Obama Stimulus Plan - Double Renewable Energy!

Using old data the LUZ solar plants started out at 24 cents/kWh in 1984 (extremely expensive), but by 1989 the cost was down to 7 cents/kWh (just over the going rate). These plants are still operating profitably. Presently, the wicked growth in wind and solar is due to the economics getting close to the tipping point. As shown above, its a matter of scale that makes the difference.

The LUZ solar plants had Natural Gas backup for the bad days. Of course, in the desert, this was just a few days during the year. The quick availability of Gas Turbine backup solves this issue nicely. Since there are decades of knowledge on how to do this seemlessly, this problem is really solved. Weather forcasting cloudy days a couple of days into the future is reliable. Seven days of Turbine operation vs 365 days of turbine operations is acceptable to most reasonable renewable proponents....which should include you.

Both solar plants and wind plants are VASTLY less expensive and take VASTLY less time to build. The last remaining hurdle is the massive indirect subsidization of conventional plants. For example, who pays for all the environmentally safe disposal of the waste coal ash from coal plants? Answer-no one, you are not charged for it since it is usually just allowed to pile up at the plant. If all coal plants and all nuclear plant customers were required to pay for all aspects of extracting the fuel and disposing the waste, then the economics of solar and wind win outright in every aspect. Now the grid will take money, but this is a permanent payoff.

 

Well said, mate. Don't forget that the fossil fuel industry gets some VERY generous tax incentives and write-offs. Without those massive subsidies the cost of coal would certainly be higher. The fed has been subsidizing coal miner healthcare since 1970.

The biggest issue with renewables is storage. You spoke to the advantages of CSP technology in this regard. Do the LUZ plants have thermal storage (molten salts)? I would imagine that that would drive the costs down further if the answer is no.

 

storage will be an issue but that is why diversification AND a completely integrated national power grid is vital.

somewhere in the country, the sun shines and the wind blows all the time (ok, so the sun is not out all the time) right now, storage is an issue and nothing we have right now is anywhere near as efficient as we need them to be.

the Bonneville Power admin is forced to throttle down hydro power every night (we sell as much as we can but inefficient lines along with mountainous regulatory issues limits that option) but then have to fire up coal plants every afternoon when peak demand hits between 4 and 7 pm.

that situation should not be happening. what we need is wind and solar to cover the peak demands during the day with the hydro to fill in at night and be able to send the power to ANYONE who needs it instead of a handful of utilities that buy it now.

there have been times when we pumped water uphill into a reservoir simply because we had to let water thru to prevent damage to the dam. the water was saved for later to use for peak power demands or irrigation purposes. so as much as we lack power when we need it, we frequently have issues when the power we do have harnessed we cant find a use for.

 

The grid to support the existing energy sources mostly exists. Some new grid will be required for new stuff, which is where the Feds can make a progressive difference. Hey, it's not like our massive rail infrastructure isn't supporting the power grid and particularly the movement of coal...the advantage being is that the capital was ponied up long ago (as were the govt. concessions to make it happen--the GOP seems to forget that aspect.)

A more robust power grid is needed regardless. Lack of infrastructure investment since the 80's is beginning to kick our asses anyway. This country has been run as cash cow for several decades and just like a manufacturing facility run that way it is beginning to show its age and the neglect. (See the U.S. military for another example...it's going to take some money to replenish once we exit Iraq--that worn out gear ain't comin' home to an armory near you.)

One of the beauties of wind and solar is that a good power grid should be able to make some transfers across time zones to smooth out demand and generation peaks. The size of the country can be an advantage in matters like these.

Thank God there are some responsible adults in power at last. They might do some things that irritate me or that are counterproductive, but compared to the last bunch they are at least trying to move the right way.

 

The very first LUZ plant did. It had a mineral oil storage tank. It did not work out too well since it limited the max temperature of the heating loops, experienced a fire, and was unnecessary for the optimum use of the plants as a daytime peaking facilities.

The real game changer here is the MIT cobalt catalyst for efficient large scale seperation of water into hydrogen and oxygen. The concept is to run the plants in the day running both the power plants and the Hydrolysis. Then at night, let big fuel cells provide electricity.

'Major discovery' from MIT primed to unleash solar revolution - MIT News Office

 

The grid for the country is completely seperated down the middle. The western half and the eastern half are not connected. This will be a big political hurdle to overcome. Ideally, the solar capabilities of the Southwest should be available to the East in an integrated approach for the entire US, Mexico, and Canada.

 

Interesting article on Renewable Energy World - Renewable Energy News, Jobs, Events, Companies, and more today:

Full Article

Amongst other things, the article answers on of Herr Berman's questions:

Also of note, the 8.3 GW of new wind capacity totaled 42% of all new installed capacity last year. Wind is really moving up the curve. At the peak of coal plant construction in the 70's I think the peak per year was 16GW of new coal fired capacity. That puts the wind figures in perspective. It's an encouraging sign.

 

another thing we have to look at is that is it all that evil to overbuild solar??

that would be like asking do we ever have too much power and the answer to that is a resounding NO... we have power needs now that will always (at least for now) be put on the back burner because of the high demand, low ROI, etc.

when your continuing cost is near zero,(pending patent of sunshine rights... not much trust in lawyers here i guess) having excess capacity is not all that bad a thing. besides you all know America's claim to fame is gluttony. iow, there is no such thing as too much power... now when we dont have to pay $43 a barrel (for the current alternative) what is the downside?

ok, right now, its start up costs, construction costs, etc... BUT

is it a downside?? i dont think so and lemme tell ya y.

what is it we really need in this country right now...my take

1) CONFIDENCE; that is by far, the #1 thing we need. money is fine sure... but to be honest with ya, we have plenty of it. we aint broke and nowhere near it... so why is everyone crying about money?? well, its obvious, without confidence, no one wants to take the money they have and commit to anything because they are afraid of what will happen tomorrow. even if GM came out with the greatest car ever made today, who will buy it?? not many and only because they are afraid GM will be gone in a few months.

to get confidence, we need to get started in the right direction on so many different fronts. so were to start?

A ENERGY it simply costs too much to buy it from someone else or look for it when there is usually 3 miles of rock covering it up. it is simply incredibly stupid to look for it when its constantly beating down on your head or hitting you square in the face...so why dont we do what is obvious... well, our sheep mentality and the oil company's ability to make us believe that our cars cannot be given up. well, they WILL BE given up and i sure as hell would like to have an alternative way of getting around. heck, im getting old, so my bike or my feet aint gonna cut it.

B JOBS putting people to work... giving THEM to option to control their lives, make their own purchase decisions, that is what makes people feel good and that will build confidence faster than any handout ever will, no matter how big (lotto winners excepted)

C BAN ROI yep, thats right. its a term that no one can correctly quantify. it only causes confusion, makes shysters and idiots sound intelligent, and has now real place in America's future. after all, foreign oil has no ROI, so why should its solution have one?..our government is not a business, so business terms do not apply... ca piece? understood? ok...good

so after reviewing the above, its obvious that renewable energy sources cannot be overbuilt. building a lot only slightly increases ROI (which of course no longer applies), but employs more people for a longer period of time, so its a wash. one eliminates the other.

now, the only thing that is at issue is the finite energy of our Sun for which i do not have an answer for, but i am listening

 

Dave, you can't ban ROI. That would require a planned economy, and those are grossly inefficient and have zero innovation. We want to maximize ROI and make capitalism work for us, not against us. Banning ROI would mean that the best technologies won't win out. That will stifle innovation, which the last thing we want.

 

One of the real solutions is to build a "smart grid".

Most of the components of the "smart grid" are already available, and are not all that exotic.

Examples of smart grid would be things like time of day metering, the ability of the utility to turn on and turn off major loads remotely during critical peak periods. Loads such as water heaters etc. Use the ability of the smart grid to meter and transmit power in both directions, from desegregated sources such as residential and commercial solar, plug in hybrids/evs etc. Change local and state utility rules to mandate time of day metering, reverse metering etc.

Much of the efficiencies can be gained by being able to absorb the peak loads from sources such as conservation (turning off water heaters momentarily for example) solar and plug in hybrid inputs to the grid, come with no real cost,, just a matter of changing the way we do business.

Icarus

 

but Tripp, we can ban ROI... its absolutely necessary to get technology off the ground. and trust me, banning ROI only removes government inertia, greases the wheels, reduces the neigh-sayers.

its like the space program, it spawned hundreds of tech advances that found a free market where capitalism flourished. but most of those market were not multi-billion dollar markets, but only used the fruits of a multi-billion research program.

i can guarantee anyone that any change as sweeping as weening us off of foreign oil will create hundreds of new niche products and markets where ROI will then apply...we only need to get to that place and we cant do it as long as ROI is around

 

I can understand banning the "misuse" of ROI, but the whole sustainable undertaking absolutely needs to work out economically....and this requires economic planning and financial analysis to ensure that the money is spent as wisely as possible. Technology by government mandate is good way to set back renewable energy.

One thing that is a sore subject with me is having government (vs. industry) pick the technologies to be funded. This leads to things like massive government investment in useless fuel cell cars and abandonment of the CARB "no pollution mandates" that resulted in fleets of EVs widely used. Or the government picks biofuels as the technology to finance. You get the idea.

What the government can eventually be good at is economic legislation (tax rebates for solar installations) or easily enforced sustainable regulations (20% renewable power by 2020). This latter has caused the concentrated solar industry to take off. In these cases, industry works out what technologies give the biggest bang for the buck....if the legislation is well written and executed. It's not the "ROI" that is the problem so much as what the ROI is calculated to do (Pick the best technology or optimize fleecing the government).

 

Here are Joseph Romm's views on this...

In other words, we need to guarantee to investors that if they invest in clean energy projects they will make money. It's precisely for this reason that the PTC is so important. When the PTC gets extended by congress (they usually let it come periliously close to lapsing), the wind industry has a boom. It happens every time. The PTC (production tax credit) is the signal to investors that wind farms will make money, it's what makes wind competitive with NG (because the fossil fuel industry gets all sorts of nice credits that alternatives don't get). The history of the PTC has shown that if you shape the market to foster alternatives to fossil fuels, investors are more than happy to pony up the money. They know exactly how much that wind farms gonna cost (no fuel price fluxuations to worry about). It's a very safe bet.

 

If we banned ROI in 1994 we wouldn't be communicating right now because there would be no internet. Sure, there would be DARPA net, but not the web as we know it today... it was the lure of ROI that created the web. We need to harness the entrepeneurial spirit to create a similar revolution in the way we use energy. ROI is essential for innovation to occur. Yes, there will be spectacular failures, some scams, and fortunes created and lost... but that was true of the IT bubble as well. In the end we have gotten an amazing information revolution that has completely reshaped our lives... mostly for the better (particularly in the developing world).

 

That's why I prefer actually increasing the cost of fossil fuels rather than trying to pick the tech. We do need to set targets on how much fossil fuel use we want to reduce and by when so that we can drive fossil fuel price accordingly. But let the market work out the how, it should do better at weighing.

On the other hand you still need to fund basic research and some pilot development along multiple parallel paths. If/when they dead end, shut them down and move on. This is the sort of risk govt can take, but private industry can ill afford. There is no apparent silver bullet, so there will be needs in many areas.

 

it wasnt "government" that invested in fuel cells, it was bush. he did it against advice from every possible source. he ignored climate change despite scientists from all over the world in nearly every discipline screaming over the urgency of the situation.

now we can say that bush as our president was the "government", well im not so sure of that. he acted as if he was a puppet with a hidden agenda aimed at benefiting a very narrow segment and fighting this war on terror when all it really did was made American lives much more inconvenient with a huge loss in personal privacy issues.

but right now its simply too easy to say, "oh we cant do that. not good enough, there is a better way, etc..." well, we can continue to run our debt up to astronomical levels throwing money down a bottomless pit while spending money researching desperately looking for the golden goose and hope we can find it, develop it, and implement it before its too late. i dont really like that scenario.

there is little secret to the fact that solar and wind works and works right now. and sure, both can work better than they do now. we are still learning both technologies and solar especially gets more and more efficient every year.

but the choices we face is like the rabbit and the hare. we have the hare which is the homerun technology, hasnt even started the race, not known when it will start, but when it does, look out!!... well, we hope.

or we could be the turtle, start out now, sure its slow, not as efficient as we want it to be, but it does get us what we want, and we do have the space and resources where it could, even in its currently inefficient form, provide most of what we need. that is here and now. sure, we may have to build 2-5 times the number of power plants before we even come close to the power output we have now (which is barely keeping us afloat)

but power produced here creates jobs here and revenue that stays here. for every dollar we spend here that does not go to the middle east, that dollar will benefit us many times. one of the biggest reasons why we are in our economic condition is that our economy has been undermined by the constant flow of money to the middle east.

**edit**
wow!! about 4 posts happened while typing this one... i said to ban ROI only when getting the government to provide an infrastructure to allow renewables to flourish. i said that anything that creates change on a scope this large will automatically create whole new industries with private funds for investment and research where ROI will be key as always. sure i am advocating huge government intervention to change the climate to encourage wind and solar and EV's but in no way do i think the government should run any of those programs.

just give us large rebates for EV's, and solar upgrades. put up a high efficiency power transmission grid that can take power generated and distribute it 2000 miles away, and remove all the localized red tape in between so this can be done economically. that is all.

 

True, and the Nat'l labs are doing some good work in these areas. We should fund more of that... with taxes (and discontinued subsidies) on fossil fuels.

 

Maybe to get the excess power from your roof up to Chicago in mid winter when their solar panels are covered in snow?

 

Don't even get me started

It actually wasn't too bad when most of SCADA was done over leased lines. You actually needed a wee bit of skill to actually break into a SCADA link

The apocalypse started once all those Windoze machines were used as pretty frontends to the "it's too hard" SCADA backend, and then those pretty Windoze frontends were made part of a cheap, unlicensed radio network, and/or Internet connection

Actually, the Idaho National Lab did a staged cyberterror attack through SCADA against a large scale generator, which was being fed into a dummy load. INL was able to destroy the generator by using common exploits

Of course, since the taxpayer paid for this large generator, I would have expected far more spectacular results

Sources: Staged cyber attack reveals vulnerability in power grid - CNN.com

The official INL government website used to have a link to this test. They appear to have now removed it from their site

 

Clean energy spend needs to more than triple - report Business Feed Article | Business | guardian.co.uk

Dumping Crops at Sea Proposed as Way to Bury Carbon http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/01/30/carbon-sequestration.html