New Solar Capacity Beats Coal and Wind, Again 356
Lucas123 writes Solar energy installations beat both wind generated and coal-fired energy for the second year in a row, according to a new report from GTM Research. While solar only makes up about 1 percent of U.S. energy, in 2014, it added nearly as many new megawatts as natural gas, which is approaching coal as the country's primary energy source. Solar capacity grew 32 percent from 2013 to 2014 and GTM is predicting it will grow 59% YoY this year. Just two years ago, in 2012, coal represented 41% of new energy capacity and solar only 10%. Last year, coal was down to 23% of new electrical capacity. Solar capacity growth last year represents a 12-fold increase over the amounts being installed in 2009. Key to solar adoption has been falling costs across market segments and states.
Politicians will be stupid but scientists/technolo (Score:5, Insightful)
Whenever I hear about all the stupid comments and grandstanding from politicians trying to pander to a scientifically illiterate (American) public I despair. However when I look at the (long predicted and now achieved) strides in solar power, a see a "ray" of hope.
Finally solar power is becoming cost competitive even with coal. Hopefully in a few more years and certainly less than a decade it will be decisively so. At that point, one hopes, renewable power will no longer be a political decision but a purely economic one.
This, of course, won't solve global warming, certainly not "over night" (ha ha). The vast build up of CO2, thermal lag and feedback loops (permafrost melting) means we will be dealing with this for generations to come. But it might slow down the buildup enough so that new carbon sequestration technologies created (again by scientists and technologists) can fix the problem for good.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah... wooo hooo Solar produces many giga watts of power, while coal continues to spread CO2, uranium and heavy metals at an increasing rate
Does it bother anybody else that nuclear isn't even mentioned in passing in the linked article?
It has been well documented that Solar has a high initial energy cost for production, suffers from spikes and lulls in availability and cannot be easily transferred across the US due to an aging and outdated power transmission system. Why does not anybody in the solar industr
Re:Politicians will be stupid but scientists/techn (Score:5, Insightful)
Why does not anybody in the solar industry step up and support nuclear energy as the logical replacement for coal to fill all of the known gaps in solar power?
Why can't the nuclear industry take care of their own stuff ?
Re:Politicians will be stupid but scientists/techn (Score:5, Interesting)
> Why can't the nuclear industry take care of their own stuff ?
Because they got used to the military paying the bills and generally babysitting them. It has been too cozy for them having the military as a giant revenue "vacuum cleaner" sucking up tax money and pouring it into their pockets.
Hopefully that time is ending. Hopefully.
Re: (Score:2)
Because they will be closed long before their stuff become harmless.
So their stuff will become a public funded problem.
Re:Politicians will be stupid but scientists/techn (Score:4, Insightful)
Why does not anybody in the solar industry step up and support nuclear energy as the logical replacement for coal to fill all of the known gaps in solar power?
Because it isn't that. Nuclear can't be ramped up and down quickly, so it's not useful for filling in.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Why does not anybody in the solar industry step up and support nuclear energy as the logical replacement for coal to fill all of the known gaps in solar power?
Because it isn't that. Nuclear can't be ramped up and down quickly, so it's not useful for filling in.
Most existing plants were not designed to load follow, but nuclear certainly can load follow relatively quickly. Not quite as fast as gas, but pretty quickly. The size of the plant is a factor as well.
The solar industry wants as much money as it can get, so it will villify all other sources as much as it can. Of course, they can't attack wind because they'd split their base, and they can't attack gas because new gas installations enable the grid to handle new solar. Either way, the oil and gas industry is q
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Lead Acid batteries are tricky to maintain and if not maintained well then their in-out efficiency falls ~50% pretty quickly.
Li-ion is better on both fronts, but Lithium is scarce.
There are other storage technologies, Pumped Hydro http://www.fhc.co.uk/dinorwig.htm being the most tried and tested one, but Pumped Heat http://www.isentropic.co.uk is being developed now, and there's Tidal lagoons, and hot salt, however none of these are domestic in scale.
I think in general economies of scale and effciencies of
Re:Politicians will be stupid but scientists/techn (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I had not heard of nickel-iron batteries before this[0], but they don't look promising:
"Due to its low specific energy, poor charge retention, and high cost of manufacture, other types of rechargeable batteries have displaced the nickel–iron battery in most applications" The poor charge retention seems to suggest that the in-out efficiency will be low as well.
There are other chemical batteries that would be better, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanadium_redox_battery springs to mind, and the sodium su
Re:Politicians will be stupid but scientists/techn (Score:4, Informative)
NiFe batteries (i.e. Iron Edison) models are starting to get a foothold in the solar storage battery market. Their main selling point is the fact that they have a very long usable life and are very stable. They have a relatively poor energy density in volume compared to lithium variants, but for storage battery installations, this isn't as big an issue as in a smartphone.
Re:Politicians will be stupid but scientists/techn (Score:4, Informative)
Pumped hydro may be more efficient but there you need the space and geography to support it and it would be good for large scale storage. For more local storage, using better batteries like sodium-sulfur batteries at the substation level to smooth things out..
Re: (Score:2)
If space isn't a problem, why not NiFe batteries? Those don't damage themselves if they drop below 50% SoC, and unlike lithium batteries, don't lose most of their capacity in 2-3 years.
Another energy storage medium would be flywheels.
I do like the idea of a battery bank at residences, because this is an ideal whole-house UPS.
Re: (Score:2)
Why does not anybody in the solar industry step up and support nuclear energy as the logical replacement for coal to fill all of the known gaps in solar power?
Because it isn't that. Nuclear can't be ramped up and down quickly, so it's not useful for filling in.
So Solar means we can't actually eliminate fossil fuels and carbon emmissions... (unless you find the perfect loss-less battery for storing energy when its cloudy or at night) I'd say that is a significant gap in the ability of Solar power to ever serve as a solution for eliminating carbon emissions. But only being 1% of the solution now means it has a ways to grow before you hit that wall and realize that solar can only ever reduce carbon emissions by some percentage.
It does very much seam like Solar pow
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Check your math! That is clearly wrong simply by taking the number of people on the planet and dividing up 3.6m miles between them, 1 average person obviously only needs a fraction of roof space to supply their power.
Math done, 3.6m miles = 1331 square meters per person, that's orders of magnitude wrong.
You need to go back to school, Solar power doesn't generate heat it collects heat/energy,
Re: (Score:3)
Because it isn't that. Nuclear can't be ramped up and down quickly, so it's not useful for filling in.
And things like Solar, Wind, and Wave wave aren't usable as baseline "brown" power. Because their generation sources are not stable and dependable. BUT, they can be used, alongside existing hydro and geothermal to offset demand spikes.
In other words, you don't use nuclear power to "fill in". You use nuclear as your baseline. You use everything else to fill in.
Re:Politicians will be stupid but scientists/techn (Score:4, Insightful)
Why does not anybody in the solar industry step up and support nuclear energy as the logical replacement for coal to fill all of the known gaps in solar power? :D as they store enough heat to run a few nights without sun.
Because neither PV plants have a gap (you don't need much power at night, or do you?) nor do thermal solar plants hang behind nuclear power
Of course I could be nitpicking and point out that the sun actually is a huge nuclear reactor.
Re: (Score:3)
Of course I could be nitpicking and point out that the sun actually is a huge nuclear reactor.
Just need a big power cable and we will be all set.
Re: (Score:3)
The public largely rejected nuclear, yet reality says all those electric cars will need to plug into something.
Nuclear isn't called nuclear anymore. It is called "broad sustainable energy mix". The public will see windfarms and solar, because they take up space, and meanwhile here and there, new nuclear will quietly be built, and if by then anyone objects, they can cite urgent need to reduce emissions, given we've already built so much wind and solar and yet, oddly, we still have a ways to go to reach the t
Re: (Score:2)
> The public largely rejected nuclear, yet reality says all those electric cars will need to plug into something.
Already taken care of:
https://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2014/09/16/future-grid-energy-in-the-not-so-distance/
> The way to get more nuclear is to never mention the word
And to lower the CAPEX four times. THAT is something no one has figured out yet.
Re: (Score:2)
That is interesting. But I meant cars as something which will be an extra demand for clean electricity, at a time when people are burning coal for their home energy needs. Can you both make the air conditioning clean and your car? And that's USA where you have lots of space.
Re: (Score:2)
You're dreaming if you believe anyone utility is going to "quietly" build a nuclear plant...certainly it won't happen in the U.S.
Re: (Score:3)
"Why does not anybody in the solar industry step up and support nuclear energy as the logical replacement for coal to fill all of the known gaps in solar power?" - they are more likely to support power storage like bat
Re: (Score:2)
I'd imagine the reason that nuclear wasn't mentioned in the linked article, is because there is a 0% rise in nuclear generation capacity, and thus doesn't show up as a data point.
In fact, except for NRC-licensed uprating of existing reactors, there hasn't been any increase in nuclear generation capacity in the US in over 30 years. If they complete that plant in Georgia, then we'll probably see it in the future versions of this article.
Re:Politicians will be stupid but scientists/techn (Score:5, Interesting)
Nuclear Fission: suffers from exactly the same scarcity issues as oil/gas. The only sane fusion to do is to wrest the plutonium from the military and then dispose of it in Fast Breeders. Fisson is not necessarily a power source, we do not know the cleanup cost (in energy terms) as noone has ever successfully fully decommissioned a nuclear power plant and dealt with all the waste
1. The military hardly uses plutonium. Enriched Uranium was eventually where it's at
2. We haven't seen lots of exploration for new uranium sources because we've been running off the military stockpiles for the last 20 or so years. It's depressed the market enough that expanding mining wasn't worth it. That source is coming to an end, ergo more mining operations are starting up.
3. Even without expansion of exploration like we've seen with oil/gas, we have enough Uranium within about double the current price to last several hundred years.
4. Before price increases would make the fuel costs for a nuclear plant 'significant', IE something you'd actually see in your electricity bill, we'd be able to filter the stuff out of sea water profitably.
5. Breeder reactors allow much more complete burn up, which means that about 80-90% of all the 'waste' we currently have sitting around can be turned into new fuel.
Fusion: I honestly think it ends up being an issue of scaling. 'Double' the dimensions of your fusion chamber and you end up using 8 times the resources, but get 16 times the power. I'm afraid that by the time we get it figured out, it'll turn out that the *smallest* practical plant is something like 20GW, and it'd take so long to build that it'd never be economical.
but a set of decent storage technologies with in-out efficiencies in the 90%s and capable of maintaining that store for a few days,
Now this I don't disagree with. They were talking about how on the radio battery prices have come down so much that using them for grid storage is actually starting to make sense.
Solar wise, they need to get the panels a couple percent more efficient and a couple percent cheaper before they make enough sense for me to bolt them to my house, but then I'm practically within shouting distance of the arctic circle. I seriously looked at them last summer.
That being said, I'm honestly trying to get my parents(in Florida) to invest in them, but the government is interfering there. Heck, I think solar car ports covering parking lots would be nifty. Solar panels(most of them) are structural enough that if you don't need a tight seal they can act as a shade/roof without an underlying layer.
Re: (Score:2)
> The military hardly uses plutonium
Wut? That's practically all they use.
> current price to last several hundred years
At the currently tiny fraction of worldwide production. If you are arguing for some sort of fission economy, then there's not nearly enough of the stuff.
> and it'd take so long to build that it'd never be economical.
It doesn't make a difference, the non-nuclear side is already too expensive to build:
https://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2015/02/28/fusion-aint-gonna-happen
Re: (Score:2)
1. The military hardly uses plutonium. Enriched Uranium was eventually where it's at
Any form of your 5th point would use plutonium.
2. We haven't seen lots of exploration for new uranium sources because we've been running off the military stockpiles for the last 20 or so years. It's depressed the market enough that expanding mining wasn't worth it. That source is coming to an end, ergo more mining operations are starting up.
The biggest problem with the mining of uranium is the amount of energy required to extract the ore from the rock...
3. Even without expansion of exploration like we've seen with oil/gas, we have enough Uranium within about double the current price to last several hundred years.
...and all of the new sources coming on line are all from harder ores i.e. it takes more enrgy to extract from the granite ore bodies than it does from sandstone ore bodies. This means the energetic output of your reactor is soaked up by the energy you used to get the fuel in the first place.
4. Before price increases would make the fuel costs for a nuclear plant 'significant', IE something you'd actually see in your electricity bill, we'd be able to filter the stuff out of sea water profitably.
Again th
Re: (Score:3)
All this is irrelevant. Uranium, is limited in supply, even if it's a large supply. This limit means we will eventually have to stop using it and use something else. So why bother starting?
Whilst living on this planet the sun will provide us with all the energy we need if we can just work out how to harness it effectively. Save the Fissile materials for when we *really* need them, like if/when we get into deep space exploration.
There are enough fissile materials for 100,000 years worth of power, once you put thorium and breeders and non-traditional uranium sources into the mix. Even if this is off by an order of magnitude, a 10,000 year supply of power lasts longer than recorded human history. To me, this is a reliable enough supply (and one that can be used TODAY) that I support its use until we bridge to some form of terrestrial fusion, and/or solar energy.
Let me ask you this: If we started now and built even just enough nat
Re: (Score:3)
Why invest in short term solutions?
Because you don't go directly from the Wright Brothers to the Space Shuttle in one step. There are intermediary steps involved, because that's how technology progresses.
Waiting for the perfect technology instead of using incrementally improved solutions has you getting nowhere at all.
Re: (Score:2)
All this is irrelevant. Uranium, is limited in supply, even if it's a large supply. This limit means we will eventually have to stop using it and use something else. So why bother starting?
The sun will one day burn out and not provide solar energy, eventually we will have to stop using it and use something else. So why bother starting?
Re: (Score:2)
All this is irrelevant. Uranium, is limited in supply, even if it's a large supply. This limit means we will eventually have to stop using it and use something else. So why bother starting?
Really? You're saying that because there's only a couple thousand years of our current energy needs sitting there, we shouldn't use it at all because it's only a couple thousand years? It's better to continue burning chunks of mountain and turning them into clouds of shit that kills people because we don't have a permanent lasts-longer-than-civilization-has-been-here energy source?
You are fucking cracked. Turn off your computer and never use it again - it's powered by a temporary energy source that we wi
Re:Politicians will be stupid but scientists/techn (Score:5, Informative)
> Sure, it is technically correct
No it's not.
There are dozens upon dozens of reports, all easily accessible on the internet, that state in no uncertain terms that the US grid is perfectly capable of handing lots and lots of intermittent power. The last report I read, now outdated as its from 2012, said that California was able to use up to 100% embedded PV. That means you could install PV on everyone's home and office to net meter to zero and the grid would handle it just fine.
http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/NR/rdonlyres/8A822C08-A56C-4674-A5D2-099E48B41160/0/LDPVPotentialReportMarch2012.pdf
Re: (Score:2)
> Sure, it is technically correct
No it's not.
There are dozens upon dozens of reports, all easily accessible on the internet, that state in no uncertain terms that the US grid is perfectly capable of handing lots and lots of intermittent power. The last report I read, now outdated as its from 2012, said that California was able to use up to 100% embedded PV. That means you could install PV on everyone's home and office to net meter to zero and the grid would handle it just fine.
http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/NR/rdonlyres/8A822C08-A56C-4674-A5D2-099E48B41160/0/LDPVPotentialReportMarch2012.pdf
I don't much care how much you protest, night time is gonna be wanting for power if that's your install base. Either that, or somebody is gonna be spending a lot of money storing the solar energy generated during the day for use overnight. THAT cost is certainly excluded in current solar price listings.
Re: (Score:3)
Solar can only get cost competitive with coal when it exists as a supplemental power source. It cannot take over baseline supply due to intermittency so it can only serve to shave off daytime peaks.
Storage? Sure, but that costs money and shaves off efficiency. And if you want to go full solar you need to expand the farms so they can:
1. Cover all daytime demands.
2. Produce enough surplus to charge all the battery banks to cover the sunless hours.
3. Produce even more surplus because some days are cloudy.
The
Re: (Score:2)
In short: The solar future doesn't look as bright once you start to scale it.
I think you will find that Solar thermal generation doesn't scale in the way you have assumed.
Re: (Score:2)
All solar energy is area dependent and will scale linearly in a similar manner.
Re: (Score:2)
All solar energy is area dependent and will scale linearly in a similar manner.
Indeed it is area dependant however I think you are referring to photovoltaic as opposed to Solar thermal which has line and point modes of collection. IIRC the output of point mode stations quadruple as the size of the station doubles because the higher temperatures achieved at the point.
Obviously there are limits to the largest size, however we are nowhere near that yet.
Re: (Score:2)
What I mean is that solar irradiance is at 1000W/m^2 give or take depending on sky quality time of day and so and combined with turbine efficiency means that you can never exceed 600W/m^2 peak no matter what the scaling modifiers are presented as.
Re: (Score:2)
With your head stuck in the sand the horizon is quite close.
Re:Politicians will be stupid but scientists/techn (Score:4, Informative)
Finally solar power is becoming cost competitive even with coal.
Capacity =/= generation. Generation is generally 20% of capacity due to solar's awful capacity factor, which is why its NOT competitive with coal (really, nothing is). I would love for this to be true, because as a tech solar seems like the elegant solution we need-- you make the panel, it magically makes energy, win win! Except thats not the reality. Things like latitude (germany is pretty far north, for example, which affects their generation), the fact that panels dont last forever (need replacement after 15-30 years), their high cost to make, and their low efficiency conspire to kill "the dream". Enough soapboaxing-- lets look at actual figures.
(Sources from wikipedia, and from thence many other sites)
A chart of energy prices by source, Germany. [wikipedia.org] Note how coal is generally 1/2 to 1/3 the cost of solar.
US DOE estimates for 2019 [wikipedia.org] (scroll down for chart). The fun facts--Total system costs (per mWh):
* Coal (various types): 95 - 147
* Natural gas (various types): 66 - 128
* Advanced Nuclear: 96
* Solar, Thermal: 243
* Solar, PV: 130
Note the first column, which is where solar really gets thrashed. Your installed solar capacity may be 1000MWh, but your average output over the year will generally be 200MWh because your capacity factor sucks. Go towards the poles, it will be far worse (as Germany is discovering). Take a look here [greentechmedia.com], you can see that while Germany has a boatload of solar capacity (beating out everything else), its actual generation lags behind everything except gas and hydro.
Im not cherry-picking these, either; one of those links youll note appears to be to a "green" site. Im just grabbing the first links I see, which mesh with every other piece of info I've seen on the subject. The TL;DR is that solar is crazy expensive and not really a great pick for northern countries. Maybe Im wrong and Germany will hit 100% of its generation year round eventually-- but I seriously doubt it. Solar is great as long as you dont expect it to carry the full weight of your country's energy needs; its really not made for that.
The real tragedy to me is that Germany is scaling down its nuclear, with the upshot that its still having to rely heavily on coal. If we did live in a world driven by science and rationality, we would see solar / wind / nuclear on an upswing and coal on a downswing. Thats not happening because many "green" types will worry about the nuclear boogeyman, and claim that if we work for 100 years we can possibly get solar to be cost competitive and efficient enough to actually generate a country's energy.
Re: (Score:3)
If nothing is competitive with coal then why are all the coal plants in the US being retrofitted to run off Natural Gas?
Garbage (Score:3, Informative)
1. Heavily regulate coal, increasing costs.
2. Force plants to close, decreasing generating capacity.
3. Crow about the fact that Solar out generated coal and is cost competitive.
Solar hasn't improved. Coal has been artificially handicapped.
Re: (Score:3)
The average power you get out of 1GW of solar panels is at best 32% of the peak (in practice it is quit
Re: (Score:3)
Um... yeah, that North West Oregon Housing Authority (NOHA) has really been cooking the books, probably getting kickback from the corning insulation people
Re:Politicians will be stupid but scientists/techn (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
I live on the east coast. We are getting artic slippage. That's a new climate. It also was not the coldest anything on record which is why we got so much snow.
Re:Politicians will be stupid but scientists/techn (Score:5, Informative)
The interesting thing about pumping more energy into a large fluid system is that it accentuates the amount of difference between the hot spots and the cold spots, making the hot spots hotter and the cold spots colder. (fsvo spot that means a moving 'lump' of fluid)
The main effect of global warming is to increase the violence and variability of the atmospheric stirring (commonly referred to as weather). Raising the temperature of 6 thousand billion tons (nb I use uk billions ie 10^12 so we're talking 6 x 10^15 here) of air by a half of a degree represents a lot of energy, that energy means more stirring, means more extremes of weather. It's hardly amazing to anyone who cares to think about it for a moment or two and who's studied a pan on the stove.
So yes, the cold winter you just experienced IS a product of global warming.
Re: (Score:3)
It's because the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the globe. This makes the jet stream wavier, and that causes localized cold weather:
http://www.weather.com/science... [weather.com]
The reason for the extra Arctic warming has several reasons. One being that the air is dry, which means that increasing CO2 blocks a larger portion of IR. Secondly, the reduced sea ice area exposes more dark water to the sun.
Re:Politicians will be stupid but scientists/techn (Score:5, Insightful)
*facepalm*
You really don't understand the difference between global and local climate, do you? A 4 degree C change in local climate doesn't mean that much. A 4 degree C change in the global average is a catastrophe.
Re:Global Warming? (Score:5, Informative)
Which Global Warming? The one which stopped 18 Years ago?
No, not that Global Warming, it's another one. You can't say that it has stopped or is dead, because all you need to do is look at a graph of global temperatures to see that this is not unprecedented. The global temperature peaked in 1940 and then didn't reach that point again until 1970. Global Warming didn't stop back then, despite that lull.
In fact, that wasn't a lull, it was more of a plummet then a rise. If you look at the graphs, you will see that the global temperature repeatedly plateaus (or even falls) only to continue warming a few years later.
It is totally premature to try to call the end of a major trend while you are in the middle of it. Just look at how noisy the data is for the period that you mention [drroyspencer.com] (which is just one reading). Who is to say that we wont see another step up in the next year or so followed by another plateau at a higher level? It certainly fits the pattern that we have seen in the past.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I couldn't care less if we reduce pollution for the sake of "global warming" or "to stop particulates and heavy metals from being rele
Re: (Score:2)
This is an incredibly logical stance, and one that I find myself drawn to. I don't know if climate change is being caused by human industrialization or not - I haven't seen all the data, and I'm not a climatologist with the proper training to interpret that data.
I do know that turning chunks of carbon found under a mountain into plumes of shit in the atmosphere isn't very good for the lungs that happen to be downwind. The science is pretty clear on that. Therefore, if we can find ways to stop doing that
Re:Global Warming? (Score:4, Insightful)
As any investor will tell you, past performance is no guarantee of future results. I would further direct your attention to the fact that your link to the satellite data only goes back to about 1970. Prior to that, we had even less data sources with less data points. The further back you go (prior to around 1930, there wasn't even standardization or widespread training for temperature measurements at weather stations), the less accurate, precise, and available the data becomes. All in all, for a planet that's 4,500,000,000 years old, we have about ~45 years of decent climate data. That's akin to trying to measure the speed of a car by taking a very grainy, low resolution 30 second video, editing it down to just the last 0.3 microseconds, and using a collection of indirect methods to carry out the measurement, then trying to determine the cause of its movement.
We're still at the point of having a child's understanding of the incredibly complex climate on this planet. Multiple times a year, new inputs into that climate are discovered that have a measurable impact (even if we can't yet measure that impact). Do humans have some level of impact on the climate? Absolutely; any chaos theorist can tell you that. How much is that impact? We don't have enough understanding of the system to know that yet. Our methods of measurement are crude, imprecise, and disagree with one another (tree ring data disagrees with satellite data disagrees with oceanic data, disagrees with ground station data). We attempt to reconcile that with crude statistical analysis that seeks to essentially cut the difference down the middle and call it a day. When we don't even have those crude measurements available, we turn to even cruder measurements like ice cores and subjective weather descriptions.
We are a child trying to understand the inner workings of a nuclear power plant even as we struggle to master basic arithmetic. That doesn't mean we shouldn't continue learning more. That doesn't mean we'll never get there in our understanding. It doesn't mean we shouldn't fund the basic research that takes us forward. It doesn't mean we shouldn't take reasonable steps to reduce obvious negative impacts we have on our environment. It does mean that setting public policy based on the level of understanding we have today is foolish and that any attempt to purposely alter the climate through mass engineering efforts is downright suicidal.
Now we'll see the difference in the replies to me between a reasonable, rational individual who will agree that the goals of reducing our obvious, measurable, visible environmental impact are good and should be pursued and the AGW zealots who will demand that all believe as they believe, worship as they worship at the alter of the IPCC, and who will cast me out as a heretic and an infidel regardless of common goals.
Re:Global Warming? (Score:4, Insightful)
All in all, for a planet that's 4,500,000,000 years old, we have about ~45 years of decent climate data.
The age of the Earth is totally irrelevant in this discussion. What you need to look at is the time constant of the relevant physical phenomena. Suppose an evil alien race injects a ray into our sun that makes it 10% weaker. How long do you think it takes for us to notice clear effects ?
Re: (Score:3)
The whole global warming arguments gets old. There are plenty of other arguments that can be used to encourage changes towards greener solutions. Solar power is free and space on roofs is also free to be used. It's free energy and considering our peek usage is during day light (overall usage, not residential) it seems like an ideal solution.
Solar panels were expensive and the reason is because they weren't being researched due to a lacking interest (double edge sword). Since many solar energy programs have
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
All you did with that post is tell everyone "I don't know about climate change, but I'm going to assume I do, and repeat what someone I trust told me about this, instead of acting like a rational adult and finding out for myself". Good jerb! You're so clever!
Gee Dave, you must be a rational adult, so what results are you getting from your fleet of temperature-measuring satellites that you put into orbit? Of course you designed, built, and launched them all yourself, because otherwise you'd just be "relying on what someone you trust told you" about global temperatures, and that would be childish.
Re: Global Warming? (Score:3, Informative)
Re: Global Warming? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not even all of that one political party. Just a vocal section of it.
It's pretty sad when CHINA can agree on this, but the radical right wing cannot.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
All of those are valid (if pointless) questions, so what it your point?
The subset of Christians who are called Catholics could be better or worse than the entire set of Christians.
Just like the subset of humans who are 3 years old have an average height shorter than that the set of all humans.
Lots of carefully worded obfuscation (Score:5, Informative)
The summary and TFA are carefully choosing their words to make it look like a land slide sized change in energy production, when all they are really talking about is subtle rates of change. But even these twists can't disguise the fact that 23% new energy is still done with coal.
In fact, the solar and wind aren't even meeting replacement needs for coal and gas plants taken out of production due to failure to meet environmental standards, and being too costly to upgrade. Old Coal plants are more often replaced with New Coal plants than they are with wind or solar.
Missing from those figures (because they don't represent New Production), is the number of coal and gas plants upgraded to meet environmental standards.
Its not all bad news. The best wind and solar sites are being heavily developed, cherry picking the most promising sites. And the arid south west is sprouting lots f solar farms. But we need to ramp up both wind and solar many fold before we can even think of retiring coal.
Re: (Score:2)
In Australia, we seem to be doing a little better. We haven't had new coal for a while (and we have enormous brown coal deposits). And from today's news, a report of increased efficiency to put solar in line with coal [smh.com.au]
Re:Lots of carefully worded obfuscation (Score:4, Insightful)
Why subsidize residential PV?
But what is very interesting in the source article is that residential solar installations cost more the twice as much as commercial ones. Given that fact, why in the heck would we subsidize residential solar? If the goal is to build as much as possible, and generate as much solar as possible, we should eliminate residential subsidies and build much more cost effective commerical ones. That way we get more clean energy, and everyone benefits, not just the wealthy to middle class demographic that typically installs residential solar.
Re: (Score:2)
> But what is very interesting in the source article is that residential solar installations cost more the twice as much as commercial ones
Yup. Economy of scale.
> why in the heck would we subsidize residential solar
Because the price of electricity on the residential side of the meter is more than double the wholesale price. So in the end it's about the same difficulty to do net metering on residential solar than commercial on the other side of the meter.
Re: (Score:2)
Why subsidize residential PV?
Because there's no need to destroy a big chunk of desert. Honestly, it's worth twice as much since the land is already "destroyed" and my roof is sitting there empty. People act like solar isn't environmentally destructive but it is - not to the extent that a coal plant is (and the destruction is limited to the immediate area of the plant).
My roof should either be a solar collector or painted white. Right now it's a solar collector and I'm paying good money in the summer to take the collected heat and m
Re: (Score:2)
I have no problem with folks installing residential panels. It makes sense for some. Go for it, we're all proud of you. But if tax money is going to subsidize it, is it too much to ask for getting the most for our money? Isn't the goal to maximizing clean air/carbon free generation?
Also, consider that residential panels are often not installed at the most optimal orientation as it is common to align with a roof plane, whereas commercial
Re: (Score:2)
Why subsidize residential PV?
I'm sure it started out as a fine idea, designed to boost the "solar power economy" -- create a demand for a product, and maybe you will stimulate the industry that makes this product and drive down prices through innovation and economies of scale.
I think once panels got good enough and residential installs big enough, somebody figured out that with net metering you could structure panel installs in such a way that the installer collected the subsidy and the homeowner paid for the panels over time with the
Re: (Score:2)
Basically, they figured out how to sell panels where the cost of them got significantly shifted to someone else -- the government and the utility, and the benefit went to the installer and the homeowner.
I'm not convinced that the above is a bad thing -- if the goal was to get lots of solar installed, and cost-shifting incentivized people to figure out how to accomplish that goal, then good -- it worked as designed.
As for whether or not that cost-shifting is "fair" to the utilities or the taxpayers; that's a value judgement, but IMHO it's no more unfair than the cost-shifting that takes place when first-world countries emit carbon whose worst effects are then suffered by third-world countries.
Re: (Score:2)
> But gas is the most expensive plant to run apart from nuclear
OMG, read something before posting!
http://www.lazard.com/PDF/Levelized%20Cost%20of%20Energy%20-%20Version%208.0.pdf
Gas cogen is *significantly* less expensive than nuclear. The only thing that comes close is wind, everything else is more expensive.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, and you also said "gas is the most expensive plant to run apart from nuclear" and that is the exact opposite of the truth.
You did make an error, an egregious one. Given that you replied in less time than it takes to actually read the paper, maybe you should do that first before posting here and digging your hole even deeper.
When you start from 0 (Score:2)
It's pretty easy to tout big percentage increases
Capacity vs availability (Score:3, Interesting)
Comparing capacity alone does not produce a clear picture. It must be tempered by the capacity factor [wikipedia.org]. That is the ratio of the theoretical capacity of a device to the actual output from the device. The capacity of solar panels is found by exposing the panel to a set amount of light. It is used to compare panels and is only part of calculating the actual output of the panel. In the real world conditions vary which causes output to vary. The capacity factor of PVs in the US is anywhere from 13% to 33%. The capacity factor of a coal burning plant is 63.8%. A watt of coal capacity is worth from 1.9 to 4.9 times as much as watt of PV capacity.
Then there is the fact the coal power is dispatchable [wikipedia.org] while solar is not. That make coal power more stable and valuable.
Re:Capacity vs availability (Score:5, Informative)
The dreaded capacity factor again :)
As you pointed out, a solar plane might have a CF between 13% (who builds a solar plant at sucha place?) and 33%.
Likewise a coal plant has not a CF of 63%, but a range from perhaps 60% for a load following plant, and something like 85% - 95% for a base load plant.
I personally don't see a difference between a dispatachable coal plant that idles at less then 10% of its load over night, just to keep it warm, and peaks to 90% of its max over daytime versus a solar plant that idles during darkness at 0% and ramps up following daylight to 100% around local noon (or what ever daytime the plant owner decided to have its maximum.
Please people, if you want to throw around CFs then start to grasp that this 'metric' is extremely tricky and not really usefull for comparing power plants. Every power plant serves a certain purpose: base load, load following, midrange power, peak load, balancing power, reserve power, a combination of balancing/reserve like pumped storage, a combination of load following/peak power and balancing like combined gas plants, a mix between base load and mid range for wind and solar (yes, the other midrange / load following plants have to shape their load around the variation of the wind and solar plants) etc. etc.
That said: for laymen who want to know if they should have a private solar plant on their roof/in their garden or invest into a local wind project wikipedia capacity factors are irrelevant. Missleading at best and disastrously wrong easily.
To calculate the viability of a plant at a specific place ... that might be your place, you need reference data of the previous years about hours of suneshine for _every day_ not an average over the year, same for wind. And don't make the mistake to use wind speed averages. 2m/sec and 8m/sec might average out as 5m/sec but so does 4m/sec and 6m/sec. The power production in both cases will be hugely different.
Assuming you have capital costs of like 10% of the investment as interest, being of by 1% or 2% with your (wrong) CF based calculation might change that 10% to either 8% or 12% ...
Regarding wind and especially solar you also want to check at which time of the day you might get the best prices. Instead of going for a high CF and produce most solar power around local noon, you might have a better price at 4PM and depending on latitude (because of sunset time) you might turn your solar plant slightly towards west.
In germany e.g. roof top solar that points south gets much less subsidiaries then solar plants that are significantly tilted to the east or west (since a few years) because most of our (private) solar plants are tilted due south.
Anyway, if you want to throw around with CFs learn how limited their meaning is ... otherwise you shoot yourself into the foot if you build your own plant and make an idiot about yourself if you talk about big scale energy production.
Re: (Score:2)
Likewise a coal plant has not a CF of 63%, but a range from perhaps 60% for a load following plant, and something like 85% - 95% for a base load plant.
I personally don't see a difference between a dispatachable coal plant that idles at less then 10% of its load over night, just to keep it warm, and peaks to 90% of its max over daytime versus a solar plant that idles during darkness at 0% and ramps up following daylight to 100% around local noon (or what ever daytime the plant owner decided to have its maximum.
I see a big difference instead. If a coal plant has a CF lower than 85-90% that is because you want it so, that is you don't need that power, while with a solar plant, you may need that power, but it's cloudy or it's winter and you're in the northern hemisphere etc. And that's just half of the story, because electric companies deliver electric power, not energy.
Re: (Score:2)
> The capacity of solar panels is found by exposing the panel to a set amount of light
No it's not, that's nameplace capacity. Capacity factor is "how much does the sun shine". You get it from a weather forecasting tool, like this one...
http://pvwatts.nrel.gov
> That make coal power more stable and valuable
And natural gas is even more dispatchable, which is why they're shutting down the coal plants as this paper notes.
Re:Capacity vs availability (Score:5, Informative)
Correct. Comparing different generation technologies by peak production capacity is like trying to compare the range of cars by looking only at the size of their gas tank. You must take into account fuel efficiency to get an accurate range estimate. LIkewise, capacity factor is analogous to the "efficiency" with which the power source can convert its potential capacity into actual energy.
Capacity factor for static PV installations in the U.S. is 10%-19%. The contiguous 48 states averages about 14%-14.5%.
33% is the max capacity factor for concentrated solar power - where you have reflectors tracking the sun all day and the panels/thermal salt bath mounted atop a high tower to minimize oblique incident sunlight angles throughout the day.
Coal is used mostly for base load. It's pretty slow to ramp up or down in respond to demand - once you shovel in a certain amount of coal to start it burning, you cannot stop it from burning. Nuclear is like that too.
Most peaking plants (supply electricity as demand peaks) are gas, oil, and hydro. You can shut those off within about a minute of demand dropping.
Energy Rich (Score:4, Interesting)
Harvesting the energy around houses and decentralizing the grid will have an impact on the IT industry to develop technology to manage it. It seems to me that adopting wind and solar would present some really interesting challenges and opportunities for manufacturing as well.
With politicians crapping on about jobs growth but not where it is coming from it seems to me this is the elephant in the room.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Transmission losses are a good point, but regardless of the other inputs to the grid I think the really interesting thing about these developments are that it really changes the dynamics of the grid as a supplier and consumer becomes the same thing.
Sometimes people will have power to sell and sometimes they will need to buy it so, to me, it looks like a whole new trading market emerging for who and what will provide certain levels of available capacity. The trading and management technologies that deal wit
Electric utilities will go the way buslines went? (Score:5, Informative)
Structurally these utilities need massive insvestments, long build times, beset by NIMBYism. They pay off only when there is a critical mass of users. Only when the cost of investment is amortized over a very large user base, these projects are economically viable. Once the user base falls below the critical mass they get into a death spiral. Costs keep increasing for the remaining users, and as they drop out, it increases for the remaining users even more.
Electric utilities are looking at exactly the same scenario. In 1955 if someone predicted the demise of street car lines within 20 years, they would have been laughed at. But in 20 years almost all of them became moribund. Except for very high density locales like Chicago, Boston and New York it is mere shadow of its former selves.
As solar becomes cost effective, finance companies will jump in and simplify the financing and installation headaches and make direct head to head comparison possible. "All you pay for is the electricity you actually use based on the meter. All you do is to give us permission to install solar panels in your property. Compare it directly with your utility bill". As affluent customers start using more of solar and use less of the grid, the utility company will start levying "grid-connection fees". And at some point people would start cutting the grid. Then cost will start going up for the remaining users and the spiral would start.
The electric utilities are well aware of the situation. That is why they are fighting so hard.
One way out of their plight is for the utilities to start installing more and more of solar. Solar generation neatly matches the peak demand. If they can use solar for peak summer late afternoon demand and run their gas plants for base load they can survive or stretch it out for a long time. But no matter what, coal is out. Even dirty coal is costlier than gas, not much cheaper than solar. Clean coal just can't compete.
Re: (Score:2)
The grid and generation needs to become non-profit, preferably publicly owned. Like roads and other basic infrastructure it isn't something that should be used for profit, especially as the economics are going to cause the power companies to start damaging society and the economy just to maintain their margins.
bizarre reactions here (Score:5, Insightful)
Because it isn't polluting (Score:3, Informative)
Therefore it's something that ecologists and other anti-capitalist hippies would like, therefore allowing solar or renewables would be like letting them win. And that's why solar energy must be fought at every turn!
Seriously, that is why the rank and the file rightwing moron on the street are so upset and angry at solar and wind: it looks like the hippies were right, therefore they were wrong in attacking them. And by attacking them again here, they re-entrench their insistence, since giving up would be ad
Ms. Rosie Scenario (Score:3)
But when there is an ideological agenda, there can be a lot of confirmation bias.
Start with the title, "New Solar Capacity Beats Coal and Wind, Again." Is this an objective, nerd-centric assessment of scientific fact? Or is it a victory-lap "Eat stuff all of you doubters and deniers"?
The concern is that Renewable is not quite ready for Prime Time and being jammed down our throats.
Re: (Score:3)
The concern is that Renewable is not quite ready for Prime Time and being jammed down our throats.
Solar has been ready for prime time for 15 years. China filled the vacuum and made it happen in 5, just as predicted by anyone who studied the manufacturing learning curve of PV wafers and cells from prior semiconductor industry advancements. Far from jamming it down anyone's throats, we developed it all and then gave it up because we could not see past the very close horizon of a few entrenched interests.
Virtually every financial firm of merit has predicted that the raw economics of solar energy will le
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
It is a math trick. (Score:2)
When they are measuring the "added" capacity they measure the max output at solar noon. When you measure it over say a year it is going to be less than a 3rd of that number.
Of course coal, nuclear, wind, and so on also do not produce max 24/7/365 but it is a much higher percentage than solar.
Land costs (Score:4, Informative)
Solar's relatively low cost/km^2 could become a difficult problem if it starts attempting to compete with other power projects purely on cost. Most cost/kwh numbers floated around don't factor in the total cost of owning and operating a solar installation, and only show the theoretical cost/kwh based on the equipment cost vs. power production. Right now, the driving factor for solar power generation is clean energy and not cost. I'd love for it to get down in cost to be competitive within the decade, but I expect that when that happens, cost might have to be not just equal, but significantly lower, to account for the solar field size needed to replace a standard coal plant. Lack of land availability can also become a damper on adoption in more populated areas, the areas that need the power the most.
I really think that something will need to be done to facilitate distributed solar via rooftop in order for solar to take over as a main power source. Right now, its too dangerous to build a business model around solar leasing via home rooftops because the rules are changing so frequently and the rules are different everywhere you go.
Economy vs Nature (Score:2)
Arctic front (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Edit that should 534 Gigawatts not GWH must be tired.
Re: (Score:2)
"Are you expecting the entire (or only significant portion) of the US energy production system to be rebuilt each year???
Well at 0.2% a year, you better hope that solar cells last half a millennium not the 25 year accepted figure.
Re:So by your assertion... (Score:4, Funny)
Coal plants have no trouble lasting two to three times solar installations
Too bad that doesn't apply to the coal itself.
Re: (Score:2)
If you look at the article it does another bit of sleight of hand. They talk about how competitive solar is at $1.40 - $2.40/watt DC. Coal and gas are running around $1.00/ watt AC. So when they say competitive they mean costs 40% - 140% more and then you have to add in the cost to convert AC.
Re: (Score:2)
Wow. From 0 to Hitler in two posts. Must be somekind of record
Sadly, not.