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Brookings Study Calls Solar, Wind Power the Most Expensive Fossil Alternatives
turkeydance (1266624) writes A new study [PDF] from the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, argues that using solar and wind energy may be the most expensive alternatives to carbon-based electricity generation, even though they require no expenditures for fuel.....Specifically, this means nuclear power offers a savings of more than $400,000 worth of carbon emissions per megawatt of capacity. Solar saves only $69,000 and wind saves $107,000. An anonymous reader points out that the Rocky Mountain Institute finds the Brookings study flawed in several ways, and offers a rebuttal.
"$400,000 worth of carbon emissions", it says. What, monopoly money?
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
A Think Tank chock full O' Think.
I like it.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Decommissioning costs (including storage, disposal, and demolition) never seem to figure into these numbers.
Can we factor in the cost of even 1 minor nuclear plant accident and see what the numbers look like then?
I mean, as far as I know, no one has properly, fully decommissioned a nuclear power plant and effectively long-term-stored its waste yet, have they? Why shouldn't the cost of doing that, completely and adequately, be built into the cost assumptions for nuclear?
Why shouldn't there have to be an extremely large security bond put up when building one of these things that covers:
a) Full cost of full decommissioning and million-year safe storage
b) Fukushima/Chernobyl scale disaster insurance coverage, covering full remediation costs and damage payments for all surrounding economic losses and health costs caused by a major nuclear plant disaster.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Ain't it odd? How generally there are two thing always omitted when people try to sell the clean, cheap nuke plants. I also think it's kinda odd that every time something gets discussed terrorism is a big issue (usually as a tool to get privacy concerns out of the way, citing safety and security as the pinnacle of importance), except when we're talking about the one thing that any terrorist with a hint of a brain would aim for: A soft target that not only is invaluable to the power infrastructure but also has the capacity to actually have a severe and VERY long lasting impact on the lives of million, along with striking terror into the hearts of EVERYONE on the planet at an inconceivable scale.
Fuck, 9/11 would become a footnote in the books of terrorist attacks compared to something like that!
Oddly, that's never even touched when the pros and cons of nuke plants are discussed...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Oh, but the Sun will run out of fuel eventually!
i wonder what kind of solar technology they are talking about. There are multiple solar technologies so talking about it as a single technology is misleading. Absolutely, non concentrated photovoltaics is the worst technology, the most ineffecient, and the fact the public has been conditioned to think of this as the only solar technology is partly to blame for solar not being more widely used. I wonder how technologies such as mirror or lens concentrated PV, or a thermal concentrated solar technology, or the Solar tube lighting systems compares. Very well, I would suspect. The mirror thermal dishes uses only relatively cheap low cost parts involving mirrors, a thermal collector system, possibly a microturbine or sterling engine to convert the heat into electricity, or it can be used directly. Continuing to use flat panel unconcentrated PV solar really is a crime and makes no sense since the concentrated systems and thermal systems can work so much better.
While nuclear is a fossil alternative, it is also not renewable, uranium is not easy to come by and the stocks will run out sooner or later. The good thing about solar is it is renewable.
hey, windmills don't take themselves down!
I notice that only gas is listed as adding new emissions. But hydro has methane emissions from the vegetation that's flooded when the dam is constructed. Not to mention the concrete that makes the dam. Solar, wind, and nuclear also have some building emissions costs, unless you replace all construction vehicles with electric and find a way to make concrete and steel without carbon emissions. (Wood might be an alternative for certain parts of wind turbines and maybe even solar frameworks.) Gas should probably have much higher emissions too, as the whole infrastructure from the well to the power station leaks methane. (How much is debated, but it's not zero.)
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
Nuclear costs mostly depend on the amount of (not necessarily useful) regulation, and the amount of opposition to building new power plants. If we replaced all the NIMBY Americans with Frenchmen, the costs for nuclear would be much lower than they are now in the US. Wind, solar, and nuclear all have their plusses and minuses, and currently solar and wind are growing while nuclear is stagnating, so you also have to consider what the costs will be in the future.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Solar panels and wind turbines don't tend to live very long, so increasing the timeline won't really help. Plus, if it was a small timeline, nuclear would look more expensive as it would include all the initial costs (nuclear power the first year is much more expensive than nuclear power subsequent years, until decomissioning).
"No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session." -- Judge Gideon J. Tucker
Think tanks are always on someone's payroll. Industry pays for the cushy lifestyles of the researchers, and industry expects published results that can be used in PR campaigns.
Economic studies on virtually ANY controversial subject can uncover facts, experiments, and methodologies to amply support one side or another, accompanied by fancy statistical terminology, if the researchers are motivated to do so.
Doesn't consider the probability of an disaster multiplied by the cost of the incident.
Just look at Japan's Fukushima disaster.
So, you're saying we should use non-renewable, polluting alternatives just so it's a better match with wind and solar?
Seriously?
SERIOUSLY?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Cost is not the only consideration. It also by and large doesn't matter - environmental damage does. And build time.
Nuclear power plants can only be built so fast...I believe the chief restriction at the moment is how fast the containment vessels can be manufactured, and there's already a backlog.
What's frustrating is that we're pouring billions into fusion research with virtually no evidence of payout, instead of going with the solutions we have today, and then working on fusion once we've stopped fucking over the planet quite so quickly.
Please help metamoderate.
The problem is, your "assuming" is a pure fantasy.
You cannot generate 100% of your power with wind/hydro/geothermal/solar.
Wind is out because the wind doesn't always blow or blow in the proper direction or blow at the proper speed ratings for a wind farm to take advantage of.
Solar is out because the sun isn't always shining overhead. Not to mention it's affected by weather/climate conditions as well (panels buried under a foot of snow don't function well, if at all).
Hydro is out because we're already tapped about 99% of the viable hydro in this country. And the environmentalists are wrangling amongst themselves because hydro destroys the local ecology. Pretty much guaranteeing that any remaining possible sources of hydro are NOT going to be exploited.
Geothermal's out because there's a limited number of places you can actually, viably put these. And there is documented ecological damage from existing geothermal installations. Not to mention the fact that you get hydrogen sulfide and, oh yeah, CARBON DIOXIDE emissions from geothermal. Also, geothermal has water consumption issues. Not to mention the fact that there's good evidence that, since you have to site geothermal on geologically active sites, geothermal leads to increases in earthquake frequency/severity.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
so often? 3 times is not really so often.....
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
not yet, but when the majority of power is produced by those windmills and solar they will be. its still in the chicken and egg phase
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
If you are seriously comparing the environmental impacts of producing wind turbines and solar panels to the environmental impact of our current scale of fossil fuel extraction and consumption, you need to learn how to think quantitatively, not to mention qualitatively.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
The per-kilowatt cost of solar has been on a steady decline for years, and so far the trend shows no signs of slowing. Large scale solar deployments in the future will have the benefit of further lowered costs.
See chart.
.: Semper Absurda
They account for those costs in this particular study.
only until efficient power storage is solved. all those methods will generate more power than needed at certain times of the day so if the excess is stored, problem solved.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
This paper: assumes $0.2 - $0.3 billion to decommission a nuclear power plant (based on a 2013 report by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission)
UK: $9 billion decommissioning costs per plant, based on an estimate by the UK's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.
Japan: $1 billion per plant so far, but estimated $1.8 billion per plant for the remainder
I suspect this paper gets its results by downplaying by an order of magnitude the decommissioning costs of nuclear power.
There were nine number in the analysis which were badly outdated. Doing it right reverses the order. http://www.forbes.com/sites/am...
If what happened here in Illinois is typical there won't be any Nuke plants running. None of the existing nuclear plants cleared the most recent auction to to supply the grid here with power. Below is an excerpt from an Excelon conference call explaining the situation to investment analyst. "On the PJM auction results, as you know, the auction cleared at $120 a megawatt day, it was higher than most anticipated due to primarily, the rule changes around lower imports, lower demand response, and participants bidding behavior. We think the results are encouraging for our plants that cleared, but there is an opportunity for further improvements in the market rules in the future, such as, firm fuel commitments, anti-speculation rules, and with the recent ruling, court ruling looking for clarity on the role of demand response, energy efficiency in the capacity markets. Our nuclear units: Oyster Creek, Quad Cities, and Byron, five in total did not clear the auction. For Quad Cities and Byron, these units are important for grid reliability, environmental and from an economic standpoint, are especially critical in helping Illinois meet its environmental goals in light of the recent EPA rules. To that extent, Illinois House passed a House Resolution 1146 in May recognizing the value of nuclear energy for its reliability and its carbon-free benefits and urged the expiration of our opportunities to avoid closing nuclear plants. We have agreed not to make any decisions about retiring these units until June of next year to allow for the Illinois legislature time to enact market-based reforms at the state level that this could be items such as joining Reggie or a clean energy standard. However, as we’ve said in the past, if we are unsuccessful and we do not see a path to sustain profitability for these units in question, we will be forced to retire them to avoid long-term losses. I do want to be clear, again, about one thing, we are not looking and do not want contracts for subsidies from Illinois, only contracts that recognize the environmental benefit in the reliability of the assets."
Exactly correct. Using correct number reversed the order. http://www.forbes.com/sites/am...
The input data were badly out of date. http://www.forbes.com/sites/am... Wind is the cheapest.
Solar panels last for centuries. The just need refurbishing after 30 years or so. Nuclear plants apparently can't survive refurbishing. http://hardware.slashdot.org/s...
only until efficient power storage is solved.
Which would ALSO factor into the costs associated with these power generation technologies.
all those methods will generate more power than needed
You hope.
at certain times of the day so if the excess is stored, problem solved.
Until the systems are actually, you know, INVENTED, TESTED and INSTALLED, no, the problem is NOT solved.
And until then, anyone talking about Wind and Solar are actually talking about Wind-Plus-Natural Gas and Solar-Plus-Natural Gas.
Oh yes. And the byproducts of natural gas consumption? CO2 and Water Vapor (greenhouse gasses anyone?)
So, please, keep hyping your pie in the sky as a fait accompli.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The Rocky Mountain Institute had already debunked this story at http://www.corvalliscommunityp...
The Brookings Institution??? Why would anyone give a damn what some think tank, er, thinks?
By definition, a think tank's job is to simply rationalize their clients opinion.
Quite odd how, out of the first eighteen comments (not counting replies), five are about decommissioning costs, and five are about meltdowns? They seem to repeat the same talking points, almost as if on a script.
I'm not saying they're shills, but at the very least a lot of people seem to be getting their information from the same place, which leaves them missing several crucial facts:
1) Nuclear power works at scale. It's proven, and it scales perfectly. The biggest solar plants on the planet are 500MW (Topaz Solar Farm, PV) or 400MW (Ivanpah Solar Power Facility, thermal). A single nuclear reactor is well above that - scroll down this list and you'll see very few sub-500MW, and quite a few 1GW+ reactors. And remember, most plants have more than one reactor. 66 nuclear plants are enough to give us 20% of our energy. 947 wind plants are only enough to give us 3%, and 553 solar plants (PV and thermal) don't even break half a percent.
2) Nuclear power would be a hell of a lot safer if new designs were actually approved. The regulations are pretty much ridiculous - they don't approve new reactor types that are designed to solve all the problems we've found with the old designs, but they still allow old designs with known weaknesses to be extended long past their designed lifespan. Add to that the ridiculous costs of dealing with the bureaucracy and the weak requirements for cleanup/decommissioning, and it almost seems like the regulations are designed both to make nuclear power unprofitable, and to keep public opinion against it. Hmm...
3) Nobody is arguing for pure nuclear power, because that doesn't work for all the reasons people say it doesn't work. Nuclear (and geothermal, where possible) makes for an excellent base load. Nuclear meshes well with hydro - excess capacity can be used to run the dam in reverse, pumping water up to store that energy for later use. And if positioned right, it provides both cooling water for the reactor, and a single point to close off flow or install filters if something does go wrong. Wind, tidal and solar can supplement this as locations allow, with solar in particular taking the edge off the peak load.
4) Every power plant can go wrong. What happens when a hydro dam fails? Thousands of people die. What happens when a solar plant fails? We don't know yet, but it probably won't be that good considering how much damage they can do even when working properly. Same for wind, and tidal, and geothermal. They do some minor damage even when working perfectly - frying or chopping up migratory birds or fish, or altering the geology in the case of geothermal. Nuclear has the benefit, at least, of being perfectly clean when working perfectly. Yes, if things go wrong it can be absolutely horrible, but that's why regulations need to focus on redundant containment and fail-safe designs, not on constant inspections.
"The Olkiluoto project in Finland is three times over budget and 9 years late, while the Flamanville project in France is 4 years late." http://www.vox.com/2014/8/1/59...
Call me when you can actually get 4-5 BILLION megawatt-hours a year out of Wind and Solar in a stable manner 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
Oh. And I will NOT be holding my breath waiting for you.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Per unit of power generated, wind and solar are much more dangerous than nuclear even if you factor in the meltdowns. What's going on is the same reason some people are afraid of flying. When a plane crashes it gets reported all over the world, with hours of coverage and video and pictures.. Meanwhile, most car crashes go unreported (did you know wind turbines killed more people in 2011 than Fukushima?). Thus creating the misperception that cars are safer, even though statistically planes are far safer.
There are a lot of things that can be done now that don't have the great potential negative effects that are possible with nuclear energy production. When houses are built or roofs are replaced heat reflective roofs can be used. This could be done for a very small additional cost that would be quickly recovered in cost savings. Passive solar design could reduce fuel use especialy if combined with better insulation. If the passive solar design of buildings was done with an emphasis on keeping the increase in the cost of building to only a small increase a large amount of benefit could be for an acceptable price. There are many cost effective things that can be done now.
Any slightly modern nuclear reactor these days is load-following. Many of the reactors in France are load-following by necessity, for example.
Site & blog: http://www.mayaposch.com
Decommissioning a nuclear plant site (not counting proper long-term fuel-waste disposal) has estimated costs of $7 Billion per nuclear plant.
My experience with engineering projects tells me that "double it and add 30 (%)" ;=) is a good heuristic for determining how much it will really cost, since everything is usually low-balled to win contracts. So we could guess $15 billion per plant.
No one has really implemented a proper long-term high-grade nuclear waste storage facility yet, so capital and ongoing costs for that are unknown.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Or not appreciably so, even compared to coal. That they do so is a myth being promoted for short-term economic gain.
A major problem with natural gas infrastructure is the leakage of methane (unburned) in the extraction and transport process. If that leakage rate reaches 3%, natural gas energy is about equivalent to coal on greenhouse gas effects on the atmosphere.
So increased natural gas energy is not an effective solution for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and slowing the global warming process.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Yes, and the democrats aren't pushing green for any reason other than altruism, correct? Take no notice of the immense graft happening. Neither side is innocent of having vested interests as you demonstrate with your last sentence.
As wind builds out, it will provide more electricity than is needed at times. Using that to produce methane provides a drop-in replacement for fossil methane. This is being included in carbon emissions reduction stratagems these days. http://arstechnica.com/science...
When arguing solar vs. nuclear, what you are really arguing about is where to put the reactor, and whether it's going to be a fusion reactor now, or a fission reactor now, with a fusion reactor replacing it later.
The only way to keep up with rising demand will be to use everything. Solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, nuclear, and every ounce of fossil fuel on the planet. I think before very long we'll come up with some kind of carbon reclaimation scheme, even if it's as low-tech as turning wastepaper and sustainably harvested pine into charcoal and burying it in tapped-out coal mines. There will be trouble when we run out of petroleum, but hopefully we'll be able to compensate with fusion. And, of course, the "energy companies" as they've rebranded themselves will start rolling out all of the gasoline replacements they've had waiting in the wings for decades, like that bacterium they found in zebra poop that turns cellulose into butanol.
That's just it. Wind turbines and solar are NEVER going to be producing the majority of power (unless we cut back DRASTICALLY on our power consumption).
I don't see why not. All it takes it the time we need to build it up. The current power sources weren't built over night either but are the result of many decades of build up.
Not quite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
. . . we would immediately replace all fossil fuel plants with nuclear while working to upgrade the grid and replace the nuclear plants with distributed solar by the end of the century.
Of course, that would require us to actually put our fear, avarice, and ignorance aside and work together as Americans for the betterment of our country and our species, something which seems unlikely in the current political climate.
I'm not saying that these methods can't eventually offset their manufacturing debts. But pretending they're "clean" from start to finish is disingenuous.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
If you measure its negative impact only by lives lost... what about if you also include how much it actually ended up costing to clean up after an accident? The Three Mile Island incident didn't kill anyone, afaik, for instance, but remains on record as the worst one in US history (exceeded worldwide only by the Chernobyl meltdown, afaik).
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
PV (photovoltaic) won't benefit much from scale, but some of the solar thermal options that use mirrors for heat that's then used for steam generation certainly do.
fencepost
just a little off
They already do from time to time in (eg) Germany and Spain.
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
Only to a degree, and typically less following is possible as the fuel load gets older in each reactor.
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
Even if you only counted incidents where there was a loss of one or more human lives, there have been over twice as many as that which happened on USA soil alone. And actual fatalities caused is far and away the only useful metric in measuring how problematic something actually is. I'd suggest that the costs of cleanup would play a large part in it as well.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
It's interesting to me that, when someone publishes a study that might not support the liberal template of "renewables and sustainables rock", the moderators also publish a rebuttal. In fact, I have never seen a Climate Change article with a rebuttal attached EVER. Slashdot slanted, oh hell yes they are.... come on guys. Let ALL of the members in the forum speak.
except for we have not built a single new nuke power plant in how long? we have much better design than the ones that have melted down now. so you cant really make that argument
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Can't be bothered to read TFA, and got a life-threatening yawn scanning the overly complicated rebuttal.
Dollars of carbon offsets vs. megawatts of installed capacity is mostly a measure of the average capacity factor during operation, possibly adjusted by the fossil fuels needed for maintenance but that is way beyond this level of analysis.
Capacity factor is something like 20% for solar (5 full sun hours most days), 40% for wind in a favorable location, 95% for nuclear until something bad happens In the end if they all have the same cost per installed MW then nuclear wins. If solar had 5x less installed cost then it wins, similarly for wind at 2.5 less.
1, and 4 are moot when you are generating all the power you need from your own roof... Now, batteries need to catch up, but a bank of batteries in your basement can keep a house overnight if it's well insulated.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Yes. And all the civil libertarians here who are so pro-nuclear yet all huffed up about the NSA won't ever admit to themselves the cognitive dissonance inherent in this.
Hydro is out because we're already tapped about 99% of the viable hydro in this country.
The states of the US Western Interconnect have developed about half of their potential traditional hydro. Big dams have their own environmental issues, of course, but there's also quite a bit of run-of-river potential in the Western. For the Texas and Eastern Interconnects, you're about right for traditional hydro. I keep waiting for people to figure out that the US doesn't have a unified grid, it has three almost entirely independent regional grids, and those regions have very different situations. Trying to have a one-size-fits-all national energy policy is going to result in all sorts of problems.
Nope. 100% renewable is perfectly doable.
Learn to love Alaska
There's a lot of research going on, but I'm not sure what's current. Some of the things I've seen mentioned include compressed air (pumped underground - old oil or natural gas wells I think), molten-salt batteries of various types, simple molten salt (similar to what's used for solar thermal) and later steam generation, pumped water (gravity storage), etc. Any of these could be appropriate depending on location, geography, etc.
fencepost
just a little off
They obviously left several stages out of their calculations.
From Nature.com
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
1, and 4 are moot when you are generating all the power you need from your own roof... Now, batteries need to catch up, but a bank of batteries in your basement can keep a house overnight if it's well insulated.
This is assuming you're in a place where it's feasible to do this (see #2, as none of these points exists in a vacuum from the others).
For places like the North Central and North Eastern US, you don't get enough hours of daylight, nor enough quality of light during a good portion of the year to pull more than a trickle charge off a normal sized rooftop. And that's BEFORE calculating a foot of snow and ice on the roof.
Try harder.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
When they talk about building a wind turbine, they talk about using the same amount of steel as it takes to build a family car (you know, something that costs around $30k and requires fuel). Why does the wind turbine cost twenty times that?? Because it doesn't benefit oil stockholders, that's why.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Comparing abstracted megawatt to megawatt is assuming it's a continuity - implying that you can build a 10MW nuclear plant when you only need 10MW and that you can do it at 1/100 of the price of a 1GW nuclear plant. It doesn't work that way. At small unit sizes wind, solar, natural gas etc have a vast advantage. So long as you have energy requirements that are not constant and predictable they have a place.
Since the thing we are discussing did not come out of a high school project that's a very major flaw and shows either poor editorial control or a deliberate attempt to mislead.
The dangers of radiation are grossly overestimated by most people and the over reactions are part of the enormous costs. For instance Japan shut down access to areas that so far I know have lower radiation levels then other sections of the world has as natural background radiation. (Admittedly not all areas effected are so low, but never the less it's quite the over reaction thus) And over doing evacuation adds costs and peoples health due to displacement and anxiety. And over doing the successive clean-up due to similar reason also would add enormous amounts of cost.
And then we're still left with the question if such problems would have occurred with a far newer design that should solve many many of the drawbacks and issues that caused this situation in the first place. In fact a some what newer design a bit further along the coast seemed to in fact handle the matter just fine despite quite similar occurance of Earthquake and flooding there as well.
So is nuclear 100% safe, obviously not. Is it as dangerous as often portrayed? Probably not if one looks at the actual factual data. Could it be a lot safer if we stopped using the old designs and mvoed everything to newer designs? This seems highly likely.
Thus current policies in many places seems a bit non-sensical and counter productive. Things could be much better over all.
Why can't we generate 100% of power we need with a combination of Wind/Solar/Hydro.
Because we've essentially built all the hydro we're going to build in the US. Even if we stopped caring about local ecology TODAY, and started building new hydro every place left, that'd still only double Hydro's capacity (which is currently 6-7% of our annual power consumption). So, generously, 14-15%.
That's just not enough for base load. It isn't.
Currently solar generates less than half a percent (0.3) total power consumption.
Currently wind generates a bit over 4%. Even if we assumed AWESOME quadrupling of growth in these fields (which would be unlikely and cost prohibitive), we're still talking, on a good day, 32% of total power consumption. On a bad day, you're STILL at 15%.
You cannot run our power grid that way. Sorry.
We're fast approaching the time Denmark proves you wrong.
That's Denmark. .05% of what it is in the US.
The total land area of Denmark (proper) is less than
Total population of Denmark is 1.5% that of the US.
Denmark's population density is four times that of the US.
Annual power consumption in Denmark is less than 1% of what it is in the US.
The per-capita energy consumption of Denmark is less than half what it is for the average US citizen.
It's very easy to build a nice, consolidated power grid when everything and everyone is so close at hand, the climate is so uniform, the natural resources are there, and the size and power consumption of the populace is so low.
Now, imagine you had to push power to guys in Ankara, in Turkey.
Or better yet, imagine having to push power to people in Kuwait.
That's roughly the distances we're talking about from one end of the US to the other. And that's not including Hawaii or any of our territories.
So, tell me about these "fast approaching" times.
Solar thermal and betting big on batteries.
Again, land use issues and unsuitable for implementation outside of certain areas.
And batteries ARE coming along. But at nowhere near the speed we need them to be at. Not in the next 30-50 years.
As for "get a broom" for your solar panels.
You're seriously suggesting people climb a ladder, get up on their roof and sweep off solar panels? You ARE aware that not every building extant has a flat roof right?
Oh and why limit ourselves just to the USA?
Because the top producers and consumers of power are:
China, the US, India, Russia, Japan, Germany, Canada, France, Brazil, and South Korea.
Pretty much, of all of those, only Japan has the luxury of low land area and high population density.
The most prolific power users swing between 1900 and 90 watts per capita, with India being at the bottom and Canada being at the top.
Small, self-contained countries may or may not be able to get away with a power system monoculture that excludes nuclear.
All of these larger countries simply don't have that luxury.
There is enough to supply all our energy needs if we choose.
Maybe in little backwoods Denmark there is. Or Greenland. Maybe it's enough for a few million people.
But when you're talking OVER half the population of the planet (the top 10 power consumers) and the distances involved (in China, you can walk for nearly 6000 miles STRAIGHT and never cross the border into another country). Then no, your little cookie-cutter solution simply doesn't fit.
Yes you can. (Generate 100% of your power with Wind/Solar/Hydro.)
Again, maybe in Denmark you can. Good for you. The world's a much bigger place than Denmark. So this country cousin attitude needs to go. Welcome to the big city.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Nope. 100% renewable is perfectly doable.
Oh! Well! If YOU say so. I'll just take your word for it!
Or not.
See my reply to the AC from Denmark above.
100% renewable is not, currently, doable in the US.
In 2012, only a bit over 11% of all power generated in the US was renewable. More than half of that was Hydro.
Even if you had a PHENOMENAL growth rate in ALL renewable energy sectors (4x growth), you'd STILL be looking at a power deficit of more than 50%.
You'd also see a fourfold increase (if not more, as it's taken years to get to this level of renewable production) in pollution from the manufacturing of said solutions.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
What are you talking about? "Doable" isn't the same as "doable tomorrow, with no spending or investment". With sufficient investment (no more than we've spent on investment in oil and nuclear), we could be 100% renewable. Yes, it will take time. That doesn't mean it isn't doable.
Learn to love Alaska
Talk about a skewed, worthless study from Brookings. Garbage in, garbage out.
As Amory Lovins ably pointed out, its data is old. It also does not consider the entire cost of production, usage and cleanup. Cleanup costs count too! Are West Virginia, Ohio, British Columbia, Alberta, the Niger River basin, or Ecuador's rainforests, or the Gulf of Mexico just not in Charles Frank's back yard? I guess not. Screw people for living there, then. Do not the geopolitical considerations of an aggressive military foreign policy required to keep the oil flowing not count too? Screw those GIs and the people who live where they're sent in oil wars, too. Exxon's got to make a buck.
That's what externalization is. It means omitting key and pertinent parts of the picture and just sticking it to whomever is dealing with the consequences.
Solar panels are rapidly getting more efficient and cheaper to make, and you can put them directly on site where they're needed so you don't have to lose electricity to resistance across a far-flung grid with its necessary redundancies and overproduction, which are required in the event that a powerstation needs a maintenance cycle.
Someone's just keen to keep a bloody monopoly.
And if you look at the factual data of solar power, how dangerous is that, compared to the amount of money that has to be invested in it?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
None of those issues is insurmountable. As time and technology march on we will solve those problems.
Yes, no point in holding your breath because you'll probably be dead by the time your hopeful figure can be reached. Once the storage question has been solved, and other technology generation systems like tidal power add to the pot (plus any new future and yet unknown systems), things will take time. Its still relatively early days in the new power generation systems, e.g. PVs are getting more efficient all the time
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
"Until the systems are actually, you know, INVENTED, TESTED and INSTALLED, no, the problem is NOT solved."
duh, yeah. you are being totally unrealistic. No-one but you seems to be saying it will be 100% perfect or efficient on the first iteration of the technology. Gas, coal, hydro and nucleur power did not work as well as they do now when first put into use.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Its quite clearly a limited resource, and leaves us with heaps of radioactive waste that nobody wants.
you are getting bent out of shape over nothing. you are expecting utopia in a day e.g. if everyone had solar on their houses and offices etc, you are not so reliant on huge generating stations. those generation stations could then become partly huge energy storage stations that are charged by all the excess solar power fed to it until personal storage is in place. You'd then not be in the situation california found itself in 2000 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
i would find it great to remove myself from the grid and only be reliant on the grid if my systems went off line. The more solar etc, the less fossil fuel burnt.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Okay, show me the weather data for the last time there was a day without wind in the continental US.
Your comments about the wind direction just crack me up. You have no idea how wind power works, yet you feel compelled to criticize it? Wind turbines follow the wind direction, but they don't do that when they're offline for maintenance. Do you understand? You have NEVER EVER seen a wind turbine that does not turn because the wind is coming from the wrong direction.
The US has not tapped out basically all of its (no apostrophe here, look it up) available hydro resources. It's being wasted as continouos production when it should be used to take care of peaks and valleys in consumption and production. Here's an analogy: You want to heat your house so you go out into the forest and set fire to it, then go back into your house and discover that the forest fire does not heat your house enough. Then you draw the conclusion that you need to heat your house using nuclear power because there is no way that biofuels can do it, seeing as the whole forest is already on fire? How about chopping some wood instead, and burning it in a furnace inside your house? A resource is not fully tapped until it is being used in the correct way.
And how is a doubling of wind and solar "generous" in any way? Because 50% of all rooftops already have solar panels on them? Yeah right. How about we start from the real example of Germany and their current figure of 7% of all electricity coming from solar, and then add generous multiples on top of that? But nooo, we can't do such an unfair comparison seeing as Germany is located so fucking far to the south compared to the US, and has so incredibly many more deserts appropriate for solar power production. And don't get me started on the much lower population density of Germany is. Right? Just face it, the US of today is a society that celebrates mediocrity under the motto "we can't do that here".
If you say that "renewables can't meet our energy demands if we don't build any" you are technically correct, but it is also a statement of no value for any discussion.
In this neck of the woods every wind turbine has a back up generator.
Why?
Peak power demands are hot, windless, summer days.
So the back up power generator has to kick in. And the generators of choice? GAS TURBINES.
Solar you say?
Do you have any idea of how much square footage is required to meet peak demand? So it costs a fortune to hook the necessarily remote solar farms in to the grid (though in fairness, that has a lot to do with the price of copper).
Face it, 'fossil' fuels and nuclear are efficient ... when used efficiently. ... hmm, thought not.
Oh, and if you are really fussed about power consumption, then do something like say, get rid of your air conditioner
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
In many ways, honorably working as a defense contractor is slightly more thankless than shoveling shit for a living. You do all you can to serve and routinely get accused of fucking over people.
There is no such thing as working honorably as a defense contractor. In an honorable system, we would not be taking money from people in order to go bomb brown people for oil, or opium, or economic concessions. Instead, R&D would be handled more efficiently, outside of government.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If it takes 150 years to develop the technology, but we kill everyone off with climate change in 125 years, it doesn't help much.
Is nuclear a 100% safe and clean tech? No. But it's a way forward until the technology to pull/retain power from renewables hikes up an order of magnitude.
Not saying "forever". Just until we develop better, cleaner, sustainable tech.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I'm not saying these things aren't good within little hotbox environments.
However, pretending like widespread deployment is an actual solution for the entire world? Fantasy at best. Damn lies at worst.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Rooftop Solar is /less/ costly than any of the other alternatives, because it costs real money to get electricity from a centralized powerplant out to the customers.
Even if generating at the powerplant is free, the transmission costs alone are greater than the cost of rooftop solar.
http://www.theguardian.com/com...
Math, motherfuckers.
--
BMO
No. As I've said elsewhere. I'm looking for a way forward. Until our ability to utilize renewables meets our demands.
I'm not saying "nuclear forever". I'm saying "nuclear for now", augmented by renewables.
This solution does the least damage to the environment as a whole.
The problem with your "everyone has solar panels" is that they're a waste of money in a good portion of the country and will pull nowhere CLOSE to their capacity, That and the maintenance requirements for such installations are logistically infeasible. Expecting the populace of the north central and northeast US to climb up on the roofs of their houses to sweep off solar panels is nuts.
Sure, being able to remove YOURSELF from the grid might be a good move. FOR YOU. Lots and lots of people simply don't have that sort of luxury
You're thinking like a guy who installs single family septic systems. Tack on a million more people? Sure! Just scale the single family system up, right?
Wrong.
That's the "If you have a hammer" principle.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Show me a day without wind
Try actually reading what I've written.
There are large swaths of time when the amount of wind is either insufficient or too excessive to operate the turbine. During which time the turbine generates...nothing.
As to the turbines following the direction.
Actually, there are static-placement wind farms. I've driven through several of them. Please, know what you're talking about.
I didn't say the US had tapped out all its hydro resources.
I said that further exploitation of hydro resources is going to be problematic due to environmental impact issues. Again, RTFA.
Then you draw the conclusion that you need to heat your house using nuclear power because there's no way biofuels...
You obviously aren't reading.
The problem with biomass fuel are the emissions. That and the fact that you can't expect a few billion people to go out chopping wood. If you think this is some sort of realistic solution, you're fucking insane.
How is doubing wind and solar "generous"
Because wind and solar have taken HOW long to get to where they're at. Doubling up in the short term is actually VERY generous. Heck, even if you QUADRUPLED output, you'd still be left with a power deficit of more than 50%.
As for your anti-US screed. I'll give it exactly the attention it deserves.
I'm saying "renewables can't currently meet our energy demands in the near and medium terms".
As such, if we want to divorce ourselves from fossil fuels and the pollution they cause, we need to look to things like nuclear for a base load.
Then, in the future, if we can get renewables to the point that they CAN provide base load, so much the better.
Not all-nuclear forever. Just until the technology for renewables catches up to our needs.
If we were to figure out vacuum energy tomorrow, I guarantee you'd see me dropping nuclear like a hot potato. But, for right now, nuclear's the cleanest, most self-contained option for base load power in the larger, more populous countries in the world.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
That's great for NYC. What about the outlying communities?
What about the people spread out all over hell and gone in Oklahoma? Texas? Idaho?
You simply have no idea (or are willfully ignoring the logistics) of what is required to keep this country in readily available electricity.
If low population density was a good thing, are you going to tell a farmer to give over half his fields to a PV or Solar Thermal installation? Plus however much space it'd take for a battery assembly to store it?
How about you come back to reality.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
People keep saying "with sufficient investment we could be 100% renewable". Sure, and everyone would be living inside a wind turbine coated with PV solar cells.
Probably not going to happen.
And you're still going to have areas where this sort of thing doesn't work for a good portion of the year.
Which means building a national power grid that could handle that sort of asymmetric load.
Now sure, we PV/Solar Thermal over Southern California, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona and South/Central Texas. Maybe that's enough capacity. Maybe. Plus a few trillion batteries that need to be replaced every 5-10 years.
I'm pretty sure the investment for advanced nuclear would be significantly less and yield greater energy output.
Do a little bit of math. Find a nice strong wind turbine. Now calculate how many of them you'd need to provide even 25% of the country's 4 BILLION megawatt hour annual demand.
Now do the same thing for PV Solar.
Now do the same thing for Solar Thermal.
Now calculate the land usage.
Come back when you have a realistic answer.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
less people die from all nuke power than solar or wind individually
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Only if you count per TWH of energy produced, and that would only be because the actual number of solar installs is so much higher than the number of nuclear power plants worldwide where, all other things being equal, the number of accidents happening during installation would be larger anyways (which is when most accidents for things like solar or wind occur, because their installation generally requires working at a height, such as on a roof, and although most professional roofers do take precautions to avoid falling, most fatalities in those industries are still caused by falls, which in all fairness, could happen even if the work had nothing whatsoever to do with trying to get power from wind or solar), and because almost all solar installs are for private energy consumption rather than for public energy use, the total amount of power being produced by solar overall is so much less than nuclear that the denominator of the expression is very tiny, resulting in a misleading large number.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
Casteism
The paper does not distinguish between solar PV, solar thermal, and solar water heating, which are all completely different technologies with completely different scales of efficiency.
It does not distinguish between wind turbines sited on land and wind turbines sited at sea, despite the fact that the latter cost approximately 10 times more than the former to build and maintain.
Overall because of this conflation the results it comes up with are inherently flawed. Please try again.
The Brookings Institute needs to factor in the cost of the wars overseas and the geopolitics of fossil fuels. Also if they really want to be real about nuclear power they need to factor in the cost of all the clean ups and the cost of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission we are going to be paying a lot of money for a long time for nuclear power even if we're not getting one watt out of it
Sheesh! You take a pretty dim view of human inventiveness. 150 years ago the telephone hadn't even been invented yet. The cost of solar PV has dropped precipitously in the past 15 years to the point now that plans for a coal plant were shelved because it wouldn't have been able to compete with solar. At this point the only think holding solar and wind back is a cost effective means of storing power to buffer the intermittent nature of the power and a lot of people are working on that problem.
You should read some articles ... google or wikipedia about how power production and distribution really works.
As far as I remember Kuwait is interconnected with Denmark just fine, since over 30 years.
All your claims why it won't work in your 3rd world counter are just: made up.
Even the idea that "all viable water power options" are used is completely off world.
Everything you bring up "your country is so huge" makes perfectly clear: there are options over options for wind, solar, water ... you name it.
It is the opposite around, Denmark perhaps is running out of space for wind power, USA certainly not. Europe perhaps is running out of transport capacity via power lines (we build new ones!!!) but I doubt it. The USA could build new ones, too!
Comparing the distance of LA with NYC with Denmark versus Kuwait simply shows: you have no clue ow international energy grids actually work, heck Denmark is connected with Mongolia and east China, too!! (Like the rest of west Europe)
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
or too excessive to operate the turbine. ... I don't consider this large.
Over the lifetime of the turbine perhaps 1% or 2%
Yeah, you will argue now that you might want that power right now when the fucking wind turbine is down.
I say: no. You are hiding in your storm shelter (hopefully), the power lines are ripped of already anyway, it does not matter if the turbine shut down 30 mins ago. (No one hears your screams)
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
There is no storage question.
The storage question comes when you can produce 100% of your power.
As long as you only produce 5%-10% you need no storage.
Actually you only need storage when you produce far more than 100% of your demand and like to ... oh? ... store it for times where production does not meet demand.
Storing energy at a time where your production is far of from demand is pretty pointless, rather waste it.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
How exactly can a wind turbine kill a human?
Hae? How retarded are you?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
No they are not.
Or, only in a limited sense.
Simply speaking: France is splitting up the fleet reactors into three groups. The "we are prepared to power down" group (dry to take over base load), the base load group (on emergency to power up), and the "ready to power up, but also react on peak old downs" group.
A single reactor can not follow load. Yes, it can power up quickly (far slower than a coal plant) and power down, but it suffers from Boron/Neutron poisoning which prevents it from powering up again (if not time perfectly) that means it is unsuitable for load following (if it has not a small fleet of plants 'in synch' with it)
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
30-100% load cycling, according to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
Also this link: http://www.oecd-nea.org/nea-ne...
Much depends on the exact reactor type, but for Gen II PWR/BWR reactors and up load-following is most definitely a realistic proposition. As the second link notes, German reactors were forced to switch to load-following mode due to the disruptions on the grid caused by the large-scale unbuffered PV solar and wind turbine fluctuations on the grid.
Site & blog: http://www.mayaposch.com
German reactors never switched to load following.
How should they be able to do that anyway?
They are running on 95% of max output, and they contribute like 20% of total power. Neither do they have room to power up, nor would it be significant if they would power down. If they'd pored down and would not not power up in minimum 20 mins, they can't for 6 hours due to boron/neutron poisoning.
I don't get your first line: 30-100% load cycling what is that supposed to mean?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Now sure, we PV/Solar Thermal over Southern California, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona and South/Central Texas. Maybe that's enough capacity. Maybe. Plus a few trillion batteries that need to be replaced every 5-10 years.
You are just a troll. Chemical storage is one of the worst options available. It's just the only one the trolls claim when whining about it.
Come back when you have a realistic answer.
For PV, you'd need no new land. Just doing rooves with souther exposure would meet your requirements. All the wind off shore. zero dedicated land needed. That's realistic. You just don't like it.
Learn to love Alaska
If you wish to refute my sources, please provide your own references. It doesn't appear that you even read any of them.
Site & blog: http://www.mayaposch.com
Why shoul I read a reference that is wrong?
I live in germany, next try?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
By the time it takes to get a nucleur system on line, renewables have lept forward in efficiency. I'm not against nucleur either but you seem to be implying its a waste of time with solar etc until its perfect, but how does it get better unless its made, used and refined? you can't keep it in the shed until its perfected otherwise it'll stay in the shed.
" Expecting the populace of the north central and northeast US to climb up on the roofs of their houses to sweep off solar panels is nuts." no, i'm sure there are ways to automate that if needed, cars have wipers (mine automatically works when its wet), why not the same for panels (as an example). but if its not practical for solar/wind your area then don't do it, simple.
"Sure, being able to remove YOURSELF from the grid might be a good move. FOR YOU. Lots and lots of people simply don't have that sort of luxury" - no, unfortunately its not a luxury i can buy but its an aspiration for me and a target ideal for all.
"You're thinking like a guy who installs single family septic systems. Tack on a million more people? Sure! Just scale the single family system up, right?" - not sure what you mean here but if every one has their own septic tank (where possible) and that can also be used to generate power. but that again is a choice for them. Most waste disposal is based on hundred year old ideas - have a read here for ideas in the pipeline http://cleantechnica.com/?s=to...
I prefer spreading the risk of power generation not all the eggs in one basket
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Typical modern wind turbines have diameters of 40 to 90 metres (130 to 300 ft) and are rated between 500 kW and 2 MW. As of 2014 the most powerful turbine, the Vestas V-164, is rated at 8 MW and has a rotor diameter of 164m.
That from the wiki and which also has other numbers for that biggest piece, which clearly show that diesel still wins.
Troll 2.0 Fear my asocial networking!
2012 was indeed a bad year for Swedish nuclear with Oskarhamn 1 being out and reaching 0.7 % load factor but the yearly average was 70 %. Check your math, either you misplaced decimal somewhere or you are mixing up the load factor of your turbines with the nuclear's share of Sweden's electricity production for 2012 - 38.5%, understandable brain fart, but still completely different metrics.
Troll 2.0 Fear my asocial networking!
Since the Rocky Mountain Institute's head proclaims that "It would be nothing short of a disaster if we were ever to find a source of cheap, clean, abundant energy", I take any statement from RMI with ... about a metric ton of salt.