Solar Power — Cool Video
Anyone looking for a high-level view on solar energy is going to adore this video on the subject. “High-quality, accurate, entertaining, and objective” – 2GreenEnergy 🙂
Anyone looking for a high-level view on solar energy is going to adore this video on the subject. “High-quality, accurate, entertaining, and objective” – 2GreenEnergy 🙂
Per the video, solar is expected to expand to generate 27% of of electricity by 2050. It’s hard to know what to do with that statistic. France, in only 15 years, went from zero nuclear to 80% nuclear, but that was only one country so comparing the speed with which FRANCE implemented nuclear with the rate at which the video expects the WORLD to implement solar is perhaps not fair. Even so, the comparison is interesting. But to have a major impact on reducing global warming, we have to phase out using fossil fuels at a much faster rate than that.
Also per the video, the maximum efficiency of solar cells is 30% to 35%. Actually, it is more commonly about half of that. Perhaps they meant to say that the efficiency may be increased to that amount.
Comparing the cents per watt of solar with other systems is not a fair comparison since it does not take the availability factor into consideration. For example, if the availability of solar is 20%, then, even with unlimited storage, it would have to be overbuilt by a factor of five to provide continuous power. When that is considered, it does not compare favorably with systems which can provide power 100% of the time. The cost of the storage makes it even worse.
It was correctly pointed out that PV solar will produce power even on cloudy days. In fact, it was stated that PV solar can produce 80% as much power on cloudy days as on clear days. That is probably true if the cloudiness is only light. However, concentrated solar will produce NO power on cloudy days. And, the heat storage capability of concentrated solar makes storage more economical than battery storage for PV power.
Nuclear systems can produce power practically 100% of the time whereas solar systems, unless they have storage, cannot. That difference may not seem important now but of solar penetrating increases beyond a certain point, that limitation will become inescapably clear.
It is unclear why they showed the solar airplane which is traveling around the world. It is barely able to do so. They have to watch the weather very carefully, at time, have to land and wait until adequate sun will be available. It is not able to carry a load. As a stunt it is impressive, but it seems unlikely ever to have a practical purpose.
Solar PV is exceeding 30% efficiency in the lab.
It would be good if that 30% efficiency can be realized in practical situations. Even though I don’t see solar power as practical as a major source of power in most large countries, there are still plenty of uses for it. I’ve already mentioned that it has improved the quality of life for people who live in areas where connecting to the grid would be impractical.
In my neighborhood there is a parking lot for a condominium complex. The security gate for it is solar powered presumably because it would be inconvenient to connect it to the grid. Solar power is also used to power some school crossing lights. As solar power becomes less expensive and battery life improves, all sorts of uses will be found for small amounts of solar power.
You may want to do a bit of reading on this. Yes, there are small applications, but there are 27 GW of solar PV installed in the US alone, more than half of which is utility generation.
I am aware of large PV installations in the U.S.; I’ve seen some of them. I’ve also seen many roof-top PV installations, including in my neighborhood. But using current technology, because of its intermittent nature, solar cannot ever come even close to achieving the required 100% fossil free power, even if it is so overbuilt that its peak available power is five or more times the required peak demand. In that case, with current technology, there would be times when the amount of power would drastically exceed demand and other times when the power is greatly insufficient.
Increasing the efficiency of PV panels, regardless of how much, would reduce land and building material requirements and might reduce costs, but because of its intermittent nature, that increased efficiency alone would not make it possible to achieve 100% fossil free power.
On the other hand, even with our current mediocre nuclear power technology, nuclear can achieve 100% fossil free power. So, although we can expect better nuclear technologies to be deployed in the future, we don’t have to await new technologies to achieve 100% elimination of fossil fuel usage with our current nuclear technology.
Nuclear power requires considerably less steel than PV solar power requires and drastically less concrete and steel than solar thermal electric requires. In the following link, see the table following the heading “Building Materials Footprint”:
http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/programs/energy-and-climate/nuclear-has-one-of-the-smallest-footprints
France went from 0% nuclear power to 80% nuclear power for electricity in only 15 years. I know of no other country that has phased out fossil fuel usage to that extent without nuclear power.
Then too, nuclear power requires less modification to the grid because it can be installed where the grid has been designed to accept power. That also helps to increase the speed at which it can be implemented.
Hi Frank,
I agree, Solar power is already proving extremely useful for many specialist applications, especially rural.
The problem as I see it, is not so much with the technology which is continually improving and developing more and more exciting specialist uses, but the claims of devout solar advocates as to Solar’s suitability for high demand, industrial scale, electricity generation.
The more extreme of these advocates have turned Solar technology (along with Wind, wave, etc) into a sort of mantra for a new religion, where reality no longer operates !
That would be harmless, except these advocates are very politically active and demand governments support these technologies, while deterring and restricting competition from other technologies.
I share your view on the solar plane. The limits to the amount of power that can be generate per square foot of wing space means that this can never be practical. Given that, why do it?
Of course, one could make a similar argument about the PV on the Prius roof, but at least there it’s doing some good, and, IMO anyway, it’s cool to look at.
I was directed to an article entitled, “A Naval officer’s “Atomic Insights”. Here is a quotation therefrom:
“…my analysis tells me that anyone who pushes the idea that there is a hope for human society to shift from fossil fuels to a narrowly defined set of “renewable” energy sources that pointedly excludes atomic fission is either hopelessly innumerate or simply lying through their teeth. Because I am pretty sure that statement is true, I understand why fossil fuel interests (broadly defined to include anyone who wants to keep making money by finding, extracting, transporting, financing, marketing, refining, or selling coal, oil, natural gas or any of their byproducts) talk a lot about their plans for development of wind, solar, geothermal and biomass energy and either ignore or discourage the use of nuclear energy.”
And here is the link:
http://www.marcgunther.com/a-naval-officers-atomic-insights/
The article is well worth reading in its entirety, including the comments which follow the article.
Here is another helpful website:
http://atomicinsights.com
IMO, no one knows, be he a naval officer or a pastry chef, if a grid-mix made up of 100% renewables (in the absence of nuclear) is attainable or not. In any case, it doesn’t matter, since the future of the next 50 years almost definitely holds a place for nuclear (as well as natural gas).
Actually, it does matter.
CH4 also has to be phased out. Although burning CH4 emits less CO2 than burning coal, it still emits considerable CO2 and that’s what has to be eliminated. Ideally we would have negative CO2 emissions, but it is unclear whether that could ever be done on a large enough scale to matter.
Except for power sources which are very limited by geography, nuclear is the only CO2 free power technology at present which can provide all our needed power reliably. Spending excessive $$ on intermittent sources of power will delay the implementation of totally CO2 free sources of power. Also, when intermittent sources of power are connected to the grid, they complicate operating nuclear plants because the nuclear plants have to be designed in such a way that they can do a better job of load following; that increases costs.
We know for certain that nuclear systems can provide uninterrupted power at all times; that is not questioned. But so far no country has ever succeeded in using only wind and solar power; they have always had to use nuclear or a CO2 emitting power source for backup.
There is also a big difference in implementation time. Germany’s Energiewende programme began well over 15 years ago (I haven’t searched for the exact date when it began); here are their results:
“Some aspects of the Energiewende have been successful: renewable sources accounted for nearly one-third of the electricity consumed in Germany in 2015.”
Here is the link for the above:
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601514/germany-runs-up-against-the-limits-of-renewables/
Yet in less time, France went from zero nuclear to 80% nuclear. The evidence suggests that nuclear power can be implemented more quickly than renewables especially considering Deutschland’s unquestioned commitment to renewables. It is critical that we practically eliminate CO2 emissions as quickly as possible to minimize global warming to the extent possible.