[gg3]

Error alert:

"The maximum you can get into the grid is about 25 percent from solar," including photovoltaics, Mills says. But "once you have storage, it changes from this niche thing to something that could be the big gorilla on the grid equivalent to coal."

Note this 25% is not the same thing as 25% efficiency. This 25% if, the maximum contribution of solar to the grid, due to intermittency. For wind, it's 20 - 30% depending on whose figures you are looking at. So we can reasonably assume that solar plus wind = about 50% of grid capacity. The remaining 50% has to come from somewhere, and it needs to be firm & dispatchable power: power that can be varied as the inverse of the contributions from solar and wind. The best two sources for this are hydro and nuclear.

[davep]

Error alert:

"The maximum you can get into the grid is about 25 percent from solar," including photovoltaics, Mills says. But "once you have storage, it changes from this niche thing to something that could be the big gorilla on the grid equivalent to coal."

Note this 25% is not the same thing as 25% efficiency. This 25% if, the maximum contribution of solar to the grid, due to intermittency. For wind, it's 20 - 30% depending on whose figures you are looking at. So we can reasonably assume that solar plus wind = about 50% of grid capacity. The remaining 50% has to come from somewhere, and it needs to be firm & dispatchable power: power that can be varied as the inverse of the contributions from solar and wind. The best two sources for this are hydro and nuclear.

I'm not sure that you are correct. 25% due to intermittency would still be <25% with storage (due to losses). The 25% and the intermittency may be separate things.

BTW, there is storage technology available, such as Vanadium Redux which gives back roughly 80% without the progressive reduction in capacity inherent in most battery systems. It's currently being implemented for an Irish wind farm.

With storage, I don't see why there would be some 25% total capacity limit, as there is the generating capacity coupled with on-demand availability.

[aahala]

HydroLuver

I generally agree with the numbers you gave concerning alternative
energy, subsidies and mandates. I would not described them
as you have however. I think the efforts are somewhere between
diddily squat and far less than enough.

The numbers in insolation may seem incredible, stunning or
massive, but relative to the situation they aren't, in my opinion.

Some examples relative yours:

The $22B investment for 10,000 MW wind and 300 MW solar
over 7 years is about 60% of the profit(not income or funds
invested, but profit) by Exxon in a single recent year. The
amount of energy from this alternative investment would not
likely cover even half the average annual increase in the US electrical power consumed.

The subsidies you believe are so stunning or massive for wind
and solar are rather puny when compared to the indirect
subsidies for oil included the annual military defense budget.
The generally accepted range for this annual figure -- before
the Iraq war -- is between 20 and 100 billion dollars a year.
(The total annual federal subsidy for wind and solar combined
is probably less than $2 billion).

The RPS that you described are definitely a good thing but
how good are they really? One or two of the states that have
the increasing renewable energy standards state the growing
requirement, but provide no penaly whatsoever if a utility fails
to comply. Some of the other states which have RPS, the
requirements are pretty small in the required increase, with
all kinds of loopholes the utilities will surely take advantage
of if the going gets tough.

[yesplease]

The amount of subsidies and mandates being passed into law in favor of alternatives is incredible. Numerous states now require a percentage (often 20%) of renewable energy from their utilities by a certain date. The level of tax credits for solar (almost 50% of cost) and wind (1.9 cents kwh) are massive.

It's increasing on a regional level, but I wouldn't go as far as saying it's incredible. There are some who wish to encourage and mitigate any problems we may have with resource prices and externalities, but AFAIK, we have not slowed down significantly WRT FF emissions and/or use. Budgeting a few billion is great for both those who care about it, and those who care about how it'll make them look if ya follow. Hell, El Casa Blanca has acknowledged climate change, but I don't see 'em doing much about it... And, provided free or extremely cheap gubberment land leases could make solar thermal economically competitive w/o taxing FF externalities, I don't see how we wouldn't see something similar to prop 87 in CA, w/ the FF lobby spending hundreds of millions to protect billions, or trillions over the long haul, in profits.

[cephalotus]

http://www.solarmillennium.de/pdf/TRECwhite_paper.pdf

you may also have a look at the first big European projects with solar thermal power plants in Spain on the main page:

http://www.solarmillennium.de

[thor]

http://www.trecers.net/index.html :

Feasibility of the DESERTEC Concept
The technologies that are needed to realise the DESERTEC concept are already developed and some of them have been in use for decades. HVDC transmission lines up toto 3 GW capacity have been deployed over long distances by ABB and Siemens for many years. In July 2007 Siemens accepted a bid to build a 5 GW HVDC System in China. At the World Energy Dialogue 2006 in Hanover speakers from both the companies just mentioned have confirmed that the implementation of a Euro-Supergrid and a EU-MENA-Connection is, technically, entirely feasible.
Solar thermal power plants have been in use commercially at Kramer Junction in California since 1985. New solar thermal power plants with a total capacity of more than 2000 MW are either planned, under construction, or already in operation. The Spanish government guarantees a feed-in tariff of about 26 EuroCent/kWh for 25 years and this has established favourable business conditions for CSP. Because of the higher solar radiation at good sites in the USA or MENA it is now possible to use lower rates in feed-in tariffs. The DLR has calculated that, if solar thermal power plants were to be constructed in large numbers in the coming decades, the estimated cost would come down to about 4-5 EuroCent/kWh.
In order to establish, by 2050, a capacity of 100 GW of exportable solar power in MENA, over and above the domestic needs of sun-belt countries, only a few governmental supporting measures would be sufficient to make the construction of the power plants and the necessary transmission grid more attractive to investors, both private and public. An approximate investment forecast for the TRANS-CSP scenario has been researched by the DLR (graphic on the right).

http://www.leonardo-energy.org/drupal/node/1485 :

They have calculated that it would be feasible to build a total of fifty square kilometres of facilities in the desert capable of generating 100 GW

Nuclear power plants can't keep up. There's not enough uranium to make this happen. Last time I checked, the sun isn't going to run out of heat anytime soon.

[KillTheHumans]

Nuclear power plants can't keep up. There's not enough uranium to make this happen.

Actually....there is. Australia is currently trying to find the limits to an ore body which constitutes about 20-25 years supply. GLOBAL supply. Noticed the huge drop in spot market price over the past 6 months? There is a reason for this...

[cephalotus]

-> http://www.solarmillennium.de/upload/Pr ... _paper.pdf

[Tyler_JC]

Nuclear power plants can't keep up. There's not enough uranium to make this happen.

Actually....there is. Australia is currently trying to find the limits to an ore body which constitutes about 20-25 years supply. GLOBAL supply. Noticed the huge drop in spot market price over the past 6 months? There is a reason for this...

[TheTurtle]

Actually....there is. Australia is currently trying to find the limits to an ore body which constitutes about 20-25 years supply. GLOBAL supply.

I don't mean to quibble, but doesn't that mean that there is only a finite supply? What happens after 25 years?

[yesplease]

Actually....there is. Australia is currently trying to find the limits to an ore body which constitutes about 20-25 years supply. GLOBAL supply.

I don't mean to quibble, but doesn't that mean that there is only a finite supply? What happens after 25 years?

The sun will only last for so many years too... It just depends on what time scale/use is being referred to.

[Grifter]

This was being talked about on bbc radio 4 when I was in the car at about 9 - 9.20 pm tonight.

Can't find a link to the actual program, just thought I'd say.

[TheTurtle]

The sun will only last for so many years too... It just depends on what time scale/use is being referred to.

I might still be alive 25 years from now. Several billion years from now, probably not.

[KillTheHumans]

I don't mean to quibble, but doesn't that mean that there is only a finite supply? What happens after 25 years?

The usual of course. We start a website called PeakUranium.Com, we pretend we'll all die without it, make up cool scenario's involving our neighbors and cannibalism, dream up scenario's whereby smart people like us live, everyone we don't like die's, etc etc.

Or....we find some more. Hubberts estimates of nuclear fuel was measured in thousands of years....I have a feeling we'll get into one of those "easy" uranium versus "hard" uranium type arguments, there will be new expert geologists who miss the peak uranium date by the odd century......

[xerces]

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/04/14/solar_electric_thermal/

Storable Solar energy with a higher conversion efficiency than PV technology. The energy storage cost is 1/20th that of solar panels. I see no fundamental bottlenecks with scaling up such a technology since it's composed of common materials and off the shelf commercial sub-components.

[sicophiliac]

Why waste the money on something as sustainable and logical as that? The money would be much better spent bombing oil rich countries and cutting gas taxes!

[yesplease]

I see no fundamental bottlenecks with scaling up such a technology since it's composed of common materials and off the shelf commercial sub-components.

The deserts of Congress will be filled with dead and bloated lobbyists before the government funds something like that in sufficient numbers, and those with enough private capital to do similar wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole given the time required to amortize costs, and the potential of even more lobbyists filling legislative halls with gifts and whispers of removing any financial incentives and/or tax breaks, even if their industry receives similar.

Although the technology functioned well, Luz was forced to file for bankruptcy in 1991. The reasons, detailed in this Sandia report, included uncertainty in the market, a delay of federal and state tax breaks, and the lack of economic value derived from environmental benefits.

It's far more profitable to limit energy sources, gouge consumers, and have something left to clean up afterward, figuratively and literally.

[xerces]

All of your points about politics are taken. However, it still does not detract from the fact that this is an economical(at current prices) and scalable solution to the problem at hand.

Unlike PV technology, we could actually build thousands of square miles of solar thermal energy collectors without breaking the bank or running out of key resources. When embedded into a distributed grid, I don't see why such a solution cannot eventually cover the total energy output currently delivered by petroleum? And once the net energy deficit is covered, can't the surplus electricity simply be converted into motor power(via electric autos or hydrogen)?

Peak oil is not about peak energy, it's a peak in liquid fuels used primarily for transportation.