Existing Solar Tech Could Power Entire US, Says NREL 589
derekmead writes "A new report from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory finds that solar holds more potential to generate more power (PDF) than any other clean energy source. The NREL broke things down into four groups: urban and rural utility-scale photovoltaics (giant solar plants, basically) as well as rooftop solar and concentrated mirror arrays. Between those technologies, which are all already on the market, the NREL reckons there's a proven potential for solar to hit a capacity of 200,000 gigawatts in the United States alone. For some perspective, 1 gigawatt is what a single nuclear power plant might generate, and it's more than most coal plants. A gigawatt of capacity is enough to power approximately 700,000 homes."
We will get solar when there's a profit. (Score:5, Insightful)
In a capitalist society, abundance is not a feature.
Re:We will get solar when there's a profit. (Score:4, Insightful)
...and if every home can generate their own power at point of usage.. Well there is no long term market in that except panel cleaning.
Re:We will get solar when there's a profit. (Score:4, Interesting)
replacement, repair, also sun goes down and sometimes is cloudy. so you still need power infrastructure just not so much of it... so accordingly price adjusted for the power companies
Re:We will get solar when there's a profit. (Score:5, Funny)
Just build the fucking Dyson Sphere and be done with it.
Re:We will get solar when there's a profit. (Score:5, Interesting)
...and if every home can generate their own power at point of usage.. Well there is no long term market in that except panel cleaning.
Well, not exactly:
* inverters blow out, occasionally needing replacement
* sometimes you use more power than the panels can provide (especially if you have a garage)
* a home with north-facing roof or on the north side of anything bigger than it doesn't fare so well.
* as sibling said - the sun goes down every day.
* if you have kids, odds are good they're going to throw something onto the roof. Odds are better that it'll be hard enough to crack the glass on a panel.
* even top-end panels last about 25 years max before peak output drops below 80% of rated Wp.
Finally, to make a panel, you have to burn an unholy amount of electricity just to feed the CZ furnaces for the wafers/cells (letting alone wafering, cell processing, panel construction, etc). It has to come from *somewhere*...
Re:We will get solar when there's a profit. (Score:5, Informative)
* inverters blow out, occasionally needing replacement
* sometimes you use more power than the panels can provide (especially if you have a garage)
* a home with north-facing roof or on the north side of anything bigger than it doesn't fare so well.
* as sibling said - the sun goes down every day.
True.
* if you have kids, odds are good they're going to throw something onto the roof. Odds are better that it'll be hard enough to crack the glass on a panel.
Not true. Panels are designed to withstand pretty heavy hail hitting it at terminal velocity. Unless your kids are shooting at your roof with a gun, the panels should be fine.
* even top-end panels last about 25 years max before peak output drops below 80% of rated Wp
Not true. Standard guarantee is that panels will be at the 80% mark or higher at 25 years.
Finally, to make a panel, you have to burn an unholy amount of electricity just to feed the CZ furnaces for the wafers/cells (letting alone wafering, cell processing, panel construction, etc). It has to come from *somewhere*...
True. But energy payback time is down to between .5 and 1.4 years depending on exact technology used. That's from the EPIA March 2011 white paper, and things are surely better now.
Re:We will get solar when there's a profit. (Score:4, Informative)
> You repeated essentially exactly the same statement
Essentially exactly the same?!
The original statement implied that the panels *would* degrade to 25%, Mike pointed out that that's simply their warrantee. As I said earlier, my car had a 80,000 km power train warrantee, but I'm far beyond that and it's still working fine.
> go bankrupt at the end of 25 years
In 25 years the inflation adjusted price of PV will likely be very close to zero.
> See here [wikipedia.org] - not an industry shill.
I helped write that article (and wrote most of the related ones, like LCOE and $/watt), so I can same with some authority that you're missing the point. The point was about the *energy payback*, the ratio between the energy used to make the panel to the energy it produces over its lifetime.
> TOTAL system levelized cost
I find it more than a little amusing that you complain that Mike is an industry shill, then quote numbers from an industry shill to show him why.
The EIA numbers you quote were compiled before the price of PV imploded. If you'd like to run the calculations again with modern numbers, you can try the math I put in this article:
http://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2012/01/24/your-own-grid-parity-pv-system/
And before you start, contract tenders for mid-scale commercial systems are currently going out at $3.50, all in.
Re:We will get solar when there's a profit. (Score:4, Informative)
> * even top-end panels last about 25 years max before peak output drops below 80% of rated Wp.
Nope. That's when their warrantee expires, but that don't actually "do that" in the field. My car didn't magically stop moving when it hit its 80,000 km power train warrantee either.
Arco started serial production of panels in the early 1970. Those that can be found (most were scrapped, some sank in the ocean) are producing an amount not easily distinguishable from 100% of their post-burn-in power rating. That's after 40 years. This is not atypical. Study after study after study has shown that there is no real degradation after burn-in, and the warrantee is really covering mechanical failures.
The same is not true of inverters. Most of them have a 10 year warrantee and last 12 to 15. That is something everyone expects to improve as operational frequencies increase. Microinverters almost all come with 25 year warrantees now.
> you have to burn an unholy amount of electricity just to feed the CZ furnaces
The panels "pay off" their energy in 2 to 3 years. Thin-film versions in 1 or less.
And before you say it, do you know where concrete comes from?
Re:We will get solar when there's a profit. (Score:5, Funny)
I think he is referring to the EV you will have recharging in there?
Or maybe he uses his garage as a grow room
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True, its actually a bug!
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In a capitalist society, abundance is not a feature.
"Since the beginning of time man has yearned to destroy the sun. I will do the next best thing...block it out!" - Montgomery Burns
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Re:We will get solar when there's a profit. (Score:5, Informative)
One day, solar energy will be cost-effective in many places, but not today. Solar energy is great if you want to move off the grid, or if you're in a remote location, but for the average American, it simply isn't cheap enough yet.
Re:We will get solar when there's a profit. (Score:4, Insightful)
Can't have all those political allies solar companies going tits up after they poor tens of billions of dollars into them.
Re:We will get solar when there's a profit. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, but the cheapness of the Chinese panels was due to price fixing. Once all the Americans were put out of business, the Chineese would have raised prices on their own to make back their investment, and the US would be closed out of the market. Not imposing those terrifs would have been short-sighted.
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You can expect a WTO decision on this and the tariffs rescinded. Now that we let the Chinese into the WTO you better believe we are going to be paying for that decision for many, many years to come.
Both with money and jobs.
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I have no idea of the facts, but the obvious answers would be:
- the chinese gov't, to build market share
- for the same reasons that applied when they were trying to sell to the US pre-tariff
Re:We will get solar when there's a profit. (Score:4, Informative)
of course it adds up.
For starters, the Chinese have a MUCH cheaper labor market than we do, mostly because they pay their people in crap for wages, and in government connected businesses, they use slave labor from the political prisons.
China has an unofficially stated goal to dominate the economy of the planet. The way they are doing this is by dumping cheaply made goods on the worldwide market and undercutting existing suppliers until those suppliers collapse. Then once there is no more significant competition, they raise prices back up.
They did this exact thing with the Steel industry back in the '70s and '80s, and now steel is FAR more expensive than it was then, but the American (and others) steel industry is all but wiped out. Same with the garment industry. China pretty much OWNS the commodity clothing market, and the electronics market, and the manufacturing almost anything market. They have been doing this for YEARS and people are only now starting to catch on.
I'm all for Free Trade, but it only works when everyone plays by the same rules. When one player (China) is obviously rigging the game to destroy everyone else, then it's time to change the rules. In the meantime, Avoid buying things made in China as much as possible (it's not possible anymore to completely avoid it. Chinese made crap is everywhere.)
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Who is paying the Chinese makers to sell them at a loss? Now that the tariffs are in place, why are they still sold for the same amount internationally? It just doesn't add up.
The Chinese government does. It's one of the many areas of the Chinese economy where their government actively interferes to drive foreign businesses into the ground so they can take over. Most of the foreign businesses affected are in countries that don't quite have such an economically protectionist government.
Re:We will get solar when there's a profit. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:We will get solar when there's a profit. (Score:5, Interesting)
4x it's weight in toxic waste and greenhouse gasses
That's not very much. Each kWh the panels generate saves roughly half a kilogram of greenhouse gasses based on the average generation mix in the US, for example. On average, a single one of the 15kg, 215-watt panels on our roof makes enough power to offset four times its weight in greenhouse gas every 23 days. Given their 25-year warranty, that's means that the panels will save roughly four hundred times the greenhouse gas that was produced in their construction, if your "four times the weight of the panel" number is correct.
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There's also the fact that there's nothing about the manufacture of solar panels which requires the production of greenhouse gases: the furnaces used to make them are electrical. Though if we wanted to get fancy they could also be biogas, solar thermal etc. Or just powered by other solar panels.
This is exactly the same bait and switch as gets pulled with "nuclear power produces CO2 because of the mining and refining!". It ignores the pertinent issue which is that no part of the process requires or is even p
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If you believe you have a 25 year system warranty that is worth the paper it's printed on, you are smoking some good stuff.
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Re:We will get solar when there's a profit. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry but I disagee. Subsidies make sense when you're trying to jumpstart something like this that will have an overall benefit to the country. Spiking demand for panels to get production numbers up, getting a support system of installers built, and lowering the demand on local power production are all good reasons to want subsidies IMO. If I could get panels on my roof without having to get a second mortgage - on a home that is already upside down - then I'd do it and lower my demand on the grid. But I can't, costs are way over the top, so in my area where there appears to be almost no subsidies or other incentives this industry stagnates. I've got a terrific location for panels but no way will I spend the coin it would currently require...
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The government is mostly under control. Just not under our control.
Our chance of taking control of the government is the same as our chance of ending oil subsidies, withdrawing troops from the middle east, and terminating the FDIC and Federal Reserve.
Only by freeing ourselves from fossil fuels and fractional reserve loans can The People take charge of this government the banks and oil companies now run. And they do run it, regardless of what your cereal box says.
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Remember, Walmart tends to get federal, state, and city rebates for those installations, plus they're fully deductible as a business expense, then they get to do positive media about being green.
You'll Have To Claw That Oil Out Of My Cold Dead.. (Score:5, Funny)
Don't bother us with your pathetic alternative energies. We have to burn every fucking ounce of long-chain hydrocarbons, use up every ounce of radioactive ore, burn every ounce of methane and other simple hydrocarbon, before we even consider your pathetic green hippy alternative energy sources. Only fags and Commies believe in generating electricity by anything other than CO2-vomiting power plants. Oh, and CO2 is totally harmless, no matter how fucking much of it you puke out.
God bless oil! The only way oil could be better is if I could fuck or eat it! Now get off my lawn, you pathetic Marxist hippies.
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We just have to burn more than we can pull out of the ground and you'll immediately see prices spike, as governments ration oil to make sure that farms, commerce, and armies get first grabs at it. Personal automobiles may bid up to $10/gallon for whatever's left over.
Cost is important! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cost is important! (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it doesn't. So long as the solar panels pay for themselves, they're viable. It may not be viable for an individual to put them on his roof (mostly because they are undervalued in the market, if what you say is true) but that has nothing to do with whether you can go and build solar power plants to replace coal, nuclear, gas and oil.
Just because one specific type of solar installation might not be perfect (for you) doesn't mean solar itself won't work.
Re:Cost is important! (Score:4, Informative)
I'm in the northeast, a very low-end power user (bottom quartile), and the math still doesn't work out for me on PV. What DOES work is solar thermal to warm up a tank in the basement that sits before the hot water heaters (preheating water) and pumping heat into the living space via baseboard radiators. Unfortunately, those systems are not as cookie-cutter, so getting someone to put them in is almost impossible.
Unfortunately, all the energy saving stuff I see seems geared for newer homes or homes in sunny and hot areas. Where I am, people generally don't even have Air Conditioning, they have 110 year-old homes that aren't well insulated (and often can't be without $15K of asbestos remediation and $5K of rewiring, neither is subsidized). I have yet to meet a contractor who understands that I want windows on the south and that ALLOW lots of infrared in.
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I looked into solar hot water and a double tank system with drainback (the first needed for safety for drinking water, the second for areas with hard freezes) just didn't make economic sense against electric, let alone cheap natural gas. My calculated payback period without electricity for the drainback pumps or installation was in excessive of 20 years. Now if you don't have natural gas then solar hot water for floor heating might make sense (no need for a double tank, though I'd think you'd still need dra
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Wish I had mod points for you. I had a similar experience when I looked into it. The numbers just didn't add up and the upfront cost is crazy. If you could get solar panel costs down to about 10% of where they are now. you could get some traction. But right now, it's just too much for most of us.
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When I looked at it this spring, properly-sized solar panels on my house (to cover baseline load, not summer peak) would cost me about $5k after all the local and federal tax credits. The payback period would be about 5-6 years, so I'd come out very far ahead with the 20-year life. And the $5k investment in the house would absolutely raise the value of the house by at least that much. It all totally made sense.
The only problem was that we have no south- or west-facing slopes that aren't tree covered yet.
Re:Cost is important! (Score:5, Interesting)
There are companies that will own the panels and charge you for them monthly like a utility. No upfront cost.
eg -
http://sanjosegreenhome.com/2010/01/27/secrets-of-residential-solar-lease-sweet-deal-or-disastrous-rip-off/ [sanjosegreenhome.com]
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Don't bother us with your pathetic alternative energies. We have to burn every fucking ounce of long-chain hydrocarbons, use up every ounce of radioactive ore, burn every ounce of methane and other simple hydrocarbon, before we even consider your pathetic green hippy alternative energy sources. Only fags and Commies believe in generating electricity by anything other than CO2-vomiting power plants. Oh, and CO2 is totally harmless, no matter how fucking much of it you puke out.
God bless oil! The only way oil could be better is if I could fuck or eat it! Now get off my lawn, you pathetic Marxist hippies.
I'm sure I've been past a few places in the last month where the people are entirely off the grid. I think they are laughing at everyone who doesn't have the luxury of a location suitable for wind or solar, because it really can cut our generated needs. I'm pretty sure at least one was a commune.
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"The only way oil could be better is if I could fuck or eat it!"
RealDoll? Edible oil product?
(yes, I know that last one is not petroleum, but... are you sure?)
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yes, algae fuels would help the petroleum fuel shortage. Particularly Botryococcus braunii: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botryococcus_braunii - but there are far better solutions generating electricity.
Re:You'll Have To Claw That Oil Out Of My Cold Dea (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, unless I messed up the math, this study is saying that the solar technology we have right now could be deployed to easily generate that much power, in the US alone.
gigawatt...ho hum (Score:5, Funny)
1 gigawatt is what a single nuclear power plant might generate, and it's more than most coal plants
On the other hand, that's barely enough for one jump back to the future.
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1.2 gw
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Thorium (Score:3, Insightful)
We could just design and build thorium reactors for a lower cost.
They are safe.
They do not take up valuable farm space or displace native creatures and plant life.
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Yes, I think Thorium is the way to go. Of course, the DoE join-development project of LFTR with China should just about kill US ability to use it.
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Re:Thorium (Score:5, Informative)
The fact is that there is so much thorium in Earth's crust, you hardly need another energy source. If we ran out after 100,000 years, we would start mining other planets and moons for the stuff. It is so energy dense that such operations would be economical, even with our current primitive technology.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9M__yYbsZ4 [youtube.com]
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The thorium fuel supply is limited, however.
Far less limited than fossil fuels, however. If we use thorium breeder reactors only for all of our energy needs, I believe the sources I have read have suggested that we have identified only 50,000 years worth of thorium deposits....
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Of course they are not. Extracting a lot of energy from something with high energy density is never safe. This is particularly so when the scheme involves radioactive goo.
This is of course compounded by your standard array of corrupt, stupid and greedy nuke plant operators. And you don't get a different brand of them unless you drop your libertarian wet dreams.
So, no. Thorium reactors are currently not an alternative.
Re:Thorium (Score:4, Informative)
Well you could even be using free-breeder reactors, or well anything in between too until it becomes cheaper? So what's stopping you besides wacknut environmentalists and NIMBY nuts? CANDU reactors can use anything for fuel, nice huh?
But here you are complaining about "greedy nuke plant operators" and yet we have greedy *insert other power plant operators* and we have even worse super-greedy wind/solar operators. Who get lovely feed-in-tariffs of 40-80c/KWH to sell their electricity. That's what we pay for in Ontario right now. Oh yeah, really good. Right on track by 2015, most expensive power in North America.
Hey, it's so bad in Germany that there's over 1m people that can't even afford their power anymore. And the price per/KWH is now over 20c.
Thorium reactors are an alternative, but they're a stepping stone, like other nuclear technologies. Technologies that environuts, and nimbys' get their panties in a twist over.
Sustainability? (Score:2)
The raw materials (silicon and trace elements) are virtually unlimited and highly recyclable, so that's not a problem. The problem is that photovoltaics have a limited lifespan.
What's the energy input to replace a panel? I do believe it's favorable. In other words, I think it's worthwhile to make the cells whereas ethanol is actualy a net loser. I just don't have numbers. Google time...
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The problem is that photovoltaics have a limited lifespan.
Well, yes-- everything does. Off-the-shelf consumer photovoltaics typically come with 25-year warranties guaranteeing 80% of original capacity at year 25. They'll gradually degrade at about 0.5%-1% of original capacity per year-- they'll last more than four decades.
What's the energy input to replace a panel?
Depends on the type of panel and how much sun it gets when you hang it up, but construction energy payback is generally 1-2 years. Given the a
Pshaw (Score:5, Funny)
Like these so-called scientists know anything. I heard on the radio today that solar energy is baloney and if the radio says it, then that's plenty good enough for me and anybody who says different is obviously biased.
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If they could get the system cost down to something on the order of 15 cents a generated kilowatt hour including overnight storage they might have something.
Why is 15 cents per kilowatt hour the magic price target that solar power must meet?
Is it because that's what conventional electricity currently costs you?
If so, that's reasonable for today, but there's no guarantee that conventional electricity won't cost more tomorrow -- especially if you factor in the externalized costs (subsidies, military and strategic costs of having to keep control of foreign energy fields, global warming, war due to competition for diminishing resources, environmental damage due to
Scenery (Score:3, Insightful)
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This is a valid concern-- but until we run out of houses, wal-marts, and parking lots to put them on, it shouldn't be an issue. We have plenty of already-spoiled scenery that can do double duty. ASU is all over this-- their campus parking garages and parking lots are all growing solar covers. Intel's fab on the south side of town has solar panels on top of all their shaded parking.
700,000 homes (Score:4, Insightful)
First, you need more peak energy production with solar than with fossil fuels or nuclear, because you also have to be storing up energy for dark hours/cloudy days.
Second, that sounds like it's estimating some pretty low consumption per household, which probably isn't realistic. Electric consumption per household is on the increase, and I'd expect this to continue. More so if there's a move toward electric/hybrid vehicles recharged at night.
duh (Score:2)
The NREL broke things down into four groups: urban and rural utility-scale photovoltaics (giant solar plants, basically) as well as rooftop solar and concentrated mirror arrays. Between those technologies, which are all already on the market, the NREL reckons there's a proven potential for solar to hit a capacity of 200,000 gigawatts in the United States alone.
oh great. i guess all we need is the bazillion dollars needed to build and maintain these massive solar arrays.
duh.
Re:duh (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, building such things is not a "cost" but an investment. Just allocate the whole cost of the past several Middle-Eastern wars to your power bill and see how it goes for ya.
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And, in the 1950's, computers filled a room and cost millions. Now, my iPhone (actual cost around $500) can probably equal all the processing power and on-line memory in the world at that time. Costs will come down, steadily, as the technology matures. With PV, prices will continue to go down as the market continues to grow. That's the way technology works.
Re:duh (Score:4, Informative)
I did a quick calculation. Using 100W = 3 square feet.
That is roughly 3.2 square miles/gigawatt of solar cells.
200,000Gigawats would be 640,000 square miles, or roughly 16.8% of the US land mass.
I'm just saying - the numbers they are throwing around are a bit amazing. Further - what happens at night? Do they have a decent storage system for this juice?
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Though granted, the overnight storage would definitely be a challenge if solar scaled that high, and a lot more long-distance transmission lines would be needed.
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Yeah, we should rather spend all that money on importing oil! At least that does something for those poor Arabs and we get rid of that pesky money for good. And we even get some CO2 out of it!
Stick it where the sun doesn't shine... (Score:3)
I am very skeptical. Maybe I'll be more convinced when I finish reading the report. But 1) what about when it's dark? 2) there's significant losses when transmitting electricity over long distances. This can be minimized by the use a very-high voltage transmission lines, but that requires greater expense, and bigger, uglier towers. 3) What land use is going to be lost when we have so much of the country covered with solar panels? 4) photovoltaics don't work as well in the heat as the do in the cold. How are you going to fix the problem of their heating? 5) some of the newer technologies use Indium and other rare metals - are these going to become even more scarce? 5) China has killed the PV cell business in the US. 6) wind 7) nuclear
Re:Stick it where the sun doesn't shine... (Score:4, Informative)
2) Residential solar systems can be grid tied into local power systems, or a system of batteries at the place of installation.
3) The United States Government owns huge tracks of land. Google "government land map" and you should see. Those desert areas would be perfect for solar plants.
4) Eather the drop in solar panel prices will be enough to offset their loss of efficiency in high heat, or a new design that will be efficient in the heat will come out.
5) Maybe
6(2nd 5?)) They've caused the price to fall like rock. That's awesome from the home solar installer's perspective. I've seen systems as low as $0.82 per max watt output most recently, and prices are falling even further. The business isn't over, but it's a bloodbath of companies getting out classed.
7(6?)) Unless there are amazing drops in prices I see solar staying the more economical option.
8(7?)) Nuclear reactors take 20+ years to build. The cost of solar will long since be cheaper than nuclear by the time any plant could be built.
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- So there were problem once, so there will be problems forever? Dealing with environmental regulators is a problem for any business.
- Nuclear plants constantly need to be be inspected and approved during the building process. Until something change nuclear plants take 20+ years to build
- Since when aren't other forms of energy subsidized? Oil, biofuel, and coal companies all re
Solar vs. Nuclear: Mars Rover Edition (Score:4, Interesting)
Spirit and Opportunity were powered by solar panels delivering 140W.
Curiosity, 5 times heavier, has a radionuclide battery delivering 125W.
Despite being much heavier, Curiosity will be faster and more effective than either Spirit or Opportunity.
The difference, of course, is that nuclear power is being delivered constantly, while solar power needs sun shine, varies over the day and depends on weather and season.The 1GW of propaganda power is what you get under ideal conditions - in other words, never. A nuclear power plant rated at 1GW will deliver this and is capable of delivering it for months without a break. On a yearly basis, 1GW in the shape of a nuclear power plant will deliver 10 times as much energy as 1GW of solar power in Germany (about 5 times more for solar power in deserts/arid areas).
And that's without considering the need to store energy from solar power plants in order to use this power when it is needed. Both in terms of the cost in money and energy.
If you compare solar power with anything else in the way this article does, you're deliberately deceiving the readership and nothing else.
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Funny the first rating is "troll". I'm merely taking the exact same position as the article and explain what's wrong about it, but all of the sudden, I'm a troll. Maybe the article is.
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Actually Curiosity will be slower than Spirit/Opportunity, according to the pdf I read. However it is able to get over obstacles that would have stopped the older ones.
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Exactly, the power output definitions are completely different. A 1GW-rated nuclear plant will produce 1GW 24/7/365, rain or shine. The solar panels are rated 1GW peak. Real instant output depends on a bunch of stuff, like sunlight intensity and angle and how dirty the panels are - were they installed with a 2-axis gimbal system to keep them constantly pointed directly at the sun, or just sitting on the ground? And is there some mechanism to clean them off regularly? Take that stuff into account and the nee
Nuke plant 1GW? Disinform much? (Score:4, Insightful)
The nuclear plant outside Phoenix produces over 3.3 GW. Stating that a nuclear plant "might produce" 1 GW to make your photovoltaic inefficiency sound better is disingenuous at best. Also, last time I checked urban rooftops are already cluttered with equipment, not just sitting there waiting for someone to exploit that real estate, and rural areas are often full of food producing, recreation having, wildlife harboring land. Why you'd want to cover that with vast arrays of shiny glass and metal I can't say. Just remember, all those arrays need plenty of grease, and petroleum products to keep them operational. They'll still result in plenty of pollution of their immediate footprint, which is enormous.
Fails to account for ALL other clean energy source (Score:2)
This:
"A new report from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory finds that solar holds more potential to generate more power (PDF) than any other clean energy source."
and this:
"The NREL broke things down into four groups: urban and rural utility-scale photovoltaics (giant solar plants, basically) as well as rooftop solar and concentrated mirror arrays."
don't jive. They're leaving out a lot of other technologies such as wind, hydroelectric (micro through major), wood (which is very clean), etc. Solar's grea
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Just imagine... (Score:2)
What if during the housing boom, there was a mandate in place that all new homes had to be built with solar panels? Imagine how much power those acres upon acres of vacant homes around Vegas would be producing right now.
In order for solar to be viable on a large scale, it needs to be mandated by the government and the utilities need to be coerced into allowing homes to feed back into the grid. During the day when people are at work, their homes can be powering their offices. When they are home at night,
Solar is the only good bet in the long run (Score:3)
I'm a proponent of nuclear power and I'm a bit skeptical about the practicality of renewables in the short term, but I believe that in the long run solar is going to dominate the energy scene. The amount of energy the Earth recieves from the sun is staggering, and the amount of solar energy we could generate if we created huge sun-orbiting solar power plants is pretty much unimaginable in modern terms (the sun outputs enough energy to sustain a population of 24 trillion billion humans at present rates of consumption). As such, I have no doubt that we will one day be able to meet our basic needs using solar power. It would be conservative to predict that eventually we will be drawing in massively more energy from solar power than we consume today from all sources.
In particular though, solar is the most direct and efficient power source that does not suffer from Jevons Paradox. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox [wikipedia.org] If we perfected fission and fusion power, we'd simply amp up our power usage massively. Cheaper energy means we can afford to do more with it. Suborbital commuter flights? Launching city-sized spacecraft? Colonizing the solar system and maintaining the colonies with regular shipments of supplies? Not a problem...but with such massive energy consumption, we'd eventually face yet another energy crisis. Although it may seem rediculous now, supplies of easily obtainable, high yield fusion and fission fuel would probably be depleted to worrying levels within the timeframe of a human lifetime.
This doesn't apply to the sun. You can't mine the sun, it's simply too hot. Plus, it's already a fantastic fusion power plant, so there's no need to try it. The only "downside" is that the sun has a production limit, which is fairly stable and not easily increased. However, this is really a blessing in the long run as we can't consume more than what the sun gives off in a given time period, leading to long-term stability. Therefore solar is the only notable power source in the long run.
That said, non-solar nuclear still has an important place. In the short term, fission can help reduce our reliance on coal during the gap between fossil fuels and solar. In the medium term, nuclear has an important place in space colonization and turning the sun into a giant fusion power plant. In the long run, it may still have a place as a high-density energy storage medium. The point here is that the energy we use doesn't just vanish. What we make out of it can have a big impact. We wouldn't have gotten to the point where we could make the leap to nuclear and solar without fossil fuels...or at the very least it would have taken much longer to get where we are now. The use of "consumable" nuclear power will jumpstart our next big push.
Solar power at night is easy (Score:5, Interesting)
They have tested and proven that "molten salt" can be produced by aiming a field of mirrors at a high tower. The salt is double the temperature of boiling water. It gets stored underground in big tanks or caverns. Then a portion of the heat is used (24 hours a day) to boil water and run a conventional steam turbine hooked up to a conventional generator. The system can run for 3 days with no sunlight.
Re:Solar power at night is easy (Score:5, Insightful)
So, it's a fancy battery (just storing thermal energy until conversion to electricity, instead of storing the electricity).
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You are a muppet, it is a method to generate electricity from mirrors, water and salt. All of which predate all sorts of power sources! They could have used this in the dark ages without it being out of place, but they didn't happen to have any ipod's they needed to charge...
Re:Solar power at night is easy (Score:5, Informative)
Correct but it solves the main issue of solar power: That it's not available during the night.
The molten salt keeps hot for days so intermittency is no longer a significant issue.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
Solar power towers [wikipedia.org] can store energy efficiently in molten salt and achieve continuous output.
Cloudy days (Score:2)
Solar power towers can store energy efficiently in molten salt and achieve continuous output.
True but how well do they work on a cloudy day? Solar cells will still produce power - albeit less - on a cloudy day. It seems unlikely that this is the case for solar towers.
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And they would, in fact, still produce some energy on cloudy days. Most designs call for parabolic mirror installations, which will focus the light onto the tower even if the source
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I just bought some land for some serious off grid living. So I have been looking at solar and wind power for my little get away place. I have found that the power generation systems have come down to an affordable price point, but the storage tech still needs significant improvement, and needs to come down in price a long way.
I will be keeping
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They throw around some mighty big numbers. I wonder how those numbers look when the sun sets.
Even without storage, having that power to tap during daytime hours when businesses and homes need it most would be very helpful. I imagine that demand is most high when it's hottest (for AC), which would also be when this technology performed best.
Until then, solar will be limited to the world of rich eco-friendly types.
Not if the government/utilities build it. And hey - you already pay a massive premium for on-peak power, I bet there is funding for this in there somewhere..
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You appear to be ignorant of the many other forms of grid energy storage [wikipedia.org] which are available. Also, electrical energy could be converted to other useful forms, such as hydrogen, to replace existing hydrocarbon uses.
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You're only considering solar panels on individuals' houses. We don't all use diesel generators all the time, so why would solar have to be locally installed?
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Well, there's a terrific technology for storing that daytime solar energy that works as long as solar provides less than 50% of your electricity. Best of all the infrastructure to use it is *already* in place.
It's called unburned fossil fuels.
You simply shut that old oil burning plant during the day, leaving that bunker oil it would have burned in the tank. The result is up to a 50% reduction in pollution (including carbon footprint), and reduced price pressure on dwindling petroleum supplies.
Granted, as el
Re:Wow (Score:4, Informative)
Sure you can. That's the entire concept of a peaking plant and any oil plant would be rigged for peaking. It's too expensive to run it as base load.
Peaking plants can and do spin up and down quite quickly. The GE LM6000 (basically a modified 747 engine) units they use in one of our newest natgas plants can go from standing still to maximum output in under 5 minutes and back down at about the same rate.
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I think picking one winning technology at this point is ludicrous, the goal is to (cheaply) reduce CO2 whilst still keeping the lights on. Some places can do that with the sun, others with wind, waves, tides, nukes, geother
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has to mean 200,000 gigawatts per hour
Oh my. I really hope this was a troll, but I'm going to bite anyway. If not, know that you are in good company; most people struggle with the idea that watts already include "per unit of time". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watt [wikipedia.org]
Of course, this is from the same person that wishes the power company would stop using kilowatt-hours to report my electricity usage and start using kilo/mega/gigajoules.
That being said, you may have some legitimate arguments if you have the units straightened out.
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Yeah, there is no fucking way you're getting that much power out of existing solar tech. I'm embarrassed I had to scroll down this far on /. to see someone questioning those laughable numbers. They've got to be off by several orders of magnitude.
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That's a nonsensical phrase unless you're discussing a change in power over time (such as, "every hour, power rises by x gigawatts"). You could say gigawatt-hours (GWh), which is a unit of energy, or you could say gigawatt-hours per hour (GWh/h), shortened to gigawatts (GW), which is a unit of power. It all depends on what you mean. But I don't think you really mean gigawatts per hour.
No, it says 1
Re:Something is wrong here (Score:5, Informative)
Would it cost money? Sure. Then again, one tank of gas for a pickup truck costs $100 right now.
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We do a lot better with non photovoltaic generation with molten salt.