Slashdot Mirror
Scientific American's Solar Grand Plan
Maria Energia writes "Scientific American Magazine proposes a huge, far-reaching plan to get solar energy powering 69% of America's electricity needs by 2050. The costs and technology are ready, they say, but huge changes to our transmission system will be needed."
I wrote an article on my blog with some related thoughts about solar. In particular, I've considered installing solar panels on my roof, but my geographical region has a tendency to accumulate dust very quickly, so I'd be out on the roof cleaning the panels all the time if I were to have any chance of breaking even.
Or, you could buy yourself a big air compressor for about $400 at Lowe's, and set up some compressed-air lines and nozzles over your solar panels. Connect this to some sort of electrically-powered solenoid valve and a timer, and the compressed air will blow off the dust for you. Of course, this will take a small amount of power, but it's a lot easier than climbing onto your roof every week or so.
So my thought was that some enterprising company should buy up a few acres of land (or rooftops), and let individual homeowners sponsor small batches of solar panels, like 5kw or 10kw, in exchange for some sort of credit on their electric bill. A system like this would dramatically reduce the barriers to entry for individuals who'd like to pay for solar power, as well as vastly increase the economies of scale. Does any system like this currently exist?
This sounds exactly like something called a "co-op", a type of company where the customers are also the owners. I understand there are utility co-ops in some parts of the country (probably in more rural places).
This would work well if the co-op could get access to the rooftops of large commercial buildings, which are basically wasted space. Imagine a shopping mall covered with solar panels; it'd generate a huge amount of power (especially where I live in Arizona). You might get some better efficiencies of scale that way, by concentrating the panels onto large rooftops rather than scattering them around on smaller rooftops. Plus, you'd improve power transmission efficiency greatly because much of the generated power would be consumed very close to the panels' location, rather than our present model where power is typically generated many miles away from a city, and then transferred over lossy transmission lines to where it's used.
Honestly, even if we didn't bother worrying about storing power for nighttime, and set up enough solar panels to supply most of our country's daytime power needs, the amount of fossil fuel saved would be staggering. Plus, we could reverse the current practice of charging less for off-peak power, to encourage customers to use more power in the daytime when the panels are generating the most power.
Deserts aren't useless; they're filled with lots of natural flora and fauna, just like any other ecosystem, and unlike other ecosystems, are quite delicate.
For human use, deserts (at least in North America) are excellent farmland for many crops because of all the sunlight and lack of bad weather and natural disasters. They just need irrigation, which has been done here in Arizona for around 1500 years by the Anisazi.
You don't need land to make solar power. Just stick solar panels on all the "useless" rooftops of all the buildings. The only thing most rooftops do is keep rain out of buildings, so why not cover them with solar panels? Of course, some stupid HOAs will probably scream about it because solar panels don't meed their aesthetic guidelines.
You can't restore a mountain after you tear off its top.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
http://www.transterrestrial.com/archives/010275.html It's an ambitious plan that could sharply decelerate CO2 emissions and increase the US output of "green" power. Heroic plans require heroic proof. A critical analysis follows.
Some high level critiques are the following:
* Shifting peak load from day-time to night-time would not occur until solar displaced all natural gas plants and other swing units--i.e., all of excess air-conditioner demand over night-time demand, and all of the additional day-time usage that would occur as the price between day-time and night-time power usage equilibrated. This obviates the need for any wind-storage of solar power until well later.
* Compressed-air energy storage will become less useful as the price gap between day and night power diminishes. This undermines the case for near-term night to day storatge and will only be economical under this plan for day-to-night storage after day-time power is sufficiently cheaper to support the capital outlay. (Ironically since the solar installation is of the hockey-stick variety, compressed air storage may become viable for night-to-day energy storage well before solar becomes a relevant portion of energy supply.)
* Current photovoltaic production is about 2 GW of which US installation is about 8%. The plan calls for 84 GW of US installation by 2020 which would require 45% increases in solar installation every year for 13 years. Capping the installation at 10 GW/year installed, the ramp up becomes 70% per year 2006-2014.
* These growth rates are implausible without a $2.80/watt subsidy taking the installed price of $4/w to $1.20/w which is equivalent to $0.05/kwh. That would mean $234 billion in subsidies just to get to 3% of needed installed capacity by 2050.
* Polysilicon shortages are holding back photovoltaic growth so in 2007 and 2008 a growth rate of 20% is more plausible. That would require doubling production every year from 2009-2014 to hit the installed base of 84 GW by 2020.
* 84 GW by 2020 would be just 16% of average load and with a peak watt of electricity generating only 6 or 7 hours per day in the Southwest, it would be about 5% of total electric power generated.
* For this 5% of energy generated, we would be subsidizing it over 200% of the value of the energy generated--that is for $0.06 of electricity, it would require $0.14 in subsidies.
* At the end of the period, there is no guarantee that prices will be low enough to compete with coal, natural gas, nuclear or wind.
* If solar becomes viable and can compete with other energy types and begins to displace other types of power, prices for those types of power will drop. The total cost of solar will have to beat the marginal cost of coal or nuclear to dismantle an existing plant.
Consider investing in terrestrial solar power for security reasons or as a contingency, but it's a lot of faith to get the case to work for half of daily electricity demand.
Ever since power electronics were invented, DC transmission works just fine. It has the advantage of not needing to have huge chunks of grid in phase with each other(so you don't get staged collapses like in 2003).
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Many power companies offer a 'green energy' plan. You pay an extra 1-4c per kw/h and they build sufficient solar/wind/geothermal plants to cover your energy needs. This is probably as close to what you want as you'll find.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Because to power each server at 12VDC from the 1 megavolt long-distance DC transmission line, you have to string together more than 80,000 servers in series. Then when one server blows out, all 80,000 go down along with it. Then you have to test them one at a time like a string of Christmas lights until you find the bad server, which could take weeks.
Morocco is already negotiating with the European Community on doing this. So even if you are Algeria, Libya or Chad you are too late for the party. It has already started.
Neither Libya, not Chad are in possession of the chunk of land which is the closest to the EU. All it takes to connect the grids of Morocco and Spain is 13km. Compared to that Libya-Italy is several hundreds.
Add to that the fact that Libya is a tribal patchwork whose stability is held by just one man (Chad is a total mess). Kadafi is a figurehead which has shown a truly magnificent talent to balance between the warring tribes interests. Once he is gone it will be very entertaining. So frankly, while trying to get some oil out of Libya or Chad may make sense, investing the amounts needed for solar is not particularly wise. Algeria is only slightly better.
You still have to solve the transmission difficulties. Italian grid is probably in one of the sorriest states in Europe. You have to overhaul it massively just to allow import of electricity from Libya. Exporting is probably out of the question. Still, Italy is already a net electricity importer so the market is there.
Spanish grid is in a much better state, but once again it is not designed to carry effectively electricity all the way from Morocco.
The next country North from both of Italy and Spain is France which is a net energy exporter with a huge nuclear lobby and it has a considerable political influence in guess where - Libya, Chad and Algeria. And so on.
So at this point in time it will probably end up with just Spain and Morocco doing it. While they have a shouting match about the enclaves every few weeks they are most likely to get it done.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
There is a really simple reason this isn't done more:
Buying, installing and operating the solar powerplant costs MORE than you can expect to make back by selling the generated electricity. It's not profitable, plain and simple.
That may change: solar cells gets cheaper and better all the time, and electricity has an upwards price-trend. The minute the curves cross, people *will* do this.
I would be delighted to see solar on every rooftop in the nation - or in the world.
However I do think it important to point out that a single flat square mile with dedicated professional maintenance would be far cheaper and more efficient than TEN THOUSAND scattered rooftop patches of ten thousand roof-owners and ten thousand power conversion units connecting to the grid and ten thousand separate maintenances and other issues.
Did I mention ten thousand? Ten thousand for EACH square mile of solar landscape offset?
The economies of scale become especially significant if you have a company operating a hundred square mile or more field. And each hundred square mile field that would equate to a MILLION or so itty bitty individual rooftop installations.
Commercially owned buildings with mega-size rooftops might... just might... be worthwhile serving that building itself. Millions of individual home solar rooftops can't be a general rule until you can slap it down like roofing shingles in a way and at a cost that the home owner wouldn't be massively distressed if for some reason it completely quit working and went unrepaired.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.