Just spoke with a parabolic solar heating engineer.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(burritos @ Dec 21 2006, 02:38 PM) [snapback]365255[/snapback]</div>

Interesting. I'm wondering how much space the 64MW array takes up; don't forget to factor that into your calculations.

Besides, wars are so much more engaging than conservation, aren't they? My goodness, all the cool new weapons...the proclaimations by our elected officials...the clash of cultures, religions, and societies...not to mention those lovely pictures of jets taking off in the twilight from some undisclosed middle east location, fully loaded under afterburner...

"black jet exhaust...chickens squawking in the barnyard..." (to quote George C. Scott in the movie DR. STRANGELOVE).

Wow!!!!! God Bless the U.S.A.!!!

Meanwhile solar arrays just kind of sit there, doing NOTHING. How boring.
[laughing]

My only concern is how you keep dust from accumulating on the panels or whatever the sun is shining upon. Curious how efficiency goes down under different environmental conditions, and what the labor costs would be to keep this stuff running near peak efficiency.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(burritos @ Dec 21 2006, 05:45 PM) [snapback]365486[/snapback]</div>

Your calculations are flawed. Power generation plants fueled by conventional fuels can run at full capacity pretty much any time of day. The same is not true of solar powered plants. Note that they only quote 11K MWH per year, even though the plant capacity is 5MW. 5MW generated 24x365 would be around 4x that 11K MWH figure. So your figures are probably at least 4x off.

 

Rather than scale up to build a *BIG* one wouldn't it be better to build a series of smaller ones in various locations to power locally? Not too small. I'm sure there's an optimum size.

 

The city of Chico recently installed a 1.1MW solar array at their waste treatment facility.

"During the first year in operation, the 1.1 MW solar array was responsible for avoiding an estimated 1.6 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) per year. This would be the same as removing CO2 emissions from an estimated 160 passenger cars annually. It is also the equivalent of CO2 emissions emitted from nearly 31,000 propane cylinders used for home barbecues."

"During the dedication, PG&E presented the City with a solar rebate check for $3,813,791 – the largest single solar rebate ever awarded by PG&E.

In addition to this $3,813,791 rebate, PG&E also provided a $351,640 rebate to the City of Chico in 2004 for solar panels atop a municipal parking structure. City’s First Solar Facility The Water Pollution Control Plant is home to the City’s second solar facility."

http://www.solarbuzz.com/news/NewsNAPR701.htm

What I would like to see is data that displays how much CO2 was produced in the production and implimentaion of the panels and project how long it will take for the solar panels to mitigate CO2 to break even. From there we can see how useful the system really is.



<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Godiva @ Dec 21 2006, 10:58 PM) [snapback]365575[/snapback]</div>

I believe it would be MUCH better to use smaller facilities, spread out over larger geographic areas. This will make customers less suseceptible to power outages for any number of reasons. Single large "anything" has this type of vulnerability. True it costs more but redundancy always does.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(priusenvy @ Dec 21 2006, 09:56 PM) [snapback]365565[/snapback]</div>

This is one of the arguments used by James Lovelock in his book "The Revenge of Gaia". The irregularity of solar and wind power are one of the reasons he is so vocal about using more nuclear power to wean our world off fossil fuels IMMEDIATELY before we hit one of the tipping points for global warming. Then we can continue working on perfecting other forms of "clean" energy or even fusion.

 

Sandia Labs in Albquerque has been at the forefront of solar power research for a long time. I think you'll find this resource interesting. Note the "solar tower" configuration -- it's impressive to stand in all those "heliostats" (mirrors).

http://www.energylan.sandia.gov/sunlab/overview.htm

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(priusenvy @ Dec 21 2006, 09:56 PM) [snapback]365565[/snapback]</div>

wow....only thing we can say is "flawed calculations"???

nothing about green, running costs, health, clean air....

wow

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(priusenvy @ Dec 21 2006, 10:56 PM) [snapback]365565[/snapback]</div>

This is not quite true. Solar thermal plants generate heat which can be stored and used later. Their are capable of heating water to very high temperatures (3000C) if the water is pressurized. That heat can be stored and used to generate power when there isn't sunshine. The production factor of this kind of plant isn't as easy to calculate because it is weather dependent but if located in the SW the PF would be quite high.

 

And let's not forget that you've still got the older plants to cover for the energy discrepancies.

 

I'm for alternate energy. All kinds. I've been working more or less in that field for 30+ years. However....

1... There is no energy source that matches conservation. Better insulation is always more cost effective than alternative (or any other) energy.

2... Few of our household activities actually need electricity. Commercial electric power is great for the seller because it doesn't stink, transports virtually instantly, and most users don't have an intuitive concept of how much they are buying. (Long ago I suggested that cars would get better mileage if gasoline was sold in quarts like motor oil. If the soccer mom had to open 80 cans to fuel the minivan, she'd have an intuitive understanding of fuel efficiency!)

Sure, we need electricity for our computers and TVs. And it is nice (although not necessary) to use electricity for things like brewing coffee and making toast. But electricity is extremely high-quality energy and is is pure waste to use it for low-quality tasks such as water heating, home heating and cooling, and the other applications that constitute most of our electricity demand.

What is energy quality? Here's an example. A man needs to weld a steel alloy. His fuel is wood. But no matter how much wood he burns he will never have enough energy to weld steel because wood heat is not of sufficient quality. Not hot enough. What to do? One solution would be to use the wood to fuel a steam engine which would drive an electrical generator which would power an arc welder. He just increased the quality of energy, of course he used a greater quantity of wood than he received in electricity. But he accomplished the task.

Various analyses here and elsewhere only deal with quantity (KW hours and such) but ignore quality. The rule is to gather and use energy of a quality appropriate to the task. Very little of this requires PV.

3... Any analysis based on dollar costs is flawed because they involve externalized costs (such as global warming or acid rain) which don't ever show up in the monthly bill.

We need to ask questions like "Can a PV industry operate completely from PV power? That includes everything from digging the silica and refining the aluminum, all the way to the point when the installer drives his van away. To the extent that they cannot, the "cost" of the panel must include all the non-PV energy consumed, the global warming it caused, and so on.

At this point I'm not sure that a PV manufacturing plant could operate on PV power, nevermind the mining and all the rest. And if it cannot, then PV is a net loser and we need to move on.

However, I'm always ready to learn how wrong I am!