Again, the power is episodic. When night comes and you need lights and heat, what do you do? Storage of energy is only practical for hydro now.

http://www.watcherofweasels.org/public-sector-uselessness/

Some months back, I did a back of the envelope calculation for this, based on the solar constant (Approximately 1kW/sq-m), and some very generous assumptions (50% conversion efficiency, 12hrs/day sunlight, etc.) The figure I came up with to “replace” the US power grid’s current capacity is roughly 5 GIGA square meters. Actual stats are more likely 25% efficiency and 6 hrs effective sunlight per day (Solar insolation for major cities here) — so x4=20Gsqm just on realistic numbers for those two factors alone.

So: 5 GIGA square meters — How big is that? About 4/5ths the surface area of the entire STATE of Delaware (>3 Delawares by the likely figures, as opposed to the “generous” ones). A small state, I grant, but still — a frickin’ state!!

What? you only want to manage 25% of current cap as solar? Ah, so covering a FIFTH of a state with little-blue-cells/mirrors/whatever is OK with you? Green enough? Let’s not forget the concrete and steel infrastructure to hold all that, eh?. And the people involved in keeping them clean (not unimportant), which, by the way, reminds me — what is the #2 cause of accidental death in the USA? Can you say “falls”? Think that might be relevant to all this panel/mirror cleaning that needs to be done?

“Green” AND “Safe” power. Ooooh, doggy, gotta get me some o’ that!

If you want to look over my reasoning:

Solar Power: Flat-Out Wrong For All Time

This is independent of Shannon’s considerations, I’m just showing that solar is simply too diffuse to be a fraction as “clean and green” as it’s sold to be, that the areal coverage to derive a substantial modern power grid from it — either in solar cells or solar thermal mirrors — is just flat out preposterously HUGE.

The solar constant — the maximum solar energy that makes it to the surface of the earth — is just not that big a number, and it CAN’T be futzed with. There is no engineering trick, no inventive genius possible that allows you to get more than roughly 1 kW per square meter. That number is a law of physics no less immutable than the law of gravity… except one might be able to theoretically futz with the law of gravity, that is.

And even when it does, it does so on a very predictable schedule.

> And this isnt the Field of Dreams, if you build it private companies may not decide to build their multi million dollar factories in the desert of NM.

Esp. not when the Greens are going to give them endless crap about interfering with the unique habitat of the spotted lounge lizard and the gecko running bird…

1)Coal can be transported to the plant by river barge, in places where the geography makes this feasible.

2)Alternatively, the power plant can be located in a coal-mining area (with short railroad lines to bring to coal from mine to furnace) and the *power* transmitted long distances via HVDC lines.

But it is true that “alternative energy” will be more attractive in companies without an existant grid. Absent heavy subsidies, solar power is more likely to play a significant role in, say, rural India than in the U.S.

If you start from scratch, with no rail and no power lines, alternative energy isn’t going to pull you out of poverty any faster. What will you use as transport fuel? Windmills? Will you make steel for power pylons with solar-fueled steel mills?

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2465537/posts

Here is one commentator

“An obsolete coal plant using 80-year-old technology can provide power where and when you need it. It can be positioned almost anywhere from the equator to the tundra. (It will even work aboard ships.)

Sorry, but that is bullsh*t. Maybe not in the US, but in 3rd world socialist countries where coal plants are about as reliable as wind turbines. You need a functioning railroad network also to deliver the coal in time.

Let me emphasize this: In order to replace the functionality of a single 80-year-old coal plant anywhere in North America, you have to build a continent-spanning power grid that can efficiently and reliably transfer power from any single location in North America to any other location. The entire grid has to extend everywhere and work all of the time or it has no hope of providing power where and when you need it.

The point is: In the US this railroad network exists, but if you start from scratch, the economies look different.

I’m not saying that alternative energy is cost-competitive and a useful one-for-one replacement for conventional power plants. Certainly not.

What I’m saying is that the author of the article doesn’t understand economics. Everything can be done. At a price. Of course you can couple a wind turbine to an electrolyzer and a couple of fuel cells and back it up with biogas. That works 24/7. But it’s stunningly expensive.

Also a statement like The honest answer will always be no is pseudo-religious. It’s an article of faith and not an analysis of economics.

Back in the seventies, billions in tax subsidies were dumped into “trash to energy” projects that worked fine in the laboratory at a small scale. Without exception, however, not one of these projects succeeded in scaling up to the point of a working demonstration plant. One specific demo plant example, personally verified, ran for the sum total of five days before being shut down as a failure. Thirty years later, what have the best and brightest minds in academia, government and business determined is the best way to extract energy from trash? . . . If you guessed the millennia-old practice of burying the garbage, and the century-old process of tapping wells into the ground to recover natural gas (produced by the landfill), then you were correct.

A few years back, when Boone Pickens tried to use a wind-farm plans to gain eminent domain authority that would minimize the cost of getting his water sources in North Texas and beyond to customers in the Dallas-Fort Worth market, he never planned to make a dime selling electricity. Why then would a clearly smart energy guy get involved in wind energy (apart from that little eminent domain issue)? . . . Again, look to the past. Wind energy has been used for centuries to pump water, not through any commercial electrical grid, but rather, by having the windmill and the well in immediate proximity to each other, and most importantly not relying on the windmill to operate continuously. In the case of collecting water, a tank is used to store enough water to cover the periods on no wind, and in the case of removing water from lowlands, enough pumping capacity is used to prevent flooding. As explained by other comments, what works for water does not work for electricity.

Pickens could use wind-generated electricity when the wind was available to run his pumps, and rely on water storage (not electric storage) capacity when the wind wasn’t blowing. Again, centuries old technology that works at its intended scale, but is totally incompatible with a commercial electric grid.

A solar powered attic fan is one example of effectively using solar power, a commercial solar panel farm is not.

Conversely, it’s not very practical for me to set up a nuclear reactor in my back yard.

Theoretical possibility does not equate to real-world scale.

The crux of the original argument is: “The non-alternative power system will have to remain online at full potential capacity to be able to step in and compensate for alternative power’s inability to provide power reliably at POC.”

All I see is Isegoria saying there are “alternative” ways to add some small fraction of power to the grid at some lower reliability. By doing so, and by an improved pricing scheme, the peak demand for reliable “non-alternative” power will probably grow more slowly.

Is slowing the growth of non-alternative power generation the best use of resources?

Is the U.S. over-investing (due to subsidy) in technologies that promise, at best, to slow the growth of traditional power generation?

The subsidy that goes to windfarms and PV installations could instead be given to those who cannot afford enough power. Maybe that’s a better way to spend borrowed dollars?

E = mc2

http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=2469

“A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of hearing William Tucker speak at a conference in Washington, DC. His explanation of E = mc2 was the best I had ever heard. Even better, Tucker explained how Einstein’s equation applied to renewable energy sources like wind, solar, and hydro. His lecture was a revelation. It showed that the limits of renewable energy have nothing to do with politics or research dollars, but rather with simple mathematics. During a later exchange of emails with Tucker, I praised his lecture and suggested he write an article that explained E = mc2 and its corollary, E = mv2.”

And they say it is an ill-wind that blows no good.

Free poultry! I gotta get a house in a windmill flight path.

When a nuclear plant has many of the same components exposed to similar doses of radiation for the same periods of time, engineering requirements imply a very large number of replacements of parts or just retiring the entire facility. The real question I was putting forth is twofold. Do we have the political will to replace these facilities and do we have the technical expertise to do so.

I would support replacement at an appropriate scale. So much for the sock looms.

Or Israel.

NedLudd: (How aptly named!) “High level nuclear waste” or what is more correctly called used fuel rods is not a real problem. They must be removed from the light water reactors that use them because their solid oxide fuel elements have deteriorated, but they still contain 95% of their original energy value. The only rational thing to do is to recycle them, which is what the French, British and Japanese do. American policy was established by Jimmy Carter. ’nuff said.

On Solar. When I discussed employment with Solar Energy Systems many years ago, there plans for solar were much more modest than today’s advocates. They only saw a presence for solar in niche markets. Such things as remote locations in specific environments and stand alone things like the electric road work signs you may see or as a small supplement to a building or home. Thin film photovoltaics have made great progress since then. Dow Chemical is even making solar shingles to reduce the cost of installation. Physics is still a cruel master and despite all the advances, efficiencies are still in the neighborhood of 12%.

On Wind. In MI, there are only two realistic places to put wind turbine. In the thumb and the top of the mitten. The Detroit Free Press reported in an extended feature last year the problems it is causing among the residents in those areas who are complaining about the noise.

Both these technologies have the limitation of working intermittently and not having a sufficiently robust storage capacity, i.e. batteries. Companies like energy conversion devices have been working for over 4 decades on these technologies with progress but not on the scale for general power use.

Other technologies such as plasma gasification, cogeneration and biohydrogen are worth trying to do, but only if it makes economic sense compared with other, existing technologies. If the political system attempts to tilt power generation to technologies for anything other than safety, efficiency, reliability and capacity , we will be in for some serious and possibly deleterious social effects. Both parties love social engineering. Economics should trump that.

I single nuclear power out for special consideration. Many nuke plants will have to be retired soon and that will put a serious strain on our ability to provide adequate base generation capacity. We need to face as a nation the decision to add to these plants or to replace them. Both waste disposal and safety are going to be much stronger determinants of the future of this industry. Instead of worrying about 3 Mile Island (which was small) and Chernobyl (only one reactor was like that in the US at Hanford and is retired), we need to seriously decide to build the expertise to manage nuclear power or we will lose the ability to do so. If you really want to be scared, find the now out of print book “We Almost Lost Detroit” about the Fermi reactor in Monroe, MI.

Isegoria: I want to thank you for “spelling out your economic logic step-by step”: tremendously helpful and well-argued. I added your blog to my roll, if you don’t mind.

The utility industry and the poor have a long and complex relationship. It is worth looking at in detail.

To let current generators who have come to their assets paid for by ratepayers earn a king’s ransom for adding no value is about as fair as letting the Russian oligarchs earn millions from privatizing state assets that they have acquired through whatever means.

I stand by my point though that the marginal cost of a kilowatt-hour is much, much higher at peak-demand, and with just the slightest bit of “smarts” in the meters — enough to tell when electricity is consumed — we can charge higher rates during known peak times and thus shape consumption to better match capacity.

This does not have to involve a tremendous transfer from the poor to the coal plants, if we just design the new rate scheme to be revenue neutral: for a fixed fee of $N, the plants can charge $M/kWh during well-defined peak hours. We can then use that $N fee to subtract $n from every low-income household’s bill, if that’s what we want to do.