Renewable Energy: The Vision And A Dose Of Reality
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… I’m sorry, did I miss your factual response to what I said, which was that rooftop solar seems to have a payback period now of about 10-12 years?
My response was a question. Which you entirely ignore.
davefairtex post=5912 wrote: illargi –
Then why are all those companies, GE, Siemens etc., closing their solar divisions?
…
But I stand by what I said before. Rooftop solar, even unsubsidized, is starting to look attractive – depending on location, especially in the low interest rate environment.
And in three years? I think it will be an even clearer win by then.
Dave, you seem to be projecting the present into the future. Ilargi’s question might have been seen as a reminder that that’s a futile exercise.
Apologies, Ilargi, for responding to the snake oil trolls.
There isn’t really a lot to say to Stoneleigh’s analysis, it is spot on. If I ran the circus, we’d be putting PV panels on every available sunny surface, and use a combination of NaS and NiFe secondary cells to store the power for non-sunny times. I would put most of the grid development effort into the local scale, and make the national / transnational scale a distant secondary priority. I’d arrange tariffs and taxes and such to strongly encourage conservation. That, I think, would do the most good for the most people.
But I don’t run the circus, nor do I wish to do so.
And, isn’t it informative that knowledge of the laws of thermodynamics and the conservation principles of physics are so rare in the general population?
“Apologies, Ilargi, for responding to the snake oil trolls. “
No problem, though it gets a bit out of hand, it sort of feeds the illusion that what they say actually has something to do with Nicole’s words. Or, for that matter, that they actually read the article.
What I think is crucial when it comes to renewables is that they should NOT be connected to the grid. It’s the same tug of war as the one that plays out in Europe: the haves plead for more centralization, and thereby kill what good there is in the limited union as it exists. The have-nots, on the other hand, should be shouting much harder against that. Thing is, they would first need to understand what is at stake here. The fact that people focus on promising gizmo no. 63584163 makes me think that isn’t happening.
Another timely discussion.
https://www.oftwominds.com/blogoct12/oil-abundant-costly10-12.html
Why Energy May Be Abundant But Not Cheap (October 29, 2012)
With that caveat in mind, the preponderance of evidence supports the notion that fossil fuel energy may remain abundant in the sense that supply meets or exceeds demand in a global recession, but the price of liquid fuels may remain high enough to create a drag on growth, employment, tax revenues and all the other economic metrics impacted by high energy costs.
ilargi post=5916 wrote: …
What I think is crucial when it comes to renewables is that they should NOT be connected to the grid. It’s the same tug of war as the one that plays out in Europe: the haves plead for more centralization, and thereby kill what good there is in the limited union as it exists. The have-nots, on the other hand, should be shouting much harder against that. Thing is, they would first need to understand what is at stake here. …OK I have read the article now. Yeah, it says what I always knew about centralization. Thing is, if the “haves” knew what they were doing, they would not want more centralization. It only benefits the very-most-central of them, and makes the whole system so unstable as to jeopardize most of the “haves”. And the losses encountered in a power grid are not-insignificant either.
IOW, a perfect example of the profligacy of scale.
Speaking of the profligacy of scale and centralized-control-single-point-of-failure, we have a beautiful example playing out right now.
The big financial center in New York City is shut down because the Masters of the Universe are afraid of a little weather.
Makes me realize how important it is to get more local, to the extent that I can.
SteveB –
Dave, you seem to be projecting the present into the future. Ilargi’s question might have been seen as a reminder that that’s a futile exercise.
I’m glad you understand what his question might have been about. I certainly didn’t. It seemed to me to be a non-sequitur, or a derailing technique.
I prefer things to be more clear and direct. If there’s a point to be made – for heaven’s sake, just make the point.
I said: “No amount of political will can achieve the physically impossible”.
Roger Yates wrote: “This is a political statement. By physically impossible you mean that it is not possible to maintain our present profligate lifestyles with other than cheap fossil fuels. We will therefore need to change our expectations.That is a political task. Humanity has been through worse. It is doable. We really are able to get off the tiger’s back of consumerist growth and reorganising society in a sustainable way. You appear to take the present modal of profligacy as a given. I am disputing that.”
Roger, again I am forced to ask if you actually read what I wrote. It appears not. The point, which I made very clearly, is that our current expectations are the problem and that they will have to change. They will, but not in a planned transition to sustainability. There is no time for that, and human nature doesn’t work like that anyway. We will simply find we have much less and will have to make do in whatever way we can. Initially, it will be money in short supply, but that sets us up for an energy supply crunch down the line.
A few people here (or several versions of the same person) have a touching faith in perpetual motions machines. They don’t exist. End of story.
Jambo wrote: “Remember that 40% the worlds people are subsistance horticulturists. They could use things like solar hot water heaters and cookers. The root of most problems is bigness.”
Agreed. There are many small scale and simple ways to use renewable energy that can make a huge difference to people’s lives. The problem comes when we try to scale everything up to gargantuan, make it extremely complex and build in a structural dependency on that system always operating. We need to be far more modest in our expectations. You could say live simply, so that others may simply live.
Wouter Drucker wrote: “All that riches never made us happy, as it never can. The Netherlands is one of the richest countries in the world. Out of 16,7 mil inhabitants, 1 mil are on anti depressants, .3 mil are alcoholic. The simple truth is that happiness comes from inside.”
Indeed riches to not buy happiness.
By the way, the Netherlands only thinks it is rich, in much the same way that Iceland and Ireland previously did. Borrowing a lot of money and buying things with leverage always ends badly. The bubble is beginning to burst there, and many expectations are going to be dashed. Many more people will be emotionally affected than are presently, as they will feel the rug has been pulled out from under their feet.
Aloha Stoneleigh/Nicole,
this is really an update for the talk you gave in Austin in May 2010. Now there is so much fractal-like micro-detail to the process of deflationary change. you spoke and gave examples, but it is certainly fascinating to see the details of this unfolding change, which you lay out here, while maintaining the focus on the overall zeitgeist/mass-conceptual-state, and the real-world drivers of it, as well.
You still rock. I’m moving to that “lifeboat” in Hawaii, where I work at that little clinic. I’ve got 1200W of solar panels, 10kwh of Edison cells, and jungle and marine-rated charge controller and inverter.
this is my neighbor and friend, Jim Channon showing his food forest, about 10 min walk from where I’ll be staying. (Skip the commercial. It didn’t used to be there.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLi28tRxk9I
It’s real nice bicycling, too!Here’s an interesting comment from a member of the public to an article on wind power in the UK’s Daily Mail paper (not a high-brow news source, but an interesting reflection of popular sentiment). Assuming it’s accurate, it fits with what I wrote in the German context – that offshore wind turbines sometimes need to be run with diesel. Unfortuantely I can’t find any other online reference to the radio interview he mentions.
Daily Mail article comment: “There was a wind farm engineer that called into LBC on the radio this morning. He said that he shouldn’t be telling us this as it’s not meant to be public knowledge but the wind farms out at sea are powered by diesel engines! The reason for this is because if they stop then they can get damaged. He called them a complete waste of money. They also have to go out on boats to fill the wind farm engines with diesel. They use a massive amount of fossil fuels to keep them going. Defeating the purpose are not the words!”
Do the onshore wind farms require diesel? Or is that just needed to run the bilge pumps in the watery windmills?
… profligacy of scale … again … we are now infested with ridiculously oversized and expensive boondoggles.
And, I think I had heard that little fact on TOD a while back, that the windmills had to be kept running even when there is no wind, or something bad happens to them. Can’t recall what it was. The bearings seize up or something.
It’s great to have you writing/interviewing again Nicole. No one does the “big picture” commentary better than you. Please keep at it.
Whatever happened to DESERTEC?
Nature magazine reports today, that Sahara solar plan loses its shine… here: https://www.nature.com/news/sahara-solar-plan-loses-its-shine-1.11684?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20121101
Alex
This is one of the most comprehensive analysis’ I have seen on this subject and I am in awe of Nicole’s grasp of the big picture and the insights she brings to our attention. However, nobody has mentioned anything about the emerging technology of Space Based Solar Power that I believe has the potential to fulfil all the criteria for a base load distributed energy system on local grids. Has anyone looked at this in any detail to see if the EROEI for this technology is viable or could be in the near future in time to avert the lights going out long term?
see: https://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/index.htm
&
https://www.alexmalcolm.co.uk/2011/01/space-energy-ted-space-energy.htmlAlex Malcolm
https://www.alexmalcolm.co.uk/It’s one of those cosmic-scale ideas, like Dyson spheres, or terraforming exoplanets, or geosynchronous space elevators, that will simply never happen. They take too long and require way too much energy/materials/money up front. These projects represent extreme risk, while the market for large projects is drying up due to declining appetite for risk and emerging shortages of energy, materials, and money.
Thanks Stoneleigh, a timely and erudite article. Realistically there is only one solution and that is reducing our energy consumption, however I think the problem with reducing energy use is that it goes against the whole growth/consumerism paradigm that we currently exist in. This is unfortunate as wise use of the fossil fuel inheritance could have set us up for comfortable and sustainable living arrangements. There is no reason for instance to use the amount of energy we use to heat houses if we retrofit them with high levels of insulation and controlled heat recovery ventilation. This sort of relatively low tech and simple proven technology would instantly negate the need for any alternatives to grow the current energy supply. Also entraining more energy at the local level, energy that is currently wasted such as the heat from large centralised power station by using locally based CHP (combined heat and power) plants would reduce energy consumption further (standard CCGT are about 50% efficient, coal fired often much less than 40%, most CHPs upwards of 80% efficient). But alas now it is too late. Neither the money nor the will (or the basic understanding) is there. We will as a species continue to be fascinated by our technology, a fascination that will seal our fate:
Ellul, J. (1963). The technological order, in Stover, C.F, editor, The Technological Order. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, pp. 10-37.
Jacques Ellul was one of the best-known critics of modern technology. This short article is a good summary of his thinking on the matter. In it he describes technology as, among other things, artificial and autonomous, subordinating ends to means. In Ellul’s view, man is in danger of losing control and the only solution is to be aware of the problem and to be more reflective in the development and use of technology.
Ellul, J. (1964). The Technological Society. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.To Ellul, technique (for our purposes, synonymous with technology) is “… the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of development) in every field of human activity.” In this classic work he describes the characteristics of technology (automatic, self-augmenting, universal, autonomous, etc.), its importance to economics (the driving force), its relation to the state (the state is a technical organism), and its permeation of everyday life (medicine, entertainment, work, etc.). Ellul feels that technology has quickly cut man off from the ancient milieu to which he adapted for millennia.
Ellul, J. (1980). The Technological System. New York: Continuum.
Most of this book is a reiteration of The Technological Society. But he goes on to say that technology is a concept, an environment, a determining factor, and a unified but unregulated system. Perhaps most significant in this book is Ellul’s observation that man is now left with no intellectual, moral, or spiritual standard with which to evaluate technology.
Ellul, J. (1990). The Technological Bluff. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
Aside from some coverage of recent technological developments, this book is more of the same material found in the previous works. But Ellul does reveal technology’s bluff: that of increased productivity. The bluff is that though technology does increase productivity, those things produced are not really very valuable. People are fascinated by technology and diverted by it away from loftier goals
Such loftier goals as caring for each other and spiritual development, of understanding the world and our place in it as well as ‘knowing thy self’.
It is good that sites like this exist, that they may educate those that seek a greater understanding, while swimming against the tide of “Dumbing Down” and general ignorance that passes for today’s ‘wisdom’:
Jacques Ellul, whose book Propaganda is a reflection on the phenomenon, warned us that prosperous children are more susceptible than others to the effects of schooling because they are promised more lifelong comfort and security for yielding wholly:
Critical judgment disappears altogether, for in no way can there ever be collective critical judgment….The individual can no longer judge for himself because he inescapably relates his thoughts to the entire complex of values and prejudices established by propaganda. With regard to political situations, he is given ready-made value judgments invested with the power of the truth by…the word of experts
.
The new dumbness is particularly deadly to middle- and upper-middle-class kids already made shallow by multiple pressures to conform imposed by the outside world on their usually lightly rooted parents. When they come of age, they are certain they must know something because their degrees and licenses say they do. They remain so convinced until an unexpectedly brutal divorce, a corporate downsizing in midlife, or panic attacks of meaninglessness upset the precarious balance of their incomplete humanity, their stillborn adult lives. Alan Bullock, the English historian, said Evil was a state of incompetence. If true, our school adventure has filled the twentieth century with evil.
Ellul puts it this way:
The individual has no chance to exercise his judgment either on principal questions or on their implication; this leads to the atrophy of a faculty not comfortably exercised under [the best of] conditions…Once personal judgment and critical faculties have disappeared or have atrophied, they will not simply reappear when propaganda is suppressed…years of intellectual and spiritual education would be needed to restore such faculties. The propagandee, if deprived of one propaganda, will immediately adopt another, this will spare him the agony of finding himself vis a vis some event without a ready-made opinion.
Once the best children are broken to such a system, they disintegrate morally, becoming dependent on group approval. A National Merit Scholar in my own family once wrote that her dream was to be “a small part in a great machine.” It broke my heart. What kids dumbed down by schooling can’t do is to think for themselves or ever be at rest for very long without feeling crazy; stupefied boys and girls reveal dependence in many ways easily exploitable by their knowledgeable elders.
Again many thanks,
l,
Sid.Re.: Energy Waste, wasting or misappropriation of resources
the problem with reducing energy use is that it goes against the whole growth/consumerism paradigm that we currently exist in.
Have a marathon or …
Spend a billion for an election or …
Have a dictator or ….
jal wrote:
Re.: Energy Waste, wasting or misappropriation of resources
the problem with reducing energy use is that it goes against the whole growth/consumerism paradigm that we currently exist in.
Have a marathon or …
Spend a billion for an election or …
Have a dictator or ….
Such is the nature of propaganda:
The propagandee, if deprived of one propaganda, will immediately adopt another, this will spare him the agony of finding himself vis a vis some event without a ready-made opinion.
L,
Sid.The propagandee, if deprived of one propaganda, will immediately adopt another, this will spare him the agony of finding himself vis a vis some event without a ready-made opinion.
Destroy the “belief” is the same as destroying the believer.
Most people want to “be a team player”, “want to fit in”, “want to be part of the society”.
Most people do not want to be shunned, do not want to be a hermit.
Ive designed an overunity energy generator powered by logical paradoxes, namely a logic circuit proving that [0≠0], the gravitonomic paradox processing device, or zero-field capacitor. It should work, its patent applications consistently burst into flames upon contact with logic, but I’m having trouble writing a suitable programming language without binary code.
A secondary function of overunity may be harnessed by allowing the device to thermally convert the printouts of its own patent application.
stoneleigh post=5877 wrote: Roger Yates wrote: “This article is basically arguing that the present economic and political power structure is inviolable. Of course this is not true. It may be that people are not willing to challenge it. That is likely. But I think it is nonsense to suggest that, given our technical abilities and organisational scope, we cannot build a system of renewables, and quickly. Political and economic systems CAN be changed. All the material resources are in place. It is simply a question of will and organisation. To suggest that the present power structures cannot be changed, as if they were some natural force like gravity or entropy is risible. This whole issue can, and should be reduced to this kind of fundamental debate. All you are saying is that we are behaving like idiots. We already know that.”
I am left wondering if you read the article, since you raise a straw man argument. I have, in fact, argued that no amount of political will can achieve the physically impossible, no matter what kind of political system is in place.
I am left wondering if you read what Roger wrote. Roger said that “all the material resources are in place”, i.e. he does not agree with you that the transition is “physically impossible”. And if it is true that it is physically possible, as Roger suggests, then doing it is in fact a matter of political and mass will.
It is likely that Roger is right. But to understand why he is right requires venturing outside of the walled doom-garden of peak-oil catastrophism. (This is something that I personally did not start doing until about 2007 — after being in the peak oil doomerism fold for 8 years — and I’m ashamed that it took me so long.) There is a whole world of literature, seldom or never mentioned in that dreary garden, which addresses resource issues and comes to very different conclusions. This literature must be digested before one can form an authentic, high-quality Big Picture view of things. This is not about mindless cornucopianism or pathetically-naive Pollyanna-ism. I’m talking about competent analyses by very intelligent and well-informed people, fully aware of the resource issues that concern peak oil doomers.
The biggest single issue is WASTE, and the fact that most resources are simply pissed-away without contributing anything to the meeting of human needs. After studying the issue for some years, I’ve become convinced that human needs of everyone on this planet could be met on a fraction of the resources currently being used; perhaps 10%, perhaps less. That does not make the situation permanently sustainable, but it would open up enormous breathing room, and certainly indicates that near- or mid-term catastrophe is readily avoidable. The wildcard of course is political and mass will, just as Roger indicated.
This subject has been hashed-out at length elsewhere, and I can’t reconstruct it all in less than numerous long posts.
Here’s a good start, however. Read the first two posts on this thread, and if you have time, follow the links. And if you really want to be informed, actually read the Factor 5 book, among other important works of similar nature.
Topic: Factor 5: Resource Efficiency vs. “Resource Shortage”
(Read 1605 times)alan2102
Factor 5: Resource Efficiency vs. “Resource Shortage”
« on: May 23, 2011, 03:59:31 PM »NEW BOOK: Factor 5: Transforming the Global Economy through
80% Increase in Resource ProductivityIn a nutshell: this is a plan to dramatically improve resource/energy efficiency, achieving most existing human and social needs (including, IMO, a great deal that is not strictly needed, but appears “needed” to the average person) at a small fraction of the resource and environmental cost. The emphasis is on the developed world, but it is highly relevant to the developing world as well.
This book reflects what I and secularanimist have been saying in many past posts: that the waste built-in to our system is so huge that it is senseless to dwell on “resource shortages” until that waste is wrung-out. What we have is not a shortage of resources so much as a longage of stupidity and ignorance. This book appears to be a detailed explanation and exploration of that point, with a specific blueprint for finding our way out of it. It is backed with extensive case studies and examples of operating systems. This is not techno-fantasyland or a gee-whiz Free Energy joyride. In fact, it deals almost exclusively with off-the-shelf technology (and tweaks thereof), and operates within the existing energy-resource situation (e.g. does not assume the building of vast numbers of new nuclear power plants).
Further, the authors claim that….
[…snip… continues at the link…]
———————-
Also:
https://www.naturaledgeproject.net/Documents/F500Introduction.pdf
FACTOR 5: Transforming the Global Economy through 80%
Improvements in Resource Productivity
Introduction: Factor 5 – The Global Imperative
By Ernst von Weizsäckerhttps://grist.org/energy-efficiency/2011-02-23-rebounding-to-a-smarter-energy-efficiency-perspective/
Rebounding to a smarter energy efficiency perspective
By John A. “Skip” Laitner
“It turns out that our actual level of energy efficiency – when we properly work through the numbers, as my colleague Bob Ayres has recently done – is an even more anemic 13 percent. That is, we waste about 87 percent of all the energy we throw at the economic problem.”Brilliant as always, Stoneleigh! Very convincing.
“The holy grail has always been some local low-cost storage technology”, says Davefairtex.
I’m surprised however nobody mentioned the newly invented energy storage: liquid batteries to store energy harvested from solar and wind enough for a city. It seems intermediate version: bigger than personal, much smaller than garganuan grids, enough for a larger community. 2 MWh of cheap storage, a size of a shipping container.
Roger Yates post=5888 wrote: “No amount of political will can achieve the physically impossible”.
This is a political statement.I’ll have to differ. It is not a political statement. It is more like a tautology. It reduces to: “The impossible is not possible.” Hard to argue with that.
By physically impossible you mean that it is not possible to maintain our present profligate lifestyles with other than cheap fossil fuels.
Right. That’s what she means, as I take it. The good news, however, is that we need not, and ought not, maintain our present profligate lifestyles, and we can actually become MORE prosperous, healthy and happy if we give them up. And the other good news (see my post above) is that we can wring vastly more goods (human need-meeting things) from given levels of resource use. Our society is massively, outrageously inefficient.
Talk of “physical impossibility” is misleading unless these points are made clear. Yes, of course it is physically impossible for things to carry on the way they have been the past 50-75 years. But then, it would be idiotic, and totally unnecessary for any valid purpose, to carry things on they the way they have been the past 50-75 years. Which is not to say that we won’t do just that — idiots that we are. :unsure:
We will therefore need to change our expectations.That is a political task. Humanity has been through worse. It is doable. We really are able to get off the tiger’s back of consumerist growth and reorganising society in a sustainable way. You appear to take the present modal of profligacy as a given. I am disputing that.
Everyone takes the present mode of profligacy as a given.
It reduces to: “catastrophe is inevitable because change is impossible”. Of course, the first clause will be correct if the second clause is correct. And even if change is possible, it will still be a very difficult, challenging time. No bowl of cherries, this.
Elle post=6010 wrote: I’m surprised however nobody mentioned the newly invented energy storage: liquid batteries to store energy harvested from solar and wind enough for a city. It seems intermediate version: bigger than personal, much smaller than garganuan grids, enough for a larger community. 2 MWh of cheap storage, a size of a shipping container.
Huh. I thought it was going to be a water tower. Good luck to them beating that elegant system.
ilargi post=5908 wrote: Unsubsidized rooftop solar right now seems like it has a reasonable payback period at about 12 years, with expected equipment lifespan of 20-25 years.
Then why are all those companies, GE, Siemens etc., closing their solar divisions?
That’s easy. Because the Chinese built vast production capability, and undercut everyone’s prices. Hence a big shake-up in the industry. This is the same as what the Chinese did to other industries.
We’ll have cheap PV panels for years. The solar PV revolution will continue, (indeed, is just beginning), at least in the lower latitudes. It is a very attractive and useful technology, and eminently viable on both a dollar cost basis as well as an EROEI basis. It is not the solution to all energy problems, obviously, but it is very useful, and will be a growing part of the mix for many decades.
fine read, btw:
https://www.theoildrum.com/node/3047
Photovoltaics: From Waste to Energy-maker
Posted by Engineer-Poet on October 8, 2007 – 9:00am
[…big snip…]
To summarize the points above,
— We’ve been ignoring a major supply of silicon-
containing material.
— This material can be made into elemental silicon
very cheaply.
— The silicon product is ready for direct fabrication
into raw wafers for PV cells.
— These PV cells may be extremely cheap: about 3 peak
watts per dollar.
— If we used all the annual supply of this silicon
source, we could create peak capacity of about 10% of
US average electric consumption every year.
— If we used the stockpiles accumulated over the last
several decades, we could go a lot faster than that.Elle,
I thought the link was going to provide some information as to the technology – it was just a rehash of how great it would be if a way did exist of storing electric energy. Sad.
Stoneleigh writes:
Solar is particularly expensive in comparison with currently available alternatives. Grid parity – cost competitiveness with other sources – is a distant dream, hence the requirement for disproportionately large subsidies:
Not a distant dream at all. It WAS a distant dream, in 1990, perhaps 2000. But not now. Costs have fallen off a cliff over the last 20 years, and grid parity already exists in places, depending on latitude and other factors. (Need I mention that solar PV will never reach grid parity in Alaska?)
Further, the complaint about “large subsidies”, and hidden costs, must be taken in proper context; to wit, that our other energy technologies have themselves been the recipients of vast subsidies over the decades, and have been racking-up massive hidden costs (“externalities”) all along. The true cost of gasoline was estimated, in circa 1999 (when gas was a buck a gallon), to be $10-15 per gallon; heaven only knows what the true cost is today. It costs $TRILLIONS to maintain the military and other structures that secure the oil. Viewed in that context, solar and other alternatives are entirely competitive. They are probably super-competitive, given a fair and complete accounting. We have major-ass accounting problems — with the systems already installed and running, not with the newcomer alternative energy technologies, about which there has been altogether too much caviling, e.g. about “subsidies” which are trivial in the big picture. (And it is interesting to reflect on why this is true. What do you call that desperate desire to rationalize and justify the path already taken, the decisions already made? Whatever it is called, it seems deeply embedded in us.)
Most amusing passage in the Wiki snippet below: The European Photovoltaic Industry Association expected grid parity in many of the European countries by 2020, with costs declining to about half of those of 2010. “However, [their] report was based on the prediction that prices would fall 36 to 51% over 10 years, a decrease that actually took place during the year the report was authored.”
:cheer: Isn’t that a hoot?
The truth is that solar PV has gained great momentum in just the last couple years, and is now moving ahead so rapidly that it is tripping forward over itself. And then we come along, as it is on the ground smarting from the fall, and say: “Oh my gosh! How terrible! The bubble has burst! The solar industry is collapsing!” Haha. Maybe we should learn the difference between falling down because of exhaustion, and falling down because of too much robustness.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_parity
Predictions from the 2006 time-frame expected retail grid parity for solar in the 2016 to 2020 era,[7][8] but due to rapid downward pricing changes, more recent calculations have forced dramatic reductions in time scale, and the suggestion that solar has already reached grid parity in a wide variety of locations.[2] The European Photovoltaic Industry Association (EPIA) defines the moment at which the value of PV electricity equals the cost of traditional grid power as dynamic grid parity. EPIA expects that PV power achieves this target in many of the European countries by 2020, with costs declining to about half of those of 2010.[1] However, this report was based on the prediction that prices would fall 36 to 51% over 10 years, a decrease that actually took place during the year the report was authored. The line was claimed to have been crossed in Australia in September 2011,[9] and module prices have continued to fall since then. By late 2011, the fully loaded cost of solar PV was projected to likely fall below $0.15/kWh for most of the OECD and reach $0.10/kWh in sunnier regions like the southern United States or Spain.[10] This is below the retail rate for power in much of the OECD already.
Photovoltaics are now starting to compete in the real world without subsidies. Shi Zhengrong has said that, as of 2012, unsubsidised solar power is already competitive with fossil fuels in India, Hawaii, Italy and Spain. As PV system prices decline it’s inevitable that subsidies will end. “Solar power will be able to compete without subsidies against conventional power sources in half the world by 2015”.[11][12]
As of 2011, the cost of PV has fallen well below that of nuclear power and is set to fall further.[13] The average retail price of solar cells as monitored by the Solarbuzz group fell from $3.50/watt to $2.43/watt over the course of 2011, and a decline to prices below $2.00/watt seems inevitable:[13]
For large-scale installations, prices below $1.00/watt are now common. In some locations, PV has reached grid parity, the cost at which it is competitive with coal or gas-fired generation. More generally, it is now evident that, given a carbon price of $50/ton, which would raise the price of coal-fired power by 5c/kWh, solar PV will be cost-competitive in most locations. The declining price of PV has been reflected in rapidly growing installations, totalling about 23 GW in 2011. Although some consolidation is likely in 2012, as firms try to restore profitability, strong growth seems likely to continue for the rest of the decade. Already, by one estimate, total investment in renewables for 2011 exceeded investment in carbon-based electricity generation.[13]
The dramatic price reductions in the PV industry have been causing a number of other power sources to become less interesting. Nevertheless, there remains the widespread belief that concentrating solar power (CSP) will be even less expensive than PV, although this is suitable for industrial-scale projects only, and thus has to compete at wholesale pricing. One company stated in 2011 that CSP costs 12¢(US)/kWh to produce in Australia, and expects this to drop to 6¢(US)/kWh by 2015 due to improvements in technology and reductions in equipment manufacturing costs.[14] Greentech Media predicts that LCoE of CSP and PV power will lower to $0.07 – $0.12/kWh by 2020 in California.[15]Addendum to previous:
The solar PV industry is a victim of its own success and efficiency in grinding out ever-more panels at ever-lower prices. The Chinese did subsidize the industry to some extent, but the stark reality is that — subsidies or no — economies of scale and other advancements have fundamentally changed the dynamic. PV panels have suddenly become, or are rapidly becoming, a cheap commodity item, rather than (as they were formerly) exotic high-tech things at high prices. Chinese subsidies to the PV industry probably just sped up what was inevitable, anyway.
(And btw let’s give the PRC two cheers for the speeding up. We needed it. We need these new technologies, and we need them FAST. A bit of “artificial” government support for development in heretofore under-developed industries is very much in order.)
The market is now glutted with cheap panels, and no one is making any money, for the time being. This is bad if you’re an executive or investor in solar PV companies, but good if you are consumer looking for a deal. It is also good — great, actually — if you’re a global citizen concerned about sustainability, the environment, and the transition to renewables. As prices crash, the economic reasons not to implement solar vanish, while the demand for green technologies (even at higher prices) is rising fast. Investors will also do well, eventually, but it will take a couple years for things to settle out.
We have the makings here of a transformation that even the solar boosters of a few years ago could barely have imagined. I certainly could not have imagined it. I was a hard solar skeptic for many years. No longer. Events have raced past me; changing facts have compelled me to change my opinion. I have been PROVEN WRONG. And I’m rather pleased about that.
———————-
Interesting rant:
https://tech.dir.groups.yahoo.com/group/energyresources/message/126971
From: Catapult Research [mailto:jamessmith@…]
Sent: Wednesday, 22 June 2011 4:27 AM
Subject: SunPower[…snip…]
Polysilicon for solar is getting cheaper and cheaper by the day. Last year it dropped over 20%. It may drop another 20% this year. It is dropping so fast that First Solar which uses an alternate form of solar technology (“thin-film” solar doesn’t use polysilicon) may be in real trouble. But the bigger picture here is that the cost of going solar is dropping faster than the analysts realize and they do not accurately assess the future take-up of solar in the US.
Yes— feed-in tarriffs that suppport solar power in Italy and Germany are being reduced but in the US it may be just getting started. New Jersey is now attracting bigger players. Both Home Depot and Lowes now offer programs which give you free solar panels on your roof (provided you live in NJ where solar credits are offered to solar electric producers). You sign over your solar credits to Home Depot or Lowes or some other solar contractor and you get your electric power for free! It is big. In some ways this is more attractive than the feed-in tarriffs offered in Europe.
[…snip…]
Free Market Mavens are living in a theoretical world that doesn’t exist in real life. We offer over $42 billion in subsidies for oil and gas exploration and that is still considered “free market capitalism,” but if someone pads your electric bill by 2 cents to pay for solar power subsidies and solar credits to solar producers, the Free Market Mavens go nuts!
[…snip…]
But make no mistake, solar is going to be far bigger than anyone now realizes. The New Jersey program will be copied by other states and you will see solar go viral. The solar credits of New Jersey will make the feed-in tarriffs in Europe look relatively small by comparison. Already New Jersey has over 3000 solar contractors. There are a lot of jobs being created via solar. Germany created 500,000 good paying jobs via their feed-in tarriffs for solar and I don’t see why the US can’t create a million solar jobs.
[…snip…]
What is the real risk? The risk is not that solar will continue to stay beaten down as it is now. The risk is that Utilities will wither and die. In the 1950s electric demand was rising at 9.5%. “Electricity usage” increased 0.5 percent a year on average for the decade that ended 2010, down from 2.4 percent a year during the 1990s, according to the Energy Information Administration” (WSJ –“As Demand for Power Wanes, Utilities Turn to Mergers, Friday June 17th). The risk is NOT that solar will go away or remain a bit player in the energy market, the risk is that utilities will see demand drop so fast that they will go away or get merged into monster utilities that will use their greater political power to raise rates on the remaining idiots who choose to pay for electricity instead of opting for free electricity from Home Depot or Lowes.
[…snip…]
Solar: In the 1970s solar cost $1.00 per kwh to produce electricity, but now it costs less than 30 cents per kwh and dropping very fast. Again, within just a few short years, solar will be cheaper than coal, nat gas, and nuclear. The CEO of GE ,Jeffrey Immelt, believes it will take 5 years for solar to get there, but I think it is going to happen in only 2 or 3 years. The point here is that at the same time that solar is dropping by 20% a year, we have the real costs of coal, nuclear, and nat gas rising exponentially. If you factor in the “externalities” of pollution, then solar is already cheaper than coal, nat gas, and nuclear.
[…snip…]
We are told every single day that solar can never be more than 1% of the energy mix. That is patently false. I have a 9kw system on my roof which I had installed in 2004. With newer panels that are 30% to 40% more efficient I could easily have a 15 kw system on the back roof if I installed today. That is enough solar power to cover all my home electric needs and a couple of electric cars to boot. The dirty little secret is that we can get off oil. We can get off nuclear. We can get off Nat Gas. But you won’t hear that from the Media. My take is that solar will be far bigger than anyone now expects. People might be slow in figuring this stuff out, but they are not as stupid or corrupt as the politicians that run the country. Keep in mind that every other commercial on TV now is from the Oil & Gas Industry telling you that fracking for Nat Gas is a clean energy alternative. Shale-Gas deposits in the US alone is worth more than $5 trillion. You can buy a lot of advertisements and a lot of politicians with that kind of money.
While I agree that solar will never be of much use in Northern Europe, Canada and much of the USA, I believe it will have a much better future in places that are less distant from the equator. In much of Australia, it should replace conventional power stations in a decade or so.
Here in Melbourne, largely thanks to the Carbon Tax and over-investment in the grid, our electric bills have gone up by far more than inflation:
https://www.theage.com.au/victoria/power-shock-bills-up-33-in-five-years-20120920-268qr.html
There are plenty of offers for solar power which work out at $3/Watt – including installation, inverter and batteries. Here is a system suitable for a number of houses:
We use a daily maximum of 15KW-h (and an annual daily average of 10KW-h) so this system which costs $46,000 for a maximum output of 20KW should be sufficient for at least 8 similar households. Since the cost of the unit we live in is $500,000+ – we rent – this is a small part of the whole. We currently pay around $1,200/year for electricity. Frankly, if we owned a property, it would make excellent sense to get something – even without the government subsidy which is being phased out next July.
Hi Folks,
Lil’ game of reality – spot the solar PV in the graph below:
I’m not against solar in the appropriate circumstances (where there is no alternative power source) but given all the technological problems associated with it, not least the EROEI payback times, and silly things like battery and inverter lifespans and fragility, well I think you get the picture… or not. :unsure:
L,
Sidalan2102,
I did not say solar was not useful. What I said was that it does not work as a large scale component of grid systems that lack very large amounts of storage or very flexible back up plant or sufficient baseload generation. It is scaling up that does not work. It is our current business as usual model that cannot be maintained, and that will have to change.
I have made it quite clear why transitioning to a fully renewable grid serving current demand reliably is physically impossible, especially considering the available time and money, both of which are very limited at this point. Besides, solar does not provide critical ancilliary services, without which one cannot run a power system (no spinning reserve, no voltage or frequency control, no black-start potential etc). Intermittent energy sources assume the parameters of the system. They do not set them. That must be done by dispatchable generation.
On a small scale solar is fine, although I wouldn’t go into debt to install it for obvious reasons. I wouldn’t grid connect it either. I have stand-alone solar with a battery back up myself, and I am very pleased with it. I do wish I had rewired for DC. Perhaps I will in the future. It isn’t a truly long term solution, as panels and inverters etc have a limited lifespan and at some point will no longer be able to be repaired or replaced. It’s a useful transitional technology though.
All kinds of things work at small scale that do not provide the potential to run industrial society at large scale. For instance, making ethanol from sugar beets on one’s own farm in order to run a tractor is workable in a way that large scale corn ethanol is not. Farmers used to set aside land to grow hay to feed their own horses, and it can work for tractors for as long as we continue to possess the ability to repair tractors.
stoneleigh post=6033 wrote: On a small scale solar is fine, although I wouldn’t go into debt to install it for obvious reasons. I wouldn’t grid connect it either. I have stand-alone solar with a battery back up myself, and I am very pleased with it. I do wish I had rewired for DC. Perhaps I will in the future. It isn’t a truly long term solution, as panels and inverters etc have a limited lifespan and at some point will no longer be able to be repaired or replaced. It’s a useful transitional technology though.
Nicole, would you mind expanding on your thoughts on switching to DC?
Also, care to speculate on what PV might be a transition to?
I could have wired up most essential loads to run on DC, then I wouldn’t have needed an inverter. Those are a weak link, with a much shorter lifespan than solar panels. You can get fridges, freezers, lighting, well pumps etc that run DC.
PV is essentially a transition to a much lower energy lifestyle that may involve little or no electric power, depending on where you live of course. In rural areas you end up having what you can produce yourself for as long as you can keep it going. In more concentrated areas, centralized services are more likely to last longer. In places like that a battery back up is probably more important than PV, as it would allow people to power essential loads when they need to, whether mains power is available or not.
I’d like to point out that the world’s oldest pumped storage power station at Oberwartha/Niederwartha in Saxony near Dresden, mentioned above, is in need of major refurbishment since the Elbe floods of 2002.
The current economics of the German Energiewende mean that pumped storage cannot earn its keep in the old daily cycle (charge at night from baseload nuclear or lignite power, and discharge during peak demand in the middle of the day). Newer pumped storage facilities are effectively able to double their duty cycle and recoup that income, charging at night and at midday, then discharging in the mornings and the evenings. The price differences are not high enough to make this very lucrative yet, but this is clearly the direction things are going.
https://cleantechnica.com/2012/05/29/solar-power-can-double-pumped-hydro-output-nice/
Niederwartha is not able to do this because its damaged equipment is not capable of changing direction “on demand” within a few minutes. With current prices it isn’t paying for its necessary refurbishment, so the present owner may indeed shut it down, but the economic position is very likely to change within a few years unless new renewables investment in Germany dries up completely.
This news item has just come to my attention — one more for the damning-with-faint-praise department. ..
https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2012/05/sovello-files-for-bankrtupcySadly, the renewables (though they may have a slightly positive EROI) do not have the support of massive lobbies like the nuclear and fossil-fuel energy industries.
The lack of political support, along with ongoing deflation, means two things: 1) you can get some bargains in solar panels right now, as prices have fallen well below $1/watt in some cases; 2) like the abundance of cheap beef in the wake of the Texas drought, this condition is temporary and will be followed by a not-available condition.
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