Monbiot vs. the solar entrepreneur, with a bit of Rickover thrown in
March 10th, 2010 by Robert Merkel | Published in Climate change, Economics, Energy, Technology | 100 Comments
Those of you interested in feed-in tariffs for solar energy might be interested in reading the multi-post discussion between George Monbiot and Jeremy Leggett on the merits of Britain’s feed-in solar scheme. In a nutshell, Monbiot takes a line that you might have heard from me – that solar panels on home roofs are a hugely expensive way to reduce carbon emissions and a distraction from more effective technology. Leggett takes the view that, with the market support of feed-in tariffs, costs will inevitably fall until solar becomes competitive in cost with grid electricity. The upshot – Leggett has accepted a 100£ bet with Monbiot that solar will achieve “grid parity” in Britain by 2013. Judging by the numbers on my favourite page on the internet, either grid electricity is going to skyrocket, or solar systems will have to crater in price, for Leggett to win his bet. Despite all the promises of radical cost reductions in solar panels, the real price of solar electricity is dropping by only a few percentage points a year.
On a seemingly completely different topic, Nuclear Australia digs up a letter from Admiral Hyman Rickover, the human force of nature who made possible the impeccable safety record of the US Navy’s nuclear power program. Rickover expresses his exasperation with “academic reactor designers” who propose nuclear reactors that are radically superior to existing designs:
The academic-reactor designer is a dilettante. He has not had to assume any real responsibility in connection with his projects. He is free to luxuriate in the elegant ideas, the practical shortcomings of which can be relegated to the category of “mere technical details.” The practical-reactor designer must live with these same technical details. Although recalcitrant and awkward, they must be solved and cannot be put off until tomorrow. Their solutions require manpower, time and money.
Unfortunately for those who must make far-reaching decisions without the benefit of an intimate knowledge of reactor technology and unfortunately for the interested public, it is much easier to get the academic side of an issue than the practical side. For a large part those involved with the academic reactors have more inclination and time to present their ideas in reports and orally to those who will listen. Since they are innocently unaware of the real but hidden difficulties of their plans, [t]hey speak with great facility and confidence. Those involved with practical reactors, humbled by their experiences, speak less and worry more.
Pretty much the same comment applies to every new, promising piece of technology, certainly in the area of energy. Until you’re actually forced to build it and can’t ignore the icky technical details, it’s easy to imagine the shortcomings will be easy and cheap to solve, be it carbon capture and storage, $1 per watt solar panels, or thorium-powered nuclear reactors.
Monbiot’s view is correct to a point. Putting solar panels on every roof is about as effecient as putting a coal boiler in every house. There’s a reason why energy production is centralised.
However as soon as you move to solar farming, the equation changes quite quickly in favour of solar. Thing is, it is a farming model, so you require a lot of land, I’m not sure this is viable for the UK. As solar energy is only produced at peak times (ie during the day), price comparison should be made at peak level, which I guess is the nature of the bet. There will be no grid parity without solar farming, and Britain is (IMO) better served through wind and wave as renewable energy sources. Stll, any PV system that does well in the grey skies of Britain should work great over here.
Also Rob, of your three examples, one is make-beleive, one theoretical, and $1 per watt solar panels exist and are being deployed.
With the important distinction that thorium powered plants were being built more than 50 years ago and India is building some now.
Robert, I suppose you know about this mob. Hopeful or hooey?
http://www.techniquesolar.com.au/ourstory
Lot of marketingon the page.
Concentrating solar power is not new. What’s different about this technology is that it combines solar panels and water heating.
But the key question for any solar technology is system cost. Efficiency is great only if it reduces system cost for output.
My guess based on the limited information available is that the extra complexity of integrating the solar cells into the system will add a lot of cost over a solar hot water system, for bugger-all additional electrical output.
Might make sense in developing countries in off-grid appliations, where the relatively small amount of electrical power produced might be sufficient to run lights, a small fridge, or a TV.
Great post Robert! Interesting point about the thorium reactors as I think several of the ‘academic’ pro-thorium crowd point out that many of the technical challenges have been solved since they were first encountered in the 60′s and 70′s… so it’s always a good reminder that science is full of roadblocks and dead ends.
Actually, the Indian government is currently building just one thorium-capable plant that will be predominantly uranium and plutonium fuelled. Its other thorium plants are small-scale experimental models and there are currently no plans to go to commercial scale. The other new reactors going ahead or planned in India are conventional uranium-fuelled plants. The recent nuclear deal between India and the US is likely to lead to more construction of conventional uranium-fuelled reactors in India, rather than thorium ones. This will probably delay, rather than enhance, the development of thorium technology towards commercial maturity.
The history of thorium reactors actually illustrates Robert’s point beautifully – the idea has been around for decades but the practical attempts to make it work have all faced significant technical problems, with the result that 50 years later it is still only an experimental technology, while the uranium fuel cycle is a commercially mature industry.
Thanks Robert. A rep spoke on Jon Faine but sadly I missed it. Apparently they have signed with a much larger company to start producing but I have no details.
brisbanedavey @ 1 – where can I buy these $1/Watt solar panels? I’d like to order a few thousand watts worth please!
Another Australian mob have been working on lenses to concentrate the solar radiation on to a smaller area of silicon. They seem to finally be getting some momentum.
I dare say they have to cool the silicon in order to not kill the efficiency. It seems odd to me that current flat panel rooftop installations don’t include some sort of passive cooling as the efficiency of the cells drops by up to 20% on very hot Australian summer days.
Tim said:
Regrettably, that’s probably true.
Probably though in the long run India, with 12% of world RAR of Th-232 will surely get there.
As to the tecnical problems, they have been overcome, but unfortunately for the technology, the sunk cost of conventional reactors built when people were focused on preserving the possibility of getting nuclear armed …
Aidan @9 – Glad to see that mob have improved their web site somewhat (although it’s still not brilliant). When they started out it looked like a crank ‘free-energy’ site and I always thought it was an obstacle to marketing their product.
There’s also this contribution from Labour MP Alan Simpson to the discussion at CIF, which you might find interesting Robert as he threads the evidence from Germany on costs of solar feed-in-tariffs with costs of nuclear waste disposal.
I’m a little disappointed that Monbiot would take this stand on rooftop solar. I think rooftop solar should be considered as part of the R&D for solar energy. I know of a solar installation with half polycrystalline cells and half Kaneka thin film cells. The thin film take up more apace but the capacity factor is far more than the more expensive Polycrystalline cells.
Rooftops are pretty much a wasted space and while it may not be economical or efficient by other standards at the moment to generate solar power on every rooftop, many people love the feeling of independance it gives them and they are prepared to pay for it. Those with solar systems are also more aware of their power usage and this is a good thing.
Solar power needs to be encouraged. Then again, such a bet could serve to encourage by means of a challenge. All may be right with the world after all, in this case!
With the retail price of green electricity now pushing over 20c / kWh, the tax-payer coughing up an average price of 40-50c / kwh over the next 15 years for rooftop PV might well end up with a bargain. Asking why should the tax-payer cough up anything is fair but apply the same question to every other government subsidy for fledgling industries.
The “distraction” argument could just as easily be applied to something like bike tracks but then we’d just have two bad arguments.
As for Monboit, well he’s having a bad run isn’t he.
SG
I’m in favour of every technology paying its way. No subsidies, actual or hidden.
Shaun @ 14, can you explain your last comment, re Monbiot?
SG, that’s just it. With the feed-in tariffs, people who put solar panels on their roofs are getting everyone else to pay for them.
Shaun, again, I come back to the stats. We’ve been waiting the best part of a decade for the breakthrough in solar power costs, and it’s an exceedingly slow process – and it’s chasing a moving target as other green energy sources also come down in cost.
Zee, Britain’s nuclear power program was a technological dead end (in terms of the reactor design they used, a gas-cooled reactor designed as a bomb factory first and a cost-effective power source second). Furthermore, they should have started a fund for decommissioning, like the USA and Sweden have. But, even so, given the immense value of the electricity those reactors have generated (hundreds of billions of pounds over their lifetime), the cost of decommissioning is relatively small in comparison. The billions of dollars being spent on feed-in tariffs will make SFA contribution to the UK’s energy needs.
I think, wilful, that it is a refernce to Monbiot giving aid and comfort to the “climategate” squawkers. He called for Jones to resign. Not one of Monbiot’s better moments.
Personally I’ve never been a big fan. His nonsense on biofuels put me off.
Fran @ 10, I seem to remember a Wikipedia article saying that India wanted 30% of its power to come from thorium reactors by 2050 a strategy they have been pursuing for a few decades. No reason to stop now unless their prototype reactor fails miserably.
I think though the enthusiasm behind thorium is the reduced waste issue, and off the top of my head there’s half a dozen companies working on fast breeder or reactors that will extract 99% of the energy from both types of uranium. I think these things are more practical and materials problems that have to b overcome, so I think there’s reason to be hopeful that someone, somewhere will figure it out.
The bit I read on this issue from Monbiot emphasized that solar panels did not make much sense in the UK where, unlike Australia, peak power is reached sometime after the sun goes down. In Perth, people on smart power are charged/credited during daylight about three times as much as after 9 pm. So solar in Australia should be evaluated as an alternative source of peak power.
It is also worth noting that about half the current price paid by consumers is grid related costs. So any localized form of power located near the end user has a significant cost advantage so it is important that the cost of getting power to the customer and a rising grid capacity problem should also be taken into account.
As I’m entirely off-grid on solar I have no bills currently, but am aware, and checked with one energy provider, that electrickery here is currently not that far from the most recent prices for solar PV given at the solarbuzz site you linked too, ~35c US/kWh (38c Aus) for domestic, and ~19c US/kWh for industrial.
You pay just for the line in and service everyday however much you use as well.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they have risen since, or will soon, but that’s what was available.
Seems to me the current real problem for solar, and many other renewables, is actually storage and requirements for intense power at times. Not actually my system here, but the significant issue is storage and battery life when your off the grid.
On a sunny day we’re almost always (anytime I’ve checked) producing far more power than we can store or use.
Seems like not a problem really to have a lot more panels getting cheaper and providing distributed power sources. They are low maintenance pretty long run technology once in place for the most part. With battery and electric car developments, the idea of distributed and portable power being available through the car fleet has already been raised as well.
Distributed power networks would seem to produce a far more efficient and resilient distribution and use of resources on a global basis to me. Though it doesn’t accomodate the hording of resources, power and wealth that a centralised system does. In the same way that a distributed network like the internet works, or not if you want to centrally control everything.
Definitely seems a better bet here than the UK. With our searing sunny days the cause of air-con fueled power spikes more than anything, it seems completely ridiculous to not consider and support.
The world is finite and until we get to infect somewhere else, this is all we’ve got to share around the whole of life as we know it. Whatever energy system anyone might point to. I don’t think any could realistically deliver the ultimate desires of 7 billion plus humans, economically or ecologically.
Reality is that humanity can only ever exist within the actual means of our world. Without a tempered view of what we, the whole world in the long run, can really expect with so many of us around in such a finite space. It’s all going to seem less than good enough. Especially if there’s no thinking outside the box of what we’ve just done or expected before without any consideration.
Robert @ 17, there’s a lot of “the rest of us pay for” ie subsidising, of fossil fuels. Heavy road transport another. As for solar and feed in tarriffs, what John D said re peaking power and what Quoll said re distributed generation.
Surely the only thing remarkable about this debate is Monbiot talking sense? Though, fortunately for my sense of the natural order of the universe, he is back in the Grauniad this week to wailing and gnashing his teeth about denialism spoiling his party.
I mean, who in Australia led the feed-in charge? Media Mike Rann, of course, crowing about how it showed SA leading the nation in tackling climate change. Practically proof of Monbiot’s the solar panel as a perfectly useless symbol of moral superiority for the middle classes.
As for Leggett – transparent stunt to draw attention away from the fact that he actually doesn’t have any counter-arguments. A measly £100, payable in 3 years time and only then if anyone bothers to remember a pointless and no doubt temporary spat between ideological soul-mates? Cheap diversion.
Besides, even if Leggett is right – the chances of which of course are somewhere between Buckley’s and none – wouldn’t this mean that a feed-in tariff is even sillier than it actually is? If solar panels are going to be so much improved in only three years, it is even more wasteful to subsidise now unimproved and highly inefficient ones.
Without trying to turn myself into a corporate schill, Chris, I’d recommend First Solar as your first port of call: First Solar website
They have recently opened a second fabrication facility in Malaysia, and can pump out around a gigawatt’s worth of solar panels per year. However my point about the farming model is germane – you won’t get $1 per watt for a single suburban roof installation, sorry. It is a volume business, getting those costs down.
One way or another PV modules have been subsidised at the point of sale for effing years.The installers simply pocket the subsidy and move on to the next sucker.
However if you want to do something serious do this:
1. Totally ban any-thing other than high albedo rooftops north of the Tweed river.
2. Install tropical roofs over all existing North facing rooftops north of the Tweed river
3. Subsidise PV for village electrification in developing countries – not for the bloated fat cats in OZ
4. Ban storage hot water systems for coupls over the age of 60, make them use instant heating systems(studies have shown that those smelly old people do not have showers often enough, the stored energy just leaks out through the insulation).
Ban Electric jugs – make people buy ths nifty little heaters that only heat as much water as you need.
Huggy
@25
So out of 5 “serious” solutions you have three bans and one compulsory thou shalt install what I tell you to?
And some people wonder why Greens are popularly perceived as authoritarian control freaks or worse.
Wozza, the greens would not know if a brass band was up them unless some-one gave them the drum.
The greens just want handouts ,handouts and more handouts and a “look at my solar panels I am sooo green” kind of Shtick.
I am simply trying to inject some common sense ideas that would have a real impact.
Unless energy storage is incorporated into the network it will all fall apart soon.
When we fix that problem then the PV on rooftops will mean something. Until that day it is all bullshit.
Huggy
My solar panel owning friends in Perth get their power at the same price they sell it for. sure, there is an installation subsidy but my assessment is that solar PV is getting close to competitive without subsidies when peak power, sivings in line costs etc. is taken account of.
So a few dumb questions:
1. What is the breakdown of costs: Panels, support frames, AC converter installation etc.?
2. Would it make more sense to reduce the cost of AC conversion by making some use of DC power in the house? Things like radiators and water heaters can operate on either and other household items could be converted. Things like computers actually convert the AC to DC before it is used.
3. Would it make more sense to install the panels on north facing walls to save installation costs?
4. To what extent are these costs/kWh sensitive to installation size? Would solar PV be more competitive if the installations were larger? It may make more sense too have fewer houses with all their north facing roof covered or to share a larger AC conversion unit between a number of houses?
5. Would it make more sense for the householder to rent their roof to a power company that owns the system instead of going for householder ownership? Companies setting up solar PV farms have to pay for land and power lines.
As a partial answer to your questions, JohnD:
1. Cost breakdown. The biggest item is the panels, followed by the inverter, then installation costs. Frames and ancilliary materials are minor, if it can be mounted directly onto a North-facing roof.
Individual panels are in the order of $1650 each for high efficiency SunPower 225W panels (there are also volume discounts on pricing). An inverter which will handle about 2.5 kW will be about $2,500. Installation cost will be about $1000.
3. I suspect it would not be better to mount panels on the wall. There is an optimal angle to the sun, to maximize capture of photons (at right angles to the incident radiation, I guess). The angle is thus different at different latitudes, and somewhat different from summer to winter. Most roofs are at roughly the right slope, such that a special mounting system is deemed an unnecessary extra expense.
I believe you could squeeze an extra 10-15% out of the system with efforts to get the angle optimised. Better half has plans to construct a device to do this, when he finds a free weekend or so.
A vertical wall would be a long way out of optimum, so I expect it would compromise the efficiency significantly. There are equations to examine this, but I would have to dig them out again. I checked what was optimal for our location, versus the angle of our north-facing roof about 2 years ago, but have forgotten the details.
4. Costs are definately sensitive to installation size. Solar panels are cheaper in bulk, and inverters are more cost efficient for larger systems.
I heard recently that a retirement village got together and wangled a bulk deal with an installer, which wound up costing them 2 old shoelaces and a piece of chewing gum. Slight exaggeration there, but after rebates, it apparently cost them hardly anything (a few thousand each I think it was, and they were effectively carbon-neutral afterwards).
Just goes to show – not all old codgers are slow on the uptake!!!
5. My understanding of the REC’s system is that it already goes some way down this track. You more or less “rent” your savings in CO2 emissions to some company that wants to reduce emissions, while you use the power generated for yourself.
JohnD, here are some graphs and info on angle of tilt (for your comment about using vertical walls) and the summer/winter optimum angle discussion. Strictly, one should also track the sun during the day E-W.
http://www.yourhome.gov.au/technical/fs67.html
There are equations (which underly the graphs) given in Wikipedia, but that is probably more the province of serious techie-types. I suspect that the graphs would illustrate the main points well enough for this venue.
All these complicating factors caused this household to start small, with a test system of 1.3 kW, to see how well it performed under non-optimal conditions of benign neglect (no tracking system).
It worked just fine, so we have recently upgraded to 2.2 kW and our household is now emissions-neutral in energy terms. Next BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) is a plug-in electric car! :)
Great stuff Elise, keep it going. Being an orchardist in the MDBasin, I am fiscally challenged at the moment and would love to have my own roof top solar system but it is inspiring to hear of others’ success.
In regards to comments at #26 and #27, do they realise the deadly embrace they are in? Aside from that dog eat dog act, there seems to me to be an increase in vindictive attacks on Greens voters recently. I hope this is true generally because it means we are seen renewed as a threat to the BAU of the majors and their ‘growth’ infatuated benefactors.
Salient Green @31, that is grim news indeed, being an orchardist in the MD Basin. No easy answers, for yourselves, or for Australia.
Regarding the “deadly embrace”, I have just aquired Peter Senge’s new book “The Necessary Revolution – How Individuals and Organisations are Working Together to Create a Sustainable World”. I bought it because his previous book “The Fifth Discipline” was really interesting. This new book is totally different.
Senge believes that we are at the end of an Age, and the start of a new one. He compares it to the Renaissance, amongst other things. A few interesting comments:
“Ages do not end abruptly. Everyone does not just wake up one day and say ‘This isn’t working. We must change.’ Quite the contrary. When faced with challenges of this magnitude, the vast majority of people and institutions try harder to maintain the status quo.” That would be the “deadly embrace”, I guess?
“Pressures for change are building rapidly, and solutions and opportunities – and news of what works and how to build on it – are spreading equally rapidly.” Senge reckons we are coming into a period of major transition, not unlike the start of the Renaissance or the Industrial Age.
“One thing we have learned from working on organisational and systemic change is that the leaders are hard to identify in advance. Sometimes they are CEO’s or presidents, but often they do not occupy positions of obvious power in a corporate hierachy. They are not the flag wavers, campaigning vocally for change, but rather passionate individuals working to transform their organisations from the bottom up. They are most often open-minded pragmatists, people who care deeply about the future but who are suspicious of quick fixes, emothional nostrums, and superficial answers to complex problems. They have a hard-earned sense of how their organisations work, tempered by humility concerning what any one person can do alone. They often do not think of themselves as leaders, but time proves them wrong…This is the sort of person for whom we have written this book.”
As far as I have read, the book is something of a call to arms! :)
In short, I don’t think it would actually make too much sense, particularly for high power demanding things (washing machines, vacuum cleaners, toasters, drills and power tools etc).
Not a sparky, but have lived with solar in a few circumstances, and know just enough to be dangerous in some peoples eyes perhaps.
Basically low voltage requires higher current to get the same power – (Power) Watts = Voltage x Amps (Current). ie 100 watts = 100 volts x 1 amp or 10 volts x 10 amps.
Which translates into needing much bigger wires to move the same power at lower voltage and lots of loss. This is also why the leads from your car battery to the starter and jumper leads are thick, to carry the large current required to start the engine at 12v.
You lose a lot less power over distance with higher voltage and you can use smaller wires, but obviously it actually can become more dangerous for people to connect with as well. I do believe that 110v was used in some countries due to being seen as a bit safer than the 240v we have here. It is then converted to low voltage for many technologies, but not most things that require a bit of power are directly powered by 240v. Even though I think DC motors can be more powerful (again your car starter motor as an example), it’s been an impractical system for house wiring in the current sense so not used so widely previously.
There’s a lot more to it with newer high power low voltage transmission lines and other things I’m not very informed on, but it’s a basic problem of electical power.
More technology does use low voltage (<12v) now and with portable power storage/supplies hopefully developing further, maybe central recharging units or something less directly wired might happen.
I would think yes to a point, depending upon the situation, at least for conversion to 240v the quality and efficiency probably increases in inverters as they scale up.
Would anyone, or a local business, volunteer their roof for the local PV project? Or just do it for themselves if they could afford it?
I took that solarbuzz site to be suggesting that industrial scale PV in the US were already providing power at ~19c (US)/ kWh, now.
JohnD @ 28 – I think there’s a few barriers to using the DC power directly. The simple one is you’ll need a second set of wiring through your house so you can use them. Another is the reliability of the power, a lot of devices do not appreciate brown outs (eg a cloud passes overhead) and that can damage them. At the very least you’d probably need a chunky UPS. And then you need a way of powering devices either through the UPS or directly from the grid when there’s no solar power available. You can buy DC powered appliances but they’re quite a bit more expensive (not enough demand) and retrofitting would I guess be pretty expensive.
As for solar panels on north facing walls, apart from the angle problem that Elise pointed out, in climates where you ever need heating the north walls should be reserved for windows so the sun can heat your house directly :-)
Chris, there is a lot of talk about recycling automotive electric car power cells for domestic purposes once the batteries have lost their upper charge level.
To the thread, I think that Monbiet is under informed. The technology is moving faster than his imagination can absorb it.
For a little entertainment have a look at
http://blog.cafefoundation.org/
Thanks for the data Elise. It does suggest that solar PV would be more competitive if the rooftop installations were larger and/or neighboring houses shared an inverter. What I had in mind for the wall installation was a louver system so that the panels were at the right angle. at least in the Nth/south sense. might be a lot easier to put up than a roof installation. In sunny Qld people put in louvers to keep the sun off the wall and windows.
In terms of DC, my understanding is that current solar PV installations run at about 80V. Running 3 of these in series would give 240V so radiators etc. would not have to be re-sized. My understanding is that DC motors are inherently more expensive than AC squirrel cage motors but I am in no position to comment on whether using DC motors would add much to the cost of something like a fridge. Batteries would help reduce sudden fluctuations and help give the necessary low voltages for computers etc.
Waiting for more expertize.
Actually that was high voltage DC transmission lines I don’t know much about, but I am reading up on. DC current it seems is generally less practical with transmission, aside from the voltage issue, until recent technological advances for higher power lines and junctions. They seem to bury HVDC lines rather than use towers as well. Seems some people are already exploring the idea of such networks for renewable energy projects and believe there might be advantages to HVDC. Though I don’t think anything will change with basic house wiring needs too soon.
There’s an issue as well that transformers work better with AC current, so apparently is more practical for appliances, which mostly have built in step down transformers to provide the specific voltage and current required.
Technology in production, storage and transmission of energy particularly renewables, at least in some places, is moving rapidly. As it needs to. Though for the whole world and it’s needs practically, we’ll see I guess.
I’m with Monbiot on this one. Although I suspect Robert’s reasoning is right, I think you can reach the conclusion from another direction.
Britain is obviously a bad place for solar panels. If they were grid competitive there, they’d be completely smashing everything else in the US or Spain, let alone here. We’re seeing no signs of that, and if we did there would probably be a temporary shortage of solar production, pushing prices way up.
It’s sort of the same reason I don’t think nuclear is a goer in Australia – for a range of reasons we’re less suited to it than a lot of other places, so if it was viable here it would be easily the winning technology elsewhere. I’ve an open mind on whether its the best thing for other places, but see no evidence it’s a total standout, which makes me think its wrong for us.
BTW Robert, do you think it is coincidence that solar prices hardly changed the entire time Bush was in office, but have declined every month since Obama was elected, now down almost 10%?
I realise this could be caused by a lot of factors, including the economic crisis, but if it is politically driven its pretty significant – another three (well hopefully seven) years of prices declining at that rate won’t make Leggett right, but it will make things pretty interesting.
Feral said:
The reasons nuclear doesn’t fly here are almost entirely culturo-political. In the 30 years since Rex Connor, it has become mapped onto the major party divisions, the deire to be “not America” plus the hangover from the “non-aligned in the Cold War” set.
Throw in the feel good factors of renewables and the indifference to power source nimbies not living in the foot print of coal plants have and really, who politically is going to run with it?
Feral, I think it’s almost certainly coincidental.
Obama has SFA direct influence over the supply of solar panels, and a Democratic congress and administration is likely to push the demand up rather than down. In turn, that should push prices up in the short term.
Some good news
http://www.gizmag.com/cheap-easy-plant-based-fuel/14468/?utm_source=Gizmag+Subscribers&utm_campaign=2e8ac3bef4-UA-2235360-4&utm_medium=email
Chris @34: “As for solar panels on north facing walls, apart from the angle problem that Elise pointed out, in climates where you ever need heating the north walls should be reserved for windows so the sun can heat your house directly.”
Totally agree, Chris! Large north-facing windows, to catch the warmth of the winter sun, with summer shade (louvres or shading or deciduous trees) to avoid heating in the summer.
Feral Sparrowhawk @38, Europe has lousy amounts of sunshine, and lots of overcast days for many countries near the North Sea. Australia has heaps of strong sunshine – some of the best sunshine hours in the world for most of Australia. Apples versus Oranges.
Robert @41, I heard a story that the problem was insufficient production capacity for silica and solar panels, compared with unexpectedly rapid increases in demand. The consequent price spike caused the usual market reaction of bringing on more capacity. Then there was a temporary glut relative to demand, due to much higher capacity and the effect of the GFC on spending. The result was a price slump. That will not last long, as lower prices will stimulate extra demand.
All normal market behaviour. We don’t need to look for any political bogeymen under our beds.
Fran @40, I agree with FS @38, that nuclear is not an obvious winner in the first place. However, more importantly, it belongs to an old mindset of centralised power generation and monolithic organisations.
We are coming into a new era of decentralised control, networks, and smart grids. Both in terms of businesses, and in terms of thinking and organising people.
I’d be putting money on a gradually accelerating trend towards decentalised power generation by households and small businesses. They could be using fuel cells (BlueGen or Bloom, I think it is called) and solar PV or micro wind turbines where appropriate.
Larger businesses could do like the big miners and have their own gas-fired turbine plants. Eventually they could switch to larger fuel-cell units. All under their own control, rather than the monopolistic control of some nuclear power company.
I reckon there is a critical enabling technology for larger scale use of solar PV, which is storage of power, as Huggybunny said earlier. When that enabling technological problem is solved efficiently, we will have lift-off!
Those who say it can’t be done, could do worse than thinking back to the 1970′s, and what we didn’t know or use then.
If only, IF ONLY we could get a price on carbon. I just looked up a link I saved from ’08 re 13 startups doing concentrating PV systems. Only half of the sites are still operating.
How many other solar research and development programs are shelved or stalled due to the fossil fuel lobby’s power to frustrate climate change mitigation efforts? How many solar companies with good competitive technology are simply waiting for a carbon price?
A price on carbon would get many of these arguments about nuclear vs wind vs solar off the bloody roundabout and going somewhere.
Salient Green @44: “If only, IF ONLY we could get a price on carbon.”
Maybe we can get there another way, via REC’s, or whatever they are going to be called now?
Just progressively ramp up the REC’s program?
Sorry if this is OT, but I disagree with you Fran that “the reasons nuclear doesn’t fly here are almost entirely culturo-political”.
For a start Australia is obviously more suited to renewables than almost anywhere else – heaps of sunlight, plenty of places to put wind, even a lot of opportunities for tidal and wave. The only thing we’re not long on is hydro. We’ve also got plenty of natural gas and (unfortunately) cheap coal. If there was anywhere on Earth clean coal was going to work it would be here, since the base cost is so low.
On the other hand, nuclear has few advantages here. Sure we dig up a lot of the uranium, but the transport costs are low, so that doesn’t affect things much. Moreover, we have no established nuclear industry, and its always going to be more expensive to start one without the expertise than to revive one when you have people with experience. The distances in Australia are also a factor against nuclear, although I suspect a small one (need to look into that).
To bring it back to the topic, if you put these in reverse you’ve pretty much got the UK and northern Europe. If there is anywhere on Earth where nuclear makes sense and solar doesn’t its there. Consequently, you’d only expect to have much use for solar in Britain if it was the one big answer for everywhere, and I very much doubt it is.
Robert #41 that makes sense. I sort of thought my theory was too good to be true, but the pattern was rather noticeable.
In rejecting my claims about the unpopularity of nuclear power in Australia Feral Sparrowhawk said in part:
Indeed it is, and if any place in the world could be poster child for a broad range of renewables, Australia would be it. Regrettably, the history attached to rejection of nuclear power in this country owes nothing to claims that renewables are fit to shoulder the principal burdens of stationary or transport energy in this country. Such claims were put well after nuclear power was taken off the table here.
Nuclear power began falling out of favour here in the last year of the Whitlam government, at a time when the idea of solar energy was some techno-geek cum hobby alpaca farmer’s dream. In those days people thought about back-to-nature as a lifestyle thing for them rather than the system as a whole. By the latter half of the seventies, uranium had become enmeshed in arguments about resource sovereignty — basically how much of Australia’s uranium should be owned by foreign companies, whether there should be local processing of fuel rods and in coming years, the environmental and cultural implications (for indigenous people) or uranium mining. With the advent of TMI and arguments over Trident, Pershing, SS20s, Neutron bombs etc, uranium mining (and by extension nuclear power) became inseparable from arguments about safety, detente, world peace, NNPT and so forth. Fast forward to Chernobyl and that substantially hardened positions. That it happened within the USSR welded tow quite distinct constituencies together and even when the USSR fell, the idea of “dirty bombs” and “loose nukes” in the hands of terrorists became telling.
The idea of susbtantially replacing fossil thermal power in this country with renewables really begiuns in the 1990s with advocacy over GHGs but long after nuclear power had become an unthinkable thing in the minds of many (and in particular in the minds of those somewhat to the left of the mainstream).
Not only that, but some of it is dug up incidently to other resources, like copper, which would be dug up anyway and which would be necessary to expand the electic grids of any country. And of course there’s also the thorium oxide, which is a waste product from nonazite and zircon recovery.
That’s true, which is why we ought to encourage other states going down this path to include our people in their development programs. The Chinese have a substantial program and Russia is developing an IFR. What you’re failing to note though is that until such time as some technology other than fossil thermal can do the work of coal or gas, no government is going to shut down even the filthiest of plants. Ferguson made this point not so very long ago. Hazelwood will stay poisoniong the people in its footprint until renewables can do its job i.e for the far off indefinite future. The only non-nuclear alternative is “clean coal”, which because it is commerically unthinkable, is simply an expensive red herring. If the government abandoned “clean coal” and subsituted “renewables” the situation would not change a jot. Personally, I’d prefer that if we aren’t going to take nuclear power seriously as an option that they simply fess up and admit that we are not going to do anything serious and put in place a timeline to replace coal with gas. That would be less costly than “clean coal” and at least stop all the argy bargy.
I can’t imagine what you are arguing here. The distances favour nuclear over renewables since renewables cannot get to first base except as a system reticulated over large areas remote from where most of the demand is. Even coal suffers from this a bit. So does gas. Nuclear can be built right at the sites of demand and since the feedstock is small in mass, shipping is not a significant factor in siting the plants.
Despite being keen on nuclear myself, I don’t imagine that it will be on the agenda here any time soon, but sadly, I don’t see renewables as replacing coal anytime soon either. If renewables excluding hydro ever get to 20% of stationary in this country I’ll be gobsmacked. As long as we refuse nuclear, we are going to be stuck with fossil thermal, most of which will be coal and in transport, oil. That’s the reality.
I’d like to think that people here could put aside their cultural angst and put nuclear on the same metric as all other courses of power, but I accept that this is not how people work. While I disagree with Elise about this issue, she does put her finger on one of the key appeals of renewables — the idea of localised power — a kind of analog of the authenticity most people like in their governance. Just as having your local member serve you sounds goods, so too does local power — so much more authentic than centralised power. Local power is filled with local goodness — I made it myself on my own roof — it doesn’t come from some large foireign owned multinational corporate giant – is a very appealing pitch, and one with which nuclear in this country, even if it proves cleaner than renewables — will struggle to compete.
I’ll signal from the outset that as usual I’ve got no interest in being drawn into another round of ‘nuclear is a good answer to climate change / no it isn’t', but thought people might find my colleague Tim’s take on the recent debate held on nuclear featuring Ziggy and James Hansen among others an interesting read. personally found the info about thorium reactor development etc. useful as I haven’t had a chance to keep up with progress in that area in recent times.
Again Myriad, your link fails …
bugger that’s weird, I checked it and all – take two
Myriad74 sent me to …
You must log in to see this page.
Culture aside, Fran, from what I am seeing, lately, Nuclear in Australia is a risky venture of the “no sooner built than redundant” category. Something that I never thought that I would say is that PV is going to take the field seriously in the next 10 years providing a possible 50% of all electricity needs within 30 years, with the investment coming from the individual resident and business sector. If this happens then nuclear power stations would be left releasing their surplus energy as steam. This PV growth scenario is viable at todays electricity rates once the suitable hardware is a vailable.
The factor not covered previously is that once an alternative private system is paid for then the electricity thereafter, until replacement is required, is free. This is a huge incentive to instal distributed high yield systems in some domestic and most light commercial applications. I believe that $1.5 per watt is achieveable today for some PV systems. This situation will only improve.
This will of course make a mess of the baseload backup power system if the wrong infrastructure is selected. Inefficiently operating major infrastructure will drive up line power charges further consolidating the commercial viability of distributed power.
The future electricity environment is to me starting to look very exciting. All due respect to him for his environmental awareness efforts, and Monbiet may achieve a technical win in this paricular bet, but his argument is already lost.
I should have added that once real levels of surplus PV power are available energy companies may well refuse to buy the surplus. This will almost certainly lead to very interesting private electricity market place.
BilB: while it’s possible that the electricity price could drop to levels that make nuclear plants unable to pay back their debts, it’s highly unlikely they’d be left idle.
The fuel, operation, and maintenance costs of nuclear plants are so low that energy prices would have to drop to a couple of cents per kilowatt hour to make shutting them down a better bet than keeping them running.
eh it’s a note Tim put in his facebook profile, but now I’ve realised it’s a published piece by Greens Senator and spokesperson on nuclear, Scott Ludlam:
nuclear debate
The trouble with Scott’s account is that it is an exercise in half truths. Nobody determined to become a nuclear-armed state would use IFRs or thorium reactors to do so. That would be way too complex and way too expensive. You’d set up a dedicated reactor to do the job, much as Israel and Pakistan and India did.
IFRs and thorium reactors threaten to reduce the stocks of weaponizable materiel and foreclose the need for new uranium mines.
We should support their use.
For those who would like a layperson-ascessible description of the differences between conventional nuclear and the IFR …
Look here.
oops … accessible
The point that I am making, Robert, is that Nuclear power plants do not prefer to be revved up and down on a daily basis. The thermal stresses on the reactor core would reduce their commercial life considerably. The Solar genie is out of the bottle now. It would stepping back in time to where the public were legally unable to generate their own electricity to prevent the inevitable advance of distributed power generation. The move to a privatised electricity sector will only serve to accelerate that advance. This will be a case of the market delivering unexpected and conflicting consequences. The incongruity of the outcomes will be delightful, as this will all unfold regardless of climate change or global warming. And just so I can claim first useage, keep you eye out fo the new “iPower” and “iEnergy” systems, coming to a building near you. Soon.
BilB suggested:
Of course, they don’t have to be revved up and down, as the marginal cost of the fuel is so low, (particularly in the case of an IFR which uses existing spent fuels from LWRs) that very little is saved by backing them off. You can do desal and/or pump water to reservoirs, do water treatment, or pumped storage or simply sell off-peak.
One suspects that if EVs become the dominant private vehicle mode, then off peak power will become less off peak anyway. Some heavy users of electricity — say aluminium smelters — may switch to more off-peak times.
Fran, with any constant delivery energy source if the energy cannot be put to a useful purpose it has to be released either as hot air or steam. Just releasing energy costs money. Blowing off half a facility’s energy is an unlikely outcome. Smelters are a constant electricity demand production process so a dedicted nuclear reactor/smelter combination is a more logical outcome. But then if a nuclear power plant was to be built specifically to service a smelter then I doubt that it would be built in Australia. India is more likely for its low labour cost with a greater certainty of staying that way longer.
The short comment is that the future energy generation environment is far less certain than is presently assumed. This will have a major impact on energy infrastructure decision making.
Another force at work here is a growing belief that the climate change issue has passed. In a brief encounter with an ex coalition MP last night I received “see, I told you that this global warming thing would blow over”. I don’t believe that this is an exclusively Coalition perception in Australia, either. There is a high probability of a stagnation of effort on emissions abatement structure. So when the next wave of awareness arrives driven by irrefutable in you face evidence the reactions will be panicked rather than orderly. Short term fixes will be the order of the day. This will have a significant influence on the solutions undertaken.
BilB said:
Yes, that’s right, it does, but not much money in the case of nuclear power, since the fuel per KwH is quite modest. Naturally you’d have some standby stuff to do along the lines I suggested. Some redundancy in the system is required to cover unscheduled outages.
Yes, that’s why they abandoned the idea of building Hazelwood, or extending its life ;-)
You could build nuclear plants principally to run desal and water treatment operations and since you can slew this up and down, and water stores well …
Then there’s the idea of boron “fuel” and nuclear as outlined by Tom Blees in his Prescription for the Planet.
Sadly, I can’t rule out that you are right on the waning enthusiasm for emissions abatement. The failure to get a deal at Copenhagen and the comparatively weak political position of Obama in the US (partly his own mishandling of his first year) has set back progress. I think it will take a couple of disatsrous years of things that look like climate change to concentrate the minds of enough conservatives on the job.
It seems so bizarre and depressing that data that neither the reality of climate change and our likely legacy nor the non-climate change related issues associated with destroying the biosphere is enough to get critical mass on this matter in the places where it counts, and that instead what we are hoping for is a series of climate underpinned severe weather events of the right type to get people to do what they should have done without them.
Fran: How many serious sized gen4 or thorium cycle power stations have been running for long enough for us to know what the real cost of building, running and disposal of waste of these options are? Or how reliable they are? Serious means a capacity of above say 300 mW.
What do we really know about their turn-down ratios?
At the moment, there are very few GenIV or thorium reactors but within ten years, there will be a brace of them to look at. Waste generated is a matter of physics and maths so I’m not sure what you mean. With pyroprcessing, we can vitrify the lot and expect it to remain stable for long after it has ceased being a threat to humans.
Ans why do we really care about their turn down ratios if we plan to operate them in a fairly narrow range?
Elise,
PV modules should be pointed north in our hemisphere the angle should be the latitude of the location. This means that a vertical orientation is only sensible inside the antarctic circle. At the equator any direction will do, it is usual to incline them at 10 degrees on the equator to provide some washing. If you want some winter gain for stand alone systems add another 10-12 degrees.
Fran,
All this stuff about diddy little safe reactors is just talk. Obama has just invested in a massive program for totally conventional nukes. Why? because that is where the money sits. The only way they will get funding and insurance is to install totally “tried and tested” stuff. The fact that it is inefficient, dangerous and totally overpriced crap is besides the point.
Huggy
huggy@65 said:
Err no he hasn’t. He has given loan guarantees but the loans are private and the developers expect to do these without direct assistance from the state. The reason they are conventional is that in the US there has been a bar on unmoderated (fast) reactors for a very long time. Clinton, as a pay off for support from anti-nukes in 1994 stopped the IFR program that had been running for a decade and even barred Argonne from discussing the matter.
Now the Russians are building an IFR which should be up and running by 2015 with Americans helping them.
Leggett’s going to lose. I love Monbiot’s no bullsh*t approach to climate change. He mercilessly exposes greenwash for what it is.
I wonder what he’d make of a government that profits enormously from climate change but claims to be concerned about the problem. You think Rudd is unhappy the the Senate blocked the CPRS? Not a chance.
Also, those “totally conventional” nukes that Obama has just provided a funding lifeline to are the essentially failsafe AP1000, with a maximum core damage frequency of 2.41 × 10−7 per plant per year. China plans on 100 of them by 2020.
Which will admittedly leave several metric shitloads of waste to be eaten by Gen IV reactors.
Fran: You said:
In 10years time we may have a much better idea about he potential of geothermal and geosequestration as well as alternate nuclear options. In addition there is a strong likelihood that wind, solar etc. will have developed considerably. All this suggests that we would be smart to use non-nuclear options in the short term and revisit the nuclear option when we have hard data from commercial size building and operation of advanced nuclear.
John D said:
Doubtless this will be so, though I’m less sure we will see any gamechanging improvements in solar or wind’s feasibility. That’s one reason why I favour a less prescriptive approach. Let us price carbon dioxide equivalent emissions (and energy emissions more generally) according to some metric that reflects their actual harm to the commons and the cost of remediating it and then let each technology compete on its merits.
Where “we” means “Australia” I agree. We aren’t going to get nuclear here within that window as a matter of practice so we should keep an active watching brief, exploring the technology and its feasibility with a view to allowing it to compete in the third decade of this century. We can certainly be cognizant of what others have done.
Personally, in Australia, I think the best non-nuclear technology, dollar for dollar and dollar per unit of Co2 and pollution abatement is gas. With the right market settings and regulatory structure we could phase out coal by 2025 and have a system that is somewhere between 50 and 65% as CO2-intensive as we have now.
This has the advantage of not sounding too green for conservatives to take it seriously and not being too expensive. We could justify it simply on local pollution grounds and maybe use landfill gas or waste gas from sewage treatment in some places to further reduce the net-CO2 intensity.
It’s worth noting though that South Korea, which has aggressively pushed nuclear power is now winning supply contracts offshore and reaping the benefits of preserving their industrial and engineering base. Their APR1400 LWRs are coming in at about $US2300 per Kw installed.
Fran Barlow @70
But why? How would you know? What relevant qualifications, knowledge or experience do you have to make that assessment? Why should we pay attention to what you think? What benefit will we derive therefrom?
What modelling have you done on comparative energy prices, gas production and demand to arrive at this view? Or are you just handwaving? Now let me guess…
Presumably you’re aware that this is widely done already.
Tim Macknay asked:
Well I was for a very long time convinced that solar and wind were the most promising technologies. I spent extensive time looking at the economics and the constraints on each. Regrettably, their success as baseload replacement technologies depends very substantially on storage technologies to support their output becoming a lot more cost effective than they currently are. Moreover, the cost of conveying their output to demand sources would also have to fall very considerably. There’s also no clear reason for thinking that even if we did build this technology, that it would last the 40 years we expect and get out of bogstandard GenII NPPs. If there are improvements in wind and solar technology at the pointy end, the expenditure we make now will be redundant. And of course, what does one do when it is time to replace the technology, (even if it does last 40 years, which so far, to the best of my knowledge, none has)? That’s also something that gets very little attention.
In real terms, gas prices have been fairly stable over any ten-year period in the last 30 years. That could certainly change in a decade or two, but there’s no specific reason for thinking so. Australia has very significant gas reserves to draw upon. And the installed cost of gas is modest compared with the installed cost of solar and wind, per Kw.
In any event you are absolutely going to need to pair gas with wind and solar if you are to maintain constant supply. You are going to have to use a lot of Open Cycle to give you the flexibility to make use of these sources, so anything that prejudices gas will also prejudice wind and solar as well, unless you go the even more expensive path of having very significant pumped storage. So the modelling is actually quite easy.
Not as widely as it could be done if we had more installed gas capacity.
Fran, on best estimates, depending on how much we lock up in export contracts, we run out of gas in Australia in about 32 – 36 years.
Tim, if you’re checking peoples qualifications, could you please state yours?
Wilful said:
I’ve read similar estimates but of course, it very much depends on that overseas demand. China is gearing up with nuclear and within 25 years may be demanding a lot less. And in 15 years we may well be on the path to gearing up with nuclear too. It’s also possible that we will discover a lot more.
I see gas as a transitional technology from coal while so many of us are still bothered by unfounded fear of nuclear power, rather than the end game.
Wilful, I admit that my demand of Fran was rude (sorry, Fran) – of course anyone is entitled to opine on anything they like. Luckily Fran has a thick skin. I responded that was because, as far as I’m concerned, the discussion over energy has far too much speculation and handwaving masquerading as informed opinion. When I read these threads, I hope to learn something. That process is inhibited by the too-liberal deployment of hot air. As regards my own qualifications, feel free to demand I state ‘em then whenever I hold myself out as an authority on something.
Re Fran’s response:
Fran, we already know you don’t believe renewables can provide baseload because of the storage problem. However, I was specifically interested in your statement: “I’m less sure we will see any gamechanging improvements in solar or wind’s feasibility”. That was an opinion about the likely future development of renewable energy, not its current status. From what you’ve said, it appears to be pure speculation.
On gas, I don’t necessarily disagree with your view (at least in the short term), but I wanted to see if it was based on more than handwaving. Your response suggests it was handwaving. I noticed too you resorted to your habit of throwing in a technical term (in this case “open cycle”) to give the casual impression of in-depth knowledge. You’ve done that before and been caught out (remember “run of river hydro”?). I don’t know about other readers, but that technique sets off my b*llsh*t alarm.
The solution to credentialism (and lack of informed comment) on credible blogs isn’t to demand appropriate degrees, but to demand appropriate, authoritative off-site linkages.
barry brook, for example, isn’t a nuclear engineer, he is by all accounts an ecological modeller, so he would ‘fail’ a credential check, but has demonstrated a pretty solid understanding of power issues to my mind, and isn’t shy of providing solid, relevant links to back up any claim, particularly if challenged on a point. Of course, there’s a lot of spin, misinformation and speculation on all sides of nuclear and renewable energy debates, so mostly we’re all just pissing in the wind and have to come back to fundamentals if we’re to get anywhere.
But we’re not going to get anywhere. The most fundamental fundamental is that blog chatting is a diversion for frustrated intelligent people with no real power. Our debates here, interesting as they may be, will have somewhere between zero and and almost zero influence on the energy mix of Australia in 2020 and 2050.
Tim
You’re right, I do have a thick skin. You’re wrong to assertt handwaving by me on this occasion. Saying I’m “less sure” is a fairly qualified claim which wouldn;’t be inconsistent with “it might happen”. I do favour the best suite of technologies and if that turns out to have a substantial component of solar thermal and wind then I’ll be perfectly happy with that. Indeed, even if, (as I think most likely) it does a worse job per dollar than nuclear would but people decide that they are willing to pay the premium to do the same job nuclear would, I will live perfectly well with that. My fear is that not enough will be happy to pay the premium and so we will get neither renewables nor reductions and instead get stuck with more coal, and possibly CC&S coal at a premium.
Both terms were justified. Run-of-the-river hydro a totally legitimate term for hydro without reservoirs. Open cycle gas plants are difference from closed cycle plants and would be used because they are better at responding to slews (changes in the relationship between demand and output) than are the more thermally efficient closed cycle plants.
Point taken.
I wholeheartedly agree. I think this also explains my own increasing frustration with blog discussion – as a diversion, it shows diminishing returns on investment over time, at least where serious isues are concerned.
And Fran, I should add that I do believe you generally put your views forward in good faith, which is why I find your handwaving a bit perplexing. We don’t always disagree, as you know. Anyway, this is turning into a derail. Apologies for that.
Tim M,
Fran doesn’t seem to understand how energy storage works in the various solar technologies despite having it explained a number of times.
“Regrettably, their success as baseload replacement technologies depends very substantially on storage technologies to support their output becoming a lot more cost effective than they currently are. Moreover, the cost of conveying their output to demand sources would also have to fall very considerably. There’s also no clear reason for thinking that even if we did build this technology, that it would last the 40 years we expect and get out of bogstandard GenII NPPs. If there are improvements in wind and solar technology at the pointy end, the expenditure we make now will be redundant. And of course, what does one do when it is time to replace the technology, (even if it does last 40 years, which so far, to the best of my knowledge, none has)? That’s also something that gets very little attention”
That whole slab is so full of “I just don’t understand” that it is becoming annoying. CSP is proven over and over to be a full and flexible baseload system. There are systems that have been up and running for 30 years and are better today than they were when they were installed because there is a constant process of renewal, and the replacement parts are steadily improving in efficiency. The replacement rate is around 1% per year so the earliest plants have experienced 30% replacement.
At a glance a (the?) longest running nulcear paower plant is Big Rock Point at 35 years. There are also stories of longest running demolision jobs which invlolve nuclear power plants.
So to spell it out,
“And of course, what does one do when it is time to replace the technology”
CSP is renewed incrementally and should never need shutdown replacement as Nuclear does.
Solar PV is heading towards 50% efficiency in the most exotic end of the technology. But you will not find that information in the Sydney Morning Herald. You have to look a little deeper and understand what it is that you are seeing.
I am really waiting for Fran to put forward the ultimate anti Solar argument,
“what if the sun stops shining”!!
But that’s not how you meant it at the time. Aargh! This is exactly what I mean. Ditto for your reference to ‘open cycle’ – I wasn’t implying the usage was wrong, just that you threw it in there unnecessarily. BTW, I think you meant ‘combined cycle’, not ‘closed cycle’, gas plants. There – see how annoying that is? ;)
BilB – Fran’s remarks about technology replacement also struck me as odd, since the same issue affects all forms of power generation, not just renewables. As you point out, there are potential advantages to energy infrastructure that can be replaced incrementally, rather than requiring total decommissioning and new build.
In the context of the bet, I tend to agree with Robert that Monbiot will probably win, at least in the British contest.
BilB
Look at South Korea however BilB. They built a bunch of GenII planst from about 1979 onwards. Those plantsl klicenced until about 2017 have just been given 20 year renewals.
Not at retail level it isn’t. NASA’s record was 40.7%
Putting aside the temptation to remind BilB of what happens at sundown, clouds can and do affect how much solar collectors can collect.
And that power does in any event have to be delivered a long way from where it is collected
What’s that, Fran? only 40.7% efficient? Why ever did they bother!
Power delivery? That’s a problem that has to be solved only once.
And despite BilB’s heartfelt advocacy for solar thermal, (which after geothermal was the technology I thought most likely to do the heavy lifting) it hasn’t really taken off despite favourable tax treatment in the US, or even in sunny California, where about 10% of in-state capacity comes from renewables (mostly wind).
What is holding it back?
According to this source and enthusdiat, it’s laziness.
If California, with all that sun and the memory of a recent set of outages in their minds, and a public sympathetic to renewables can’t sustain solar thermal, who will?
Let me know when 40% efficient panels hit the retail market at costs comparable to the current retaiul models, BilB.
Fran @85: “Let me know when 40% efficient panels hit the retail market…”
So bloody what about efficiency, Fran???
I presume you are aware that early oilfields produced less than 10% of original oil in place? Did that stop people from using the stuff and developing the technology? Well, did it???
Presumably they needed someone like your good self, to tell them to give up unless they could produce 40% of original oil in place?
Bloody efficiency isn’t the point, Fran. Cost per kWh to the consumer is the point.
as Fran has said many a time, lets just get a price on carbon pollution and allow all technologies to flourish on their own merits.
Fran: If you want to use a gas transition you need to specify what year the production of gas fired will start to decline and what year it will cease if you are to get realistic comparison of alternatives. That is why I favor contracts for the supply of clean electricity so that sensible boundaries can be set for the various alternatives. Simply depending on artificial price increases is not going to make this happen.
In response to Frans assertion that nuclear and then gas are the best alternative to our current coal addiction, I must point out that both uranium and gas are finite resources with less than 50 years supply available, in the case of uranium, we would run out in less than 10 years if all power generation was switched to nuclear.
Please get The Final Energy crisis edited by Sheila Newman out of the library, it has excellent discussions of all the options and basically none will maintain the current energy intensity we enjoy in the affluent developed world. Within the next 10 years we will start our energy descent back to preoil community, it would be best to start planning now rather than stay in denial.
For more information check out the “Start Here” section on http://www.energybulletin.net/ Then read Richard Heinberg, various books available in the library.
John D said:
It seems to me that the year 2018 might be a year in which we could begin to review the status of nuclear power with benefit of a working IFR (2015 in Russia) and a number of thorium plants in India. By 2025 we might have the first 2 or 3 GenIII and GenIV plants here. From there we could add about 3GWe every five years until all the remaining coal and gas was phased out, possibly by about 2060.
Elise said:
Indeed it is Elise, and if you calmed down a moment, you’d grasp that that was my point.
If a 40.7% efficient solar panel costs ten times as much to buy as one that is 10% efficient, you lose on the trade, all else being equal. If a 5% efficient set of solar panels cost less than half the price of the 10% one, then you are ahead, all else being equal.
NASA’s panels had no cost constraint, and were aimed at powering satellites and so they could spend a considerable amount getting them up to the efficiency they wanted.
Fran,
“If a 40.7% efficient solar panel costs ten times as much to buy as one that is 10% efficient, you lose on the trade, all else being equal”
Fran you don’t know what you are talking about on this, and I can’t enlighten you at the moment because I have a commercial interest in this technology. Just suffice it to say that $1.50 per watt is achieveable today, as I said above.
Maggie M,
I don’t believe in the need to cut back on the functions that our energy consumption allows. I believe that the future is entirely electrically powered, just as Carbonsink has proclaimed for such a long time. The exciting thing about further extending electric power into so many new areas is that it is far more efficient than liquid fuel power. And even more exciting than that is that this will be entirely powered from the sun, and this transition can take as little as 40 years.
I was recently in Qingdao (China), and every building there had solar waterheating units (multiples thereof) on their rooves, right down to tin shacks. The disturbing thing was that everybody drove cars. I saw about 3 bicycles in this city of 10 million, quite the opposite of Beijing. The message there is that the fuel will not last much longer, just as you suggest.
Maggie M said:
This is a more ambitious claim than the usual 50 years for uranium but it is wrong on several counts
I refer readers to detailed modelling by Professor David Mackay, UK Government adviser on these matters:
In summary, we not only have our existing RARs of uranium, but with IFRs, the entuire waste inventory is available too — enough on some estimates to power all of the world’s energy for 475 years. Currently, only about 0.6% of the uranium is used. Not only is this more efficient, it radically reduces the time the resultant hazmat needs to be sequestered.
Moreover, seawater contains uranium that could be extracted at about $300kg. Again, the fuel cost would make very little difference to energy prices as fuel cost is a trivial part of the power supply cost with nuclear.
And there is of course thorium, which is about three times as abundant as uranium. Australia has about 20% of world RARs of thorium.
Fran,
And no sooner spoken about, here is a similar technology to the one that I am involved with.
http://www.gizmag.com/cuess-solar-panel-photovoltaic/14507/?utm_source=Gizmag+Subscribers&utm_campaign=d65a18b76e-UA-2235360-4&utm_medium=email
The future is Solar, get used to it. Nuclear cannot compete against this in our geographic situation.
From your link, BilB
Don’t get me wrong — progress is progress, and if this does no more than is claimed, then I will be every bit as happy as you to celebrate. Apparently it is going to be used alongside utilities as an adjunct to existing supply, which sounds sensible to me on a number of grounds. In settings where significant hot water and electricity is demanded, this could be excellent.
I still don’t see how it can carry the industrial loads the main system carries though.
I can’t afford to argue endlessly with you, Fran, I have worked the numbers, not on this system but another, and what will ultimately happen is most houses and businesses will have a minimum 10 Kw system, plus additional energy, which will be paid for in 3 to 5 years from savings on their current energy outgoings. These outgoings include electricity and automotive fuel. Furthermore there will be an entirely new energy distribution market available. Just think about that, free energy for every household and many small businesses, with the entire investment to achieve this coming from the energy user’s pockets, but essentially free to them as this money is money saved from not needing to buy electricity and petrol. It doesn’t get any better than that.
Of course you are going to say “what happens when the sun goes down”. For starters these systems are still working on cloudy days, just at a reduced rate. Secondly, over the next 20 years, as pointed out by a Dutch researcher, many households will have access to a recycled automotive energy pack which, while no longer efficient enough to power a car at peak performance, will still be suitable for domestic energy storage and delivery.
You are going to have to start thinking about these sorts of systems in the same way as we thought about computer printers. Every year a different price, better and cheaper. Against a trend like that Nuclear is no longer relevent.
So coming back to the thread, again I say that Monbiet may achieve a battle win based on exact timing, but the campaign is already won in Leggett’s favour. And as to latitudes and seasons these systems are partially self compensating, and no I won’t spell out how that applies.
Fran @92: “Indeed it is Elise, and if you calmed down a moment, you’d grasp that that was my point.”
Second the comments of Tim Macknay and BilB upthread.
Fran, before you get too condescending with me again, I will refer you back to your appalling effort on an earlier thread where you tried and totally failed to demonstrate why solar was ineffective. Your calculations were soo emabarrassingly wrong, I am amazed that you continue to argue the case. Even after I spelt out the errors in both assumptions and calculations, you continued on in the same vein.
I doubt you have any real idea about solar technology, despite your claims to have “spent extensive time looking at the economics and the constraints…”. If that were so, you would not make so many plainly wrong statements.
I also doubt that you understand much about hydro, since in an earlier thread you did not seem to grasp the basics of hydrostatic head and friction losses. And you had a thick enough hide to suggest that I didn’t understand basic physics, when I challenged it. Remember the rediculous analogy to your washing machine overflowing? You clearly didn’t understand what you were talking about.
Fran, it would appear that you make a habit of reading and collating the stories of others, without any real understanding of the technology in each case. You then grossly overstate your position in areas where you have limited real expertise.
You may fool yourself, Fran, and some others with negligible technical background. There is no harm in having an opinion, but you really should try to refrain from overselling your limited knowledge.
One thing to keep in mind here is that Fran represents an average elected public official, with passion and enthusiasm sitting in committee making judgements about future energy infrastructure.
This is our democracy at work. Those seeking election generally come from the law, education, unions/business, and the social welfare sector. By my observations at least. However many of the decisions about our future are heavily dependent on science and engineering knowledge. Passion just does not bridge that gap. How can we make this better and safer? How can we make our democratic decision making sharper. Do we have the wrong mix of talents and skills in our parliaments?
Deary me Elise …
You have worked yourself up into a lather.
Whoever it was upthread who made the point that the stuff we talk about here really changes very little was right. In the end it doesn’t matter if you think my opinion is total bollocks or the words of an oracle, or anything in between. The probability that anything said here by anyone will even be quoted by anyone close enough to policy to have a hand in shaping it is trifling.
What we are really doing here is a series of thought experiments with others who, like us, are fascinated with public policy, feel a need to express ourselves, and for the most part are somewhat left-of-centre. It’s a lot of fun, and often, we can find out how others of similar general disposition might respond to the things we fancy we have figured out.
You say solar is the way to go. I have serious doubts, though I would be pleased to be wrong. As I said, my fear is that if you are wrong, and nuclear keeps being blocked, we will simply get coal, coal and more coal, until it stops being viable and the ecosystem is a mess. But if a whole bunch of really clever entrepreneurs figure out how to replace coal in a hurry with something better that isn’t nuclear and sell that concept to the public successfully and soon, on a world scale, then I will most happily concede my mistake.
Until that day arrives though, or if it arrives too late to make a difference, I will continue to fear an oncoming ecological and human catastrophe. Let’s hope one of us gets proved correct very soon.