Solar Industry: No Breakthroughs Needed

Monday, August 03, 2009

Solar Industry: No Breakthroughs Needed

The solar industry says incremental advances have made transformational technologies unnecessary.

By Kevin Bullis

The federal government is behind the times when it comes to making decisions about advancing the solar industry, according to several solar-industry experts. This has led, they argue, to a misplaced emphasis on research into futuristic new technologies, rather than support for scaling up existing ones. That was the prevailing opinion at a symposium last week put together by the National Academies in Washington, DC, on the topic of scaling up the solar industry.

The meeting was attended by numerous experts from the photovoltaic industry and academia. And many complained that the emphasis on finding new technologies is misplaced. "This is such a fast-moving field," said Ken Zweibel, director of the Solar Institute at George Washington University. "To some degree, we're fighting the last war. We're answering the questions from 5, 10, 15 years ago in a world where things have really changed."

In the past year, the federal government has announced new investments in research into "transformational" solar technologies that represent radical departures from existing crystalline-silicon or thin-film technologies that are already on the market. The investments include new energy-research centers sponsored by the Department of Energy and a new agency called ARPA-Energy, modeled after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Such investments are prompted by the fact that conventional solar technologies have historically produced electricity that's far more expensive than electricity from fossil fuels.

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But industry experts at the Washington symposium argued that new technologies will take decades to come to market, judging from how long commercialization of other solar technologies has taken. Meanwhile, says Zweibel, conventional technologies "have made the kind of progress that we were hoping futuristic technologies could make." For example, researchers have sought to bring the cost of solar power to under $1 per watt, and as of the first quarter of this year one company, First Solar, has done this.

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Solar electric panels can meet electricity demand on any scale, from a single home to a large city. There is plenty of energy in the sunlight shining on all parts of our nation to generate the electricity we need. For example, with today’s commercial systems, the solar energy resource in a 100-by-100-mile area of Nevada could supply the United States with all of its electricity. If these systems were distributed to the 50 states, the land required from each state would be an area of about 17 by 17 miles. This area is available now from parking lots, rooftops, and vacant land. In fact, 90% of America’s current electricity needs could be supplied with solar electric systems built on the estimated 5 million acres of abandoned industrial sites in our nation’s cities.

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PV technology can meet electricity demand on any scale. The solar energy resource in a 100-mile-square area of Nevada could supply the United States with all its electricity (about 800 gigawatts) using modestly efficient (10%) commercial PV modules.

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Power towers enjoy the benefits of two successful, large-scale demonstration plants. The 10-MW Solar One plant near Barstow, CA, demonstrated the viability of power towers, producing over 38 million kilowatt-hours of electricity during its operation from 1982 to 1988. The Solar Two plant was a retrofit of Solar One to demonstrate the advantages of molten salt for heat transfer and thermal storage. Utilizing its highly efficient molten-salt energy storage system, Solar Two successfully demonstrated efficient collection of solar energy and dispatch of electricity, including the ability to routinely produce electricity during cloudy weather and at night. In one demonstration, it delivered power to the grid 24 hours per day for nearly 7 straight days before cloudy weather interrupted operation.

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Utilizing the Project Development and Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) experience of its business partners and its exclusive arrangement for Flagsol's parabolic trough technology and services in North America, Solar Trust is ideally positioned to build on the success of Solar Millennium, LLC's June 17, 2009 announcement of the execution of power purchase agreements with Southern California Edison (SCE). The agreements, which are subject to approval by the California Public Utilities Commission, call for the development of two, 242 megawatt (MW) power plants, with the option to expand to include a third 242 megawatt plant, for a total of up to 726 megawatts of capacity, and provide for the purchase of the output by SCE over a 20-year period. These solar thermal power plants are expected to begin operation between 2013 and 2014.

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Myth 1: Solar electricity cannot serve any significant fraction of U.S. or world electricity needs.

PV technology can meet electricity demand on any scale. The solar energy resource in a 100-mile-square area of Nevada could supply the United States with all its electricity (about 800 gigawatts) using modestly efficient (10%) commercial PV modules.

A more realistic scenario involves distributing these same PV systems throughout the 50 states. Currently available sites—such as vacant land, parking lots, and rooftops—could be used. The land requirement to produce 800 gigawatts would average out to be about 17 x 17 miles per state. Alternatively, PV systems built in the "brownfields"—the estimated 5 million acres of abandoned industrial sites in our nation's cities—could supply 90% of America's current electricity.

These hypothetical cases emphasize that PV is not "area-impaired" in delivering electricity. The critical point is that PV does not have to compete with baseload power. Its strength is in providing electricity when and where energy is most limited and most expensive. It does not simply replace some fraction of generation. Rather, it displaces the right portion of the load, shaving peak demand during periods when energy is most constrained and expensive.

In the long run, the U.S. PV Industry Roadmap does expect PV to provide a "significant fraction of U.S. electricity needs." This adds up to at least 15% of new added electricity capacity in 2020, and then 10 years later, at least 10% of the nation's total electricity (http://www.nrel.gov/docs/gen/fy03/30150.pdf">PDF 674 KB).

Myth 2: Solar electricity can do everything — right now!

No way. Solar electricity will eventually become a major player in the world's energy portfolio. The industry just doesn't have the capacity to meet all demands right now. But assuming that the proper investments are made now and are sustained, the industry will become significant in the next few decades.

In 2000, for example, worldwide PV shipments grew by 37% from the previous year. In 2001, they grew by another 38%. Although this brought shipments to about 400 megawatts per year, it's hardly enough to meet the entire burden of U.S. or world electricity needs... yet.

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A more realistic scenario involves distributing these same PV systems throughout the 50 states. Currently available sites—such as vacant land, parking lots, and rooftops—could be used. The land requirement to produce 800 gigawatts would average out to be about 17 x 17 miles per state. …

http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/EE/article.asp?doi=b809990c

Energy Environ. Sci., 2009, 2, 148 - 173, DOI: 10.1039/b809990c
Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security

Mark Z. Jacobson

This paper reviews and ranks major proposed energy-related solutions to global warming, air pollution mortality, and energy security while considering other impacts of the proposed solutions, such as on water supply, land use, wildlife, resource availability, thermal pollution, water chemical pollution, nuclear proliferation, and undernutrition.

Nine electric power sources and two liquid fuel options are considered. The electricity sources include solar-photovoltaics (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal, nuclear, and coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The liquid fuel options include corn-ethanol (E85) and cellulosic-E85. To place the electric and liquid fuel sources on an equal footing, we examine their comparative abilities to address the problems mentioned by powering new-technology vehicles, including battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and flex-fuel vehicles run on E85.

Twelve combinations of energy source-vehicle type are considered. Upon ranking and weighting each combination with respect to each of 11 impact categories, four clear divisions of ranking, or tiers, emerge.

Tier 1 (highest-ranked) includes wind-BEVs and wind-HFCVs.
Tier 2 includes CSP-BEVs, geothermal-BEVs, PV-BEVs, tidal-BEVs, and wave-BEVs.
Tier 3 includes hydro-BEVs, nuclear-BEVs, and CCS-BEVs.
Tier 4 includes corn- and cellulosic-E85.

Wind-BEVs ranked first in seven out of 11 categories, including the two most important, mortality and climate damage reduction. Although HFCVs are much less efficient than BEVs, wind-HFCVs are still very clean and were ranked second among all combinations.

Tier 2 options provide significant benefits and are recommended.

Tier 3 options are less desirable. However, hydroelectricity, which was ranked ahead of coal-CCS and nuclear with respect to climate and health, is an excellent load balancer, thus recommended.

The Tier 4 combinations (cellulosic- and corn-E85) were ranked lowest overall and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste. Cellulosic-E85 ranked lower than corn-E85 overall, primarily due to its potentially larger land footprint based on new data and its higher upstream air pollution emissions than corn-E85.

Whereas cellulosic-E85 may cause the greatest average human mortality, nuclear-BEVs cause the greatest upper-limit mortality risk due to the expansion of plutonium separation and uranium enrichment in nuclear energy facilities worldwide. Wind-BEVs and CSP-BEVs cause the least mortality.

The footprint area of wind-BEVs is 2–6 orders of magnitude less than that of any other option. Because of their low footprint and pollution, wind-BEVs cause the least wildlife loss.

The largest consumer of water is corn-E85. The smallest are wind-, tidal-, and wave-BEVs.

The US could theoretically replace all 2007 onroad vehicles with BEVs powered by 73000–144000 5 MW wind turbines, less than the 300000 airplanes the US produced during World War II, reducing US CO2 by 32.5–32.7% and nearly eliminating 15000/yr vehicle-related air pollution deaths in 2020.

In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered. The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss, and the biofuel options provide no certain benefit and the greatest negative impacts.

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Whereas cellulosic-E85 may cause the greatest average human mortality, nuclear-BEVs cause the greatest upper-limit mortality risk due to the expansion of plutonium separation and uranium enrichment in nuclear energy facilities worldwide. Wind-BEVs and CSP-BEVs cause the least mortality.

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The time between planning and operation of a nuclear power plant includes the time to obtain a site and construction permit, the time between construction permit approval and issue, and the construction time of the plant. In March, 2007, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved the first request for a site permit in 30 yr. This process took 3.5 yr. The time to review and approve a construction permit is another 2 yr and the time between the construction permit approval and issue is about 0.5 yr. Thus, the minimum time for preconstruction approvals (and financing) is 6 yr. …

http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/EE/article.asp?doi=b809990c

Energy Environ. Sci., 2009, 2, 148 - 173, DOI: 10.1039/b809990c
Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security

Mark Z. Jacobson

This paper reviews and ranks major proposed energy-related solutions to global warming, air pollution mortality, and energy security while considering other impacts of the proposed solutions, such as on water supply, land use, wildlife, resource availability, thermal pollution, water chemical pollution, nuclear proliferation, and undernutrition.

Nine electric power sources and two liquid fuel options are considered. The electricity sources include solar-photovoltaics (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal, nuclear, and coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The liquid fuel options include corn-ethanol (E85) and cellulosic-E85. To place the electric and liquid fuel sources on an equal footing, we examine their comparative abilities to address the problems mentioned by powering new-technology vehicles, including battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and flex-fuel vehicles run on E85.

Twelve combinations of energy source-vehicle type are considered. Upon ranking and weighting each combination with respect to each of 11 impact categories, four clear divisions of ranking, or tiers, emerge.

Tier 1 (highest-ranked) includes wind-BEVs and wind-HFCVs.
Tier 2 includes CSP-BEVs, geothermal-BEVs, PV-BEVs, tidal-BEVs, and wave-BEVs.
Tier 3 includes hydro-BEVs, nuclear-BEVs, and CCS-BEVs.
Tier 4 includes corn- and cellulosic-E85.

Wind-BEVs ranked first in seven out of 11 categories, including the two most important, mortality and climate damage reduction. Although HFCVs are much less efficient than BEVs, wind-HFCVs are still very clean and were ranked second among all combinations.

Tier 2 options provide significant benefits and are recommended.

Tier 3 options are less desirable. However, hydroelectricity, which was ranked ahead of coal-CCS and nuclear with respect to climate and health, is an excellent load balancer, thus recommended.

The Tier 4 combinations (cellulosic- and corn-E85) were ranked lowest overall and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste. Cellulosic-E85 ranked lower than corn-E85 overall, primarily due to its potentially larger land footprint based on new data and its higher upstream air pollution emissions than corn-E85.

Whereas cellulosic-E85 may cause the greatest average human mortality, nuclear-BEVs cause the greatest upper-limit mortality risk due to the expansion of plutonium separation and uranium enrichment in nuclear energy facilities worldwide. Wind-BEVs and CSP-BEVs cause the least mortality.

The footprint area of wind-BEVs is 2–6 orders of magnitude less than that of any other option. Because of their low footprint and pollution, wind-BEVs cause the least wildlife loss.

The largest consumer of water is corn-E85. The smallest are wind-, tidal-, and wave-BEVs.

The US could theoretically replace all 2007 onroad vehicles with BEVs powered by 73000–144000 5 MW wind turbines, less than the 300000 airplanes the US produced during World War II, reducing US CO2 by 32.5–32.7% and nearly eliminating 15000/yr vehicle-related air pollution deaths in 2020.

In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered. The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss, and the biofuel options provide no certain benefit and the greatest negative impacts.

SOLAR TRUST OF AMERICA, LLC TARGETS SOUTHWESTERN U.S. FOR DEVELOPMENT AND CONSTRUCTION OF UTILITY-SIZE SOLAR THERMAL POWER PLANTS

CLEVELAND, OHIO and BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA - August 17, 2009

Solar Trust of America, LLC, a newly formed integrated industrial solar solutions company, today announced that it has entered into contractual arrangements with its business partners Solar Millennium and MAN Ferrostaal to provide the U.S. market with a complete turnkey solution in connection with the development, construction and financing of large-scale concentrated solar power (CSP) plants in the southwestern region of the United States.

The services offered by Solar Trust of America include Project Development; Plant Layout Design; Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC); Supply Chain Management; Plant Operations and Management; ready access to large-scale project financing; and equity participation. Solar Trust of America also announced that it has entered into an agreement to use Solar Millennium AG's proven, in-house Flagsol parabolic trough technology exclusively in North America.

"We believe that we are the only CSP company providing a completely integrated solar solution using proven technology for utility size plants currently generating electricity for the grid," said Uwe T. Schmidt, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Solar Trust of America. "With thousands of fully-funded and completed industrial projects in the combined portfolios of our business partners, we expect to become the industry leader in the development and construction of these solar thermal power plants in the U.S."

The company's business partners include Solar Millennium AG, an international project and technology developer and supplier of parabolic trough collector technology used in powering solar thermal power plants; and MAN Ferrostaal Incorporated, a U.S. subsidiary of MAN Ferrostaal AG, a worldwide provider of industrial services and plant construction and engineering. As part of the launch of its business, Solar Trust announced that Solar Millennium, LLC, of Berkeley, California, a leading U.S. developer of solar thermal power plant technology, has joined the Solar Trust family as a wholly-owned subsidiary and will serve as the company's solar thermal power plant development arm. Solar Millennium and MAN Ferrostaal are both contributing assets and technical expertise to Solar Trust of America and will be shareholders in the new company.

Utilizing the Project Development and Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) experience of its business partners and its exclusive arrangement for Flagsol's parabolic trough technology and services in North America, Solar Trust is ideally positioned to build on the success of Solar Millennium, LLC's June 17, 2009 announcement of the execution of power purchase agreements with Southern California Edison (SCE). The agreements, which are subject to approval by the California Public Utilities Commission, call for the development of two, 242 megawatt (MW) power plants, with the option to expand to include a third 242 megawatt plant, for a total of up to 726 megawatts of capacity, and provide for the purchase of the output by SCE over a 20-year period. These solar thermal power plants are expected to begin operation between 2013 and 2014.

Solar Millennium AG is the company responsible for the development of the Andasol 1, 2 and 3 solar thermal power plants constructed in Spain. Andasol 1 and 2, Europe's first commercially operating parabolic trough power plants, are currently supplying electricity to consumers and businesses in Andalusia, Spain with environmentally friendly power that are expected to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 150,000 tons per year, per plant compared to modern coal-fired power plants. Two of these plants feature large-scale thermal storage technology capable of extending power production for up to 7.5 hours per day after the sun sets. MAN Ferrostaal AG is leading the Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) for Andasol 3, which is currently under construction in Andalusia and scheduled to be connected to the local grid in 2011.

"America's energy future is at a critical crossroad," said Josef Eichhammer, President and Chief Operating Officer of Solar Trust of America. "The challenge is to reduce our carbon footprint and energy dependency from imported fuel. Solar thermal energy is strategically critical to ensuring a sustainable energy future for America. The sun radiates enough energy in 40 minutes to supply the world's entire power needs for a year, we simply have to harness it. We are working diligently with the region's utilities to meet their future demand for renewable energy with proven parabolic trough solar power plants and energy storage solutions. With our new positioning we will leverage the experience of Solar Millennium AG in Spain and strengthen our efforts to achieve our growth objectives in the U.S."

The company currently has multiple solar thermal power plants in advanced stages of development in the southwestern region of the United States. Each plant, if constructed, will feature highly efficient, environmentally friendly solar thermal power plants generating approximately 250 megawatts of electricity each, or enough energy from each plant to power 80,000 homes for a year.

Solar Trust embraces U.S. federal and state government policies and initiatives to provide significant infrastructure investments, job creation and supplier opportunities in renewable energy through such programs as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and the U.S. Department of Energy's Loan Guarantee Program for renewable energy projects.

Eichhammer said new government legislation will stimulate significant development of cost-efficient solar power plants across America's Sunbelt region. "Solar energy provides comparatively low long-term generation costs with no additional fuel costs such as coal, oil, gas or uranium. As a result, solar thermal plants deliver clean, carbon-free power and an effective hedge against rising energy costs. Our goal is to secure 20 percent of the solar thermal energy market and set the benchmark for facilities of this size and capacity. We intend to be at the forefront in powering America's future."

Uwe Schmidt emphasized that the development, engineering, local procurement and construction of the utility-size thermal solar power plants should provide an economic boost to the region. "Each of these plants will include investments of more than $1 billion. Each plant is expected to directly employ more than 800 skilled workers during the initial construction phase and create approximately 100 permanent jobs for operations, maintenance and management employees. And, each plant is expected to indirectly create thousands of additional jobs as Solar Trust of America procures materials, goods and services for each facility in the U.S. We expect to generate sustainable revenue throughout the value chain by developing, constructing and operating the plants, while helping the region meet its renewable energy goals and stimulating its economies."

Proven, Bankable Solar Thermal Technology

The solar thermal energy technology employed by Solar Trust of America has been technically viable for more than a quarter century. Today, there are dozens of solar thermal power plants currently in development, under construction or in operation worldwide using similar technology. A solar thermal power plant features large-scale, line-focusing parabolic trough collectors arranged in long rows of "farm-like" arrays that concentrate, capture and transfer the sun's heat energy and feeds that energy into a steam-driven turbine that generates electricity. Members of our engineering team were instrumental in the development and construction of parabolic trough power plants which have been in continuous commercial operation and successfully feeding "peak load" power to the California grid for more than 25 years.

About Solar Trust of America

Solar Trust of America, LLC is an integrated industrial solar solutions company strategically positioned to support the critical need for renewable solar energy generation in the United States. The company's Project Development, Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC), financial resources and Operational Management expertise ensures the delivery of a fully integrated concentrated solar power solution using exclusively available, commercially viable and proven parabolic trough solar thermal energy technology. For more information about the company visit www.SolarTrustofAmerica.com.

About Solar Millennium

Solar Millennium Inc. is a wholly-owned U.S. subsidiary of Solar Millennium AG, an international company in the renewable energy sector, with its main emphasis on solar thermal power plants. Together with its subsidiaries, the company specializes in parabolic trough power plants, a proven and reliable technology with which the Group has adopted a leading position worldwide. Solar Millennium covers all important business sectors along the value chain for solar thermal power plants - from project development and technology to turn-key construction as well as plant operation and investments in power plants. In Spain, Solar Millennium developed Europe's first parabolic trough power plants and realized them with its partners. Additional projects are planned around the world with an overall capacity of more than 2,000 megawatts. The current regional focus is on Spain, the US, China and North Africa. Furthermore, the company has the aim of achieving market readiness for the so-called Blue Tower technology for the generation of product gas that is rich in hydrogen through the reformation of regenerative residual materials, and also for solar chimney power plants in the long run. For more information on Solar Millennium visit www.solarmillennium.com.

About MAN Ferrostaal

MAN Ferrostaal Incorporated is a wholly-owned U.S. subsidiary of MAN Ferrostaal AG, a global provider of industrial services in plant construction and engineering. As a general contractor in plant construction, the company offers project development, project management and financial planning for turnkey installations, including petrochemical plants, gas and solar power stations, oil and gas installations, biofuels and industrial plants. MAN Ferrostaal operates as an independent sales and service partner in the automotive, printing and packaging machinery, piping and marine construction sectors, employing around 4,400 people in 60 different countries. In 2008, its annual revenue amounted to $2 billion (approx. $1.6 billion Euros). For more information on MAN Ferrostaal AG visit www.manferrostaal.com

This press release contains forward-looking statements relating to Solar Trust of America, its subsidiaries and the solar industry. In particular, statements regarding plans, estimates, assumptions, expectations or projections about the future other than statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, forecasts concerning solar industry growth or other trend projections and statements about Solar Trust of America's strategies, objectives, goals, targets, outlook, and business and financial prospects. These statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations.

Press and Analyst Contact: Bill Keegan, Director of Communications, 312.927.8424, or press@SolarTrustofAmerica.com

Can't provide baseload?
Posted by kristopher in Environment/Energy
Mon Jul 27th 2009, 03:09 PM
"Baseload" is an interesting phenomenon. People tend to believe that it is an indispensable element of a power grid, but that is an assumption that requires scrutiny. Bear with me as I review some basics for those who may not be as familiar with them as I know you are.

In linguistics 'back formations" are cases of words that are culturally created through misapplications of accepted rules of grammar. For example, there is growing acceptance of the word /conversate/ in some US subcultures. Those who employ the word derive it as a verb from noun /conversation/. Standard American English (what is used by newscasters is the benchmark for SAE) of course, offers the verb /converse/. However, if that word is unknown to (or not readily recalled by) the speaker it is understandable that /conversation/ would be yield /conversate/ based on the relationship of words such as /gravitation/ and /gravitate/, or /hesitation/ and /hesitate/.

I offer that because the development of 'baseload' power as a component of the grid has followed a similar pattern. In order to meet rising demand within a central, thermal generation based grid, a natural path of development was to make the centrally located generators ever larger. Eventually the size of these generators became so large that their size related operational characteristics started affecting how power was marketed.

A large generator is a long metal shaft with a large amount of wire wrapped around it. This shaft spins within a magnetic field and generates electricity. This shaft is very long and the windings are very heavy; so heavy, in fact, that if it is allowed to stop spinning the shaft will sag in the middle and develop a curve that must be eliminated by *very slowly* commencing rotation and allowing the weight of the windings to eventually center the shaft so that power production can commence. This process can so long to accomplish that it becomes prohibitively expensive to stop one of these large turbines from spinning if it is in daily use to help meet the varying demand for power. So rather than shut down and restart, it is more economical to keep the turbine fired up.
This forms a "base"level of generation for a given locale. Another word for "generated power" is 'load'; that gives us our "baseload".

What this leads to, of course, is an oversupply of power related to demand. The natural reaction to such an oversupply is to attempt to recoup money from some of the unused power. That drives a trend in pricing that causes industry with flexibility to orient itself around the availability of this less expensive source of energy.

So our existing (and near term projected) system does rely on this structure, however it isn't the only configuration that a grid could assume and still meet the needs of an industrial society.

An alternative is to conceive of a system where the power needs of any given user, including industries, is evaluated and met independent of central power generation. For example, an auto plant may use a small (compared to the generator described above) natural gas generator to back up a large photovoltaic array on their roof. This system would work with a much more flexible grid composed of many other, similar small distributed generating set-ups to allow the investment in equipment made by the auto plant to be more fully utilized; thereby spreading around the capital costs.

So when you say that solar can't provide baseload, I would have to question the foundation of the statement. I realize the scenario I describe is where we are going, not where we currently are; however the discussion is about where we invest our scarce dollars in infrastructure investment to meet our future needs. While the existing nuclear fleet is an important part of our grid now and going forward, it isn't prudent to plow more money into nuclear generation if our goal is prompt action on climate change. Those dollars deliver much greater bang for the buck ... with wind and solar.

Baseload" is an interesting phenomenon. People tend to believe that it is an indispensable element of a power grid, but that is an assumption that requires scrutiny. Bear with me as I review some basics for those who may not be as familiar with them as I know you are.

In linguistics 'back formations" are cases of words that are culturally created through misapplications of accepted rules of grammar. For example, there is growing acceptance of the word /conversate/ in some US subcultures. Those who employ the word derive it as a verb from noun /conversation/. Standard American English (what is used by newscasters is the benchmark for SAE) of course, offers the verb /converse/. However, if that word is unknown to (or not readily recalled by) the speaker it is understandable that /conversation/ would be yield /conversate/ based on the relationship of words such as /gravitation/ and /gravitate/, or /hesitation/ and /hesitate/.

I offer that because the development of 'baseload' power as a component of the grid has followed a similar pattern. In order to meet rising demand within a central, thermal generation based grid, a natural path of development was to make the centrally located generators ever larger. Eventually the size of these generators became so large that their size related operational characteristics started affecting how power was marketed.

A large generator is a long metal shaft with a large amount of wire wrapped around it. This shaft spins within a magnetic field and generates electricity. This shaft is very long and the windings are very heavy; so heavy, in fact, that if it is allowed to stop spinning the shaft will sag in the middle and develop a curve that must be eliminated by *very slowly* commencing rotation and allowing the weight of the windings to eventually center the shaft so that power production can commence. This process can so long to accomplish that it becomes prohibitively expensive to stop one of these large turbines from spinning if it is in daily use to help meet the varying demand for power. So rather than shut down and restart, it is more economical to keep the turbine fired up.
This forms a "base"level of generation for a given locale. Another word for "generated power" is 'load'; that gives us our "baseload".

What this leads to, of course, is an oversupply of power related to demand. The natural reaction to such an oversupply is to attempt to recoup money from some of the unused power. That drives a trend in pricing that causes industry with flexibility to orient itself around the availability of this less expensive source of energy.

So our existing (and near term projected) system does rely on this structure, however it isn't the only configuration that a grid could assume and still meet the needs of an industrial society.

An alternative is to conceive of a system where the power needs of any given user, including industries, is evaluated and met independent of central power generation. For example, an auto plant may use a small (compared to the generator described above) natural gas generator to back up a large photovoltaic array on their roof. This system would work with a much more flexible grid composed of many other, similar small distributed generating set-ups to allow the investment in equipment made by the auto plant to be more fully utilized; thereby spreading around the capital costs.

So when you say that solar can't provide baseload, I would have to question the foundation of the statement. I realize the scenario I describe is where we are going, not where we currently are; however the discussion is about where we invest our scarce dollars in infrastructure investment to meet our future needs. While the existing nuclear fleet is an important part of our grid now and going forward, it isn't prudent to plow more money into nuclear generation if our goal is prompt action on climate change. Those dollars deliver much greater bang for the buck ... with wind and solar.