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Power Science

Scientific American's Solar Grand Plan 122

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the grand-plans-require-grand-effort dept.
Maria Energia writes "Scientific American Magazine proposes a huge, far-reaching plan to get solar energy powering 69% of America's electricity needs by 2050. The costs and technology are ready, they say, but huge changes to our transmission system will be needed."
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Scientific American's Solar Grand Plan More

Scientific American's Solar Grand Plan

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  • I remember way back in high school (okay 4 years ago) and in some college classes the teachers were always talking about how the US power grid was a joke even compared to some 3rd world countries. And now with the whole terrorism thing, it's even worse to have a crappy power grid. I read a thing about how other countries have way better and more adaptive and efficient and safe power grids like Japan and stuff. We needed to replace it like decades ago but nobody ever wants to pay for it. So I figure if w
    • George W. should've put those billions we sunk into the war into this project instead. We could've gotten out of the Middle East, and we be much more secure politically and economically. Instead, we threw all of those billions down the toilet, with a less stable Middle East that likes us a lot less, and a rickety economy.

  • The article (Score:5, Insightful)

    by truthsearch ( 249536 ) on Monday January 07, 2008 @05:11PM (#21947328) Homepage Journal
    Instead of a blog post about the article, you can also read the article [sciam.com].

    Of course this /. article is a blog post about the article, but it doesn't need to be a blog post about a blog post about an article...

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Instead of a commenting on a blog post about the article, you could also comment on the article.

      Of course this /. comment is a meta-comment on the /. comment on the /. article which is a blog post about the article, but it doesn't need to be a comment on a blog post about a blog post on a comment about a comment on the article about a blog post.

      Oh forget it I got lost in my own meta-humour. Reminds me of coming to terms with higher order functions in Lisp.

  • War of the Greenies (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DerekLyons ( 302214 ) <fairwater@[ ]il.com ['gma' in gap]> on Monday January 07, 2008 @05:19PM (#21947408) Homepage
    Of course, while the Green factions that are all about energy will be all for this - they'll be fighting the Green factions that are all about saving every tiny scrap of land from human usage.
     
    With the majority of the greenies attention diverted to internecine warfare... the rest of us can get on with building nuclear power plants.
    • The land required by this plan appears to be roughly equivalent to the land required for coal and natural gas mines. So by replacing those mines the land usage would be mostly offset. Plus I'm sure many would agree it's better to place solar panels on top of the ground than to destroy the ground to dig up coal.
      • When the coal is removed - the land can be restored. When the solar panels are in place, they are in place forever. (30,000 square miles is a 175 miles on a side. That's a huge chunk of enviroment.)

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by Mr. Slippery ( 47854 )

          When the coal is removed - the land can be restored.

          You can't restore a mountain after you tear off its top. [grist.org]

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by maxume ( 22995 )
          Are we talking Texas huge here, or Alaska huge, or maybe Canada huge, or like, maybe Pacific huge? Oh wait, you meant South Carolina huge. It's certainly an enormous chunk of land, but it isn't even most of Texas or anything absurd like that.

          Also, you meant that they are in place until they are decommissioned and removed.
          • No, I meant forever. Our demand for energy isn't going away anytime soon. (You think South Carolina sized isn't a huge area and a huge impact on the enviroment? You're a fool.)
            • We already use many times the area of South Carolina just for growing food. What's the big deal?

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by maxume ( 22995 )
              No, I think it's a huge area that would have a huge impact on the environment. I just think it's manageable, and I like hot showers.

              And really, if something made an installation obsolete, the space could be reclaimed.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by arivanov ( 12034 )
          And why exactly am I supposed to care about 175 miles long chunk of desert? In fact it may as well be twice bigger than that. What is important is that it is not in the middle of agricultural land.
      • What about all of that wasted rooftop space in cities and suburbs? They are the ones demanding the power, let them generate some of it. Panels partially shading streets could also offset some of the heating effect cities generate and maybe make streets bearable in the summer plus lower air conditioning power demand.

        These would be photovoltic panels though. I don't think you could build a direct heating system like those in the article in a developed area.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cromar ( 1103585 )
      Save us O Lord, Uranium! Guide us by thy holy glow and spare us from thy Wrath. Thy great and swift Justice teareth the sinner to rags and blighteth his land and seed for 10 score years, even as he blighteth the wicked land of sin Chernobyl. Holy be thy Righteous Reactor and thy Words of Blessing and Routine Maintenance. By following thy Law we are spared. Let all tremble before thee!

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • I agree. I don't understand why more of it isn't used. Solar cells would provide shade, and probably cool the land.

        Does anybody know whether there are sand storms there that could damage the cells?

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Eivind ( 15695 )
          There is a really simple reason this isn't done more:

          Buying, installing and operating the solar powerplant costs MORE than you can expect to make back by selling the generated electricity. It's not profitable, plain and simple.

          That may change: solar cells gets cheaper and better all the time, and electricity has an upwards price-trend. The minute the curves cross, people *will* do this.
          • Mod up

            Maintenance would probably turn out to cost a lot more than people think. Deserts are pretty dusty places on a daily basis to start with. One good dust storm could mean having to clean every mirror (or panel) with water that has to be shipped in. Maybe they could create something like windshield wipers for them.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by arivanov ( 12034 )
        Morocco is already negotiating with the European Community on doing this. So even if you are Algeria, Libya or Chad you are too late for the party. It has already started.

        Neither Libya, not Chad are in possession of the chunk of land which is the closest to the EU. All it takes to connect the grids of Morocco and Spain is 13km. Compared to that Libya-Italy is several hundreds.

        Add to that the fact that Libya is a tribal patchwork whose stability is held by just one man (Chad is a total mess). Kadafi is a fig
    • "Of course, while the Green factions that are all about energy will be all for this - they'll be fighting the Green factions that are all about saving every tiny scrap of land from human usage."

      I think after all of the roof surfaces available are covered with PV cells then we might see that any additional land surfaces needed could be very small. We might be able to get away with roof surfaces and some small amount of desert areas. The New Orleans Superdome roof is 440,000 square feet, almost 10 acres. T
      • Covering roof surfaces won't work for this plan, as they will be too diffuse. Not to mention the plan relies on the vast amount of sun available in the Southwest, not the much smaller amounts available in much of the rest of the country.
         
        Heated his pool in the WINTER? ROFTLMAO. Again, the rest of the country isn't Florida. (My attic only rises above 70F about three months out of the year - and condensation will be a serious problem if I were to put pipes up there.)
        • Well, many Floridans and southerners live in Florida and the south. Maybe they could rely on it, instead of coal, nuclear, and hydro. We need a multiprongered approach, not a 1-size-fits-all.
      • Also, heat exchangers would be useful for shower water, and so on.

  • I read this in the magazine (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jandrese ( 485 ) <kensama@vt.edu> on Monday January 07, 2008 @05:20PM (#21947420) Homepage Journal
    I thought the plan sounded pretty cool, but couldn't help but to think they had glossed over some details that are likely to make the total cost of the plan skyrocket, like the current production rates on Solar Cells or the cost of replacing them every 25 years as they degrade. The biggest problem is that the whole plan is so grandiose and expensive that it would be impossible to get through Congress, even if it does end up saving bucketloads of money in the end. The plan also handwaved through the "What if it's really cloudy over the entire Western US in the middle of winter?" question.

    I do have to say that this was thought out more than most grand energy plans I've seen, but it still smells only maybe 3/4 baked.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nuzak ( 959558 )
      > the cost of replacing them every 25 years as they degrade.

      And current turbines last forever?

      • Re:I read this in the magazine (Score:4, Insightful)

        by jandrese ( 485 ) <kensama@vt.edu> on Monday January 07, 2008 @06:09PM (#21947914) Homepage Journal
        You'd be surprised how old the turbines are at your local power plant. It's the boiler room that generally seems to require the most upkeep (fire is a harsh mistress). Plus, even if they did require replacement the cost of the plant is a lot less than the cost of the gigantic solar grid.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by LWATCDR ( 28044 )
      Well they are planning on using compressed air as a "form" of energy storage.
      I say form because they still burn natural gas with the compressed air. I would say it is 3/4 baked also but it is a start.
    • The point of the article was really as a feasability study. The plan is not perfect but I think that it doesn't have as many holes in it as you say it does. They actually based their estimated energy production off of the amount of sunlight that struck the ground during the darkest of winters. They talked about Photovoltaic but also of concentrated solar. While the mirrors on concentrated solar do break, they last a good long time in general and they last a lot longer then 25 years. They did mention the pro

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dbIII ( 701233 )
      A couple of bizzare things here. First is the blanket 25 year life assumption of photovoltaics - a bit odd since it's solid state and the ones Einstein was looking at in his twenties are probably still working. Local conditions are going to vary this - places with hurricanes every now and again or just high humidity would have a lower life and in other places they would last like the proverbial thousands of year old cast iron pillar in the desert.

      The second bizzare thing is the concept of using photovolta

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Surt ( 22457 )
        They discuss solar thermal in the magazine article. In fact they propose that something like 3/4 of the power will be solar thermal.

        The main advantage of solar (in their view), whether thermal or photovoltaic is the reduction in non-solar input requirements.
    • They may degrade, but you don't have to replace them, the newer cheap plastic printed solar cells maybe, but most will still be pumping out 70-80% of their rated amount in 25 years. Still quite useable since the payback rate is getting down to 10 years.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by KlaymenDK ( 713149 )
      As "afaik_ianal" (918433) states, it's easy to calculate the actual cost/benefit of solar, compared to doing the same for coal. Further, one should factor in not only PV/turbine life time and energy efficiency, but also the energy required to build the power plant in the first place and then to bring the fuel to the plant. None of these latter categories earn any coal plants any points, though the life time and efficiency can indeed be improved upon.

      In that light, it's really not a bad thing to have plants
    • the whole plan is so grandiose and expensive that it would be impossible to get through Congress

      TFA says it would require $420 billion in subsidies over 40 years. That's small compared to the Medicare prescription drug plan, which will cost $724 billion over the next seven years.

  • Sponsored Solar Panels (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wildsurf ( 535389 ) on Monday January 07, 2008 @05:23PM (#21947452) Homepage
    I wrote an article on my blog [benweiss.com] with some related thoughts about solar. In particular, I've considered installing solar panels on my roof, but my geographical region has a tendency to accumulate dust very quickly, so I'd be out on the roof cleaning the panels all the time if I were to have any chance of breaking even.

    So my thought was that some enterprising company should buy up a few acres of land (or rooftops), and let individual homeowners sponsor small batches of solar panels, like 5kw or 10kw, in exchange for some sort of credit on their electric bill. A system like this would dramatically reduce the barriers to entry for individuals who'd like to pay for solar power, as well as vastly increase the economies of scale. Does any system like this currently exist?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Grishnakh ( 216268 )
      I wrote an article on my blog with some related thoughts about solar. In particular, I've considered installing solar panels on my roof, but my geographical region has a tendency to accumulate dust very quickly, so I'd be out on the roof cleaning the panels all the time if I were to have any chance of breaking even.

      Or, you could buy yourself a big air compressor for about $400 at Lowe's, and set up some compressed-air lines and nozzles over your solar panels. Connect this to some sort of electrically-power

      • Re:Sponsored Solar Panels (Score:4, Interesting)

        by wildsurf ( 535389 ) on Monday January 07, 2008 @06:14PM (#21947958) Homepage

        I wrote an article on my blog with some related thoughts about solar. In particular, I've considered installing solar panels on my roof, but my geographical region has a tendency to accumulate dust very quickly, so I'd be out on the roof cleaning the panels all the time if I were to have any chance of breaking even.
        Or, you could buy yourself a big air compressor for about $400 at Lowe's, and set up some compressed-air lines and nozzles over your solar panels. Connect this to some sort of electrically-powered solenoid valve and a timer, and the compressed air will blow off the dust for you. Of course, this will take a small amount of power, but it's a lot easier than climbing onto your roof every week or so.
        The thing is, with home-installed solar, the margins are so narrow that it doesn't take much for it not to be profitable anymore. And when you factor in condensation at night, the dust gets rather caked on; like a car windshield left outside. You can't just blow the dust off; it takes at least soap and a squeegee. In any case, this doesn't help the high cost of actual installation of the panels in a custom location, and wiring it into the house electrical grid, plus the time and expense dealing with permits, etc. For new construction, solar might make sense; but for retrofitting, it's doubtful. However, I think the co-op type idea could really work, and hope somebody makes it happen.

    • So my thought was that some enterprising company should buy up a few acres of land (or rooftops), and let individual homeowners sponsor small batches of solar panels, like 5kw or 10kw, in exchange for some sort of credit on their electric bill. A system like this would dramatically reduce the barriers to entry for individuals who'd like to pay for solar power, as well as vastly increase the economies of scale. Does any system like this currently exist?

      My electric coop is doing something along these lines. Subscribers can elect to pay about .5 cents per KWH more than standard each month (used to be 1.5 cents), up to whatever your lowest monthly KWH usage is. When enough KWH have been subscribed to absorb a wind turbines output, they put one up. It's obviously a little more planned than that, but the point is, the wind turbine generating capacity they put on line is dependent upon the number of subscribers willing to pay extra for it.

      A few bucks a mon

    • What you've described basically sounds like effectively the equivalent of a public company selling equity in the form of securities to raise capital to fund a solar generation plant and issue some kind of dividend after selling the electricity. In which case, yes, that exists, although that would be privatised electricity. Don't see anything wrong with that.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Surt ( 22457 )
      Many power companies offer a 'green energy' plan. You pay an extra 1-4c per kw/h and they build sufficient solar/wind/geothermal plants to cover your energy needs. This is probably as close to what you want as you'll find.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )
      It's not solar, but here in Calgary, Canada, we have the option to pay an extra 20% for some portion of our power bill in order to sponsor the wind farms in southern Alberta. Most of the malls in the city pay the extra and put stickers on their doors to say they're wind powered. The city's rail transit does likewise and there are a few trains painted with a wind theme.
    • First, we create a special legal entity to actually do the building of the solar panels (or whatever else the capital-intensive process is, because this works for just about anything). Then, that legal entity creates a bunch of special pieces of paper, called "shares". (For the ecologically conscious, they don't *have* to be paper anymore -- most are just entries in a database.) These shares are sold to the general public, although in practice buying shares from a new legal entity is sort of risky so onl
  • Cover near useless deserts with solar power then use the power to either convert to hydrogen, or just pump down the power lines. As energy prices rise and solar become more efficient and cheap, you should be able to do the cyclical thing. You know, spend X dollars for solar and land, then after selling energy off, you buy more solar and land. Better yet: go to the stock market and get your X dollars jump started. Once we cover deserts in solar then we start experimenting on solar panels in space to shoo

    • Re:Hasn't solar always been the dream (Score:5, Informative)

      by Grishnakh ( 216268 ) on Monday January 07, 2008 @06:02PM (#21947858)
      Deserts aren't useless; they're filled with lots of natural flora and fauna, just like any other ecosystem, and unlike other ecosystems, are quite delicate.

      For human use, deserts (at least in North America) are excellent farmland for many crops because of all the sunlight and lack of bad weather and natural disasters. They just need irrigation, which has been done here in Arizona for around 1500 years by the Anisazi.

      You don't need land to make solar power. Just stick solar panels on all the "useless" rooftops of all the buildings. The only thing most rooftops do is keep rain out of buildings, so why not cover them with solar panels? Of course, some stupid HOAs will probably scream about it because solar panels don't meed their aesthetic guidelines.

      • They just need irrigation

        Given the rapidly diminishing aquifers [usgs.gov] and the increasing demand for surface water, saying land "just needs irrigation" to be fertile is sort of like saying I "just need to grow wings" to be able to fly.

        • Well, it hasn't been a problem for the past 1500 years. It's only starting to become a problem because of our overpopulation, and our wastefulness with water.
          • Actually, water has been a problem for civilizations throughout history (including the Anisazi mentioned earlier in this thread, whose civilization failed largely because of unforeseen consequences related to their irrigation methods). Water problems have led to the collapse of civilizations that lasted for hundreds of years, though modern technology does alleviate the problem somewhat. Collapse [wikipedia.org] discusses many of these issues in detail.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • "some stupid HOAs will probably scream about it because solar panels don't meed their aesthetic guidelines"

        This is a ridiculous comment, most people (I'd imagine 99%) have aesthetic guidelines and preferences, the truth is we could all save a tonne of money if we weren't so obsessed with aesthetics, but the world would be a drab, boring and colorless place. From an engineering point of view I agree, but from a mathematics, psychological and geometric perspective, I disagree. What we call aesthetics is sy
        • Don't be retarded.

          1) A well-designed solar installation would be extremely attractive. It just wouldn't fit in with the cookie-cutter McMansion styles that are prevalent in many of today's modern American subdivisions, at least according to the battle-axes who run the HOAs.

          2) HOAs are notorious for attempting to ban things which they don't like, even though they're clearly being impractical: people's personal vehicles if they're not parked in a garage, satellite dishes, certain colors of paint, etc. Someh

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Alsee ( 515537 )
        I would be delighted to see solar on every rooftop in the nation - or in the world.

        However I do think it important to point out that a single flat square mile with dedicated professional maintenance would be far cheaper and more efficient than TEN THOUSAND scattered rooftop patches of ten thousand roof-owners and ten thousand power conversion units connecting to the grid and ten thousand separate maintenances and other issues.

        Did I mention ten thousand? Ten thousand for EACH square mile of solar landscape o

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by MobyDisk ( 75490 )
          You are right that it would be more efficient, but it is harder to roll out and more environmentally damaging. I really don't like the idea of having thousands of square miles of land covered in solar panels when I could have every roof on the planet covered. The things really aren't that hard to maintain. There's also political benefits - Imagine a world with very few power companies, because everyone can produce their own. It also means that people who think this is a good idea now can just do it for

  • I stopped reading SA 2 years ago (Score:4, Interesting)

    by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Monday January 07, 2008 @05:35PM (#21947610) Journal
    ...after being a subscriber for 21 years.

    They had exhibited a definite political point of view, no doubt due to the change of editorship. I noticed the new 'tone' of their articles for several months before writing them in 2003, telling them that as a longtime subscriber I was unhappy with the polemic, political stance that they'd decided to take. By 2005, I'd had enough - they no longer were simply describing science or explaining the cutting edge of science discourse; they had decided to become a liberal advocacy magazine and I decided my subscription was better spent on what I was looking for. I've found it in the excellent and much more timely Science News - no political crap, just an update on the newest SCIENCE.

    Hey, they don't need my paltry subscription; I'm sure that despite the two letters I sent, they couldn't care less that I'm gone. But I did what I felt was right, and I'm happy about that.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Atario ( 673917 )

      they had decided to become a liberal advocacy magazine
      [Needs citation]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by IvyKing ( 732111 )
      I stopped subscribing to SA a bit after 2000 for pretty much the same reason that you did and had been a pretty avid reader of the magazine since the mid 1960's. I've continued to subscribe to Science News because, as you said, they continue to focus on science.

      One small example of how SA has gone downhill - they used to be very good at correctly placing the Hale Telescope on Palomar Mountain, but now invariably place it on "Mt. Palomar" (Science News still gets it right). While this may be a really mino

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dbIII ( 701233 )
      Probably not suprising they turned partisan after the loony right has effectively declared war on science. Pity really, I've read a lot of very good issues back to the 1960s but haven't read it in the last 5 years so have to take your word for it.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by astrodud ( 43361 )
      I'm not an SA subscriber, but after seeing the politicization of anti-science that has happened over the past 7 years, it is not surprising to see a pro-science rag take a stand against that.

      Also, it is not surprising to hear some people (ahem) claiming that calling for a grand solar plan is "political". Scientists would say that it is (may be) good public policy, based on the scientific awareness that continuing generation of CO2 will spell big problems for our civilization.

      And well, if that ends up being

  • Subsidies of $400B? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by WoTG ( 610710 ) on Monday January 07, 2008 @06:09PM (#21947918) Homepage Journal
    Why should there need to be subsidies for this? Oil is at $100 per barrel. A few years of this expensive oil, plus a couple years of more mass production, and most of this "plan" will happen on it's own.

    Solar and wind are much closer to being competitive than even a few years ago. Nuclear power is cool again. And who cares what happens with emissions in the US anyway? The greatest emissions increases are going to be in the world's factory, China.

    Find ways to make alternative energy cheaper than fossil fuels and we can forget about this CO2 nonsense and go back to worrying about people starving to death from poverty.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Shihar ( 153932 )
      Oil at $100 does NOTHING to electricity prices. Oil is almost never burned to make electricity. The only time you burn oil to make electricity is when you need to meet a sudden increase in demand. You can turn on a gas turbine very quickly while coal, nuclear, etc takes months or years to turn on. Once you have met the demand, you can simply turn it off. The only thing high oil prices does is make running car off the grid (through hydrogen, batteries, whatever) more attractive. Of course, as soon as y
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Shihar ( 153932 )

          Not yet anyways. Unless another underground lake of crude is found, it might be cheaper to convert coal into synthetic oils through a process known as "Coal Liquefaction".

          Once your coal resources are being used for other things besides generating power, the cost of electricity will go up. How much and how soon is anyones guess at this point however.

          Even this is not a huge worry. Making oil out of coal is fairly expensive. There are a lot of much easier and cheaper ways to get oil. Hell, Canada has as much oil as Saudi Arabia in its shale oil fields (think tar like oil that takes extra processing). Further, the US has a massive coal supply. I think it was projected at being a 250 year coal supply or something like that. There is nothing that can deplete that in the next 100 years.

          The only good reason to think about alternative energies for the g

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by shani ( 1674 )
        The only good reason to worry about where our electricity comes from is for environmental reasons. There is absolutely nothing economically wrong with burning coal for another hundred years or so.

        Well, this plan doesn't posit 100% solar until 2100 or so - and that's starting now.

        But yes, you're right. The US has plenty of coal, all inside US borders.
  • What are they smoking?

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by maxume ( 22995 )
      Ever since power electronics were invented, DC transmission works just fine. It has the advantage of not needing to have huge chunks of grid in phase with each other(so you don't get staged collapses like in 2003).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mudshark ( 19714 )
      Yes, DC transmission. Ever try synchronizing the phase of multiple AC distribution networks? Also, AC has its own set of issues, especially when you get to the > 400KV end of things where corona discharge is problematic. HVDC cuts these losses in half. There's also the elimination of reactive loads and noise, and you can use the earth as the return for your current (there goes half of your materials cost). See the Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] entry for some good info.

      It's not a one-size-fits-all solution, which is why i

  • "cost competitive" (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Cajun Hell ( 725246 ) on Monday January 07, 2008 @06:50PM (#21948312) Homepage Journal
    This is "cool" and all, but..

    420 billion in subsidies from 2011 to 2050 would be required to fund the infrastructure and make it cost-competitive

    How does spending money on something, make it cost competitive?

    That's like saying if I spend $100 on a $110 widget, and then pay another $10 for it, it becomes cost competitive with a different $10 widget.

    (I am not ignoring the possible advantages of energy that has lower CO2 emissions. I'm just bitching about Sciam's newspeak. Is deception really necessary?)

    • It's easier to get a $400 billion subsidy than it is to get a $400 billion 40-year loan.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Surt ( 22457 )
      If the government takes tax monies and subsidizes solar plants, they become cheaper for the plant makers, who do not pay the taxes. It's a cost shifting plan where the government forces the costs from the plant makers to the taxpayers. For the plant makers, solar becomes cost-competitive with alternative plant types.

  • Affordability (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by DieByWire ( 744043 )

    From the SA article...

    The federal government would have to invest more than $400 billion over the next 40 years to complete the 2050 plan. That investment is substantial...

    I dunno. What president in his right mind would ever spend 400 billion [nationalpriorities.org] on a national security issue?

    • Since some thin skinned moderator was put off by a little sarcasm...

      400 billion works out to slightly over .8 Iraqs (so far...)

      Which do you think would be a better national security investment?

  • A critique of SciAm's proposal (Score:3, Informative)

    by FleaPlus ( 6935 ) on Monday January 07, 2008 @07:35PM (#21948672) Journal
    For a contrary view, here's a quoted critique by Sam Dinkin over at Transterrestrial Musings:

    http://www.transterrestrial.com/archives/010275.html [transterrestrial.com]

    It's an ambitious plan that could sharply decelerate CO2 emissions and increase the US output of "green" power. Heroic plans require heroic proof. A critical analysis follows.

    Some high level critiques are the following:

            * Shifting peak load from day-time to night-time would not occur until solar displaced all natural gas plants and other swing units--i.e., all of excess air-conditioner demand over night-time demand, and all of the additional day-time usage that would occur as the price between day-time and night-time power usage equilibrated. This obviates the need for any wind-storage of solar power until well later.

            * Compressed-air energy storage will become less useful as the price gap between day and night power diminishes. This undermines the case for near-term night to day storatge and will only be economical under this plan for day-to-night storage after day-time power is sufficiently cheaper to support the capital outlay. (Ironically since the solar installation is of the hockey-stick variety, compressed air storage may become viable for night-to-day energy storage well before solar becomes a relevant portion of energy supply.)

            * Current photovoltaic production is about 2 GW of which US installation is about 8%. The plan calls for 84 GW of US installation by 2020 which would require 45% increases in solar installation every year for 13 years. Capping the installation at 10 GW/year installed, the ramp up becomes 70% per year 2006-2014.

            * These growth rates are implausible without a $2.80/watt subsidy taking the installed price of $4/w to $1.20/w which is equivalent to $0.05/kwh. That would mean $234 billion in subsidies just to get to 3% of needed installed capacity by 2050.

            * Polysilicon shortages are holding back photovoltaic growth so in 2007 and 2008 a growth rate of 20% is more plausible. That would require doubling production every year from 2009-2014 to hit the installed base of 84 GW by 2020.

            * 84 GW by 2020 would be just 16% of average load and with a peak watt of electricity generating only 6 or 7 hours per day in the Southwest, it would be about 5% of total electric power generated.

            * For this 5% of energy generated, we would be subsidizing it over 200% of the value of the energy generated--that is for $0.06 of electricity, it would require $0.14 in subsidies.

            * At the end of the period, there is no guarantee that prices will be low enough to compete with coal, natural gas, nuclear or wind.

            * If solar becomes viable and can compete with other energy types and begins to displace other types of power, prices for those types of power will drop. The total cost of solar will have to beat the marginal cost of coal or nuclear to dismantle an existing plant.

    Consider investing in terrestrial solar power for security reasons or as a contingency, but it's a lot of faith to get the case to work for half of daily electricity demand.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dbIII ( 701233 )
      Critics really like photovoltaics because if you scale up anything other than a fast breeder to a big enough size you will eventually beat them (double the area only get double the output) so you will win against the enormous photovoltaic installation strawman. I really cannot take the article or some of the comments of the critic (compressed air storage indeed!) seriously. There is also the failure to understand that the polycrystalline silicon is the easy stuff and the since crystals we need for other
  • Just think, if we had spent our nation's taxes on this instead of a foreign civil war in a nation that had nothing to do with 9-11, we would still have about $700 billion left over, and still get most of our oil and gas from Canada and Venezuala like we do today.

    Plus, with such a system, the solar energy supply would make our national energy supply much less vulnerable to overseas terrorist attacks.

  • A California plan for solar power (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Monday January 07, 2008 @09:13PM (#21949266) Homepage

    Here's a plan for solar power for California that could actually work.

    Goal: power 100% of Southern California's air conditioning load from solar energy within eight years.

    Why Southern California? Because there's enough sunlight for solar power to work well. Why air conditioning? Because peak air conditioning load and peak solar power output happen at the same time. Peak power load for all of California is about 42 gigawatts, and about a quarter of that is Southern California air conditioning. So we need about 12GW of solar panel capacity.

    Technical approach. Applied Materials says they're ready to build the first "gigawatt" solar panel plant. By that they mean a plant that produces in one year enough panels to generate a gigawatt of peak power. Two such plants can make enough panels to do the job in six years. No new technology is necessary.

    Paying for it Raise electric rates on hot summer afternoons. Anything bigger than a 3-bedroom house has to have time-of-day metering.

  • The article states that endpoints of transmission lines would have DC->AC conversion. What about skipping this step for data centres, where all equipment runs on DC anyway? I didn't see anything in the article mentioning this....

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Waffle Iron ( 339739 )

      What about skipping this step for data centres, where all equipment runs on DC anyway?

      Because to power each server at 12VDC from the 1 megavolt long-distance DC transmission line, you have to string together more than 80,000 servers in series. Then when one server blows out, all 80,000 go down along with it. Then you have to test them one at a time like a string of Christmas lights until you find the bad server, which could take weeks.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )
      One of the easiest ways to (efficiently) change high voltage DC to low voltage DC is to change it into high voltage AC, run it through a transformer, then rectify it into low voltage DC.
  • by 2050?

    Of course France gets 70% of its electricity *today* from nuclear power. But lets ignore the proven viable solution to the carbon problem, and go with the pie in the sky approach that won't work for decades even by the most optimistic estimates...

    When will people get it through their heads that solar is not a viable replacement for fossil fuel? Most of the country isn't even sunny enough to use it. The parts that are, aren't sunny *all the time*. When night hits, the entire country would brown out.
    • France? FRANCE? Jesus, if France is so great, why don't you go eat a croissant.

      In fact, why don't you open a bottle of fine Veuve Clicquot champagne, slice off a sliver of delicious Comté and put it on a CRACKER. A little WHEAT cracker, shaped like a rose. And then perhaps you'll eat the next cracker with a delicate pate, prepared by the finest Michelin 4 star chefs in all of Paris. Suppose you take your Francophile self strolling down the Champs d'elysee with a beautiful woman on a lovely evening in t

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dbIII ( 701233 )
      I suggest reading something about nuclear power that was written after 1970. The shining lights of reprocessing and fast breeders waiting to give us a wonderful too cheap to meter nuclear future are in the really early literature - however people writing today have seen what happened when the prototypes of those technologies were built.

      The ridiculous 100% replacement with any single thing argument is that of salesfolk or people fooled by them. Stop reading the 1970s advertisements and try some chemistry a

      • You can't say that I got my information from reading articles in the 1970's since I wasn't *alive* int he 1970's.

        >however people writing today have seen what happened when the prototypes of those
        >technologies were built.
        Which people are you talking about? What is your evidence? Can you cite any facts, or just a general dislike for nuclear power?

        There are indeed problems with nuclear power, but the reading I've done suggests that those problems are exaggerated (such as the problems with waste).

        >The

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dbIII ( 701233 )
          You may not have been alive at the time but your information is decades out of date. Google or wikipedia Superphoenix for information about the full sized fast breeder prototype and it may tell you why it was a dead end. As for reprocessing, in practice very little reprocessing had ever been done although some was done in one site in France over the past decade.

          Some points were missed badly - what was meant above was that energy monocultures are for several reasons a bad thing and only advocated by salefo

    • Because the carbon alarmism has nothing to do with concern about the fate of humanity, and everything to do with shutting down successful economies?

      Before you ridiculue it, ask yourself if there's a better theory that fits the data.

      As usual, I'm going to give the most convincing reason: There is an optimal solution to the environmental dangers of carbon emission, but it's rejected because it's not harmful enough to the economy. That solution is to tax carbon fuels in proportion to their externality and app
  • From TFA [sustainablog.org]:

    The cost of this plan is admittedly large, as any major change in the nation's infrastructure would be. The plan estimates $420 billion in subsidies are needed from 2011 - 2050 to fund the infrastructure and technology advances to make solar power more cost-competitive.

    From costofwar [nationalpriorities.org]:

    The War in Iraq Costs $483,838,893,498

    If the figures are correct, we could have already paid the subsidies for the next 40 years to fund the infrastructure and technology advances needed if we hadn't invaded Iraq

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