To those who say Solar cannot provide enough of our energy needs

I've read it here on DU in the past that solar power and wind power is all well and good, but it can *never* totally replace fossil fuels. The thinking usually goes like this: cars need some kind of fuel and so do factories and to heat buildings. That sounded like a challenge to me so: 1) Electric Vehicles, and 2) concentrate sunlight to make heat for factory processes and to warm our living spaces.

melt rocks with sunlight
If it gets so hot that it can melt any known material, why not put concentrated solar to work taking the place of fossil fuels in some industrial uses:

making cement


drying


make biofuels


Maybe a 6' mirror is too small. So, just make a bigger parabolic mirror. How much would it cost to make a 40' parabolic mirror? One of the links I reviewed stated an annual gas bill of $1 million for a processing plant that used gas heat to dry the product. How many mirrors can you buy for $1 million? Need more heat? Imagine a line of 40' solar concentrators from one end of the building to the other.

The parabola shape can be adjusted to tailor the focal point to be as far or as near the mirror as desired and a molten salt can be heated by this process, the heated salt can then be pumped through the machinery to provide the industrial processes that heretofore would require burning natural gas.

Formula of the parabola is: x2 = 4ay
where a = focal length
Take several values of "x" with equal intervals and calculate "y".
e.g. Take x = 0.1ft and then calculate y
Then take x = 0.2ft and calculate y. With the interval of 0.1 keep taking values till the required width.

What part of *free energy* don't these geniuses understand?

But I think I've finally found my death ray that I've always wanted.

TlalocW

but on the whole, i think you are on to something. there are other ways to generate electricity that no one seems to want to explore because it's just easier to keep doing what we've been doing. I think between solar and energy i don't see why we can't have at least half not this mamby pamby 20% stuff floated around. it's like how the electric cars only go 50 miles..... if they could go 300 on a charge people might actually WANT to use them. imagine if they had solar collectors on the roof of the car that could be charging the battery constantly or something. but if we need a hybrid gas/electric then we still are tethered to the gas. I am so interested in geothermal energy and am hopeful that we will be able to put that in at our house someday, thereby making heating and cooling not add to the use of such things as coal/propane at least at our house. it's too cost prohibitive for us now, but maybe someday.

we can do it. we friggin put a man on the moon!! why the hell do we keep thinking we can't get ourselves using sustainable energy that does not further harm the earth!!!

Basically you dump heat into a tank filled with molten salt and when the sun goes down reclaim that heat to continue to power the generators during night time hours.

Not because there's "not enough sunlight" but the returns are diminishing. You build a power plant where you can concievably get 5-8 KWh m^2 a day or you build one where you get half that (which is close 2/3rds the United States).

Solar PV is viable anywhere, but I'm specifically referring to industrial use of sunlight and central power generation for commercial and industry. A PV panel on your roof will subsidize half your electrical usage at the bare minimum. With geothermal heating and cooling you are looking at nearly having your whole home powered by PV (throw memristors in there for your electronics and possibly not using a grid at all).

Last I checked, that's not a desert climate.

When you're dealing with process heat the only question is the desired temperature at "the business end" of the factory. The size and number of solar concentrators can be increased until adequate temperatures are reached. Will it be cheaper to build on the equator versus the arctic? Seems reasonable. As long as there is sunlight there is a use for it, at least as a supplemental source of heat.

Why not? Would you throw away half the money in your wallet just because it is folded up too many times (much more convenient to only use the crisp new bills).

Want to use Solar PV and geothermal heating and cooling as well? Why not? Read the wallet sentence again.

You cannot base a whole industry on it unless you have a lot of sunlight a lot of the time, industry is the largest consumer of energy in the world. Residential energy use is pithy in comparison.

Maybe piddling or minuscule. Anyway, we don't disagree that a plant that makes cement and has a natural gas bill over $1 million could use all the help they could get. For the sake of argument, let's say that the "worthless" solar heat is only able to cut their energy bill by 10% --that's $100,000 in their pocket. After the mirrors, pipes, molten salt enclosure, etc. were capitalized that would be money in their pocket, aka "profit."

I didn't discover this idea of parabolic mirrors that concentrate the sunlight. Here's a video of someone cooking a grilled cheese sandwich in just a minute using only the power of the sun. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJ22QCAqFCc --be sure to watch all the way through for important safety tips (things can catch fire if you leave this mirror unattended).

I don't know whether its like table salt or some mix.
It heats the salt and stores the heat and can run for several days w/out bright sunlight.
Solar steam production could be achieved, but I am no boiler tech..

As far as solar heating I am working on a solar (still need more funding) to heat air for a solar oven and to heat water for radiant in floor heat.

With that kind of heating you only need 65 to 75 degree water pumped through tubing under the floor. We have a standard tank type solar heater which will become a closed loop system. It will provide enough hot water for domestic use and to dump the remaining heat into a tank under the house for use in the heating system.
It would take too much to cover all the research and numbers here, I didn't just come up with this yesterday I have been looking into it for years.

the thing with radiant infloor heating is that if the floor is 70 degrees it radiates into all the interior spaces and contents..It actually only takes 40% of the energy to heat this way as it does for forced air heat. Cooling is reverse run cool water through the pipes.

The solar water heater unit we have was tested in March in or near Ontario CA and heated water to 180 when air temp was 30f. It is rated for 190 gallons a day. I live in NC we should see better than that and be able to dump heat into a super insulated tank in the basement for later use.

but i had never heard about melting salt and it running for DAYS without sun!! wow! i mean, solar power if we could do it seems the most promising form of electricity we have available!! i have also watched discovery channel shows where they talk about the types of things they are researching to do solar cells and different kinds of fuels..... whoever harnesses these alternatives is going to own this next century. it could be the US if we weren't just the greatest just because we say so and rest on our laurels.

I read online about a home that incorporates heat storage in their basement. It has a 6 ft wide x 15 foot long x 6 ft tall reinforced concrete structure filled to the brim with sand. Inside the sand pit there were copper pipes that snaked back and forth to form a sort of loop. The whole thing was capped with concrete and water proofed.

In the daytime, a row of windows facing south warms not only the concrete floor of the living room but windows extend below about a foot or so to allow sunlight to strike the sand pit. So it gets passively warmed in the daytime. The homeowner also has a solar heater that runs solar hot water through the sand all day long. In the evening a separate set of copper pipes takes the heat out of the sand and distributes it through the radiant flooring in other parts of the house, (the mass of the living room floor keeps that area warm through the night).

In the summer, the process is reversed; the sand soaks up excess heat from the house during the day and radiates it away at night, keeping the house cool.

Molten salt would be the same idea, just allowing much, much higher temperatures to be stored.

Another I have heard of is a similar arrangement west south (northern house) clerestory windows that light the house, but have another set of glass panes that forms a plenum, the warm air from the space is pumped to the basement where 18tons of coarse gravel are warmed.
I think I saw it on 'Greenest Homes' Planet Green. Water is more accessible here. We also wish to collect rain for the veggie gardens from the roof.

The water/heated air is the heat transfer medium. Not to nitpick, just a little correction.

I think it's a workable idea if the plenum is mostly facing south (as long as the building envelope is tight and well insulated it should provide much if not all of your heat).

In the dead of winter, if you're not getting enough heat you could get some full length mirrors and mount them on the north side of the house on so they reflect sunshine onto the north wall of the house, it'll warm the wall and any that goes in through windows will provide much needed light (most homes have far too many north-facing windows anyway).

Upon rereading your post I see you plan to use water as the heat storage medium. The trouble with water is that it gives up its heat too readily.

How many hours of heat storage do you need?

...is that it moves out of the liquid phase at such a comparatively low temperature.

green tech research and development, and that is because oil/coal/gas are so firmly entrenched......

We cannot afford to do the entire house at one go.
Our plan was to get the solar water heater. check.

Now we have to build the rest of the system and it is going have to be a piece at a time.

We still need to buy balance of system, it will be totally off-grid. We also want to PV our well pump.

The house is going to need a total gut and redo and it is going to take time.
The rooms will be redone one at a time and the pex will go under the floor as we do each.
It is a modular house on pier foundations with brick skirting around it. No drainage, insulation, or moisture barrier were ever installed down there, we are not the first owners, but it was only 15 or so years old and messed up.

I have done some restoration/rehab before
Lessons learned, only tear one room apart at a time, it always cost 2x as much and takes 3x as long to do as first estimated, plaster dust in breakfast tastes like s***, plastic sheeting and duct tape are necessary to keep that dust out of the rest of the house and you and spouse Will argue at some point in there.

Depending on the kind of place you live in there are strategies to be more comfortable even apartments and save $.
We plan on radiant because the house is large and all one level and can be zoned easier than any other heating arrangement.

after we lost our previous single wide 1970s trailer in a fire. that thing was awful!! no matter what we did to try to keep the heat in we were basically just bleeding heat everywhere. community action came in and replaced our windows with the same windows that had already been in there!! what a waste of money!! we have our house paid off so we are trying to improve it now. we replaced all the windows and will be putting new siding on and block underneath in the spring. want to wrap the house as well considering this is a 1996 and when they manufactured it they did the bare minimum which we found out when the wind blew off pretty much the whole one side of the siding. my husband was out there in the wind and rain putting it back up. but the wind just comes right through the walls. not good for energy efficiency.

we too are doing one room at a time but can't afford to change the carpet much less do anything extra. it will take so long maybe we'll have the house the way we want it in time to pass it on to the kids. uggh. but they aren't going to do anything to stop that gravy train of money to oil and gas. they line the pockets of our 'representatives' making it quite certain there is no representation actually going on.

i definitely agree that the oil companies have no reason to be getting any money from us. they make so much money as it is!! here, let's give them more!! we need to invest in renewable energy and ways to use LESS energy as well. like the CFL bulbs i have put in every light fixture I couild. if i could afford the ones to put in my dimmable dining room i would!! as it is I don't have the covers on several light fixtures because otherwise I couldn't use the CFLs in them.

Everyone I know who's remodeling are doing it just as you describe: one room at a time. And it's a smart way too because you learn as you go along and by the time you're done with the whole house you have all the know how (and probably all the tools) to build your own house the next time. And any mistakes only affect one room (most likely).

Temperature isn't the game, energy is. Helium ballons can go higher than most airplanes. That doesn't mean balloons can replace jets. The "problem" is collecting the energy when it is available, and then applying it where and when it is needed. There are losses in those processes and they can be exteremely large.

Was this sent to Obama, because if he had this before the SOTU it would have been the focal point of the speech?

The only distinction I can see is that smelting requires high temperatures over an extended period of time. That is where the molten salt thermal storage comes in. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smelting Everything else would be the same as current processes.

Solar Tres, a solar power plant in Spain, uses a molten salt thermal storage to enable 16 hours of energy storage. It's all in sizing and proper engineering. Larger solar collectors and larger volume of storage expands the number of hours of usable heat energy.

but having been around smelting plants as a kid, I will believe it when I see it.

Larger than it currently is, to be sure, particularly in desert climates... but small overall.

Have you see photos of Solar Tres? Did you know that you could build 60-70 of them right next to one another and you still wouldn't generate what some single nuclear reactors put out?

Really... were you to take the average expected generation into account... you would have to build 100 of them to match some of the modern reactors. And even if you took the time to do that, you would still run into cold, cloudy, winter months where you could go days without any significant power generation at all.

Of course we could expect the prices to come down... but at 200 million Euro (?) per unit, you would be spending quite a bit more (as well as eating up massive portions of the landscape).

I think you're taking the point about Solar Tres too literally. I'm not saying that a duplicate of Solar Tres should be built at each factory or processing plant. I only brought it up as an example of how molten salt storage can be used to extend useful heat well beyond the peak daylight hours.

I suppose you haven't read very many of my posts so you couldn't possibly be expected to know that I favor a multi-faceted approach to getting us off of fossil fuels. Nuclear power, solar PV, solar thermal, geothermal power plants and geothermal heating and cooling, tidal power, and wind power must all be advanced at the same time. We need as much of them all as we can get. We also need to stop driving fossil fuel burning vehicles and drive electric cars and trucks. There is no silver bullet to end the tyranny of oil and coal. It has taken over 100 years for those two poisons to insinuate themselves so deeply into our lives, economies and societies. We do not, however, have 100 years to get off of them. My best guess is that we will suffer climate catastrophes if we do not end fossil fuel use within the next 10 years. We will probably survive it but we won't be happy about it at all.

The time for slow, steady progress was 1979 when Pres. James Earl Carter started his energy independence plan for America that focused on coal gasification, energy efficiency, green building codes, and electric cars. Then the idiot voters put Ronny Raygun in office and he did all he could to undo everything Carter started. The only lasting benefit was the Energy Star program as far as I can tell. Then Ronnie went under the desk for oil execs and gave them everything they asked for in return for them getting us off of foreign oil. Just like a two bit whore who is tossed out the door when you're done with her, big oil took all the subsidies and tax breaks but gave nothing back to the President except the walk of shame back to the White House the next morning. Perpetual dumbass that he was he kept up the pretense for the nation. Now we're 30 years too late to take baby steps or carefully study every little option that might come along. We need bold, decisive steps toward green energy and toward the end of fossil fuel use.

the whole shit and shebang.
If only we'd stayed on the Carter plan we'd be well on our way to energy independence today without a world heating up due to co2 like we find ourselves with now. Of course we'd have had to have kept our manufacturing in the good ole USA where we have or had good sound environmental laws back then too. As it is now our manufacturing is off to countries that have little or no environmental laws at all.

Only thing is, Carter's plan would have had us 100% energy independent by the year 2000.

Would there have been a 9/11 if we hadn't needed to be anywhere near the middle east in the 1990s? I dunno. Would we have it one hell of a lot better in this country? Damn straight!

the neoCONs made a pledge amongst themselves after watergate that they were going to have to buy up the news, both the printed and the airwaves to get their message out and they proceeded to do just that and look where we are today, up shit creek without a paddle like no one could have imagined the day tricky dick resigned.
We're here by design not by chance and thats what pisses me off about the whole thing I watched it happen. knowing full well where we would end up. sunsabitchen bunch of crooked bastids anyway.

Thanks for reminding me. It's like the Dems in congress are F**KING idiots (or have been looking the other way). Each time they let a huge media merger go through, allowed 1 person to own tv, radio and newspapers in a single market, watched as right wing radio swept across the country, I got more and more disgusted. I kept on thinking they were just biding their time, waiting for a big enough disaster to justify cleaning house.

Well, we had that disaster in '08 and the Dems have done nothing about any of that, the opposite in fact.

One party rule in this third world sh*t hole from here on out...

I'd like to think we as a country is better than this but I guess the proof is in the pudding as they say.

Our problem is, in my way of thinking anyway, the dems that we have today for the most part are as dirty as the reptilicans are. Scratching each others backs like the ole chums they've become.

http://www.gwu.edu/explore/mediaroom/newsreleases/georgewashingtonuniversityprofessordevelopscarbondioxidefreemethodofproducingiron



It's relatively new but I've seen studies as far back as the 90s demonstrating that it's possible. Without the use of the grid, you save a lot of money on energy usage.

The video linked to in the OP was an eye-opener for me. Especially when they said that the temperature achieved by that 6' wide mirror is 3,500 degrees Centigrade, hotter than any known material can withstand. That was the key for me. Parabolic mirrors are relatively cheap to build so there should be a wealth of potential uses for concentrated sunlight in industry. Using fossil fuels is not only harmful to the planet, it's also darned expensive. Sunlight? I don't think they're going to be able to meter that anytime soon.

Thanks for posting.

You can't just scream we're saved and instantly deploy it. You need to zone sites, develop specific designs for said applications, and then dedicate industrial capacity towards the production. You also need to secure funding and go through the state and federal licensing boards, all while competing with existing developed and deployed products, which are cheaper than your product on a $/MWh basis. The problem is inertia, but if you think you have a better mouse trap then please, find investment funding, get engineers and legal experts employed, hire a construction firm, get a contract with a manufacturing plant, and go ahead and do it.

Now and forever, whether we like it or not....

True. You have to build large numbers of really, really big parabolic mirrors and the hotter temps you need means the mirrors have to be that much more perfect (focusing on a smaller target with no scatter). The target material and all the pipes would need to have a higher melting point than the temperatures you are working with (what good would it be if the whole thing just melted on the first summer day?). Molten salt storage would allow you to maintain a stable temperature inside the production area.

It's not easy, but once built the fuel is basically free forever. Just keep the mirrors clean and keep them pointed at the sun (tracking the sun is well understood and not expensive).

The point is, a 6' wide mirror is large enough to produce temperatures far higher than most industrial processes require today. Is it a panacea? Have I solved all the world's troubles? No. But it's something to think about. And maybe some genius who is designing a factory next year will think, "why not use the free energy of the sun" at least for part of the heat energy needed.

"And maybe some genius who is designing a factory next year will think, "why not use the free energy of the sun" ..."

And what would make you think that they haven't? You do know that solar furnaces already exist right? The cost of energy in processes like this is huge. It is why the frequently locate them near rivers or dams, to utilize that source of energy. Alaternately, they build railroad tracks right past them to brink in coal. You really think no one has ever considered using a solar furnace when designing or retrofitting an industrial facility? What will drive them to actually doing it will be when the economics work out. That's the total process economics, not just the fuels costs.

When the sun isn't shining, there is an issue. And unless there is a connection between all of the solar collection devices around the world, there will be times when there is no generation.

Storage can be momentum, chemical, compression, potential energy, etc.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&newwindow=1&q=advantages+of+distributed+generation&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=

A grid is composed of MANY different sources of generation that all work together. Just like now, when there is an unscheduled outage caused by a year long shut down of a nuclear power plant, there are myriad other sources that keep the system working.

The same goes for a distributed grid based on renewables. To isolate one contributor to the grid and to portray that as representative of the grid itself shows a complete lack of understanding of the nature of the beast we are dealing with.

ETA:


The Role of Energy Storage with Renewable Electricity Generation
Technical Report NREL/TP-6A2-47187
January 2010

Paul Denholm, Erik Ela, Brendan Kirby, and Michael Milligan

In terms of solar, the grid in America is approximately 3 hours of time difference from coast to coast. So at best we would get 8am est to maybe 5pm pst. And then we wait until the next day for sun. If we include wind, it's another subject. Aside from distribution, the "grid" evens out the fluctuations. It doesn't store a thing.

And so my argument is kind of weak, since wind is a part of the subject. Between wind and solar, the fluctuations might even out to something usable.

Calm nights occur regularly.

The problem with both wind and solar (and tidal) has never been intensity. They've all got mind-bogglingly large quantities of energy. The problem is consistency. They all produce gobs of power at certain times, and none at other times.

That means they're probably a good replacement for natural gas peaking plants, which only run as-needed. The problem is we're trying to replace base-load coal plants. And solar, wind or a solar/wind combination can't do that. What's needed is a way to store the energy when you're getting gobs of it so you can use it when it's calm/dark.

There's some theoretical designs involving liquid sodium as a thermal mass, but that's only a good fit for thermal solar. PV and wind don't generate power via heat, so to use thermal mass you'd have to have two generating plants: one from the PV/wind, and a turbine for thermal. Similar issue for using something like a flywheel, or pumping water.

Ideally, battery technology would advance enough to make it practical to store the electricity in an enormous battery, but there's really nothing on the horizon there.

Now, none of this is to say that energy storage is an impossible problem. But saying there's a crapload of energy in the sunlight striking the Earth doesn't change the fact that without a tested and debugged energy storage system solar can't replace coal. But we'll get there eventually.

Currently we simply do not have the materials necessary to make electric vehicles using current designs at the level necessary to build out our storage in enough time to abate CO2 before it causes catastrophic climate change.

V2G = vehicle to grid, using batteries in vehicles to power the grid when they're sitting around doing nothing.

it would already be done. More to the point, draining the batteries of idle vehicles is a really, really bad idea. Since it makes them no longer vehicles.

V2G is just a synergy between two groups trying to get wider adoption/subsidies/support for their pet cause.

The batteries themselves are sitting there being unused. It's a good idea, but the material requirements are very high. You need hundreds of millions of these kwh battery packs, and you need hundreds of millions of charging stations (that discharge, too). In that vein I agree that they're trying to get support for their pet cause, that's a cool idea, but will not be implemented to any significant extent.

Solar and wind do compliment each other very nicely, though.

I wake up after a calm night and get in my electric vehicle. Unfortunately, I can't go to work because my battery was drained powering the grid and I no longer have the range to get there.

That's why it's a terrible idea that will never be implemented: They're hoping people buy electric cars so that they can make electric cars less reliable.

I'd suggest you find, download and read this NREL document by some of the most knowledgeable people we have on the grid. If you have questions just ask.

It is clear that high penetration of variable generation increases the need for all flexibility
options including storage,


Your spampasted material isn't a defense that significant storage isn't necessary (in fact just the opposite)... it's a defense that each individual generation site does not need to have it's own individual storage.

As usual you try far to hard to find a "gotcha" instead of reading for comprehension. I said that storage isn't the limiting factor that was claimed and the paper shows precisely that. We do not need to wait for anything to deploy a 100% renewable grid.

The poster said that "storage is the issue" and you said "not really"... that the magic grid will take care of it.

I said that storage isn't the limiting factor that was claimed

Yep... and you were wrong. Anything even approaching a 100% renewable grid requires massive amounts of storage (or INCREDIBLY MASSIVE overbuilding).

And the NREL paper is equally clear. Your characterizations are nothing more than self-serving spin by a dedicated proponent of nuclear power.

Clear that you were wrong... and clear that you're trying to spin away from it now.

And the NREL paper is equally clear

Yep... it clearly says that trying to push past about 20% (even to 30%) penetration would require storage... yet you try to use it to support a 100% renewable grid without significant storage?

Please... it's obvious that you're pushing... but do you really expect any rational DUers to be buying when your product smells that bad?

Your characterizations are nothing more than self-serving spin by a dedicated proponent of nuclear power

Lol... five bonus points to the DUer who can correctly label the logical fallacies

Bzzzt!

What is tu quoque?
What is a red herring?
What is argumentum ad hominem?

Not that he makes it difficult. :)

Your post discusses the integration of variable sources into the grid. That's not what I'm talking about.

This is the issue:
If the power grid used all solar and wind, where would the electricity come from on a calm night?

Your options:
1) It doesn't. You have a blackout.
2) You massively over-build your generation capacity so calm/dark areas can be served by windy/sunny areas.
3) You come up with a practical massive energy storage system.

1 and 2 are not feasible. That leaves 3. 3 is solvable, but no one has fielded a technology to solve it. There are ideas, but they haven't been proven yet.

I highly recommend actually reading the posts you're responding to, as well as your literature before posting a reply. It avoids foolish mistakes.

Just because the grid is eating energy from your batteries at night doesn't stop you from putting online cogen or natural gas. Which btw is exactly what every renewable plan has as a primary backup. So you get a few weeks out of the year of very calm winds (such as UK's past two winters), you fall back to fossil fuels.

You are expecting people to willingly let the power company "drain their cars".

Whether their car would actually be drained isn't relevant. It becomes a "tragedy of the commons" problem and that will prevent implementation.

What would ultimately happen is that gas/cogen would kick in in the event of very cool still nights.

In many areas, the peak needs are in the afternoon. Some of the graphs show the vehicle charging up at work and then being drained in the afternoon just before the ride home.

You wrote:
Your post discusses the integration of variable sources into the grid. That's not what I'm talking about.
This is the issue:
If the power grid used all solar and wind, where would the electricity come from on a calm night?"


The characteristic you are trying to talk about is called being a dispatchable power source. What is now in place is relevant to your question - coal, natural gas, nuclear and hydro are the largest contributors. All of these are to some degree "dispatchable".

In the context of the NREL paper variable generation IS wind and solar. The grid that is built on wind and solar is going to be comprised of a wide variety of energy sources and strategies for delivering power to the end user; onshore wind, offshore wind, solar PV, solar thermal, geothermal, biofuels, wave/current/tidal and isothermic is the list covering most of the generation.

Of those solar thermal, geothermal, biofuels, wave/current/tidal and isothermic are completely dispatchable. To a degree so are wind and solar PV.

Part of the pricing of electricity in the wholesale market is how dispatchable it is. Wind and solar PV do earn credit (money) for being dispatchable, but they don't earn much; while sources like natural gas or geothermal plants can earn a lot.

If we have millions of windmills distributed over the offshore areas and across the land there is ALWAYS going to be a basic level of electricity flowing into the grid from wind.

This is a study grounded in reality that you might like to read:



(PNAS stands for Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)


Forget for a moment your question about quiet nights and consider what happens when you turn on the lights in your house. Does that additional demand created by your individual home require the power company to find additional generation the moment you flip the switch? No, of course it doesn't.

That is because the grid is a HUGE interconnected system. When you turn ON something, odds are very good that someone else is turning OFF something.

What about large swings in aggregated consumer behavior or large, industrial users?

That is when dispatchable power (including storage) comes into play.

What your question boils down to is this in, say, 2030:
What do we do when the wind reaches a low point and it is dark?

Answer: We continue doing what we've always done. We rely on the rest of the grid to meet the demand.

The NREL paper to some degree presupposes you know this information and it makes clear that your scenario isn't realistic while explaining 1) the way dedicated storage isn't needed and 2) how storage is but one more part of the grid that will be rolled out as its economic niche matures.

We can use natural gas and/or biofuels to perform the same dispatch function but as we get more and more renewable power on the grid that will result in greater and greater inefficiency as the amount of power from renewables increasingly exceeds low point demands. This creates an economic niche perfectly suited for storage.

There are currently a wide array of viable proven storage technologies on the shelf including but not limited to gravity storage (pumped hydro and others), various chemical batteries (including those that will go in vehicles and homes), various forms of thermal storage, compression and flywheels.

Storage is currently experiencing rapid growth that is part of the move towards more efficient management of the grid, but it isn't the limiting factor for increased renewable penetration that you believed it to be.

The characteristic you are trying to talk about is called being a dispatch-able power source.

You just scan every post trying to figure out which of your spam caches can be used, don't you?

His point has nothing whatsoever to do with dispatch-ability. That's important on FAR shorter time frames (and in smaller amounts) than he's talking about. If you have three cold cloudy days in a row with little wind... saying "dispatch-able" doesn't help you. Dispatch-ability (of other generation sites) helps offset some of the short-term variability of wind power... it doesn't do anything for more significant drops.

This is a study grounded in reality that you might like to read:

And once again... if you understood what you were posting, you would recognize that it destroys your claims.

First of all... it does not say "there is ALWAYS going to be a basic level of electricity flowing into the grid from wind." - It says just the opposite. It says that even with a dramatically diverse (geographically) grid of wind generators, you still have dozens of points during the month when you have far less power generation than you're counting on.

Second... you should try comparing that graph to one from an actual grid that includes real base generation capacity. At this scale you would see nothing but a perfectly straight line.

Third... you really should take a look at where that zero line is on the second graph and compare it to the label generating capability of a single site. IOW... even if it were a straight line, you have eleven sites spread up and down the east coast reliably generating the peak capacity of how many sites?


What do we do when the wind reaches a low point and it is dark?

Answer: We continue doing what we've always done. We rely on the rest of the grid to meet the demand.

And what makes up the rest of the grid? (THAT, btw is what his post was about). Coal plants that are only used 20 days a year but are constantly staffed and maintained because you don't know which 20 days that will be? Oh wait... I bet it's excess capacity at wind sites elsewhere in the country, right? Better check that third point above.

It appears that the flaw in your reasoning is you treat the grid as a generator. That the grid will always be able to create power from something.

And that's not true. The grid is a distribution system. The power must be generated somewhere and it can not be stored.

Let's go with an artificially simple example to try and get my point across:
My town in upstate NY is powered by a nearby windmill and a nearby solar plant. To get power through the night, we'd have to rely on the windmill, since there's no sun and no energy storage.
To cover the possibility of a calm night (note: Not dead calm. Just less windy than expected), we have to build another windmill, let's say in North Dakota.
But there's times when both upstate NY and ND are calm. So to cover that possibility, we'll also have to build another windmill off the coast of Maine.
So, to reliably get 1 windmill worth of power, we had to build 3 windmills. We had to massively over-build capacity. That's very expensive, since a lot of the time that overcapacity will be idle.

Replace the extra windmills with other forms of generation, and you get the same result: we have to massively over-build capacity. And in my example, we've also invented high-temperature superconductors so that there's no line losses from all the separate plants. In reality, we'd have to build even more capacity in ND and ME to compensate for line loss.

And now, on to some glaring errors in your post:

Some electricity. But to get enough electricity, we would have to massively over-build so that there's enough capacity to handle calm winds. If it's only windy in the southern half of the country, the south needs double the generating capacity in order to power the northern half. And keep in mind the rated output of a windmill is at the ideal wind speed. Higher or lower wind speeds reduce output.


Actually, it does. Turning on a light switch causes an infinitesimal drop in voltage on the grid. The grid has enough capacitance to absorb the transient of a few light switches, but generators will need to send out a tiny bit more power to handle the new load. Industrial customers, such as aluminum smelters, must make careful arrangements with the grid operators for when they power on their equipment, since that equipment is a much larger drain. Because once again, the grid is not a source of electricity. It is only a distribution system.


And my entire point is we can't. The grid could bring us power, but only if we've overbuilt generating capacity to make more power, or built massive energy storage. Because the grid is not a power source.


"Dedicated" storage would mean one giant battery pack per windmill. And that's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is an enormous battery pack near a bunch of windmills to collect the excess power when the wind is blowing at ideal speed.
Your alternative requires building excess windmills so that there's enough capacity attached to the grid to generate power for "calm" areas.


No, there are a wide array of ideas for storage. AFAIK, no one has actually scaled any of them up to sufficient size to be practical as the energy storage of the grid. And as I mentioned in my previous post, many of these mechanisms are not directly compatible with the energy sources you are trying to match them with. Wind and PV can't directly give you thermal storage, for example. Which again means another type of generator, as well as the inefficiencies of converting from wind -> electricity -> heat -> electricity.


Again, you are not bothering to actually read what I'm writing.
Additional renewable sources on the current grid works fine.
Having only renewable sources, or renewable sources as base load, on the current grid will not work fine. That needs storage or massive overcapacity.

Do you have any links to discussions or papers that talk about the overcapacity requirements in grids that connect only renewable sources? I was thinking about this issue yesterday in relation to the increased requirements for gas peakers to support wind farms, and I realized that the amount of peaker capacity required would be directly related to the amount of overcapacity of the intermittent sources. I’d like to start getting a handle on what that tradeoff looks like in economic, environmental and logistical terms.

The problem for the wind-only scenario, as you point out, is that no matter how big the grid is and how broad the geographical distribution of generation sources, there will still, statistically, be times when the grid contains virtually no electricity. These times may be very rare, but they would happen. Even half an hour of 10% power could have significant social consequences.

We can reduce the severity of the inevitable slumps by adding diversity in the types of generation, but if the primary form of generation is wind the degree of mitigation provided by tidal, solar, geothermal and biomass and hydro would probably be fairly small relative to a continental terawatt-level demand.

If we wish to avoid periodic brownouts and blackouts altogether using only renewqable sources, we have three choices: 1: base load generators; 2: storage; 3: fuel-driven peaker plants.

Since coal and nuclear provide most of the base load power today, and they are not to be considered, that takes option 1 off the table, and we are left with storage and peakers.

There is currently no effective grid-scaled storage that is widely available - pumped hydro is the only one I know of and it’s limited by geography. The probability that we will develop and deploy such massive storage capacity over the next 20 years is remote IMO - especially in the presence of other cheaper options.

That leaves fuel driven peaker plants. Most renewable fuels have very low net energy, don’t scale well and have unexpected consequences - look at the problems we’ve had with replacing vehicle fuels. Algal biodiesel is interesting, but has not yet been proven, let alone deployed. Production scale is likely to be an issue for it as well. The only fuel source that is available in significant quantities world-wide right now and for the foreseeable future is natural gas.

Faced with this dilemma, I expect that most utilities (world-wide, not just in the USA) will opt for existing base load generation supplemented by up to 20% wind where it’s practical. Since most of the existing electrical generation is base load coal and nuclear (over 70% of all global electricity), this leaves us all with an enormous frackin’ problem.

Except perhaps some nonsense that you've yet again made up out of whole cloth.

The Prius uses 1 kg of neodymium and 12 kg of lanthanum. Converting half the world's cars to electric vehicles with the same material requirement would require 300,000 tonnes of neodymium and 3,600,000 tonnes of lanthanum. And of course that use competes for neodymium with wind turbines that require 1 tonne per MW of nameplate capacity. Given how far this would outstrip current world production, we're going to need some fancy engineering to get around that material limitation.

That rare earths aren't a limiting factor in electric vehicle manufacture using current designs? That designs that don't use rare earths are commercially available? Or that I'm lying?

...facts don't matter. The belief remains true and others who can't see it are blind.

Also that while are competitive advantages associated with those rare earths, they are not commodities that underpin the success or failure of renewable energy. Long before those improvements became manifest, the renewable sector was growing by leaps and bounds.

Nuclear supporters used to try to push the bogus lithium shortage theme but y'all like that term "rare earths" so much better because it uses "rare" in the name; a fact that gives your attempts to misinform a definite leg up.

Heck... they want to restrict the debate to technologies that are many decades old (and pretend that there's really no difference between Chernobyl and reactors that will be built thirty years from now) if we're talking about nuclear power. They're perfectly ready to assume (likely correctly) that we'll just advance the technology and find a different way to do things is a particular "rare earth" becomes too rare... but nothing apart from their favored technologies will ever benefit from advances.

Nuclear supporters used to try to push the bogus lithium shortage theme but y'all like that term "rare earths" so much better because it uses "rare" in the name; a fact that gives your attempts to misinform a definite leg up.

Lol! One has to wonder how many "guts" a guy has to have to make that kind of a claim after years of pretending that the globe is close to running out of uranium... one of the most common elements around.


And, of course, there's the difference that uranium is plentiful right here in the U.S. - while the supply of many so-called "rare earths" is controlled by China.

Considering battery technology has moved forward at a pace that makes glaciers seem zippy, what should we be basing our estimates on?

Oh, and lithium isn't a rare earth metal. But lithium batteries contain more than just lithium.

The designs need modifying. I did not allege that they cannot be modified. Toyota is looking in to making an engine that uses less Nd.

More of your magic grid nonsense, eh?

A grid is composed of MANY different sources of generation that all work together.

Yep... and that's fine when the vast majority of those sources regularly operate 24/7. All you need is an excess capacity of, say, 20% and you can reliably supply power all year long. If a nuclear plant is refueling at the same time a natural gas plant is undergoing maintenance and there isn't a lot of wind blowing... the other generation options pick up the slack and nobody has a problem.

But 20% (or probably even 200%) overbuilding doesn't get the job done if your power mix is 40% wind, 40% solar and 20% hydro. It doesn't matter how spread out your magic grid is... you lose all of that generation at night if you don't have significant storage. It's also undeniably true that there are days without much wind... even over large portions of the country. You will run into weeks where there isn't much wind... but there are lots of clouds (and, of course, it gets dark pretty much every night).

You could have a magic grid with five times the peak capacity of the modern grid and still not be able to guarantee that people would have power when they need it.

I don't expect you to apply any original thought to the post, but indulging in that fantasy for a moment... go and dig up that graph of how stable wind power could be with wind farms all up and down the east coast (offshore). Even with a grid about as spread out as it possible in the country... there were still a couple days with almost no power... and even that steady norm was a small fraction of the combined peak capacity of the turbines.


I feel I must also note... that you look particularly foolish arguing that storage isn't critical by spampasting an article that very clearly says that storage is critical even at 20-30% penetration.

But he has quietly stopped pimping V2G despite the fact that it is integral in any renewable energy plan.

It required "hundreds of posts" (as you say) because it was subject to the same denialist nonsense from the nuclear supporters that every other element of a renewable grid has to endure here.

Just because you stuble upon your rock-battery-of-the-moment-will-save-us idea of the day, doesn't mean that others haven't heard of it... or that it's a workable idea.

Before I started posting about V2G it had never been discussed at DU. I was collaborating on a paper with the developer of the concept at the time.

or does your math not extend that far?

http://www.udel.edu/V2G/docs/V2G-Cal-2001.pdf

What ever happened to your magic rock batteries anyway? There was supposed to be a full-scale model up and running by now, wasn't there? Hmmm... not as "off the shelf" as you expected it to be, eh?

I know Kempton's papers, they are not the issue.

IOW... duh... it wasn't exactly classified information.

Assuming that when you learn something is the first that anyone has heard about it isn't particularly rational. Most kids get past that developmental stage right after "object permanence" and the recognition that mommy can still see you even though you've covered your own eyes.

Time to make the big leap kristopher.

edit: same with EEstor which was popular among conservatives.

...and advertising that is merely an attempt to raise venture capital.

I like the idea (in theory) too... it just isn't ready for prime time. And some of their claims were overblown.

I realize that it requires technological advancements that V2G proponents overlook and that in the end it promotes the drive to work culture that our society doesn't need.

A certain former Joint Chief once said, in two after-dinner speeches in Washington, that a certain form of energy generation would make electricity "too meap to cheter" ... or something like that. Since that day, no fewer than four generations of people who have disliked that form of energy generation have laughed themselves silly over those remarks, believing they could ridicule away things they disliked. This includes some of them who spoke in utopian terms about "free energy forever".

Converting to 100% "Green" energy has, in fact, been cost-estimated. In an article in the November 2009 Scientific American, Mark Z. Jacobson and Mark Delucci estimated that a world-wide "sun/wind/wave" (or "SWW") system would cost $100 trillion over 20 years to build. The grid upgrades and storage systems would be extra. I have little doubt that it's doable, but both fossil and nuclear energy generation are less expensive -- by at least an order of magnitude.

There are a great many ways that "green" energy can be used profitably. And these energies can be used residentially for a basic level of service. But we still have energy demands which can only be satisfied by stable, dispatchable, always-ready energy generation -- that is, a grid and a number of big, stable energy generators. Solar and wind energy can even take a little of the load off that system -- but not all of it. Unless, that is, we want to put over $100 trillion into the effort, when we can get the same for less than one-tenth the outlay (which is still a HUGE investment) using other, less-loved technologies.

There's no free energy with which to run our civilization, anywhere. We have to choose for zero carbon, minimum resource use, and pay the price that reality-based engineering demands.

Then we have to accommodate ourselves to make the best fit with this new energy regime.

Then we have to get there.

--d!

I'm afraid that naysayers and those who advocate "wait and see" or other efforts to slow down the process of ending fossil fuel use will win the day. The rest of us will pay the price for their lack of vision, lack of courage, or entrenched interests. If that should be the case, $100 Trillion will seem like chump change compared to the consequences we are surely heading for.

I have my doubts as to whether a 100% nuclear conversion would cost only 10% of a wind conversion (my back of the envelope noodling says nuclear will cost about the same), but the rest of your points get a :thumbsup: from me.

...I'll take the nuclear haters words with a grain of salt.

A certain former Joint Chief once said, in two after-dinner speeches in Washington, that a certain form of energy generation would make electricity "too meap to cheter" ... or something like that.
---------------------------------------------------

Actually, the person that coined the phrase was an AEC Chairman, Lewis Strauss:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_cheap_to_meter

...the phrase was coined by Lewis Strauss, then Chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, who in a 1954 speech to the National Association of Science Writers said:

"Our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter... It is not too much to expect that our children will know of great periodic regional famines in the world only as matters of history, will travel effortlessly over the seas and under them and through the air with a minimum of danger and at great speeds, and will experience a lifespan far longer than ours, as disease yields and man comes to understand what causes him to age."

It is often (understandably but erroneously) assumed that Strauss' prediction was a reference to conventional uranium fission nuclear reactors....
However, Strauss was actually referring to hydrogen fusion power and Project Sherwood, which was conducting research on developing practical fusion power plants.

PamW

I have personally melted concrete with a fresnel lense from an old screen TV. The power of the sun is incredibly insanely amazingly awesome.

Well worth the listen regarding solar energy in Germany:
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/10/15/hermann_scheer_1944_2010_german_lawmaker

Scheer's bio (from DemocracyNow.org):

...doing something.

It doesn't do shit. As I pointed out elsewhere, solar energy can't even run the computers dedicated to saying how great solar energy is. I very much doubt that there is one person among the hundreds of thousands of people who post here who has ever run their car for a day on solar energy.

All solar afficinados are engaged in toxic wishful thinking designed to produce consumerist guilt assauging fantasies.

It's a rob the poor to fund the rich tax break scheme and nothing more.

But what's more doable -- multi-terabuck industrial heroics, or a realistic definition of "needs"?

Not to mention smarter and more likely...

Our existing system can provide our needs many times over. Likewise solar.

It's the waste and the endless consumption of consumerism that can't be sustained.

In the Pacific Northwest, passive solar can, and does, reduce the cost of heating homes to utterly trivial amounts ($10-30/month maximums at current energy prices). Of course, you don't get to have 12000 square foot McMansions, nor do you get to have the traditional building trades build them using manufactured imitations of traditional materials, but that's a different issue than whether you can keep a family warm enough to be comfortable all winter.

In sensibly designed cities and suburb-like housing, the amount of energy expended on transportation could be reduced by 90%. But you have to design cities sensibly, and we don't have the intellectual or legal infrastructure to do so.

If we give up consumerism as a means of providing happiness, the energy costs of manufacturing and industry could likewise be drastically reduced, since we could just quit manufacturing disposable crap altogether. This is good because there's whole new kinds of industry that are going to need increasing amounts of energy, like providing clean, safe water, and redefining and re-engineering 'efficient' recycling to mean least energy use, least raw materials use, least pollution, greatest quality of employment, instead of most profit to the owning class.

Has anyone seen the latest commercial from BMW. Listen to the words in the song that is played:


That's not a unique example. Coke is life. Drink Pepsi and you'll have fun. Drink this beer and you'll have loads of friends and attractive members of the opposite sex! A Pizza Hut pizza will guarantee that you are surrounded by friends. Etc.

Mega corps spend billions each year on psychiatrists, sociologists, behavioral scientists, etc., to figure out how to push your buttons and manipulate you just enough to get you to buy their crap. They don't give a crap if you're actually happy with it after you've made your purchase. The one and only thing they care about is removing the money from your pocket and putting it into theirs. They only make products because they can't be like the big banks, making money off of everyone else's money.

The consumer society is a lie. It is also deadly for our planet.