solarwind’s Recent Comments

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  umm...just wrong? and which side are you on?

  stopgreenpath - just a little curious on your point.  you don't want ecosystem destruction, which is understandable, neither do i.  Climate change will cause global ecosystem catastrophe.  Soo...do you prefer a few Mojave ground squirrels to die from a poorly-sited CSP plant, or massive global die-off of thousands of species.  This situation sucks either way you look at it, but to me it's a simple lesser of two evils.  

  And btw, there is no way 1 MW of wind (which is under 1/3 of the preferred size of turbines nowadays) causes "perminant, total ecosystem death".  That's orders of magnitudes wrong.  Wow.

  You claim also that PV has higher energy density than CSP.  Again, way wrong.  PV is 8-12 acres/MW, and CSP is 4-6 acres/MW(Ausra's claiming 2.7).  Are you assuming "small PV" would be roof mounted?  Well, then there'd be no new required land (zero) and thus you wouldn't be able to come up with a fraction in that case either.

  Finally, there's a 7-8% increase in LCOE with dry cooling for CSP.  So rather than $.15/kWh, you'd be paying ~ %.16/kWh  (extra cent).  I have a monthly bill of ~ 250kWh...I'll pay $2.50 extra no sweat.On So how much do renewables cost anyway? posted 1 year ago 30 Responses

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  thnx michael

  You said it well.  I'd like to add a couple quick thoughts:

  *CSP with TES can provide firm dispatchable baseload power.  Andasol 1 just came online in Spain, 50MW with 8 hrs. storage.  Andasol 2 and 3 are in construction.  And central receiver designs have more potential for storage, even 24hr+.  There's now doubting CSP's current and future potential for significant power gen.

  *the current antiquated grid can support 25% PV penetration before mass storage.  So as thin-film and c-Si continue to fall and money from the Iraq war is redirected towards healthy incentives to bring PV to grid-parity, it will be a good DG supplement to the utility-scale CSP, wind and geothermal.

  *There's something near 140,000 times the US electrical consumption of potential resource for enhanced geothermal, which is another baseload generator.

  These are not technological, nor are they overly economical; all technologies mentioned are nearly competitive with current generation portfolios prices, and are much cheaper than new infrastructure, particulary peaking plants to meet excess peak (which is growing faster than baseload demand, btw).

  And finally, it's important to remind ourselves of why we want to do this at such an ambitious pace:  curb GHG emissions.  Remember?  What did Al Gore say in one of his recent speeches...something about a 75% probability that w/in 5 years there will be no summer arctic ice (i think the source he mentioned was Lawrence-Berkeley Labs)?  Everything is accelerating, things will surely get worse, and FAST.  This is the reason why we must stop debating trivial minor economic differences.  Internalize the costs on the damage carbon from coal and other hydrocarbons cause and there's no doubting the "business model" of RE.

  If there weren't climate change motivations, no one would be pushing this so hard.  All other related issues such as peak oil and national security (domestic production) are ancillary problems, and this should be recognized.  We need to stop eCO2 emissions ASAP.On Alliance for Climate Protection ramps up calls for renewable-energy plan posted 1 year ago 17 Responses

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  what about waste?

  I saw a blip the other day about Yucca mountain going forward...the article said that @ the earliest it may open around 2020.  But the point here was the 96 billions of dollars of total projected + already expensed project costs, just for waste disposal.  Where are these costs when discussing the LCOE of nuclear vs. solar thermal?  They should surely be accounted for and will likely significantly impact the LCOE of nuclear power.  It really sucks nukes produce such difficult waste, huh...

  source:http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSN084806662 ...

  But good posts all around.  

  Side note:  we have to remind ourselves how incredible fossil fuels are - the intrisic chemical energy density is astounding.  It will always be difficult for renewables (which harness real-time solar energy) to compete with fossil-fuels (concentrated solar energy).

  Renewables have already reached a very advanced technology level to even allow us to debate grid parity.  Pretty impressive.  However, it hasn't happened yet and need additional subsidization...where is Congress btw?  dumb.  A carbon tax is a solution that makes a whole lot of sense to me...energy prices would increase, income taxes would decrease.  And rebates for the poor so the carbon tax wouln't screw them.  The problem would solve itself.  A tweaked "free-market". Brilliant On So how much do renewables cost anyway? posted 1 year, 2 months ago 30 Responses

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  wow...

  whew!  where to start... first of all, apparently, a VP of an "int'l fortune 50" co. doesn't have anything to do all day but blog - how many times... - 5 or 6?  I'm not going to count.  My favorite part is that he mentions the BSME as if it's a point to brag about.  Oooohhh..  I also have a BSME....oooohhh, but I have MS too!  my god!  wooowwww... should I mention that everytime I mention something technical?  Furthermore, when you rebutted my post, where did you get first- the hostility, and second - that I was talking about avoided cost analysis for a solar power plant?  You've made ridiculous assumptions.  Yes, I know all about LCOE and LCA and amortization and EBITDA and bla bla bla.  I don't feel inclinded to mention every aspect of what my job encompasses in a short blog.

  I'm probably wasting my time explaining this, but since I'm almost done I'll continue - renewables are completely viable for firm, dispatchable electric generation.  Mr. Hostility, you mentioned you work with geothermal?  I'm assuming you mean large-scale geothermal power plants?  Well then, you'd know that there's more than enough resource to supply the U.S.'s needs with that technology alone.  And here's the crux - it's dispatchable.  And CSP with TES (esp. molten salt) can obtain capacity factors of 70% or more.  God, man, do your homework.  And you claim to be the CSP guru!  Wind - yeah, you're not going to get capacity factors much better than 30%...but the idea is that you spread enough out over a wide area, these local fluctuations and rapid transients more or less cancel out and the generation profile becomes much more predictable.

  I don't understand, Mr. BSME, Mr. 20+ years in the industry, how you can't see how the combination of geothermal (firm) + CSP w/ TES (firm) + wind (non-firm) + distributed gen PV (non-firm) won't work?  Add-in additional energy storage in the form of PEV's and/or utility-scale pumped-hydro, CAES, a smart grid...

  These are not technical issues - they are policy issues.  And policy can decide any price of electricity they want for renewables.  Even today, the LCOE we compare isn't a true LCOE.  We include incentives and subsidies.  How else do you think coal is so incredibly cheap (aside from the astounding chemical energy density)?  Incentivize more, and you're not raising the price that consumers pay at all.

  Lastly (god, why did I waste so much time on a blog), my concerns for this specific article (which my first post makes quite clear, I believe) relate to the carbon emissions from extracting energy from fossil fuels... and yes, jubilao, even nat gas fuel-cells release CO2 as a biproduct.  CH4 -> CO2 + H20 + (a little)CH4

  There's no panacea, but renewables are more than capable.
  On Consumers express renewed interest in natural-gas vehicles posted 1 year, 2 months ago 20 Responses

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  here we go again...

  sigh  it's scary to me that people can still say this publically.  Did we not settle this debate once and for all a year or two ago?  Now we're on to debating the long-term effects and the timeline, right?  yikes.  the thing that makes me sad is that there are somehow still people that don't believe (ha! "believe", likes it's some object of faith) in anthropogenic climate change.  In fact, i was having a political talk with my friend (i know, not a good idea) yesterday after Obama's speech, who's a R, who actually told me that "scientists" don't know.  I'm not even angry.  Depressed, perhaps...

  At this stage, I would hope that saying a comment like this would be political suicide and that both the right and the left would jump all over it.  Hell, even the Bush administration had finally conceded that the 6-point-whatever-billion of us on the planet burning fossil-fuels at an unprecedented rate has accelerated global warming.  Geez...On The eco-rundown on Alaska guv Sarah Palin, John McCain's veep pick posted 1 year, 2 months ago 120 Responses