The worry here is right-wing political push back against the emergence of threatening solar power, a push back against public support for renewable energy.  

The price of oil is making solar power more dangerous than global warming.

ORBA's President, Roy Denner, has held a seat on the BLM's Desert District Advisory Council (DAC) for the last eight years as a recreation representative. He reports that, at a recent DAC meeting in Barstow, California, the major topic of discussion involved the huge number of applications by private enterprise firms to develop energy production plants in the California desert -- where wind, solar and geothermal resources are prevalent.

It should come as no surprise that most of the proposed energy development sites are located on land currently used for motorized offroad recreation. There has been no consideration for locating sites in wilderness areas or critical habitat areas for listed species -- even though the notorious desert tortoise has been found to be propagating very well within the wind energy farm in the Palm Springs area. ...

Are we opposed to the development of renewable energy sources? Absolutely not! Along with nuclear energy sources, renewable sources can provide inexpensive energy to feed the ever-increasing demands of our technological society. But why should the tiny fraction of area left in the desert for motorized offroad recreation be the sole source of sites for these projects?

The off-roaders have aesthetic concerns too:

"Off-roaders are sensitive to the fact that we do need renewable energy projects, but ... our off-road parks could have test wells and ugly pipes running (through them) and that ruins the users' recreation experience," said Meg Grossglass, spokeswoman for the Bakersfield-based Off-Road Business Association.

How could anyone possible consider a moratorium on solar - for environmental reasons, no less - while the country continues to plow ahead with more coal and nuclear plans?

a sibilant intake of breath

How could anyone possible consider a moratorium on solar - for environmental reasons, no less - while the country continues to plow ahead with more coal and nuclear plans?

Because solar power plants' environmental impact, while much less than that of coal ones, is much greater than that of nuclear ones and their support industries. As you know.

--- G.R.L. Cowan, H2 energy fan 'til ~1996
http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan/boron_blast.html

Though, the hypocrisy of them doin' it for solar, but not oil and gas is obvious.

Still, there are many projects planned for private land that can still move forward.

This is a pretty untenable assertion. Look at how many contaminated nuclear sites there are: from uranium mines and tailings ponds to former reprocessing facilities and nuclear waste dumps. Just the Hanford Site in Washington State contains 53 million U.S. gallons of high-level radioactive waste. The federal government is spending $2 billion annually to clean it up.

Is there any site relating to solar power generation, anywhere in the world, where similar contamination has taken place?

a sibilant intake of breath

I am certain the oil industry had NOTHING to do with this.

This is why floating wind/wave energy "ships" and northern great plains wind and rooftop solar PV/heat cogeneration and solar furnaces mounted on factory sites are more effective.  These all circumvent NIMBYism encouraged and impelled by traditional renewable energy opponents.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

Just one more environmental IED.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

You are all looking for a silver bullet that will save us without having to make major adjustments in our wasteful lifestyles. Solar and wind maybe better but if we are not very careful, it all could turn out really bad.

"Because solar power plants' environmental impact, while much less than that of coal ones, is much greater than that of nuclear ones and their support industries."

This is a pretty untenable assertion. Look at how many contaminated nuclear sites there are: from uranium mines and tailings ponds to former reprocessing facilities and nuclear waste dumps. Just the Hanford Site in Washington State contains 53 million U.S. gallons of high-level radioactive waste. The federal government is spending $2 billion annually to clean it up.

Is there any site relating to solar power generation, anywhere in the world, where similar contamination has taken place?

...

i think he/she was being sarcastic. i sure hope so. but you can never be so out there that some rightwingnut won't agree with it seriously.

Well, there are those of such us-and-them tendency  that they'd say things they believe crazy, just because "them" have the sane position locked up. But here it's the other way around: 'gzuckier' and 'sindark' are defining nuclear non-exceptionalism as themsville, the province of rightwingnuts. It isn't.

By non-exceptionalism I mean thinking about rays from uranium daughters that don't really affect anything in the environment, except instruments designed to be so affected, the same regardless of whether, in the process of their getting near the instruments, some inconvenience to oil and gas interests, including government was involved.

When this non-exceptionalism is practiced, uranium mine tailings excite no more suspicion than would the same stuff at a therapeutic radon spa or mine, or at an outcropping like the Coles Hill one that was detected by prospectors driving by.

Coles Hill is not a "contaminated nuclear site" only because no oil money, and no natural gas money, has yet been cancelled as a result of its existence. If nuclear exceptionalism still exists a few decades hence, Coles Hill may by then have become such a site through having become much less radioactive than it now is.

A solar electric power station that produced a gigawatt-year per year would, by occupying more land than the total footprint of all the uranium mines in the world, have a greater impact, even though Geiger counters would behave no differently on that land after it was built.

If it were one of hundreds, and such stations had a long history of taking money from the oil and gas interests, its non-prohibitive land usage might not be enough of an argument for them; some very subtle effect of solar energy conversion might have to be defined as contamination when it occurred in that context, and only when it occurred in that context.

--- G.R.L. Cowan, H2 energy fan 'til ~1996
http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan/boron_blast.html

I certainly hope this is some kind of weird joke.

Radon-222 has been classified by International Agency for Research on Cancer as being carcinogenic to humans. Radon is the second most frequent cause of lung cancer, after cigarette smoking, and radon-induced lung cancer is thought to be the 6th leading cause of cancer death overall.

"rays from uranium daughters that don't really affect anything in the environment"

See Ionizing radiation, radiation poisoning, cancer. All living things can be damaged by alpha and beta particles, gamma rays, and free neutrons.

a sibilant intake of breath

But that doesn't mean large-scale solar projects tread lightly on the land. Talk to the people at the Wildlands Conservancy, or the Friends of the Nevada Wilderness, and they'll tell you about the threat of renewable energy projects tearing up their carefully protected habitat. Beyond just the projects themselves, there's the transmission that has to be built to carry that power to the cities. Try having a picnic under a 500-kilovolt transmission tower, buzzing like 5 billion bees.

S. David Freeman, a Los Angeles energy expert and former head of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, refers in his new book on energy to the "wasteland of the Mojave" serving as our renewable energy "goldmine." That's the kind of attitude that pisses people off in the Mojave, which includes Joshua Tree National Park, by the way. It's not a wasteland at all, but a vibrant ecosystem teeming with life. Teeming. A lot of that life is endangered, and some renewable projects could literally wipe it out.

Compared to nuclear, solar has a massive footprint per megawatt. Sorry, but it just does, lifecycle and all. It can be responsibly sited in the desert, but only if the utilities and solar providers work with conservationists when they decide where to build. Otherwise, it's just going to be another long, green-on-green battle, one that the planet's well-funded opponents can play to their advantage. As we have seen.

And in the meantime, turn off your lights when you're not using them. There's no energy nirvana.

Considering Bush's history, its hard not to see this as an intentional poke in the environmentalist community's eye.  

By the way, the electric grid which is supposed to carry this renewable energy is in terrible shape.  And also, we should be concentrating on decentralizing electrical generation: SF is putting about 100 megawatts of PV on buildings, for instance.

It would be better ecologically to have each home and business mine and burn its own coal than to allow destruction of ecosystems by things like this proposal.  Direct destruction of ecosystems is more harmful than global warming.

Judith's post is correct in all but one aspect: she has unfortunately bought into nuke industry lies, specifically that solar power is more ecologically destructive than nuclear.  That's only possibly true if one totally ignores all the harms caused by uranium mining and refining, and from nuclear waste.  The fact is that solar and wind power, if generated for local use, are by far the least ecologically and environmentally harmful sources of electricity.

stopgreenpath has argued that putting electric lines through the Mojave impinges on that ecosystem -- I'm not sure how.  I don't know if the high=power lines that run through the country now affect the ecosystems they run through.

I see two primary tools for resolving differences: planning and local ownership / control.  

There are many disturbed lands in the desert, but there are also many beautiful places. Likewise, there are more and less appropriate places for wind turbines.  The rate of solar and wind deployment is limited by scarcity of equipment and crappy US incentive programs, not by a lack of appropriate sites. In light of the overall situation, Cape Wind always struck me as a silly fight.  So what if a particular place doesn't want wind energy now?  There are hundreds and hundreds of communities around the US that will welcome it with open arms.  Especially from a global warming perspective, it really doesn't matter where renewable energy generators are installed as long as they are in fact installed.  Yes, there are local sustainability concerns, but if the energy poured into Cape Wind had been put into an upfront process in the context of local ownership (see below), New England might be a lot further along than it is.  

The rollout of wind energy will be far more rapid and efficient if we limit how much energy is wasted in controversial locations.  Communities where renewable energy is controversial can initiate their own planning processes and come up with whatever decision they want about the best and worst places and how and when, and in the meantime the rest of us can move on to more receptive locations.  If some places don't want it that should be their decision.  Why beat one's head against this wall?  A lack of planning and prioritization of sites is sure to spawn numerous energy-wasting battles that hurt us politically. Perhaps greens should take it upon themselves to research and propose appropriate locations rather than beat the crap out of each other.  We should trust local communities and understand that there are many, many fish in the sea.  

Another important tool is local ownership.  As the Europeans say, one's own pigs don't stink.  The European countries that have been successful in rolling out renewable energy understand that this process goes far more smoothly when local residents have an ownership interest in renewable energy and a say -- as owners -- about where it goes (not the "thanks for sharing" BS of modern American governance).  If anything, Europe is a harder place to site wind turbines and other renewable energy technologies due to its long history, density of population and active communities. Yet the countries most successful in deploying renewable energy manage to avoid many of the fights common in the US and UK, and the determining factor seems to be local ownership and control.  

Many people oppose renewable energy projects not because they oppose renewable energy per se but because they don't like having outsiders ram anything down their throats.  That's an aspect of human nature that many Europeans seem to understand.

Central station solar is big business and it seems unrealistic to think that it shouldn't be planned. And yes, a new administration can set up a faster, better process, but if urban greens try to ram it down the throats of desert activists, both sides will be pathetic losers.  Fortunately, we have many options for other kinds of solar. There's so much unused potential in urban areas that we could spend most of our resources for years in these areas while we figure out the more complicated situations.  

Finally, as a cautionary tale I suggest you learn something about Stirling Energy Systems, a concentrating solar technology proposed for southern California.  The first big splash for this technology was when President Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which he did in front of the prototype units for this technology.  They certainly look cool.  The PR value of this technology was not lost on the White House.

This technology has unfortunately found itself in the middle of a swirling controversy related to a transmission line called the Sunrise Powerlink, formally proposed by Sempra Energy and it subsidiary, SDG&E in 2005.  The problem is that Sempra Energy justified the line as a renewable energy line using this technology, probably knowing that it was and is not ready for commercial deployment.  An April 2008 DOE research proposal assumes that this technology still has a Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) of only 200 hours.  To be commercially viable the DOE has said that it should have a MTBF of over 4,000 hours, but they say to do this that a brand new prototype needs to be designed, built and tested, and that will take years more time (assuming funding is available), and even then there are no guarantees it will work.  Moreover, there are only 6 prototype units at Sandia National Labs, yet the developer said they could install 12,000 units in 4 years.  It's good to optimistic, but as a renewable energy professional this schedule strikes me as being extremely unrealistic. So, why would Sempra Energy, who's CEO said he doesn't believe in global warming, and which was listed by CERES as one of the worst utilities in terms of global warming, and whose subsidiary, SDG&E. which has the worst record of complying with the California RPS, decide to use an experimental technology to attempt to meet its RPS obligations, rather than solar trough (which I worked on back in the early '90s) or other proven technologies?  Perhaps because they hoped to build the transmission line and then use it to transmit fossil fuel-fired energy, using, say, the imported LNG from Sempra's facility in Baja, Mexico.  

Those who oppose the Powerlink are strongly in favor of a variety of in-basin renewable energy technologies, especially PV, because if PV is given a home in temperate and sunny San Diego we've got troubles.  They are NIMBY's because they want the generation capacity in their backyards.  And besides, PV is cheaper that Stirling dish, even not considering the cost of transmission, and Stirling dish can't operate as baseload because it doesn't collect heat in a central location.  Sempra really is the NIMBY here, because they don't want anybody else to have a significant ownership in renewable energy in Sempra's backyard.  

That Sempra proposed that the line would go through the middle of the biggest state park in California certain set up the environmental community for a dandy internal brawl, but fortunately, all of the local enviros (land conservationist and renewable energy supporters alike) came together and proposed a 158 page plan that will allow San Diego to achieve its RPS obligation faster and less expensively than would happen with the Powerlink.  People along the proposed route are learning about and actually installing renewable energy.  The people's plan allows local people to own and control the process rather than having Sempra be in the driver's seat, which Sempra is kind of not into (BTW, Sempra's President is on the Halliburton Board of Directors).

All I'm saying is that these are complicated situations and the fossil fuel industry will divide and conquer as much as they can, standing on our edges and shouting, "Let's you and him fight!" and then slinking off to do as they please while we are distracted, discouraged and despairing.

It is possible to resolve these disputes without so much acrimony, but it takes hard work, respect and faith that we the people will do the right thing enough of the time.  

Those who oppose the Powerlink are strongly in favor of a variety of in-basin renewable energy technologies, especially PV, because if PV is NOT given a home in temperate and sunny San Diego we've got troubles.  They are NOT NIMBY's because they want the generation capacity in their backyards.  And besides, PV is cheaper than Stirling dish, even not considering the cost of transmission, and Stirling dish can't operate as baseload because it doesn't collect heat in a central location so there's no advantage there.  Sempra really is the NIMBY here, because they don't want anybody else to have a significant ownership in renewable energy in Sempra's backyard.  

In an non-ultier motive world, yes.

But here, put two togethr could cause problems.  The Texas governor (Perry) wanted rail transit to connect the cities and new electric corridors to connect to the wind farms out west, so he recommended joinin' the two together...

...but to make it "economically feasible" and help it "appeal to everday Texans, investors, and commuters", he decided to add a ten-lane Mega-freeway half a mile wide in places, along with some oil and gas pipelines, have it criss-cross near every major city in the state (but not actually go into the populated areas-thus makin' the commuter rail plans a total farce), and call the whole thing the Trans-Texas Corridor.

Gotta be careful with that kinda stuff.

HiTension, I was wondering how much those cool looking Stirling engines cost -- because it would seem like a 25kw unit would be a nice thing for decentralized use, that is, you put one inside the city, say in a parking lot, and you have a good source of solar energy...unless it's more expensive than pv.  And thanks for the narrative.

Hi-intensity pv in the focus is a more cost efficient alternative, and like Stirling, does not require lager central solar power farms in deserts.

"Each hand-built test dish cost $225,000. That needs to drop to less than $50,000, Osborn says."

$225,000 equals $9/Watt, but if memory serves I've also heard earlier estimates at $250,000 per hand-built dish, or $10/Watt.  This is only the installed cost and does not include operations and maintenance costs. The $50,000 figure equals a $2/Watt target, not including maintenance costs which even if the tech works reliably will be more than a PV panel, because Stirling engines are, after all, four cylinder engines with bearings, seals, gaskets, pistons, crankshafts, valves, etc., and all the lubricant attendant thereto.  

Since this is not a commercial product we can only estimate how much each dish unit might cost in mass production and where the price breaks would fall. The structural and mirror components can be costed out (and I believe SES has done this), but it may be a little early to rely on engine cost estimates because elimination of the hydrogen corrosion (assuming SES continues to use hydrogen as a working gas) and seal problems might require expensive metallurgical or ceramic treatments on internal surfaces.  We are, after all, talking about trying to contain the smallest atom  within a moving piston seal at peak temperatures of ~1,400F, both in terms of keeping it from leaking out of the engine and also not reacting with internal components despite hydrogen's intense desire to be bonded to something other than itself.  

Jon, you are right that the scale of Stirling-dish technology makes it more suitable for distributed use.  A few years ago there was an idea to put these on reservations in remote locations.  Apparently, this effort was abandoned because the maintenance required on these motors requires substantial training and ability.  This is not backyard mechanics.  The disadvantage of distributed locations is that the cost of maintenance increases to account for technician travel time, but if the technology could be made bombproof then this cost becomes less important and it could be very well suited for distributed applications and perhaps ranges of insolation that are not optimal for PV.

And of course, therein lies the rub.  The mere fact that this is nearly unique hand-built equipment financed from both government and private sources means that its current price isn't all that useful other than as something of a ballpark.  One should take cost estimates coming out of prototypes with something of a grain of salt and realize that what favorable estimates do is justify further preliminary development.  What matters here is commercial viability and that includes every cost needed to purchase, install, operate and maintain this equipment while making a profit.  

The weak link for Stirling engine commercial viability has been in the operation and maintenance side.  As I mentioned, if we assume a mean time between failure of 200 hours, then this means that each dish would be expected to break down around 20 times a year, which would translate into a great deal of maintenance and lost opportunity cost to the point where the current equipment would not be commercially viable, particularly if one considers having to maintain 12,000 units (SDG&E contract) or 20,000 units (SCE contract).  A DOE researcher was quoted in a article as saying that the technology needed something like 4,000 hours MTBF, which would translate into about one breakdown per year, approximately the same as current wind turbines. Even at one breakdown per year, the maintenance demands for a 20,000 unit project would be an ongoing challenge.  Statistically (and without assuming that preventative maintenance couldn't bring this figure down further) the raw number of machines that would need to fixed each day would be 55. With a 25kW machine, scale is important.

As a point of reference, how difficult would it be to install, operate and maintain 12,000 25kW diesel gensets in the desert, even if fuel costs and fuel delivery logistics are ignored (magic free fuel)?  That's a lot of equipment monitoring and oil changes.  

With regard to operations, one concern I heard from the DOE is that the SES engines, as other engines, require an electric starter and that if all 12,000 starters fire up simultaneously then the power draw would be problematic for the grid, such that the units need to be started in a cascading sequence quickly enough to get them all running when the sun comes up.  Physically possible?  Sure. Has something like this ever been done before at this scale with any technology?  I dunno. How long would it take to develop and refine such a control system so that it works like clockwork every day, year in, year out?  I dunno.  

My understanding is that this 200 MTBF figure is about the same as it was back in the 2003 to 2006 timeframe.  If the DOE 200 hour MTBF number is accurate then SES hasn't made much progress in this particular indicator, though they may have made progress elsewhere.  This suggests that the current prototypes have some fundamental design and/or materials limitations, which in turn is in accordance with a recent presentation by a DOE researcher and a DOE research outline that the DOE feels a need to design, built and test another prototype generation to overcome these reliability issues.  

In addition to these repair costs, planned maintenance costs would need to be included in any cost estimate, and while maintenance costs can be estimated, it is likely that only a pilot plant would provide accurate estimates of the cost of maintenance in full-scale operation, at least to the point where investors would be comfortable in providing serious money.

The entire point of the R&D process (lab to prototype to pilot project to small commercial to large commercial) is to prove to investors that a technology is worthy of investment at a particular scale.  The more money involved the higher the due diligence of the investors and their bankers and attorneys.  Moreover, there can be a lot of "back to the drawing board" in the first two development steps before a technology can finally breakout to a pilot project phase, and many technologies die at these earlier stages.  Stirling-dish has not yet progressed beyond the lab and prototype stages.  

SES has plans to build a 1MW / 40 dish pilot project, and in fact its contract with Southern California Edison quite appropriately requires that it do this (SCE having a fair amount of experience in dealing with new technologies), but my latest info is that SES has not moved forward very far or fast with required permitting over the past few years. A certain amount of preliminary inquiries and rudimentary filings, but nothing substantial.  But then, if the DOE is correct in its assessment that the tech needs another round of prototype development and that this prototype cycle will not end until the 2015 timeframe, it wouldn't make much sense to proceed with the pilot project phase now, though there might be pressure from investors and other vested interests to move ahead even if the technology is not yet ready.  

There have been prior examples of pilot project and even larger-scale rollouts that ultimately did not prove to be commercially successful because the technology wasn't ready, but other pressures and the encouragement of government funding/subsidies provided for political reasons resulted in premature advancement.  There's always a balance here.  It would be physically possible to build a 40 unit SES pilot project based on existing technology, but this would not appear to be appropriate.  Assuming the DOE MTBF figure is correct and their prototype effort is required, doing a pilot project now would appear to be a waste a great deal of valuable solar R&D resources.  

Nonetheless, attempting to initiate a pilot project could pump up perception of the value of this technology, thereby possibly achieving near-term investor financial objectives as well as advance the interests of the utilities that contracted with SES, but would this really help society?  If SES suddenly announced that it was going to move ahead with a 40 unit pilot project tomorrow based on current technology, I would be concerned, but they haven't done so.  

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2008/6/13/ ...

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

Amazin', if PV can supply some heat as well, then it can become an even more important part of a geothermal heat pump/pv system to heat and cool buildings.

....

"The increased boiling efficiency seems to be the result of an interesting interplay between the nanoscale and microscale surfaces of the treated metal."

....

"Boiling is ultimately a vehicle for heat transfer, in that it moves energy from a heat source to the bottom of a vessel and into the contained liquid, which then boils, and turns into vapor that eventually releases the heat into the atmosphere. This new discovery allows this process to become significantly more efficient, which could translate into considerable efficiency gains and cost savings if incorporated into a wide range of industrial equipment that relies on boiling to create heat or steam.

"If you can boil water using 30 times less energy, that's 30 times less energy you have to pay for," he said."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080626150930 ...

If it holds, this would mean less mirrors per unit of electricity produced.

Smaller footprint.  Less land used.  Ability to place closer to point of use.

Add to this the NREL test that showed  38% efficiency at the 10 suns concentration level, the same as the IBM system.  That is three times the normal PV efficiency of most PV installed right now.

And add the value of the heating done by the cogenerated waste heat.  

So around 3 times the kwh, from one tenth the PV cells.  300x in power output per PV cost?  

That would beat just about any other system as far as (GHG free, fuel free, fuel price  inflation free) cost per kwh.  No desert solar farms or power lines need be added.  our roofs would power our world.

Now a nice 10 cent per kwh (5 cents for utility scale commercial producers) subsidy diversion, from fossil and nuclear industries, directly to solar PV/heat cogeneration panel consumers would start the gold rush.  With maybe a big order from the government, for government buildings to get the mass production going.

Take McBushs' 300 million dollar prize (already won by several battery companies, hehey), order 300 million bucks worth of these for government.

I think the governator might find out about this and scoop the feds.  California will lead again.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

And aren't plastics just byproducts of oil?  In other words, if plastics weren't produced, wouldn't the amount of oil extracted and used for fuel remain the same?  If so, solar's "footprint" would be minuscule.

Oh wait, Bush zeroed out solar concentrators his first year in office.

Distributed solar PV/heat cogeneration is  hard to beat.  On GHG and payback.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

Put up more on a shed or garage and pay your taxes, by selling the excess to your utility.

Now that's real financial security.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

The rest of us are in the world of life, a world of politics.  So naturally we want clean low-carbon 24 hour soar power.  Life depends on it.  And politically we can do it.

After business installs some $100 billion of solar concentrators for direct natural gas and electricity displacement, then business will go up against more difficult competitors, like base load coal power.  

Energy is a very heavy industry, lots of inertia to massive scale up.  I believe solar will grow very big with time and capital.

However, we have no way enough time for solar power to displace coal power.  Our survival depends on shutting down coal without qualifiers, without delay.

So rooftop concentrators are great. They can make a contribution. But they are one silver BB, not a silver bullet. You still need to put solar generation and and wind generators someplace other than already paved surfaces.  

And DRX to anticipate your argument, yeah a smart grid can replace some of the need for electricity storage. But low temp needs are 20% to 30% of demand. Even if you add it in high demand for industry, you still end with a huge amount of demand "smart grid" tech cannot shift.  A renewable dominated grid either includes electricity storage or high temp heat stored to make electricity on demand. If you satisfied for renewables to be "non-disruptive" to continue just to compete around the edges then we don't need storage. We can keep adding wind and solar without ever shutting down a coal or gas plant. As Hapa said sardonically in another context: "Isn't that nice? Everybody gets to keep making money?" But if we want efficiency and renewables to be disruptive, to actually start displacing coal, and oil and natural gas, then we are going to need to start adding truly dispatchable renewable electricity - soon.

And to return to Sunflower's point, that means shutting down coal, and encouraging efficiency and replacements a lot faster than business will "naturally" do this.

OK, obviously the first step is not to need typical U.S. power consumption. In a new home that is easy; a new building can get clever and combine really good efficiency with passive heating and cooling to reduce climate control consumption by 80% or 90% at almost no cost. An existing home does not have as much potential, but can probably cut climate control needs by 50% to 60%. That reduces your 49,000 PV + heat pump to ~25,000 PV plus heat pump.

On the other hand, going back to the typical (ineffcient) U.S. home, an active solar sytem that can supply most of your heat and hot water is around 20,000. For residences you can't buy  solar  thermal powered air,(There are commerical sized heat powered chillers) but the highest efficiency ordinary air conditioner on the market is rated at about 18 SEER which would translate into 700 watts for a typical home, and less than that if you have upgraded your insulation and weather sealing and so on.

(Again, for new buildings the story is very different - you can get about a 90% reduction in climatec control consumption for a 5% increase in building costs by doing things right in the first place)

If you want to get rid of coal as quickly and cheaply as possible, let buildings 80% to 90% heat and cool themselves. Then put in other forms of efficiency, such as savings in lighting, water heating, appliances, office equipment. You can easily end saving as much or more energy as building currently use for climate control. While you are at it generate the 20% of so of electricity could from wind and solar with comparatively minor grid upgrades (around 60 billion, most in smart grid improvements rather than transmission which we should have done anyway to handle conventional power better).

To some extent Industrial CHP (what Sean specializes in) could displace a lot of generation as well. You might end not only displacing all coal electricity, but some of the natural gas as well.

And even though all roofs do not receive enough light to be cost effective as solar platforms, in a study of San diego roof space, it was found that 53% of their power could come from roof mounted PV.  That was with older type lower efficiency PV.  And before conservation with direct ground circulation cooling substituted for air conditioning.  

With cogenerated heat how much of the electrical load used for heating/cooling would be met?  

The buildings that can't use solar heat and  need heating/cooling could use geo heat exchange, storing the solar electricity as heat/cold.  further storage could be obtained by pressurising water systems, with water towers or tanks in buildings that are filled when the sun shines.

What other really large loads are there?  Industrial?  That can be provided by solar furnaces on factory roofs that store heat in thermal salt for 24 hour operation.

Batteries in plugin vehicles can store energy when the sun shines too.  Homes can have just a few batteries to power low power loads at night, like home electronics and efficient lighting.

I would add wind, wave, water, region to region power transport, and biogas  power to the mix.  I was wrong in claiming all power could come from rooftops without some other storage.  A bit of an exageration.

But with these other sources and smart grid storage it would work.  With the main high power loads of heating/cooling provided by roof top solar cogeneration and geo heat exchange.  By using phase change heat/cold storage, several days of this load could be bridged.


http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

San Diego is in a desert. And is comparatively low density, meaning comparatively high percent of roof space. I'll bet Seattle could not get 53% of its power from rooftops. Nor New York.

>what other really large loads are there?  Industrial?  That can be provided by solar furnaces on factory roofs that store heat in thermal salt for 24 hour operation.

Industry uses 33% of energy - more than either residential or commercial. And Industry takes up a lot less square feet than either. And industry is going to get all its power from its rooftops? Really?

Yes of course factories in less sunny areas would use wind and wave power instead of solar.  Most high temperature industries could move to high solar insolation regions.

How much of that industrial 33% could be reduced by conservation?  How much could be saved by cogeneration and geo heat exchange and heat pump heat recycling?

That 53% figure was with 12% efficient PV.  New concentrating pV is 38% efficient.  Add in heat cogeneration and it goes up yet again, to maybe 70%?  That means most areas could get most of their energy from rooftops.

Cities with less roofspace, high rises for instance, can have solar mounted on their south facing surfaces.  Plus mass housing as in high rises uses less heating/cooling per resident.

And mirrors mounted over areas that need cooling can concentrate light on collectors on the sides of buildings.  

I still think that wind ought to provide 20% of present power use.  Wave and current power another 10%, and biogas 5%.

Coal, nuclear, and gas guzzling can be shut down in stages as renewables/conservation comes online over the next 20 years.  Shutting down coal power to force conversion isn't likely to sell politically or economically.  

Carbon taxes, caps, or trading won't be popular either.  Subsidy diversion is the way to go.  Take the corporate welfare away from big oil, coal, ag fuel farming, and nukes.  

Use the savings to fund direct subsidies to consumers and utility scale customers who generate GHG free kwh or save kwh.  10 cents per kwh for retail consumers and 5 cents per kwh for wholesale utility customers, like factories.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

No it couldn't. High insolation regions are water short, and industry is water consumptive - many times the requirements of domestic use.

Look, I'm not denying we could get a lot of our energy from rooftops. But we need to get a lot from wind as well - and wind is a lot cheaper in wind farms than on rooftops per kWh. Also if you use variable sources such as sun and wind you need variety, not just of sources but of geographical location. Even if you got all your power from rooftops, sun and wind both, you had better have long distance transmissions so that when one area was not providing power you could get it from another. Add in things like wind and wave which really tend not to be local, and you need a fair amount of transmisison.

I realize there are very good reasons to be suspicious of anything coming out of the Bush administration, but, to use a cliche, even a broken clock is correct twice each day. Is it possible that the goals of environmentalists, protecting already degraded habitat, might actually coincide with the nefarious goals of the Bush adminstration? Hey, if they want to stop development of big solar on Federal land, doesn't it set a precedent that might be used to stop further development of gas and oil... or grazing? Use their arguments AGAINST them now that they've gone on record suggesting that the desert should be protected.

It look like conservatives can kill just about any idea, even one that might be good for the environment, just by endorsing it. If G. W. Bush were to say all polar bears and their habitat should be protected, would you get so suspicious that you call for the extermination of the bears???

Anyway...

I'm here to comment on peak copper....

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

Are we interested in quick green fixes to replace coal and oil? Or are we interested in sustainable green solutions? Extractable copper is declining and over a third of remaining reserves are in China. Countries around the globe are building infrastructure and consuming larger and larger amounts of copper. Why do we want to continue to build large power plants, whether coal, nuclear, or solar, that require long transmission lines and all the material necessary for installing and maintaining them, especially when we're so close to affordable photovoltaics for intallation on homes and businesses?

Furthermore, when we can clearly see the disadvantages of corporate control over critical elements of our infrastructure, why would we want to dig a deeper hole and ensure continued corporate control over our energy? They'll inevitably resist paying for upgrades that might save even more resources and reduce costs for consumers. They'll find ways to skirt environmental regulations. They'll resist change when better technology is discovered. They'll send our military into Africa to secure rare metals neccessary for keeping aging solar panels going long after they should have been replaced.

Better to have a variety of photovoltaic systems -- and other means of collecting solar energy -- manufactured by different companies, installed on millions of roof tops by local independent contractors, maintained by independent contractors. The most efficient will emerge and be used by more and more people. The worst systems will end up at a recycling center.

Oh yeah, we mainly agree on various sources and different kinds of storage and conservation.  

I guess my point is that rooftop solar can provide a lot more of our power than we realized, back when solar PV was 12% efficient and solar heating had to be installed separately from PV.

Those desert solar farms though, built on wilderness land?  Or a huge HVDC super highway?  I just don't think we will need them.  Solar furnaces on factories and key additions to existing HVDC lines ought to be enough.

Here's a thought.  How come we never hear about superconducting magnetic energy storage anymore?  my utility company, Wisconsin Public Service has used it successfully for years, on a small scale.

Whatever happened to the idea of scaling it up?

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

The most popular are the cheapest and easiest (or maybe now just the easiest) oil and electricity. Make something better, easier and cheaper and make it eco-friendly and the consumer will change our energy future with their pocketbook.

You can't legislate that any more than you can legislate happiness. Sure you can make it illegal to be unhappy and, depending on the penalty for violating that law, you may end up with millions of people with creepy perennial smiles on their faces. But everyone must find their own happiness and most will go with what makes them happy. SO find something cheap, easy and green and you will change the world.

Mike Johnston

If you direct these subsidies away from the problematic GHG and contamination producing energy sources, and give them to consumers who generate GHG free kwh on their own rooftops and save kwh with plugin vehicles and geo heat exchange heating/cooling; the freed up market, in the form of those consumers will choose the technologies that yield the most GHG free kwh generated and kwh saved.

Free of monopoly forces markets will operate efficiently.  Government needs to stop the monopoly game that the status quo players enjoy.

It is easy for advocates of "free" unregulated markets to overlook the fact that OPEC and state owned energy companies and governments that are controlled by multinational corporate oil interests and futures trading monopolists (like bushco) are not really in favor of actual free and fair trading.  It's a radical concept.

Free marketeeerian forces oppose real free markets.  

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

The nice thing about geothermal is that it handles heat and cooling.  Air conditioning/ventilation takes up a whopping 19% of all electricity, according to my spreadsheet.  of course, this is all region-variable -- perhaps solar could be used to cool in the hottest regions.  

Solar thermal sounds great too, but if you can't use absorption chillers unless the building is big, then the cooling doesn't take place.  Also, refrigerators take up another 10%, which would be nice to connect to a heat pump, although apparently they can be made very efficient.

So, the general idea is that, depending on the region, a building should be able to heat and cool itself -- which could certainly include retrofitting -- and you can shut down coal plants.

The refrigerant fluid, ammonia for instance, absorbs heat from the cooled area when it evaporates, then it gives up the heat (normally to hot summer air).  Then the ammonia/water solution is heated by solar energy to separate the ammonia for the next cooling cycle.

If the ammonia vapor gives up it's heat to the cooler ground, the whole system would be much more efficient.

Similar efficiency gains would result from any industrial process that now depends on hot summer air for the cooling end of any energy cycle.   Industrial cooling that heats up water in rivers, prone to drought, could also benefit from geo heat exchange.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

2010-2020: efficiency standards. retrofits. deployment of existing tech to replace remaining dirty watts. refinement of near tech.
2020-2030: coup de grace to gasoline/diesel. deployment of near tech to replace natural gas. further cost focus. world-round push to eliminate coal in global south.
after 2030: green growth. retirement/refit of first decade industrial sites if applicable.

actually i was thinking of it more like overlapping 20-year cycles, like the hadley center's "decades."

Guesstimates that are used to bolster energy/ag policy directions could have a clearer, simpler explanation.  That would allow more people to make informed decisions on what they would like to invest in themselves and see the government subsidize.

The real market for these energy devices, the actual consumers, could then make their own best guess in the actual purchase.  Just like checking consumer reporting sources for reliability and quality before buying products.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

Chances are research money could be deployed in this area to far greater effect than on cellulosic ethanol and clean coal. But then that would mean spending money on conservation and demand management. How un-American. Can't have that.

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

These kinds of modification of the ground circulation design can deal with different conditions.

In desert regions with hardly any groundwater heat transfer might be slower, but still feasible.  More pipes would be needed.  Solar powered heat absorption cooling dumping heat to the ground could make up for that though.  

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

However, to echo what hapa and amazin' are saying, it seems to me that this cries out for good research for each bioregion, or subbioregion, to determine the best fit.  At least, we should be thinking in terms of levels of electrical/energy generation -- building level, city level, national level -- and especially at the building (and maybe a neighborhood level), using solar heat/geothermal heating/cooling for direct use of heating and cooling instead of always assuming that we need more electricity.

http://www.halliburton.com/Default.aspx?navid=342&pag ...

SDG&E is a subsidiary of Sempra.  I regret this error.  The CEO of Sempra is Donald Felsinger, who in this June 18, 2006 San Diego Union Tribune article

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20060618-9999 ...

said he's not interested in pursuing renewable energy and doesn't think that global warming is proven:

"And although SDG&E says it will comply with state mandates on renewable energy, Felsinger says he no interest in pursuing renewable energy projects elsewhere in the company. In fact, he expresses no interest in dealing with the issue of global warming, although environmentalists generally target the energy industry as among the biggest contributors to the problem. But Felsinger said he is unconvinced that the phenomenon of global warming exists. 'There is definitely a debate about global warming, and when you look at the opposing views, neither one has prevailed,' Felsinger said. For example, he said, "The coal industry says there is no evidence of global warming.' Later he added: 'I don't think the science supports either side. So you ought to take a position of moderation. It's difficult to take sides between smart people.'"

. . .

"But Felsinger says he's reluctant to invest in renewable energy technologies beyond what the state requires. 'I will deploy our dollars in a way that is less controversial,' Felsinger said.
His interpretation of less controversial, however, is a matter of debate. Sempra is investing heavily in projects related to natural gas, including liquefied natural-gas receiving terminals in Baja California and along the Gulf Coast. The LNG terminals are a source of controversy, as critics argue that importing gas will continue U.S. dependence on a fossil fuel and at the same time raise the cost of the commodity because of the cost of shipping and processing."

Since this article was published in 2006, Sempra's PR people have adamantly backpedaled on these statements and claim that, gosh, Don really does want to do something about global warming.  But this individual was (and is) the top dog in the company that in 2005 picked Stirling Energy Systems as SDG&E's means to achieve the 20% by 2010 CA RPS mandate.  At that time, SDG&E stood at around 5% to 6% renewables, far behind all the other large California utilities.  And they are still way behind.  Perhaps the foregoing quotes explain part of the reason for this failing.

Thanks to all for this interesting thread.

With that research provide locally appropriate technical s