Cheaper solar edging closer

[skids]

This hit /. today, and if you're strolling around the millions of other blogs it will likely show up, I figured you might like my diary here to use as backup material to bash on any FUD astroturfers (link below the main link)

Technologies collectively known as concentrating photovoltaics are starting to enjoy their day in the sun, thanks to advances in solar cells, which absorb light and convert it into electricity, and the mirror- or lens-based concentrator systems that focus light on them. The technology could soon make solar power as cheap as electricity from the grid.

The idea of concentrating sunlight to reduce the size of solar cells--and therefore to cut costs--has been around for decades. But interest in the technology has picked up in the past year. Last month, Japanese electronics giant Sharp Corporation showed off its new system for focusing sunlight with a fresnel lens (like the one used in lighthouses) onto superefficient solar cells, which are about twice as efficient as conventional silicon cells. Other companies, such as SolFocus, based in Palo Alto, CA, and Energy Innovations, based in Pasadena, CA, are rolling out new concentrators. And the company that supplied the long-lived photovoltaic cells for the Mars rovers, Boeing subsidiary Spectrolab, based in Sylmar, CA, is supplying more than a million cells for concentrator projects, including one in Australia that will generate enough power for 3,500 homes.

http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17774&ch=energy
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/10/8/15152/1089

[kestrel91316]

1. Based in SYLMAR??? WTF????

".......And the company that supplied the long-lived photovoltaic cells for the Mars rovers, Boeing subsidiary Spectrolab, based in Sylmar, CA....."

Sylmar is a big barrio. I know - I live down the road. This is WAY bizarre.

[skids]

2. It's probably your insane real estate prices. n/t

[kentauros]

3. Isn't there also a holographic film

concentrating technique? I seem to recall reading that over on Treehugger.com at one time. I've also read how the Germans are starting to paint the sides of their buildings with a solar paint. Sure, not as efficient as panels, but with that much surface area, the more the merrier :)

Now if we could only get architects and building owners in the US to start using this technology. That and rooftop wind-turbines. I've often thought we could put immersion generators into the bayous around here to generate a little bit of extra electricity during flood-type sitations (that's only time the bayous move enough water to be used for hydro purposes. Too many of them are nothing more than big concrete ditches most of the time anyway...)

I am glad to see more and more of the solar technologies coming onto the market and being implemented. If I didn't rent, I'd cover the flat roofs of this apartment complex with nothing but concentrator panels and micro-turbines :)

namastEric

[Tesha]

18. FYI: Holograms can reproduce complex optics in a flat material. (NT)

[NNadir]

4. This book indicates that solar energy will be cheap by 1995.

There are several variations of photovoltaics involving different degrees of tracking the motion of the sun and using lenses to concentrate the sun's rays. Each has advantages, but at an added cost, which roughly compensates for them. We, therefore, simplify our discussion by considering only one of the options, a fixed flat plate. According to the directors of the government program, for photovoltaics to penetrate the utility market,2 the module cost must be reduced to $45 per square meter if the efficiency is improved to 15%, or to $80 per square meter if the efficiency can be raised to 20%, assuming that the system life expectancy can be extended to 30 years (all costs are in 1987 dollars). These are the program goals. In 1982, the best performance was an efficiency of 9.8%, a cost of $1,140 per square meter, and 15 years life expectancy. In 1987, this had improved to 12% efficiency, a cost of $480 per square meter, and a life expectancy of 20 years.3 If these trends continue — i.e., if every 5 years the efficiency improves by 2%, the cost is cut in half, and the life expectancy is increased by 5 years — photovoltaics will penetrate the utility market by the end of the century.4 Those involved in the development are very confident that this will happen...

...A system generating 10,000 kW of electricity, including over 1,800 mirrors, each roughly 20 feet on a side, has been constructed and successfully operated since 1984 at Barstow in the California desert.5 Several smaller facilities are also in operation, largely for research purposes. Improved methods have been developed for transferring the heat from the receiver, at the top of a 300-foot-high tower in the Barstow plant, to the steam generation facility on the ground. There has been great progress in mirror development, increasing the area of individual glass-metal mirrors while reducing their costs, and introducing stretched-membrane mirrors, which have a potential for further cost reductions. With current technology, a plant could be constructed for $3,000 per peak kilowatt versus the $11,000 per peak kilowatt cost for the Barstow plant. Government program directors estimate that the utility market will be penetrated if the cost gets down to $1,000 per peak kilowatt. Enthusiasts believe that this can be achieved by 1995.

If all goes well, solar thermal plants may be contributing to service of peak power loads in the southwest desert by the turn of the century.

http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter14.html

For reference, this book was copyrighted in 1990, and so the "turn of the century" in question here was the twentieth century.

I suppose one could be forgiven for saying "I'll believe it when I see it." Or is that just being overly negative?

For the record, Amory Lovins, confused mystic published an article in Foreign Affairs in 1976 talking all about how local "soft" energy would displace all central energy production, especially nuclear energy by 2000. Apparently his McMansion in Snowmass, Colorado, rich boy's playground, is off the grid but nuclear plants around the world have not been replaced by other "off the grid" solar powered homes. Lovins home is still rather unusual, just as it was when he spent many of hundreds of thousands of 1980's dollars building it. (It's now worth millions of course, not that he needs to sell it, especially after all the money he made promoting the "hyper" car. Actually he produced zero cars but he did produce investors.)

In 1980, he argued that nuclear energy was uneconomical in nations like France and Russia and not only would lead to the widespread distribution of weapons plutonium but the bankruptcy of these nations and an intractable waste problem.

The number of people who have died from the storage of nuclear waste since 1980, before Lovins moved to his ski resort mountain aerie with his wife, is still zero. The number of people killed by nuclear weapons produced from French civilian plutonium is also still zero. On the other hand, the number of people who have died from air pollution in the same 25 year period is easily more than 100 million, easily outstripping those killed by Stalin and Hitler combined.

Lovins was all warm and fuzzy about cheap "soft" solar energy in 1976 and 1980. It was a certainty he said. By. The. End. Of. The. Century. (Maybe he meant the 25th century?) He also said that electricity demand would decline after the mid 1980's. Actually electricity consumption has risen by 208% since 1980.

But this absurdity of these predictions did not effectively hurt Lovins in any way other than to reduce the number of skiable days in his town, an effect from something called "global climate change." (Global climate change isn't very severe for people who live on mountains, although it can reduce the effective daily benefit of a season pass lift ticket with the Aspen Skiing Company.) Believe it or not, Lovins has received big awards, including cash awards, and international fame on the strength of these predictions. Wow. Isn't life wonderful?

One can read all about the wonderful solar energy expert Amory Lovins here at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amory_Lovins

There's a very nice picture of him just outside his fucking SUV in the article.

As of 2006, the 4th largest export of France, which fortunately didn't give a flying fuck what Amory Lovins had to say, was electricity, nuclear electricity. Unlike most nations on earth, France produces less than 10% of its electricity using combustible fuels.

But that's neither here nor there. The problem of the global climate change era is that more than talk and optimistic predictions are necessary. It's not a joke any more. It would be really, really, really, really impressive if, instead of fucking talking all the time about how cheap and available solar will be, solar energy advocates would simply and finally show us the money.. As of 2006, after many decades of talk about how cheap it will be, solar electricity accounts for less than 0.1% of all the world's electrical demand. I don't believe that the reason has to do with anyone on the surface of this planet demanding an end to the use of solar energy. On the contrary, everybody thinks it's wonderful. So why is it so insignificant? Why are we still talking about how cheap it will be someday?

[Porcupine]

5. We know how many people HATE solar power. It's not feasable

Solar Festival


Nuclear Festival
(no image available)

Yap, people are just marching in the streets so that they can have a Nuclear Plant moved into their neighborhood. Or better yet a fuel reprocessing plant. Or a waste disposal facility.

Solar just doesnt' get the billions of yearly subsidies the nuclear industry gets either. http://www.cnp.ca/media/nuclear-subsidies-11-00.html">more In fact people think solar power is fun and interesting and incredibly usefull if you live more than 1/4 mile from the nearest power line.

[NNadir]

6. This is nonsense. The solar industry is highly subsidized everywhere.

It still does not produce 0.01% of the world's electricity. Therefore whatever subsidies are being applied in places like Germany, Japan and the US, they are having no effect on climate change.

They are however, providing lots of opportunities for middle class and wealthy people to pat themselves on the back. It's sort of like Halliburton with positive press, subsidize the rich...

I don't care if people buy solar toys to assauge their guilt over their piggish middle class lifestyles, including attendance at solar festivals where 1000 watt Marshall amplifiers for bands. I don't hate solar energy.

I merely note that the pretense that the world can save itself with solar energy, and thus can demonize nuclear energy - which is safer than solar - is the same as doing nothing about climate change. Noting the physical fact that is measured by something called numbers is not quite the same has "hatred."

I am acutely aware that there are many people who insist on doing nothing about climate change because they have a poor sense of reality and do not realize that it is coal, not nuclear, that threatens all life on earth. Sometimes I think these people must be smoking something.

It doesn't matter. Happily, the "solar will save us" crowd has no credibility and is being ignored around the world. The reason this crowd has lost credibility is that it has always, for decades, talked big and delivered little.

Current plans, on the other hand, for nuclear capacity call for enough capacity to provide half of the energy now provided by coal.

[mzteris]

7. nuclear energy is SAFER than solar??

That's a new one.

[NNadir]

8. OK, why don't you look at the ExterneE report?

http://www.externe.info/expoltec.pdf

The safety of nuclear energy compared to solar can be seen graphically in figure 9. Note that the difference is small. Solar, nuclear, and wind are all much safer than natural gas and wood (biomass).

In figure 10 it is shown that in many cases wood is more dangerous than natural gas, which is amazing, since natural gas is an unacceptably dangerous fuel.

Only wood, coal, natural gas and (to the extent it is used) can do what nuclear energy does, provide constant baseload power. Among the world's power plants, nuclear has the highest capacity utilization. In the United States the capacity utilization of nuclear power plants has been around 90% of name plate rating, whereas an excellent capacity utilization for a solar facility is about 25%. In fact, when you here about 10 Mega"watts" of solar power, the number being discussed is the peak output at noon on a cloudless day at the time of year when the inclination of the sun is ideal.

The realities here fly in the face of conventional popular impressions, but frankly, conventional popular impressions are completely idiotic. The fact that we are facing the severe environmental, political, and supply problems in energy is wholly a function of public stupidity.

[mzteris]

9. I'm not particularly "anti -nuclear"

(I worked at the construction of Perry nuc, btw) - but to say Nuclear is SAFER than SOLAR? I mean, comeon -

unless you're thinking that a sunburn is really bad? :)

[NNadir]

10. I'm sorry, but I insist I'm relying on data.

The common conception is that solar cells are environmentally a free lunch. They are not.

Actually the truth is more prosaic. There are some rather nasty chemicals involved in the synthesis of solar materials, some of which are quite toxic. Solar PV cells are mass intensive, meaning that one must handle quite a bit of mass to get a small amount of energy. This has immediate environmental consequences.

All that said, solar technology is environmentally very clean all things considered. But it produces a trivial amount of energy. The amount of energy produced by solar cells is so small, I would not be surprised to learn that all of the energy it produces has been wasted running websites saying how wonderful solar energy is.

There are millions of links all over the web touting how solar cells production facilities are going to produce 100's of mega"watts" of new solar cells this year. The "watts" refers to the fact that they are always discussing "peak" power. In fact 100 MW doesn't even represent a small gas plant, however, whereas the world has tens of thousands of power plants. Thus there is a huge amount of crowing about practically nothing at all.

If however, solar energy became a significant form of energy, the environmental impact would become more obvious. It is currently hidden because the industry is still so tiny. (I don't think it will ever produce more than 5 or 10 percent of electricity - which would be fine with me. Every solar cell displaces a little bit of natural gas.)

The real danger of solar energy is that it produces publicly complacency. Waiting for solar to become more popular is almost the same as doing nothing. Let me tell you something: If we do nothing, something very, very, very, very, very bad is going to happen. Everybody who is serious on the planet is talking about what global climate change is going to mean. It's not a joke.

[mzteris]

11. ok - I'll buy that.

What do you suggest, however?

I admit that I keep waiting for some "new technology" to suddenly make gas and coal and nuc (and wood) power relatively obsolete. . .

[NNadir]

12. I suggest expanding nuclear power by a huge amount.

Waiting for "new technology" is doing nothing. There are only a few forms of primary energy known or immediately on the horizon.

We simply must include the external cost of energy in making policy. The external cost, in fact, suggests the magnitude of the size of a carbon tax.

The entire revenue of a carbon tax should be invested in making greenhouse gas free energy. There are only a few realistic scalable options for doing that right now. It is obvious also that action be taken right now because the crisis is right now.

Note that I favor subsidized wind and solar energy. However I believe the bulk of any energy subsidies should go to forms of energy that are best proved.

It happens that the world is taking my advice. New nuclear capacity either under construction, on order, or proposed will bring nuclear energy to a position in which it is producing half as much energy as coal. (This includes nuclear installations around the world.) The new capacity, coupled with existing capacity will produce about 60 exajoules of primary energy. The world consumption of coal now amounts to about 120 exajoules.

I believe that more new nuclear capacity will be announced in the near future.

[piedmont]

13. Uh, that's not a measure of safety on the y-axis of Figure 9

That graph is comparing the costs per kWh associated with the emissions generated by each of the technologies. You cannot say that one technology is safer than another because its emissions are deemed cheaper to deal with.

By the way, I'm not against nuclear power, but the fuel for current fission plants is a non-renewable resource.

[NNadir]

14. The external costs involve health costs.

The methodology is quite clear.

If one clicks around on the www.externe.info site - and I've done this many times - one can find more detail. In table 6 of this document the costs are broken down explicitly:

http://www.externe.info/expolwp6.pdf

The Greenhouse gas of light water reactors (current enrichment) is smaller than solar by an order of magnitude. Greenhouse gases is an issue in human safety. The magnitude of sulfur dioxide emissions is also smaller for nuclear by an order of magnitude. Sulfur dioxides are an issue for human safety. Particulates are smaller for nuclear by an order of magnitude. Particulates are a matter of human safety. In heavy metals, the costs are on the same order of magnitude but are measurable in millionths of a kg per kw/hr for both forms of energy. In non metallic organic volatile compounds, nuclear is superior to solar by an order of magnitude. Only in radioactive emissions is solar better than nuclear - however the difference is trivial in absolute terms. Nuclear releases one one hundred millionth of a kg per kw-hr, where as solar produces one 10 billionth.

Nuclear is safer than solar power.

The difference is trivial on external costs, but it is not trivial on economic costs. Neither is it trivial in terms of proof of the technology.

It happens that one or two nuclear reactors can produce more energy than the entire output of solar generated electricity worldwide. Given that the world operates more than 440 nuclear reactors, the contention that solar energy is somehow a substitute for nuclear is a declaration of insanity. Solar would do well to displace some natural gas, but there is no evidence at all that this industry is prepared to displace significant natural gas. I wish that it were in such a position, but it is not. The biggest risk of solar energy doesn't involve the external costs of manufacture and installation at all. The biggest risk of solar is that it lulls people into inaction. Solar is not a major form of energy. It is a light diversion for enthusiasts. It's role in energy is still comparable to the role of the kazoo in music.

The main reason people talk so much about solar energy is because it is what they want to hear. In general, the enthusiasm for solar electricity in lieu of nuclear energy is notable only to the extent that it involves a complete suspension of the ability to think critically.

Solar is not as safe as nuclear. Solar power is just not affordable for the world's poor: It's entirely a rich boy's technology and mostly appeals to people who want to assuage liberal guilt over a consumerist life style. In this sense it is almost Republican - it substitutes concern for the status of the wealthy and elevates it over the dire needs of the poor. Even if this were not the case, solar power cannot produce continuous energy under any circumstances and therefore is not a competitor for nuclear energy at all - though it can compete with natural gas and is preferable to natural gas on an external cost basis, but not an internal cost basis. I doubt however that solar will displace natural gas at any point in the near future. As climate change is a problem now, solar power is therefore next to useless.

[Porcupine]

15. Nukes safer than Solar as Asteroids safer than mosquito's

Nnadir keeps insisting that Nukes are safer than solar and completely ignores issues of waste and accidental releases on the Chernobyl scale.

My primary arguement against this is that the central governments that have run nuclear power operations have a lousy record of telling us the truth on these issues. Their numbers are no more to be trusted than the Bush administration's assesments of threat levels from Iran.

More important is the mosquito vs. asteroid parable. Mosquito's have in their millions of years of history transmitted diseases that have killed more humans than all wars put together. Include other mammals and the mosquito should be the most feared killer ever to grace the planet.

Asteroids, when they hit the planet and become meteorites, have killed very, very few humans. On the other hand it is clear that individual asteroids killed the majority of megafauna on the planet several times now. Thus asteroid strikes have made thousands of species extinct.

Solar power may kill more humans as they crash panel carrying trucks and fall off roofs than operators in nuke plants. Nuclear weapons, an unavoidable offshoot of nuclear power, can make your species extinct.

[NNadir]

17. One needs to examine expectation values.

The expectation value is the product of the probability of an event times the number of persons injured.

We know immediately what the consequence of the worst possible nuclear accident will be, since the worst possible nuclear accident will be.

Experimentally - ignoring the fact that the lessons of Chernobyl will preclude this type of reactor from ever again being built - the risk of total failure of a nuclear reactor with release of its inventory of radionuclides is found to be, approximately, 1/(50 years * 450 reactors) = 4.55 X 10^-5 failures/reactor-year. Here I am referring to failures that have resulted in fatalities among the general public - of which Chernobyl is the only example. This is the factor for the first 50 years of nuclear power - during which much experience with reactor operations was obtained . There is no reason therefore to assume that the number will be that high in the next fifty years.

The number of persons who have died from Chernobyl related causes numbers less than 1000, although it is possible that in the next twenty years, there may be some people who experience a Chernobyl related loss of life expectancy. (They have already survived 20 years.) So let us say that this number proves to be 10X as large and approaches 10,000 people. The expectation value is thus 0.46.

Consider if the possibility of a run-away greenhouse event eliminating life on earth is 1 in 10 million. (I think it's much higher than that - and there are gradations between, such life continues, but millions of people die from climate related famine, flooding, and resource wars.) The loss of life would be six billion people and thus the expectation value would be six billion divided by 10 million or 600.

Thus the risk expectation value for doing nothing about climate change - the de facto position of all nuclear opponents - is more than 1000X greater than using nuclear power.

Opponents of nuclear power raise all sorts of silly objections about what could happen if nuclear energy is used. There's the usual nonsense about nuclear weapons, and so called "nuclear waste," and nuclear accidents. The unstated case in spouting such nonsense is the insistence that nuclear power be perfect to be acceptable. What is always the case is that the people who list what could happen using their productive imaginations are oblivious to what is happening. This is immoral in the sense that nuclear is easily better than all other options now being used, especially including living with fossil fuels which are unacceptably dangerous.

The anti-nuclear position is dogmatic and quasi-religious. It does not stand up to any rational inspection. In general, the world has totally disregarded this religion, which is a good thing. Although the pace of nuclear power commitments around the world is rising rapidly as we blow off this irrational nonsense, it is not rising fast enough.

The 162 reactors now in various stages of development world wide will be enough to bring nuclear energy to the position where it is producing half as much energy as coal. Coal must be phased out however. Hopefully the next few years will bring a commitment for many hundreds of reactors more.

[Odin2005]

16. Good point, a lot of the solar hype is just "feel-good" psudoenviromentalism.

It's a "righteous crusade" that lets naive upper-middle class people feel less guilty out thier wasteful lifestyles without actually helping anything. Same thing with the anti-nuclear stuff.