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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.
Decommissioning costs (including storage, disposal, and demolition) never seem to figure into these numbers.
If you read the article and linked information, you'd know they included decommissioning costs, plus costs related to accidents and insurance costs. Also, many nuclear power stations have been fully decommissioned. A surprising number of them are now greenfield sites in the US.
We're looking into Solar right now, and I'm considering everything from a leased system that only provides daytime power offset, to a full system with battery bank and generator capable of intentional islanding off-grid for those few times that the power goes out. Trouble is trying to size the thing, one estimate suggested we only get 12.5kW, but with three HVAC units and two hot water heaters, plus the air compressor and other things down the road like a welder I don't think that the ~50A from such a system would really be enough given that the property is sized for 200A service and I have an outbuilding to support. I can buy a propane-powered 20kW generator for about $4000, so I'm wondering if I'd be better off sizing solar to be similar.
Even costing more than other non-fossil-fuel sources, solar appeals because it's something that I can do at home. I can't really do wind, there's probably not enough thermal gradient to do geothermal, there's no stream or river to do hydro, and obviously nuclear is out. That pretty much leaves me with solar.
I'm disappointed that codes for new construction haven't started mandating the installation of solar. Integrated into the design of a house it could probably fit aestetically better than a retrofit, and the cost to purchase such a system when rolled into the 30 year loan would probably make it more feasible for most to have it. On top of that, wider adoption would serve to drive costs down for everyone else, including possible retrofits like mine.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Similarly, the amount of radioactive material released by burning coal is rarely mentioned.
.: Semper Absurda
I'm installing solar this month.
The ROI calculators show a first year 7% ROI (of course, this will increase as electricity prices increase).
It's hard to find another investment which will give me 7% return on my investment and where the return will increase by 3-5% per year for the next 25 years.
This is a no-brainer.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Yes, they also factor in fuel disposal costs.
It's on pg. 14 if you're interested.
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.
We're looking into Solar right now
I looked into solar last year. In California, we have tiered pricing, where the first tier costs $0.10 per kwhr, the second tier $0.12, and if you go over that, the third tier is $0.30. I wanted to at least eliminate the top tier. But before I invested in solar, I decided to try to cut consumption as much as possible. I added insulation to the attic (saving gas in the winter, and electricity for A/C in the summer), installed an attic fan, and switched all our lighting to LEDs. LEDs are expensive at retail ($10 per bulb) but far cheaper on eBay ($2 per bulb). The result was that I was no longer using any top tier electricity, and the solar no longer made sense. I did all this for about 5% of what the solar would have cost.
Exactly correct. Using correct number reversed the order. http://www.forbes.com/sites/am...
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.
120V service is derived by adding a center-tapped-neutral to a 240V single-phase system. Residential power is calculated based on that 240V number. So, 240V at 200A is my max power capacity before tripping the main breaker.
I have to look at both while-running max load and have to consider startup demand. Breakers for individual circuits are supposed to be sized for startup demand (though apparently there's a tiny bit of room for fudge here, with slower-acting breakers so that a peak draw at startup could theoretically exceed a breaker rating for a very short time without either tripping the breaker or being especially dangerous) but by and large, that's what I have to do. I can rule-of-thumb the breakers for the 240V devices to figure out approximate max startup demand if everything kicked on at the same time.
If I add up the startup demand for the three HVAC units, the two hot water heaters, and probably 20A for all of the various residential 120V circuits for lighting and devices, I'm well over the 50A of a solar system, and I expect that with all of that running at the same time I'm probably over 50A there as well. That's the biggest concern, and I know that I've had all three HVAC units running at the same time before. The air compressor doesn't run very often, but it also draws 30A while it does.
We're probably going to put a couple inches of foam insulation on the outside of the house and have it stuccoed, and we're going to change the windows. Unfortunately there are a lot of windows to change, and it'll be close to five figures to change them all.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
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.
Early solar adopters aren't bearing this cost because the power company charges them same amount for power whether or not the sun is shining - it's not really an issue until solar is a bigger power source. Germany IS already there, leading the way with solar and wind, and has been paying outrageous prices for electricity at certain moments when there is a crunch - up to 400 times the normal rate! But as you can imagine this is a huge financial incentive to create new solutions.
I question the study because the transition to solar will be gradual, and it's hard to say what more efficient means we might come up with to store power. If we had a smart grid that could communicate fluctuating electricity prices to devices, there might be a lot they could do.
Straight conversion efficiency isn't the only factor that matters by a long shot, and might not even be the most important factor. Maximum charge cycles / lifespan strikes me as important. Cost of materials. Safety. Regulatory complications. A 10% loss in efficiency is probably worth it to go from 3,000 charge cycles to 10000.
fencepost
just a little off
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.