Google Engineers Say Renewable Energy ‘Simply won’t work’

[paperburn1]

There is more to solar than PV.
Direct storage of heat is the way to get the efficiency needed to make the projects work. PV panels are not quite up to the task yet, and even if they had the rating needed there is still the problem of storage of the electricity until you need it.
The pv panels are good for small task loads but not large ones.

[Tom Ligon]

Photovoltaic panels in the 300 W range are now down to about $1/W in pallet quantities.

That $/w cost does not take into account intermittency (which you discuss). The real cost to account for that is $4 to $6 a watt. And it gets worse. In the places where we have summer and winter - summer is different from winter. So you might get down to $4 a watt in summer and up to $10 (or more) a watt in winter.

Where solar makes some sense is in places with Air Conditioning to off set the cost. And it may not make sense for that if it isn't subsidized.

Solar AC is a really tasty idea. If you're willing to do without on a cloudy hot muggy day, or use grid power then, solar energy tends to be strongest when it is hottest. I've been considering it for the cabin. Several high-efficiency AC systems are available which are "solar ready", and there are supposed to be some installers around who will put them in as a package deal.

The problem is, finding those installers and getting them to talk to you. I managed to get one out for an estimate once, he said the 24 SEER system, without PV panels, that we'd discussed would come in under $10k, then presented a formal quote over $10k, and never got back to me on later inquiries. It probably does not help that what I intend is non-standard. Grid tie is not available in our area yet, and the standard installations are grid tie, and don't directly power the AC stand-alone.

The real deal killer is my wife. She's figured out there are tax credits available, but says the tax credits only apply to our primary home, so the deal is off on the cabin until it is our primary home. In other words, they've manage to craft an incentive for putting in solar that is actually stopping us from doing it.

[Tom Ligon]

There is more to solar than PV.
Direct storage of heat is the way to get the efficiency needed to make the projects work. PV panels are not quite up to the task yet, and even if they had the rating needed there is still the problem of storage of the electricity until you need it.
The pv panels are good for small task loads but not large ones.

I use both solar PV and heat collector panels circulating propylene glycol solution. I've worked with PVT before (combining the two functions). If you cool PV panels you may get around 25% more out of them than otherwise. Their efficiency drops as they get hotter.

The catch is, this scheme is no good for domestic hot water because the working fluid temperature is too high for the efficiency boost. You need a heat sink running low enough to boost PV efficiency. The 90 F temperature of a radiant heat floor is a good match. But even if you don't get the efficiency boost, the fact that you're recovering all that waste heat for some use constitutes a huge overall performance boost. The need is seasonal, of course, and sometimes you'll need to get rid of the excess heat, just as any stand-alone PV system will sometimes have power you don't use.

This cooling could work on conventional PV panels, but for best effect you need a different construction, one designed to trap as much heat as possible.

If they can get tin selenide thermoelectric generators in production at a competitive price, those could out perform PV and still be used to scavenge the waste heat.

[GIThruster]

. . .The small end-user can afford to run on renewables. . .I have achieved of the 50% drop of my overall energy usage by doing this. So it does work.

I am still tied to the grid. There are some things that the grid can supply more economically than I can generate myself. Today is an excellent example, we are going to have no sunshine or four days in a row due to the weather. For those four days I am 100% reliant upon grid power. I do not have the storage capacity nor could I afford the storage capacity to do this. The return on investment is just not economical.

So I will just look at my average of $50-$60 a month electric bill and chuckle quietly as people say renewables are impossible.

You keep saying it's possible and showing that it is not. To show it's possible to go all renewable you have to go all renewable. No one has ever said using solar won't save you money. What they argue is that when you start talking about energy storage and such, it's not affordable. An this is just what you showed!

Energy storage is hard and expensive. Just because we can cut back on our power generation during peak draw periods by installing solar does not mean it can be a replacement for other sources. If you want it to to be such a replacement, you at the very least have to come up with a storage facility that is much more efficient than what we have.

[mvanwink5]

Don't forget the subsidies, and the endless, insufferable propaganda.

[palladin9479]

The average first world citizen simply use's far to much power for "wind / solar" to be realistic, and that use is growing. It's good for when you can implement it with little to no opportunity cost, stuff like rooftop panels or thermal storage. As long as there is a reliable backup source of power for when the ambient stuff isn't working anymore. The genie's been let out of the bottle, people's power use is only going to grow as technology continues to change our lives.

[D Tibbets]

Intermittancy is certainly a valid consideration. The metric of using nameplate capacity can be mis leading, but it is a metric that can be compared across the field. It reflects cost to build a system versus output capacity. It does not address intermittancy issues or down time for steam plant repairs or fuel rod replacement, etc. The intermittancy issues are certainly magnified for wind and solar, as well as less than optimal output due to wind variance, clouds, etc. Also, the cost of fuel needs to be considered, essentially none for wind and solar, retirement costs and yearly operational and maintainance costs. It is complex.

Solar photovotaic costs at ~ $1 / W nameplate capacity are certainly increasingly attractive despite other concerns- with storage being the largest by far, but that is mitigated somewhat with the recognized plurality approach that is recommended. I think the $1 price tag is not so important as a goal, but as a way point towards costs perhaps reaching $0.10 per watt. That would more than make up for any capacity short comings during the night, etc. At least from a cost per watt standpoint.

I am not a Solar freak, but I recognize that by the introduction of cheap excess nameplate capacity, needs can be met. It might be inconvenient in terms of unregulated power upon demand, without time rationing, etc. It can support power needs for the most part. Some help from geothermal and hydroelectric helps and the world will not end with fossil fuel depletion from an energy perspective. I am more worried about fossil fuel use for fertilizer production and feedstocks for cheap plastics, etc. Note that I have not mentioned any environmental concerns either way.

The point that I sometimes try to make is that fusion power is already here- photovoltaics are direct energy converters that derive their power from the Sun fusion reactor. It is inconvenient in many ways, but real and significant. Terrestrial fusion power in high density power plants could be much more convenient, and easily power cheap aluminum production, manufacture of liquid fuel if desired, desalination, etc.

If the convenience of concentrated terrestrial fusion power plants costs too much though, most of the advantages are lost. This seems to be the situation for low Beta tokamak schemes. A Polywell or FRC type scheme might be both convenient and reasonably priced to build and operate, if they work.

PS: I wonder how much power could be tapped from Yellowstone, provided you could distribute it. And, where is Long Valley? The power could be used in space. Laser propulsion is an option- perhaps inconvenient and intermittent, sorta like Solar power for terrestrial use.....

Dan Tibbets

[mvanwink5]

Renewables, Con Men, Politicians, Utopians, seem to go together like a 'Hero' sandwich.

Intermittency is not the biggest issue, the critical issue is unpredictability. Fuel rod replacement is scheduled at the utility's discretion, wind is not. It is hard to understate the significance of that. Solar is more predictable but has no night time production, and further, capacity variation during the day is nearly unusable. The problem is that the renewable "alternative" is political which always seems to mean full of con man propaganda, and the whole discussion reflects that with misleading wordings. Anytime renewables are discussed for instance, it invariably blames the customer for using power the way the customer wants, just the sort of thing that government, politicians, and 'Utopians' do, or janitors who dream of empty buildings that would be so much easier to clean - not connecting the need for their job to things being in the building.

And, since when was the power source for solar or wind free? In this universe nothing is free, it is just another propaganda term, and commonly used by con men as their marks always lose reason when something is "free," like 'Free' subsidies.

Sorry for the rant, I just get tired of this 'Utopian' bodge.

[Tom Ligon]

Long Valley is a huge caldera in California, adjacent to Mammoth Mountain. I first heard of it a couple of decades back when the ground level was moving rather alarmingly, causing a few speculations about the effects of its last major eruption.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Valley_Caldera

Long Valley and Yellowstone both have the potential (not imminent, but supported by their histories) of eruptions of the "knock North America back to the dark ages" kind. Or the potential to make a lot of steam, cheaply, instead.

One of the fun things you can do with intermittent power is make fuel. If we were to push for a hydrogen economy, there are photo-assisted catalysts for electrolysis of hydrogen that have been around for decades. People have been tinkering with hydrogen storage options (absorbers of various sorts, particularly), for about as long. I can see it as a transportation fuel, although somehow we need to figure out what will work best and start getting distribution and retail infrastructure in place.

But once you start talking about hydrogen as a transportation fuel, space transportation can benefit from a temperamental but cheap source, whereas making hydrogen by burning fossil fuels is a darned fool's errand.

But thousands of multi-GW powerplants? Not saying it is impossible, but I know what people want. They want to flip a switch and get power, no foolin' around. People could have off-the-grid solar right now. There are plenty of websites happy to sell you a turnkey system. But few people want to make the investment, or fool with the maintenance. If they had no power grid, they'd do this and put up with the chores happily, but given the choice of reasonable power at the flip of a switch for a low rate automatically paid from their bank account ... home solar has no chance.

We have power grids with big power plants run by pros because it just is so damned nice and economical and efficient. When considering options, it is important not to simply legislate switching to something else, but to realize that the something else has to be even more nice and economical and efficient.
That means a knock-down, drag-out competition, not subsidies of things that can't make it on their own. I don't actually mind solar and wind, and I support giving some R&D incentives to promising new ideas, or fundamental research that could lead that way, but installing major systems that cannot make it on their own merits is just bad policy.

Effective storage would change the balance. Hydrogen? Maybe.

[mvanwink5]

Hydrogen has nasty safety issues. Politically driven "solutions" to problems are nightmares, yet for 'Utopians,' that is the first and only approach that seems to inspire them. I guess there must be some logic to it, I just can't seem to understand it.

I am for smart solutions, customer centered solutions, market - free market that is - solutions. One size fits all is simple minded 'Utopian' political approach. Reality dictates that wind, solar, thermal, nuclear, geothermal, hydro, etc. all have a place and a market, even hydrogen. However, 'Utopians' want to force their 'dreams' or 'visions' on others using politics. Never ends well. I have supported solar, myself, since the 1970's but then the alternative got political. That is when the con men entered with "free fuel" and "free" subsidies. Politics = corruption, which leads back to 'Utopians.'

[Tom Ligon]

Hydrogen has nasty safety issues. Politically driven "solutions" to problems are nightmares, yet for 'Utopians,' that is the first and only approach that seems to inspire them. I guess there must be some logic to it, I just can't seem to understand it.

Is hydrogen so much worse than natural gas? The Hindenburg certainly adversely affected hydrogen's brand identity, but the actual culprit may have been the fabric skin of that ship, and a failed seam. Natural gas causes several spectacular explosions a year, and we still use it. My home is heated with it. I have invested in a gas/CO monitor.

For some crazy reason, I drive around in vehicles fueled with a flammable liquid that is essentially the same damned stuff they made napalm out of. Looks like urban terrorists may have been tossing incendiary devices made with it in one particular town last night.

If hydrogen were found to provide cost-effective energy storage (for example, using big hydrogen electrolysis and fuel cell facilities as batteries to provide storage for wind and solar sufficient to power the grid for days at a time), that would require only on-site storage. I wouldn't rule it out. The hybrid car battery approach looks pretty pointless to me.

But my point was precisely that political pronouncements that we must use a particular technology are just plain stupid. The determination needs to be sound engineering and economics. To put it bluntly, profit.

[mvanwink5]

Tom,
Hydrogen is colorless, odorless, and when just burning, not actually an explosive event, just burning, you can't see the flame. It is like a superheated steam leak where you can't see the leak, but it can kill or maim. Then when considering the event where explosive conditions occur, you can't even smell the hydrogen, and ignition is so easy. Finally, because of the very small molecular size of H2, leaks are not easy to prevent (actually Helium is worse, but of course it is inert).

That was the point. As a consumer filling his own tank like propane, gasoline, diesel, kerosene, etc, H2 is worrisome. Remember the troubles in the old days when carbon monoxide was used as a fuel for home heating? That was nasty stuff too, but for different reasons. Some things just are not a good idea for consumer use, and I would be worried about use of hydrogen for a common consumer fuel.

[krenshala]

Natural gas is also colorless (when a vapor) and odorless, in its natural form. The providers -add- oderants to it so you can more easily tell when a leak is occuring, without the need for any detectors other than the nose (though having them is probably safer).

There were lots of arguments when the automobile first started getting traction (no pun intended). The arguments were between whether it should be fueled with gasoline or hydrogen, and what would happen with each in the case of a crash. Personally, I'd rather be in a vehicle where the fuel leaked up, away from the scene of the crash, than in one where the fuel pools underneath.

[Tom Ligon]

Krenshala, you beat me to it on the odorant issue.

I hope everyone here who uses propane tanks actually does have a bottle of soap water handy to check for leaks. All the instructions with tanks and appliances say to do that. And certainly you have gas detectors running?

Soapy water works with hydrogen, too. I've used it. Particularly when you're hooking a $400+ bottle of deuterium up to a fusor. One mistake there could be deadly ... losing an expensive lecture bottle of the stuff is not itself deadly, but when your wife finds out you need to buy another bottle, she may kill you.

Hydrogen gas sensors are easy. A small bead of platinum- or palladium-coated porous ceramic catalyst, stuck on a thermocouple, will get hot when exposed to a hydrogen-air mixture.

As for gas going up, the number of people who walked, or ran, away from the Hindenburg is remarkable. The fire was spectacular, but it went UP, and the airship had the people at the bottom. The individual gas bags opened when exposed to fire, sure. But they were nearly pure hydrogen inside, not a hydrogen/air mix. Only the intermix zone could burn, and the bags themselves could not explode.

[mvanwink5]

Our generators were hydrogen cooled, so we had multi decades of experience with hydrogen. We also had fatalities from hydrogen explosions and fires, lax safety procedures and training. Laboratory and industrial use is one thing, but on a massive consumer everyday use, it would not be my choice for an all purpose everyday consumer fuel. Think of a teenage kid fueling his car...

Also, I would expect the hydrogen to be used for powering fuel cells, and I wonder what odorant would not be an issue for the fuel cell? But, I am wondering out of total ignorance on the subject, it's just that there are robust catalysts and catalysts that are picky.