OT: Solar power

There is no better way to transport hydrogen atoms than by sticking them to carbon atoms 4:1. And it's down there in the ground, in vast quantities, all done for us already.

Hi, Robert -

I am involved in solar power, but not for the masses. My partner and I are working with clients who need remote power. In fact, the city in which I live has many solar powered gizmos because of the enormous cost that the utility companies charge to do such things as supply power to a flashing light in a school crossing zone, for example.

It may be that powering the USA is not feasible, as your post implies, but millions of small changes in the power reduction over the whole USA can make a difference, don't you think?

Cheers, John S

The problem with solar power is storage. At utility scales, there is no economic or efficient storage available. For small things, like walkway lights or your crossing lights, the batteries will be dead in a few years. Making, replacing, and disposing of batteries is a big part of the equation.

From Stansberry & Associates Digest Premium:

Digest readers know well? Porter has long been bearish on solar-energy technology and the companies that sell it?

This is as clear as I can be: Solar power, as a source of energy for the power grid, will simply never work. And by "work," I mean it will never even be even remotely economic. The reason why it will never work has nothing to do with technical hurdles or innovations that have yet to be made. The reason it will never work is because of the laws of nature, in particular, the Second Law of Thermodynamics. ? Porter Stansberry, September 23, 2011 S&A Digest

And based on an article we found in the Sunday Wall Street Journal, he's not the only one?

Utilities are fighting back against calls that they accommodate solar power?

In most cases, solar panels don't generate 100% of the power residents use? As Porter has often said, the biggest problem for solar power is called "night." And at night (and other times when panels aren't drawing much power), solar-powered homes draw power from the same grid that serves regular utility customers.

But when solar panels generate a surplus of power? it flows into the grid. And most utilities are required to pay customers for that power.

As Sunday's Wall Street Journal points out:

Under state rules known as net metering, customers are credited on their bills for any power that flows from their homes to the grid, usually at the same rate they pay when they draw power from the grid.

So customers with solar panels not only are buying less electricity from their utilities, but also are able to offset much of the cost of what they do buy.

In other words, solar customers are having it both ways. And major utilities in states like California and Arizona aren't happy.

Arizona utility Arizona Public Service Co. estimates its approximately 1 million residential nonsolar customers pay around $18 a year to subsidize its 18,000 solar customers.

"Everyone who's using the grid ought to pay their fair share of the grid," says Jim McDonald, a spokesman for the utility told the Journal.

Arizona Public Service Co. presented two alternatives to the current net metering laws? And both options would boost the average solar customer's monthly bill by $50 to $100.

Who are you and what have you done with the intelligent people on this group?

So? When's the last time you saw a battery backup installation stocked with Duracells? Utilities will use existing, known reliable technology, like vanadium cycle batteries, or phase change thermal.

Indeed, the grid could be an interesting space with such storage laying around. Instead of a Q ~= 0.1, it could be highly locally redundant with massive energy storage. Enough energy storage to keep it spinning for a whole day is an equivalent Q of five million! It would provide ample peak demands to those fast-charge electric "gas" stations you'll see popping up everywhere soon.....(he says with, only half sarcasm really, because it could happen).

On a related note... in some EV thread some ways back, someone (it might've been you?) supposed that the average domestic gas pump is equivalent to a #4-0 electrical cable at 2kV, or something like that (it's near a megawatt, in any case). The above answers the question of, "okay so where are you going to get that power from?"

As for the charging cable, all I have to say is... so what? There's a station not too far from here that sells CNG -- if that stuff let loose, it wouldn't be much less destructive than the electrical equivalent! I would dare assert that electric can be far safer, because the volts and amps can be monitored down to the microsecond. Detect an arc? Shut off the IGBTs, little or no harm done. (IGBTs won't shut off? Crowbar 'em, take a sigh, and replace the $1000 fuse later.) Insulation integrity, faulty connectors? Run an automatic hi-pot cycle before starting. And come on, you can't put a coax grounding shield around gasoline to put it out.

Tim

Yes. Stupidly low prices give opportunity to buy stock in efficient, cash-gushing gas and pipeline companies. Sit back and collect dividends, re-invest and get rich. But beware of Uncle passing laws ("green" power, "global warming", etc) that will kill them.

What he says is true. I bought a set of solar lights about five years ago, and they are all dead now - need new batteries. I could replace the batteries, but instead it will be cheaper and more time-effective to just buy a new set of lights. All those batteries will need to be handled by landfills. Even in your walkway lights, a more commercial application, those batteries are not going to last forever.

And at utility scales, no, there really is no cost effective, efficient means of storing electricity. Pumped water, big battery installations and such are usually cost sinks, not profit sources.

Charlie

Our local electric co-op has rebates and assistance programs for customers who want to install solar (and other green projects, they helped us switch to geothermal), which kinda goes against what you're saying. Perhaps we have the one utility in the country that wants to be a good neighbor? Perhaps they see solar as mitigating their peak demand needs? Dunno.

Known reliable? "Will use"?

Sounds like fuel cells, which have been the energy source of the future since 1838.

My car works great. It's not a problem that needs fixing.

Solar makes things worse for the utilities. It forces them to pay big bucks for power that they don't want. It forces them to have 100% of system capacity hot online, but not use all of it when the sun is bright. The rampup at sunset is getting brutal.

Solar tower systems store energy in large lumps of stinking hot molten salt s. In a 300MW station, the thermal time constant of the reservoir is days, if not longer.

The American Chemical Society keeps on bombarding me with research papers a bout new electrode materials - most involving nanotechnology. Presumably th is crew of monkeys pounding on typewriters will eventually come up with som ething appreciably better than what we've got.

The better electric cars already seem to have twice the range of their chea per brethren.

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It's called pumped storage. Pump water up into a reservoir and let out agai n through a turbine, or compress air into an underground cavern and let it out again through a gas turbine. Energy recovery seems to be limited to som ething like 90%, but it works.

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It injects CO2 into the atmosphere. If you had to pay the real long-term co st of that pollution, you'd go electric, and buy your power from a solar pl ant.

Less convenient, perhaps.

That's the legislature, not solar power as such.

Gas-fired generators - essentially aircraft turbines coupled to generators - have very rapid ramp-up times. I think you are exaggerating.

Compressed air storage systems are just as fast.

increasing CO2 in the atmosphere may turn out to be a good thing, it will forestall global cooling

Mark

Certainly it's the legislatures that have created this problem, largely to appease the greenies, and it's time the legislatures fixed it.

Let the market decide how much solar power is worth when sold to the utilities, and then let people decide on solar installations based on the market price they can get for the power (which will be very little).

Let the market also decide on the price it wants for grid power when supplied to a user who has solar panels, and who will thus draw grid power for only part of the time. They shouldn't be allowed to use the grid as a free backup paid for by the other users.

The result will be that domestic solar power for grid attached users will quickly cease to be attractive to anyone but those who have a philosophical desire to use it.

If CO2 emissions are a problem, then attach a price to them, and again let the market figure it out.

Even if not running, gas fired plants still have to be paid for. They don't cost nothing to build.

Compressed air storage is useful for load balancing day versus night, but they're useless for dealing with longer term shortfalls that arise when solar is underperforming because of overcast skies, so there still needs to be weather independent capacity in the system.

As currently implemented, solar is a parasitic form of generation, and it's time people realised that.

Sylvia.

m cost of that pollution, you'd go electric, and buy your power from a sola r plant.

forestall global cooling.

John Larkin has been telling us this for years. It doesn't happen to be tru e, but gullible suckers will believe any story they get fed by the denialis t propaganda machine.

One of the side effects of global warming could be a re-run of the Younger Dryas - which happened a the end of the last ice age, between 12,800 and 11 ,500 years ago.

What happened then was that the Gulf Stream turned off for 1300 years - Eng land was 5C for that entire period, and the US eastern seaboard would have cooled off to a similar extent.

Why the Gulf Stream Turned off is a matter for discussion. One theory is th at the Laurentian ice sheet slid off into the North Atlantic and melted the re, dumping enough fresh water to kill the thermo-haline circulation that d rives the Gulf Stream. If the Greenland ice sheet decides to slide off in t he same sort of way, it might create the same effect. No glaciologist is ga me to predict what the Greenland ice sheet is going to do as it melts - it' s a very complicated question.

There are lots of other interesting things that might happen. A uniformly w armer climate is one of the less likely options.

Experimenting with the only planet we've got is a little incautious.

I'd like to see the numbers in that equation.

What's the cost of a radar school zone MPH display? What's the cost of making it solar? What's the cost of annual battery replacement? Alternatively... What's the cost of digging up the street to get to that underground power line across the street? And the cost of installing the cables? And the cost of metering, administrating the power? And the cost of the power?

If you want, feel free to include the "social/environmental" cost of making/recycling the solar and batteries. Compared to the pro-rated environmental cost of the machinery, personnel, fuel to dig up the street.

I expect there's gonna be a LOT more low-power stuff that's routinely solar powered.

I investigated the cost of installing a powered attic ventilator. The extra cost of a solar-powered one was WAY less than the cost of the building permits and electrician to get power 30 feet to one that runs off the grid.

Permits? Electricians? For a 30 foot run? I thought we were EEs here.

The solar stuff doesn't need permits?

er?

Typical inane drivel. A grid-tie inverter pumps power into the grid when it can, the POWER UTILITY IS NOT PAYING A PENNY TO GENERATE THIS POWER, for this energy getting into the grid. What is it whining about ? When power is getting drawn from the grid, the consumer pays for it -- what is unfair about it ?

Of course this public service company is a hand maiden of the utility companies, and would try to force such rules on the consumers.