Solar cheaper than nuclear
in [Design]
|
From: Bill Sloman on 8 Aug 2010 21:59 On Aug 8, 12:11 pm, John Larkin <jjlar...(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote: > On Sun, 08 Aug 2010 01:12:58 +0100, Dirk Bruere at NeoPax > > > > <dirk.bru...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > >On 07/08/2010 23:34, John Larkin wrote: > >> On Sun, 08 Aug 2010 01:16:03 +0300, Paul Keinanen<keina...(a)sci.fi> > >> wrote: > > >>> On Sat, 07 Aug 2010 21:45:48 +0100, Dirk Bruere at NeoPax > >>> <dirk.bru...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > >>>> "Summary > >>>> Solar photovoltaic system costs have fallen steadily for decades. They > >>>> are projected to fall even farther over the next 10 years. Meanwhile, > >>>> projected costs for construction of new nuclear plants have risen > >>>> steadily over the last decade, and they continue to rise. In the past > >>>> year, the lines have crossed in North Carolina. Electricity from new > >>>> solar installations is now cheaper than electricity from proposed new > >>>> nuclear plants." > > >>> The cost of recent (2000+) nuclear power plants is somewhere between > >>> 1-3 EUR/W based on actual deals. > > >>> To be competitive, at the grid_interface_point at the equator in > >>> cloudless conditions, the solar panel cost should be somewhere between > >>> 0.25 .. 0.75 EUR/W based on the geometry alone. > > >>> Moving away from the equator or allowing for some random clouds, the > >>> unit price should be even less to be competitive. > > >>> For some reason, all bulk solar power producers, such as existing > >>> power plants in Spain or the proposed DESERTEC project are using > >>> concentrated solar thermal power, not photovoltaic cells :-). > > >>http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=is-the-sun-setting-o.... > > >> John > > >So, solar is so successful that subsidies are being cut back... > > That's one way to look at it. The other way is to imagine that Spain > ran out of money to throw at subsidies. All sorts of people from all > over the world were cashing in on it. Another way of looking at it is to thing about the well-known - but none-too-predictable - economies of scale. The rule of thumb is that multiplying production volume by a factor of ten halves the unit cost of the item produced. The mechanism by which the unit price is driven down is the unpredictable bit, since it does seem to depend on innovation, which is - by definition - unpredictable, but a big market and the prospects of making lots of money by servicing that market does seem to generate innovation at a useful - and tolerably predictable - rate. > If solar can compete on its own, it should. But even if it becomes > economical on a cost per KWH basis, without a good storage method it > will be a niche source. Which may be why the big solar energy projects seem to mostly thermal - it isn't that difficult to keep a large volume of molten salt hot overnight. My hot water tank in Cambridge had a thermal time constant of 36 hours, which meant that it lost 23% of the stored heat over- night. Scaling the mass up up by a factor of a million or so while the surface area only has to increas by a factor of ten thousand, and the thermal time constant would go up to 3600 hours, and the heat loss overnight would go down to 0.23%. > There's lots of natural gas, and it's mostly hydrogen. There's a finite amount of natural gas - which is mostly methane, which is 75% carbon by weight. Burning natural gas is much better than burning coal which is close to 100% carbon, and appreciably better than burning oil, which is close to 85% carbon by weight, but not an approach that provides any kind of sustainable solution. > http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:SB125193815050081615.html > > http://www.getsolar.com/blog/spains-solar-subsidies-on-the-chopping-b... > > http://www.fastcompany.com/1676909/spains-famous-solar-subsidies-are-... All of which report that Spain hasn't got enough money to be able invest in long term projects with no great immediate pay-off. As John Maynard Keynes famously said, in the long term we are all dead, but global warming is one of those issues where we get to choose now how many of are kids are going to die prematurely. John's too ill-informed about climate science to believe this, and too vain about his half-baked opinions to realise that he has been fed them by people with an interest in selling lots of carbon now, and no interest at all in putting off the climatic excursions that are going to follow from burning lots of carbon now. -- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen
From: Bill Sloman on 8 Aug 2010 22:04 On Aug 8, 10:19 pm, Sylvia Else <syl...(a)not.here.invalid> wrote: > On 8/08/2010 9:45 PM, Paul Keinanen wrote: > > > > > On Sun, 08 Aug 2010 21:22:46 +1000, Sylvia Else > > <syl...(a)not.here.invalid> wrote: > > >> On 8/08/2010 6:18 PM, Paul Keinanen wrote: > >>> On Sat, 07 Aug 2010 19:11:20 -0700, John Larkin > >>> <jjlar...(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote: > > >>>> If solar can compete on its own, it should. But even if it becomes > >>>> economical on a cost per KWH basis, without a good storage method it > >>>> will be a niche source. > > >>> A storage method is only required, if the installed solar capacity is > >>> larger than the day/night load variation. In all countries, the day > >>> load is larger than the night load, especially if there is a lot of > >>> air conditioning loads. Solar energy could supply the daytime peak, > >>> while other forms of energy should be used to supply the base load > >>> during night. > > >>> If fixed arrays are used, they should be oriented so that the peak > >>> production match the peak load hours, instead of simply orienting the > >>> arrays to the south. > > >>> Of course, other means of production is required for cloudy days, but > >>> it makes more sense to use hydroelectric plants or burn stuff, instead > >>> of trying to store solar energy. The solar energy storage time would > >>> have to be up to weeks due to clouds and months at higher latitudes to > >>> ride through the winter. > > >> If the discussion is about economics (and judging from the subject line > >> it is), then the cost of having that other plant sitting idle when the > >> sun is shining has to be included as part of the cost of solar. > > > The cost of an unused facility depends only on the interest rate. > > > If some active solar energy storage is used, it will also have various > > operational costs, such as energy loss costs, personnel costs and > > replacement part costs. > > The interest is not insignificant. > > There are personnel costs even when the plant is not running, because > the people required to operate it are not available from a pool of > people who are otherwise unemployed. They will have to be paid enough to > make it worth their while to keep themselves available. > > These costs are not usually included by proponents of solar power. > Instead the usual strategy is to allege that there is spare capacity in > the system anyway. There is, but it's there for a reason which doesn't > include being a free backup for solar. No, it is there because demand varies during the day. That isn't going to change. Solar - as has been pointed out - provides power during the day precisely when the air-conditioning system are at their greediest. -- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen
From: Bill Sloman on 8 Aug 2010 22:35 On Aug 9, 7:42 am, dagmargoodb...(a)yahoo.com wrote: > On Aug 8, 12:45 pm, nospam <nos...(a)please.invalid> wrote: > > > Dirk Bruere at NeoPax <dirk.bru...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > > >I think that within a couple of decades most houses will have their own > > >PV and battery set, and use the grid for (expensive) backup. > > > Show me a battery with a replacement cost which is less than the cost of > > the equivalent grid electricity it can discharge in its lifetime. > > > Of course if grid electricity prices rocket (due to technically illiterate > > eco wankers and politicians refusing to build viable large scale generating > > capacity) anything can happen. > > The easiest way to make any one technology competitive is by > kneecapping the others. A scheme well-illustrated by the oil industry, which dictates that the US has an immense and expensive "defence" forces, paid for by the tax- payer, to protect US-exploited oil fields around the world. The same subsidy, re-directed to sustainable domestic energy sources, would kneecap the US oil industry. Sadly, the kind of military or commercial intelligence that might appreciate this is in short supply, and James Arthur is one of the people least likely to understand the point. He probably thinks that it is right and natural that the US spends as much on "defence" as the next ten countries down the pecking order put together. Historically, the top nation spent as much as its two closest rivals, but the US managed to invent the military-industrial complex, and the oil companies, like the banana importers before them, are happy to exploit this irrational extravagance. -- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen
From: Bill Sloman on 8 Aug 2010 22:40 On Aug 9, 12:27 am, Paul Keinanen <keina...(a)sci.fi> wrote: > On Sun, 8 Aug 2010 06:31:09 -0700 (PDT), Richard Henry > > > > <pomer...(a)hotmail.com> wrote: > >On Aug 8, 1:18 am, Paul Keinanen <keina...(a)sci.fi> wrote: > >> On Sat, 07 Aug 2010 19:11:20 -0700, John Larkin > > >> <jjlar...(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote: > >> >If solar can compete on its own, it should. But even if it becomes > >> >economical on a cost per KWH basis, without a good storage method it > >> >will be a niche source. > > >> A storage method is only required, if the installed solar capacity is > >> larger than the day/night load variation. In all countries, the day > >> load is larger than the night load, especially if there is a lot of > >> air conditioning loads. Solar energy could supply the daytime peak, > >> while other forms of energy should be used to supply the base load > >> during night. > > >> If fixed arrays are used, they should be oriented so that the peak > >> production match the peak load hours, instead of simply orienting the > >> arrays to the south. > > >> Of course, other means of production is required for cloudy days, but > >> it makes more sense to use hydroelectric plants or burn stuff, instead > >> of trying to store solar energy. The solar energy storage time would > >> have to be up to weeks due to clouds and months at higher latitudes to > >> ride through the winter. > > >California ISO typically reports 2 types of electric power usage day - > >those with a peak about 9 PM when it is cool, and those with a peak > >about 2 PM when it is hot. > > >http://www.caiso.com/outlook/SystemStatus.html > > Thank you for the graph. > > It would appear that the daily variation is about 9 GW, so that is the > maximum nominal solar power that it makes sense to build. > > Apparently some kind of daylight saving time is used, since the > consumption is high after sunset, apparently due to air conditioning > load. > > A similar curve for Finland (at Alaska latitudes) is available athttp://www.fingrid.fi/portal/in_english/electricity_market/load_and_g... > with about 2 GW day/night variation during weekdays and 1 GW during > weekends with early morning base loads of 7 GW. > > The base electric consumption is more than 12 GW during the winter > night and about 14 GW during the winter day. > > Someone might think that putting up 2 GW of solar power would solve > the problem. Unfortunately, at such high latitudes, the sun does not > shine much in the winter. A solar panel would only produce a few > watts. So in reality, the solar power array would be usable only > during a few summer months. Germany is talking about building massive solar generation in the Sahara, and shipping the power north on ultra-high-volage DC links. Super-conducting cable has yet to be mentioned, but it would seem to offer even lower losses per kilometre. -- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen
From: Bill Sloman on 8 Aug 2010 22:45
On Aug 8, 10:59 pm, "k...(a)att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz" <k...(a)att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz> wrote: > On Sun, 08 Aug 2010 11:24:09 +0100, Dirk Bruere at NeoPax > > > > <dirk.bru...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > >On 08/08/2010 03:11, John Larkin wrote: > >> On Sun, 08 Aug 2010 01:12:58 +0100, Dirk Bruere at NeoPax > >> <dirk.bru...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > >>> On 07/08/2010 23:34, John Larkin wrote: > >>>> On Sun, 08 Aug 2010 01:16:03 +0300, Paul Keinanen<keina...(a)sci.fi> > >>>> wrote: > > >>>>> On Sat, 07 Aug 2010 21:45:48 +0100, Dirk Bruere at NeoPax > >>>>> <dirk.bru...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > >>>>>> "Summary > >>>>>> Solar photovoltaic system costs have fallen steadily for decades. They > >>>>>> are projected to fall even farther over the next 10 years. Meanwhile, > >>>>>> projected costs for construction of new nuclear plants have risen > >>>>>> steadily over the last decade, and they continue to rise. In the past > >>>>>> year, the lines have crossed in North Carolina. Electricity from new > >>>>>> solar installations is now cheaper than electricity from proposed new > >>>>>> nuclear plants." > > >>>>> The cost of recent (2000+) nuclear power plants is somewhere between > >>>>> 1-3 EUR/W based on actual deals. > > >>>>> To be competitive, at the grid_interface_point at the equator in > >>>>> cloudless conditions, the solar panel cost should be somewhere between > >>>>> 0.25 .. 0.75 EUR/W based on the geometry alone. > > >>>>> Moving away from the equator or allowing for some random clouds, the > >>>>> unit price should be even less to be competitive. > > >>>>> For some reason, all bulk solar power producers, such as existing > >>>>> power plants in Spain or the proposed DESERTEC project are using > >>>>> concentrated solar thermal power, not photovoltaic cells :-). > > >>>>http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=is-the-sun-setting-o... > > >>>> John > > >>> So, solar is so successful that subsidies are being cut back... > > >> That's one way to look at it. The other way is to imagine that Spain > >> ran out of money to throw at subsidies. All sorts of people from all > >> over the world were cashing in on it. > > >> If solar can compete on its own, it should. But even if it becomes > >> economical on a cost per KWH basis, without a good storage method it > >> will be a niche source. > > >How much govt money was pumped into nuclear before it could "compete on > >its own" (assuming it can, even now)? > >As for niche, that could be a very big niche if it was used to supply > >daytime heavy industry over a continental grid. > > You get more of what you subsidize and less of what you tax. If you subsidize > a failure (solar) you get more failure. If you tax nuclear you get less of it. > Now you know why, as a country, we're failing. We don't like success. No.It is failing because an appreciable proportion of your population - and you are an obvious example - can't distinguish failure (nuclear generation) from success (solar generation) because they think that anything that was praised when they were in primary school (nuclear power generation) is still praise-worthy, and stuff that hadn't been invented back then is new-fangled nonsense. -- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen |