Solar Industry Learns Lessons in Spanish Sun

[phantom power]

Farmers sold land for solar plants. Boutiques opened. And people from all over the world, seeing business opportunities, moved to the city, which had suffered from 20 percent unemployment and a population exodus.

But as low-quality, poorly designed solar plants sprang up on Spain’s plateaus, Spanish officials came to realize that they would have to subsidize many of them indefinitely, and that the industry they had created might never produce efficient green energy on its own.

In September the government abruptly changed course, cutting payments and capping solar construction. Puertollano’s brief boom turned bust. Factories and stores shut, thousands of workers lost jobs, foreign companies and banks abandoned contracts that had already been negotiated.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/09/business/energy-environment/09solar.html

[Statistical]

1. Spain's feed in tarriffs were 46 cents per kWh.

Insane. Not only were panels subsidized but they were paying people 46 cents per kWh generated.

I mean subsidies are one thing but that isn't even sustainable. They would have went bankrupt trying to subsidize even 10% solar at those rates.

[kristopher]

2. That would depend on local market conditions for the power.

Solar provides peaking power and wholesale peaking power is often 10-30 times the wholesale price of baseload.

$0.46/kwh might be the averaged peaking price plus avoided costs of constructing new generation.

[NNadir]

3. Any idea what the peak period in power demand is almost everywhere world wide?

Well then, if you don't know what you're talking about, just make stuff up.

Let me give you a hint: It's not high noon.

[kristopher]

4. Do you ever have a rational thought?

Who said it was at noon? What I wrote was:
That would depend on local market conditions for the power. Solar provides peaking power and wholesale peaking power is often 10-30 times the wholesale price of baseload. $0.46/kwh might be the averaged peaking price plus avoided costs of constructing new generation.

[NNadir]

5. Yeah. Lot's of 'em. It's why I understand energy and don't rely on glib

assertions that consist entirely of wishful thinking.

Have a nice evening, and, somewhere about midnight, let us know how your big solar PV system is doing with your magic electric SUV with the giant batteries is performing.

This, of course, would be in lieu of understanding a shred of a mote of a fragment of a speck of a particle about the epidemiology of COPD and the role played by the good ole "transitional" (for the last 50 years of handwaving) dangerous fossil fuel waste dumping industry that never garners the a shred of attention from our tritium inspired vandals.

[kristopher]

6. Nuclear power fails to be the best means of addressing COPD and other air quality issues

Report on matching hourly and peak demand by combining different renewables
http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/HosteFinalDraft.pdf

More papers on topic from Jacobson
http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/susenergy2030.html

This one includes air pollution mortality:

Abstract here: http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/EE/article.asp?doi=b809990c

Full article for download here: http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/revsolglobwarmairpol.htm


Energy Environ. Sci., 2009, 2, 148 - 173, DOI: 10.1039/b809990c

Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security

Mark Z. Jacobson

Abstract
This paper reviews and ranks major proposed energy-related solutions to global warming, air pollution mortality, and energy security while considering other impacts of the proposed solutions, such as on water supply, land use, wildlife, resource availability, thermal pollution, water chemical pollution, nuclear proliferation, and undernutrition.

Nine electric power sources and two liquid fuel options are considered. The electricity sources include solar-photovoltaics (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal, nuclear, and coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The liquid fuel options include corn-ethanol (E85) and cellulosic-E85. To place the electric and liquid fuel sources on an equal footing, we examine their comparative abilities to address the problems mentioned by powering new-technology vehicles, including battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and flex-fuel vehicles run on E85.

Twelve combinations of energy source-vehicle type are considered. Upon ranking and weighting each combination with respect to each of 11 impact categories, four clear divisions of ranking, or tiers, emerge.

Tier 1 (highest-ranked) includes wind-BEVs and wind-HFCVs.
Tier 2 includes CSP-BEVs, geothermal-BEVs, PV-BEVs, tidal-BEVs, and wave-BEVs.
Tier 3 includes hydro-BEVs, nuclear-BEVs, and CCS-BEVs.
Tier 4 includes corn- and cellulosic-E85.

Wind-BEVs ranked first in seven out of 11 categories, including the two most important, mortality and climate damage reduction. Although HFCVs are much less efficient than BEVs, wind-HFCVs are still very clean and were ranked second among all combinations.

Tier 2 options provide significant benefits and are recommended.

Tier 3 options are less desirable. However, hydroelectricity, which was ranked ahead of coal-CCS and nuclear with respect to climate and health, is an excellent load balancer, thus recommended.

The Tier 4 combinations (cellulosic- and corn-E85) were ranked lowest overall and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste. Cellulosic-E85 ranked lower than corn-E85 overall, primarily due to its potentially larger land footprint based on new data and its higher upstream air pollution emissions than corn-E85.

Whereas cellulosic-E85 may cause the greatest average human mortality, nuclear-BEVs cause the greatest upper-limit mortality risk due to the expansion of plutonium separation and uranium enrichment in nuclear energy facilities worldwide. Wind-BEVs and CSP-BEVs cause the least mortality.

The footprint area of wind-BEVs is 2–6 orders of magnitude less than that of any other option. Because of their low footprint and pollution, wind-BEVs cause the least wildlife loss.

The largest consumer of water is corn-E85. The smallest are wind-, tidal-, and wave-BEVs.

The US could theoretically replace all 2007 onroad vehicles with BEVs powered by 73000–144000 5 MW wind turbines, less than the 300000 airplanes the US produced during World War II, reducing US CO2 by 32.5–32.7% and nearly eliminating 15000/yr vehicle-related air pollution deaths in 2020.

In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered.
The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security.

Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss, and the biofuel options provide no certain benefit and the greatest negative impacts.

[NNadir]

7. You cite this paper every damn day. It's still as dumb and as useless as it was 15 weeks ago.

Critical thinking actually involves a broad perspective.

I read many thousands of papers a year, mostly in reputable journals. I do recognize that many of them nonetheless are invalid.

There is NOT ONE anti-nuke on this website who is competent to judge any remark on nuclear power.

Anti-nuke's do shit like demontrate, for instance, that they have no fucking idea about what a void co-efficient is. Not so long ago there was actually an anti-nuke on this website who suggested, for instance, that Chernobyl had some bearing on their stupid and ignorant obsession with tritium atoms in Vermont.

QED.

[kristopher]

8. Right,

your post is an excellent example of why the author is a very well respected and widely published academic and you aren't.

http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/revsolglobwarmairpol.htm