Windfarms are POINTLESS!

[Solly]

I'm still waiting for a response.

[joncha]

POINTLESS!

[Impaler[WrG]]

That's an urban myth. We've done threads right here at Apolyton which showed you'd need a total surface area greater then the entire continental US to produce to total current electrical demand solely by solarpower. That still wouldn't prevent blackouts during cloudy days.

Thats rediculus, please provide some links to these threads, I would like to see what Ned was smoking.

[DRoseDARs]

Originally posted by Impaler[WrG]

Originally posted by Oerdin
That's an urban myth. We've done threads right here at Apolyton which showed you'd need a total surface area greater then the entire continental US to produce to total current electrical demand solely by solarpower. That still wouldn't prevent blackouts during cloudy days.

Thats rediculus, please provide some links to these threads, I would like to see what Ned was smoking.

Indeed. Business Week disagrees with him, and I first saw the proposal in Popular Science, but Business Week seems the stronger source to cite from an economic standpoint.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_37/b3950067_mz018.htm

SEPTEMBER 12, 2005

Chart: Solar Is Heating Up

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

Power From The Sunbaked Desert
Solar generators may be a hot source of plentiful electricity

Before President George W. Bush signed the federal energy bill into law on Aug. 8, he got a firsthand glimpse of a technology that could transform the deserts of the Southwest. Instead of a sandy wasteland, there would be gleaming farms with thousands of giant dish-shaped mirrors measuring 37 feet in diameter. Each dish would track the sun and focus its heat rays on an oil-barrel-size contraption suspended out in front, harnessing the heat to drive a 25-kilowatt generator.


Plant enough of these solar-dish farms, Bush learned on his tour of Sandia National Laboratories' National Solar Thermal Test Facility near Albuquerque, and they could mightily reduce the need for electric power plants that burn fossil fuels and emit carbon dioxide.

MOJAVE MEGAWATTS
The day after the Presidential tour, Sandia's vision began to look a lot more real. The supplier of the solar-thermal dish generators, Stirling Energy Systems Inc. in Phoenix, won a major commitment from Southern California Edison Inc. (EIX ) (SCE): For 20 years the utility will buy all the electricity that Stirling Energy can generate at a 500-megawatt solar energy farm that Stirling will build in the Mojave Desert near Victorville, Calif. This could be the biggest solar installation in the world -- equal to a typical coal-fired plant. And if local power lines can be upgraded to handle more juice, Stirling could enlarge the facility to 850 MW -- and SCE would take all of that, too.

Stirling's deal was made possible by several trends that are pushing alternative energy into the mainstream. As oil has become more expensive, so have natural gas and coal, the primary fuels for power plants. At the same time, concerns about global warming have prompted lawmakers -- local, state, and now the feds -- to unleash incentives for renewable energy. Wind power, solar energy, geothermal, and biomass fuels are all benefiting.

If the dishes do well, Stirling Energy's 4,500-acre desert farm will usher in new potential for Stirling engines, invented in 1816 by Church of Scotland minister Robert Stirling. His engine is ideal for green energy because it doesn't burn fuel internally. Instead, its pistons are driven by heating and expanding a reservoir of gas, which then cools for the next cycle. Using the sun's energy to heat the gas means zero fuel is burned.

Stirling Energy stands to rake in upwards of $90 million a year once the solar dishes are generating 500 MW in 2011. For SCE, already the largest purchaser of renewable energy in the U.S., the extra 500 MW will more than double the 354 MW of solar power it tapped in 2004 from nine other solar-thermal operations in the Mojave. It will also add almost 20% to SCE's 2,588 MW of renewable energy sources, including 1,021 MW of wind power. Last year more than 18% of the electricity that the utility delivered to its customers came from renewables.

Monster dish-shaped "heat antennas" are hardly familiar icons of green power. People tend to associate solar energy with flat, glassy panels that convert photons from sunlight into electric current. But such photovoltaic cells don't produce power as efficiently as Stirling dish generators. Cells typically convert just 10% to 15% of the sun's light -- and many cells perform at just half that level. In contrast, Stirling dishes achieve almost 30% in Sandia's six-dish system. "Later this year we'll do even better," declares D. Bruce Osborn, Stirling Energy's new CEO and a longtime solar proponent.

DAYTIME ONLY
Why hasn't Stirling Energy's technology made more of a splash in the power business? "Our dilemma has always been how to get costs down," explains Osborn. The dish assemblies now run $250,000 each. But that's because most have been handcrafted in sporadic lots of one or two units. Building a group of 40 or so would trim the cost to $150,000 each, Osborn estimates. With real mass production, that could drop by 50%.

So when SCE said it wanted to buy more renewable energy, Osborn's outfit proposed the 500 MW project as the means of moving beyond its chicken-or-egg impasse. Producing that much electricity will require 20,000 dishes, built in a steadily increasing flow over several years. "We're ramping up now," says Osborn.

He expects to have 40 dishes in place for a 1 MW facility by the end of next year, followed by 50 MW in 2008. The electricity will be delivered only when the sun is shining, but that's when the utility's customers place peak demands on electricity. "Our system is a really good match, providing peak power at times of peak load," notes Osborn.

The price per kilowatt-hour (kWh) that SCE will pay is confidential and must be approved by the California Public Utilities Commission. But there's little doubt that the contract will get a thumbs-up, perhaps as soon as next month. One reason: SCE says the price it negotiated is so attractive -- "well below the 11.33 cents per kWh" it now pays for peak power -- that it won't seek any subsidies from the state.

Subsidies have been a common means of jump-starting solar projects in California and 46 other states. Early this year, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger unveiled his Million Solar Roofs Initiative, calling for an additional 3,000 MW of solar power by around 2017. If the Million Solar Roofs Initiative passes next month, as expected, homeowners who install solar energy systems will earn a 7.5% state income-tax credit, in addition to other state incentives and the new 30% federal tax credit.

Consumers, of course, are unlikely to plant Stirling Energy's huge 37-foot dishes in their backyards, even if they are the most efficient solar generators around. But the technology dovetails nicely with California's mandate that utilities must derive 20% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2017 -- and Schwarzenegger would like to boost that goal to 33% by 2020. Osborn says that a dish farm of 11 miles square could produce as much electricity as the 2,050 MW from Hoover Dam. "We're already looking at a half-dozen one-square-mile sites in the California desert," he says, "and there's lots and lots more territory there."

Theoretically, Stirling dish farms with a total area of 100 miles square could replace all the fossil fuels now burned to generate electricity in the entire U.S. What happens in the California desert over the next few years could determine whether thermal solar power can help end the dominance of fossil fuels.

[Sandman]

They are unable to respond to power demand, and only blow at the times of the year when power spot prices are low (windy conditions in winter are mild and hence the system is less tight, windy conditions in summer are cooler and hence the system is less tight).

If I understand this mangled sentence right, you're saying that when it's windy in winter, it's usually warmer? That sounds like a grand claim, particularly given wind chill and the effect of drafts. Got a source?

Edit: D'oh

[Tingkai]

I think he's saying that strong winds are associated with warmer temperatures, and cooler temperatures which is a contradiction.

Strong winds occurs in all temperatures for obvious reasons.

The idea that the wind only blows when the demand for electricity is low, is simply false.

[Fake Boris]

Re: Windfarms are POINTLESS!

Originally posted by Doddler
Windfarms truly are economically pointless. They are unable to respond to power demand, and only blow at the times of the year when power spot prices are low (windy conditions in winter are mild and hence the system is less tight, windy conditions in summer are cooler and hence the system is less tight).

Dude, I can tell you that when the blind blows in Montreal, in the winter, it's ****ing cold.

[LordShiva]

Re: Re: Windfarms are POINTLESS!

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
Dude, I can tell you that when the blind blows in Montreal, in the winter, it's ****ing cold.

QFT! I was in Montreal in March, 2005. -35 C with wind chill. Brrrrrr.

(I warmed up at Club Copacabana, though )

[Solly]

Originally posted by Sandman


If I understand this mangled sentence right, you're saying that when it's windy in winter, it's usually warmer? That sounds like a grand claim, particularly given wind chill and the effect of drafts. Got a source?

Edit: D'oh

it's not mangled at all. The coldest spells in winter are generally when we have light winds and high pressure sits over us (& for extra effect, snow cover). Wind farms don't export power during these times of system stress.

The hottest spells in summer are when we have light winds and high pressure sits over us. Wind farms don't export export power during these times of system stress.

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
I'm a big proponent of wind, and solar. I think we've been morons not to develop it before now.

Guess thats why you buy them from the experts

http://businessweek.com/magazine/content/01_18/b3730108.htm

The article is a bit old - since then the percentage of windpower has risen from 13 to 20 %

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Impaler[WrG]

Thats rediculus, please provide some links to these threads, I would like to see what Ned was smoking.

Let's double check it using some simple math. Here's the specs for a solar panel made by Kyocera Corp of Japan which is actually quite good.

http://www.emarineinc.com/products/solar_panels/kyocera_panels.html

The panel takes up 10 sq ft and has a max power rating of 130 watts. Unfortunately, solar panels never produce the max power and certainly not for an extended period of time there for a good rule of thumb is that the average daily output in a sunny mid-latitude place will be 25% of the max capacity. That gives us 32.5 watts per hour from 10 sq ft of solar panels.

Total US consumption of electricity in 1999 was 281 billion kilowatt hours (demand has undoubtly gone up considerably in the last 7-8 years but we'll make it easy on you and use this lower number).

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2744/is_1999_Sept/ai_56249948

1 kw-hour = 1000 watt-hour so we'll need 281,000,000,000,000 watt-hour to satisfy US demand in 1999. Dividing that number by 32.5 will give use the total number of solar panels needed to produce that amount which is 8,646,153,846,153.85 solar panels but since we can't have part of a solar panel we'll round that up to the nearest whole number. Since each panel takes up 10 sq ft we will need 86,461,538,461,540 sq ft.

1 square mile = 27 878 400 square foot

So we'll need 310,139 sq miles of solar panels assuming there is no transmition lose, that none of the panels ever breaks, and assuming that they do indeed produce 25% of their max power output every single day rain or shine. That's not to bad in terms of surface area (about 120% the size of the state of Texas). The cost for just the solar panels not counting installation or maintance would be $6,484,615,384,615,500 That's about $6.484 quadrillion! The entire US GNP is only around $15 trillion per year! All that money and we still won't have any electricity at night.

Thus in conclusion it seems that we do indeed have the space to put all of those solar panels but just buying those panels would be massively to expensive. It would be more then the 10-50 years worth of GNP for the entire planet not counting installation, maintance, transmition loses, etc... Solar is not the anwser and never will be.

[Aeson]

Solar is already part of the answer.

And saying it never could be the answer is silly. We don't know what advances will be made in the future. The sun will always be a great source of energy for as long as the Earth will be habitable.

[Dinner]

Even if we assume, quite foolishly, that some how the cost will come down to just 1/1000th of its current cost then we're still looking at more money then the total US GNP for the next 100 years. It's just not going to happen.

For large scale power at an affordable price our choice is either fossil fuels or nuclear power. Sure, we can have some niche applications of solar, wind, and geothermal but they're going to remain a tiny percentage. For real massive amounts of electricity solar will never be a serious part of the equation.

[Solly]

What plant are you going to use to generate through the peak hours in order that generation matched the daily demand profile?

You need gas and coal.

[Adrian Hon]

If the cost for the solar panels, according to your calculations, is $6.484 quadrillion, and the US GNP is $15 trillion, then it would take 432 years of the GNP to pay.

However, if the cost came down to 1/1000th, then it would take a mere 0.432 years.