New Partner in Portugal: Sun Business Development

August 23, 2010

I just got off the phone with an extremely professional company in Portugal with which 2GreenEnergy will be partnering to deliver renewables consulting and EPC (Engineering, Procurement and Construction) projects for our clients.

You’ll travel a long way to find a group of people with a deeper background in the guts of what makes large projects – especially CSP (concentrating solar power) work. Coincidentally, my main contact, Agostinho Miguel Garcia, knows David Mills, co-founder and chief scientist at Ausra – whom I interviewed for my book’s chapter on the subject. Check them out here.

I always expect the Portuguese to speak a number of languages, but this guy exceeded my expectations there too – a total of six including Mandarin. Holy smokes.

By Craig Shields | Posted in Solar Thermal | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

Solar Thermal – Ausra Sold! – More Discussion

February 12, 2010

PhotobucketMore on my coversation with John Hugo on solar thermal, who writes:

Craig: I agree, could not have said it better re: nukes.

Re: the capital intensity of solar thermal, I don’t have a cost estimate on the power block from them and turbine procurement appears to be a problem according to them. But the cost of the mirrors etc. is $99 million for 50 MW pls the power block costs. This compares to $4/watt for PV, or $200 million.

Their system also allows for a gas assist that can run after the sun goes down or during low sun periods. That can add another 25% to capacity and which has the fuel costs of gas, but that’s the same as other gas systems in place now. Better than coal or nukes?

To which I replied:

Dr. Mills, Ausra’s founder, declined to talk (to me, at least) about the cost per Watt, even though I fairly well grilled him on the subject. Perhaps he was just being coy, but according to what he said, the price of steel is incredibly important in making this determination, and that this fluctuates greatly.

Personally, here is what I suspect. An extremely important aspect to keep in mind is that, unlike say wind, the efficiencies of solar thermal are improving every month. As you’ll see in my book’s chapter on the subject (scheduled to be published in March), there are four essentially different technologies here. Dr. Mills declined to say too much about exactly what he’s doing, but it was clear that he was pretty excited by it. The only hint he gave me was that it had to do with bringing a high-temperature (thus high-efficiency, per the principles of thermodynamics) solution to a technology that had previously been thought of as low-temperature.

I’m quite confident that Dr. Mills and his colleagues will be continue to be extremely active in the business; his passion for it is obviously sincere. And I, for one, believe he’s barking up the right tree in terms of a true and comprehensive solution for the world’s energy needs.

By Craig Shields | Posted in Solar Thermal | Tagged , , | Comment (1)

Solar Thermal Leader Ausra — Sold!

February 11, 2010

PhotobucketI’m sure many readers are aware of the incredible development in solar thermal / CSP (concentrated solar power). French energy giant Areva, which has a large nuclear portfolio, bought Ausra, and says it will use the acquisition to become “the world leader in concentrated solar power.” Here is a discussion I just had with my colleague John Hugo:

John writes:

It’s interesting that they were able to sell with little installed base and no real history of operation. The water cooling operation uses quite a bit of water and the dry version still uses water but much less and output is reduced. They have good people but they are not professional salespeople. …. I think it’s a hedge vs. nuclear which I don’t think will cut it due to the storage issue which has not been solved.

But despite recent political support re: nuclear why do it if you can do solar at less cost?

… and I reply

John:

Yes, this is quite a development, for sure. Here’s my take for what it’s worth:

CSP is extremely capital intensive. Projects require huge piles of cash, and happen only when the underwriting company is strong enough to present a meaningful warranty. I happen to know (based on my interview with the company’s founder David Mills) that Ausra was hungry to partner with (or, apparently, sell to) a company that could make all this happen.

Everything else you write about CSP is correct, if perhaps overstated. It DOES use water for cooling, and there IS a storage issue. There’s also a transmission issue, as the power is generated in the desert. But IMO, these are challenges that can be — and are being — overcome. First and most obviously, there is a good correlation between the sun’s shining and human activity. But more importantly, advancements that are being made constantly in smart grid, high voltage DC, and molten salt energy storage, in my mind at least, make CSP the top bet for our energy future.

On the other hand, I believe that there is no future whatsoever for the nuclear industry. I know there are people who disagree (and that I’ll be hearing from them any minute). But to me, no amount of money and the lobbying, subterfuge, and disinformation it buys will get that industry past the incredible dangers, outrageous costs overruns, and decade-long delays that are intrinsic to the very nature of what they do.

With all their financial (and thus political) strength, I don’t doubt that you’ll continue to hear claptrap about supporting nuclear. There is a word for this: corruption; it’s a regrettable but deeply entrenched part of our daily lives — whether we recognize it or not. But having said this, I very much doubt that you’ll live to see another new nuke actually put into operation in the US.

By Craig Shields | Posted in Solar Thermal | Tagged , , , , | Comments (7)

The True Cost of Electric Power

November 1, 2009

PhotobucketI urge readers to go through this excellent article explaining the costs of various means of generating electrical power.  This is a wonderful presentation of the most important ingredients in the calculus that we would like to think our leaders employ in establishing public energy policy. 

To present a few of the basics:

 

 

  • The availability of renewables fluctuates during each 24-hour cycle, and thus it’s normally assumed that they are inappropriate for providing baseload power.

 

  • The cost of building the plant is independent of the cost of the fuel to operate the plant.

 

  • Where solar and wind can be switched on and off in seconds, fossil fuel and nuclear plants cannot.

 

  • The cost of pollution needs to be included in the calculations.

While I don’t dispute any of this, there are important aspects of the discussion that I feel need to be brought forward:

  1. The reason that we believe renewables cannnot provide baseload power is not intrinsic to the generation method per se, but to our perceived inablility to store energy inexpensively. However, molten salt technology, which stores energy as heat and coverts it to electricity on demand, is a proven method of removing this objection. I urge readers to note the work of Ausra, the US leading solar thermal company, based in Northern California. Yesterday, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. David Mills, the company’s founder, in preparation for my book on renewables.

  2. The actual cost of building these plants is almost never anywhere near the projected budget.  Readers may want to Google “nuclear plant cost overrun,” and read a few of the 54,700 articles they’ll find on the subject. Here’s one that refers to a certain nuclear project as “satanic,” based on the the actual amount of the overrun ($6.66 billion). The Florida utility, FPL Group, now estimates the cost of building a new nuclear power plant at over $9 billion, nearly double their previous estimate.

  3. The nuclear industry and its lobbies have carefully confused us about the costs and safety of shipping and storing nuclear waste, which remains dangerous for as long as one million years.

  4. As noted, the author of the article above mentions the cost of the pollution, but does not suggest any real way of quantifying it. While I’ll grant that this is not a straightforward issue, it’s really crux of the matter.

As I’ve written many times in the past, if the price we pay per kilowatt-hour of electricity (or for a gallon of gasoline) included the cost of addressing the lung disease and long-term environmental damage to our skies and oceans, the math would be changed completely. Society’s desire to continue to mine, process, ship and burn coal and oil would be gone in the blink of an eye.

By Craig Shields | Posted in Renewables - Business | Tagged , , , , | Comments (11)