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Future of Solar Power

Started by Gary_C, April 19, 2016, 01:23:46 PM

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Ianab

You are probably correct that the economics math didn't work out on that project. That's not to say that the principle didn't work, just that it costs too much. OK, we have learned something, now back to the drawing board. Can it be improved or what's been learned adapted to work in some other scenario.  Sometimes spending the money on a pilot project, prototype or simply research is money well spent. Starting 100 of these schemes before you have one working? Now that would be plain stupid. Building one small scale system so you KNOW how well it works? That's called R&D. Maybe it will be the next big thing, maybe not. At least you then KNOW.

On unrelated solar news...

http://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/news/79268368/solar-plane-reaches-california-after-flight-across-pacific

If you had said, even 30 years ago that a solar powered plane could fly around the world, you would have been laughed at. Everyone KNEW that a solar powered plane couldn't fly at night, even if you could build one, which you couldn't. OK, it's not really ready for commercial use as it cruises at ~30 mph and can't take off if the wind is blowing. But the millions they have spend isn't wasted. Cellphone and internet access to remote areas supplied by a solar powered drone that just circles at 50,000 ft for months on end? Suddenly looks more practical...
Weekend warrior, Peterson JP test pilot, Dolmar 7900 and Stihl MS310 saws and  the usual collection of power tools :)

SwampDonkey

The city of Sault St. Marie has several sources of renewable energy, not relying on any one source.

https://www.sault-canada.com/en/ouruniqueadvantage/renewableenergy.asp

I think the rate is around 0.175/kwh on peak demand for residents, $0.083 off peak. The heavy users pay $0.099   .
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

florida

Swampdonkey,
Interesting stuff but it all proves my point.

The Prince Wind Farm has a nameplate capacity of 189 MW but an actual  capacity of 27.5% or about 51 MW.  51 MW has a whole sale value of  $1,814,400 annually. The cost of the project was $400,000,000.00 which, if financed over 30 years, means an annual cost of  $2,552,000.00.  They also employee 15 technicians on site to keep  the windmills running. I know from other reading  that they cost $75,000.00 a year each so there is  another annual expense of $1,125,000.

Doing the math means an annual loss of at least of $1,862,600.00 not even including the cost of replacement parts, trucks, etc.  Once again the politicians have curried favor with the rich guys and the rich guys are laughing all the way to the bank while you pay the bill.

The solar farm is even worse. With a nameplate rate of about 90 MW and a cost of $360,000,00 it will be magnitudes worse than the wind farm since the  capacity factor will be about 6% of nameplate.  In other words it will produce about  5.4 MW of power  or less than $200,000.00 annually   at $.37 a kw   The annual payment will run about $2.2 million  for a dead loss to taxpayers of $2 million a year not including the maintenance  labor and material.

Cogeneration- The steel company is using the same gas turbine technology as every new power plant uses.  It does save the utility from building more power plants but does not directly reduce rates or qualify as "green."

Hydro certainly works but for Sault-Ste-Marie to take credit for creating "green energy"  through dams that have been there 100 years is a bit disingenuous.

Reverse Polymerization looks interesting. If they are doing it without taxpayers money even better.

Keep in mind that the $760,000,000 of wind and solar is on top of the cost of conventional power, it does not replace or reduce it.  The taxpayers and ratepayers are basically paying for nothing they didn't already have but at 3 to 4 times the cost.

General contractor and carpenter for 50 years.
Retired now!

SwampDonkey

The extra cost of clean energy.  ;D

Not quite the same thing, but another comparison on heating.

$4000 for a flu, $2500 for wood fired furnace and duct, monthly bill for electric around $100-130, firewood $280/cord delivered 6 cord. Flu lasts decades, furnace 25 years

$10,000 for heat pump and electric furnace combination. $300-500 during cold months, we got 8  of'm. $200 for 3 months if used for A/C..... we don't really need much in the north. 10-15 year life.
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

John Mc

Quote from: florida on April 24, 2016, 10:38:47 AM
The solar farm is even worse. With a nameplate rate of about 90 MW and a cost of $360,000,00 it will be magnitudes worse than the wind farm since the  capacity factor will be about 6% of nameplate.  In other words it will produce about  5.4 MW of power or less than $200,000.00 annually

Array size is usually measured in watts (or KW or MW). Production is usually measured in watt-hours (or Kilowatt-hours or Megawatt-hours, depending on the scale). So I assume when you say it will produce about 5.4MW you mean 5.4 MWH?

I'm curious where you are getting your numbers, particularly the 6% number. When we install solar PV in Vermont, a fixed mount system (not tracking) produces about 1200 KWH per year for every 1 KW of solar panels we install (assuming they are mounted at the optimal angle and orientation for our area, and are in a location that gets good solar exposure). This is not just theoretical numbers, this is actual performance history.

For example:

  • 50KW system we installed on the roof of a school a couple of years ago has averaged over 1100 KWH per year for each KW of panels installed. This roof has some partial shading, and is also shallower than optimal angle and not facing due south, reducing it's output both from its angle to the sun and the fact that it does not shed snow as well as it would if it were at the steeper angle
  • A 3.825 KW roof-mount system we installed 3 years ago is averaging 1266 KWH per year for every KW of panels installed. In fact, in the 3 years and 3 months this small residential system has been in operation, it has already put out 5.8 MWH - more than the annual production you calculated for a 90 MW system.

So either I have completely failed to understand the numbers you put out, or your numbers bear some checking and recalculating. Assuming it's properly designed and installed, 90 MW "nameplate" rated system would need to operate for about 5 minutes in full direct sunlight to output 5.4 MWH.
If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.   - Abraham Maslow

Gary_C

John, your numbers are similar to the numbers florida is providing.

For example, your 1KW installed capacity could produce 24 KWH per day or 8760 KWH per year. Since your system is producing 1200 KWH per year, the system is producing about 13.7 per cent of full installed capacity. Yes, I know the sun doesn't shine 24 hours per day but when you compare a solar system to the installed capacity of a conventional power plant, you have to look at the total installed capacity and the cost of installation.

This sun doesn't shine 24 hours per day is exactly the disadvantage that solar power needs to overcome by some means or it cannot be competitive with other power sources and it's a double whammy. Not only do you have to install the peak instantaneous capacity you need but you also have to have a backup system of equal instantaneous capacity available when the sun doesn't shine. Or a storage system to get you through the nights and cloudy spells.
Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway.

John Mc

Gary -

I'm well aware of the pros and cons of solar and the need for storage or other means to produce when the sun is not shining (Vermont is not exactly the "sunshine state").

What I'm taking issue with is that a 90 MW "nameplate" rated system only puts out 5.4 MWH per year. I'm not sure if I'm just misunderstanding the units he is talking about, but nobody ever claims that the the expected output of a 90MW system is 90 MW x 24 hours/day x 365 days/year. I also don't claim my car, which probably has a top speed of 100 MPH is capable of an annual traveling distance of 876,000 miles either.

As for solar not being able to compete without subsidies: I'm all for removing ALL subsidies from ALL forms of energy, as well as having the true costs of generating or using each form of energy born by the generators (and passed on to the consumers) of such energy. Subsidizing (or allowing users to dodge the full costs of) oil, gas, hydro, solar, etc just lessens the incentive to use it efficiently. However, the US (and the world) is so far from such a system that I doubt it will ever happen.
If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.   - Abraham Maslow

Gary_C

Power plants are nothing like cars and the power plants we depend on for our grid electricity do absolutely run 24 hours per day 365 days per year. In fact one coal fired plant that I know of ran for nearly 10 years without any downtime. At the five year inspection it was determined it needed some work and the parts needed were not available for almost four years.

My nephew is a operator at a nuclear power plant and down times are scheduled for years ahead and every minute the plant is down is very well planned and extremely expensive to the owners. With that kind of investment you can't have idle capacity.
Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway.

tmarch

"No matter how you slice it a 10K photo voltaic system is going to run between $50,000 and $60,000 installed with no storage."
How many of this size system cost this much and why?  Right now I can find a 10K system installed for $25,000 that will have all the best components available.  Take the tax credit and it's less than $20,000.
Personally I have a 6K system at the ranch and it offsets all my usage yearly.  Not that we use that many KWH anyhow, but conservation is key.
Retired to the ranch, saw, and sell solar pumps.

esteadle

There are a series of interesting graphs of Wind Energy Production Capacity by year at this link.
http://apps2.eere.energy.gov/wind/windexchange/wind_installed_capacity.asp

There was a post above in this thread, where someone asked a somewhat rhetorical question about "what plants did they shut down". That's not the way it would work, actually. Its more likely that additional capacity would not be built based on the availability of additional capacity provided by the energy technologies coming onto the market. This is avoided capacity.

There is also the consideration of the advancement of energy efficiency at the point of consumption. New technologies like LED lighting, smartphones, and energy efficient appliances, programmable thermostats, alternate power buses (DC) -- these make capacity demand considerations a much more manageable problem. An axiom of the energy industry is every watt of avoided consumption saves many watts of generated capacity. By avoiding the consumption of energy, alternative local power generation becomes a more realistic situation.

Traditional power generation technologies have costs that are typically unaccounted for. Their effects on the environment are usually not reflected in the rates that energy consumers pay. If carbon emitters were to pay for the effect they have on climate, and the severe weather effects that manifest as a result, all of the economic considerations change.

maple flats

It sounds to me that florida is so against any form of green energy that he makes up or mis-interprets the numbers.
For me, I'll take solar PV anytime, which I have at 6.32KW strong. On a yearly basis it supplies all of my energy, thru net metering. I just paid up front for the electricity for the rest of my life, and for others after that.
logging small time for years but just learning how,  2012 36 HP Mahindra tractor, 3point log arch, 8000# class excavator, lifts 2500# and sets logs on mill precisely where needed, Woodland Mills HM130Max , maple syrup a hobby that consumes my time. looking to learn blacksmithing.

Gary_C

It's not accurate to portray florida or myself as "against green energy" as this topic is all about pointing out the difficulties solar energy has to face to become economically viable. All "green energy" sources have to compete with each other to be the choice for capital investment and solar has an inherent disadvantage because the sun does not shine all day. In fact there are only about eight hours daily you can expect production for a solar investment minus cloudy day losses. That third or less production limit is a severe handicap when considering investing in energy production and thus either requires significantly lower costs of investment per KW capacity or you have to look elsewhere for the capital to be invested for energy production.

Of course in isolated locations like yours, the lack of small scale alternatives may make solar the preferred investment. I actually run a isolated system in my camper where I spend many of my days while working in the woods and have a 3KW inverter, 4-6 volt batteries in a 12 volt storage setup, two solar panels for assist and a 3 kw Honda generator to recharge. The solar panels are not giving me much assist but they are many times covered with snow and it is just too dangerous to get up on the roof to clear the snow in the winter. That plus they have not worked well since one was damaged and replaced.

This does not make me for or against solar, just a realist about the benefits. 
Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway.

florida

Sorry for not being here to answer questions. Been down sick with a terrible cold.

John,

You're right about my confusion between MW and MWh although that is what I meant to be saying. I got my figures from another website that said the capacity factor in Vermont as about 6% which would mean 5.4MWh annually.

maple flats

I'm not anti green energy at all. It has an important role to play in places where grid power isn't available. I'm not even against solar as long as it's fairly represented and taxpayers aren't paying for it. Net metering forces the rest of the rate payers to subsidize your power because laws force the power company to pay retail for your solar power. That's what I'm against.

SolarCity is one of the if not the largest solar power retailers in American. Here's what they have to say about their business.

"SolarCity officials, including Musk's cousins and fellow Obama donors Lyndon and Peter Rive, acknowledged the company's dependence on government support  in its 2012 IPO filing. "Our business currently depends on the availability of rebates, tax credits and other financial incentives," forcing other people to give us profits  they wrote. "The expiration, elimination or reduction of these rebates, credits and incentives would adversely impact our business."




General contractor and carpenter for 50 years.
Retired now!

florida

esteadle

Not true at all. Actually as more wind and solar is brought on line MORE gas fired generators have to be built just to back them up. It has to be gas fired because no other generators can ramp up fast enough to keep pace with wind and solars intermittent power production.

Also, wind and solar have a larger carbon footprint than coal fired plants since they are magnitudes less efficient. The trick is that the carbon production takes place where the steel, aluminum, concrete, copper, fiberglass and cells that go into them are made. A 3 MW commercial windmill will never produce enough electricity to pay its  construction cost whereas a coal fired plant pays for itself many times over.
General contractor and carpenter for 50 years.
Retired now!

Ljohnsaw

Quote from: florida on May 02, 2016, 04:46:26 PM
Net metering forces the rest of the rate payers to subsidize your power because laws force the power company to pay retail for your solar power. That's what I'm against.

I'm not jumping down your throat, but this is NOT true out here in the "other" sunshine state.  My power company only pays WHOLESALE rate for solar power - and it really isn't even that.  Their web site quotes that any over generation at the end of the year will be bought for "about 4 cents / kwh" and they typically pay between 2 and 3 cents.  My all-in average rate (First tier) is $0.1839.  Our rates go up to 45 cents so that is why I have solar.  The extra is the transportation charges, etc.  While I was working for a different power company, we would be happy to buy power at 50 or 60 cents plus transport charges.  My argument is that I should get credit for the power company not having to transport electricity to my neighbors when I am over-generating.  That is, I should get the full retail rate because that is what I'm offsetting, not the wholesale.  But, alas, that won't happen :-\
John Sawicky

Just North-East of Sacramento...

SkyTrak 9038, Ford 545D FEL, Davis Little Monster backhoe, Case 16+4 Trencher, Home Built 42" capacity/36" cut Bandmill up to 54' long - using it all to build a timber frame cabin.

SLawyer Dave

I am in the same boat as ljohnsaw.  Over generation of solar power from my solar system, nets me about .03 cents a kwh.  I believe my average cost to buy power from PG&E is like .35 cents.  Where solar makes sense economically for me, in that it drops me from a high tier cost of electricity, to that of only needing a very small baseline need.  So I save about $100 a month in total.

In Hawaii, where electricity is VERY expensive, (they have to import oil and natural gas to generate most of their needs), solar has been almost standardized and can be found in almost every home.  So as electricity rates go up, solar power becomes that much more affordable. 

Unless incredibly inexpensive ways to store solar power become available, solar will never be "the answer", to our world's electrical power generation needs.  However, it will almost certainly be a part of the answer for many generations to come. 

Out of all of the "green" energy options out there, I believe the most likely to be able to meet our future needs is Hot Dry Rock Geothermal.  It is the one technology out there that has the *potential*, to meet all of the world's electrical power needs alone.  A U.S. Department of Energy study a few years ago estimated that there is 10,000 terra watts of power available here in the Continental U.S. alone,  A single terra watt, is equivalent to all of the electricity produced throughout the entire world for one year.  So that equates to 10,000 years of supply at our current world wide usage.   

florida

ljohnsaw

No offense taken at all but thank you for the warning! Lol!

I can't believe your rates! I mean I do but holy cow is that some expensive power!  CA is as bad as Europe. As a matter of fact the highest electric rates in Europe, $.45 to $.60 a k are in the countries with the most developed solar and wind systems. In Spain and Germany they encouraged solar with feed in tariffs of nearly $.60 a k so guess what happened? Solar went up everywhere and of course it wasn't  sustainable so the tariffs crashed leaving people on the hook for their systems. They found many larger solar systems  producing power at night! The owners were running gensets at night as even paying for fuel they made money.

Anyway, here's an article from Feb about how CA has just extended the law forcing retail net metering rates on the utilities until 2019.

http://www.utilitydive.com/news/inside-the-decision-california-regulators-preserve-retail-rate-net-meterin/413019/
General contractor and carpenter for 50 years.
Retired now!

florida

SLawyerDave

I don't know how you guys can pay those rates. I'd be broke trying to keep my air running! At $.35 my power bill would be $7 or $800.00 a month! But you're right, you're getting up into the rate area where solar does come close to being competitive. However, I thin your high rates are mostly due to politics, not a lack of available power. CA has a massive hydro system, thousands of oil and gas wells and import massive amounts of power from surrounding low rate states. There's no reason for your power to be so expensive except political manipulation of the market. Your politicians want you to pay more.

Here's a chart of average power prices across the US.  Here in Florida we have no hydro so almost all of our power is produced by traditional methods yet I pay less than $.12 a kh.

Never heard of Hot Dry Rock Geothermal, I'll have to look that one up.
General contractor and carpenter for 50 years.
Retired now!

Gary_C

Here is that chart from the EIA on electric rates across the country. Electric Power Monthly

Hot Dry Rock Geothermal is basically extracting heat from near the earth's core and requires a type of hydraulic fracking. They claim no leakage of the fluids but with the attention fracking for oil is getting, fat chance that method is going to get wide spread approval. Plus it just gets you hot water, not electric power that is relatively easy to transport.
Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway.

Ljohnsaw

There are several places that have or could have what we have in Northern California.  Geothermal steam plants.  My old company built their first plant in 1981 in the Clear Lake area.  There are a LOT of units out there - we just built two plants of two units.  They were supposed to have a life span (due to steam field depletion) of 30 years.  We innovated re-injection of the condensed steam.  A non-producing or very low producing well is used to start pumping water down the well.  Once it gets a little quenched, it starts to draw the water down.  They calculated it takes 35 years for rain water to get down to the hot rocks - we were short circuiting that.  We also built small retention dams to capture rain water (they get about 35" a year up there) to re-inject.  That added quite a number of years to the life of the steam field.  We also converted the turbines to work from lower pressure steam and they are still churning out power today.  The plants are taken off-line, IIRC, every other year for a month for preventive maintenance - sometimes a turbine replacement (spare on hand) to be rebuilt during the year.  The only down-side of these is that the seismic activity has increased in the area a little bit.
John Sawicky

Just North-East of Sacramento...

SkyTrak 9038, Ford 545D FEL, Davis Little Monster backhoe, Case 16+4 Trencher, Home Built 42" capacity/36" cut Bandmill up to 54' long - using it all to build a timber frame cabin.

Larry

Our electric utility, Ozark Electric Cooperative, just put a one megawatt solar power generation station on line.  I haven't read how it is going as of yet.  One megawatt doesn't seem like much, but maybe they get green credits or something.  You can read about it hear.

https://www.ozarksecc.com/press/pr/solar-facility/july-15-2015

We just had a thread about electric rates and it seemed I had about the cheapest, so I'll won't say nothing bad about our utility.

I have heard rumor of a new idea.  Invest in the utility company to install solar panels than get a break on your bill.  This would be in lieu of the homeowner buying and installing there own solar panels.  The idea is to eliminate net metering.
Larry, making useful and beautiful things out of the most environmental friendly material on the planet.

We need to insure our customers understand the importance of our craft.

SLawyer Dave

https://www.yahoo.com/news/futuristic-device-helping-scientists-break-055236603.html?ref=gs


Above is an article about researchers in Australia coming up with a new kind of solar panel, prism design that doubles the efficiency of the panel to 34%.  Hopefully they can scale the technology and costs and make this an affordable alternative.

Gary_C

Think of that method as putting a layer of diamonds (high purity optical glass) in the panel. I wish them well in making that idea cost effective.

Their method still does not address the sun does not shine all day factor that is killing the utilization factor.

Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway.

SLawyer Dave

Quote from: Gary_C on May 03, 2016, 10:31:46 AM


Hot Dry Rock Geothermal is basically extracting heat from near the earth's core and requires a type of hydraulic fracking. They claim no leakage of the fluids but with the attention fracking for oil is getting, fat chance that method is going to get wide spread approval. Plus it just gets you hot water, not electric power that is relatively easy to transport.

Just to be clear, Hot Dry Rock Geothermal, or HDR, does rely on heat coming from the Earth's core, but the "hot dry rock" has to be within 15km of the surface, (drill-able depth).  Typically this is a crystallized plutonic structure of heated rock that extends down many miles into the Earth's Mantle.  That crystallized rock, (think granite), conducts the heat emanating from the Earths core and mantle up close to the surface of the earth.

The sole difference between HDR and "wet" geothermal, (as ljohnsaw spoke about), is the presence of water at depth within these "hot rocks".  The Geysers Geothermal plant in Lake County California, taps into a relatively shallow area of hot rock, for which water naturally filters down to.  The water becomes super heated, (steam field), and then by that pressure is forced to the surface through small fractures in the overlying rock to create geysers.  The power company drills holes down into the steam field to take some of that steam, and turn a turbine.  So both "wet" and HDR geothermal give you "hot water" that is under high pressure, and when allowed to come to the surface, "flashes" into high pressure steam, which is used to turn a turbine and produce electricity. 

As to the "hot water" vs. electricity that Gary referenced, there are a number of low grade, (low temperature), geothermal projects around the world where people are piping geothermally heated water into buildings and projects as a heating source.  Due to their lower temperature, they are not considered a viable resource for electrical production, but can be economically viable over a small geographical area for heating purposes.

The availability of "wet" geothermal resources, is actually very limited.  There are only a few areas of such resources throughout the U.S. that have commercial viability, and almost all of those are concentrated throughout the western U.S. 

HDR on the other hand, only relies on finding Hot rock at drillable depth.  That occurs approximately 85% over the area of the entire world.  Due to the depth, pressure, and "dry" condition of these crystalline rock formations, they are isolated from ground water by their very definition.  Ground water can't get down to them, and neither can it escape upwards out of them.  Dr. Donald Brown, of Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos Labs, is considered the "father" of HDR as he and his team pioneered the concepts back in the late 60's and 70s.  His idea was to drill into these HDR and then using high pressure water injection, to open up naturally occurring faults and fissures within the rock that the water could then travel through.  Using very sensitive seismographs, the scientists could actually watch the micro-quakes that occurred and plot these three dimensionally, as the water infiltrated the rock from the well head.  The scientists would then drill a 'production' well into the area of the rock that the water infiltrated into. 

This concept has been repeatedly proven around the world in different experiments, (look up Fenton Hill for the U.S. 20 + year efforts).  The big issue to date, has been the lack of "flow through", meaning that the amount of water moving through the rock strata has not been great enough to make the process commercially viable).  There are a number of ongoing efforts around the globe, with different ideas about how to make this process commercially viable.  If this technology can be perfected, and made repeatable, then realistically, the world's electrical generation needs could be met literally until the earth's core cools down, or the sun goes nova. 


SLawyer Dave

Quote from: Gary_C on May 22, 2016, 11:04:48 AM

Their method still does not address the sun does not shine all day factor that is killing the utilization factor.

As I posted previously, solar alone will never be an answer to the world's energy needs, but it certainly can be a very large contributing factor.  Given that the world's energy usage is highest during daylight hours, the utilization factor is automatically eased.  Increasing electrical costs, along side higher efficiency solar panels and scaled costs of production, should make solar power even more affordable over the next 20 years. 

Electrical production has always been the big issue.  With the market pushing for electric cars, electrical storage and battery improvements have been making great strides in the last 10 years.  Now the electric power industry and researchers are starting to work on large scale power storage concepts.  If any of these concepts can be shown to be workable, then solar can take a giant leap forward. 

Hydrogen fuel cells show a lot of promise.  Imagine using excess solar power generated during the day, to disassociate sea water into oxygen and hydrogen.  The hydrogen will then be stored in fuel cells, and used to produce electricity during non-day light hours.  Or, using a direct conversion, store both the disassociated oxygen and hydrogen, and then recombine in a controlled and continuous burn to replace natural gas in a conventional gas fired turbine.  This reaction will also produce clean potable water, something that is itself very valuable in many places.  Yes, there will be loss of efficiency with both methods, but again, make solar energy cheap and efficient enough, and the conversion loss becomes affordable.

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