism has at its heart the discount factor which favors the near-term at the expense of the long-term. Perhaps it pervades human nature as well, as people take near-term gains over larger but later long-term gains. Today, discount factors hurt nukes due to high up-front costs, yet they still prevail even in face of regulations and cheap oil. As long as discount factors remain high, saving the world for future generations will always be questionable. Do the math -- at 7% discounting (low for business decisions), a future value halves every 10 years. 100 years out is factored down 2^10 - to .1% of current value. $100/bbl oil today will trump $10,000/bbl oil 100 years from now, even in constant dollars.
If discount factors drop such that 100 year future costs are valued higher, long-lived investments will be easier to make (though surely the cash to do so will be scarce). Nukes might do just fine if the other option is freezing in the dark, even if it means possibly dying years earlier than we expect today.
And even ignoring discount factors, if you asked most people if they would be willing to live in relative comfort but a struggling person on the other side of the world would die from radiation poisoning, or both could choose to barely survive with a 50/50 chance of either dying within five years from hunger, what would most pick? In reality the choice won't be so obvious, but each of us chooses everyday. How many would choose to forego children to keep a Maldives island above water? Who would sacrifice their kids to save a tribe of Amazonian rain-forest dwellers? Do you buy the iPhone and have child labor build it for you to take pennies home to Mom to buy rice, or do you forego the iPhone and have a nameless child starve? Nothing is black and white....
Ghung, I strongly expect you'd answer differently than most. I suspect many would say one thing if asked, but do another in reality. Those few who will sacrifice and reduce may make a tiny difference, but will be swamped by those who do not. I'll just go on record as saying it's going to suck to live in a nation that is poor, powerless, and short on resources.
As for me, I've chosen to work in gas and oil instead of nukes. 30 years of increasingly expensive oil should support my family for the working years I have left, and I will gladly sell energy bullets to all combatants. For retirement I may well work in renewables, assuming there is money to be made. I don't think I'll do nukes personally, but I am absolutely convinced that others will.
Capitalism has at its heart the discount factor which favors the near-term at the expense of the long-term. Perhaps it pervades human nature as well, as people take near-term gains over larger but later long-term gains.
Then perhaps Man should not be using fission power?
A couple of papers with a less sanguine view of the French reprocessing industry.
http://www.psr.org/nuclear-bailout/resources/spent-nuclear-fuel.html
http://www.citizen.org/documents/Burnie%20paper%20on%20French%20reproces...
What I got from this is that, in reality, the French are running a once-through nuclear power generation process since only a small handful of their reactors burn any MOX and the costs of reprocessing and storage are probably as much as would be simply storing the un-reprocessed fuel.
The remaining fission products in the waste stream do indeed fall into to two categories: i) highly radioactive and dangerous but short lived, or ii) long lived but not very dangerous, like the potassium-40 found in every human.
So was/are the open reactors at Chernobyl and Fukushima waste streams?
I don;t think there is any doubt we can have a decent life with less consumption. Ghung gives us one end of the scale - self sufficiency, and some of the dense, energy efficient cities (or parts thereof) give another.
The real issue with reducing consumption is that it will also reduce JOBS. There is a large part of the western (and especially US) economy that is primarily geared to servicing "consumers". Reducing consumption of everything from energy to plastic toys to movies to hamburgers will reduce those jobs, and that is why governments fear it. They dream of economic growth - while holding consumption steady, but is that possible, and if so, how?
Some people would argue that if we have to give up on a good part of the discretionary consumption - the fun stuff like like vacations, skiing, motorsports, movies, air travel, Disneyland etc, then we have a decrease in "quality" of life. Personally, I think giving up all that would lead in an increase in health, but that would lead to even more job losses...
Governments pay lip service to reducing consumption, but they are all serious about one thing - a return to "growth", rather than how to live without it.
Best we learn to do so ourselves...
Thanks, Paul, but I have a long way to go compared to some folks I know. I refuse to give up Bourbon imported all the way from Kentucky, I love paper towels, and I still get plastic bags at the checkout; they have too many other uses. My wife nixed the idea of washable toilet towels, and they'll have to pry my log slitter from my cold dead hands ;-)
I bet the average resident could cut his home energy use in half, without giving up a luxury like Bourbon, transported across state lines. The energy cost of the transport is probably pretty small. I think we waste more energy with low efficiency cooking techniques than we do transporting foodstuff.
Yes but decentralization will be a good thing...I live in Montana a state very proud of buying "montana made goods" we can buy whisky made here and even gin made here...not to mention local beer and wine....water is the key....clean water that is. It can be done and will be done as painful as can be...not sure how we will get coffee though..might have to give it up....
Hell with good whisky, wine, and beer who needs coffee. : )
Me!
Yair...don't know if its of interest but this outfit have built a fair lump of a crane for nuclear plant construction.
http://www.bigge.com/heavy-lift-and-transportation/super-cranes.html
A nice clear animation of an interesting concept.
Cheers
Some consumption could be converted into investment in stuff like renewables. For instance, I "stimulated" the economy in 2009 by buying PV panels. At least for the few decades it would take to build up renewables -or other useful longterm infrastructure, we could try to convert consumption towards investment. Of course baring a major cultural change, this would have to be led by government action (raise taxes, and spend on infrastructure rather than plastic junk). And this goes against a certain ideological grain in American culture.
People are afraid of nuclear to the same extent that they're afraid of plane crashes because accidents are spectacular
When a plane crashes it doesn't take out 20+ square miles for decades.
Storing nuclear waste really is a problem, it seems the Japanese are storing it all over the place, much to the detriment of the population. I think I will give nuclear a pass
I would embrace Nuclear if the waste were stored in communities
The people who make the economic decisions are likewise insulated from the failure modes of fission power.
To a person, when asked, the fission supports here on TOD are not spending their time next to reactors like Fukushima.
Nice matrix... Just a few comments:
For Nuclear, I think both Japan and France already use breeder reactors using liquid sodium so that doesn't really seem like new technology. But really nuclear has been tried and it is a pretty complete failure - the costs are to high even when it works perfectly and it's not safe. Meltdowns happen every 10 to 20 years with the number of reactors we already have, it we built out 10 times as many, we would be having a meltdown every year.
For Solar, there are GsAs cells which are up to 34% efficient when using concentrated light, and more standard panels over 20%. Using 15% is a bit low. Solar thermal is also improving, like brightsource http://www.brightsourceenergy.com/ who's generator is up to 40% efficient. Solar quickly becomes a lot more practical as the efficiency improves, assuming 20% or more and it would even be a more obvious winner on your matrix.
Actually efficiency is no longer a super important driver and cost per watt is far more important. See Tom's piece "Don't be an PV efficiency snob" www.theoildrum.com/node/8461
When it comes to the fully deployed cost per watt, higher efficiency is important because it reduces the balance of system costs (fewer mounts, shorter wire runs etc.). As panel prices drop, the system sweet point efficiencywise goes up.
You're not wrong that efficiency reduces BOS costs, but not to the point where it makes sense to use Gallium-Arsenide for grid tied PV.
We will just have to wait on the GaAs stuff. AltaDevices claims their thinfilm stuff will be cheap. I doubt that venture would succeed unless it is competitively priced.
And if the cost for GaAs drops 20% for every doubling of production, as is typical for manufacturing learning curves? In that case how many doublings before GaAs makes sense?
Never. It will always be way more expensive then silicon.
Way more expensive may no matter. Not if higher efficiency cuts BOS costs by more than GaAs increases it. With thin film very little material is needed. Although processing cost is very important.
Basically it could be no more expensive than what would be offset by the saved BOS costs. Specifically, increased panel cost per watt/efficiency ratio must be less than BOS cost per watt/efficiency ratio. That is going to have to be only a bit more expensive, not way more expensive.
That misses the point, which is that in the case where the mfn cost per cell goes towards nil for both, then install cost dominates and thus efficiency then dominates.
http://cires.colorado.edu/science/groups/weatherhead/documents/PIPeff36.pdf
Single crystalline GaaS efficiency is 26% compared to single crystal Si at 25%. Currently Si costs $500 per square meter and GaaS $10,000 per square meter. If cost efficiency due to mass production is important, then the advantage goes to silicon which is produced in the gigawatts.
Triple junction devices are over 40% efficient in the lab. I'm not sure you can even buy it if your name isn't NASA. Are we fantasizing a world where triple junction devices are too cheap to meter?
That paper is a bit oblique in how it breaks out PV efficiency records. Table III has GaAs cells at 35.8%, Table IV has concentrator GaAs at 29%. The firm Semprius apparently has tested, production ready GaAs at 33.9%.
Regards cost, the concentrators are the only place where GaAs might make sense. In the case of of future concentrators, yes, the PV cost might be in the noise compared to the balance of system.
One just has to read the table titles.
Table III is "notable exceptions" to tables I (cells) and II (modules), i.e.
1 sun illuminated things that didn't fit elsewhere.
It lists a GaInP/GaAs/GaInAs tandem (two cells "stacked", monolithically per the note) as 35.8%,
though note that the area is only .88 cm^2, ie the size of your pinky nail.
The Table IV is "Terrestrial Concentrator cell and modules", thus the added info of intensity.
The new (in bold) GaAs cell at 29% is a single cell, .0505 cm^2 is a cell .22 cm on a side
(if square - some concentrator cells are round to match the optics),
illuminated at 117 suns.
The Semprius link you gave notes "three layers ... each modified to convert a different part of the solar spectrum", sounds like a triple junction cell to me (more expensive).
Their press release has few details, other than use of STC and AM1.5D (direct - intended for concentrator cells), no mention of any concentration - which will change the efficiency slightly.
An excellent and easy to understand online "book" on solar cells is:
http://www.pveducation.org/pvcdrom
If someone hasn't beat me to it already...
IIRC France and Japan ran experimental breeders for a short time and shut them down. I don't believe any bona-fide breeder reactors are currently in commercial operation.
The Russian BN-600, typically running at about 540 MWe, is a sodium-cooled fast-neutron breeder, usually considered to be a commercial operation. There have been a series of problems with the reactor, all classified at the lowest IAEA level.
Next-gen reactors such as the AP1000 are designed to have much higher fuel burn-up rates, somewhat blurring the distinction between non-breeders and breed-and-burn types of breeders. There are no AP1000s currently in operation, but China has four under construction. This past week, the US NRC approved licenses for two AP1000 units to be built in Georgia.
With a loud no vote by the US NRC's hackish chairman, Jackzo. He has a great deal of power to still slow down the Georgia plants, and thus increase their final cost.
Oh, certainly. But AP1000s are going to go into operation somewhere in the next few years, even if not in the US. I only brought them up to illustrate the point that "What's a breeder?" is becoming a fuzzier question.
This is a revised composite of my notes to Tom on Do the Math. I am glad that Tom has acknowledged that his matrix is largely subjective, but maintain that values assigned the disparate energy resources are misleading.
Tom,
I was surprised that your matrix did not include columns for ore energy or plant power density. These parameters are benefit weighted expressions of resource use. Nuclear energy is costly not because of resource constraints but because of how it is implemented. Plants are not standardized, wastes not reprocessed, advanced design concepts frozen, and environmental impacts argued endlessly. Ore energy density is directly related to environmental effects of mining and waste disposal. Terms you have used such as potency and compactness seemed analogous to plant power density and get at the crux of energy return on investment for systems in which fuel abundance is not an issue.
Heat rejection (cooling) requirements for thermal power plants are the same for similar heat source and sink temperatures. Nuclear and solar are both abundant, so let's try a qualitative comparison nuclear and solar-thermal footprints for both the (primary) heat source and (secondary) cooling sides. Source temperature is not much different on the absolute scale, so Carnot efficiency and secondary side considerations and are a wash, except that water is scarce under a clear blue sky in the desert. A nuclear reactor cooling tower dwarfs the containment vessel, which is the source of nuclear thermal energy. Conversely, a solar thermal cooling system is dwarfed by the mirror array, and this array is huge compared to the reactor containment. Of course, a detailed analysis of resource use would take higher order (resources to get the resources...) requirements into account. Others (see below) have done such an analysis and come up with significantly less resource use per Joule delivered for conventional 40 year old LWR designs than either solar PV or solar thermal, even while neglecting energy storage considerations. And we can do better. Advanced burner and breeder reactor designs using liquid metal cooling, seal-less electromagnetic pumps, supercritical CO2 secondary sides, pool reactor containment geometry, and passive emergency core cooling are significantly safer and more compact.
http://www.isa.org.usyd.edu.au/publications/documents/ISA_Nuclear_Report...
Upon what basis do you claim that breeder reactor transuranic wastes are more nasty? Breeder reactor transuranic waste products pose much less long term hazard than existing commercial reactor waste streams, since the half-life is significantly shorter. As we extract more energy from nuclear fuel, the resulting waste becomes less hazardous. Please see below link, section 3.2:
http://www.inl.gov/technicalpublications/Documents/4731797.pdf
In terms of sustainability and safety, design really matters. Existing nuclear power plants were designed while the technology was in its infancy, and it is quite unfair to judge fission reactor safety and sustainability based on them. Yet even these existing plants can be shown to be safer than burning fossil fuels, on a fatality per Joule accessed basis. This is consistent with a high energy density fuel that is handled in a comparatively safe manner.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html
Another resource I’d like to share is the book “Powerplant Technology” by M.M. El-Wakil. It includes detailed thermodynamic discussions, comparisons of thermal-fission, fast-breeder, geothermal, hydrocarbon, solar, wind, and ocean sources, energy storage and environmental considerations. Some time ago, I was fortunate enough to attend courses taught by the eloquent author.
Because nuclear energy issues are so complex, with many choices to be made for a reactor design and fuel cycle, it is possible to highlight certain choices to suggest that nuclear power is not a viable option. I believe that by neglecting power density, your ranking system treats nuclear unfairly. In a previous post on energy "cubes," you represented nuclear fuel requirements as the amount of crust required based on an average abundance of uranium, even though nobody is mining uranium by randomly digging up our Earth's crust. Why not treat fossil fuel and mineral resources in the same manner?
In stating that you are not anti-nuclear, perhaps you are trying to suggest that you are being fair and impartial by rating all nuclear options at 2 or below. If so, this is a self-assessment, and we humans tend to be bad at it. Which is one reason to talk, blog, argue, listen, and be flexible.
You and many others seem to be missing the boat regarding waste streams. Because nuclear ore and fuel have an extremely high energy density, it is economical to very substantially contain nuclear waste. Energy released by nuclear disintegration simplifies the detection and identification of accidental emissions, at levels far below that which presents a health hazard. Conversely, nearly all fossil fuel waste is discarded into our atmosphere, where it causes a whole host of problems. Existing nuclear waste and depleted uranium are vast potential resources waiting to be released in advanced breeder or burner reactors. I am certainly not alone in suggesting that nuclear is the solution to what may be the mother of all industrial accidents. James (Gaia) Lovelock, Stewart (WholeEarthCat) Brand, Patrick (Greenpeace) Moore, James (AGW) Hansen and Bill (MS) Gates, nuclear outsiders all, have arrived at the same conclusion. I hope you will revise your matrix after taking a look at climate change.
For remote installations, I am excited about solar. However, electricity is a luxury if one is off the grid to begin with. Most of us reside in an urban environment where electricity is an essential service.
Thank you for your articles. I was very impressed (9/10) by your galactic scale growth and nation sized battery articles. We seem to agree about the problems if not the solutions. Split wood and atoms, pedal a nuclear-electric bike, and provide Djerassi's pill for peace!
Tom, it all depends on what qualities one cherishes. I cherish clean, quiet, powerful. My matrix I suppose differs from yours. In fact, I set one forth years ago: Scoreboard
One day, the notion of burning fuels to move things will seem as primitive as cooking a meal in Manhattan at a campfire on the floor in the kitchen. Yes, fossil fuels are compact, but not as compact as electricity delivered by wire. Fuels are explosive too, whether fossil or bio, and have no business in a conveyance. Now don't get lost, I'm not talking about EVs with batteries – another primitive notion for the urban landscape.
We are designing a transport system based 100% on solar energy. We are placing small, on-demand vehicles above the street, where they won't run into people, pets or deer. This is not a pipe dream. Contact me if you want to know the details.
Maybe that's true in the USA, but not in Europe. Really, how hard can it get?! When was the last time you looked at a freeway cloverleaf? That's what's hard: accommodating a free-wheelin' half-drunk cowboy in a 3-ton behemoth with a wide margin for error – 12' per lane?! Plus a shoulder or barricade. Tons of steel and concrete can be eliminated, as we have greatly streamlined the urban transit system by putting 200 kg podcars on switched computerized networks above the streets ... and then one day we will be jackhammering the streets to turn them into parks where kids can play again in their village, without getting run over by said cowboy or a choo-choo train cleaving the community in half. We can do better.
Come on, it's time to roll up our sleeves and stop kicking the can down the road for our children's children to figure out what's obvious: the age of fossil fuels is moribund, and it's time we stopped killing a million people a year (globally in traffic) with a transport system design that's completely out of step with peak oil realities – and the reality of 21st century technology that is 10X better in so many dimensions: 10X less weight, 10X less energy, 10X greater safety...
Join the solarevolution!
I disagree with your classification. Home implantation criteria is pushing for low efficiency technologies.
Hen, in practice, PV is an awful source of energy. However, less worst than most of your suggestion.
Thermal solar is the best because it is very easy to put in place and we are spending a lot amount of energy in producing low temperature heat. Then is hydro put the potential is essentially used. Next is wind. At this moment, biofuel from algae is an energy SINK by a huge margin and the prospect for improving than are not good. Everything else is closer to magic.
"Hen, in practice, PV is an awful source of energy. However, less worst than most of your suggestion."
PV has been a remarkable, elegant solution for us, going on 17 years now, especially when combined with solar thermal. It isn't PV that's awful; it's people's expectations and lifestyle requirements.
PV performances is poor on any metrics. However, for some person that might work. You may claim the contrary by facts are pointing in the opposite direction. Thermal solar however is a good technology.
As usual, you fail to qualify your statement, and not everyone lives in gloomville.
Solar survives on subsidies. Per kWh it produces more pollutants than others renewable energies. Also, the EROI is low. Those are all fact that can easily be checked.
Gosh, Yvan, if they're so easily checked then why do you never qualify anything you post??? Until you support your own claims, they're just a worthless waste of bandwidth, IMO.
In front of me, I have a thesis of one of our student. As a best case, I use Ouagadougou Burnia Faso. In this city, an 15 kWp array produce 23.1 MWh per year. The local energy price is 20 cents/kWh, hence the earning would be 4260$/yr. Such system has been build in Quebec City this fall for 150 000$, roughly 35 years for simple return. I think you can bargain for half this price in USA. You end up with a payback of 17 years. You may do it in 15 years in Hawaii. Cheaper electricity or less sun and you never pay back you solar system.
Off course, I did not calculate any interest rate or material depreciation. People claim than PV is trouble free, but I also get the exactly opposite report. Also, these cost do not include the overhead to stabilize the grid or to store the production.
You dont trust me. Check this very nice analysis on this web site: http://solarcellcentral.com/cost_page.html
It pays back in 16,4 years, with 50% discount in governmental grant. And this system as no storage capacity. This is based on 2011 price.
Morale, PV might be interesting in 2020, but for the moment this is a resource sink.
Thankyou for the link! I'll enjoy studying it. This tidbit did catch my attention:
I'll get back....
1)His cost analysis assumes a zero disount rate
2)He assumes continuing sales and property tax and permit exemptions/discounts for residential PV
3)He assumes continuing steep declines in PV costs
4)He assumes grid-connection with near-free backup/storage, net metering subsidy, and free interconnection.
5)He assumes no income tax on PV production
6)He assumes no homeowner's insurance cost increase
7)He assumes PV lasts almost forever and has negligible maintenance cost with the exception of inverter replacement at year 12 (which may be true but certainly isn't typical analysis).
PV makes a lot of sense under some circumstances. My older brother lived off-grid with 7 kids with batteries, PV and small wind for years. My folks have PV on the roof and my Dad does installs. Residential PV is right for some folks, it will almost certainly never be the least-cost solution for the masses.
I think residential PV is somewhat of a side show. The biggest part of current demand is for commercial and utility scale. We can't power the economy from residential roofs, although it can make a substantial dent in net residential demand.
Well certainly, I'm not posing Residential PV as a silver-bullet for the whole grid. In that sense, any of the renewables is a 'side-show', since it seems there are really NO silver bullets.. but also, Industrial and Retail Buildings have Rooftops and Parking Lots, Storage yards, etc.. where they can be (and some Are) installing more appropriate amounts of PV to work with their needs.
True. About commercial and industrial rooftops, and parking spaces. But in many cases the available surface area doesn't come close to being large enough. Much of it is partially shaded by neighboring building, and/or it has lots of other things going on. Like AC units, exhaust stacks, etc. etc. So if PV is going to become a big slice of the answer (and I think its the most promising one out there), its also got to do the utilityscale thing.
Now the question arises, as to how much of the available sunlight in a utilityscale PV farm can be converted to electricity. With todays farms, not so much. Panels are not of the highest efficiency, maybe 12% for First Solar, and 15% for typical silicon implementations. And the design philosophy, is don't wast any of the capability of the panels. So panels are tilted -or single or dual axis tracked, and wide separations between them are needed in order to avoid shading issues. So maybe we are getting 5% up to maybe 10% of the actual solar energy that impinges on the site. Its going to take a lot of land!
But, is that the way it will go down ten or twenty years from now? certainly, we are getting better at making affordable eficiency. The latest numbers from NREL, show a hero-cell from SunPower at 23%. I think it came from a regular production line, but I'd bet it was a rare hero-cell, not typical of bulk production. So maybe we can expect SiC (crystalline silicon) to be 20%, maybe a bit more. certainly better than the 12-15% of current practice at least. And, AltaDevices had a preproduction GaAs cell also tested at 23%. It is claimed that tech is capable of 36%. So hopefully affordable bulk production after several years of learning might be maybe 30%. Beyond that there certainly are possibilities. Multijunction (three PV layers tuned to different wavelengths) is a bit over 40%. But it is expensive and only suitable to concentrating PV, which uses optics to concentrate sunlight hundreds or a few thousand times. But there are at least paper cells, with even more layers that might be capable of over 50%. Others are working on getting more than one electron per photon. If these people succeed, maybe cSi efficiency can be doubled.
Also look at the solar field. If the panels become cheap, then land costs dominate. Rather than tilting panels, or using trackers, which requires wide spacing, simply cover the entire area with horizontal panels. Then farm efficiency becomes the same as panel efficiency. Its at least within the realm of possibility that the land requirements can be seriously reduced.
RE: Land Use..
I think one of the mixes we don't really hear about yet, but will (my prediction, anyhow..) is that PV makes an ideal, modular, long-term roofing surface, and that both residential and industrial architecture, and land-use development will start to create new buildings and groups of buildings with PV as part of the intrinsic roof material (and not just these 'BIPV Pseudo Shingles' that we've seen), oriented and optimised for all the development's structures to get full solar production.
This way, you get the twice the utility out of the land value, and you also double up on the benefits of your roofing investment. I would expect these to be uniform modular units, and you could mix the amounts of PV and Heating panels you needed, while future owners could adjust the mix like they were swapping out LEGOs.
So far the BIPV players have been those with uncompetitive panels vainly trying to stay in business. I do like the concept. However panels do better with airflow behind them to aide in cooling. In hot climates panels do increase the lifetime of the part of the roof that is shaeded. However, the usual implementations don't shade everywhere, so the roof still needs replacing, and the panels make that costlier. I have one of those fake tile roofs, which have a very long (40-50)year lifetime, so it isn't an issue. However if you have tarpaper shingles, and your roof isn't brand new, then that means it must be replaced long before the panels go bad. I think thats stops a lot of people.
Six of these PV farms were installed in our County last year, 0.5 -2 MW, all on leased land, mostly marginal commercial plots that would likely have remained vacant due to the downturn in real estate here. There is plenty of already developed commercial property that isn't selling/leasing, so these land owners were glad to find a long term "tenant". They are well distributed throughout the grid and are a nice supplement to the nearby 12 MW hydro plant. These installations are only a small contribution to the system, but at least will offset some of the upwind coal that our gridweenies rely on for 40%+ of their power. Subsidized, of course, by TVA and Govt..
The county commissioners have passed new ordinances and restrictions making it more difficult for these installations to get approved, and I've had contact with the parent company that indicates they have canceled several additional PV farms and are taking their business elsewhere.
My 50,000 square mile utility has applications for interconnection of 1000's of MW's of this style of ground-mount utility-scale PV. Among other responsibilities I have been directly involved in review of many of the interconnections. I currently have approval authority (not doing the direct review) for distribution voltage connected PV over about 20,000 square miles of California with some of the highest solar potential in the country. My comments here, of course, do not represent my employer in any way.
Glad you are here. Hopefully you can increase the informed comment about what impacts intermittency has on the grid, at what scale, and what responses can or can't be realistically implemented in the long and short term. If you don't mind. ;-)
Seriously, I have been very bothered by what I consider quite amateur commentary on TOD in the past, including from authors and editors. Things that might make you think that, say, Germany's grid could not actually function right now.
And now I see you have been already giving us a bunch of good commentary downthread. Thank you.
He doesn't assume continued increases in grid rates, which would be a fairly safe assumption (in many areas), as are many of his assumptions. I've gone on record as never expecting our system to reach grid parity in the financial sense, even though a grid connection would have been ~$16k in our case. We had other concerns that are more pressing than the monetary. We actually care where our power comes from.
None of this supports Yvan's original assertion that "PV performances is poor on any metrics. " It's successful adoption for many purposes negates this claim, and his claim that "Per kWh it produces more pollutants than others renewable energies" is also unsupported.
Well, from the same document you will see that wind energy is half the price of PV. Also, a key problem of PV is it creates microvariabilities in the grid that are very hard to handle and you can correct those by more interconnection. In Germany, this is becoming a serious issue.
The microvariabilities of significance typically relate to voltage impacts. Most installs currently assume that they are too small to have significant impacts, and so run at unity power factor. Aggregate penetration at individual distribution feeder levels is more frequently reaching levels where output variability is having significant voltage variability impacts. The fix is typically as simple as different programming for the inverters (to operate at fixed non-unity pf to sterilize voltage impacts). This is undesirable from a producer standpoint as it increases losses and thus reduces net production, however, generally interconnection agreements allow the grid owner to specify this change if and as necessary. The next step is programming variable pf based on output level. The step after that is programming active voltage control (which has standards implications for current anti-islanding schemes).
Another distribution impact of output variability is increased wear on capacitor switches and on load-tap-changers in distribution substation transformers and voltage regulators. This will increase distribution O&M costs slightly.
High PV penetration levels are typically limited to individual feeders or distribution substations to-date, so subtransmission, transmission, and generation impacts are less significant. Subtransmission and Transmission problems are chiefly thermal capacity limitations (although with increased penetration of non-synchronous generation other problems related to protection and transient stability do appear). Generation impacts from output variability already tend to be most discussed in the context of intermittent renewables (particularly wind).
So what levels of penetration cause these changes to be needed? And do current inverters have the capability with only reprogramming? I assume that those who have already been approved are generally grandfathered in? There's got to be some adavantage to being among the first (other than paying a premium because the industry hasn't fully climbed the learning curve).
But, it is good to know these issues don't have to be show stoppers.
The level of load penetration at which voltage issues will appear is highly dependent on location (grid strength). The resistive component of source impedance is the biggest factor ("real" current times source resistance roughly equals voltage rise). Most large inverters being installed do have the capability to take the first step (to run at a fixed non-unity pf) with simple setting changes (note that I take a fraction of the credit for when this feature began showing up in US standard inverter offerings, as it began about 6 months after I began imposing the requirement on a high fraction of applications, though the euros were ahead of us). Smaller inverters often don't, but I would guess that most of them could with a chip-flash or board replacement. In most cases interconnection agreements allow utilities to come back to installations and require changes if problems are being caused. Most agreements directly require the ability to regulate pf within a specified range if so directed. In actual implementation, so far, in my experience, the requirement is being imposed on later entrants. Higher penetration may cause that to change. We are in the top few utilities in the country as to PV install, so I would guess we are running near the front of the pack in seeing problems, although behind the curve in publication of papers and participation in industry forums.
Some implications: If electrically close to a source substation penetration on distribution can be quite high, thermal problems (100% penetration) will occur before voltage problems. The distribution system is generally designed for power to flow out, not in. I start looking at voltage issues when predicted full output distribution circuit voltage rise hits just 1% (this is not a substantive barrier level, we just start looking at low-hanging mitigation at that point). My first go-to mitigation is to make switched (with voltage control) any distribution capacitors which are not switched. My second go-to mitigation is to require inverters to buck VAR's at fixed pf. For extreme cases, the addition of voltage regulators or the reconductor of distribution lines may be necessary.
Note that I'm talking distribution level issues. Small residential installs often cause localized voltage rise and variability problems for themselves and/or neighbors on the same secondary system. The go to mitigation at install phase is currently transformer and secondary conductor upgrade. The worst (calculated) case I've had at that level was about 11% voltage rise on the utility side of the meter where a half-dozen services on the same (several blocks) small secondary system out in Nipton, CA all installed maximum sized net-energy-metering PV installs. I had to split it up between several new transformers (whcih required new poles due to revised mechanical wind-loading regulations) and reconductor all the secondaries (all paid for by other ratepayers). I did manage to avoid primary extensions.
Lot's of good sun in Nipton! Ha.
How many years would guess can go by (let's assume current install rates) before problems like this become common in more densely populated areas? I would assume 'grid strength' is better in cities and new suburbs, but I'm sure you could say if that's true or not.
Thanks again for all this info. I've been dying to learn more about this stuff from someone who sounds like they know what they're talking about.
The localized (1-50 customers) problems I refer to in the Nipton comment are already common (~5% of the time) even in relatively dense urban areas, as a single installation that is sized to displace full annual kwh consumption at a residence will have a higher demand than the load. It almost always occurs if there is more than one system on the same secondary (about a 1% probability currently if installations were random, but they aren't so 2% is probably closer). This may require an increase in transformer or service conductor size. Any residence with a long secondary feed (normal suburbia) may encounter voltage problems even for a small PV install, especially if close to the substation, because customers near the sub have higher voltage than customers near the end of the line (for normal outward power flow). Because the voltage is near the top of the acceptable envelope already, a small voltage rise, rather than the expected voltage drop, may drive a need for mitigation. My third go-to mitigation for this type of problem, after larger transformer and larger secondary conductor, is to use a tapped distribution transformer, tapped down a fixed 2.5%. Because the voltage is higher to start with, and because transformer and secondary size have already been increased...the maxload, nogen voltage drop has been reduced at the same time the maxgen, noload voltage rise has been reduced, and thus a 2.5% reduction will not result in undervoltage under lowest voltage conditions, and can be used to prevent overvoltage at highest voltage conditions.
For MW scale PV, even in urban areas, more than 15% or so (depending on how far from sub) will often require some cheap mitigation of the inverter power factor variety.
So...for distribution scale PV, closer to the sub is better (less primary voltage rise), for individual house scale (where primary voltage rise is negligible), farther from the sub is better (since the install is less sensitive to secondary voltage rise), until we get to the point of aggregate penetration where current flow on the primary reverses (which is less than 100% penetration, but how much less depends on the minimum daytime load coincident with max PV output, 15% is probably a decent estimate in my area).
I have seen unscrupulous installers use buckboost transformers to reduce voltage seen at the inverter so it doesn't trip off at 132V rather than dealing with the grid issue (and the branch circuit conductor on their side) before being paid, thus hi-potting everybody else on the secondary system. Most people don't monitor their voltage, so the installer is long gone by the time the voltage causes enough problems that the utility comes out and finds the problem. Ideally, the utility will prevent this problem at installation via calculation, but installers simultaneously lobby for rubber stamp interconnection requirements, so below a certain size this may happen. Where we have legal voltage at the meter (only causing high volts for one customer due torise on his side of the meter) but inverters are tripping on high voltage, first go-to mitigation is to switch from voltage-source to current source inverter, second is increasing AC conductor size to the inverter. I can imagine legitimately using buck-boost in this circumstance if I was working on the other side of the meter, but the transformer should be near the meter, not near the inverter.
Can you clarify what you mean by source resistance? Is this a property of the inverter, or of the PV or interconnection wiring?
Also, what is meant by 'real' current? (Is there 'fake' current? Are you referring to PF issues or something else?)
"Real" current is power engineer jargon for the component of AC current in phase with the voltage which involves real power rather than apparent power, the magnitude of the real component is the power factor times the rms current. For reasonably low levels of voltage drop, the change in magnitude of the supplied voltage may be approximated fairly well by Ireal times R. In practice for high penetration we will model this more carefully.
By source resistance I am referring to the impedance of the grid itself without the local DG (Thevenin equivalent). In the case we are discussing the relevant impedance is usually the resistance of the distribution conductor from the substation to the PV. For large distribution overhead conductor where the same conductor size/spacing is present for the whole distance from the substation, the ratio of the reactance to the resistance is high enough that simply drawing VAR's at a fixed pf (set to match the source impedance) at the inverter is sufficient to completely sterilize the voltage rise. If output of watts varies, input of vars varies simultaneously, and grid voltage does not move much (only second order effects). Smaller wire, and underground systems have lower X/R and this does not work as well. Also, operating at reduced power factor increases losses and capacity on the utility side, too.
I have been aware that PV systems are often unable to supply VARS when they are actually needed, but I wasn't aware that power factor can actually be used as a voltage regulation tool (albiet at a cost).
So if I understand you correctly, the effect upon kWh measured by the net-meter is dependent on the source resistance? I'm trying to wrap my head around what the typical percent reduction would be on the customer's net-metered production. I must admit my ability to do power factor math is limited, and I guess I would also just be making wild guesses for R.
From your other reply:
Wow. That is pretty shady. It would never even have occurred to me it could be done.
The losses are a second order effect. If I require an inverter to run at 95% power factor, that will increases losses by about 10% (and also cause the inverter to run hotter, some inverters may have to directly reduce max production to keep current down), so if the inverter and AC efficiency on the customer side is 95.0%, that might be 94.5% after my mandated 95% pf.
Thanks again for answering my questions. As a PV installer I have been searching for quite a while for info on the more nitty-gritty aspects of the impacts our systems are having. It is nice to finally have some knowledge, both to satisfy my curiosity, and so I know what to expect in conversations with the utility when these issues inevitably start affecting us. Some of it I will need to study more carefully to completely understand, but this has been great so far.
It wouldn't make any difference hooking up PV with 230/240V AC, would it? The same grid issues apply to both 110 and 230V right?
No grid difference. For single-phase 240V is better than 120V on typical American service (1/4th the secondary voltage rise as a percentage for the same kw and conductor). I have a 6kw limit on 120V imbalance on a 120/240V service. Three-phase is better than single phase (but most single-phase inferters are too small to make a grid difference). Single-phase inverters in numbers not divisible by three on three phase services are a bit annoying (mostly because the cost isn't born by the installer and it offends my rigid sensibilities), but it's a local problem. Most American single phase inverters will operate at 208, 240, or 277V, just select which.
We have a lot of 2 phase down here 127-0-127, how does that affect matters?
NAOM
I'm not very familiar with non-U.S. secondary voltages, but I'd imagine you could connect a standard single-phase inverter phase to phase. I think, worst case you'd have to add a cheap buck boost transformer.
Thanks, our regs are supposed to follow the USA regs as part of NAFTA, NOM_001_sede_2005 if anyone wants to look. The neutral sitting in the middle doesn't cause any issues?
NAOM
So, I did a little googling. Your 3-wire 127-0-127V single-phase service is actually two phases and neutral of a 4-wire wye-grounded 3-phase system which is nominally 127V to ground on each phase, and 220V phase-to-phase. This is similar to U.S. 120/208V 3-phase systems, and we actually do the same thing and give 120/208V 3-wire single-phase to apartment dwellers in some places (it's a more capital efficient distribution model than the U.S. typical). I do not anticipate the neutral relationship causing you a physical problem with standard equipment connected phase-to-phase. I can imagine the mfg giving you warranty problems, however, and inverter failure is not at all unusual (most common failure is DC capacitor).
My unverified source says the voltage range at the meter in Mexico is legally permitted to vary more widely according to the info I found (+/-10% rather than +/- 5%). That's 198V-242V phase-to-phase. A lot of U.S. equipment is designed only for 240V and won't like this much, although depending on what it is you might get away with it. Some U.S. equipment (single-phase 240V air conditioners) is designed to operate (over a very broad utilization range) at either 208 or 240V without adjustment and probably actually would work better on your system than on either U.S. voltage. Other equipment (like most single-phase inverters) is designed to operate at either voltage, but has a selector switch to pick which. The adjustable Sunny Boy's have a 22% utilization voltage range around either 208 or 240 (or 277 in some cases). For 240V that's 211-264V. By putting the inverter electrically close to the meter/main you can minimize variation on your side. If you are lucky in your utility connection, the voltage at your meter is stable and always above 211V (122V to ground), in which case a Sunny Boy on the 240V setting should work well. I would not attempt to use the inverter on the 208V setting even if the voltage is fairly stable and on the low end of the range. If the variation includes excursions below 211V and stays below 242, I would be inclined to use a cheap 12 or 16V buck-boost transformer (to get 231 or 235 nominal) to correct the voltage to nearer the inverter nominal voltage (not all of the way or you risk overvoltage if the Mexican voltage goes all the way to 242). For a 5kw inverter, you could get an nicely oversized 500VA (they run hot so I'd oversize if it's going outside in the heat where it'll lose life, or inside where it'll heat your living space) Jefferson Electric buck-boost online from Galco for $75-80. You could probably beat that price by looking harder. Details of your setup and supply might change the particulars of my guesses, don't take the above as a design recommendation.
Note that this (matching nominal voltage) is the intended use of a buck-boost transformer, not the gaming that I was talking about yesterday to allow the system voltage to be pushed above the nominal envelope without tripping the inverter.
Thanks for that detailed answer, I have filed it.
Our street distribution is normally 3 conductor 3 phase at high voltage stepping down to 4 wire 3 phase that the consumers are split off. My leg seems to be the 2 phases fed from 2 HV phases (2 breakers, one of which pops from time to time and I lose 1 phase). The voltages I measure are typically 124-127V each phase and 250V across the 2 phases. Droops are more common than highs though I was seeing 260+V across 2 phases for a while. For old UK appliances I have a 120V regulator that is rigged as a buck feeding a step up transformer so I get around 230V. Note for any wanting to use those regulators, many are totally incapable of regulating anywhere near their claims.
Last place I stayed had 3 phase to the panel and that measured around 108V per phase, don't recall what it was across 2 phases. One warning for anyone plugging in an appliance here is that the local electricians happily wire 2 phases to an ordinary 120V outlet! I think the issue with the Mexican % regulation is to allow the voltage to droop though I had some very high voltages (133+ ISTR) for a while that have dropped back now, ate my UPS batteries. There has been a lot of infrastructure work going on here to try and catch up with the town's growth.
I'll look at those buck-boosts though I've been thinking about a resonant regulator to keep voltage more constant, the switching regulator and UPS hate the droops. Heat is not so much of an issue as our temperatures only get up to 33-34C, it is the humidity that we humans suffer from but shouldn't be an issue with a transformer - they don't need to sweat.
Thanks again
NAOM
The physical description sounds like what I was talking about, but ...
If you are getting roughly arithmetic addition of the phase to ground voltages when measuring phase to phase, then my assumptions about your service are wrong. Sorry. The voltage measurements sound like regular single phase 120/240V service, but with really high voltage. Where are you at down there? I will ask one of the guys I work with who used to work as an electrician in Mexico, what it sounds like to him.
If you have a picture or two of the transformer arrangement showing the connections, that would help.
I'll try and get a good look/picture of our local transformer. It tends to pop one of the 2 breakers that go up to the HV and I get 1 phase go out but power stays on the other so there is some sort of tapping. Quick check with the meter just now, one phase to neutral 125V, other phase to neutral 126V, phase to phase 252V, neutral is connected to earth. I think it does fit in with what you say and that fits with the NOM and the guide books I have, I think they crank up voltages so they can deal with long runs without boosting the voltage and adding more gear. For a while it was higher and the UPSs kept cutting out on overvoltage and draining the batteries. I'm in Vallarta.
NAOM
Inverter lives are short compared to projected system lives, so it may be that as-needed inverter replacement with newer models can accomplish much of this, especially in residential.
Nothing I said should be taken as supporting Yvan's position. I just don't like the pie-eyed optimism in the link either. It's doing anti-PV folks a favor by setting up a strawman. I'm on record here in the past that I think the sweetspot for PV is large commercial/industrial rooftops and that I support ~20% penetration when prices fall enough to be more competitive without incentives (which I do think will happen). Right now the industry is in the transition period from declining panel prices to where the cost of balance of plant is also under pressure created by generous but declining incentives which built the silicon supply chain up (which probably weren't the most cost-effective means to the end, but seem to be working).
As you say, there are good and sufficient reasons for some folks to install residential PV, even without incentives.
Never? Then that is to say that installed PV cost can never fall to ~12 cents/kWh, including storage? How do you arrive at that conclusion?
No, my assumption is that if residential falls to that level the cost of less distributed PV alternatives will also have fallen and will still be lower if a level playing field is assumed.
Ah, PV will never be 'least-cost'? No doubt you have posted an opinion that I've missed on a better candidate? Sooner or later fossil fuel electricity must become higher cost, so in the long term you believe, what, that wind, nuclear, geothermal, etc will be lower cost than residential PV for electricity? I don't see it. Or do you mean utility grade, large scale PV will be cheaper with its associated transmission and land costs?
You are misunderstanding me. The sweet spot for PV install cost (including interconnection and grid integration costs) is MW scale on commercial/industrial buildings. That should be cheaper than residential for the foreseeable future. Remember your response to my previous post on the subject a few days back.
Yes, I follow, thanks.
PV on buildings with high power consumption during day time would compete at end-user rates (assuming all power on the roof can directly be consumed most of the time - I don't mean net-metering). Large PV systems in the desert on the other would need compete at utility rates.
PV on buildings would in this case out-compete larger PV systems in the desert.
Your Quebec example is $10/watt, which is highway robbery. The germans have been instaling PV at under $3.50 per watt. And now the spot price for panels is at or under a buck. We clearly need to push down the costs, including paperwork and permits, as well as physical mounting costs. The main societal benefit of (some) early adoption is in pushing the learning curve of the technology, rather than the direct energy benefits.
Yes, there is an issue of adding supply variability on top of existing demand variability. There will need be investment in grid systems (and smart demand response) that can handle this. I don't expect the solar buildout will be faster than our growing ability to cope with it. But, it clearly can't be ignored.
10$/W is indeed expensive. Normally, we do our economic analysis at 5$/W including the balance of system. This is why I did the calculation with 5$/W and not 10$.
Actually, they usually install them for less than €2/W (otherwise they wouldn't be installed, since the German feed-in tariffs simply wouldn't allow higher costs - Germans don't just install PV in the GW-range for personal amusement).
Here's an example for a 26 kW complete PV-system (including installation) in Germany at €1574 /kW = $2.07 /W:
http://www.photovoltaikforum.com/angebote-f41/31061-26kwp-1574eur--t7478...
At a capacity factor of 20% (California), an interest rate of 5% and an amortization time of 15 years (a PV system lasts 30 years), this system produces electricity at 12 cents/kWh if you include 1 cent/kWh for maintenance.
And the feed-in tariffs are paid for by the rate-payers and not the tax-payers and are meanwhile only at 10 to 16 cents/kWh above utility rates and continue to drop. This means at 7% share at this rate the rate payers pay less than 1 cent/kWh for this renewable option.
In addition: The renewable power plant owners, the renewable power industry and its 400,000 employees pay in fact taxes. And this tremendous tax income is also a reason why Germany is currently better off than many other European countries with highly unbalanced budgets and thousands of unemployed.
Ironically and despite the fact that France is supposedly blessed with lots of nuclear power and Germany just took 8 reactors off the grid last year: Germany is currently exporting electricity to France at a very healthy profit margin:
http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/frankreich-braucht-energie-vom-ato...
Well other sources say Germany is a net power importer since shutting the nuclear plants. But assuming the electricity export is correct, German PV is of little or no help in the winter, when capacity factor frequently falls to 2% of the 21GW (peak) installed (e.g. Feb 9th), meaning the electricity going to France is coming from traditional coal and a little from Germany's 7% wind.
Well, theses sources claim that Germany is still a net power exporter: http://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2011-09/deutschland-exporteur-strom
http://www.focus.de/immobilien/energiesparen/von-wegen-blackout-trotz-ei...
But this is in fact irrelevant. Relevant is at what rates Germany imports and exports: And fact is: Germany imports electricity from France when its cheap and turns on its extra capacity when France struggles to cover its electricity needs and pays dearly for electricity imports (to run all its wasteful and inflexible resistance heaters) - like it does now.
And according to your link PV peaked at 5.8 GW today (and was actually more because the PV installation numbers from the last 4 months are not factored in).
And France imported about 6 GW.
By the way, the Swiss utilities are mad at the German power producing roofs. Thanks to their flexible hydro power plants the utilities in Switzerland were able to benefit from the high electricity prices in central Europe at noon and export electricity at a healthy profit margin. However, meanwhile the German roofs have reduced these electricity prices, since they 'unfortunately' also peak at noon:
http://www.drs.ch/www/de/drs/nachrichten/wirtschaft/301909.schattenseite...
First PV was bad because it was too expensive and nowadays it's bad because it makes power too cheap...
For ~3 hours. If France really needs additional winter time power it is likely at night given their use of electric heating. Curious: are the French still using resistance electric heat, or electric heat pumps?
The French introduced lots of resistance heating to deal with the surplus nuclear power they built - with the effect that they don't have enough power when temperatures drop.
They usually also don't store that heat and have badly insulated buildings. So they need that power all day long.
I'm not saying that Germany is exporting PV. I'm just pointing out that PV is already significant even in cloudy Germany.
Re French space heating, yes I understood resistance heating was big back in the 70s-80s when they originally France went ~70% nuclear. Today we have 4:1 electric heat pumps so I was curious whether a switch over has been ongoing in France.
Re German PV, I'm pointing out that German PV is not significant in the winter time, given the daily energy output can be 40X less than in the summer. Put another way, one medium sized 500MW coal plant would have produced more energy than all of Germany's PV combined over 24 hours on Feb 9th. And German PV electricity is ~$0.35/kWh, with maybe $130B in installation costs so far? Some method is still required for storing the very significant PV output from the long days in the high latitude summers. I suppose the resolution for now is displaced fossil fuel use in the summer.
German PV power production is actually very significant compared to the amount of power which is being exported to France.
One small sized Honda generator (shown below) would have produced more power than the 2 French nuclear power plants which shut down unexpectedly on February 10th 2012 in France:
http://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2012/02/10/des-arrets-de-reacteurs...
On the same February day the German PV power plants peaked at 5.8 GW: http://www.sma.de/de/news-infos/pv-leistung-in-deutschland.html
Also, the PV power plants in Germany do not shut down unexpectedly. Thanks to weather reports Germany knew exactly what they would produce.
Germany has installed maybe 23 GW of PV. At €2.5 /W that's actually about €5.75 billion yearly investment volume at 5% interest rate and 20 years amortization time. And the feed-in tariffs for German PV power plants are meanwhile between 17.94 cents/kWh and 24.43 cents/kWh and drop almost on a quarterly basis.
Besides that the renewable power industry including its employees pay more taxes than what they indirectly receive in feed-in tariffs: German tax-payers already paid €204 billion to the nuclear power industry:
http://www.taz.de/!59828/
PV may be cheap in 2012, but the 23GW put over the last ~5 years was not installed at €2.5 /W, more like double that. This is why the rate is over 30 cents / kWh, and for PV already installed the cost will never fall, absent a refinance at a lower rate w/ the bank on aging PV.
Regarding the 5GW PV peak yesterday - I believe you are confusing energy w/ power. Yes power peaked at 5GW, but the total energy output for the day was ~15GW-hrs. A ~600MW coal plant would put out the same 15GW-hrs over a day.
Regarding outages, of course PV has unplanned outages - inverters fail, trunk lines go down, trees fall on roofs. I grant the more distributed the PV the smaller will be the outage.
Actually, Germany installed 14 GW of the 23 GW in the last 2 years and last year they already installed the PV-systems below €2 /W. In 2007 Germany did not even install 1 GW of PV - so the 2007 feed-in tariffs are irrelevant in that regard.
And PV never has unplanned outages in the GW-range unlike nuclear.
And as I said: One small sized Honda generator (not a 600 MW coal power plant) would have produced more power than the 2 French nuclear power plants which shut down unexpectedly on February 10th 2012 in France:
http://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2012/02/10/des-arrets-de-reacteurs...
Yes I see Germany has dropped its PV installation costs impressively, more than I knew, and waited until the tech was more mature to ramp up. I have:
2011 7.5GW @ €2.4/W
2010 7.4GW @ €2.8/W
2009 3.8GW @ €3.6/W
2008 1.9GW @ €4/W
2007 1.3GW @ €4.5/W
2006 0.9 @ 5+/W
or ~€70 billion through 2011.
And PV never has unplanned outages in the GW-range unlike nuclear.
What is that supposed mean? If a large week long snow storm blows in blanketing the country it doesn't matter because, well, they knew it was coming? In any case one can't compare PV to nuclear kWh for kWh unless and until someone comes up with a storage solution for to handle overnight, those snowstorms, and the tricle of winter PV output in general.
or ~€70 billion through 2011.
Even if this figure is correct: This amount is paid off in 20 years and not in one single year.
For comparison:
In 20 years at constant $110 a barrel the US spends over $9'000 billion on crude oil imports.
In 20 years the US will spend $14'000 billion on its military. A military which won't generate a single clean, homemade kWh (other than for itself) - on the contrary.
Besides: This PV investment mostly paid for tax paying jobs in Germany (PV installation, inverters, PV manufacturing equipment is mostly German).
So, Germany got a better deal than the US with its expensive and gas guzzling F-22's and F-150's and what not.
If a large week long snow storm blows in blanketing the country it doesn't matter because, well, they knew it was coming?
Exactly. Planed capacity is cheap. Spinning reserves to take care of unplanned outages are expensive.
Besides that wind farms actually generate lots of power in storms and thus PV and wind complement each other very well:
http://www.q-cells.com/uploads/tx_abdownloads/files/6CV.1.32_Gerlach2011...
The grid operators already have lots of flexible capacity in order to take care of varying demand (actually over 600 GW in the US). Increasing PV mostly saves natural gas, water (hydropower) and some coal and reduces the load on the grid on hot and sunny days. Nothing to get worried about.
Even if this figure is correct: This amount is paid off in 20 years and not in one single year.
Of course, 15-20 seems to be the usual note.
Besides: This PV investment mostly paid for tax paying jobs in GermanyOne could have jobs digging gas wells with spoons if creating jobs was the only concern. The relevant issue is whether or not the jobs produced a product less expensive than alternatives.
Exactly. Planed capacity is cheap What? Maintaining double current capacity (current + solar/wind that's backed up by current) is not cheap in any accounting.
Maintaining double current capacity (current + solar/wind that's backed up by current) is not cheap in any accounting.
We're talking about sunk costs. Heck, we want to retire coal generation, or make it very low utilization, right?
I'd be curious to see good numbers on the actual marginal costs of maintaining very-low-utilization generation plant of various kinds.
Sure I'd like to see coal retired when possible. My point here is that w/ solar/wind you never can, absent storage. Yes PV/wind would cause coal's utilization to drop, but you have to keep the plant and some coal mines and the local coal stockpile there, ready to operate at 100%, for long into the future, meaning it eventually has to *replaced*, not retired.
I'd be perfectly happy to reduce coal plant utilization to 5%. I think that's good enough.
Now, will we have to replace coal plants in 40 years? I really don't think so. Effective solutions include Demand Side Management (especially with a fleet of EVs); geographic dispersion; overbuilding (current FF plant is about 150% overbuilt, after all); and a relatively modest amount of synthetic fuel conversion (H2 or methane in natural/existing underground storage) using surplus electricity from that overbuilt plant - that could be burned in very cheap single cycle equipment, or even in vehicles using V2G.
So - for the transition - seen good numbers on the actual marginal costs of maintaining very-low-utilization generation plant of various kinds?
I'd be perfectly happy to reduce coal plant utilization to 5%. I think that's good enough.
Any reduction in coal utilization is good. But at what cost? In Germany that 5% coal reduction could be delivered by two nuclear reactors.
Now, will we have to replace coal plants in 40 years?
This year, and the next, and ... . Germany already has 40 year old coal plants as do most countries in the OECD.
Effective solutions include Demand Side Management (especially with a fleet of EVs); geographic dispersion;
Yes, agreed that those approaches will aid in reducing fossil utilization, all to the good, but they will not do away with full load backup to wind and solar, absent storage.
overbuilding (current FF plant is about 150% overbuilt, after all);
Sure, that's the backup lane again. It will have stay overbuilt.
and a relatively modest amount of synthetic fuel conversion (H2 or methane in natural/existing underground storage) using surplus electricity from that overbuilt plant - that could be burned in very cheap single cycle equipment
That is a valid storage approach, and the one I think most likely to end up in place for long term seasonal storage to backup PV/wind. The fuel should be synthetic methane or liquids IMO, not H2 which is much more difficult to store/transport and requires new infrastructure to convert to electricity. Synthetics would enable storage year round to balance the seasons, and complement a decline in fossil methane/liquids nicely.
My disagreement is with the term 'modest'. With 100% PV/wind, Germany would need to store enough primary gas/liquids to provide a couple weeks* of its full electricity load, i.e. 170GW x 2weeks, or 57 TWh out, 143 TWh in, or 23 billion liters of LNG (163 large LNG tankers). Complete consumption of the cache would be rare so its production would be inexpensive, but the country must have both the cache and enough capacity to convert it to electricity at near full load for days.
*Equivalent to a month of half power production from PV/wind, or an entire winter at 2/3 power, etc.
http://www.pv-magazine.com/typo3temp/pics/Lueneburg_solar_park_Image_Sun...
In Germany that 5% coal reduction could be delivered by two nuclear reactors.
It's not really an either/or choice, right?
Germany already has 40 year old coal plants as do most countries in the OECD.
I'm not as familiar with Germany, but US utilities have badly overbuilt capacity, due to archaic regulatory ROI incentives. The US could close some coal and not miss it.
Effective solutions include Demand Side Management (especially with a fleet of EVs); geographic dispersion; - Yes, agreed that those approaches will aid in reducing fossil utilization, all to the good, but they will not do away with full load backup to wind and solar, absent storage.
Those approaches are badly underutilized at present - they'll carry us for a while. Consider the contribution to load-following if seasonal lulls in PV/wind production were matched with a price increase which triggered reduced industrial/commercial lighting (no one notices a reduction of 20% in lighting); reduced smelting; reduced EV driving; etc, etc, for a net reduction of perhaps 15% of electrical consumption. That would compensate for 50% of a 2 week long 30% shortfall with no really noticeable impacts.
Here's a discussion:
The Power of Microgrids
Microgrids are subsets of the greater grid and usually include their own generation (such as photovoltaics, wind turbines, and fuel cells), their own demand (lights, fans, televisions, computers, etc.) and often the ability to modulate it to match price and priority, and perhaps even storage capability (such as batteries or the distributed storage in electrified vehicles). What makes the microgrid unique is that it intelligently coordinates and balances all these technologies. When the microgrid detects a sudden drop in solar generation, it can ramp up a backup natural gas cogenerator or even temporarily and unobtrusively turn off noncritical air conditioners. If wind generation exceeds demand, the microgrid can signal the system and users to charge additional electric vehicles. This intricate dance among supply, demand, and storage can enable a cleaner and more resilient future.
Microgrids are already demonstrating their ability to manage variable generation. Microgrid projects from Korea to Denmark to California and Hawai‘i all carry the singular purpose of demonstrating the art of the possible. Denmark has been piloting a “cellular” grid structure—stress-tested annually by pulling microgrids’ plug from the main grid to make sure critical loads stay on (they do). Cuba used microgrids, distributed generation, and efficient use to cut its serious blackout days from 224 in 2005 to zero in 2007—and then sustain vital services in 2008 while two hurricanes in two weeks shredded the eastern grid.
The microgrid at UCSD has already proved that it strengthens the university’s — and the local grid’s — resilience. In 2009, when the rest of the utility grid was threatened by wildfires, UCSD was able to go from a 3 megawatt net importer to a 2 megawatt net exporter in 30 minutes by turning down its 4,000 non-critical thermostats by a few degrees while increasing onsite generation. UCSD’s actions played a critical role in keeping the whole area’s lights on.
http://www.rmi.org/nations_largest_microgrid_online_esj_article
not H2 which is much more difficult to store/transport and requires new infrastructure to convert to electricity
H2 is stored underground now (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_hydrogen_storage ). Do you see problems with that?
My disagreement is with the term 'modest'. With 100% PV/wind, Germany would need to store enough primary gas/liquids to provide a couple weeks
Two weeks is 4%. I believe the US has more than that storage right now, in underground natural gas storage.
It's not really an either/or choice, right?
Nuclear is a viable path forward for centuries in my opinion. The currently fielded pressure water reactor and enriched U fuel cycle is 1950's technology, and should be gradually replaced.
I'm not as familiar with Germany, but US utilities have badly overbuilt capacity, due to archaic regulatory ROI incentives. The US could close some coal and not miss it.
The US does have overbuilt capacity, but that means only that much of it is slightly used, not that it can be eliminated. Over capacity is necessary for reliability reasons, and explains why, for example, when the US east coast earthquake tripped off the North Anna nuclear plant nobody even saw their coffee pop burp, and the operator plus the US NRC could leisurely dawdle around for months in meetings before a restart.
H2 is stored underground now (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_hydrogen_storage ). Do you see problems with that?
To scale up to a size capable of backing up an entire (wind/solar supplied) country? Yes. Storing H2 is one issue, then it has to be transported to the H2 gas electric plants (which don't exist). Current CNG pipelines look like a porch screen to the tiny H2 molecule, and at the same pressure the pipe diameter has to be 3-5X larger to deliver the same energy as provided by NG. In other words, an entire H2 delivery system would have to be built from scratch.
Two weeks is 4%. I believe the US has more than that storage right now, in underground natural gas storage.
No the US might have several percent of annual current gas consumption stored; it has nowhere near enough gas to run the entire country's entire fossil electric (plus nuclear?) energy load, replaced w/ 100% gas, for two weeks. It is doable though. The volume of the strategic petroleum reserve, times two or so if I recall, filled w/ synthetic LNG would handle the US for a couple weeks. The low efficiency cycle of synthetics means it is doable (i.e. affordable) only for the relatively rare long term wind/PV lulls (and thus also works for low emissions). Something more efficient would have to be done for backing solar nightly.
Nuclear is a viable path forward for centuries in my opinion.
Probably. Again, it's not an either/or question, is it? For one thing, we really need low-CO2 generation ASAP, and nuclear build is slow and currently comes in very large increments. For another, diversity of supply is good. For yet one more, proliferation concerns from uranium enrichment are even now leading to possible war in the ME.
The US does have overbuilt capacity, but that means only that much of it is slightly used, not that it can be eliminated. Over capacity is necessary for reliability reasons
Not really. US utilities and Sysops have used backup generation as the primary strategy to deal with sudden losses of transmission or generation, but DSM can handle a large portion of that - it's an old an proven strategy. DSM isn't used more widely because US ROI regulations don't reward it (outside of California).
Again, one implementation of DSM:
The Power of Microgrids
Microgrids are subsets of the greater grid and usually include their own generation (such as photovoltaics, wind turbines, and fuel cells), their own demand (lights, fans, televisions, computers, etc.) and often the ability to modulate it to match price and priority, and perhaps even storage capability (such as batteries or the distributed storage in electrified vehicles). What makes the microgrid unique is that it intelligently coordinates and balances all these technologies. When the microgrid detects a sudden drop in solar generation, it can ramp up a backup natural gas cogenerator or even temporarily and unobtrusively turn off noncritical air conditioners. If wind generation exceeds demand, the microgrid can signal the system and users to charge additional electric vehicles. This intricate dance among supply, demand, and storage can enable a cleaner and more resilient future.
Microgrids are already demonstrating their ability to manage variable generation. Microgrid projects from Korea to Denmark to California and Hawai‘i all carry the singular purpose of demonstrating the art of the possible. Denmark has been piloting a “cellular” grid structure—stress-tested annually by pulling microgrids’ plug from the main grid to make sure critical loads stay on (they do). Cuba used microgrids, distributed generation, and efficient use to cut its serious blackout days from 224 in 2005 to zero in 2007—and then sustain vital services in 2008 while two hurricanes in two weeks shredded the eastern grid.
The microgrid at UCSD has already proved that it strengthens the university’s — and the local grid’s — resilience. In 2009, when the rest of the utility grid was threatened by wildfires, UCSD was able to go from a 3 megawatt net importer to a 2 megawatt net exporter in 30 minutes by turning down its 4,000 non-critical thermostats by a few degrees while increasing onsite generation. UCSD’s actions played a critical role in keeping the whole area’s lights on.
http://www.rmi.org/nations_largest_microgrid_online_esj_article
Storing H2 is one issue
Well, are settled that looks like a proven method of storing H2?
it has to be transported to the H2 gas electric plants (which don't exist).
They can be colocated with the H2 storage, so that we only transport electricity.
US might have several percent of annual current gas consumption stored; it has nowhere near enough gas to run the entire country's entire fossil electric (plus nuclear?) energy load, replaced w/ 100% gas, for two weeks.
The US appears to have about 4 TCF of NG: that's 16% of annual NG consumption, only a portion of which is used for generation. I'd WAG guess that's enough to power the whole country for 4 weeks.
More later, when I have time...
The US appears to have about 4 TCF of NG: that's 16% of annual NG consumption, only a portion of which is used for generation. I'd WAG guess that's enough to power the whole country for 4 weeks.
Apparently today the US has storage for 8TCF*. That's enough gas at 40% conversion to run all of the US's 450GWe demand for three months. (8tcf = 8.4e18J). Of the 450GWe, ~75% comes from fossil, so 8tcf storage could run US non-fossil electric demand for 4 months. Of course as you say only a fraction of current US gas use goes to electricity production, about a third, the rest going to space/water heat and industry. So then leaving space&water heat and industry alone, the US can run its entire non-fossil electric demand for over a month from a cache similar to current storage. Next, how much gas electric capacity is available now? This surprised me but should not have: 407GWe, enough to power the entire US non-fossil demand. Only thing left technically is to build enough syn-gas plants to produce 1-2tcf at 0.3tcf per year or so. That, and overnight backup of solar.
*And is using most of it currently! I expect producers sitting on it waiting for prices to rise.
Thanks for the sources!
Yeah, this whole seasonal backup problem just doesn't seem that hard.
Now if I could just track down some good data on the capex for large-scale electrolysis...
Yes I'm reminded now that though H2 has transportation and combustion/fuel cell infrastructure problems, syn-methane has carbon problems, namely that it has to come from somewhere. Pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere just to make methane via Fischer Tropsch would be, I think, energy prohibitive.
H2 has transportation... problems
Don't forget co-location
H2 has...combustion/fuel cell infrastructure problems
If it's burned only for 5% percent of the year, efficiency isn't important, so we could use simple, cheap ICEs.
Pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere just to make methane
I think it's not as bad as one would think. OTOH, there are alternatives:
1st, this is a stationary plant, so one could sequester the carbon during burning, and recycle it. Again, efficiency isn't so important here...
2nd, from your reference:
Carbon dioxide reuse
In 2009, chemists working for the U.S. Navy investigated Fischer-Tropsch for generating fuels, obtaining hydrogen by electrolysis of seawater. When it was combined with the dissolved carbon dioxide using a cobalt-based catalyst, the reaction produced mostly methane gas. However, use of an iron-based catalyst allowed reducing the methane produced to 30 per cent with the rest being predominantly short-chain hydrocarbons. Further refining of the hydrocarbons produced by means of solid acid catalysts such as zeolites can potentially lead to the production of kerosene-based jet fuel.[24]
The abundance of CO2 makes seawater an attractive alternative fuel source. Scientists at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory stated that, "although the gas forms only a small proportion of air – around 0.04 per cent – ocean water contains about 140 times that concentration".[24] Robert Dorner presented the findings of his work to the American Chemical Society on 16 August 2009, in Washington DC.[25]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_process#Carbon_diox...
Don't forget co-location
Yes, I'd have to think about that more. That means one has to generate H2, store, then generate electricity, all on site, which leads to the following:
1. All the H2 electric generation has to be newly constructed on location, cheap or otherwise, when we just found there is already 407GW of methane electric generation in place.
2. Similarly, there is sufficient methane storage already in place. While some of that underground methane storage may also be suitable for H2 storage, I doubt a large fraction of rock formations that are impermeable to methane are also impermeable to H2 ( but I don't know).
3. For a given pressure one has to store 3.7X more volume of H2 than methane to obtain the same energy.
4. Electric distribution has to be constructed new to the storage sites.
so we could use simple, cheap ICEs.
Agreed, but that's ~300GWe of ICE or whatever generation that has to bought, installed and attached to grid, vs the alternative gas plants again which are in place.
stationary plant, so one could sequester the carbon during burning, and recycle it.
Yes I thought of that and was looking for an alternative because it means modifying the gas electric fleet w/ some kind of carbon capture plan. The numbers I've seen on permanent carbon capture scheme from coal plants (volume and cost) are atrocious. This scheme does not involve permanent underground storage but still I'm wary. Yet in the long term I think a closed carbon cycle as you suggest is probably unavoidable. Unless
2nd, from your reference:Carbon dioxide reuse
Thanks, missed that! Very cool. Didn't realize the sea water CO2 concentration was so high at ~6%, perhaps sea water makes an effective carbon capture system, though that is still far short of the required stoichiometric 1:2 mix (CO2 to H20). I suppose that's corrected by mixing hydrogen through the required volume of seawater. I'm curious about the process energy consumption beyond H2 generation, for the H2 vs syn-methane comparison.
Don't forget that we're really doing very long-term planning here: NG and coal will be around for at least 50 years for 5% (kWh) backup, so current plant and sunk costs don't really apply.
I'm curious about the process energy consumption beyond H2 generation, for the H2 vs syn-methane comparison.
Yes, I'd like to see good, detailed numbers.
The relevant issue is whether or not the jobs produced a product less expensive than alternatives.
As opposed to the tax-paying feed-in tariffs, the €204 billion taxpayer-money spent on just the German nuclear power industry didn't create a worldwide job growth market.
The feed-in tariffs in Europe mainly contributed to the fact that the world has meanwhile affordable PV at its disposal and already installed 27.7 GW in 2011, which can produce electricity for less than an oil power plant or a diesel generator.
Oil still has a 6% electricity share worldwide (about what 200 nuclear power plants currently produce). PV can reduce diesel demand in rural areas in short time. Nuclear on the other hand cannot (even if it could be built as quickly as PV). Rural areas in developing countries don't have a grid large enough to accommodate a nuclear power plant.
Maintaining double current capacity
Again: Planed capacity is cheap. Spinning reserves to take care of unplanned outages are expensive. This is fact and it won't change just because it doesn't coincide with your believe system.
![]()
Besides that the hydro dams are already here and don't need extensive maintenance.
Hydro in Europe has enough capacity to power Europe for 22 days. There are no nights and calm periods which last that long: http://www.claverton-energy.com/european-hydro-capacity-compared-to-the-...
Since PV only produces power during daytime it actually reduces peak electricity demand during day time, which is why Swiss pumped hydro operators don't like PV because they can export less to Italy and Germany during peak demand and receive less excess electricity at low demand (PV doesn't produce at night): http://www.drs.ch/www/de/drs/nachrichten/wirtschaft/301909.schattenseite...
And again: Combined cycle gas power plants and black coal power plants already have a low capacity factor in order to deal with varying demand.
More importantly: Most people keep ignoring the fact that much more energy is consumed for heating and hot water than for electricity in Germany:
Heat pumps which substitute fossil fuel heating systems reduce the fuel demand by over 50% even if their electricity is solely produced by a combined cycle power plant or a combined heat power plant. And low temperature heat can actually be stored cheaply:
If the heating and hot-water sector is electrified with heat pumps, natural gas consumption is not only reduced greatly, but demand response capacity can be increased tremendously.
Germany produces less CO2 per capita than Belgium with a 55% nuclear share. Unfortunately and unlike the promoters of renewable energies, the nuclear industry is not a promoter of efficient use of energy - on the contrary - it promotes resistance heating in badly insulated buildings.
Again: Planed capacity is cheap. Spinning reserves to take care of unplanned outages are expensive. This is fact and it won't change just because it doesn't coincide with your believe system.
Asserting electric capacity is cheap as fact does not make it so simply by saying it again and again. Coal plants cost $2-3/W to build. Figure 1. They have to be built now, next year, and the year after just to replace retiring plants. Coal mines and local coal storage must also be maintained.
Old coal power plants can be replaced by cheaper and more flexible combined cycle gas power plants.
Since combined cycle gas power plants have low capital costs, they can also easily deal with lower capacity factors.
Agreed, CCG is more like a $1/W to build. Still, recognize that those CCG plants, a lot of them, have to be paid for in addition to solar/wind we'd like to build. The synthetic gas made from wind/PV energy plants have to built and paid for, the gas storage has to be ... etc. This is all doable to my mind, but it comes about from essentially building two power infrastructures side by side, one intermittent and one not. This is something to keep mind when considering the closure of nuclear plants that run 90% of the time, winter or summer.
If you reduce methane use for heating and hot water by replacing them with efficient heat pumps, there's enough natural methane left to power the CCG plants. There's no need for synthetic gas for now. According to NOAA Russia is apparently flaring about the same amount of natural gas energy as Germany is currently consuming electric energy (in total).
replacing them with efficient heat pumps, there's enough natural methane left to power the CCG plants.
Yes heating gas energy is reduced by X but then the electric demand goes up by X/4,
which must be backed up synthetic gas electric plants supplied with 3X/4 of gas energy.(sorry I'm wrong there, most the new X/4 demand energy would be provided by the solar/wind grid). Eventually I suspect everyone will switch to solar district heating - no backup, storage built in.There's no need for synthetic gas for now.
Agreed, not now. I assumed (?) we've been talking about how to outfit a theoretical soon-to-be Germany with all of its current nuclear shut down, and then later losing its fossil fuels as well.
Last year Germany's nuclear power plants generated about 2.7% of the total energy consumption in Germany. Efficiency measures have more influence on the CO2-reduction than the German nuclear power fleet. Besides as I said before: Unfortunately the nuclear power industry has been pushing inefficiency measures (e.g. resistance heating) for decades. In addition the nuclear power industry is unfortunately also lobbying against renewable power. A few years ago the Swiss nuclear power operators were even running a TV-ad against PV, while at the same time investing in coal power plants outside of Switzerland. These sorts of actions are unfortunately not supporting any CO2-reductions.
If we only use the NG generation for a few weeks per year, we probably should go with very, very cheap single-cycle units.
Heck, we probably should use EREV V2G - capex would be paid for by the vehicle owners.
Hydro in Europe has enough capacity to power Europe for 22 days. There are no nights and calm periods which last that long: http://www.claverton-energy.com/european-hydro-capacity-compared-to-the-...
No, slow down for a moment and do the math. You're confusing stored energy and the rate at which it can be produced (power). All of Western Europe's hydro power combined (147GW) could not supply even Germany's total average electric demand (170GW). Or as stated in the bottom of that link:
See the article on hydro storage backup of existing electric demand/load by the same author (Murphy). In the case of the US, some 60X current hydro installation would be required. I think generation and storage of synthetic hydrocarbons (e.g methane) is the way to go, not hydro, but that's not modest either. To supply Germany with two weeks of 100% electric demand via methane, assuming a future all methane based electric power plant backup, would require a stored cache of some ~160 large LNG tanker loads.
Besides that Germany's average demand is only about 60 GW:
Hydro power can relatively easily be increased (no need for more dams just more turbines), but there is currently no need for more hydro power capacity because the flexible capacity already available is more than sufficient.
Besides Swiss utilities are currently increasing pump/turbine capacity by over 4 GW on existing dams (because the utilities were apparently hoping for a nuclear renaissance and a larger price spread between night and day).
Also, if Europe actually did have mostly renewable power it would be interconnected over a wide area. Thus significantly reducing the power fluctuation of all renewable power plants combined.
Germany already has methane storage capacity to cover its entire methane needs for almost 11 weeks (there are no calm periods and nights which last that long): http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erdgasspeicher
In addition, Germany can reduce its methane consumption by replacing fossil heating and fossil hot water systems with efficient heat pumps.
Besides that Germany's average demand is only about 60 GW:Yes, and falling. I blundered earlier by using all primary energy figures (i.e. transportation, heating, etc) earlier to arrive 170GW. Also, it appears of that 60GWe about 60% is fossil fuel supplied, with another 20% supplied by hydro+other renewable, and ~20% by nuclear. So to replace fossil plus nuclear (really?) about 48GWe is required. Now we are down to ~45 large LNG tankers to backup a two week outage.
Germany already has methane storage capacity to cover its entire methane needs for almost 11 weeks Germany's entire methane needs do not extend to all Germany's electric production.
So to replace fossil plus nuclear (really?) about 48GWe is required
Germany is not fading out nuclear before 2022 and it doesn't have any plans to get rid of its coal power plants (unfortunately). In addition, Germany already has about 20 GW interconnection-power with its neighboring countries.
By 2022 Germany will have far more Wind, PV and biomass capacity and more interconnections with its neighboring countries than it has now. It will also have a more efficient heating sector. Methane consumption in Germany has already been dropping since 2007.
So no, it probably won't need more methane by 2022 than it did 2007.
And again: Germany already has 20 billion m3 of methane storage: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erdgasspeicher
20 billion m3 corresponds to about 216 TWh. At 60% efficiency even your absurd 48 GW CCG plant capacity could run continuously at full power for 16 weeks.
Germany is not fading out nuclear before 2022
You are mistaken. Eight plants are closed now, and all will be closed by the end of 2022.
it doesn't have any plans to get rid of its coal power plants (unfortunately).
??? Then what is the point of ramping up solar and wind? Just to replace nuclear, period, the end?
20 billion m3 corresponds to about 216 TWh. At 60% efficiency even your absurd 48 GW CCG plant capacity could run continuously at full power for 16 weeks.
Yes, or about 5 weeks if only a third of gas consumption goes to electric production as in the US. Anyway that's plenty. Yes there's ample storage in Germany and in the US too. One still has to have the 48GW of CCG plants and maintain them, and build the syn gas generation infrastructure.
Why do you say 48GW of backup is absurd? I posit that figure only for a future Germany with all nuclear and fossil electric generation gone, tentatively replaced by solar and wind. I grant one could knock off ~5% by demand management and another ~10% by running river fed hydro hard for a couple weeks. But otherwise we know PV goes to zero every night, and occasionally wind nearly so. Where else do you suppose the power will come from on those nights?
48GW of backup
First, DSM would likely be used for much deeper reductions: 15% would be routine, and 30% in emergencies could easily be done.
2nd, the German grid would pull in significant inflows from it's neighbors: "anyone" indicates that Germany already has about 20 GW interconnection-power with its neighboring countries.
3rd, the PV and wind would be very, very unlikely to go to zero. In the US, the various sysops estimate wind to have a firm capacity figure of 10%-90% of average output (depending on the sub-grid: ERCOT is lowest, and NYSERDA is highest).
4th, we would almost certainly overbuild wind and PV, just as we overbuild FF plants.
So, let's assume 60GW average power consumption (diurnal variation would be handled separately). Let's further assume that we're dealing with the one-week of minimum PV/wind output.
DSM could reduce the 60GW to 42GW.
If the average solar/wind contribution is 48GW, it might be built to produce 64GW on average (with the excess going to syn-gas & syn-fuel production). At it's minimum it would still probably produce 10%, or 6.4GW.
If the inter-grid feed can really provide 20GW, let's assume that level: 20GW.
Hydro would provide it's 12GW.
Ok, we have demand of 42GW, and supply of 38.4GW, for a gap of about 4GW.
What could hydro be ramped up to temporarily? How much would other sources be ramped up to by then: geothermal, biomass, wave, etc, etc?
DSM would likely be used for much deeper reductions: 15% would be routine, and 30% in emergencies could easily be done...
For two weeks? I'm only vaguely familiar with what's done now in the US but DSM seems to be one order of hours, a couple days at most from what I understand.
2nd, the German grid would pull in significant inflows from it's neighbors...
Yes I had purposely not pursued that issue because it just moves the problem somewhere else. At the moment, for instance, Germany can afford to shut down nuclear plants and import power (at times) because others, like the French and Czechs continue to use nuclear power. In the larger picture counting on ones neighbors just means the same thing as it does in larger countries like the US: i) the chance of the long term outage becomes rarer but it does not go away, ii) every country/energy sector/whatever has to overbuild to be of use to its neighbor should the neighbor have a two week outage, iii) one needs to build a lot more very long distance interconnection than currently exists.
3rd, the PV and wind would be very, very unlikely to go to zero. In the US, the various sysops estimate wind to have a firm capacity figure of 10%-90%...The PV won't go to zero? ;-) Yes I was aware of the firm wind estimates. We haven't that much data yet to really count on it, but sure, keep 10% wind.
So, let's assume 60GW average power consumption (diurnal variation would be handled separately). Let's further assume that we're dealing with the one-week of minimum PV/wind output. Ok, sure.
DSM could reduce the 60GW to 42GW.
I think that's optimistic for a week, but I don't have and contrary data/reference. Keep in mind whatever solutions one comes up with here also have to work for less severe outages over longer periods, i.e. 4 weeks at 75% solar/wind power.
If the average solar/wind contribution is 48GW, it might be built to produce 64GW on average (with the excess going to syn-gas & syn-fuel production). At it's minimum it would still probably produce 10%, or 6.4GW.Ok, for an all wind system.
If the inter-grid feed can really provide 20GW, let's assume that level: 20GW.
Here as per above I don't think that's a fair game. The chance that, say, Germany and Denmark both have a week long wind ~outage is less than either alone, but it is still substantial. Plus, as per above, it forces both countries to build the extra 20GWe so that when they have an average power week they still have the 20GWe to spare for their neighbor.
Hydro would provide it's 12GW.
Apparently German hydro capacity is 5GWe. Perhaps you're using the all renewable figure there, i.e. hydro plus existing German wind? Usually hydro runs well short of 100% capacity but in a bad wind/solar week it certainly be run 100%.
So I have an (arguable) demand of 42GWe, and a supply of 5+6.4=11.4GWe, gap of 31GWe
DSM ...For two weeks?
It depends. Many industrial customers could easily accept 90% curtailment for that long - they'd work it into their planning, just as smelters now operate at night to take advantage of low electricity rates.
EREVs would maximize their charge before the bad weather hit, run down their batteries, then run on liquid fuel for the rest of the week, probably sending power back to the grid late in the week (V2G).
more later...
If the inter-grid feed can really provide 20GW, let's assume that level: 20GW
In 2009 Germany was already importing and exporting 123 TWh of electricity:
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/statistics/search_da...
If the capacity factor of the transmission lines in 2009 was 100% (highly unlikely) that would correspond to: 14 GW inter-grid capacity.
If the capacity factor of the transmission lines in 2009 was 50% (more likely) that would correspond to: 28 GW inter-grid capacity.
So, 20 GW inter-grid capacity is a very save assumption and it will probably be significantly more by 2022.
Transmission capacity can be doubled without building new/additional transmission towers:
http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/3M/en_US/EMD_ACCR/ACCR_Home/Proven_Be...
DSM could reduce the 60GW to 42GW.
Germany already has
10.3 GW of hydro,
23.1 GW of gas power:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraftwerk
21 GW of CHP:
http://www.iea.org/g8/chp/profiles/germany.pdf
At 70% capacity factor biomass is already at 6 GW:
With 0% coal, 0% PV, 0% wind, 0% nuclear and 0% inter-grid capacity Germany is already at 60 GW. So, your 42 GW with DSM would be an non-issue.
Germany imports oil, natural gas, hard coal and 100% uranium mostly outside of Europe. If Germany would import some renewable electricity from its neighbors instead, it would not change anything other than the fact the renewables are not limited and that Germany would also export renewable electricity.
There's no reason for Germany to stop trading energy just because it increased its renewable capacity.
What could hydro be ramped up to temporarily?
There's already plenty in its neighboring countries, so there's not really a need to do so:
http://www.iset.uni-kassel.de/abt/w3-w/projekte/europes_hydropower_bernh...
Austria: 10.9 GW
Switzerland: 13.8 GW
Norway: 27.6 GW
Sweden: 16.2 GW
France: 24.3 GW
Czech Republic: 2 GW
Poland: 2 GW
Luxembourg: 1.1 GW
And hydro power capacity is being increased (mostly pumped storage capacity).
It's a little more complicated than that. Germany was a net importer last summer, and is currently a net exporter. Germany's electricity exchange is highly seasonal. Normally it exports about 3 TW-h, net, per month in the winter, and runs a slight deficit in the summer. Between last April and last November, Germany's net exports were about 11 TW-h less than in previous years, but it still ran a surplus for 2011.
https://www.entsoe.eu/resources/data-portal/exchange/
Complete figures for December and January aren't available yet, but obviously the situation wasn't helped by the weeks in which Germany's solar power seldom broke 1 GW.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,809439,00.html
Thanks Bill Woods. Interesting bit from Der Spiegel:
Sounds like the economically interested PV lobby has overplayed its hand.
As I said:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8925#comment-872339
It is not relevant whether Germany is a net importer or exporter. Relevant is at what rates Germany imports and exports and in that regard Germany gets a better deal than France. Germany has enough flexible capacity to be a constant net-exporter if there was any economic sense in doing so.
Complete figures for December and January aren't available yet, but obviously the situation wasn't helped by the weeks in which Germany's solar power seldom broke 1 GW.
The fact that the German wind power plants always generate more power in the winter (over 20 GW a few hours ago):
http://www.transparency.eex.com/de/daten_uebertragungsnetzbetreiber/stro...
does certainly offset the low German PV output, which besides still reached 7.8 GW, for instance, on January 16th:
http://www.sma.de/de/news-infos/pv-leistung-in-deutschland.html
The fact that the German wind power plants always generate more power in the winter (over 20 GW a few hours ago):
...does certainly offset the low German PV output, which besides still reached 7.8 GW, for instance, on January 16th:
PV peaked at 3.9GW today, 2.1GW day before. Why cherry pick? It won't change the fact that backup has to be in place for the not-so-cherry-days. PV produced the equivalent of only ~four peak hours (~16 GW-hrs) on Feb 15, while wind on Feb 15 produced 20GW x ~16 hrs, 320 GW-hrs. Again, PV in the high latitudes in winter time is puny, only to be balanced out by finding away to store the ample summer PV output.
PV produced the equivalent of only ~four peak hours (~16 GW-hrs) on Feb 15, while wind on Feb 15 produced 20GW x ~16 hrs, 320 GW-hrs.
And in the summer wind will produce less and PV will produce more. As I said: Wind and PV complement each other.
A agree in some places that will be seasonally true but that's not the point, which is there are extended periods when little or no production comes from either.
If you just pick one region the probability of just low wind for an extended period is already very low.
http://mobjectivist.blogspot.com/2010/06/wind-variability-in-germany.html
If you compare 2 different regions Spain and Germany the probability of just low wind is even lower:
http://www.transparency.eex.com/de/daten_uebertragungsnetzbetreiber/stro...
https://demanda.ree.es/generacion_acumulada.html
Just try to find a single period of 2 weeks in both Spain as well as Germany were there was little wind generation at the same time. And if you are lucky try to find low PV in that very same period. But given the fact that PV and wind complement each other, this will probably be impossible:
http://www.q-cells.com/uploads/tx_abdownloads/files/6CV.1.32_Gerlach2011...
If there were extended periods of low wind and PV you'd also see that in this FFT analysis just for Germany (page 8):
http://eeg.tuwien.ac.at/eeg.tuwien.ac.at_pages/events/iewt/iewt2011/uplo... (there would be no noise before 10^-6 Hz = 11.5 days).
Except when it doesn't. On Monday for instance, when wind and solar combined were less than 3 GW. (Wow, I really had to search hard to find that cherry.)
(Wow, I really had to search hard to find that cherry.)
Which is exactly the point. In general wind and PV power plants save fossil fuels in gas and hard coal power plants (both fuels are imported). These power plants already have a low utilization rate in order to take care of varying demand and varying electricity prices (including and obviously in France).
You may claim the contrary by facts are pointing in the opposite direction.
Ok then - show these "facts" you claim to have.
I don;t think this is necessarily true. Has home implementation of computers led to inefficiency?
If a 50% efficiency solar panel can be made tomorrow, will this somehow preclude it from home implementation?
The concept of small scale distributed production is well worth having in the matrix because most consumption is small scale distributed consumption. Presently, we have a huge infrastructure investment in the distribution from centralised production (be it oil, gas or electricity) to the distributed consumption.
Is not a production source that matches the consumption pattern worth considering?
In the special case of heat engine technologies - ICE's, steam and gas turbines, and wind, you are correct that small scale is less efficient than large. But from a systemic point of view, sometimes that scale comes with external costs that can be avoided with small or mid scale. It is also near impossible for someone to corner the market on supply -Enron style- with a distributed system. The more inputs the grid has from the more places, the more resilient it is. Similarly, distributed generation lowers the peak loads on transmission systems, which further increase s resiliency. And it allows towns/communities to produce at last part of their own energy, to gain some degree of autonomy. Relying on Russian supplied nat gas to a CCGT may be more efficient than solar on your rooftop, but do YOU want to be dependent on Russian gas?
If it really was the best, we would see a lot more of it being done. Currently, *EVERY* CSP plant in the world has been built with massive subsidies. They are still at the demonstration stage, and have not demonstrated themselves to be more cost effective than solar. The fact that they can only be done on large, empty pieces of land is a significant drawback. Solar PV can be done on rooftops, or even agricultural land (as sun shelters, Wind can go on agricultural land. BUt with CSP, that land is given over to CSP and nothing else - this is a restriction that some other energy sources do not have.
Ah, c'mon Paul, Sure you know that you can put reflectors all over the sides of bldgs anywhere, aimed at that big solar tower on top of the wallmart. Each one with a tracker that knows everything about the sun and the tower. The thing in the tower can be the heat engine that you like best for that particular size- stirling, gas turbine, steam, combined cycle-
And on top of that (npi) you can rent out each reflector output to anyone in sight who might need a little heat/light at the moment.
So I make a contract with Luigi to vaporize that SOB who keeps walking his dog by my stoop with a momentary megawatt of nice clean solar energy. And not to forget the dog.
Hey! a new business opportunity.
Always enjoy Tom's "Do the Math" articles. I see that UCSD is working with RMI on self organizing micro grids too as shown in this video. http://www.rmi.org/nations_largest_microgrid_online_esj_article This work is critically important as we begin to integrate more renewables into a much more complex power transmission and distribution system. For more on this topic some might be interested in attending the upcoming IEEE Power and Energy Society T&D conference. http://www.ieeet-d.org/
Today's post mentioned challenges in dealing with the intermittency of renewables. This article from the UK is one of the best I have found on this topic. "The Costs and Impacts of Intermittency" http://www.uwig.org/0604_Intermittency_report_final.pdf
It would be good to add EROI's to the matrix of alternatives too. There must be some smart students out there that could help with that.
Hope we figure some of this stuff out before we burn our remaining FF's into the ground.
I have a problem with the math you use. It is not that the sums are incorrect, but that the initial inputs are.
For working out solar PV, the correct inputs are things like the following; aluminium, glass, copper etc. The increase in production of these resources and the energy to produce them as an addition to current consumption if we were to have BAU. Whenever I do the numbers looking at anything to replace FF over say 40 years, there is a huge increase in resources needed to reach the goals of maintaining anything like BAU.
Of course the huge increase in resources takes more energy to produce, catch 22 in a world at peak oil.
Where is the maths on who misses out on their BAU so that alternatives prevail??
The correct math does not use sqm, efficiency and current cost alone. The big picture clearly shows a lack of resources and the energy to extract them over the necessary time.
Hide - In a similar vein an additional factor to the increased need for energy to produce those resources (assuming there are enough readily available) is the cost. Assuming Alt X has a great EROEI and there are abundant resources to develop Alt X in a timely manner: is there the capex available to do so? In some discussions I see the parallel logic to the "technologically recoverable" oil resources (not "reserves" mind you). IOW a resource that could be developed and improve our energy consumption profile greatly IF THE ECONOMICS OF THE PROCESS WERE IGNORED.
There is an unlimited amount of good I could do for the world: feed the hungry, house the homeless, employee the idle, etc, etc. Many readily available fixes out there...as long as the cost of doing so wasn't a factor. Short version of an old joke about a chemist, a physicist and an economist trapped on a deserted island with nothing but a crate of beans and no way to open the cans. The economist has a great plan after listening to the other two. His plan: "First, let's assume we have a can opener...". Nothing wrong with having to make assumptions with any plan. Ther error IMHO is to believe the assumptions will be met without testing their validity.
The test seems very simple to me: if Alt X is truly a solution then why hasn't it been done already? There are a number of answers to that question depending up the alt. But the fact remains: if that alt hasn't been implemented on a wide scale yet then why not? And what will change that calculus in a timely manner? Granted those are not easy answers. But that doesn't change the necessity of understand those answers.
IMO the greatest difficulty in any changes to BAU isn't technical or economic feasibility, it is from expectations. Because we expect that anything produced in the future has to be better than what we have at present, I.E. faster, more abundant, cheaper etc we tend to leave most of the good options which could be pursued now on the table whilst we wait for something better to come along. Even options which are obviously more efficient sometimes aren't used because they are 'harder' to implement. The best example I can think of this is rail vs Keystone in terms of efficiency because rail could be done overnight relatively and more efficiently at that however since it requires significantly more thinking and planning it is shelved in favour of a pipeline which has no scheduling issues, you stick it in one end and it comes out the other.
So why aren't alternatives more popular? A significant reason is that they're 'harder' to do. You need significantly more planning to implement a network of wind, solar, geothermal and nuclear power stations than a combined cycle gas turbine even if the total cost of the former is less or equal to the cost of the latter over a number of years. Imagine a car which used no gas at all and was about the same price as a conventional ICE with the drawback that when you put your foot on the accelerator the car would take at least a minute to respond above 30MPH, you couldn't sell it even if it cost nothing to run.
People are really good at knowing what other people do to annoy them, they are also really bad at knowing what they do which annoys other people. The car as a personal transport option is heaven for you, hell for other people. The car is the ultimate expression of selfishness because they are designed to satisfy the need for safety and comfort of the individual at the great expense of everyone else. The reason why the already good alternatives such as lighter EVs etc haven't taken off is because the individual doesn't have to take into account the needs of everyone else with their purchase decisions. If you can't see the negative, you won't plan for mitigating it.
Rock;
As I'm sure you've considered, the reason why many familiar Alt-X's haven't been done so far is because Petroleum is cheap and powerful enough to incline us to ignore both Oil's long-term detriments, and the Alt's Long-term Benefits.
You can say that the Cost-benefit-equation will shift when oil is expensive enough, but it seems that since (we here, anyway) can see the resource threat coming, we need to find a way to evaluate an Alt-X based on the reasonable predictions about future oil availability and cost, and act BEFORE that comes about, since we need to be using today's oil and oil-boosted economy in order to get the jump-start of installing enough alt's to make it through the bottleneck with minimal pain and threat to the Civ. overall.
Of course, this only bolsters the argument by those who say 'Renewables are Merely an Oil Extender' .. but I take issue with that, since we know that we can do real work with the renewables that will be installed, and whether that work entails gradually building renewably manufactured renewables as we now know them, or means the work coming out of Wind and Solar, etc, will be helping us move in whatever other directions we can.. either way, those tools WILL STILL WORK.. and won't require refills at wildly fluxuating prices.
Yes, there's capex to consider, but there's also a societal interest in working 'uneconomically', as with WPA efforts, or creating vital infrastructure at a loss for the time being, when the need is sufficient. Clearly, the public doesn't accept the sufficiency of need yet. But I do.
It's still got to be a matter of 'How much power do we need really?' , and 'How far in debt do we let this particular effort put us?' .. it's hardly different than the figuring anyone does when they start up a 30 year mortgage, it seems to me.
Joker - You make valid points. But: "Yes, there's capex to consider, but there's also a societal interest in working 'uneconomically', as with WPA efforts, or creating vital infrastructure at a loss for the time being, when the need is sufficient." This is where you and I part views. It matters not what societal benefits could be gained in the long run. The vast majority of the folks who comprise our society don't give a crap about those "societal interest" IMHO. Also, IMHO, folks don't prefer ff over alts because they are cheap but because they are CHEAPER than the alts. If there were a car they wanted to drive at the price they are willing to pay and if it ran on any alt you picked they would be driving that vehicle today. Same can be said for every other source of energy consumption IMHO.
Yes...this is a dark view of our societies. Yes, there are many folks willing to bite the bullet for their fellow man. They are to be honored. But they are the minority. I think history does a fairly good job of supporting my position. Lots of current examples too...like spending 100's of $billions (that could have been spent supporting alts) and thousands of American lives as well as tens of thousands of civilian lives in the ME. Done to bring democracy to the region? Opinions vary. You can probably guess my thoughts on the subject. Hardly a week goes by when something makes me think about those shiny aluminum boxes arriving at Dover. Just one reason my dark attitude persists.
Not all costs are created equal, that's for sure..
It's a funny set of mixes, Rock. I'll grant you that. Strange enough how those various sacrifices are tallied in the end. You might find I'm as dark-minded as yourself..
There are those who, for true love of Country and Core Beliefs, are throwing themselves physically into those Metal Boxes with the noblest of purposes.. in a war that, in my own cynical view, is merely an expensive and dishonest subsidy for another energy source, and another set of companies.. and we are dared not to speak their names or question the motives of those firms, while we're ridiculed openly for suggesting making much humbler sacrifices on some Boring field of Lowing Cattle, in order to secure energy here, without the promise of Glory, without the rush of seeing Badguys vanquished..
Someone on C-span suggested we should read Mark Twain's 'War Prayer' .. I'll just put in the juicy part. I don't mean to offend, but I realize that it might.. just trying to be honest.
Yes.. history offers plenty of precedence.. but we are also offered choices.
Since you mention Twain and war I thought I'd link a short piece of his not often read
The Private History of a Campaign that Failed published in his 1885 Sketches
Just compared the scroll bars of that linked web page (contains the whole short story but has smoe minor printing errors similar to the word I typed before minor) and this-Twain's piece is about 1/5 the size of this post/comment page at the moment. It makes for a nice break.
"IF THE ECONOMICS OF THE PROCESS WERE IGNORED "
but what is economics? economics, as it is understood now, just means accepting BAU. one could say that saving BAU by BAU is not possible because it's not profitable.
"if Alt X is truly a solution then why hasn't it been done already?"
because there is no solution which can make profit (i assume you implicitly mean by solution something which can make profit, in the standard sense)
by the way here you can find a definition of Alt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exterior_algebra
That's actually a pretty fair assessment of the situation.
Fortunately a lot of things can get done that aren't "bankable projects". Small solar thermal and wind have historically fallen into that category, who knows what else will in the future?
Tom has written a blogpost on this precise issue, called "The Energy Trap". You can look for it on 'Do the Math' and also here on TOD.
JB,
I fully agree with Tom's work there, but it often gets overlooked, even by Tom. I have been talking about this catch 22 for a long time, yet it seems to fall into the same category as Westexas's ANE (Available Net Exports). It is a huge obvious problem to anyone who does basic maths, yet most even here on a 'Doom and Gloom' site refuse to understand the implications. All the talk about renewables, self sufficiency, power down in a BAU type way, is just hype and hope.
The following are posts that I made in the past about this catch 22. Notice how the replies by cornucopians never look at the real numbers of what must be mined and manufactured, only general things like x% increase here, or there is plenty of y there...
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8052/814011
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7725/784268
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8155/822094
I'll stick with what I said months ago...
I'm going to going from meta-response to nitty-gritty in my reply here.
First, if the standard is that we must replace FF 'fast enough' or 'totally' in order for renewables to be considered, that's the wrong standard. The standard for renewables, in my opinion, is simply: are they economic enough to be worth a small premium to avoid CO2 emissions? One can argue strenuously for both the adoption of renewables and massive conservation and adaption efforts; those are not contradictory positions. They are simply our best bets to alleviate (not avoid) the worst effects of the predicament we are in.
So with that said, I'll move on to considering the 'energy trap' problem you raise. I think what we need, to put this issue in context, is some idea of what we already spend (in energy) to build and maintain our current energy infrastructure. If this percentage of energy spending can be used to replace our infrastructure with new renewable infrastructure, then the energy trap may not be so bad after all. When people say things like 'we need X amount of energy to build X amount of X energy source, and our energy sources are shrinking!', my question is 'so is that more or less energy than we are already spending to build and maintain what we are currently using? And is there some of that energy we can divert to better efforts?'
Because I have not seen a good analysis of these questions, the 'energy trap' remains something I can understand intellectually but not estimate the quantitative significance of. The fact is we are already using a percentage of our energy use to install renewables. It is not the case that there is not energy available. It is the case that economics, policy, and cultural attitudes dictate how it gets used.
Finally, I think you can take Tellurium off your list of materials we need. There is only one major company (First Solar) doing PV with Te, and their market share has shrunk as polysilicon has got cheap.
Although in absolute size FirstSolar is growing. To my knowledge their manufacturing cost per watt is the lowest. But, even at their planned scale production of 6.5GW/year they are smallish, 2011 production capacity was estimated at 25GW/year, and has been doubling in less than two years. So CdTe, always was, and will remain a moderate PV niche rather than a dominant supplier. (10% or less of the total). None of the other thin film companies are remotely close to FirstSolar in size or production cost. I think cheap silicon is going to be a major challenge for many of the thinfilm companies.
Well, quantify "huge". Is it "huge" a.k.a. "impossible", or "huge" "substantial"?
http://www.photovoltaic-production.com/1960/glass-industry-discovers-pro...
says in 2009 (down year due to recession, "90% utilization"), float and rolled glass plants produced 38 million tons of glass.
PV used 639,000 tons, so a bit less than 2% of glass usage.
PV module output in 2009 was 8.9 GWp
http://www.pv-tech.org/news/gtm_research_publishes_2009_pv_cell_and_pane...
Per Tom, the U.S. is a 2 TW country, assume 2000 hrs of PV/yr, 8760 hrs/yr, we need 4x the PV to power things 24x7, so 8,000 GWp of PV.
Build out of 50 years, so 160 GW/yr, roughly 18x 2009 world PV production.
Ramp glass plants to 100% -> 42 million tons.
.639 million tons x 18 = 11.5 million tons glass, 27% of world's current possible glass output.
Quadruple to include the rest of the world, so we need to double the world's glass output.
Huge impossible? I would say not. Huge significant? yes.
n.b. the 1st link refers to a company specializing in PV glass - the PV industry is just now big enough to warrant a dedicated glass plant or two.
Is the glass half-full, or half-empty? You tell me.
If people have a choice between a new home with dim power prospects or PV on the old one
(or a new car with windows vs. a new electric bicycle) in a post-peak future,
maybe the glass industry isn't such a big growth area and still produces TW of PV.
this NREL paper has more material on materials, assuming build out to 75 TWp in 2065:
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy05osti/37656.pdf
Their conclusions, CIGS and CdTe are constrained, Si is not.
sunnnv,
Thank you very much for replying with an attempt to work out the real numbers for glass, not many are prepared to try and work it out.
However, every number you have used is 'rosy', yet even your numbers have the US, with just 4.3% of the worlds population needing a 27% increase in world glass production to power everything in the USA with PV.
Let's look at some of the real world numbers. Current energy use world wide is about 150,000 TWh from here...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption
2008 numbers 143,800 TWh and growing at ~2.2% pa.
Your numbers are 160 GW x 2000 hrs x 50 years = 16,000 Twh
2000 hrs of direct sunlight a year is wishful thinking for non tracking PV in urban situations. My PV panels at 38.5" S in a 40" rainfall area are only averaging 3.86 hrs a day over spring and summer while set up for summer peak. If I get 1000 hrs a year I am very happy. I am in a rural area without much shading of the panels.
A 50 year build out is unrealistic. If the manufacturers and solar experts are using 25-30 year lifespans for PV systems, then they are the numbers that should be used for build out. I have tried to stretch the build out to 40 years in the past, to get the numbers to work, yet that is not realistic either.
Taking 150,000 TWh / 25 year build out / 1000 hrs = 6 TW or 6,000 GW. That is 674 times the 2009 production every year. If the 2009 glass use of 639,000 tons is correct then we would need 430m tons per annum, more than 10 times current total glass production of 38m tons.
This is where the catch 22 comes in. Vast increases in production on a world wide scale involve much more energy input, so our original energy use figure must be increased to allow for it, which means more panels produced to cater for this increase, which means more energy use and so the circle continues.
So is the problem 'huge', yes. Quantifying huge, I get impossible given our current economic system and peak oil which means constrained energy use.
Over the last 22 years World Energy Use has risen by ~2%/Yr. At that rate over the next 25 years we will get to ~246,000 TWh/Yr.
Your assumption about needing to produce 143,000 TWh has a significant flaw:
PV won't need to replace the primary energy lost in heat engines (40% to 90% loss), won't need to replace hydro power and wind power (which is still being built at the fastest rate of all renewables) and won't need to replace 100% of all fossil and nuclear power and biomass energy and can benefit from the COP of heat pumps (3 to 4 times more efficient than fossil furnaces).
Average crystalline PV module price is meanwhile at $0.94 /W:
http://pvinsights.com/ This highly automated thinfilm fab can even produce at $0.50 /W:
http://www.oerlikon.com/ecomaXL/index.php?site=SOLAR_EN_press_releases_d...
Average electricity consumption in the EU is 5700 kWh/ capita.
If the EU wanted to substitute 50% of its current electricity production with PV in just 20 years from now, it would need to build 0.135 kW of PV per capita and year (at 12% capacity factor). This would cost $10.62 of PV-modules per capita and month. Every 1.5 to 2 years each person needs to install about one crystalline PV module.
Of course one could also mention, that the 2 major components in glass constitute 75% of the earth's crust, but this fact is really irrelevant, if one compares these $10 /month to ones monthly rent or monthly health care bill or even monthly gas and electricity bill:
By the way, the urbanized area in the US is 109,000 square miles = 282,309 km^2: http://ti.org/vaupdate17.html
That corresponds to 42.346 TW at 15% PV efficiency. At a capacity factor of 17% this much power would produce 63,520 TWh which is still 17 times more electricity than the entire US consumes, even though it already wastes double as much electricity per capita than Switzerland with a higher average living standard.
The best selling car in the US is this:
If the majority can afford gas-guzzlers, they can also easily afford PV.
Besides the US spends $2141 on its military per capita.
If it invested 25% of it on crystalline PV modules for just 20 years - it would still 'rule' the world by a wide margin:
But each American would also have over 11 kW of crystalline PV-modules, which produce 3 times the electricity the average European consumes (at 17% capacity factor).
Anyone,
Pointing the the % of silicon in the Earth's crust tends to ignore the fact that it needs to be mined and processed to make glass.
You also seem to have the notion that electricity production from PV will be 100% efficient compared to those smelly, wasteful ICEs. I think that there will be all sorts of inefficiencies in a PV world, such as the following...
1 Reduced power production because of hot conditions in summer. My panels seem to lose 10-15% of production because of heat on 40 degree C plus days.
2 Storing power produced via whatever means will lose efficienct in the conversion, then the conversion back to useful power. Batteries of any description lose efficiency over time, the highest levels of efficiency in batteries is at the earliest part of there lives. If storage were to be Hydro, then evaporation will take it's toll on efficiency as well as seapage.
3 Having PV production peaking from 10-2 will create periods when much of the power is not useful to modern society. If all the power can be used on the sunny days, then there will be huge shortages during winter with cloudy days on end.
4 using urban areas instead of ideal desert places will mean a much greater build-out because of shading, incorrect angles and pollutants (dust during the summer).
148,000 TWh of PV over 25 years might seem like a number too high for you, but there are billions of people in developing countries that want their share of the modern lifestyle. So if energy use in 25 years is the same as today, then who do you suggest misses out??
1. The PV-inefficiencies you mention are already in the capacity factor (e.g. 12% for Europe or 17% for the US).
2. You don't need to store power in your basement. You need to substitute F-150's with more efficient Hybrids and EV's and substitute fossil fuel heating systems including water heating with heat pumps including insulated water tanks and implement demand response and use fossil fuels to operate combined gas power plants instead and you need to utilize the grid. In addition, better insulated buildings improve demand response on hot as well as cold days.
Wind power in Spain has already been saving water for years: http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/04/15/spain-water-idUSL1579694720080415
Interconnected renewable power plants provide baseload: http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/winds/aj07_jamc.pdf
If Brazil can do this, so can North America:
http://www.abb.com/cawp/seitp202/06c9cd09d993758cc1257601003db274.aspx
3. That's why you don't want 100% PV. According to this study Wind and PV complement each other very well: http://www.q-cells.com/uploads/tx_abdownloads/files/6CV.1.32_Gerlach2011...
4. It will mean less build-out. Because the building area available would already produce more power than is needed.
This factory in cloudy Switzerland produces 450% more energy with PV than the entire factory requires including heating and hot water:
http://www.solaragentur.ch/images/content/PDF/G-11-09-12%20Solarpreispub...
If 450% can be accomplished in cloudy Switzerland 50% can be done in sunny America.
5. Before the third world can afford Ford F-150's, they can afford a PV-panel to operate a lamp or a TV-set.
http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/indias-women-solar-engineers-light-up...
Besides I don't consider having a F-150 part of a modern and enjoyable life style anyway.
On the Brazilian HVDC line story: The U.S. and Scandinavia pioneered this HVDC technology (until the past decade the ancient Pacific DC intertie from Sylmar to Celilo was the biggest and longest), the article was written by a technically illiterate PR person at ABB, the Brazilian line will be +/-600kV DC to ground (1200kV), and China has in operation (though not 30 months ago at the time of the press release) +/-800kV (1600kV) UHVDC lines of similar length (slightly shorter so the length record may hold up but it depends on what else is built before the Brazilian line is in operation), the Brazilians are piggybacking on China's forerunner projects (which has funded ABB's technical progress), and using mature technology levels.
So, excess solar and wind power from Southern California could in principle be consumed in Oregon and Washington State and their hydro power lakes could save water at the same time. (No need to worry about batteries in the basement).
(By the way: The first HVDC systems were built by this Swiss guy over a 100 years ago (already up to 100 kV): http://www.electrosuisse.ch/g3.cms/s_page/74440
ABB was created after Asea (Swedish) and BBC (Swiss) merged. Both companies already worked independently on HVDC decades before they merged.)
So, excess solar and wind power from Southern California could in principle be consumed in Oregon and Washington State and their hydro power lakes could save water at the same time.
In theory, maybe, in reality, not very often, if at all.
Last spring even the wind turbines in Or/Wa had to be shut down as all dams were spilling and the wires were exporting at capacity.
For Ca, it is almost never a net exporter of electricity, any wind or solar they do generate will be consumed in Ca, and just mean they import (slightly) less.
So, seen any good capital-cost estimates for large scale electrolysis for stranded wind?
As I recall, you were looking for info on this last year...
We used to have a poster here by the name of "stranded wind", who was proposing some such scheme.
There is another poster by the title of Benjergedes Farms, who is pushing a wind to ammonia scheme;
http://freedomfertilizer.com/
But for H2, no. Mind you, if you can do it, then you could power one of these, that runs past my window every 15 minutes;
Only fleet of them in the world (and likely to remain so...)
http://bctransit.com/fuelcell/default.cfm
I've looked at some of these, but getting detailed capital-cost figures for the electrolysis component seems to be hard.
Thanks for trying.
http://www.wecc.biz/committees/BOD/TEPPC/Shared%20Documents/DRAFT%20WECC...
See page 3, North to South flow dominates, but varies between about 50 and 70% of the time, and is rarely at peak.
Thanks for that - am surprised that Ca is an exporter 20% of the time - I thought it was about 5%.
I used to look at flow duration curves for rivers for flood and dam modelling, have never seen it for power lines, but makes perfect sense.
Amazing that for more than half the time, the line is being used to less than 20% of capacity, and it is only over 50% of capacity for about 20% of the time.
Seems like an under-utilised link.
http://www.wecc.biz/committees/BOD/TEPPC/Shared%20Documents/DRAFT%20WECC...
This one probably looks more like you were expecting (it's the AC path). The nice thing about the DC link is that (being completely dispatchable over a 6200MW range) it can be used as a throttle for natural AC flow to allow dispatch to be less dependent on the grid.
I don't think CA ever really exports, the Southwest supplies a lot more of our power than the PNW. CA utilities paid to build a lot of generation in AZ, NV, and UT (coal and nuclear and hydro) back in the day. That meant there was transmission to there, which means the merchants built a bunch of plants during the IPP gas plant boom.
Yes, that is more like what I was expecting.
Always amazed me that LADWP(?) built a plant in Utah...
For Ca, it is almost never a net exporter of electricity, any wind or solar they do generate will be consumed in Ca, and just mean they import (slightly) less.
I'm talking about potential future solar and wind build out.
People/laymen always seem to be worried about putting batteries in the basement to store excess power renewable instead of just using power lines which already exist.
I think it will take a *lot* of wind and solar development in Ca to make it a net exporter.
I'm not the battery in the basement kind of guy - the grid is a great place to send any excess from the generation source.
But there are a lot of imports to displace before worrying about sending it north.
I wouldn't deny this. I'm worried about public perception regarding this entire storage topic.
And I consider it a non-issue if states with a low population export power to states with a high population (as long as they get properly paid for it).
By the way: The canton of Zurich in Switzerland also owns lots of hydro power plants in the Alps (as California seems to own in other states). I recently read an article that Zurich would have difficulties to produce enough renewable power to be self-sufficient and storing it would be expensive (and would always depend on the hydro power plants in the Alps).
The fact that much more energy from oil, natural gas and uranium has to imported not just from the Alps (which the people in the Alps couldn't use for themselves anyway, because not many live there), but from much, much farther away didn't seem to worry the person who wrote the article at all.
Are glaciers significant contributors to Swiss hydro? In a hydro project we here are pushing forward something like 13% of the seasonal flow comes from glacial melt that is not being replenished by glacial growth. Rainfall projections from the prevailing climate models appear to make that a non issue as precipitation on the south slope of the Alaska Range is expected to increase and eventually take up any shortfall caused by diminished or even extinguished glacial runoff. Of course my question is how good are the models? Is the situation for the Alps similar?
The glaciers are melting too. But by far most of the hydro power is produced thanks to precipitation. (In the summer rain is feeding the lakes directly and in spring melting snow from the winter precipitation is feeding the lakes.) They also say that precipitation may increase in the future but mostly in the summer.
The utilities are even already looking forward for some of the glaciers to be gone. Since there is a potential for more hydro. If this valley could be 'damed' and filled with water one would end up with quite a lake...
Average crystalline PV module price is meanwhile at $0.94 /W:
http://pvinsights.com/
That is far from the total installed cost which includes at least labor, mounting frames, inverter, grid connection. Also the lowest module prices in those averages are going to large buyers (e.g. power utilities), not Joe rooftop. This reference has modules prices at $2.30/W.
http://solarbuzz.com/facts-and-figures/retail-price-environment/module-p...
Yes thin film is always cheaper, but then one has to have the 30-40% extra area compared to Si crystal to lay it out.
This reference has modules prices at $2.30/W.
Here you can get them for $1 /W:
http://www.sunelec.com/
here you can get them for less than $1 /W with small quantities:
http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/439450073/250w_280w_solar_photovoltaic...
http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/514768436/195w_solar_photovoltaic_pane...
http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/501010712/230W_photovoltaic_solar_pane...
http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/348706583/High_efficiency_190_watt_mon...
http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/299325752/Polycrystalline_photovoltaic...
And here you find complete, small PV systems (including inverter, cables, crystalline modules, mounting frames) for less than €1 /W:
http://www.evotrend.de/sonderangebote.html
Average electricity consumption in the EU is 5700 kWh/ capita.
If the EU wanted to substitute 50% of its current electricity production with PV in just 20 years from now, it would need to build 0.135 kW of PV per capita and year (at 12% capacity factor). This would cost $10.62 of PV-modules per capita and month. Every 1.5 to 2 years each person needs to install about one crystalline PV module.
Several problems with those assumptions:
1. By itself without storage the largest EU wide PV fraction is well under 50%. Consider: at noon on a sunny day with a %50 PV supplied EU the electric output must be 50% * 1/12% = 4X the average demand of the entire EU. That peak power can not be discarded, it has to be stored for later or the cost assumptions don't hold. Peak demand is during the day, so that helps a little, and perhaps a little might be efficiently stored on the grid by back filling some hydro. But without storage I doubt one gets past 25% PV. (Generally speaking efficient PV storage means batteries (at least) which apparently cost $162/kWh in Europe.
2. In the EU installation prices have fallen faster than the US, but PV Module prices are still far from installed module prices, which include: mounting frames, inverter, labor, grid connection. Also this reference says the EU module price is 2.3 euros/W.
3. Thin film is always cheaper per module per Watt, but then one has to have 30-40% more area than Si crystal PV to lay it out, an option not often available to Joe rooftop.
1. With demand response and by electrifying hot water heating one can increase power consumption at noon. Cooling warehouses and EV's can increase power demand during day time. Currently water heaters and pumped storage operate at night - in the future they'll operate during day time.
Distributed PV does level out and demand response, an improved grid and pumped storage is much cheaper than batteries in the basement. The probability that PV in Germany is producing more than 50% of its installed capacity is low. If PV was capped at 50% only about 5% of the energy production was lost. So, PV would only cost 5% more.
2. Here's an offer for a complete 26 kW PV-system with crystalline modules including installation for: €1.57 /W http://www.photovoltaikforum.com/angebote-f41/31061-26kwp-1574eur--t7478...
Installation of PV-systems does reduce the unemployed rate and increase the tax-income.
3. Here are complete PV-systems with crystalline modules for less than €1 /W (without installation): http://www.evotrend.de/sonderangebote.html
The best selling car in the US is this:
If the majority can afford gas-guzzlers, they can also easily afford PV
That Ford is 2.7% of all US new car/truck sales, hardly the majority, but it is used a great deal by people who work out of their vehicles, much as this 'gas-guzzler' has been in Europe for years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Transit
Unfortunately, fact is that the US sells about the same amount of light duty trucks and SUVs as conventional cars:
http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3022-autosales.html
And only 3 out of the 15 best selling cars in the US have an average mileage of at least 30 mpg (city and highway combined).
The best selling cars in the US are:
http://autos.aol.com/gallery/best-selling-cars/
1. Ford F-150
2. Chevrolet Silverado
3. Toyota Camry
4. Nissan Altima
5. Honda CR-V
6. Dodge RAM
7. Ford Fusion
8. Honda Accord
9. Honda Civic
10. Toyota Corolla
11. Chevrolet Equinox
12. Ford Escape
13. Chevrolet Impala
14. Hyundai Sonata
15. Ford Focus
On the other hand none of the 10 best selling cars in Europe have a lower mileage than 30 mpg:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_10_best_selling_cars_in_Europe
(I hardly see any Ford Transit's in Europe and if I see similar vehicles they are filled with tools and construction workers, but I see tons of empty pick up trucks with a single, clean-clothed driver in the US. Besides these European light duty vehicles are usually powered by a 1.9 diesel engine and not a 5.4 l gasoline engine. I'm not sure what your point is).
I got the 2 TW continuous from Tom's blog,
and the factor of 4 to get to 8 TWp (Terra-Watt peak) of PV by assuming 25% capacity factor. Guess I live in a sunnier climate.
For the world at 150,000 TWh/yr, / 8760 hrs/yr = 17 TW continuous.
As per "anyone" and Tom (who derates the US from 3 TW continuous burning things to 2 TW using electricity), there is a lot of efficiency to be gained by using electricity.
It's just not done now with cheap coal/natural gas/oil, and the waste of burning coal to make electricity. But when we have no other choice, we'll have to make (a lot of) our
electricity directly from sunlight.
If Tom goes from 3 to 2 (down 33%), 17 TW continuous would drop to 11.4, call it 12 TW.
If we assume 25% capacity factor worldwide, that's 48 TWp of PV.
The NREL paper I referenced above is more conservative, and says 75 TWp total installed by 2065.
The PV R&D/manufacturing community has been talking about TW for years now, there's usually a track at the major technical conferences, and there's even a business conference called the Terrawatt-hours Conference Series:
http://www.photon.info/photon_conf_start_en.photon?ActiveID=1115
I was lazy and assumed a constant build, but the NREL paper assumes a growth rate
from today (actually 2005), and that growth rate is slowing over the years.
They include replacement of old panels - though many 30 year old panels are still useful -
in their continued build out.
So their 2065 glass usage is even higher than your flat figure,
requiring 730% - 1,460% growth, but, here's the kicker, that only 3.5%-4.6% annual growth.
(and since I think thin film is going to wither and die under the onslaught of cheap crystalline silicon, we can use the lower numbers, as crystalline silicon modules use only one piece of glass.)
So this energystar paper says the US glass industry uses 1% of US industrial energy.
www.energystar.gov/ia/business/industry/Glass-Guide.pdf
However, container glass etc. uses a lot, so from this page:
http://www.eia.gov/emeu/mecs/iab98/glass/energy_use.html
we can get that flat glass uses about 1/3 of glass energy, so we start with 1/3 of 1% of US industrial energy. US and World industrial energy use is in the same range: 27% or so
US or world total consumption. So 7.3x (the 730%) times .3% of industrial energy means
some combination of 2.2 % growth in industrial energy use or offsetting decline in other uses will power the glass growth.
Since BAU will likely not continue, I would bet more on offsetting declines.
And the decline of BAU will also mean lowering the target.
(not a politically correct thing to say I know, but agriculture is bumping up against
the limits of topsoil right now, never mind artificial fertilizer, declining effectiveness
of pesticides, drought, ... )
So I'm not as pessimistic (on the technical/energy side) to say "impossible".
In 1980, the world (read US) PV industry shipped about 1 MW.
In 2000, the world (US down to 25%) shipped just under 300 MW, call it 290 MW - 29,000% growth in 20 years!
In 2009, 8.9 GW is 8,900 MW, 3000% growth in 9 years, 890,000% growth in 29 years!
The NREL paper says 4,100 GWp/yr in 2065, only 46,000% growth in 56 years.
PV energy payback has gone from 3-5 years to 1 or less.
I know of developments that can cut this in half again.
So I feel I can reasonably hope for a significant PV build-out (per Tom's table, it's one of the better alternatives).
Politics may stand in the way until too late, but that's another issue.
In 2011 it was 27.7 GW of PV:
http://www.solarserver.com/solar-magazine/solar-news/current/2012/kw04/e...
Even though PV-factory utilization rates were at a record low:
http://www.pv-tech.org/news/tier_2_pv_module_manufacturers_in_china_see_...
If the PV installation rates would go up by another 10 fold (to 277 GW /year), PV would already add 412 TWh per year at 17% capacity factor. This is about a fifth of what all worldwide nuclear power plants produce. (I don't think that there would be a need to grow at 4100 GW /year even if technically possible, which it may even be since 4100 GW is still only about 20 PV-modules per person and year. My efficient household is at 300 kWh/person and year, I wouldn't have any use for all this extra power every single year.)
Thinfilm PV-Modules are probably still better suited for facades and/or windows than crystalline PV-modules.
If NiH LENR actually works (as Rossi/Defkalion/etc would like us to believe) then it scores 9 and has some interesting consequences. LENR is not cold fusion (D-D) rather Ni + H > Cu with a large amount of heat released and, whilst Rossi's eCat has lost a lot of credibility, Defkalion seem confident that independent tests will confirm COP > 20 for their Hyperion heater product.
Being able to replace HC heat sources removes a lot of pressure of the finite resource we have left and doing so in a zero emission (apart from waste heat) way makes a good start on cleaning up our collective act. As a 'backyard' technology there is a huge ramification for large centralised power companies and infrastructure.
We should not be too enthusiast about Technologies that violates laws of physics.
Indeed. BTW What law of physics is being broken?
The "laws" are those that describe the hypothesized reactions going from one mix of isotopes of Ni to the supposed resulting mix of isotopes of Cu. It's been reported that the Cu isotopes matched the normal ratios found in the crust, but that the transformation from Ni to Cu would result in a different mixture. That the projected ratio wasn't found argues against the possibility that the hypothetical transformation actually happens. There was a link to an analysis posted recently, but I couldn't find it...
E. Swanson
Hi
You dont have to find the link. Dont waste any time looking for it. Rossi is downgraded to trolling, talking about it too.
Just forget about it - until Rossi shows a unit that actually produces some kWs. Until then unfortunately it is a scam.
We have other more important things to spend our time on.
S.
Just forget about it - until Rossi shows a unit that actually produces some kWs. Until then unfortunately it is a scam.
Funny kind of scam as neither Rossi or any other is looking for investment.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/markgibbs/2012/01/16/cold-fusion-nasa-says-n...
Anyway, it appears that the NASA recently published something much more interesting about Low Energy Nuclear Reaction or LENR. Last Wednesday, with a minimum of fuss, NASA’s Glenn Research Center released a video on their Web site that discussed the organization’s LENR research.
The video is titled, rather abstrusely, “Method for Enhancement of Surface Plasmon Polaritons to Initiate & Sustain LENR in MHS (Metal Hydride Systems)” and is pretty disappointing because rather than explaining what the title means or what experiments have been actually been conducted and the results, the video, featuring a NASA scientist, one Dr. Joseph Zawodny, is a rather disappointing hand-waving, “ Jam Tomorrow” exercise.
http://technologygateway.nasa.gov/media/CC/lenr/lenr.html superficial but NASA has a much longer interest if you care to look, but of course there are more important things to do.
The NASA site points out several violations of known physics involved in most LENR hypotheses, they aren't laughing with you.
Exceptional claims require exceptional proof, LENR is an exceptional claim that hasn't stood up to the test of ordinary proofs yet.
You mean they who were told to put up or shut up and shut up?
NAOM
This is the most important takeaway from this and most stories on TOD. It is easy to prove that energy efficiency is an enormous untapped resource: ask ten people how much electric energy they use in a day, for example, and you get ten blank stares on average. Until we are aware of our consumption, we can't begin to control it. This has been left entirely up to individuals until now, and probably will be for the foreseeable future; we are expected to respond to "price signals" that probably won't be flashing brightly enough until we are well within the jaws of the Energy Trap.
http://www.aps.org/energyefficiencyreport/ offers a good look at our consumption and ways to pare it.
While it is true that some of the technologies evaluated by Professor Murphy will be more efficient at large scale, it is worth asking whether increasing complexity of energy generation and distribution at a time of energy insecurity may lead us into a "Complexity Trap" of the sort Joseph Tainter has warned us about.
Brian Stewart
"Until we are aware of our consumption, we can't begin to control it."
This is something off-grid folks have learned to live with and it isn't a big deal. For grid connected folks it amounts to voluntary rationing, but price signals, the one thing consumers seem to respond to, need to reflect the real, total costs of the energy they use. Many energy providers reward consumption in their pricing schedules, and many consumers care little about costs; they can afford to use as much as they like and think nothing of the social and environmental costs. Our growth based economics is happy to reward increased consumption.
One idea is to establish a minimum operating base level for consumers and to tax any consumption beyond that at an increasing rate, but this is another layer of complexity, and runs contrary to "free market" thinking.
Perhaps if every home and business had a simple consumption meter, a "fuel gauge", boldly displayed, showing big dollar/pound/euro signs counting up, or a budgeted amount counting down, they would be more aware of their use. I've noticed some utilities are offering something like this, but it needs to BIG and "in-your-face". Our amp and voltage meters are in the kitchen where they can't be missed. We are always aware of our current consumption and what's left of our solar ration.
I couldn't agree more. I have long proposed to anyone who will listen -- which is essentially no one -- that we make the first kWh cheap and the last kWh expensive. I don't agree that it adds complexity; after all, the rate tables now have several columns, and that wouldn't have to change. But I entirely agree that it seems to run counter to "free market" thinking. And of course the beneficiaries would be the poor and disenfranchised, not the wealthy and powerful.
I like your notion of "self rationing", but few will, as long as the negative effects of power generation are externalized. If only we could free ourselves from the notion that energy is a commodity like any other....
Brian Stewart
Some places have sliding rates. For instance PG&E has a base rate, then there is a rate for 100-130% (1.3x) of that which is higher, a rate for 130-200% (double), >200% (triple). It makes it economical for people who consume a lot to reduce their bills by adding PV (in most cases saving would have been a better choice). But, commercial and industrial customers only pay tier-1. I also pay similar sliding rates for water consumption. I don't knopw how many utilities do that. It can be justified, if adding new capacity costs more per KWhour, than using the existing infrastructure.
This (increasing tiered domestic usage rates) is true for all CPUC regulated electric utilities since the 2000-2001 power crisis. Note that 'baseline' kwh amounts for customers of CA investor-owned-utilities vary by region. That is, someone in Palm Springs (hot with high energy use) and someone in Santa Monica (cool coastal with low energy use) both pay the same amount for Tier 1 kwh's, but they get a differing number of kwh's at that level before they hit the next rate tier. About half of CA consumers are in Tiers 1 and 2. Only about 10% hit Tiers 4 and 5. A startlingly high fraction of Tier 4 customers are in the lower elevation parts of high desert areas where the baseline is similar to the San Gabriel Valley, but much lower than in low desert areas. Tier 5 customers tend to have 40,000 square foot houses. The rates at each tier vary between companies based on their cost structure.
A major power user for many rural homes is pumping water. The owner of my workplace got PV, because his home utility bill was high. He has to pump well water 500feet uphill (he lives on the top of a hill). His business, which uses several times as much power as his home pays tier1, so he hasn't put any PV on it. Although he does have a noninterruptable power system installed.
Yes, that was one of my brother's bigger loads when living off grid. They didn't live on a hill but the well was pretty deep. Water efficiency can be a big electricity saver when you're pumping and pressurizing your own at a quarter a kwh. Of course, I have ag buddies in AZ who pump water at a penny a kwh and pay less than $0.04/kwh for dairy power (rural electric district run by farmers with an allotment of Hoover power).
All of our domestic water is solar pumped, in our case to a tank buried on a ridge above the house; gravity does the rest. I helped a friend, who has to pump his water several hundred feet up hill, install a tank next to the house. Solar fills the tank and a small pressure pump supplies the house. While he doesn't have the option of gravity flow, this is still stored energy, as solar does the heavy lifting. He paid about $1000 for his 1200 gallon cistern and a couple of hundred for his demand activated pressure pump. Considering the cost of drilling and installing a well, combined with avoided maintenance and electrical costs, he figured he broke even on system costs (at least), and he can maintain the system himself.
Regarding your excellent thread, farther up, on voltage and other issues with grid-connected PV, I see the use of dump loads as a partial answer; many opportunities there. Hot water and structure cooling are low hanging fruit. Our PV system will dump excess production to our hot water thermal storage tank when the batteries are full, and I can manually use the extra production to equalize the batteries. We always find uses for this extra power. In summer, sections of the grid that are experiencing higher than needed voltage could experience cooler structures instead. As Paul in Halifax has posted, they are starting to implement this type of scheme for excess wind power, installing thermal storage in homes to receive this surplus at a discount. I see distributed balancing, including grid-interactive structures, as an option going forward.
Too bad we've waited until a time of constrained credit and dwindling resources to consider these things. Go local...
My bro scavenged and linked free 55 gallon PE drums (from dairy, previous contents known) for his storage, well pump only ran when tank was not full AND batteries were charging or charged, 12V pressure pump + 5 gallon bladder supplied pressure when you opened the tap. He had a Honda for backup well power to top off the storage when the weather wasn't cooperating. He concentrated quite a bit on reducing water consumption behavior rather than scavenging more panels. His kids are all much more energy/water aware than average.
On grid-level dump loads, you are absolutely right, that works well to solve steady state voltage (voltage variability would require simultaneous load gen adjustment) or thermal distribution problems for self-gen or if gen is installed in areas with load and we do some kind of smart grid hack to incentivize other agents to charge cars or adjust thermostats. Implementation would require a higher degree of utility interaction beyond the meter, but it's definitely feasible. The problem would come where there is an extreme mismatch between average generation and average load that can't be addressed by shifting loads in time or incentivizing marginally more usage where generation is in surplus. It would allow some increase in penetration, for low capital cost if well executed. How much is going to depend on the area. Unfortunately a lot of distrbution solar applications are in low density areas (where land is cheap) and where the proposed generation substantially exceeds the existing peak loads. I do have a few interconnections (20MW scale on 33kV) going in where the PV output is being limited to load follow (which sounds like a ghastly waste, even for DOD), but is expected to be temporary until transmission upgrades occur (at the 220kV for a regional problem in a transmission area dominated by generation). PV curtailment in response to system conditions is relatively easy, and at MW scale adds little cost other than the lost production.
Ghung,
I'm interested in how you've set up your system to dump the excess power to your thermal storage. I think I remember you have Outback equipment, have you got it set up to automatically dump when the batteries are full or do you do it manually? I have Outback charge controllers and would like to do this too.
August
I'm using an older Trace C-40 PWM controller to power an element similar to these. Elements with thermostats are nice and don't cost much more. The C-40s/60s have a simple on/off diversion mode switch and voltage setpoint.
The Outback controllers have Aux terminals that can operate a relay (12VDC signal) to do all sorts of things: Battery vent fan, diversion load, water pump, etc.. A basic continuous duty, high amp automotive relay will work fine. Outback recommends a solid state relay due to the 200 milliamp max rating for aux control. Of course, a small relay may be used to control a larger one. A small 12 volt piezo alarm beeper may be powered directly from the aux terminals just to let you know the batteries are fully charged and you have extra power to do stuff (laundry, dishwasher, blow dry the dog...).
See "Aux Mode" in your manual (page 22 in the online pdf) to program the aux mode functions and setpoints of the Outback controllers. Their presets are pretty good, though voltage and range should be set for your particular battery set. My diversion system is really a last resort since I generally find other uses for extra power when the batteries are charged, so my diversion voltage is set a little high. We did laundry, dishes and bathed the dogs this weekend and still went to bed Sunday night with the batteries fully charged. Love these crystal clear, cold winter days!
Dedicated diversion controllers, like this are available, but with the Outback controllers, aren't needed. Just add the correct relay for whatever load you want to power.
Thanks! I've had them for almost two years now and just hadn't fully explored what they can do. Looks like a good use for some of the 200A IGBTs that I have sitting around.
(rural electric district run by farmers with an allotment of Hoover power).
Made possible in part by supply from Palo Verde (largest US nuke), if not directly, then by amply suppling demand elsewhere.
Exactly. I've seen lots of those blank stares. I personally did not change my usage habits until I had data, establishing a baseline against which to work. Everyone has utility bills and meters at their house, but putting real-time numbers inside is a key step we should encourage.
Anyone interested in metering possibilities as implemented in my own home (and to learn of my personal quest to cut my energy demand by a factor of 3 or more) can find information in a paper I wrote for the APS on home energy use/monitoring. I'm sure others in this forum have gone much further, so my efforts may seem pedestrian. But hey—if everyone did such things, just think what we would accomplish. Comes back to incentives, as always.
Lately our electricity company has started sending out these monthly notices if your previous month's usage was at a certain level of efficiency relative to your neighbors. It says something like, "last month, your household was the nth most efficient compared to 100 of your neighbors." And it actually gives your ranking. Doesn't mean that much, especially if your neighbors are wastrels. But it's something I suppose. People love these little competitive things, it's like a warm fuzzy or tiny shot of dopamine maybe.
the abundance and acceptance rating for algae?
AIUI algae requires a feed stock of sugars which means its acceptance rating should be more akin to bio fuels?
And the EROI is well below one!
Citations?
http://environmentalresearchweb.org/blog/2011/01/the-eroi-of-algae-biofu...
EROI 0.01! OK, this can improve.
Thanks. That page cites a study suggesting that at commercial scale (after ascending the learning curve) we can expect EROI of 0.13.
So, a fairly expensive way to change electricity and coal or gas into transport fuel. Probably not going to happen.
OK ...TIME OUT
thinking about this, before we all get bogged down in what our fav tech to hate is we need a mixed energy [economy] matrix with an imperative that any mixed solutions must resolve intermittence?
Hydropower plants in the EU can in principle provide the entire electric demand for 22 days. (There are no nights and calm periods which last that long.)
http://www.claverton-energy.com/european-hydro-capacity-compared-to-the-...
According to this study Wind and PV complement each other very well:
http://www.q-cells.com/uploads/tx_abdownloads/files/6CV.1.32_Gerlach2011...
Also keep in mind: Wind and PV won't need to replace the primary energy lost in heat engines (40% to 90% loss), don't need to replace hydro power and benefit from the COP of heat pumps (3 to 4 times more efficient than fossil furnaces). And the economically feasible hydropower potential is approx. 1 TW: http://www.ieahydro.org/reports/Hydrofut.pdf Worldwide electrical power consumption is currently only about 2 TW.
Tom;
Many thanks for your efforts. While I may be a stickler over certain details (see below..), I do really appreciate your putting these various energy sources onto an open playing field, where we can bat them around as relative equals!
..
"Solar heating is useless for electricity or transport,.." Maybe you are simply looking at direct uses, but it seems to me that the VAST amount of Solar Heating that we could employ residentially and for business would be able to offset a fantastic amount of Electricity used currently for Space Heating, Water Heating and Cooking, as well as the Heating Oil, Propane and Natural Gas that are also used for heat, that could be freed up for Transportation.. or just freed up, perhaps.
I don't deny that I do bristle at a sentence that starts with Solar heating is useless.. , as it sets up a false judgement in one's ear that can earn undeserved validity by the number of times it echoes back and forth in there.. and in this case, I don't think the point is even right when the rest of the sentence is included, as I said above.
Respectfully,
Bob
Your are perfectly right a huge fraction of our energy consumption is heat. Technologies like unglazed solar collector cost almost nothing, while largely reducing the energy consumption. This is much clever that promoting PV pannel.
I pick both.
A thin, portable, waterproof surface that can run a tiny calculator, or power your house silently from the rooftop.. for decades, whether you want .04 watts or 4000 watts or 4 megawatts.. it is a piece of our high-tech world that I am still more than happy to trumpet.
It's advantages are way ahead of its costs, and your objection to it is still a mystery to me. There is just SO much flexibility and utility that you can derive from such an uncomplicated source of DC power.. with what's coming at us, the advantages of its portability and weatherproof-ness will be just incredible assets, when people in rough situations are going to be wet, out of juice, on the go.. PV will be saving a lot of lives.
IMHO as it stands his statement is correct. It is useless for those purposes. What you say it is good for is correct too as far as freeing up goes. To effectivly use alternative energy sources we have to face what they are good for and what they are useless for and I believe that is the point that is being made. It is not about the one source to rule them all but the best mix for the job and location. Right now solar is a no go for me, tomorrow I think I may be cooking some more rice with it.
NAOM
I understand the desire to keep things apart and sort of 'clear' that way, but really, we are in a live-fire environment here with energy, and I think it's really essential for finding the most advantageous connections and mixes, that we not try to simply put all these things into separate petri-dishes and think that will leave us with a thorough-enough analysis.
This one, in particular, hollered out at me.. "Solar thermal is useless for.." , since we use GREAT amounts of electricity for generating heat, and great amounts of burnable fuels for Cooking/Cleaning/SpaceHeating as well, so Solar Thermal plus Insulation are really a DIRECT feed-in to supporting transportation and letting electricity go towards other purposes.
I just switched my (constantly burning out..) under-counter Fluoros for 6 feet of (Paul, are you sitting down?) super cheap peel/stick LED strips last night. Basically I used $4.00 worth of the $11.00 roll to replace what 5, 8-watt fluoros had been doing previously.. so 40+ watts is down to 15.. and while I was measuring that all out on the Kill-a-watt meter, I figured I'd take a reading of the Coffee Pot while I was there.. and you're looking at 900watts.. and never mind what the range and the oven are drawing! Electricity is immensely useful stuff.. and still, we're using it to push rocks up hills for us while the Sun is being shunted ungraciously off the roof and walls. So.. "USELESS" does kind of make me twitch a little. We've got to put the pieces together here.
Geez, it's so frigg'n hard to keep up with you, Bob, but God knows I try.
Nose in the air, the slap of white gloves in the palm of my hand.... I've been working out the minimum amount of electricity required to illuminate our home at a functional and comfortable level, without going to ridiculous extremes (and here I speak of fitting everyone with miner's caps). As it turns out, it's not a lot. All lamps supplied by Philips except where noted.
Kitchen - one 5-watt LED strip mounted above the kitchen sink (RAB Lighting)
Dining Room - two 3-watt BA11 LED lamps in picture lights, plus two 2-watt BA11s LEDs in buffet lights
Front Hall - one 3-watt and one 2-watt BA11s in dual socket table lamp
Living Room - two 12.5-watt A19s in table lamps
Home Office - one 12.5-watt A19 in table lamp, plus two 3-watt BA11s in picture lights
Total: 63.5-watts
Next month, the three 12.5-watt A19s will be swapped out for Philips' 9.7-watt L-Prize lamp and that will drop us down to just 55-watts. So, in effect, we can illuminate all of the rooms that we normally occupy through the course of the evening using less energy than what would be required to power a single 60-watt household incandescent.
And if you're curious as to the brightness of this Philips 3-watt BA11 LED, it produces 136 lumens or roughly the same amount of light as a 25-watt incandescent; the 2-watt version produces 70 lumens so about one-half this.
Here's one of these 3-watt LED lamps in action:
A very nice, incandescent-like quality light that you can buy at Home Depot for about $15.00.
Cheers,
Paul
My favourite lightbulb so far is the eco smart downlight for our new construction pot lights.
These were $50 locally; the electrician said a conventional incandescent installation is ~$35. Though the amount of plastic/embodied energy/packaging is still horrendous.
We have forty or so PAR38 recessed fixtures in our home and another dozen PAR20s, all with deep bowl specular trims. The larger cans were previously fitted with Philips 70-watt Energy Advantage halogen-IRs and their smaller counterparts 20-watt electronic PAR20s (http://www.usa.lighting.philips.com/pwc_li/us_en/connect/tools_literatur...) -- a really nifty lamp that I happen to like a lot.
The PAR38 halogens have been since replaced by Philips' 12-watt 3000K EnduraLED PAR30s, which cut this load by more than 80 per cent (here I opted for a short neck PAR30 so that the lamp could be recessed further inside the housing, thus helping to minimize potential glare).
See: http://i362.photobucket.com/albums/oo69/HereinHalifax/Img_0742.jpg
The electronic PAR20s have been likewise replaced by 7-watt EnduraLEDs, for a two-thirds reduction in load.
See: http://i362.photobucket.com/albums/oo69/HereinHalifax/Img_0743.jpg
Given that LED technology is continuing to evolve at a rapid pace (and probably will for many more years to come), I'd be reluctant to install a permanent fixture, as what's state-of-the-art today could very well seem hopelessly antiquated five or ten years from now. One of the advantages of a standard E26 Edison socket is that it allows you to easily upgrade your light source at some future date without incurring the hassle and expense of changing out the entire fixture.
Cheers,
Paul
Paul,
Great work. I do make careful note of all the 'real' lights you use, for when I have the chance to do the job 'right'.. I persist in trying out odd combos out on the fringes. I'll have to pony up some pix of my experiments, while I have to disclaim that they tend to be very experimental in their complexion! But they're fun, just the same.
All these kitchen sources, these 4w Osram (rejected) 4000k(?) lamps are being refitted into pretty old Brass Light Housings that have been used for lint-storage downstairs for some time, and they are fed from a tiny Solar Setup, as will the under-counter lightstrips, when I come up with a suitable approach for Low Voltage Wire runs around the Kitchen. But the Osrams, just over the little table and the sink, have made my Breakfast, Loreley's Homework, and the Mound of Dishes much more visible and approachable.. and I have a couple more counters to hit from way up top to really show Leslie how much we can do with such sources.. putting them in nice, antique fixtures has really helped make them feel more suitable to this old home. There's a lot to be said for proper wardrobe.
I have been toying with casting my own foam/plaster 'Crown Mouldings' for along the tops of my interior walls, to create an extra insulation break for the thermal bridges up at the framing along each ceiling (thin, old 19th cent. walls), and had thought that this might also be a place to incorporate a low-voltage conduit run, since much of the most effective LED sourcing will be these Hard Task Lights for Counters and Tabletops, which I often source from up high anyway. I might even make the Outlets work like old Gaslight Fittings, and just Steampunk the thing..? (Conveniently, as you know, most Lamp Hardware is still built somewhat around the old Gas-Fitting Standards..)
Just another wacky plan to make it serve multiple masters.. be pretty, efficient, cheap(?), and uncontroversial with the 'household design review team'..
I'm flattered to hear that you think it's you who's trying to keep up.. I had the opposite impression!
Pix forthcoming..
Bob
I'm anxious to see your pics, Bob.
I like simple and clean (brutal and austere is probably more accurate) whereas Ed is very much into shiny bobbles; case in point: http://i362.photobucket.com/albums/oo69/HereinHalifax/KC.jpg
The two pendants on the left are fitted with 3-watt BA11s and the two on the right 25-watt Halogenás. The halogens are brighter, but they also use eight times more energy, and since the fixture is purely decorative (*cough*) the loss in light output isn't an issue. Fixture load here drops from 100-watts to twelve.
Cheers,
Paul
Hi Paul;
Well, I bit the bullet and took some snaps.. they're all neighbors in this same gallery, so you can see a snippet or three of my attempts..
http://s831.photobucket.com/albums/zz240/Ingto83/
Must put the wee one to bed, and I'm going to collapse with her..
Best,
Bob
Great job, Bob; thanks for sharing these pics. The 5-watt LED strips above and to the left of your kitchen range are pretty impressive, but running all of this off a 40-watt solar panel in your local climate even more so. Congratulations.
[Having raised the bar yet again, I slink off to my corner to plot my revenge.]
Cheers,
Paul
Thanks, Paul.
Admittedly, the Under-Counter Lights are still on the house power. You can see a Wall-wart and three switches just to the right of the microwave. I'm still working on a proper (and safe) distribution system. I'll have to prowl the RV sites some more!
There is circuit protection, but I really do need to bring the wire runs up to code, and put them in casings. I've seen DC wires burn before.
And I need to add another SLA batt, as I'm at the edge of my storage needs. (I have a wee pile of these, 12v 12ah takeouts sold by American Science www.sciplus.com for $10 ea.. )
Paul, I imagine that wasn't cheap. I have about 20LEDs, mostly older model Sony's and ecosmart, that I found for $10 apeace. Not the latest and greatest high tech, and the newer models that inhereted the model names are more efficient (but not close to $10 either). I still have quite a few CFLs, but these aren't used frequently enough to change to LEDs, at least not until the price and quality imporoves a lot.
The biggest savings I got with LED, was a TV. Bought 32incher for the bedroom, replaced a 23inch CRT, which used more power. This guy only draws 40watts. And my wife is now less likely to use the older 220watt 42inch in the living room. This could now be replaced with the same size or bigger LED model at about half what we paid a few years back. Maybe I'll foist it off as a kids graduation present and replace with an LED model someday.
I spend more on lighting than I should, but it gives me an opportunity to try out new products before I use them in my work and the old stuff gets redeployed somewhere else (used light bulbs make excellent housewarming presents, btw).
I'm finding myself watching more shows on-line which is a significant energy saver. Five back-to-back episodes of The Republic of Doyle (http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/Shows/Republic_of_Doyle/1379422649/ID=2194197678) on my RIM Playbook for less than 0.01 kWh.
Cheers,
Paul
Some of us are willing to do something that with a formal balancing of the books wouldn't fly. If you enjoy tinkering. Or you want to acquire the experience and/or knowledge, paying a bit of a premium shouldn't be an issue.
Hi Paul,
Always like to see what sort of lights you are working with. I won't be replacing CFLs until they fail. I've tried a dimming CFLs in a couple spots but they were a disappointment as expected. I'm with you on waiting until things come out fitting E26 sockets. We do own one halogen 120W (or close to it) bedroom fixture. It must be dimming because of my wife and my sleep schedules. Yes we could stumble around to lamps but that is tough sledding at 4:30 AM. Didn't know we were getting a halogen set up--it was the only fixture we'd seen in a couple years looking that we liked for the sloped ceiling it lives on. Don't know how I will get away from that monster.
I've two other setups I'd love to go LED on. One is the main kitchen array which is mostly unused these days. It is four pendant lamps switched from a single dimmer following the U-shaped counter top, each hold a big 60W vanity style frosted incandescent. These days we use a nearby single CFL most of the time but it is a huge trade down both aesthetics and lighting effect. Any LEDs whose color/dimming would fully replace the 60W frosted vanity bulbs? They can't burn the eye, as they are in pendants. There are times that full power is needed if only to energize us in the darkest of winter-and dimmed down they are very soothing, I really miss seeing that.
The second hopefully is the easiest fixed, the micro-hood bulb. Yes I know how poor the fan is but we use the microwave a lot and space says micro-hood. The standard bulb is a 40W Microwave 120 volt T8 Clear Intermediate Base. Other sizes do not fit in the fixture. I hate the beast of a bulb and it burns out a lot, but it is in a heavily used location. The switch is of the high/low/off variety. Anything in the LED world to replace it with yet?
Back on the roof PV array I am contemplating which we were talking about after Tom's last post. I'm near certain a stadium seating arrangement (lowest west-highest east) of tracking two or three panel sets would maximize my fairly flat roof's PV yield but it is very unlikely it would maximize my wallet's yield. When the roof is snow free-come April or May hard to say-I will put a Solar Pathfinder on it. I'm hoping I will be able to compare the analysis that system provides with CCHRCs numbers to get pretty fair expectations of what my site could produce with fixed or tracking PV setups.
Hi Luke,
Philips offers a 9-watt LED G25 globe-style lamp that is compatible with most dimmers, but it's a 40-watt equivalent (435 lumens) so it may not be suitable replacement. It retails for about $25.00.
I'm afraid I'm drawing a blank on the microwave T8. I don't think you'll find anything and, if you did, heat build-up would be a killer (small and fully enclosed fixture).
Best of luck with the PV; I hope it's a great success.
Cheers,
Paul
Thanks Paul, 435 lumens may be enough. I was surprised by the watt ratio on that bulb. Is that common on larger LED lights? I thought CFL was in the 1 watt for 4 (incandescent) range while LED got up toward the 1 watt for 8-10 range.
A lot of folks take for granted that LEDs are more energy efficient but that's seldom the case. Only recently have commercially available LEDs started to pull ahead. For example, I have some earlier generation 2.5-watt BA11 LEDs that produce just 30 lumens, a measly 12 lumens per watt. Compare that to the Philips L-Prize A19 which hits store shelves later this month; it consumes 9.7-watts and supplies 940 lumens, for a more respectable 97 lpw(most CFLs fall between 50 and 70). Of course, it will initially retail for $50.00 and for that amount of money you could buy twenty or more mini-twist CFLs.
I think you're wise to stick with CFLs for now; they much better value overall.
Cheers,
Paul
Thanks again,
I've the odd LED nighlite switched on most of the year, a nice string of LED rope lites lighting my open stairs to the daylight basement and a string or two of Christmas lites around high traffic arches that do long duty mid winter. Way cheaper to run them than to fall and break something. Plus they add some cheer, that is good for the immune system. ?-)
Luke, tracking doesn't need to be really expensive if you're even a little handy. All of my arrays are tracked using these...
http://satellitedish.com/cata0057.htm (scroll down)
...controlled by these. Easily adapted to various mechanical configurations, especially tilt-and-roll, I use old satellite dish mounts, but panels could be pivot-mounted on racks and tied together with simple linkages or cables and moved with a single actuator and controller.
Thanks Ghung,
Safely stashed the links. Any notable cold weather issues with that equipment you know of? I'd imagine I should be able to wire a master control to the arrays to shut down the tracking function. I don't need it till it warms up some anyhow. I think I will be able to get myself up to speed on how it all goes together. My shadow data will play a big part in my decision. That 16' x 36' foot piece of 2 3/4 inch in 12 inch pitched galvanized roof is by far the best location on my birch filled hillside.
Makes for design challenge but panels aren't very heavy and the roof is is framed darned stout. This could be a bit of fun.
How cold? Some wire insulation gets brittle at low temperatures. Check your local very lows, allow for climate change giving you a drop on that then compare with the wire spec. Always use the worse case if you are planning for the long term.
NAOM
thanks for the heads up. Very cold even up here on a hill we lay at -25F to -33F virtually all of January and can count of a few/several days/weeks spells of that every winter.
Let us say -40 for some margin and I think you are getting near the limit of some insulation, check the spec carefully. If you use tracking the cables need to be able to move freely so you need to be sure about the insulation. Also, take care with any loops for the tracking so that the movement is spread over the length of the loop and not concentrated in one spot. Don't get those issues here :/
NAOM
"Any notable cold weather issues with that equipment you know of?"
None that I know of excepting snow load, and wire flexibility, as Nota pointed out. The controller is solid state and the actuator is a linear, high-torque screw jack.
The actuators have internal limit switches which allow you to set stops at east and west. Reversing direction is just a matter of reversing DC polarity, so I installed a manual switch (DPDT, center off) in parallel to the controllers, wired for polarity reversing, allowing me to manually operate the arrays. A master switch feeds the controllers. On some partly overcast days I'll just drive the arrays to south and shut the controllers off so they aren't searching a lot. The controllers also have adjustments for sensitivity and fine tuning. The actuators are brushless DC, 24 volt nominal, but seem to work well at 12-36 volts (just watch amp draw). Sensitivity is one degree or better.
My actuators are mounted under the arrays, keeping them out of the weather for the most part, but they are designed for rugged outdoor use. One salvaged unit I have is easily 30 years old, still going strong with a little maintenance. They were designed to operate 2-3 meter satellite dishes, so they're pretty tough.
Reversing direction is just a matter of reversing DC polarity, so I installed a manual switch (DPDT, center off) in parallel to the controllers, wired for polarity reversing, allowing me to manually operate the arrays.
Does that mean you have to reset your panels by manually toggling a switch every night. Could the controller somehow do that automatically or must a timer be wired in which would reverse polarity at say 2:00 AM? That even seems complex as the eastern starting point changes significantly in the course of a week. Sensitivity setting might be intereresting as on clear nights here the 'darkest' hours in the weeks bracketing solstice are brighter than cloudy noons I've experienced in many locales.
At night the controller will drive the actuator to its east or west limit, whichever you select (dip switches). Mine are set to go east awaiting sunrise. There's also a switchable delay so that the arrays aren't searching a lot due to clouds, etc. These things are pretty well behaved. Occasionally on medium overcast days I'll just park them at solar south to get what production is available, as the diffuse sunlight will get them to searching some, but that's rare. I've had two of the sensing modules go bad after 7 years, but they're only $15 and I keep a spare. He sent me two new ones out immediately and they're redesigned somewhat. Haven't had any other problems. I haven't tried his new all-in-one, 5 amp ($90) unit yet but plan to order one soon. This may be the way to go, using it to drive a larger actuator via a secondary relay setup.
It's fun stuff to play with. I plan to build a concentrating solar thermal collector using his dual axis controller at some point.
Here's the first tracker I built using a salvaged satellite dish mount w/actuator (free!) and some strut I had laying around. The controller board is mounted in the gray Carlon box. This 800W array has been tracking nicely for 8 years. I may have $250 total in it (not including PV). Your salvage luck may vary ;-)
Thanks Ghung,
It does sound like it could be some fun, I'm not too old to develop a few more skills, yet. Come April/May I will see what the shadow data has to say. Not a great salvage guy myself.
If anyone wants some custom control systems I might take a look at it. It depends what it has to control as I am not exactly local.
NAOM
Well, if you are trying to find the best mix then accepting 'useless for transport' 'great for heating' is a good starting point for allocating those resources in the right way. If we are talking about REPLACING FF with alternatives then freeing FF for one use by replacing them in another doesn't really cut it. In the transition, however, you may take that into account. In a FF free future you would not be able to do such accounting tricks and would have to accept that solar thermal is useless for transport. OTOH keeping your tootsies toasty is quite another matter :)
NAOM
I get your point.. I just think that, with the conceit that 'everything is shrinking', that this is a matter of reshuffling the uses to their most sensible spots.. so yes, it is about the Transition.. but hardly with the expectation that it's to allow the fuels going into transportation to keep being used as excessively as they are now.. it's with the assumption that we'll be Thirsty in every department.. and that transp. will be especially dry, as it's choices are less flexible.
In a way, it is making sure that we don't approach 'Residential Heating' as US, and Transportation as THEM... it is ALL 'US', and we'll have to be working to improve Transportation as well, in another part of the job, but here is a place where we can free up Motor Fuels, since Motor Fuels are such a pinch-point.
I don't really buy the arguments that say 'renewables don't offset fossil fuels, since 'somebody' is going to be burning that fuel that you did not.' I think that that somebody was going to burn their fuel irrespective of whether you ran your highway signs off a generator or from solar panels.. and that you in fact DID offset fuel-use (ie, the overall 'Flow Rate') by changing a task once done with Oil, to a non-burned source.
I think of it not as an accounting trick, but as budgeting. Sorry I'm being stubborn.. I DO get that we can't likely use Solar Heat for transportation.. but ultimately, for me the issue I guess is ALL about the Transition, and so I can't worry about euclidean demands of purity from any one source or another. We just have to fit these multiple streams of energy together somehow to make things work.
Bob
Yep, it's about getting the mix right. I get a bit narked when someone trumpets that X is the solution or X won't save us. It's horses for courses. Where will thermal help? Where will PV help? Where will low energy appliances help (not limited to electric)? What variety forms of energy, not just electric, storage be used? How can energy use be cut overall? What life changes need to be made? It is putting it all together not just picking off one thing that is your fave.
NAOM
Yes. I think demands for purity only serve to derail us from making the next few steps along the way. After we've taken those few steps, we will have a better view of the possibilities. I'm fine with letting the future deal with completing the transition. My job, is to begin it, not take it to its logical conclusion. It goes with the times.
That may be logically true but is misleading if the analysis ignores what solar thermal could theoretically displace. About half of the US's ~23 TCF/yr natural gas consumption goes to residential, commercial, and industrial space or water heating. If displaced by solar thermal, that is 1e19 primary joules/year (0.3 TW) of gas per year that then can be used for electricity and for transportation.
http://www.dlsc.ca/
I think Tom's current premise is wholesale replacement, not the immediate transition process. From that standpoint you are both correct: you that in the interim replacing gas and heating oil with solar heating frees up fuels for more valuable use, he that if no fossil fuels are used solar heating is useless for transport.
He is working at this systematically, and first he is setting his boundary conditions, before attempting to plot a course between endpoints.
Tom Murphy and Rembrandt
Thanks for all your hard work.
Clarification:
Both Concentrated Solar Thermal and Coal are applicable to Transport via liquid fuels. Efficiency promises to be > 10% for both.
The challenge is to get both into mass production.
Produced fuel costs should be lower than $100/bbl for both.
While maybe not as high source to wheel cost or efficiency as electricity, they provide a bridge to transition from the current oil monopoly.
Suggest another row for liquid fuels for each.
It may not be particularly environmentally sound, but coal is applicable to Transport directly. A regular, scheduled passenger train service passes my office window belching out black smoke and making 'chuff chuff' noises. It is a full size main line engine built in 2008.
My office is in Cambridge, UK
Note: the posting at Do the Math has colorblind-friendly versions of the two matrices. I'm not sure why they did not make it to TOD, but you can get the large one at:
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/energy-sc...
and the fossil fuel one at:
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/ff-score-...
Regarding the matrix.. maybe someone posted this already, but for some energy sources - especially Nuclear - the grades are missing important column - "WHAT". That is, what you are trying to power with this source. Is it a tent, a town house or a city. This will even out the low grads for Nuclear :) not that I am in favor of this energy source, just to be fair.
Why no environmental cost column in the matrix?
Right, Ghung! If we don't count environmental and depletion and costs to the grandkids, we are engaging in STUPID accounting that is MEANINGLESS.
And when people say, as some above have, that "We can't afford it", they should be required to tell us why we CAN afford tooth-rot soda pop, kerosene vapor trails to tahiti, fancy pickuptrucks and all that long long line of crapola that we are 'affording' just fine right now.
rant off.
Tom, I very much like your efforts here. You are properly exhausted, but be assured that many thousands of folk like me have got great advantage from your work.
Putting things into discrete categories is always a problem. But, I'm sure the author states this. Some of the methodolgies that are in the too small a resource so don't bother with, are still worth some societal resources to delevope, however the rest of us can largely ignore such.
Of course intermittency is and will increasingly become a huge issue. But no concievable energy source is without some probablistic tail distribution in the category of "some economic activity will sometimes have to be curtailed because of a shortage of energy). These are really a question of how often, and how large will the shortfalls be, and how much we are willing to pay to reduce them. Any tech can breakdown, and leave those dependent upon it sitting high and dry. Just look at Japan and nuclear. In a short period of time it went from being a major power source, to one the populace is too scared of to use, leading to large scale power deficits. And we've seen Venezuala have major power supply issues during a longterm drought that reduced hydro production. No source is without some level of (blackswan?) intermittency.
So we will have to deal with source intermittency via several mechanisms:
(1) Building redundant backups.
(2) Storage.
(3) Expanding the scale of transmission, so the correlations between intermittent sources are reduced.
(4) Demand management.
And the later category provides lots of choices that will need to be made. Its a hot summer day and we can either, make everyone push their thermostates up 5 degrees F, or we can close down the following factories.... Or we could pay a premium price for overcapacity. These are the sorts of things we will have to sort out.
Nuclear power may well be a viable candidate for transportation fuels. Don't forget Los Alamos's "Green Freedom" concept, where CO2 is pulled from thin air and converted into gasoline or other liquid fuels. Their estimate, back in 2008, was a cost of $4.60 a gallon. I love the idea of recycling CO2 and we're not that far from their cost estimate. My guess is we'll see $5 gasoline in the next 5 years.
Btw, two nuclear reactors received construction approval the other day. The first approvals since Three Mile Island. They'll come online in 2014 and 2015.
When Nikola Tesla turned the power on at Niagara Falls, JP Morgan said to him, "Where's the meter?"
You can't pull CO2 from the atmosphere and not expect to pay for it.
You'll be metered. It's the economics, just an observation.
Go solar and fast.
C'mon Perry, if this was really workable, don't you think somewhere like France, that actually exports nuclear electricity, while importing oil, would have taken a look at it?
The lab guys have no real experience running large scale fuel production facilities and always underestimate the costs.
You are right in that $5gasoline is not far away - but then, Europe is at about $9 already - and alts are exempted from the fuel taxes. If green freedom isn't being done under those conditions, then it certainly won't be for $4.60.
That's 2016 and 2017 for Vogtle 3 and 4 in Georgia. Construction has been given the go ahead as has the reactor concept, but they have not been given license to operate by the NRC.
http://southerncompany.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=2472
Incorrect. these two units were granted a combined construction and operating licence.
Yes, I see now the NRC voted Feb 9 to approve, with Jaczko dissenting.
thanks for the reality based review, as always.
Absolutely no consideration to pollution or climate change effects?
The "acceptance" column covers this adequately, I think. To the extent that our society as a whole tolerates pollution and climate change, technologies that cause them are acceptable.
Our society is wrong? Go tell 'em, tiger!
First off thanks for an excellent series of articles. I think your point of view and method of arriving at a matrix and an overview of the problem are highly informative, interesting and yet you do well to avoid getting bogged down in possible complication.
I do want to mention a variation on PV you didn't and see comments from others. That is spaced based PV. It too has abundant written all over it. It also uses existing known technology though nothing has been actually demonstrated. Costs are a concern.
I do feel that you aren't going to get any significant portion of the population to get off the path of BAU. Only if it no longer is an option will that happen. If on hand, on site resources are no longer sufficient for BAU (growth of a 1% or 2% per annum) one obvious idea is to look for resources elsewhere. Methane in the outer fringes of the solar system aren't practical. Space based PV might not be, but it looks close. Maybe it will remain too expensive maybe not. Sure seems feasible in concept.
I remember your Galactic energy post. One of the very best I have seen. So the problems of continuous growth don't really go away. Just one case of kick the can down the road. I do wonder though if that isn't somehow where this ends up if things don't crash out. Reaching off planet to keep the pump primed.
What, you mean we can't just use humans to generate electricity like in the matrix? It is obvious to me that nuclear is the only thing that will work, but even for nuclear it has to be the breeder reactor. http://www.examiner.com/renewable-energy-in-eugene/is-nuclear-power-green
Thanks for all useful comments. Havig said that, unless population of earth is controlled enegy problem will not be solved. Earth has a capacity of six billions people as i remember the late Walter Cronkite interviewing scientists in 1973. Nothing changed to increase this capacity . Now we are facing this peaks not only in enegy but also in health care,food ,jobs, environment, natural resources etc...
The Earth's capacity is probably <1 billion (10^9). We are on course for >>9 billion. Not good.
NAOM
Continuing thanks for letting us share your analytical journey.
A few comments:
I was intending to say that you were missing the cost column, until I saw you'd beaten me to the punch.
Hydro punches well above its weight with respect to grid benefits beyond kwh. Solar PV and wind in their current incarnation are limited in grid penetration by their grid negatives: not that the limits are yet active at current penetration levels, nor that there is no possible tech solution to the limits.
Opposition to wind and hydro varies substantially by locale but I think you generally overstate the opposition to wind and understate the opposition to hydro.
OTEC may not make much sense as a 7% efficient source of electricity, but run open loop it's probably going to be the most energy efficient seawater desalination process, with sea salt as a byproduct (weren't we talking about salt supply for energy storage). That said, at (full energy supply) scale it seems likely to have massive environmental downsides.
One alt you didn't have is osmotic power, exploiting the energy of ixing freash with salt water. Thats roughly the same size as hydro via gravity. I think the Norwegians are working on this. I haven't heard much recently (which might mean it isn't going well).
Just some thoughts to add.
1. Intermittency can be mitigated through hybridization. For example wind + solar pv might flip sources from red to yellow. In short, there's a period of overlap that helps fill the intermittency gap.
2. Ground transport converts more readily to electric. And ground transport also requires the greatest fraction of energy use. So v to g works well here.
3. Mitigation for air and sea transport will likely require biofuels and/or hydrogen. Hydrogen liquids may work with certain air transport systems. But biofuel is proven now.
4. The food and fuel conflict should be mitigated by 1 relying more heavily on electric for transport where-ever possible and 2 becoming more serious about global population control regimes. More family planning. More contraception. Less poverty. Less income inequality. More education and women's rights. That sort of thing.
5. In the end, solving the energy problem and solving the population/consumption problem are linked. So I think shrinking through-put demand will need to be part of the solution.
6. And just one last caveat. On a veg diet we can feed about 16 times more people than we can with current levels of meat consumption. So, if you're looking for sustainability with food based biofuels, meat consumption will probably need to come down.
I still don't think people get this. Corn currently makes meat AND liquid fuel at massive scale. The real food vs fuel debate are the fantasies about cellulosic ethanol from switchgrass on marginal land.
There's already a mobile cellulosic biorefinery with the most advanced bio-agents in the world. It's called a cow. And they can self-replicate.
Now, if we did want to reduce the herd size being fed on dried distillers grains, (DDGs), we could redirect say 5% of the DDGs and McDonalds could have deep-fried McDDG nuggets that would have exactly the same taste as what they now claim is chicken, and if we were really worried about it, all the used fryer oil could be made into biodiesel to run tractors.
Very interesting post Tom and Rembrandt, thank you for your work and for sharing your crack at some structured decision analysis.
I might be inclined to swap Algae/bio-fuels and wind, but that is just a hunch, and honestly my gut bias, w/o any quantification to justify my assertion.
I think it would be fine to append the FFs to the Alts to make one table.
I think that the energy source attribute 'Demonstrated' has a lot in common with the attribute 'Difficulty'.
Since commercial power D-T seems to be continually 30 years in the future, and D-D is even more of a stretch, I wonder why not include D-He3 (Moon mining)?
I also may consider space-based solar PV (and maybe S-B CSP)power systems...probably no more of a stretch than D-T or especially D-D.
I applaud your shutting the door on more speculative ideas such as LENR...go down that rabbit hole and next thing you know ZPE is in the matrix...
Not providing weights for the attributes is OK for a first-order go. A peanut-butter spread is 10% for 10 attributes...if 2 or three attributes are weighted say 25%, 20%, and 15%, then the other 7 attributes get to share the remaining 40%...this is a reason why teams generally are reticent to use much more than ~ 10 attributes per decision construct...the weights get too diluted to mean a lot.
This construct is similar to other Mulch-Objective Decision Analysis (sometimes called Mulch-Objective Criteria Analysis)I have helped facilitate/build. You could posit 'raw scores' for the attributes, then convert them to 10-point unit-less 'apples-to-apples' values by constructing SME-agreed-upon return-to-scale Value Functions, then use a swing weight matrix with one axis being 'importance to the decision maker' and the other being 'sensitivity to small [~10%] variances'.
A next step might be to construct various COAs (Courses of Action) with different mixes of energy sources and different build schedules to address the postulated energy 'need' at various future dates.
I would agree with some of the other commenters that a 'cost' attribute and perhaps an environmental impact attribute as well...but...if a construct was formulated to price all the major externalities for the various energy sources, perhaps the conventional definition of cost could be added with an externality estimate to achieve a composite cost of RDT&E, construction, O&M, disposal, embedded energy, and pollutant effects costs. From there one could look at expanding to a capital budgeting/efficient frontier model...
...but now we are talking about a rather broad and deep effort...perhaps scores of people (~ 10 principals on the main Integrated Team, supported by a team of researchers, and probably a separate team to conduct a verification and validation, perhaps another small Red Team, and some other additional outside peer review, then acceptance by a small board of decision makers to make recommendations as policy...probably a 24-month study effort to 'go big'.
...then comes the legislative sausage factory, the blogosphere, the cable TV and AM radio talking heads...
DA can be interesting...but the devil is in the details to get agreement on the time domain, assumptions, limitations,scope, attributes, metrics, values, weights, and the big booger is trying to 'quantify' attributes that do not lend themselves to having inherent quantifyable metrics...trying to dress up BOGSAT (Bunch Of Guys Sitting Around a Table) subjectivity in the robes of numbers, with attendant mathematical transformations, and pretty charts and graphs to boot.
When I worked a stretch in Test and Evaluation, one of my contractors referred to several analytical exercises as 'mental masturbation'.
Fun stuff!
Fascinating insights into how professionals approach complex decision analysis. I think there would be a lot of worth in doing such an evaluation matrix in a more rigorous way. I only have time for slapdash myself, but it can serve the purpose of getting people to think.
At the same time, the simple and crude matrix tells me most of what I need to know: that our free ride is coming to an end, and that we can't expect our future to look like a continuation of our past. That's big news. We ought to tell someone.
It's hard to keep all the issues about each energy straight, so I've created summaries of the barriers to each potential energy resource at my website (still in progress). I've been reading and writing about the energy crisis and related issues for over 10 years now.
Overview
http://energyskeptic.com/category/energy/an-overview/
Biofuels
http://energyskeptic.com/category/energy/biofuels/
Coal
http://energyskeptic.com/category/energy/coal/
Electric grid - a huge issue for any of your electricity generating "solutions"
http://energyskeptic.com/category/energy/electric-grid-energy/
Fusion
http://energyskeptic.com/category/energy/fusion/
Geothermal
http://energyskeptic.com/category/energy/geothermal/
Hydrogen
http://energyskeptic.com/category/energy/hydrogen/
Hydropower
http://energyskeptic.com/category/energy/hydropower/
Methane Hydrates
http://energyskeptic.com/category/energy/methane-hydrates/
Nuclear
http://energyskeptic.com/category/energy/nuclear/
Wave & Tidal energy
http://energyskeptic.com/category/energy/waves-tidal/
Wind
http://energyskeptic.com/category/energy/wind/
Alice Friedemann
Alice,
what is missing in Your list, as well as Tom's matrix is seaweed, not to be confused with 'algae'.
Actually the potential is enormous.
See eg GM microbe breakthrough paves way for large-scale seaweed farming for biofuels
The benefits should be evident, especially eg in combination with fish-farms.
See here for the latest news:
http://www.ba-lab.com/news.php
all the best
Seaweed may also be a path for mining hard to find minerals and nutrients from the sea water. I wonder if they could be selected and bred to be specific for certain minerals or metals as some land plants are?
NAOM
also,
the 'intermittency' column in Tom's matrix somewhat dubiously redmarks solar and wind.
While true when seen in isolation, it is only partly true when combined with 'renewable-methane', i.e. wind/solar->electricity->H2->methane->gas-turbine->electricity.
While the overall efficiency (28-45%) does not sound impressive, eg the storage capacity for methane in the german gas-grid is 200TWh-thermal, equivalent to 120TWh electrical.
When methane is used as fuel for automobiles, 'overall-efficiency' is approx 60-70%, which does not sound so bad.
The whole technology seems vastly superior to H2 as an intermediary storage, because it is completely compatible with existing large-scale infrastructure.
see eg here "Methan aus Solar- und Windenergie"
http://www.eurosolar.de/de/images/stories/pdf/SZA%201_2010_Sterner_farbi...
(sorry, German, but You get the picture)
So my message is:
When technologies are seen in isolation, the overall picture can be quite misleading.
Tom did a good job in considering various technologies in isolation, for example, considering automobile batteries in an electric-car-world as intermediate storage, which is for the german situation 0.45TWh-electrical for 45million electric cars, compared to 120TWh-electrical using the methane-storage approach. There is this 'insignificant' factor of roughly 300 between the two scenarios.
---------------
The seaweed-approach mentioned above is positively synergistic, i.e. the whole is more than the sum of its parts.
It is truely ecological in the best sense. It does more repair than damage.
Also note that the GMO-critters involved in this, are NOT released, but are savely contained in bio-reactors. So, no hazard here. (even if some managed to escape, the danger is probably negligible, compared to other dangers, eg with 'nucular', Bush type and other. Seaweed i9s not so much a tool for aggression, right? Concentrated power in any form is synergetic to concentrated energy. let's not forget that.)
all the best
there is nothing dubious about the intermittency of wind and solar - that is well established, and Tom is absolutely right to examine these in isolation.
You are correct in that the intermittency is reduced if coupled with a storage solution - be it your H2 plan, pumped bydro, batteries etc.
But wouldn't you say the very definition of an intermittent source is one that needs to be coupled with storage to make it constant/dispatchable>
In that regard, any (electrical based) storage system can be coupled with any intermittent electrical producers, so Tom is right to identify the intermittent producers.
As for storage, the only large scale commercial type *in operation* is pumped hydro. Your scheme might work, but it hasn't been implemented commercially yet, so it gets a redmark for that.
Storage schemes, no matter how good,do not change the intermittency of the systems that supply them.
Paul,
Fusion and other exotic technologies are also in the matrix.
Here I could say something, but wo'nt embarrass my colleagues some 100 meters away (MPP). They have some work to do.
The point I wanted to make, and to which You obviously object, is, that NO technology can be seen in isolation.
A systems approach would be, to assess any possible technology over its whole life-cycle.
Isolated feasibility is at best a first step.
A next-step feasibility-evaluation reveals that eg storage of wind energy in high-altitude water-reservoirs, where they are not readily available, as maybe in some high-altitude lakes in Norway, is
a) miniscule, compared to what is needed in the global whole
b) is more often than not environmentally destructive and aesthetically annoying in the small scale.
(Don't talk down aesthetics, it is part of our value-judgement.)
As enlightened people we should be past that, but I might well be in error on that.
So there is a value-judgement and weighing of the pros and cons and the in-between.
See the Three Gorges Dam as example of a big-scale 'solution'.
Any REAL solution has to be an integrated one.
'Solutions' along a matrix according to first principles are -well- wrong from the perspective of a holistic approach.
Ofcourse this is a first necessary step, but hopefully 'we' enlightened bunch are long past that.
Maybe physicists and politicians lag a bit behind, but never mind.
I am a pragmatic engineer w.r.t. feasibility, and as such am 100% against
the Freeman Dyson’s of this world, and also the physicists, who are proud of separating the variables, and stop at that.
Don’t ask me what I think, when I put my philosopher's hat on.
Even relatively small capacity (in MWhours, not MW) can help firm up these variable sources, if they are coupled to a ramnpable generator (such as combined cycle gas turbine) on the grid. You don't have to cover the shortfall until the resource (wind or sun) comes back, but until need to cover the rampup time of the backup source.
Even better, if you put some storage in a windfarm, you could undersize the transmission line. When the wind output is greater than the transmission capability, pump water to the upper reservoir. This way you can improve the capacity factor of your transmission line.
Well, since we are both pragmatic engineers here, we can dispense with sugar coatings!
I would agree- to a certain extent - that technologies can;t be considered in isolation - their impact on the system as a whole must be considered, as must the systems that support and fuel technology X.
Assessing something over its entire life cycle is indeed a necessary step - something the nuke industry, in particular, tries to avoid.
There are certainly MANY value judgements to be made, and some, like external environmental impacts, are not included here.
I think we also have to be careful about trying to pick THE solution - there is space for many of them, and some regions obviously are more suited to some than others.
But I'm not sure what you are proposing as an alternative to the matrix put forward here - can you be more specific?
I will add:
1.- material scarcity (with present technologies).
PV: red
solar thermal: yellow
...
2.- soil scarcity.
PV, solar thermal and solar thermic: yellow
Wind: green
Bio-things (algae included): red.
...
I propose other math for the question: BAU, it is possible? Yes, if the sume is > 0. But:
Red= -infinite
Yellow = -2
Green = +1
Then: only fossil fuels have a > 0 response.
I will propose:
3..- Climate change an other residues problems:
Fossils: red
Nuclear: yellow-red
...
BAU it will be possible? No, because, all resources have at least a red flag. Is there a combination of resources that do not have a red flag? At least not easy, I think not. I am sure not when I think in a n-Dimensional Matrix that take into account: Resources other than energy (minerals, water, soils...), Residues (Climate Change, contamination...), Biodiversity loss (and ecosystems functional losses) and Human "stupidity" and ineficiency (economic inequalities, hungry, Geopolitics...).
But who cares about BAU? Human and the biosphere are the important things, not BAU (of course only at present they are related).
Why do you assign 'red' to PV for material scarcity?
Are you positing solely CIGS-type technology?
Polycrystalline cells are largely silicon, with glass 'covers' and I imagine Aluminum frames for light-weight properties which simplify the mounting requirements, although I imagine steel frames could be used...then some copper wiring, although I suppose Al could be used for wiring,...and some electronics.
Solar thermal? Steel, Al, glass, don't see show-stoppers there.
I also don't understand the 'soil scarcity' and PV/CSP...even if we went 'whole hog' and tried to use these for all our energy needs, according to the OP we would need .5% of our land...I suppose add another .5-.75% for large-scale flow batteries, pumped storage, flywheels, more power transmission lines...No need to put PV or CSP over top of farmland, or to clear forests etc. Whatever land it is put on...the soil will be largely unaffected and still be there for other future uses.
As for the rest of your comments...yes, humanity is in deep overshoot and in a dilemma, as Darwinian points out. No rainbows and Unicorns on the horizon, just humanity trying to adapt and muddle through.
The material scarcity is not for the silicon or aluminum materials of the PV systems. Silicon is not a semiconductor in itself. It needs to be doped to become a semiconductor.
The same happens for non silicon based PV devices: they need rare elements and even in a minimum portion, when you go to massive deployments, it may represent a problem, here in PV and in wind energy (neodimium and dysprosium or lithium grease as lubricant), even some generators may be designed without them, but the whole industry is seeking for permanent magnets for better efficiency and lower mechanical frictions. Even copper (apparently no so scarce), may be a liming factor in an electrically based world.
Perhaps the hint is the obsession of Chinesse to buy or acquire and control today >90% of the rare earth mineral production.
To understand we are in overshoot, one does not need to be even a Darwinian. We just need to recognize that it is the use/abuse of technology that has brought us here and remind the Einstein phrase that We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
so what you are basically arguing is, that Tom should implement a column 'mid-longterm-sustainability'
There is indeed a big problem underneath that.
What in 200 -- 500 years?
Transhumanists and their ilk dream themselves into eternal life and such, implicitly assuming future abundance.
The tune is always the same: discounting the future via the growth paradigm, where the always hopeful transhumanist zombie can happily coexist with his fellow freshborn beings.
California dreaming.
Long-term-thinking is even more taboo than LTG.
The dopants are used in minute quantities and are common so that would not be an issue. Rare earth elements are not essential and are not all that rare just the will to produce them. If local PV (as in produced where it is used) was extensively installed reduced grid resources could be moved to the PV eg the wires connecting the house to the grid would become the wires for the PV. What is desperately lacking is the will to do it.
NAOM
...The dopants are used in minute quantities...
well, this is not the case in the aggregate.
eg TFT displays use approx 3g/m2 Indium. (numbers vary)
This is clearly not sustainable in the mid/long-term.
Scaling up for example nanosolar-type solar cells is quite surely not sustainable, because the 'dopants', as you say, are simply not available in such quantities in the mid/long-term.
So does the technology make sense as a long-term-solution? NO.
So be careful.
If you imagine a >100y future, where nobody sits in front of TFT-displays, (which is probably a correct assessment), you have two basic options:
a) the cornucopian brain implant type, which is quite low energy.
(add some dystopian humor, and there you are)
b) the collapse-type with say 100mio global humans, who are btw not able to keep up a 'technological' society of the current type, by the sheer numbers of people/consumers required.
Both are value neutral at first sight.
But it depends.
'Value' is not a defined spot in time or is everlasting, but stretches out +/- 2000 years minimum.
See eg the 'long-now-foundation'.
For Si P-N semiconductor junctions the dopant concentration is ~10 PPB of, say, P or Sb or As. The land area of the planet could be paved over with Si P-N cells, repeatedly, if material mass were the only issue.
irrelevant.
And we don't even know what other materials we might end up using for PV. Thin film was largely derided for being non scalable. Yet FirstSolar (CdTe) has plans for 65GW in the next decade (they figure thats the scale they need to survive, i.e. compete in a world with cheap silicon). Obviously not a huge global resource, but a decent increment none the less.
Again PV is mostly silicon plus glass plus aluminum. Glass is sand. Silicon is reduced sand. Aluminum is several percent of the earths crust. Silicon is the second most common crustal (and mantle) element after Oxygen. Copper is an issue. But aluminum conducts electrity as well. We just don't like it for wiring because of (spark) fire hazards.
I don't see PV as eliminating reliance on the grid. Balancing out the intermittency (absent cheap batteries) increases the dependence on transmission.
I'm pretty sure more aluminum by mass is already used for conductor than copper, copper just dominates small gauge wire due to termination issues (I spent a lot of time as a kid fixing 1960's aluminum house wiring for friends, since my Dad hated to do residential himself). Big wire is mostly aluminum.
One of our local copper rats decided he would hit the big time and go for the big wires, lots more to steal. I guess he never knew that he spoiled his day over some aluminium.
NAOM
The doping is done with phosphorous and boron, neither of which are rare enough to limit PV production to less than TW scales. The rarest element used in conventional silicon PV modules is silver, and that would probably be the limiting factor.
Heisenberg:
Present solar technologies have energy-material limits to scale-up to the TWe production (Feltrin, García-Olivares).
Present CSP technologies use sodium and potassium nitrates as part of the energy storage system. To scale-up to the TWe with this technology will need more than all the reserves in mines (do the math). Therefore, synthesis via ammonia and urea using natural gas, as the fertilizer industries actually do, could be an imperative. Therefore, the TWe level deployment means a direct competition with fertilizer production and natural gas that must be taken into account in the future.
Most present mirrors for CSP use silver at rates of 1gr/m2 (Kennedy). Probably, more than 50000Tn/TWe will be needed. The reserve base (which at present accounts for uneconomical mine deposits) is less than 570000Tn. Mirrors based on aluminium do not have this problem, although they have less reflectivity than Ag based mirrors (Kennedy).
PV also has material limits with all the present technologies being applied to grid connected parks. Thin-film technologies, like Cd-Te or CIGS, cannot scale-up over 0.1TWe, due to reserves of tellurium or indium (Feltrin). p-Si technologies have Ag limits (used in the electrodes) they cannot scale-up over 0.1TWe, and with improved efficiency in the use of Ag, they will use more than 140,000 Tn(Ag)/TWe, making it very difficult the terawatt level deployment. Amorphous Si and nano-Si have the same limit as other thin-film technologies because of the Indium used. a-Si could scale-up over the 1TWe since they do not use Ag electrodes, but to overcome their very low cell efficiency, present technologies are using micro and nano-Si with a-Si that have the Ag limit. If you escale-up well over the TW then to move from the red flag to yellow flag you need: more land.
Solar thermal will compete for Cu, although is not a red flag.
Land limits: Present Civilization directly use (cities, roads, and all the infraestructures) roughly 2% of all the lands. Therefore 0,5% is at least a yellow flag. My maths for 10TWe is 2% (simply, extrapolate a real example, for instance: Lieberose in Germany, take the "expected" electric production, go to a google map tool for the real occupation of the plant and do the maths, and disccount the EROEI), without consideration to intermitence and storage problems. If the Civilization use 2% almost in good places how can we do the same in semidesert or desert places? OK, as we do at present: we will use forest, arble lands etc., but then you compete for land: Red flag (probably for all the renewables).
· Feltrin, A. and A. Freundlich. 2008. Material considerations for terawatt level deployment of photovoltaics. Renewable energy 32: 180-185
· García-Olivares, A. et al. 2011. A global renewable mix with proven technologies and common materials. Energy Policy doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2011.11.018
· Kennedy C. 2010. NREL CSP optical materials characterization facilities and capabilities in support of DOE FOA Awards”. NREL. http://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/pdfs/csp_prm2010_nrel_kennedy.pdf
Thanks. I'm tired of people simply asserting X has limits it won't scale without backing it up.
So when you speak of these limts (many are .1TWe) does that mean annual capacity increase is limited to .1TWe, or the total we can ever reach is .1TWe? Of course in engineering we use the expression "there's more than one way to skin a cat". So what are the prospects of eliminating some of these constraints? I don't expect much R&D on their circumvention will be done until the projected limits are within sight (say five years off, maybe three doublings). In fact at 10% of a limit, (3.3 doublings to the wall) the market impact of the limit is likely still tiny.
Carlos de Castro,
Thank you for your considered reply, compete with referenced assertions!
I have added this link/date to my research repository to consider with the other information I have compiled to-date.
H
Thanks for providing references.
I don't think I understand why CSP with silvered mirrors requires 1/3rd the silver per watt as p-Si. Is the silver that much thicker on the PV cells?
Also we should consider Sunpower's back-contact cells that don't use Ag. They do use a lot more Cu though.
Tom,
This overall result seems highly unrealistic to me: fossil fuels in general, and oil in particular, appeared to be great in their day, but they are much more expensive than they appear (IOW, they have large externalities) and they can and should be replaced ASAP.
So, what's wrong with the matrix?
First, green house gas emissions shouldn't be a trivial afterthought. The scientific consensus is that GHGs are a big problem, and there is a large risk that they are a very big problem. That alone would push fossil fuels down below solar, wind and nuclear.
Second, fossil fuels are not reliable. The US is still fighting a $2 trillion war to make access to oil slightly more reliable. An oil shock was a significant contributor to the 2008 recession, and has contributed to many recessions before that.
Third, the problem of renewable intermittency is not so important. In the medium term Demand Side Management and fossil fuel backup will work just fine. In the long term , overbuilding, and geographic diversity will provide most of what's needed, and synthetic fuels are perfectly viable for the small remaining percentage (they can be produced with current tech, at a price premium).
Fourth, oil isn't hard to replace. Land travel is very straightforward: freight can go to rail and short-haul electric trucks; passenger travel can go to EREVs (with ethanol for the remaining 10% of fuel needed for longer trips) and/or rail with car-shared EVs.
Water shipping and air travel is a small percentage of fuel consumption. They can be made much more efficient; wind and solar can provide a large percentage of water shipping energy; and synthetic fuels and biomass can provide the relatively small amount of fuel still needed.
Fossil fuels/oil are definitely not superior to the alternatives.
Finally, to suggest that techno-optimism is harmful is to miss the fact that legacy FF industries are using scare tactics to keep us addicted to FF. The truth is that existing technologies (efficiency; wind, solar and nuclear; rail, EVs, biomass and synthetic fuel) can provide energy that is cleaner, more scalable, more affordable and at least as reliable.
Second, fossil fuels are not reliable. I'm not sure that this is a really accurate statement.
From the US point of view, only oil is not reliable. From a Canadian point of view, they are all reliable.
In Europe we are seeing countries that are at the mercy of the Russian gas supply, but would it be any different, really, if they were at the mercy of Russian wind and hydro electricity?
The real issue here is that for any country, energy imports are not reliable, because, in a crisis, the exporting country will supply itself first.
And for many countries - energy self sufficiency is simply not possible at anything like their current population levels.
the problem of renewable intermittency is not so important. In the medium term Demand Side Management and fossil fuel backup will work just fine. In the long term , overbuilding, and geographic diversity will provide most of what's needed,
Well, the fact that it has to be addressed, means that it is important, because if it is not addressed, then there are problems, as Benamery21 has illustrated upthread on solar PV. This doesn;t mean the intermittency can't be resolved, but it does mean it has to be addressed. You don't have to do that with CCGT, for example.
I actually think that active (utility controlled) DSM is worthy of its own line in his matrix.
oil isn't hard to replace.
I'd say it is proving to be quite hard to replace. Just because it is technically possible doesn't mean you can get countries/companies/people to do it. Quitting smoking is technically very easy, but was very hard to get people to actually do it. All the other transport options involve either large up front investments that no one wants to make (electrified rail) or some level of inconvenience (limited range of EV's, "last mile" from transit lines etc). This is why it is hard.
Plus the pr from the ff industries, of course...
"fossil fuels are not reliable." - I'm not sure that this is a really accurate statement. From the US point of view, only oil is not reliable.
Yes, I was primarily thinking of oil. I should have said "oil".
From a Canadian point of view, they are all reliable.
Not really. Prices aren't under Canadian control. High prices may be good for Alberta, but not for Ontario. And not for all Albertans.
Just because it is technically possible doesn't mean you can get countries/companies/people to do it.
"Technically possible is what Tom is trying to address. OTOH, I agree that the politics of change are crucial.
some level of inconvenience (limited range of EV's, "last mile" from transit lines etc).
I personally would find inter-city travel by rail, combined with EV car-sharing, a wonderful option. OTOH, those who didn't could use EREVs, which have no inconvenience at all.
More later...
Not really. Prices aren't under Canadian control. High prices may be good for Alberta, but not for Ontario. And not for all Albertans.
Well, now we will start to split hairs. Something being expensive is not the same as unreliable. For all Canadians (and Americans too) oil (gasoline) has always been available where and when they want it, just at variable prices. Good weather is always free, but unreliable.
Oil prices have doubled over the last five years, but production is no less - so does price make it unreliable, or just that you have to work harder for it?
Technically possible is what Tom is trying to address.
Yes, very true. In which case, technically, its easy to do all those things to get away from oil powered transport. But then, technically, its easy to do nuke power too...
As you have pointed put, there are vested ineterest wanting to maintain the FF fiesta as long as possible. Though I'm not sure car companies are foremost amongst them (anymore) - they have been asking for higher fuel taxes for a while now.
I personally would find inter-city travel by rail, combined with EV car-sharing, a wonderful option.
Agreed absolutely, though I'm not so sure about the cross continent trip. That would depend on how comfortable the train ride is.
OTOH, those who didn't could use EREVs, which have no inconvenience at all.
Other than the eye watering price...
Something being expensive is not the same as unreliable.
Sure, it is. In a market system, shortages and scarcities are expressed in price. Some applications and consumers get priced out of the market. For those apps and consumers, the item is now unavailable.
The other point is that high oil prices create winners and losers everywhere, including inside exporting countries.
I'm not sure car companies are foremost amongst them (anymore) - they have been asking for higher fuel taxes for a while now.
Yes, they are. Sometimes I'm not sure if they're sincere - it's easy to ask for something if it's not likely to happen. OTOH...sometimes I think they mean it - more and more, they "get" PO.
EREVs...eye watering price..
Look at the Prius plug-in: priced about $30k, which is the average selling price of all new US cars. It will be very cost competitive.
Even the Volt actually has a very competitive Total Cost of Ownership. It's cost will be much lower in the long run, after economies of scale are achieved, and tax credits expire (not that tax credits aren't entirely appropriate, given the hidden external costs of oil....).
Nick,
I agree on your Prius comment.
Clearly, the Prius has been available at prices below the documented average new vehicle price in the U.S. for at least several years running. The Pius gas mileage and all other performance attribute metrics have been well known for years. Reliability data has been accumulating and no 'show-stoppers' have been published that I know of. In the U.S> at least new 12 M light vehicles per year are purchased.
I have looked up the data from valid internet resources and posted it before, so I won't waste anyone's time again, that exercise is easily accomplished by motivated readers.
Clearly, a combination of light vehicle recapitalization with Prius-like vehicles which get ~ 50 MPG city cycle, combined with reducing/bundling trips, and increased car-pooling/ride-sharing, changed zoning laws allowing more diversified neighborhoods (going back to mixed use neighborhoods with embedded barber shops, small grocery marts, etc. as I was familiar with in the older neighborhood in certain cites in the NE U.S.), more walking/bicycling, etc., combined with an adaptive motor vehicle fuel tax system which would keep the annual vehicle fuel expense per person at or somewhat above that experienced currently, would greatly reduce our oil consumption for personal travel.
Yes there are issues with folks who live 'out' in rural/country locales, and some issues with very cold weather performance, but the above adaptations would serve the majority of U.S. drivers' needs.
Will these implementations make 7B folks on Earth 'sustainable'? Would they solve the employment problem, provide everyone with reasonably-priced and available health care, make you morning cuppa...no.
But they would, over the course of years, steadily reduce U.S. personal transportation oil demand at a moderate rate, without invoking the need for breakthrough physics, 'unobtainium', a 'Moon Shot' or a Manhattan Project II, etc.
'Just' would require a modestly rationale national energy policy.
Which apparently asks too much of us.
H, I admire your pragmatic reasoning - makes me think you are the sort of person referred to in that old saying about military situations "may cooler heads prevail"
The Prius itself is a great achievement for a car, and the new prius C should take that a bit further. I should also point out, that many Euro cars - small, high efficiency diesels, have been getting over 50mpg for some time, as have the -admiteddly very small- Japanese Kei cars.
All this before getting into EREV's or EV's
So, clearly, it is not for lack of options that we are not seeing much improvement in fleet mpg, it is that we (as a whole) are still in love with big, powerful vehicles, and that is the hard part to change.
BUT, believe it or not, it is changing. As a result of a discussion I had on Robert Rapier's R-Squared blog, I ended up taking a good look at the top 30 best selling vehicles in the US, and came up with a surprising conclusion.
The full table is at that link, and the F-150, of course, is the top selling vehicle, and the Ram and Silverado are also in the top 10 (prius is #18). But the figures also gave the sales growth, and the surprising result is that the small and medium cars are the fastest growing market segments, and minivans are now out of the top 30 altogether.
The "cars" sold 240,00 for the period (jan 2012) , 41,000 more than previous January , for an increase of 20% on previous.
The PU's+SUV's sold 131,000 for the period, 12,800 more than previous, for an 11% increase.
In the last decade, PU's/SUV's/Minivans have had about half the market, but now they are at 35%
So, I would say the momentum is-slowly- shifting away from PU's/SUV towards cars, and within the car category, towards the smaller end.
I would also say that as fuel prices go up, I expect the shift towards cars, and smaller ones to continue…
This is good news.
The task then becomes for the EV's and hybrids to convince the cars buyers, and the small to medium ones at that, that they are a better proposition. In this contest, at present, I think the ordindary s/m cars are winning, and will continue to do so for a while yet, as more high efficiency and diesel engine cars become available. But also, the smaller car mindset is, ultimately, more amenable to EV's, I just think it will take quite some time (decade) for them to really make a difference. For all its great technology and mpg, the Prius is still only a niche player,(though a high profile one) 15 years after its introduction.
Ultimately, it is the mpg that counts, not the specific technology that achieves it. The common factor is still that smaller cars get much better mpg than larger PU's and SUV's - and it looks like buyers are starting to act upon that.
That's good news - thanks for the good analysis.
A tiny quibble: diesel gallons have 15% more hydrocarbon than a gasoline gallon, so they're not quite comparable.
Well, yes diesel is more energy dense, but many of these cars are getting way better than 50mpg.
However, to resolve the comparison issue, in Europe they rate them also by CO2 emissions (g/km), and this measure is very similar for a kg of diesel and a kg of petrol (actually, petrol has a slight advantage because of its higher hydrogen content).
Here is a link to the list of the UK's top ten most economical cars -as determined by CO2 emissions; (mpg are Uk gallons so multiply by 5/6 to get US mpg)
1 Kia Rio 1.1 Ecodynamics - 85g/km____________ (88.3mpg diesel combined city/hwy)
2 Smart Fortwo cdi - 86g/km ___________________(85.6 mpg diesel)
3= Toyota Prius T3 - 89g/km ___________________(72.4mpg petrol)
3= Toyota Auris Hybrid - 89g/km _______________(74.3 mpg petrol)
3= Skoda Fabia Greenline - 89g/km _____________(83.1 mpg diesel)
6 Volkswagen Polo BlueMotion - 91g/km ________(80.7mpg diesel)
7 SEAT Ibiza Ecomotive - 92g/km _______________(80.7 mpg diesel)
8= Lexus CT 200h - 94g/km ____________________(69mpg petrol)
8= Renault Clio 1.5 dCi 88 FAP Eco - 94g/km ____(78.5 mpg diesel)
8= Vauxhall Corsa 1.3 CDTi 95 94g/km __________(80.7mpg diesel)
The Prius T3 is our cross reference. According to the US gov top ten list, the prius gets 50mpg combined.
So, after taking the 5/6 ratio, we find the UK testing method overestimates economy as measured by the US method by about 24%
But, even the #10 on that list, would be getting the equivalent of 46USmpg, and the #10 on the US list is down to 37mpg.
In fact, comparing the lists, all but the #10 US car are hybrids, and only 3 of the Uk list are hybrids, and the entire UK top ten would fit in between #2 and #3 on the US list.
So, my point here is that hybrids are not the only way to get good mileage - small diesel cars do it too, and cheaper. If we were willing to let these into the US market, there would be a lot more people using less fuel.
Thanks.
So, the Smart Fortwo gets about 50MPG in petrol (equal to about 69MPG in diesel imperial), and it gets 85.6 in diesel imperial, so improved diesel efficiency improves MPG about 24% (or reduces fuel consumption by about 19%).
Average MPG in the US is very roughly 25MPG, so that suggests that size reduction reduces fuel consumption by about -50%, vs diesel efficiency of -19%. So diesel efficiency certainly contributes, but size is roughly 2.5x more important.
hmmm. Seems like we could refine that analysis, doesn't it?
The way I see it, the diesel smart, at 85.6, is equal to 71.3mpg US. Now, the 13% energy content difference takes it to 63mpg for US gallons of gasoline.
The US version of the smart has an official EPA rating of 34/38, so call it 36mpg.
( http://www.smartusa.com/comparevehicles/ )
If we assume the 24% difference in test procedures applies, then the British one comes down to 51mpg.
So why does the diesel go 40% further on the same energy content of fuel? Certainly, in part because the diesel engine is more efficient, both in city and hwy driving.
It may also be that the US version is "overpowered" - often the smallest engine models are not offered in the US.
Look at the Scion iQ - US version 1.3L (37mpg), British version, 1.0L engine(65.7mpg). Doing the same conversion, I end up with the British one at 44mpg for the US testing cycle - a 20% improvement over the US model.
I think the better way to compare diesel with gasoline is to look at the mileage ratings for vehicles that have both options.
Check out this table of the Uk Kia Rio models - even the worst diesel is still 9% better than the best petrol, and the best diesel is 34% better than the best petrol. (The US version has a 1.6L and gets 35mpg combined.)
http://www.kia.co.uk/new-cars/range/compact-cars/new-rio/specification/t...
So, I would say that a 20-30% mileage increase for diesel - in the same car - is about right.
The real point is, that US cars - even small one- are usually overpowered - if you are willing have slightly less acceleration, you can save a lot of fuel.
Different testing systems make comparisons hard.
"European Union (EU) testing rates the 999 cc Smart at 4.7 L/100 km (60 mpg-imp; 50 mpg-US) for the gasoline model and 3.4 L/100 km (83 mpg-imp; 69 mpg-US) for the diesel.[citation needed] The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rates the vehicle at 36 mpg-US (6.5 L/100 km; 43 mpg-imp) combined.[10]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_Fortwo
So, EU testing gives 50MPG, EPA gives 43MPG for the identical vehicle!
------------------------------------
EU testing suggests that the diesel reduces fuel consumption by 27.5%. That seems like a pretty good benchmark.
So, EU testing gives 50MPG, EPA gives 43MPG for the identical vehicle!
Yes, an increase in mpg of 16%. For the Prius it is 24%.
For the dieseI make it a 22% improvement for the diesel version (miles/btu) and 38% (miles/USgal).
You do get a decrease in"performance", as measured by 0-60 times, but so what?
The diesel smart is still quite fun to drive (have not driven the gasoline version)
So, I would be happy to generalise that a diesel will get 20-25% improvement in miles/btu, though in the case of PU's and the like, it can be closer to 30%
Comparing hybrids and regular versions, civic is 44 and 29, for a 51% increase, camry is 43/25, 72% increase, highlander 28/19, 47% , Ford fusions 41/23, 78%, Ford Escape fwd, 34/23 , 48%.
So, I would be happy to generalise that hybrids get a 40%-70% improvement - depending on the mix of city to hwy driving
I would also be happy to generalise that the euro approach to high mpg has been smaller cars with diesels, and the US approach has been larger cars with hybrids. On balance, the Euro approach is getting better over miles/btu, and their cars are cheaper. They also have a progressive road tax system (annual registration cost), based on the CO2/mile, which makes the high mpg cars an even better buy.
Where I think europe really wins is in affordability - the high fuel taxes, and CO2 tax, make the efficient cars a better buy, and the cars themselves are more affordable. So more people can afford to change over sooner.
At $15k for one of those diesels, or even $20k for a prius, the Volt at $41k looks very hard to justify.
Those comparisons seem good.
Now, regarding small car affordability: that would accelerate the changeover only if car sales rose. If car sales are at the same level or below where they were historically (which was the case last I looked), then it wouldn't. in fact, I suspect European car sales are more depressed than US car sales....
Regarding the Volt: it seems fairly clear that GM chose not to subsidize early sales, as Toyota did with the Prius, and Nissan is doing with the Leaf. They didn't want to look like they were giving anything away because of their bailout, and they may have overestimated early adopter enthusiasm, or underestimated the viciousness of right-wing media attacks on the Volt.
Still, by all accounts the Volt is comparable to ICE cars in the low $30ks. Given that it will probably save the owner $15k over it's lifetime (even adjusting for time value of $), I'd say the Volt's net price of about $33k is pretty easy to justify.
They also have a progressive road tax system (annual registration cost), based on the CO2/mile,
Are the total miles driven the previous year figured in as well? CO2/year per vehicle would seem the most potent behavior changing progressive tax. But then many businesses, especially tourism might really fight that.
Paul, thank you...I tend to go for the first downs rather than the 'Hail Mary' bombs...70-80% solution and all that. I spend considerable effort trying to convince folks not to 'gold-plate' their projects at work...
Your post is very informative, and your conclusions are logical...I agree that what counts is better efficiency, and we will use a mix of different types of technologies and vehicles to recapitalize the light vehicle fleet. Increased walking, riding the bus, car pooling, telecommuting, lots of other gradual, incremental changes hopefully will also occur.
It is heartening to see information about folks adapting their preferences to the reality of higher fuel prices.
I spend considerable effort trying to convince folks not to 'gold-plate' their projects at work...
That is one of the reasons I got out of municipal engineering - I couldn't stand the approach of gold plating everything (or Cadillac engineering, as we called it). Yet municipal engineers and administrators demand it, because they never want anything possible to come back to bite them, nor do they want o have to spend any extra effort in o&m on the project, so they basically ask for cadillac engineering, the designer wants to do it, as they love getting to design the best, and get paid more for it, and the contractor loves it, as they get paid more to do it. But the poor municipal taxpayer is paying for all of this...
I am trying to steer my local muni away from doing a $5m project for composting of sewage sludge (a fully automated cadillac system) towards a $1m version, that would require - (gasp) a full time operator. How much luck do you think I am having?
The subtle change in the car market is good to see. But if you take a look at the link to the UK top ten site, you can see just how far there is to go. There are numerous cars there, like the Kia Rio, that are made in *highly* fuel efficient versions - equal to or exceeding that of complex hybrids - that are not sold here. Mainly because of non-scalable diesel emissions regulations. These vehicles emit 1/5 the emissions per mile of the "clean" F-350, but are not allowed because the emissions per kW-h are higher.
All the solutions for much better mpg exist already, without even needing the ev's, and they aren't being made available. I find that immensely frustrating, but the American people are being kept in the dark, and denied the option to buy these affordable and efficient vehicles.
My partner is arriving in ABQ tonight, until Sat, hope you have some good weather there!
I am trying to steer my local muni away from doing a $5m project for composting of sewage sludge (a fully automated cadillac system) towards a $1m version, that would require - (gasp) a full time operator. How much luck do you think I am having?
I've had the same experience. I reviewed a project proposed by a government client that cost $3M, and recommended they do a 90% version that could have been done for $300k. Yes, they did the Cadillac version...
Budgets are separate pots. You just can't move $4m from 'new works' to 'manpower'.
NAOM
True, but in this case the whole project cost was in their capital budget.
True, but that doesn't make it right. Because of accounting rules, should we spend $4m to avoid paying $60k a year?
Even the interest on borrowing the $4m is more than that operator.
From the taxpayers point of view, it is all one pot, and a bottomless one at that...
I'm noticing taxi fleets switching over to hybrids (Prius, Camry hybrid, etc) as quickly as they can.
I think in the last 12-18 months that there was some kind of "ah ha" tipping point moment for the taxi fleet owner herd: they've decided high fuel prices are here to stay, and that hybrids are a proven, low-cost alternative.
In my local NA big-city hybrids appear to comprise about 15% of taxis, and perhaps 50% of new vehicles. The taxi drivers I've interviewed range from happy to maniacal about their hybrids.
I think in the last 12-18 months that there was some kind of "ah ha" tipping point moment for the taxi fleet owner herd: they've decided high fuel prices are here to stay, and that hybrids are a proven, low-cost alternative.
Well, I guess that goes to show just how behind the times US taxi owners are...
In Vancouver, they have been using Prius for 11 years now, here's a story from the guy who had the first Prius taxi in the world - in 2001!;
Note that many of the taxis here were not crown vics either, many were Toyota Camry and Corollas.
And then, the City went a step further (from Wiki);
Honestly, what were these US taxi owners waiting for?
2$ gas.
A big part of the problem was regulatory - certain vehicles, especially the crown vic, were essentially mandated for a long time.
Still, that's not the whole answer.
My interviews indicate it was partly fear of unexpected maintenance costs. The fleet owners had standardized on certain US vehicles, so they had a limited inventory list of cheap parts, and they could do almost all maintenance inhouse. They were afraid of being held captive by dealers if maintenance was larger than expected.
Now, time has shown that maintenance isn't a problem.
I guess I am surprised by long it has taken them to decide maintenance costs aren't a problem, or that even if they were, fuel costs were a bigger problem still.
They could have had some test priuses out on the road a decade ago - it was obvious that the best situation for these vehicles was continuous city driving - exactly what taxis do.
They could have asked Toyota for the information about how they were working in Vancouver and elsewhere. Toyota actually bought back a couple of cars from that Vancouver guy - at about 300,000km, because they wanted to check the performance of the batteries, pull down all the driveline components for wear measurement, etc.
The info was good enough for the vancouver companies to jump on in 2007, why did these guys need another five years? It has cost them a lot of money in that period. if I was a shareholder I would be demanding answers...
These taxi fleets are mostly family owned private operations.
It's amazing how long change takes sometimes. I order most of my groceries online. I still see many struggling mothers who lives would be much easier with online ordering - they say they're too harried to learn how to do it. Of course, it would only take about an hour to learn how to do it, so that's not really it - it just feels too new and too hard.
The bottom line: humans have a limited capacity for processing new things, and they have to triage which new things they deal with. Energy isn't high on the list for most people.
Yes, that makes sense.
My point of view: we have all of the tech, and all of the analysis we need. The primary problem is political resistance from legacy industries: FF industries and those that are closely related.
Nick: Good points—especially about oil not being so reliable anymore, and about the true cost of fossil fuels being far greater than what we pay at the pump.
The fossil fuel reliability assessment is in some sense for the “good old days” when the resources were cheap and abundant. We’re moving into a much tougher phase. Yes, wars have been fought in connection with oil supply, and new ones are likely on their way. It is exactly because fossil fuels are about to become several notches less reliable that I am worried about how we deal with the problem.
I agree that solar, wind, nuclear, etc. technologies can help us crawl out of the trap, but only if we fret about the future and start bold action now. The techno-optimism I fear is the blithe dismissal that technology will save us from collapse/disaster. Maybe, but I’d rather place my bets on something we can control and get to work like there’s no tomorrow.
But I'll go with Paul on saying that I don't think oil is easily replaced. The Oil Drum would probably not exist as a vibrant forum if this were true.
Yes, I think we agree on many things. The remaining points are important, though.
The fossil fuel reliability assessment is in some sense for the “good old days”
I know what you mean. On the other hand, those days never existed for many parts of the world, and they haven't existed for a long time for the US. Roosevelt struck a Faustian bargain with KSA, and the US has been embroiled in the ME ever since. Look at the US intervention in Iran in 1954, which caused so much grief starting with the anti-US/Shah uprising in 1979. The US has been the Great Satan in Iran ever since, with pretty good justification.
solar, wind, nuclear, etc. technologies can help us crawl out of the trap, but only if we fret about the future and start bold action now.
The forces of reaction (Koch brothers, et al) would like to obscure the progress we've made already. Look at the Prius C: a 75% reduction in fuel consumption over the average US vehicle, starting at less than $20k!
The techno-optimism I fear is the blithe dismissal that technology will save us from collapse/disaster.
I agree. That's the kind of dismissal that comes from CC deniers, who would like to see no action. We need techno-optimism combined with a determination to eliminate FF/oil ASAP.
I think it's very, very important for everyone to realize that oil is very, very costly right now. The US, and other oil importers, is transferring vast income and wealth to exporters, every day.
The US is effectively at war with the Middle East, albeit at a very low level of intensity. That means a war mentality, with circumscribed civil liberties, a vastly expanded military-industrial complex, an enormous diversion of engineering talent away from productive uses towards war technology (UAVs, etc).
Have you ever wondered why US television is dominated by gory police procedurals (CSI, CSI-Miami, Naval-CIS, Law and Order in many flavors, etc,etc)? Americans live with a strong background anxiety, due to fear of terrorism (aka guerrilla warfare, aka asymmetric warfare), and that kind of programming conveys reassurance that the "authorities" have everything under control.
Oil is very, very costly right now. The US, and other oil importers, is transferring vast income and wealth to exporters, every day. The war discussed above costs somewhere above $500B every year: that's around $150 per barrel of imported oil! Just as importantly, the kind of background anxiety discussed above exacts a very, very high cost.
Oil is very costly, right now. We need to replace it ASAP!
I don't think oil is easily replaced.
I think the opponents of change would like us to feel that way.
Do you feel that way based on tech problems, or political barriers?
Nick. I hope you will keep hitting on that one- oil very costly- global climate change dwarfs all other considerations, and I continue to be amazed that all the good people here continue to give it only passing reference when discussing future energy sources.
The cost of ff is the planet.
And,having got into PV and biomass only relatively recently, I see absolutely huge opportunities to make solar and solar-derived energy really work right now, not later when we have doomed our grandkids to an early death.
eg. Today my PV generated half the kw-hrs I used, and the stirling on the wood stove could have given me the rest easily. Would have today except for a string of stupid errors in matching up the burner with the very good 1kW stirliing.
Wood is stored solar energy.
Reminder to skeptics-"hasn't been done" is not at all equal to "can't be done".
Really? The overall result that solar and wind score just slightly lower than fossil fuels seems 'highly' unrealistic to you? In what the author admits is a highly subjective assessment that you are free to tweak as you like?
Really Nick, all you needed to do was to observe that if we can convince people that the 'acceptance' for fossil fuels should be red instead of green, then Coal scores the same as Solar PV. And you can even throw some of it on 'difficulty' too, since everything is likely to be difficult if catastrophic climate change is going on. And if we further decide that 'intermittency is not so important', we can change those to yellows and then Solar PV is equal to any fossil fuel.
All you needed to do was offer your preferred tweaks. No need to call the whole exercise unrealistic.
The overall result that solar and wind score just slightly lower than fossil fuels seems 'highly' unrealistic to you?
First, I don't think renewables scored just slightly lower.
Second, yes, it does seem highly unrealistic.
In what the author admits is a highly subjective assessment that you are free to tweak as you like?
Sure. It seemed to be the broad takeaway from the article.
No need to call the whole exercise unrealistic.
I didn't think that was harsh. I thought it was useful to point out that the overall, broad takeaway from the article was....incorrect.
Yes I believe jaggedben has the right tack and takes care of all of your objections.
First, I don't think renewables scored just slightly lower.
Here I'll do the math
Solar PV 5
Solar Thermal 5
Hydroelectric 5 (upgraded 'abundance' from 'red' to 'yellow' hydro now 18% of the world's electricity-no decline in hydro out put projected-just a slight difference in 'abundance' criteria, didn't start with Tom's total energy available on the planet)
If you downgrade fossil fuels from 'acceptance' from 'green' to 'red' because of the unpriced externalities you have
Petroleum 6
Natural Gas 6
Coal 5
As the easy oil is now gone we probably should downgrade its 'difficulty' from 'green' to 'yellow' now. Deep water, shale, arctic and sub arctic oil production--and that is where the new stuff is coming from--is not Texas/Lousiana onshore, LA basin or Ghawar.
Natural Gas 6
Oil 5
Coal 5
Of course when abundance goes from yellow to green
You have
Solar PV 5
Solar Thermal 5
Hydroelectric 5
Natural Gas 5
Coal 5 then 4 (Coal's abundance would go to red last though)
Petroleum 4
What is it you really don't like about The Matrix Nick?
Further up Heisenberg gives a rough outline of what it would take to refine it and gets to this point
...but now we are talking about a rather broad and deep effort...perhaps scores of people (~ 10 principals on the main Integrated Team, supported by a team of researchers, and probably a separate team to conduct a verification and validation, perhaps another small Red Team, and some other additional outside peer review, then acceptance by a small board of decision makers to make recommendations as policy...probably a 24-month study effort to 'go big'.
I've absolutely no problem with Tom's response
At the same time, the simple and crude matrix tells me most of what I need to know: that our free ride is coming to an end, and that we can't expect our future to look like a continuation of our past. That's big news. We ought to tell someone.
The Fossil Fuel era cannot be looked at as just a continuation of the past that came before it either. We weren't getting to 7 billion from 1 billion in a mere 200 years without eating up all those long, long dead pressure cooked cells.
Fossil Fuel is on heck of a solar energy bank account and we have been tearing through the principal at a hell of a clip. But...
...maybe that is just what we had to do to get the critical masses of people, knowledge and know how to linked together to work our way through the next bottleneck (there have been plenty of bottlenecks in the past) without loosing most of the really important new stuff we just learned...that is as optimistic an outlook as I will throw out there
Luke,
I would argue strongly that fossil fuels should be well below wind, solar and nuclear. This doesn't require deep analysis, or weeks of preparation, just a different point of view on the facts.
Tom says "our free ride is coming to an end, and that we can't expect our future to look like a continuation of our past. That's big news. We ought to tell someone."
I believe this is deeply unrealistic. It suggests that the things that will replace FF are to be feared, and this is not the case - of course, the Koch brothers have an interest in our believing that.
In fact, life will be rather better: cleaner, just as affordable, nicer in many ways. For example, EVs have better handling and performance, are quieter, easier to own and maintain, longer lived and overall rather cheaper. I use relatively little FF, and feel my life is rather better for it. My well insulated house needs less noisy HVAC; my electric train is safer, and has a "chauffeur" who allows me to relax and meditate, work or read for enjoyment.
Perhaps as important, EVs won't require any oil wars, or anti-"terror" campaigns to keep viable. No more screening before flying, or worrying before using the subway. Yay.
Life will be better, not worse.
OTOH, I agree with Tom:
We should get rid of FF ASAP - the longer we stick with FF, the worse life will get.
I believe this is deeply unrealistic.
Well I do always have the big ship batteries thread to go to to get a grasp of what you find realistic. Granted it wouldn't take A Nation Sized Battery but I would be curious to see the math on what it would take to fully battery power all water powered transport.
I would argue strongly that fossil fuels should be well below wind, solar and nuclear. This doesn't require deep analysis, or weeks of preparation, just a different point of view on the facts.
I'll go with at least some systems wide analysis that is not a string of disconnected anecdotes.
For example, EVs have better handling and performance, are quieter, easier to own and maintain, longer lived and overall rather cheaper. I use relatively little FF, and feel my life is rather better for it. My well insulated house needs less noisy HVAC; my electric train is safer, and has a "chauffeur" who allows me to relax and meditate, work or read for enjoyment.
Plenty of fossil fuel was used put together all the elements of your life you so enjoy. So it all could be done without them. So what. How much, how fast at what cost--Tom's analysis approaches that from one angle. It is useful. Your entire analysis of fossil fuel replacement is 'everything we do with it could be done without it...so everything is going to roll along honky dory.' It goes no deeper.
It suggests that the things that will replace FF are to be feared, and this is not the case
I have not found suggestion of the sort in any of Tom's analyses. And his fossil fuel matrix that you so fear really does explain our relationship to fossil fuel here and now rather well. Tom is more pessimistic than I maybe. I've settled in a resource rich but fairly egalitarian place...keeps me pretty chipper, but then I've put great distance between myself and the millions I was born amongst...that suggests something other than general optimism about human society.
Perhaps as important, EVs won't require any oil wars, or anti-"terror" campaigns to keep viable. No more screening before flying, or worrying before using the subway. Yay.
Don't worry we will find stuff to kill each other over long after fossil fuel fades from importance. We found plenty before it made the scene. Land and water (territory) have always been favorites but the conflicts really pick up steam when belief systems are used to marshal the troops. I truly can't see any shortage of belief systems which radically oppose each other in the future...maybe I should adjust my the future focus wheel just a tad...Nope, no Peak Belief in sight.
It's too bad we didn't finish that shipping conversation. I needed to clarify for you that the batteries were never expected to provide 100% of ship's power, or to power full transpacific trips. They were intended to provide a baseline for short-leg coal-style trips in combination with wind, solar and liquid fuel backup.
Yes, we need some systems analysis. I forget that other people haven't been analyzing this for decades, personally and professionally. To me it all seems simple, by now.
OTOH, don't you feel CC is a gamechanger? Wouldn't you agree that oil is very unreliable, and has been for decades? Heck, the US security establishment obviously thinks that way, or it wouldn't be willing to invest in multi-$trillion oil wars.
So it all could be done without them. So what.
So, that's important. Most of Tom's analysis is on the very long-term possibilities. It's valuable to clarify that in the long-term, energy needs can be handled elegantly, effectively, affordably, etc.
Yes, the transition is an important question. Regrettably, I didn't have time to contribute to Tom's analysis of that, which he called the Energy Trap.
"It suggests that the things that will replace FF are to be feared, and this is not the case" - I have not found suggestion of the sort in any of Tom's analyses.
That seemed to be a major takeaway to me: "What this post and the series preceding it demonstrates is that we do not have a delightful menu from which to select our future. Most of the options leave a bad taste of one form or the other."
I disagree with the overall impression this creates, which I interpret as meaning that the status quo is easier and more comfortable.
I agree with Tom's message that a transition from FF is a large and complex effort, and should start ASAP. OTOH, it's not really any larger or more complex than FF: it's just different.
Don't worry we will find stuff to kill each other over long after fossil fuel fades from importance.
Well, I'd love to eliminate this particular excuse...
It's too bad we didn't finish that shipping conversation
Believe me that conversation was finished when the forward loading of costs was roughly calculated. Even at coal leg sized (which is the battery powered ship Falstaff's calculations produced) the forward loading of costs makes super large batteries prohibitive. Forward cost loading/payback time is a huge consideration...even for the equivalent of new car cost 20 panel PV system I am contemplating.
Regrettably, I didn't have time to contribute to Tom's analysis of that, which he called the Energy Trap
I agree that was Tom's worst analysis of this series-if you can call what he did in that post analysis at all. There were big flaws in it. The real trap in that post was the attraction of a gross oversimplification. I wish you could have chimed in.
OTOH, don't you feel CC is a gamechanger?
CC? Carbon capture, not sure if that is what you meant? Factoring carbon capture and storage (CCS) in certainly raises the cost of coal power which would level the playing field a lot...didn't know that CCS implementation had reached game changing status just yet. Of course carbon release may well already be a huge game changer. Oh CC that is what you meant. I don't believe it will be the game changer in our economic system until it squashes it. Every time a major economy stalls less and less regulated coal is what I believe will be used to fire it back up. I truly hope that my beliefs on this matter are in error.
OTOH, it's not really any larger or more complex than FF: it's just different.
Stating it like that sidesteps or conflates the real issues. Fossil fuels entered the scene when the system was relatively small and simple and they were able to edge there way in bit at a time. What has to replace fossil fuel has to step in and replace it in a huge and complex system--as system that was built out the way abundant and cheap fossil fuels directed it would be built out.
That is the strength of Tom's Matrix design. It is loaded to make fossil fuels look good--which is the way our economy is loaded NOW. I've no doubt that fossil fuel could be phased out fairly painlessly
1. IF the oil production plateau we seem to have reached can be extended long enough (its even better if there is a still a bit of a peak in the future)
2.IF the decline after the plateau is gentle enough
3.IF we dedicate enough resources and effort to getting beyond fossil fuel soon enough.
It is very hard to tell at the moment if increased oil prices and the economic activity they engender will give us the first two IFs. Unfortunately that last IF is likely going to require investment and build out to move in advance of the market signal. The impetus for that sort of behavior has generally been government policy. Unfortunately forward thinking policy of the US government is very much stymied by the very short election cycle.
Well, I'd love to eliminate this particular excuse...
No doubt. Oil called a lot of the biggest shots in WWII. Once in the war secure supplies of oil were critical to success. Territory (Palestine) deeply underlies the Beliefs central in to Israel vs Iran. Twenty percent of the world's oil daily flow sails within small craft range of the shores of the latter daily...
...yeah you could say oil is potentially very unreliable...
the forward loading of costs makes super large batteries prohibitive.
First, I wasn't doing a cost analysis, I was doing the kind of physics-based analysis that Tom does. I was answering the question: "Will a battery powerful enough to power a conventional container-ship fit on the ship?".
2nd, Falstaff's assumption of $400/kWh is far too high: that's higher than current costs for the kind of batteries that would be used here.
Keep in mind that this kind of large-ship fleet would have very different needs than light ground vehicles: infrastructure would be far more limited and easier to provide, which would allow very different choices. There would be a wide range of possible batteries, like metal-air, advanced lead-acid and flow-batteries (like Vanadium-redox). Finally, these kinds of batteries won't be needed for many decades: costs will fall quite a bit by then. All in all, costs would be far lower.
More later...
the forward loading of costs makes super large batteries prohibitive I'll hold to that as battery cost plus interetest on a Maersk sized battery alone was what at least 10x the cost of the whole boat as built in our rough calcs. No analysis was done of oil to electric costs, freight capacity lost. Going to ships that had to port more often would add additional costs. Just the wrong place to start in the shipping world.
Like I said last time around, show batteries operating the pusher tug river and canal barge fleets first. Much more practical, as dedicated battery barge units could be towed by pushers and swapped on the fly. And grid hookups for charging present no great logistical challenge on inland waterways.
So far nothing very heavy is being pushed very far for very long by batteries. Baby steps first. Start with what is here now, (that is the starting point for the physics-based analysis Tom has been doing). Lead acid is the cheapest and most reliable at this time--run the numbers on it first. Then go to the more expensive but lighter battery systems. You will be able to see the weight and bulk to cost tradeoffs quite readily in this way.
See where we are right now on the simplest type freight movement overwater by battery powered craft using batteries we can make today. Then you will have an actual baseline to work from, one to which all other type battery systems can be compared. If battery powered tugs do not make the grade at this time at least you will have real numbers to tell you what battery improvements will have to be made for them to become cost effective in the future.
Once you have river and canal shipping down you might be ready to move out into and eventually even across the sea...
The calculations are straightforward: diesel at $4 / (40kWhrs/gallon x 35% efficiency) = about 30 cents per KWhr.
So, night time I/C power is perhaps $.04/kWhr, so that leaves about $.25 for the battery.
$.25 x (400 cycles x 80% DOD) = $80/kWhr.
So, that's our budget for lead-acid.
**Edit
Now, Lithium iron phosphate (LiPO) is better. It costs in the range of $350/kWhr, and has a cycle life of around 3,000 cycles. That's about 12 cents per kWhr, which is competitive with $2.25/gallon diesel.
The difficulty with that is that one needs to use about 300 cycles per year to capitalize on that. Lower duty cycles will increase costs proportionately. So, at the moment only very short ranges would be really economical. That means that the best application right now would be where overnight charging is possible - as you suggest, inland and close-coastal operations.
Of course that set of calculations is only the tip of the iceberg. Lots of info on tugs to wade through. I might look into it more later--wouldn't be a bad place to start researching a possible article.
Old 1970's report gave me these bulk transport efficiencies: barge 500-700 BTU per ton-mile, rail 300-700 BTU per ton-mile, oil pipeline 400-500 BTU per ton-mile. Personally I have no idea how to use that tidbit, and I've no idea if that range of numbers is now totally out of date.
I've only skimmed this article but a couple quick facts from it. 'A tugboat plying inland waters can typically move a ton of freight more than 51,000 miles before emitting one ton of greenhouse gas. A truck, by contrast, releases nearly three times as much greenhouse gas over the same distance."
Just above that in the same paragraph 'Henry Hoffman estimated that a freight-carrying barge traveling from Brownsville, Texas to Tampa Bay, Florida, consumed about 9,000 gallons of diesel fuel...trucks making the same run would use more the 53,000 gallons" Some of the newer inland towing tugs are 6,800 HP but 400 to 2000 HP is typical of tugs in service now.
Pretty skeletal stuff for someone with far better chops than myself to figure how long a run moving how much freight would be a minimum a battery powered tug would have to manage to be useful. Then battery size could be figured, which would have to include significant spare capacity above full discharge for safety (dead in the water with a load of barges not a good thing) and spare capacity for battery swaps as well if they were found the best solution.
Since water freight moves round the clock, using the lowest electrical rates assuming all charge would be done at night likely would not fly. No doubt as much low rate electricity would be used as practicable but other juice would be needed so the real price of power would be a blend of rates, thus your cost per kWh will likely need significant upward adjustment once beyond the pilot project stage...
Now, Lithium iron phosphate (LiPO) is better. It costs in the range of $350/kWhr, and has a cycle life of around 3,000 cycles. That's about 12 cents per kWhr, which is competitive with $2.25/gallon diesel.
Not quite, we now have to include the forward loading of principal plus interest payments on the the battery system (reductions due to electric motor systems vs diesel systems also included). Long, long way to go before we know anything here. But I've a strange feeling that relative to the status quo...the battery option truly doesn't look all that attractive...but even it my guess is correct that is not to say that somewhere down the road the numbers won't work out favorably for first for some simpler applications and then other tougher ones. Completing this analysis would at least give us a real starting point in the real world.
My rule of thumb is that water freight is 3x more efficient than rail, which in turn is 3x more efficient than long-haul trucking.
A couple of thoughts: I think most transportation will be most efficient in the next several decades running as an Extended Range EV. IOW, the majority of daily work will be done by the battery, but long trips will be done with liquid fuel. That allows the batttery to do what it does best: daily charging, mostly at the cheapest times, but makes the equipment as flexible as ever.
Almost everything will go electric sooner or later. Heck, diesel trains are electric now, and The Emma Maersk is partly electric right now. New US DOD tanks are EREV. Navy vessels including short range small ones and aircraft carriers are going to electric motors. Diesel subs have always been EREV.
If the diesel supplies the electric motor directly, like in diesel trains, then it's not big deal to add a battery, and expand it as the optimal battery size grows.
Keep in mind that this brave new world of expensive diesel is very new: that's why we haven't seen much innovation in electric ship propulsion until pretty recently.
The numbers I have seen and use are 100 ton-mpg for truck, 400-500 for rail and 1000 for ship.
You battery cost calculation is an interesting approach.
I think you are being a bit harsh on lead acid, at 400 cycles to 80%, you can get better batteries than that, though they cost more, of course. I did the calc once comparing the kwh*cycles*DoD and as I recall, the battery stored almost the same amount whether you went to 30, 50 or 80% of DoD.
Large lead acids may be different - I did read once about a buy who had surplus 1950's era submarine batteries for his off grid house, and were still going strong after 30 years! But his DoD was likely pretty low.
It seems with Li batteries, your problem is, as Luke alludes to, the up front cost, but overall they are better.
I have always wondered about using them on trains, since they are already diesel-electric. If the loco was pulling a battery tender, the batteries could be swapped out when there is a driver change. But you need a LOT of batteries to make a difference. Say the tender has 100 tons of batteries on board. Lead acids are about 25kg/kWh, so you have 4,000 kWh (and a cost of about $300k). For a train with three engines, combined output of about 10,000kW, that is less than half an hour run time. If the batteries get cycled once a day, then they save 4000*0.8*0.3*365=$350k. So at 80% DoD, they pay for themselves in 300 cycles, but at 400 they are dead - not much profit there..
The lithiums at 10x the life and 4x the cost, come in at (for 100 tons) 10,000kwh, $4m, and over their 3000 cycles (8years) save $7.2m. a 22% ROI, but only for 8years.
Trains are also an interesting one for solar. If the roofs of a 100 unit boxcar train were covered in panels, you would have about 450kW of panels (costing say $900k installed). They are lying flat, so assume they get 15% capacity (train is in the sunny south) and they produce 590,000kWh/year. At $0.3/kWh, that is $177k/yr, a 20% ROI, with no swapping of batteries every day, and they last for 20+ years.
Solar panels on the roof of reefer trucks would have similar payback - I don't know why this isn't done...
With the weight and process advantages of using power lines over the track, and then quite concievably also having allotments of PV along the Rail's Right-of-Way to help feed it, I think the rooftop PV would not get chosen as it is more vulnerable to damage, and the available area is fairly limited by comparison.
The roof top PV is not without disadvantages, but the disadvantage for electrification is the *massive* capital cost of stringing wires and getting all new locomotives.
Better than my PV example is for the RR's to go to LNG
But if electrification were to happen, then it opens up the possibility for input from all sorts of sources along the way - primarily wind.
Better than my PV example is for the RR's to go to LNG
I wonder about CNG vs LNG?
Railroads aren't excited about building electrification infrastructure, in part because some rail gets relatively low levels of traffic, and in part because it may raise property taxes. Investments in rolling stock would be more attractive.
The thing to keep in mind is that both cheap PV and LiPO batteries are relatively new. So, railroads haven't had time to really think about them yet.
Also, fuel is much less important to railroads than to trucks - they seem to think of fuel as a pesky inconvenience, not something to manage and minimize.
That will change, as they realize the opportunities for savings.
Much work been done with li-ion arrays of that size? Cell balancing and the like would seem important as batteries aged, and more cells more issues. Were you giving a low ball cycle number to account for that? I'd assume there were other design necessities would cut into that $7.2m before we started talking about capital cost but that's a healthy ROI you are starting with.
That's about 450 Chevy Volt batteries per tender--how many thousand tenders? That was the point I was making on materials availabilty (down thread to Nick) no one is running numbers that include implementation of this heavy duty stuff on a large scale, just car/light truck demands.
Swapping battery tenders, or even packs does sound like switchyard work.
The solar panel idea is interesting, of course boxcars can end up all over North America. They could only get so many cars out fitted at a time. If one car was in between the solar panelled car/s and the batteries they were charging (it seems it would be very complex to try and feed their power to anything else) that was not wired for panel hookup-very likely with the inventory of rolling stock-you would have stranded panels that had nowhere to dump their load. Don't know if that is an issue to panel life but it certainly is an issue to trying to get the system to work.
You can see how it might cause a bit of a hassle trying to work that out in switchyards--I've never looked into but I'd guess the time/money factor already directs the order in which cars are connected.
Reefer trucks, and possibly reefer railroad cars seem to get around a lot of the above, though they would need dual systems like anything else using intermittant renewables that needs steady power.
Bigger systems are easier: economies of scale, concentrated infrastructure, central control & ownership, fleet management, etc, etc.
The vehicles are bigger, but there are far fewer: there are about 230M light vehicles in the US - as a SWAG there are probably .01% as many train locomotives, so even if they're 500x as large, the total material consumption is at least an order of magnitude smaller.
Swapping battery tenders, or even packs does sound like switchyard work.
I can imagine catenary installed at each station, for quick recharges.
Reefer trucks, and possibly reefer railroad cars seem to get around a lot of the above, though they would need dual systems like anything else using intermittant renewables that needs steady power.
The PV would put out DC, which could be connected directly. If they're OEM, the wiring would seem to be pretty simple, and the BOS costs very small.
More later...
The overhead lines (catenary) for recharging is a good idea, though installing them at switchyards would be a pain, and may interfere with other operations - there is not much spare space between tracks there.
I'm actually still not sold on my own concept here. The Li-ion case saves $900k/yr, but you have $4m for batteries and probably at least another $500k for the tender, pus the charging infrastructure... Takes at least five years to get your money back and then you finally make money for three before you get to junk the batteries and start again.
If I was the RR, I would be waiting for battery prices to come down further, and for battery performance and diesel prices to go up further. That said, I would look into the concept and set up a battery switching locomotive (with diesel backup) and play with it (as we all like to play with our train sets!) for a few years to see how it performed, what the actual charging times are like, etc etc.
There may also be some short haul routes where this concept would work better, that are operated by smaller regional RR's.
In answer to your question on CNG v LNG, it would simply come down to the costs. A CNG tanker would need to be either one very large 3000psi pressure tank, or a whole bunch of smaller ones. Neither currently exists, and you would still have less capacity per tender than LNG. BUT it is easier to have CNG compressor stations than LNG units. Also, CNG is about 2.5 x the volume of the same energy as LNG.
LNG tank cars do already exist, about 110 of them in service (currently used for shipping liquid ethylene)
http://www.lngexpress.com/TR/presentations/020906/Scott%20Nason020906.pdf
Each car can hold 65 tons of LNG - or about 3120GJ . This is the equivalent to 350,000kWh of battery storage (engine efficiency at 40%), or 3,500 *tons* of Li-ion batteries - costing $140m. It would also be 35 hrs run time for a 10,000kW locomotive.
With NG cheap and likely to stay so for a while, and the entry costs are lower. You need your CNG/LNG tenders, and the fueling stations, and then just add dual fuelling system to your locomotives, and you don;t need to do them all at once. Once you are running on NG, you energy cost is 1/4 that of diesel. Not quite as good as 1/8 the cost with off peak elec, but the batteries bring that back up.
Overall for the RR's I'd say that NG is a much safer bet, has much lower capital requirements, and better ROI. I would still start out playing with some LNG switchers, but that's just because I like playing with train sets...
I really wasn't too concerned about the CNG/LNG--I was seeing issues, big ones, of trying to put solar panels on boxcars and make the system work, unless we had a magic wand to equip all the boxcars at once. Passenger cars would be an entirely different story, smaller trains a lot less moving of cars between trains. That seems a good place to start.
Your battery powered switch locomotive is a cousin of the hybrid harbor tugs I mentioned. If the grants those babies took is any indication something will have to force the issue $ wise. Emission standards are a lever but diesel really is still quite inexpensive when it is moving tonnage around.
There might be a trade-off for catenary line distribution and battery tenders that makes most sense. Certainly a whole lot more options when your transporting across terra firma than over the oceans deep. The maritime industry worked steady to get ship propulsion systems below decks and shielded from the elements, reversing that process (sails and solar) will bring inconveniences at the very least. I've worked on a few decks in whole gales and higher. It is amazing what the wind and wave action can force salt water into.
Keep in mind that this brave new world of expensive diesel is very new: that's why we haven't seen much innovation in electric ship propulsion until pretty recently.
Diesel isn't expensive yet, I can still afford to buy fresh flowers flown into interior Alaska in February ?-)
No one has been arguing against electric motors (the designs keep evolving) in all these threads, just against the likelihood of very heavy, moving very far with battery supplied electric power not supplemented by on-board generators--those are powered by fossil fuel these days--we will see what comes later. EREV is a sensible route (we are certainly hoping to have a wide range of choices next time we purchase a household rig) and can be incentivized by public policy however in the tugboat world that takes some big incentives right now
first hybrid tug
Named the Carolyn Dorothy, it runs on four diesel engines and 126 batteries. It was financed by the two ports and the South Coast Air Quality Management District to the tune of $1.35 million. The vessel was built by Foss Maritime, based in Seattle, and began operational duty in January of 2009.
second hybrid tug
Foss will retrofit an existing tug with hybrid technology for service in San Pedro Bay, thanks to a $1 million grant from the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to the Port. The project will be implemented through a partnership between Foss, the Port of Long Beach, and the Port of Los Angeles.
Of course government grants are getting rarer these days. Fuel prices aren't high enough to warrant the front loading of a very large a battery cost...yet. However situation is fluid.
...but just how far down the road is the next step up from Li-ion?
Will it have the same likely material availability issues. The massive industrial scale battery arrays we are speaking of would be what relative to the arrays needed to support small personal short trip transport. Argonne lab did this analysis focusing on the car/light truck segment. In its conclusion it did mention that there is a rapidly decreasing return as electric range is extended-that argues against batteries being much of a component in vehicles that must travel long distances between stops. The conclusion also states 'that larger vehicles with longer ranges require more material so heavy reliance on pure electric could eventually strain the supplies of lithium and cobalt.' Their calculations included nothing that approached ship sized, or locomotive sized, or even tractor trailer sized batteries. Wonder what that does to the numbers?
The plus I can see for hybrid in long distance overland haulers is the ability to use gravity to generate power on steep enough downgrades. I would classify gravity as 'abundant' It's just we have to spend more energy working against it than we get back out of it when it is working for us--that is certainly evident every time I go cross country skiing. Speaking of that I'd better go and wax up?-)
EREV is a sensible route
That's really what I've been proposing. Please read the whole thing at http://energyfaq.blogspot.com/2008/09/can-shipping-survive-peak-oil.html
in the tugboat world that takes some big incentives right now
The demo models are always very expensive.
Argonne lab did ... mention that there is a rapidly decreasing return as electric range is extended-that argues against batteries being much of a component in vehicles that must travel long distances between stops.
Yes: that's the argument for EREV. Please note that an EREV with 40 mile EV range covers 80% of the average drivers miles. If the ICE portion has decent efficiency then fuel consumption would be reduced by 90% over the average US vehicle. That amount of fuel could be covered by current ethanol production.
Their calculations included nothing that approached ship sized, or locomotive sized, or even tractor trailer sized batteries. Wonder what that does to the numbers?
It doesn't change them much. Large fleets can install infrastructure more easily. OTOH, very large diesels are more efficient, so the two story marine diesels tip the balance a little in the other direction. All in all, I'd say the infrastructure portion is a bit more important.
To continue on the higher comment:
I agree that was Tom's worst analysis of this series-if you can call what he did in that post analysis at all. There were big flaws in it. The real trap in that post was the attraction of a gross oversimplification. I wish you could have chimed in.
Thanks. Yeah, I was surprised by it's superficiality. Fortunately, several other people gave good comments: 1) the global curve won't be bell shaped because of price feedback - field or region decline curves don't cause price feedback; and oil may decline soon, but not NG or coal, so 2% decline anytie soon is unrealistic.
CC that is what you meant. I don't believe it will be the game changer in our economic system until it squashes it.
It should have a gamechanging impact on a realistic analysis.
What has to replace fossil fuel has to step in and replace it in a huge and complex system
Not really. EVs can drop in; freight rail is here; even wind farms are pretty straighforward.
yeah you could say oil is potentially very unreliable...
Yeah!
It should have a gamechanging impact on a realistic analysis.
should being the operative word--steep, steep future discount rate being the human modus operandi--
Not really. EVs can drop in; freight rail is here; even wind farms are pretty straightforward.
I didn't say the technologies we need to use are overly complex but rather the huge complex system fossil fuel use has built out is far more suited to continued fossil fuel use than to dropping anything else right in. This is especially true of the transport which is only involved in everything, a bright shiny attitude does not allay my concerns. As you said it is all about the transition time which my points 1-3 expand some. Of course my final point stressing oil's potential unreliability is an ever present Sword of Damocles but because of the steep future discount rates it seems to be having minimal effects on present behavior.
Oh, one more thing Tom left out:
there's enormous slack in our current energy use: single passenger SUV commutes can be replaced pretty easily by two people in a Prius, and get 85% fuel consumption reductions.
good point to keep in mind--it is very important...
I finally worked my way to the end of the tug article I linked-with a link that apparently does not work so I will go to my memory. In the last paragraph it mentions the introduction of the first hybrid tugs-though a grant of a million dollars was involved.
One other little cool tidbit it brings up was that Crowley Marine Services began in 1892 when Thomas Crowley acquired an 18' Whitehall rowboat and began transporting personnel and stores to ships anchored in San Francisco Bay. Classic.
Tom's 'Matrix' effort is commendable.
It would be nice to see DOE reach out to the FFRDCs (Federally-Funded Research and Development Centers) and other smart folks (such as Tom and some other folks from outside the FFRDC/DOE community, including some folks who frequent this site) to take this 'Matrix' construct and flesh it out more, analyze various courses of action, and have the President take the findings/recommendations to the public.
"What good is a Doomsday Device if you don't tell anyone about it?"
Dr. Strangelove
The exercise is wasted.
Do the Math rules LENR out of court.
Energy spent on LENR is wasted.
Either LENR is possible or large quantity sub-microscale integrated chip manufacturing is possible.
Guess what we are communicating using?
That's an interesting observation, but I don't know much about why that'd be the case. Could you explain it?
LENR is depending on the possibility of energetic reactions happening in a solid-state matrix that violate current understandings of quantum and solid-state physics.
High volume production of small feature size integrated circuits depends on an accurate understanding of quantum and solid state physics without any unexpected high-energy events occuring to mess up the works.
If the LENR folks are correct and there is something happening that can produce useful power from the configurations they are claiming, the IC folks should be observing (and reporting) anomolous results with quality control in their more advanced research and production facilities already (probably some time ago when they moved to copper interconnects).
Sorry to be a bit ignorant on the thermodynamics front. Can someone explain why solar thermal would not be possible at a residential scale? Whats holding it back? It seems like a simple technology with the huge benefit of thermal storage for overnight and cloudy day production. If it were able to be do e at home it would rise to the top of this matrix. Has anyone tried to build such a system?
Thanks for a great post, for energizing such great comments.
I assume you mean solar thermal electric generation, as low grade space and water heating is practical. I think it is a matter of the cost per watt, and how that scales with size. Clearly any of the solar methods that rely upon a high degree of concentration require accurate 2axis trackers. I doubt these scale down very well below below a few meters size. For small systems lots of tiny heliostats, each of which must be separatlt aimed independently just wouldn't make sense, so you end up with something like a steerable dish. Who that that who just threw in the towel, they had what reminded one of a radio telescope heating a sterling engine. They couldn't compete against flat plate PV. And this is before attempting thermal storage. For thermal storage, you have an area/volume relationship for your heat storage tank. The bigger you make it, the longer it retains heat (for a given thickness of insulation), and the less insulation per gallon of storage media. So it is hard to make it scale up.
Now some of the CPV schemes out there, seem to have a unit size of around 10KW, which might cover two to three residences, so these just might be feasable on a neighborhood scale. But I suspect O&M costs would be a lot greater for scattered single units, than for a farm of them.
Yes, the economies of scale for concentrating solar thermal (to electricity) are substanatial - i.e. small systems become very expensive per W, and you are better to just go with PV.
There have ben lots of attempts at doing small scale csp using a refrigerant style ORC system (needs temps 8-150C), but the need for tracking collectors is a big pain in the rear.
Doing the thermal storage at small scale is inefficient - you are better off to go with batteries, where there are no small scale penalties.
Well, I know I sound like a broken record, but in fact, the record is not broken, it's playing along fine, just nobody listening,
Small and very small high performance thermal machines exist- see NASA space isotope power- and there is nothing in the laws of physics that says they can't be cheap as well as VERY reliable and thermally efficient.
And people I know have done a LOT of careful study on stirling vs PV and have decided that PV is great but stirling solar will win in the end- for a very simple reason- it can use stored energy or combustion to run every day all day and all year. That makes a whale of a lot of difference in cost/watt.
Hi Wimbi,
The reason why no one is listening is because no one can go out and by the record!
There is no off the shelf stirling system available at anything like a competitive cost to PV, and you still need a fuel source.
If you want that fuel to be solar, then you need a concentrating system of some sort - likely a 2-axis tracker. And if you have that, economics of just fitting it with PV get even better.
The fact that NASA has used them for decades is irrelevant - you can do anything (except fusion) with a NASA budget. The fact that various companies have been trying to produce them commercially for decades, and almost all have failed, is what is relevant.
Don;t get me wrong, I wish you success, but given that you haven't yet succeeded, and neither has anyone else, I just don;t see credence to saying it will win in the end.
I think the ORC's (and soon the SCO2 cycle machines), like these, will win out ahead of stirlings;
http://www.infinityturbine.com/ORC/ITmini.html
NASA has been using multi-junction solar cells in (unconcentrated) space applications for years. That doesn't mean they are a good choice on the ground. In space no one can here your accountant scream (with appologies to Alien). But on the ground, accountants rule the roost.
Hi, Paul, I am reminded of the conversation between generals Westmoreland and Giap after the late unlamented little dustup in south Asia.
W-"We defeated you in every battle "
G- "True and irrelevant.'
I would love to bet you a dime for a donut on this one. But it would be unfair.
The stirling sitting out in my cold shop waiting for me to get my wits together on the wood burner has the following properties:
60 Hz 120 VAC 1kW.
20 kg/kw- engine-alternator
no metal above 304 SS in cost, and that only in the hot part
no machining requirements above standard automotive.
engine-alternator efficiency about 22%, easily improved
projected mean time to failure above 20,000 hrs.
hermetically sealed. no user maintenance of engine
Of course you can't buy it, neither can I. It was a bastard offspring of the lord of the manor and the serving wench ( fancy space engine and a air compressor) and has no siblings.
The reason we can't buy this little wonder is that when I try to get the moneybags out to look at it they go to famous consultants like PN and he says-- _above quote, --and they Quit. goddam ya!
That was a joke. Just a joke. An attempted joke, anyhow. Thanks for the nice pictures of the ORC.
Wimbi, I feel for you when it comes to getting any moneybags to buck up.
You are facing up against a century of mass production for ICE's, and a fair amount of expertise in ORC's too.
The one advantage of the stirling over ORc is the ability to operate at higher temperatures, and higher efficiency, but all previous attempts to actually do this have ended up being very complex, and then failed.
It sounds like your system is better/simpler, which is great.
If you can't get anyone to invest, then what about licensing the plans?
GEK gasifier started out that way - though they now offer them for free - and just make the kits in various stages of completion.
Since they actually have stuff up and running that people can see, people started buying (very few have actually build from scratch from the free plans).
And now they have had DoE come to them and pay them to do a 100kW trial...
If you've got the thing running, I think the best thing you can do is then put it up on the net and see who bites.
I also think that the wood burner is - at this point - of secondary importance. There are many ways to get heat to a stirling. I am sitting 500 yds from a landfill gas flare that runs 24/7, waiting for something to be done, but gas is too dirty for an ICE - can you spot the opportunity there?
Other people can innovate on the heat supply - but they don't have a working stirling.
Think of it as like the iphone - that's the key part, and lots of people can write apps for that.
So too with the stirling, get it working, and producing power, and you'll be written up in Popular Mechanics soon enough.
Ben Peterson did that, and now he's up and selling his Victory Gasifier - the small version - powering 3-5kW ICE's might work for your engine too - gives you a nice, hot, controllable flame, were and when you want it...
http://gasifier.wpengine.com/products
Paul, thanks for the informative response to my little list of woes. The engine I now have at home was used before as a demo with both propane and wood pellets, and ran just fine, I got it out of the warehouse of dead prototypes and, full of baseless bravado, just tried to toss it on a quite ordinary wood stove in my workshop. Much too messy and hard to keep running.
The stirling itself is fine, and would be cheap if it ever went into large scale production, as indicated by its commodity costs. But it does not belong to me.
So now I am just falling back on the proven pellet burner that worked just great about a decade ago. My target is a thing that would appeal to off grid people who want to top off their battery on cloudy days with their wood stove instead of firing up the hated honda.
(Cheap and simple and using universally available fuel) is my payoff function for the system optimization.
"It should be the simplest possible, but not simpler than that"--Einstein,
Wimbi, if you are looking for a simpler wood burning solution than the wood stove, what about a rocket stove, or even the woodgas "mega" stove - very simple and cheap;
http://www.woodgas-stove.com/
and they are great for cooking too!
All good ideas I have looked at. What I need, and I think the pellet burner gives, is a thing that you pour say 4kW-hrs worth of pellets into, fire it up and walk off. 4Kw-hrs later, the engine sees the battery has reached its preset voltage and shuts off the air to the pellets, and then everything peacefully goes to sleep, with an empty pellet hopper, proving how good I was at fuel rate guessing.
I tried the pellet burner on a dummy head last night, and it worked. Just a little cockeyed on the temperature distribution. All I gotta do now is tweak it a little here and there to redistribute the heat flow and there we are. (ha, ha ha, tell me another one)
I just don't think that pellets - as a fuel - are the way to go. You are dependent upon someone else to make them,a nd they don;t really store that well.
Something that runs on wood pieces, chunks or chips, well, you can find plenty of fuel for that.
If you are independent enough to be off grid, why then have a device that is dependent on outside sourced pellets?
Right, Paul, I agree with all that. My wife just told me the same thing- she has got all excited about off grid, and is not the least inhibited in her arithmetical comparisons.
She does all the shopping, and didn't like the price of those two sacks of pellets I asked her to get. She points out that we have tons of wood chips (mulch/fuel), and I am sure they can do the job, but for the moment, I don't have time to slap together a chip gobbler for my engine.
My momentary target is just to show a bunch of skeptics that wood will make electricity by several methods. The gasifier-IC engine is certainly one, but what I and lots of others want is a small fire-and-forget non-IC engine to boost the PV on cloudy days. I happen to have one, so I am packaging it for a demo, temporarily using sinful wood pellets.
I can understand the simplicity of pellets for doing you demo - i did say the fuel is secondary, though a "close" second..
Well, when you do do your demo, this "skeptic" would love to see some of the results (email in profile).
Given the SES bankruptcy, the patent on the Stirling dish which holds the world solar electricity efficiency record is up for sale. The patent was developed by Southern California Edison and Honeywell at a cost of about $25M. It was sold in 1997 or so for $1M, when SCE's R&D department was disbanded as part of deregulation. That was parlayed into SES, and some billion dollar deals. At the time SCE sold the patent, the cost per watt was about $10. The SES folks proclaimed they could get that down to $1 thru mass production. If they had they'd be building the bulk power scale plants they promised by now. If I had a spare million, and was offered the IP back for $1M, I'd pay it in a heartbeat. I actually think we could get the cost down to $1/W. I doubt the IP will go that cheap anyway. The disadvantage over solar tower or parabolic trough solar thermal (with a large central synchronous steam generator) is that the small generating units would be relatively hard to fuel on gas (for backup) and have lousy grid characteristics. The advantage is the efficiency.
My first thought was, none of these will suffice; then I thought, any of them will suffice.
The delimiting factor is population of HSS on planet Earth. With a population of 7 B [p = > s] people, nothing is going to work. With a sustainable population [p = or < s] any of them will do.
We are all worried about the wrong thing. Of course, the Pope and the legions of wacky religio-conservatives won't hear about birth control. Nor will the legions of wacky BAU econo-conservatives.
Hence, our predicament is suriving the natural destruction of population ahead. If we can manage that with some knowledge and tech base intact, we may have a chance. But I wouldn't want to give odds on that.
Craig
Exactly my thought, zaph. Thanks.
Why the "new challenges ... liquid sodium" ???
That seems insane to me.
Use of liquid salts, specifically LiF-BeF2 seems the rational way to go,
with the U233 fuel/breeding Th dissolved in the salts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor#The_Molten-Salt_Reactor...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor
The reprocessing is done on-site, in a continuous or semi-continuous fashion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_Salt_Reactor_Experiment
A detailed proposal by some guys who worked on the MSRE:
http://www.energyfromthorium.com/pdf/NAT_MSBRdesign.pdf
Hopefully one can get a sense of the level of detail that has been worked through already.
Why would one go to the trouble of making solid fuel elements, only to have to dissolve them to reprocess them?
Sodium and NaK alloys have been very problematic: they're very flammable
(burning in air or water), are corrosive and you can't see through them.
The use of liquid alkali metals has resulted in numerous failures/problems, just some:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monju_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Monju_sodium_leak...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_1#Fermi_1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix#Operation
If fluoride salts are molten, the ions can recombine, so very little free fluorine is available (the only problem with free F was after the MSRE was shutdown and left alone for years).
n.b. Nixon didn't like the bad news that Alvin Weinberg gave when voicing doubts about the safety of light water reactors or Nixon's preferred alternative (liquid metal fast breeders - which can make bomb material).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_M._Weinberg#Weinberg.27s_Firing_impac...
While I agree there is some work to be done on commercial thorium reactors,
using liquid sodium seems about 6 steps backwards.
I fear the greatest threat to nuclear power is not economics or public opposition,
it's the extent of politics, misinformation and fuzzy thinking within the nuclear industry and the related governmental agencies.
(though the declining price of PV modules and batteries will be a factor too.)
Plenty of real information is available, a good place to start is:
http://www.energyfromthorium.com/pdf/
Scroll down a ways for the ORNL reports.
The rest of the table/report seems reasonable, by my math anyway.
I would like to add that misinformation about things nuclear ultimately stems from politics.
That powerful interests mold, shape and steer public opinion over time through techniques of propaganda (a.k.a. Public Relations) should be obvious to most on the site by now. We've all seen how EIA and Mr. Yergin et. al with assistance from the Wall St. Journal or Washington Post, etc. operate a spin cycle favoring the fossil fuels industry, for example.
Public ignorance and irrational fear of low-level radiation stems in large part from a combination of ridiculously low exposure limits and the Linear-No-Threshold hypothesis for dose-response. It is only through LNT that something can burp the tiniest amount of radiation and Greenpeace and its ilk can then shout NUCLEAR TERROR: X people *WILL* DIE SOMETIME IN THE FUTURE. This is true even with Fukushima: no one died from radiation exposure and it is highly debatable that anyone ever will. Compare this to the breathless coverage. What about the petrochemical complex that blew up or the dam failure that washed away hundreds of homes, and all matter of toxic materials washed out to sea also during the quake / tsunami? What about all the consequences of shutting down that much emissions-free power and replacing it by burning all those extra fossil fuels...crickets. No, its all about the RADIATION exposure over X or Y limits, even though we don't talk about what comprises these arbitrary limits in the first place.
Official policy reinforces the message of "BE AFRAID." This was perhaps good when the objective was to stop nuclear testing and the arms race. However, such fear has resulted in the only potential source of massively scalable, sustainable GHG-free energy becoming collateral damage, by either accident or by design. Any science that discredits LNT, or evidence that even points to potential radiation hormesis (!!!), keeps falling on deaf ears in the establishment when it comes to radiation exposure safety standards. Similarly, sustainable nuclear recycling (e.g. Integral Fast Reactor) was killed off by the Clinton Administration, which included Al Gore, because of fear of "proliferation" when, last time I checked, the USA already has nuclear weapons. Besides, the IFR design never produced pure plutonium at any point in the fuel cycle anyway! So, perhaps all this fear is more by design, to keep nuclear power off the table for as long as possible.
I highly recommend the work by Prof. Wade Allison to bring scientific evidence, and sanity, into the debate about the true dangers of low-level radiation and a more rational response to safety standards. The 20mSv / year Fukushima exclusion zone looks pretty silly against the science that says 100mSv/month could be safely tolerated, and still be well below real danger.
even with Fukushima: no one died from radiation exposure
How many households were evacuated without notice? How many beloved family pets died excruciating deaths from exposure, dehydration and starvation?
I feel queasy when people say "no one" died at Fukushima.
Fear and misinformation. It was perfectly safe to let people back in long enough to collect their belongings and pets but it couldn't be done because the anti-nuke crowd would have screamed bloody murder and they have more political pull than the nuclear power industry because fear sells so well.
But go ahead, blame TEPCO, it's the "in thing".
There was no blame placed in my comment, just the fact: there were many deaths.
Solar Thermal not in the backyard ?
Well certainly not this one:
http://gigaom.com/cleantech/solarreserve-constructs-540-foot-solar-power...
But with a bigger backyard ? :P
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-08/solar-tulip-targets-facebook-ge...
Are we to take the lack of any hydrogen based options in the matrix as a verdict on its lack of appeal?
No, hydrogen is not there because it is not an energy *source*, it is an energy carrier, just like a battery (which is not on the list for the same reason).
If you can point us to somewhere that we can "find" H2, without having to first make it using energy from one of the options on this matrix, then you can claim it to be a source, not a carrier.
No one else has ever managed to find naturally occurring H2, but who knows, you might get lucky?