Green Car Congress: MIT Study Compares 2030 Electric Propulsion Systems; Conventional Hybrids, Fuel Cell, Battery and Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles Offer Comparable GHG Reductions

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MIT Study Compares 2030 Electric Propulsion Systems; Conventional Hybrids, Fuel Cell, Battery and Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles Offer Comparable GHG Reductions

16 April 2008

Overview of projected greenhouse gas and fuel consumption outcomes for different propulsion systems in 2030 vehicles. Click to enlarge.

Electric propulsion systems, including gasoline hybrid electric vehicles (HEV), plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEV), fuel cell vehicles (FCV) and battery vehicles (BEV), can, with projected evolution of the supporting technologies, “reduce or eliminate the transport sector’s reliance on petroleum,” according to a study done at MIT by Matthew Kromer and Professor John Heywood.

However, the study also concludes that continued use of fossil fuels without effective carbon capture and sequestration for producing electricity and hydrogen constrain the greenhouse gas (GHG) and energy reductions of all the different forms of electric propulsion to about 60% below that of present day technology. In other words, without cleaner power pathways, PHEVs, BEVs and FCVs are not projected to offer much of a greater reduction in GHG than an HEV, and in many cases, the GHG profile is worse.

The study, presented at the SAE 2008 World Congress in Detroit, quantifies the potential of electric propulsion systems to reduce petroleum use and greenhouse gas emissions in 2030 US light duty vehicles. The paper is a follow-on to a study presented last year that assessed the potential improvement of more conventional automotive powertrain technologies 25 years into the future. (Earlier post.)

For the purpose of the study, the authors used a 2006 2.5L Toyota Camry as the basis for the future propulsion systems. For consistency across vehicle platforms, they held vehicle performance and size constant at present-day levels. Holding the parameters constant, they noted, is at odds with historical trends, which have shown a steady increase in size and performance over the last 25 years. However, by keeping the characteristics at current levels, they could quantify efficiency gains enabled by the technological progress.

The future vehicles do include a number of evolutionary, non-powertrain improvements which are applied consistently across different vehicle technologies, including improved aerodynamics, reduced rolling resistances and some weight reduction.

Projected Characteristics for PHEV Battery Packs
Range	[mi]	10	30	60
Road Load	[Wh/mi]	183	186	193
Energy	[kWh]	3.6	8.2	16.5
Pwr/Energy	[W/Wh]	13.5	5.5	2.9
Spec. Energy	[Wh/kg]	110	135	140
Spec. Power	[W/kg]	1500	750	400
Battery Mass	[kg]	32	60	120
Specific Cost	[$/kWh]	420	320	270
Battery Cost	[$]	1450	2700	4500

They assumed the use of lithium-ion battery packs with several adjustments to present-day performance characteristics: the ability to maintain rate capability at high depth-of-discharge and evolutionary improvements in battery specific power and specific energy.

They assumed that specific energy improves by a factor of 1.5 over current Li-ion packs (a rate of about 2% per year) for both high-power and high-energy batteries.

To characterize the impact of the uncertainty over future power generation pathways, the authors considered three different generation scenarios: US national average grid mix, 100% coal, and 100% natural gas. Calculations were based on the projections from the EIA Long-Term Energy Outlook for 2030 and include 9% transmission and distribution losses, and 10% charging losses.

The simulation results showed that advanced technology vehicles offer a number of paths to reduce petroleum consumption: the hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) in 2030 offers a 63% reduction over the 2006 baseline vehicle and a 43% reduction compared to a 2030 gasoline vehicle.

The plug-in hybrids offer even greater reductions, with the magnitude dependent on the all-electric range of the PHEV. A 2030 PHEV-30 (30 mile electric range) offers an 81% reduction in petroleum consumption compared to the 2006 baseline vehicle, and a 71% reduction compared to the 2030 conventional gasoline vehicle. The PHEV-60 takes those percentages up to 88% and 81%, respectively.

However, they noted:

Reducing vehicle energy use and GHG-emissions beyond the level offered by the gasoline hybrid presents a much greater challenge. Under the assumed fuel production pathways, the hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and fuel-cell vehicle each offer a 40-45% [GHG figure] lower than the 2030 NA-SI baseline. These results suggest that without an effective effort to develop cleaner fuel pathways, a transition to alternative fuel powertrains does not deliver a significant CO₂ benefit beyond that offered by the gasoline hybrid vehicle.

Resources

A Comparative Assessment of Electric Propulsion Systems in the 2030 US Light-Duty Vehicle Fleet (SAE 2008-01-0459)

April 16, 2008 in Climate Change, Electric (Battery), Emissions, Fuel Cells, Fuel Efficiency, Hybrids, Plug-ins | Permalink | Comments (205) | TrackBack (0)

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Comments

It depends on where your electricity comes from.

If is still mainly coal, you get a lot of GHG.
However, if you swap out coal for Nuke or Solar and or wind and gas, you could get a lot of the CO2 out of the system.
One advantage of a larger battery vehicle is that it could wait longer to recharge, and could then recharge when there is an excess of renewables.

Thus, even though a 30 mile electric range might be enough, if you could hold on for a day or two, it would increase the chance of charging from wind or solar.

Not only could the larger battery buy range, it could also buy time, and increase the chance of a "clean" recharge.

Posted by: mahonj | Apr 16, 2008 1:40:09 PM

The larger battery would also get you longer battery life since you won't be deep cycling the battery as much.

Posted by: Neil | Apr 16, 2008 1:57:57 PM

These studies seem like such a "Duh" kind of excercise, but I guess the real reason is to make it clear that just switching to Hydrogen as a storage medium doesn't have any positive effect on GHG by itself.

However, I wonder about electric. I thought all industrial scale power plants had higher conversion efficiency than ICE, and that even with transmission losses, it was still very possible to come out using less fossil fuels to travel a given distance. Perhaps this study says that's not so, or perhaps it just has to include the stupid approaches to, to show the continuum.

Near Las Vegas, Ausra has built a factory for annually making linear fresnel solar thermal power plant modules that can generate 700 Megawatts at peak. That's a bout 350,000 households/year worth at (they think) between 16 and 10 cents per kilowatt hour. It seems like solar thermal has to be a huge part of the answer for transportation energy.

Posted by: Healthy Breaze | Apr 16, 2008 2:21:07 PM

Electricity is not produced with coal everywhere.

For example, in Canada, the average is only 19% with coal, 58% Hydro, 12% Nuclear, 8% NG, 4% Oil, 2% Wind and Biomass. It varies even more if you consider each local or provincial grid: Quebec is 96% Hydro, Manitoba is 91% Hydro, BC is about 80% Hydro etc.

Depending where you live in Canada, PHEVs and specially BEVs would drastically reduce GHG over current ICE vehicles. This would be specially true if we could downside the current Tar Sands operations instead of multiplying them. With enough vehicle electrification, Alberta's extremely high per capita GHG (mostly from or for Tar Sands operations) may be reduced (3-fold) to the average Canadian level, instead of going up to about 6 times the Canadian average by 2020.

Many other countries get the majority of their electricity from cleaner sources than coal. Wind, Sun and specially Nuclear energy could reduce reliance on coal, even in USA.

Posted by: Harvey D | Apr 16, 2008 2:27:04 PM

Less than 40% of the world electricity production is based on coal. Over 20% is renewable and 14% is nuclear and the rest is mostly electricity generated from Methane (lower CO2 per energy unit than gasoline) with a thermal efficiency of nearly 60%.

Why would the same vehicle running on gasoline (relatively inefficient IC) generate less CO2 than one running on electricity?

Also why does a fuel cell vehicle produce less CO2 than the electric vehicle even though fuel cells are significantly less efficient and hydrogen is supposedly produced from the same grid (also with lower efficiency)? And if it was produced from fossil fuels where did the Carbon go?

Also, since 2004 the entire renewable power generating capacity doubled worldwide. Does MIT suppose that this enormous growth will stop from now on?

Posted by: globi | Apr 16, 2008 2:38:02 PM

This study uses quite pessimistic assumptions, including: a 2% annual increase in energy density for batteries, minimal uptake of solar, wind power or other renewables and no improvement in battery cycle life, that are not justifiable. Less pessimistic, but still conservative, assumptions would drastically alter the report's conclusions.

For example, based on the last 30 years, the cost per watt of solar PV modules has decreased at a rate of 7.5% per year and unit sales (in watts) have increased by 30% per year. In California grid parity at the retail level, i.e., your home or business, will probably occur in 2015 (followed by increasing grid disparity). Grid parity will occur in different areas of the US depending on sunshine levels and electricity rates - it has already happened in Hawaii. So what is the justification for only considering "three different generation scenarios: US national average grid mix, 100% coal, and 100% natural gas" in 2030?

Posted by: NorthenPiker | Apr 16, 2008 3:27:03 PM

Arg... The bullshit keeps flowing.

Alright to start off with

They are comparing:
1. Hybrid on Gasoline
2. PHEV entirely! on Coal
3. Fuel Cell on Natural Gas

That right there is completely false comparison.
* Only half our grid is coal
* and if you compared PHEV on natural gas, to a fuel cell on natural gas, the fuel cell would be dirtier.

Second off John Heywood is pretty much the only other person (Besides Michael Wang) to publish a paper saying that corn ethanol isn't a horrible idea from an emissions perspective.

And that paper is pretty pathetic.
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/1/11/195828/750

As for the second author, he's from TIAX consulting. And what they do is pretty much take Michael Wang's GREET model, play with the variables, and then write up a long report about it.
www.energy.ca.gov/2007publications/CEC-600-2007-004/CEC-600-2007-004-REV.PDF

So pretty much it's two authors which are completely estranged from the rest of the peer reviewed world, and make gigantic assumptions that hold no basis in reality.

And whats worse, this paper they are touting Isn't Even Peer Reviewed! It's a damned white paper.

(And it's primarily based on Michael Wang's GREET Model, which also isn't peer reviewed!!!)

Absolutely disgusting.

Posted by: GreyFlcn | Apr 16, 2008 3:32:49 PM

Now for instance, lets compare

1. A Toyota Prius on gasoline
2. A Honda FCX on steam reformed natural gas
3. A Tesla Roadster on natural gas electricity

http://greyfalcon.net/electriccars3.png

Notice any difference?

Posted by: GreyFlcn | Apr 16, 2008 3:49:17 PM

Wups, wrong chart.
http://greyfalcon.net/electriccars2.png

Posted by: GreyFlcn | Apr 16, 2008 3:50:27 PM

[[Might as well go for the gold in spammage.]]

This chart works a little bit better in framing the issue at hand.

http://greyfalcon.net/electriccars3.png

Posted by: GreyFlcn | Apr 16, 2008 3:56:34 PM

In short, second and third generation biofuels used in ICE's beat all these electric propulsion technologies hands down, given the fact that you can produce both electricity and liquid fuels (co-generation), as well as store char fractions in soils.

No cost-picture, which is a pity, because that's ultimately the biggest problem with electric concepts. They are prohibitively expensive. It may take 50 years before electric transport becomes a reality in the huge developing world, where most of the growth in transport will occur.

Posted by: Jonas | Apr 16, 2008 4:34:32 PM

With respect to plug-ins, the GHG emissions from a coal plant are going to be released whether or not the plug-in is there, because it's baseload power that the utilities don't want to ramp up and down. Therefore, if you fill the battery at night, it's almost free in terms of $$ cost and effective emissions. In addition, grid-interactive plug-ins can add capacitance to the grid during the choppy peak power afternoon hours, effectively reducing the necessary "spinning capacity" need to avoid brown-out. This will also reduce GHG emissions. I doubt this was taken into account, which I believe would make the numbers better looking for PHEV/BEV. Anyone know how much?

Posted by: Ben Kaun | Apr 16, 2008 4:55:56 PM

In short, incinerating biomass is an amazingly inefficient thermodynamic process, which involves no storage of carbon.
greyfalcon.net/sugarsolar

It's just a shell game, which in the process which also creates CH4 and N2O which is tens to hundreds of times more potent than CO2.
environmentaldefenseblogs.org/climate411/2008/02/26/ghg_lifetimes/

And even if you could make it work with extensive burying of carbon, I'd love to see you try to do it cheaper than electricity.

Last I checked, if we wanted to sequester even a fraction of existing coal plants CO2 emissions, it would take a liquid-CO2 infrastructure equal to the size of our existing petroleum infrastructure.

Now imagine trying to do something like that with something that's not nearly as dense or portable as a liquid.

Small scale? Maybe.
Large scale, delusions of graduer, where the methods are more important than the goal itself.

But as you've already made emphatically clear Jonas, the Method is more important than the Goal. To you atleast.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2007/09/study-n2o-emiss.html

If anything, I got a pretty good laugh out of this statement:
"Jonas: Unlike you, I'm not biased towards any particular technology or policy"

Posted by: GreyFlcn | Apr 16, 2008 5:31:31 PM

Jonas,

Biofuels are a part of the solution but they are not a panacea because of the land area required - water area in the case of algae.

The cost issue has been analyzed by the Electric Power Research Institute in a 2005 report that compares the life cycle costs of a conventional vehicle and an equivalent PHEV. With assumptions of of $1.75 per gallon gasoline, $0.05 per kWh off-peak electricity, 3% inflation, 8% discount rate, and 10-year 117,000-mile vehicle life, the life cycle cost would be equal for a battery cost $475 per kWh.

http://www.epriweb.com/public/000000000001009299.pdf

Posted by: NorthernPiker | Apr 16, 2008 5:37:34 PM

Even with the most beautiful dreams of charging the BEVs CO2 free during off peak hours, the fact is that going electric will increase the consumption of electricity. This increase could be up to 50%.

Now, the question is how is this increase covered? The only realistic options are natural gas, coal and nuclear. And I'm not too sure about the natural gas part... It is too expensive.

Same goes for Canada or any other country. Maybe Island has a lot of un built hydro power...

So, unless we build A LOT more nuclear, we're talking 100% coal.

Posted by: Helen | Apr 16, 2008 9:32:04 PM

"Biofuels are a part of the solution but they are not a panacea because of the land area required - water area in the case of algae."

Sorry, what land area are we talking about with second gen biofuels?

And what water area? Algal fuel prototypes are in progress on desert land with recycled water. Even in the case of salt water cultivation, eco-system management will address O2 and bloom issues.

Posted by: gr | Apr 16, 2008 9:59:06 PM

Fuel cells would be more efficent because it's produced chemically from natural gas, not electrically. It's much more efficent to turn natural gas (or coal for that matter) directly into hydrogen than it is to use them to produce electricity with them and then electrolyze water.

One of the downsides of the mass adoption of PHEVs/BEVs is that yes, they use baseload power--meaning more coal or nukes--renewables and nat gas aren't baseload (or at least they shouldn't be). Seeing that nuclear is probably going down (even the most aggressive adoption proposals keeps it at the same proportion of electricity as it does now, any less and it gets smaller) and that renewables will be lucky to make up for the decline in nuclear, it doesn't seem like coal is going away for the forseeable future.

As I see it, HEV with diesel or flex fuel using algae biodiesl/cellulosic ethanol (one of the companies are bound to get it right) and PHEVs using the same backup will be it.

What would be interesting would be using desert areas with solar thermal to produce electricty and do desalination (they do it anyway) producing fresh water for algae ponds with a coal gasification/nat gas plant providing CO2 for the algae in an integrated energy complex.

Posted by: Dan A | Apr 16, 2008 10:02:16 PM

Consider cellulosic energy crops (switchgrass, poplar) Third generation - since waste to syngas is already online.

Posted by: gr | Apr 16, 2008 10:09:55 PM

Dan A,

Integrated Solar Combined Cycle looks interesting but your twist with the algal component is better still. There appears to be some growing movement in this area and in light of increased grid demand (over twenty years) I think we all would be more secure with solar thermal combinations than straight coal.

The one 345 MW SEGS station in Mojave produces 90% of world's solar thermal electricity. Though the land use and 400,000 parabolas is a challenge - some of the combined systems look plausible and even profitable (given the downside of burning coal).

Posted by: gr | Apr 16, 2008 10:32:18 PM

Helen: 100% coal? ... that's just plain ol' BS.

Dan: where do you get the idea that EV charging has to come from base load? Intelligent charging and V2G puts any source into play at some level.

P.S. Hydrogen into fuel cells from rectified NG and EVs powered from NG have almost identical efficiencies (with the fuel cell having a ridiculous price)
source - Argonne national labs

Posted by: Neil | Apr 16, 2008 11:33:48 PM

The only realistic options are natural gas, coal and nuclear.

Helen,

This is BS.

How do explain that more renewable power than nuclear power is produced worldwide?

How do explain that the EU installed 8854 MW of Windpower last year - more than any other power generating technology in 2007? And at the same time got rid of -1203 MW nuclear power?

http://www.ren21.net/globalstatusreport/

And btw, Germany installed over 1300 MW of photovoltaics in 2007.

Posted by: globi | Apr 16, 2008 11:53:33 PM

Helen ,
Yes I agree it is total BS , when you give people the choice of
buying a BEV or a PHEV , their minds automatically look around for
other ways of providing the electricity required to run the thing , and
solar generation is the natural solution .
Here in northern italy , which is about the same latitude as Maine
a guy next door to me has installed 27 panels on his roof , at the cost
of about 30000 euro , and this year he will of generated over 6000 Kwh
from these panels which he feeds back into the grid , and guess what?
yep , he´s now in the market to buy a BEV to do all the local trips.

This is exactly what the powers that be are desperately trying to
avoid , it upsets their status quo , and this is why all these so -called
scientific studies are so blatantly loaded in favour of ICE´s and the use
of hydrogen . Its the same here in europe , in fact probably more so
seeing as most of our blood-sucking governments survive from the
revenue from road fuels !

Posted by: ANDRICHROSE | Apr 17, 2008 3:29:44 AM

In any case: biofuel critics commit "crimes against humanity". Says Lula.

Discarding biofuel would be 'crime against humanity': Lula

I'm no longer doing this debate, it's become too rethorical and full of confusion.

Posted by: Jonas | Apr 17, 2008 3:48:55 AM

comments are over, page closed, Jonas link has taken over the rest of the page ... perhaps if the thing is fixed we can consider if Electric cars are “dirty” because they might get their electricity from coal fired plants, while hydrogen is “clean” .... I presume the hydrogen just appears by magic and does not require electrolysis using electricity from those same coal fired sources.

Posted by: John Taylor | Apr 17, 2008 4:48:07 AM

The whole argument for fuel cells in this paper seems to be that electric cars must be powered by coal, and fuel cells get to be powered by natural gas.

The question being, if you have the natural gas, why don't you use it to power the electric cars?

Posted by: GreyFlcn | Apr 17, 2008 5:18:50 AM

gr,

Your question: "Sorry, what land area are we talking about with second gen biofuels?"

My answer: About 1.5 mile square miles of arable or semi-arable land for US gasoline needs:

Math: Each acre of cellulosic switchgrass can produce 136 gallons of gas equivalent (GGE) per acre. The US annually consumes about 140 billion gallons of gas. which would require a billion acres or 1.5 million square miles of land area.

Reference: March 22, 2008 article, "Researchers Conclude Average Farm Cost of Switchgrass for Ethanol Is About $0.49/Gallon"
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/03/researchers-con.html#more

Here is another analysis of biofuels vs electricity for transport. It's by the former CEO of Tesla, obviously an EV fan, but the results are similar. The graphic on slide #26 pretty well sums it up.

Now algae is a lot more efficient use of surface area and as such it holds more promise than switchgrass.

Posted by: NorthernPiker | Apr 17, 2008 6:52:33 AM

The conclusions grow ever clearer. The world (not merely the United States) needs all the nuclear, wind, and Solar power it can build ASAP. Vehicle fuels will be manufactured from air and water using non-fossil energy sources and will retail at about $5 per gallon before taxes. Fossil fuels and biofuels are too problematic.

Posted by: richard schumacher | Apr 17, 2008 7:25:18 AM

I do not think we need 1 million square miles of switchgrass. We do not need to provide all the liquid fuels with biomass. Some will go a long way to reduce imports of oil. The all or nothing at all view misses the point.

Posted by: sjc | Apr 17, 2008 8:01:33 AM

Sorry, here's the link to the Tesla presentation alluded to in my previous post

http://www.arb.ca.gov/msprog/zevprog/symposium/presentations/eberhard.pdf

Posted by: NorthernPiker | Apr 17, 2008 8:07:12 AM

Who cares?

Solar EV miles are already cheaper than gasoline miles, and that's the only thing the consumer cares about.

Nanosolar are constructing their cells for $0.99 per watt, so a 2 kW array could cost as little as $3,000 at $1.50 per watt installed. Somewhere sunny like California that would produce 4,400 kWh per year.

That's enough electricity for 17,500 electric miles per year. For your average Californian it would cost:

Gasoline (at 40 mpg, $3/gallon): 7.5 cents per mile
Solar (traditional PV @ $8 per watt): 8.8 cents per mile
Solar cents per mile (nanosolar PV @ $1.50 per watt): 1.7 cents per mile

Posted by: clett | Apr 17, 2008 8:36:00 AM

@ Clett,

I'd like this math to work, but BEV have to get cheaper before it will.

My assumption is that PV panels installed in California will cost at least 3 cents per mile installed. That's optimistic. Saving a net of 4.5 cents per mile over 120,000 miles in the first 8 years is only $5400 in savings before interest and gas price fluctuations. I don't think the prospect will help enough consumers over the higher up front costs of BEVs.

Another hitch is that 5 out of 7 sunny days, your car is probably not parked at your house, but at your place of work.

I think Solar Thermal will work, but that it will not often be in combined cycle with coal and algae. Places where you have good insolation, you don't have much water.

Posted by: Healthy Breaze | Apr 17, 2008 9:21:56 AM

Making panels for $1 per watt and selling them at that price are not the same thing. Unless they are a non-profit and the management takes zero salary, the retail price will be higher. Unisolar had thin film panels more than a decade ago that cost less to make. They sold them at market rates to get funds for expansion. Nanosolar's investors probably interested in a return on risk investment.

Posted by: sjc | Apr 17, 2008 9:29:24 AM

gr:
Yes, but solar thermal is going up at a pretty rapid rate. Although orders seem to have slowed down, there was for a couple of months a new one being proposed every week of >100 MW, plus the one company that was previously discussed with a factory that can produce 700 MW/year (just one company).

Neil: They don't have to, but PHEVs/BEVs WOULD be powered using baseload because it's cheaper, and otherwise you'd need over a hundred new power plants, mostly using natural gas, and all these in themselves would spike the demand for nat gas, compounding the rise in prices. Plus, most people would be charging them at night by habit, even if we don't make it a law or use a smart grid.

Posted by: Dan A | Apr 17, 2008 9:35:41 AM

@sjc,

Nanosolar say they can make a profit selling them at $1 per watt, so I costed them at $1.50 per watt to the customer to allow some markup for the distributor.

@Healthy Breeze,
I totally agree that the big shift will finally come as soon as the batteries are cheap enough, and that is the ONLY thing in my view that is currently holding things back. Fortunately BYD are one the case with their sub $300 per kWh LiFePO4 batteries....

Posted by: clett | Apr 17, 2008 10:18:01 AM

But Greyfalcon, you still don't get it.

You smolder biomass (a technique known as pyrolysis). The products you obtain are: 1. electricity. 2. bio-oil. 3. biochar.

1. You store the biochar in soils and make them more productive, while halting deforestation if applied in the tropics.

2. You provide decentralised carbon-negative electricity to rural communities.

3. You provide bio-oil that can be upgraded to biofuels.

All this results in the use of almost all the carbon, and by storing the char in soils (where it remains inert for millennia), you go carbon-negative.

So you take CO2 out of the atmosphere, while generating electricity and biofuels.

It's the most efficient technology of all. No other technology goes carbon-negative and no other technology halts deforestation because of it.

Do you get it now?

Posted by: Jonas | Apr 17, 2008 11:04:02 AM

@NorthernPiker:
Switchgrass? (Waste) Wood!
http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,547312,00.html
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iHLzbIPNPyjjvbMH6dSzcR_QpaaQ

Posted by: randomdude | Apr 17, 2008 11:56:03 AM

They may say that, but until I see them for sale at $1-$1.50 per watt then it has not happened.

I have driven past that Kramer Junction Mojave solar thermal installation. The land that it uses is just a speck in the desert compared to what is there.

Posted by: sjc | Apr 17, 2008 1:58:37 PM

The solar cell might reach 1.5 per BUT the installed cost is still gona be 6.5 per so all you gain is going from 10 per to 6.5 a simple 35% drop in cost.

2 guys can errect a 50 kw wind turbine in an hour or so it takes hours and hours to slap up even a 4kw solar array and it takes ou more room.

As doe h2 vs bev vs erev...

No matter how bad things get we will have swiychgrass and SOME way of making h2 and if we dont have electricity then we wont need to go anywhere anyway... we just dont know how MUCH of these sorts of things we will have abd wicg things we will need to do and WANT to do will favor wich of these things... so we do em all.

Because when failure is not an option too much isnt too much and too many options is just peachy.

As doe wich one will win... who gives a f as long as we are there to go neener neener neener and gloat does it EVER matter?

Posted by: wintermane | Apr 17, 2008 5:31:56 PM

The two reasons that solar hasn't gone down in price in the last couple of years is that (1) polysilicon prices have gone through the roof in recent years, mostly due to demand from solar producers and (2) they've been able to sell as many as they can produce at these prices.

It's expected that ~2010 PV solar prices are going to drop like a rock when a whole sh*tload of new panel and polysilicon supply is going online. It's expected that's when the high-cost producers are going to start being weeded out.

Posted by: Dan A | Apr 17, 2008 10:18:20 PM

If that is true, then a panel that now sells for $600 would sell for much less. We can map the price to demand curve from that. If the price drop to half, will the number of panels sold double? We will see.

Posted by: sjc | Apr 17, 2008 11:27:47 PM

I read a comment by a venture capitalist that they were looking for a "Moore's Law" for PV. My first thought was, "The sun isn't going to keep doubling the energy hitting the earth every 18 months," but maybe it will be a price per kilowatt that gets cut in half every 18 months. There's also a lot of room for reduction in the packaging and coupling electronics. Conversion efficiency will play a subordinate role until the market matures, and it becomes a differentiator after cost/kilowatt levels some. Or..maybe quantum dots (hopefully made without heavy metals) will get very efficient and very cheap pretty quickly. Dunno.

Posted by: Healthy Breaze | Apr 17, 2008 11:35:39 PM

Asking for Moore's law for PV suggests a total lack of knowledge of semiconductors.
Moore's law works because you have been able to reduce the size of features (to 45 nm at present) and so keep doubling the number of transistors per unit area.
The number of transistors is what we are counting in Moore's law.

However, PV depends on the active area itself, not the number of logical elements on it. Thus Moore's law cannot apply.

Posted by: mahonj | Apr 18, 2008 1:22:37 AM

Solar PV has been getting about 8% cheaper every year, which is not quite a doubling in performance every 18 months, but it's certainly a trend.

Dan A is right that supply is soon to catch up with demand for silicon (dozens of factories are being built around the world) and that prices of traditional PV will plummet.

However, I think before this we will see the impact of a disruptive technology or two in the industry. Number one is nanosolar, but number two is solar-organic-rankine-cycle which has the huge benefit of 24 hour electricity production at very low cost.

Posted by: clett | Apr 18, 2008 3:14:23 AM

Price and demand are interesting to watch. Let's say I have a technology that will reduce the cost of a panel 50%. The cost per watt is 1/2 of what it was. Will I sell it at half the price or sell at or just below market price and keep the profits. The investors will want you to keep the profits, because they want to expand and capture more market share or sell out as an exit strategy.

It depends on the market. Is the market is massively constrained by lack of supply, or is supply almost keeping up with demand and a price reduction would not allow you to sell many times more panels in the same time period? Up until the Green Party in Germany changed the laws, it was hard to make a living selling solar panels.

Every time I hear the faithful talk about prices coming down as volume goes up, I wonder if this is some eternal truth under all circumstances or just wishful hoping. There are many more factors to consider, the investors own the stock and their management makes the decisions. No amount of hoping will change that.

Posted by: sjc | Apr 18, 2008 11:50:43 AM

No Neil. Not BS

What's your plan? To halt traffic when the wind doesn't blow? To halt traffic when it's cloudy?

Or exactly how much redundancy did you plan to have? Data from EON in Germany shows that with 100% wind power a redundancy factor of 25 is needed. That is, if you want 1 GW guaranteed power you need to install 25 GW.

Average power is great. But average traffic is not great. What is needed guaranteed power. Or was the plan to build 1 GW of wind power, get an average of 200 MW AND to keep a 1 GW of rotating coal power for the less than 100% wind days?

No globi. It's not BS.

The reason why more renewable is produced than nuclear is that all the cheap hydro, geothermal, farm and forest already has been built. The question is from where do we get additional power.

Denmark, the great wind power nation, has the highest CO2 emissions/produced kWh. Germany is planning for 15 + GW coal. Why? Because wind is so effective and viable? I don't think so. Wind and solar is built exactly as much as the taxpayers can afford to pay for it. The electricity has to be produced by some other means. We have natural gas, coal and nuclear. There is nothing else. The rest is just BS paid by the taxpayers.

And btw, Just how much guaranteed power did these German 1300 MW photovoltaics produce? No coal redundancy needed ;-)

ANDRICHROSE,

Do you in northern Italy only drive on sunny days? I wish my life would be so easy. On rainy days I could stay at home...

Posted by: Helen | Apr 18, 2008 1:31:34 PM

SJC,

I think Nanosolar will be leisurely about reaching their 1$/watt goal, mostly because they need to throw off a lot of cash to build additional factories. By the time they have 4 or 5 factories producing a couple gigawatts of annual PV production capacity, even if other producers can match them on price (perhaps with better conversion efficiency), Nanosolar will be able to use volume production capacity to stear the market.

The thing is, they want to take market share by growing the market faster than anyone else. They will have lower costs to do that. Other vendors can offer higher conversion efficiency to create multiple price points in the market place.

Posted by: Healthy Breaze | Apr 18, 2008 2:12:28 PM

Helen, think about what you have said - 1GW of wind requires 25GW of coal ???
The most 1 GW of wind would require would be 1GW of gas or coal, but it is mostly about 800 MW.
As you point out, you can't really replace fossil / nuke with wind, you can only supplant it.

So, you do not reduce your capital or staff costs by much, all you can do is turn down the fossil when the wind blows, so you get some fuel savings and GHG reductions.

You will also have to beef up your grid a great deal, as it ends up dancing to the wind tune. (There is no guarantee that the wind will be available near the demand centers).

If you have gas, you can spin it up/down quickly, so you can balance the wind (or solar) easily enough, but gas is expensive and won't last forever.

You can't really bring coal up and down quickly (at present).

Balancing wind (and solar) is a very interesting and important subject for the next decade or so.

I suppose it is easy enough to do with gas, the trick will be to do it in such as way as to reduce capital and staff costs as well as just saving a bit of fossil fuel.

You can go with wind - but it isn't cheap by the time you have got it to people's homes and places of work.

Posted by: mahonj | Apr 18, 2008 2:35:04 PM

No Mahonj,

I didn't say that. What I meant was that if you want guaranteed 1 GW with wind you need to install 25 GW of wind (on an area the size of Germany).

Yes. With gas you can build auxiliary quick power, but it's a bit stupid to build 1 GW wind and 1 GW gas power to get an average of 200 MW wind and 800 MW gas. Why bother with the wind? The capital costs are huge.

Posted by: Helen | Apr 18, 2008 2:48:08 PM

a: To keep the greens off your case.

b: You can go to 10, maybe 20% wind without too much fuss, if you have an alternative source (gas or hydro).
You may as well put in some - the question is when to stop - you hit diminishing returns.

It also depends on how well wind correlates with maximum demand - if you get most wind (say winter) when you need most electricity for heating, it can help also.

The trick is to know when to stop.

It probably isn't as crazy as what the Germans are doing with solar. Now that is crazy.

Better to just keep the nukes going for as long as possible (and then build more nice new design ones).

Posted by: mahonj | Apr 18, 2008 3:03:51 PM

Unplanned consumption/production is called disturbance.

Disturbance doesn't become too expensive to handle when it is 10, maybe 20%.

Wind doesn't correlate at all with maximum demand. It's not enough that it on average blows more in winter. When it's COLD there's no wind.

If solar wasn't so expensive it would be a great correlation with air conditioning.

Wind doesn't correlate with any consumption.

Posted by: Helen | Apr 18, 2008 4:08:15 PM

Year-averaged load factor for PV solar panels in Germany is 12%, compared to close to 90% of coal or nuclear power plants. It means that in order to shut down 1GW coal power plant Germany needs to install minimum 7.5 GW of installed (peak) solar panels, plus some substantial rotating power reserve, most likely NG combustion turbines. Currently Germany has about 5GW installed capacity of PV, potentially substituting one 600 MW coal-fired block.

In best locations, like Spain or SoCal, PV load factor is approaching 18%. Not so great either.

Posted by: Andrey Levin | Apr 18, 2008 8:45:19 PM

No Andrey,

It doesn't work that way. Year average is not the correct thing to calculate with if you want to close down someting else. You need to calculate with minimum guaranteed. For solar that is very close to zero %. It means that by no amount of installed solar you can replace any amount of coal.

Mind you. With solar and consumption there is correlation. Usually the consumption is bigger during day time. Maybe solar will make some sense in the future. Let's wait for that time and not waste our money on something that doesn't make any sense now.

Posted by: Helen | Apr 19, 2008 12:57:53 AM

Helen,

The electricity consumption during day time is almost trippled compared to Night. And this despite numerous inefficient electric heaters are solely running at night.
Solar is great because it never produces power when nobody needs it.

Energy storage lake pumps in the Alps are running every night because the inflexible nuclear power plants in France, Germany and Switzerland.

Nowadays these storage lakes mainly store nuclear energy - in the future they simply store renewable energy.

And here are the Facts again:

More renewable power than nuclear power is produced worldwide.

Last year the EU installed 8854 MW of windpower - more than any other power generating technology in 2007. And at the same time got rid of -1203 MW nuclear power.

http://www.ren21.net/globalstatusreport/

Germany installed over 1300 MW of photovoltaics in 2007.

And China installed 77% of world's solar thermal collectors in the year 2005 already. Because it is cheaper than building new nuclear power plants to power inefficient electric heaters.

Live and Learn.

Posted by: globi | Apr 19, 2008 2:36:34 AM

Yes Andrey you are correct.

Load leveling is currently mostly done with hydro power in central Europe.
If you have a power plant that ONLY produces power at day time, system efficiency actually increases because more power is produced when more customers need it anyway.

Posted by: globi | Apr 19, 2008 2:49:31 AM

I like your attitude globi!

Live and learn. I'll try to be a worthy teacher.

Yes. Solar correlates with consumption. This is good! Too bad that photovoltaics electricity costs to produce more than ten times what the consumer price is. Too bad that it most likely never will produce the amount of energy that was used to manufacture it... How about the cloudy days? No electricity needed then? You're proposing that the water reservoairs should not only cover the daily variations but also the variations caused by long cloudy periods?

OK. There are hopes for the future with almost free photovoltaics. Or maybe vapovare?

You missed my answer on why so much renewables are produced. Please go back to my previous answer. You didn't answer my question on how much this 1.3 GW German photovoltaics produce on a cold rainy day.

Solar thermal is good. Ther's the storage element thats missing from solar electricity.

Ps. Inefficient electric heaters? You're not an engineer, are you? I didn't think so. Heaters are actually very close to 100% efficient.

Posted by: Helen | Apr 19, 2008 3:05:52 AM

Helen,

What I meant was that if you want guaranteed 1 GW with wind you need to install 25 GW of wind (on an area the size of Germany).

Germany already has installed over 22 GW of windpower. And the country is obviously NOT covered with wind turbines.
Besides a windturbine does indeed have a higher power density than a nuclear power plant. A 3 MW windturbine requires only 30 m2 of space = 100 kW/m2.
A nuclear power plant gets about 2 kW/m2 not including the space needed for waste storage, uranium processing, uranium enrichment and uranium mining.

Also, over 20% of Danish electricity is wind.

Why bother with the wind? The capital costs are huge.

Are they? The capital costs of nuclear power are meanwhile almost 10 times higher than wind.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89169837
And wind is actually free and foreign Uranium is not.

Ignorance is bliss?

Posted by: globi | Apr 19, 2008 3:09:33 AM

You're proposing that the water reservoairs should not only cover the daily variations but also the variations caused by long cloudy periods?

Hydro power in the Alps can provide central Europe with power for up to 3 month.
Has there ever be a time when it wasn't sunny for several weeks?
Besides there have been several nuclear power plants not running in Europe for several month and not just a few rainy days.

Heaters are actually very close to 100% efficient.
Heat pumps actually reach an efficiency of 300% and are even more efficient if they are run during day time.
But as I said: China installed 77% of the world's solar thermal roof collectors in the year 2005 already.
It's way cheaper than building nuclear plants to power inefficient electric heaters.

Btw, with the money needed for one new nuclear power plant one can purchase 15 turnkey high tech and highly automated thinfilm solar module factories with a yearly output of 160 MW per factory from Oerlikon.
So, with these 15 Oerlikon solar module factories one can produce solar modules with a total peak power of 36'000 MW in 15 years.

The area on the roof of a house is more than sufficient to power an entire house with photovoltaics. And roofs are needed anyways.

Also, 8% of the area of Nevada (desert) is enough to power the entire US.
Check out: ausra(.)com

And there is also wave, tidal, hydro, geothermal, biomass, biogas and efficiency.

Posted by: globi | Apr 19, 2008 3:22:04 AM

Too bad that photovoltaics most likely never will produce the amount of energy that was used to manufacture it

Actually thinfilm photovoltaics can produce the energy needed for their production in less than one year. And some manufacturers garantuee 25 years! They can easily produce 30 times more energy than was needed for their production.

If thinfilm modules substitute part of the roof structure (e.g. tiles), the energy pay back time can even be negative, since less energy was required to produce the thinfilm modules than the tiles.

Ignorance is bliss?

Posted by: globi | Apr 19, 2008 3:29:14 AM

Ther's the storage element thats missing from solar electricity.

Again, energy storage lake pumps in the Alps are running every night because the inflexible nuclear power plants in France, Germany and Switzerland.

Nowadays these storage lakes mainly run on nuclear energy - in the future they simply run on renewable energy.

Posted by: globi | Apr 19, 2008 3:35:55 AM

Gobi,

It seems that I've touched a sensibe spot. I'm sorry for that.

The water rservoiairs in the Alps are used for base load. They are vey much depending on the yearly wether conditions. Some years there's plenty of water reservoairs, other years a lot less. Power is needed every year. If what your saying is true that there are huge amounts hydropower reservoairs, why then is the world full of fossile load leveling and auxiliary power plants. Didn't they know about the huge water reservoairs? Should you perhaps tell them?

20% of electricity in Denmark with wind. That is a lie that some people like repeat a lot. The truth is that the fossile + import (mainly coal from Poland and nuclear from Sweden) covers 100% of the Danish consumption. The wind power is actually problem waste that Norway imports almost for free.

The German 25 GW installed wind power has according to the biggest wind power producer, replaced coal by about 1 GW. In practice they are planning to build almost 20 GW more coal power.

A heater and a heat pump is a different thing. I hope you knew it. I wouldn't call a 100% efficency bad. But I suppose that with the same logic wind and solar power make sense even if they are financed by taxpayers and require 100% rotating backup power.

When calculating with capital costs you hve to take into account the production as well. Even a cheap windpower plant has huge capital costs because it doesn't produce anything that can be used. I'm talking capital cost/guarenteed MW. Not /installed "capacity".

And just how much of the German photovoltaics are thin film? Any idea why it isn't used?

Do the germans have too much money and land?

Ignorance is excusable. Stupidity is not.

Posted by: Helen | Apr 19, 2008 4:07:37 AM

The water rservoiairs in the Alps are used for base load.

No they are not. The giant hydro dams in the Alps are obviously used for peak load. The dam Grand Dixence can actually produce 2000 MW within seconds. Try this with a nuclear or coal power plant.

20% of electricity in Denmark with wind. That is a lie that some people like repeat a lot.

No this is not true. They only person repeating lies is obviously you.

In practice they are planning to build almost 20 GW more coal power.

Coal power is still subsidized in Germany. Besides the coal power and nuclear power plant operators have a huge lobby fighting renewable power as much as they can.

The German 25 GW installed wind power has according to the biggest wind power producer, replaced coal by about 1 GW.

This is just plain BS. 25GW of wind replaces over 5GW of coal.
And a coal power plant also requires back up and also requires load leveling

But I suppose that with the same logic wind and solar power make sense even if they are financed by taxpayers and require 100% rotating backup power.

Nuclear power cannot survive without public subsidies. A nuclear power plant with a power rating 1600 MW requires 1600 MW back up power.

Solar power is not subsidised in China and still it has 50 times more solar thermal on roofs than the US.

Do the germans have too much money and land?

Solar on roofs requires no land and wind requires less land than nuclear power.
German and the Danish Companies have 70% of the windturbine market with a growth of 28% per year.

Germany spends about 0.001% of its GDP on renewable power compared to what the US spends on the war in Iraq.

Reducing the dependence on foreign ressources actually does have some advantages.
Besides, Germany is certainly glad that it can still export Windturbines to the US despite the strong Euro.

And just how much of the German photovoltaics are thin film?

About 20% and its market share is increasing and this with a photovoltaics market growth of 52% worldwide last year.

Ignorance is excusable. Stupidity is not.

Are you talking about yourself?

Posted by: globi | Apr 19, 2008 4:41:52 AM

Globi,

Why do you keep repeting the lies?

You don't trust the report of EON? They really are the bigges german wind power producer.

You can for yourself check the Danish production and consumption data. The fact is that Denmark in electric energy produces 20% more than it can use. The fact is also that they have the highest CO2/kWh in the world.

So 80% of photovoltaics is made by technology that will never produce the energy it took to manufacture it.

I wonder why thin film hasn't gained a bigger share. Any ideas? Based on your writing the market share of all electricity production should be 100% thin film (and 400% hydropower?)

By now you cannot blame on ignorance any more...

Posted by: Helen | Apr 19, 2008 4:59:34 AM

gobi,

Take a look at

http://www.eon-netz.com/Ressources/downloads/EON_Netz_Windreport2005_eng.pdf page 9.

No speculations. Just report based on real data.

Posted by: Helen | Apr 19, 2008 5:08:13 AM

Helen,

ok, you hate renewable energies, but this is no reason to blatantly lie.

Helen lies 1:
Now, the question is how is this increase covered? The only realistic options are natural gas, coal and nuclear.
In fact more renewable energy than nuclear energy is produced.

Helen lies 2:
The water rservoiairs in the Alps are used for base load.
Again the water dams in the Alps go from 0 to several 1000 MW in seconds.

Helen lies 3:
So, unless we build A LOT more nuclear, we're talking 100% coal.
This is just plain ridiculous.

Helen lies 4:
So 80% of photovoltaics is made by technology that will never produce the energy it took to manufacture it.
All PV is below 4 years of energy payback time and thinfilm is below 1 year of energy payback time.

Helen lies 5:
The German 25 GW installed wind power has according to the biggest wind power producer, replaced coal by about 1 GW.
Again this is just plain ridiculous.

Helen lies 6:
The fact is also that they have the highest CO2/kWh in the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita

Helen lies 7:
20% of electricity in Denmark with wind. That is a lie that some people like repeat a lot.
This is a lie that Helen repeats a lot.

Helen lies 8:
No speculations. Just report based on real data.
Projections of a coal and nuclear power operator have nothing to do with real data.

Load leveling capabilities (power) of the dams in the Alps in being increased. Also, HVDC lines are installed to better distribute wind power.

Helen lies 9:
Didn't they know about the huge water reservoairs? Should you perhaps tell them?
The electricity produced with hydro is larger than with nuclear worldwide.
Here's a list with a few storage lakes in Switzerland only: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_Speicherseen_in_der_Schweiz

Helen lies 10:
When it's COLD there's no wind.
No winterstorms?

Helen lies 11:
Wind and solar is built exactly as much as the taxpayers can afford to pay for it.
The average German person finances renewable energy with only 0.7 Euro per month.
And they actually get more in return than what they pay for this instrument.
http://www.bee-ev.de/presse.php?pr=1178

Helen lies 12:
What is needed guaranteed power.
Nuclear power plants are frequently shut down unexpectedly. And all reactors have to be maintaned and therefore require back-up power.

I wonder why thin film hasn't gained a bigger share. Any ideas?
Obviously thinfilm has been around for much less time than crystalline photovoltaics.
Also, I wonder why nuclear power hasn't reached 100% power share even though it has been massively funded for 60 years?

Ther's the storage element thats missing from solar electricity
That storage element is also required with coal and nuclear.
Again, energy storage lake pumps in the Alps are running every night because the inflexible nuclear power plants in France, Germany and Switzerland.
Nowadays these storage lakes mainly run on nuclear energy - in the future they simply run on renewable energy.

You're proposing that the water reservoairs should not only cover the daily variations but also the variations caused by long cloudy periods?
Hydro power in the Alps can provide central Europe with power for up to 3 month.
Has there ever be a time when it wasn't sunny for several weeks?
Besides there have been several nuclear power plants not running in Europe for several month and not just a few rainy days.

Ignorance is excusable. Stupidity is not.
Again are you talking about yourself?

Posted by: globi | Apr 19, 2008 8:10:36 AM

The utilities are on a learning curve with renewables.
They have very different characteristics to fossil / nuke / hydro that they guys are used to.

Each country is different - in terms of demand profile and available resources.

Some have lots of wind, some solar, some hydro, some have coal, some gas etc etc.

Thus no solution fits all.

However, the current renewables are intermittent with a low availability factor which means they need almost full back up from fossil or hydro.

The problem is that the intermittency is correlated over country sized areas - when it is night in Hamburg, it is night in Berlin, and the same applies (to a lesser extent) to wind.

The trick is to balance them with a variable fossil source, such as gas - there is really no alternative to this, unless you have a lot of hydro nearby - this is how Denmark manages it (using Norwegian hydro).

You then have the problem of how to generate the base load - traditionally coal has been used as it is the cheapest source, but now out of favour for GHG reasons.

The gas won't last forever, and is becoming increasingly expensive, so you need an alternative.

In my opinion, that would be gen 3+ nuclear reactors, but others may differ.

If the Chinese are adding 2GW of coal per week, you may as well just put in the most efficient coal as we are all doomed anyway.

Posted by: mahonj | Apr 19, 2008 8:26:33 AM

globi,

I really thougth that you wanted to learn something. Instead your trying to make your statements come trough by repeating them time after time and ignoring any material that proves you wrong. That is not very constructive. I wish you would take a more scientific approach to this discussion.

"Helen,

ok, you hate renewable energies, but this is no reason to blatantly lie."

No I don't hate renewable energies. I hate any activity that has an negative impact on the environment without bringin any positive with it. I love hydroelectric. Especially if it can be done without reservoairs. I would lowe wind power IF it correlated with consumption. I love solar heaters, geothermal, heat pumps. But you have to use your brain with everything. Not just love it because Greenpeace tells you to.

"Helen lies 1:
Now, the question is how is this increase covered? The only realistic options are natural gas, coal and nuclear.
In fact more renewable energy than nuclear energy is produced."

Try to get to the point. How would you build 10 GW of guaranteed controllable power? 250 GW wind power? Who would pay for it?

"Helen lies 2:
The water rservoiairs in the Alps are used for base load.
Again the water dams in the Alps go from 0 to several 1000 MW in seconds."

Ofcourse they CAN go from 0-100% in seconds. But they are not used in that way. The environmental impact of the water levels going constantly up and down would be huge. Any power plant can go up or down 0-100% in seconds. All you need to doo is to let the steam out or to keep pressure up. I suggest that you read something about the subject before you write more.

The hydropower reservoairs have to have pretty constant flow. Otherwise the water will start to rise.

"Helen lies 3:
So, unless we build A LOT more nuclear, we're talking 100% coal.
This is just plain ridiculous."

No it's not. What's your point? Did you have any other ideas? Please give some numbers. Not just "GP says it is not true"

"Helen lies 4:
So 80% of photovoltaics is made by technology that will never produce the energy it took to manufacture it.
All PV is below 4 years of energy payback time and thinfilm is below 1 year of energy payback time."

We're talking Germany now. Not California. PV production is very much depending on the sun. You knew that? Now you know.

"Helen lies 5:
The German 25 GW installed wind power has according to the biggest wind power producer, replaced coal by about 1 GW.
Again this is just plain ridiculous."

You didn't read the EON report, did you? Try to read it first. Your "argumentation" is ridiculous.

"Helen lies 6:
The fact is also that they have the highest CO2/kWh in the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita"

We're talking CO2/kWh. Not CO2/capita. You know the difference? We're talking electricity production. At least I am.

"Helen lies 7:
20% of electricity in Denmark with wind. That is a lie that some people like repeat a lot.
This is a lie that Helen repeats a lot."

The numbers tell otherwise... I know you wish it would be true. It isn't.

"Helen lies 8:
No speculations. Just report based on real data.
Projections of a coal and nuclear power operator have nothing to do with real data."

EON is the biggest windpower producer in Germany. You shouldn't maybe trust the windpower plant manufacturers so much... They do marketing. It's a nice word for propaganda. Don't worry EON is doing great business with windpower. The German taxpayers guarantee that. Why would EON lie?

"Load leveling capabilities (power) of the dams in the Alps in being increased. Also, HVDC lines are installed to better distribute wind power."

Yes. In the same report there was figures about the cost. And the taxpayers pay again...

"Helen lies 9:
Didn't they know about the huge water reservoairs? Should you perhaps tell them?
The electricity produced with hydro is larger than with nuclear worldwide.
Here's a list with a few storage lakes in Switzerland only: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_Speicherseen_in_der_Schweiz"

Like I said. Most hydro is used as base power and/or very short load levelling.

"Helen lies 10:
When it's COLD there's no wind.
No winterstorms?"

First, when it's winterstorm it usually is around 0 C. Second, when it's a storm there's no windpower. The plants are closed down for safety reasons. You knew that?

"Helen lies 11:
Wind and solar is built exactly as much as the taxpayers can afford to pay for it.
The average German person finances renewable energy with only 0.7 Euro per month.
And they actually get more in return than what they pay for this instrument.
http://www.bee-ev.de/presse.php?pr=1178"

Don't trust everything you read. Try to use your own brain.

"Helen lies 12:
What is needed guaranteed power.
Nuclear power plants are frequently shut down unexpectedly. And all reactors have to be maintaned and therefore require back-up power."

True. But the backup power need is as big as the biggest unit in the grid. And its needed very seldom. With windpower and solar the backup has to be as big as the total installed power and it's needed on daily basis. Backup power is extremly expencive.

"I wonder why thin film hasn't gained a bigger share. Any ideas?
Obviously thinfilm has been around for much less time than crystalline photovoltaics. "

Of the new production it should be 100%. Why isn't it? Could it be the sky high price? Not even the German taxpayers can afford it?

"Also, I wonder why nuclear power hasn't reached 100% power share even though it has been massively funded for 60 years? "

Cheap coal and oil. Nobody was worried about CO2. That's changing, if you've noticed?

"Ther's the storage element thats missing from solar electricity
That storage element is also required with coal and nuclear.
Again, energy storage lake pumps in the Alps are running every night because the inflexible nuclear power plants in France, Germany and Switzerland.
Nowadays these storage lakes mainly run on nuclear energy - in the future they simply run on renewable energy."

True. But there's lack of load levelling power. Now you want to increase the need by not just having consumption that varies periodically but by adding production that varies completely unpredictable. Where are you planning on getting that extra load levelling power? Or give me some figures on how many TWh there is extra in the Alps and why isn't that in use now? Why doesn't e.g Germany or Poland use it instead of going fossil load levelling. Don't they know about it. Is it a secret?

"You're proposing that the water reservoairs should not only cover the daily variations but also the variations caused by long cloudy periods?
Hydro power in the Alps can provide central Europe with power for up to 3 month.
Has there ever be a time when it wasn't sunny for several weeks?
Besides there have been several nuclear power plants not running in Europe for several month and not just a few rainy days. "

So what is that hydropower now used for. Wasted? There's always auxiliary power in the grid. It's always the cheapest plant that's being run.

"Ignorance is excusable. Stupidity is not.
Again are you talking about yourself?"

Maybe somebody of the other GCC readers could answer that question?

Posted by: | Apr 19, 2008 9:17:36 AM

The reason is simple. Because they know co2 trading will come they want to keep all the old plants running until then. Then with doe loans and a proven effective lawsuit proof cost solid way to get the plants online they will build.

But for now its much cheaper to run up co2 via nat gas plants and coal.

I expect after you see the first nuke plants come online on time and budget you will see 2-300 planned.. but the real surge will come after they make a standardized type 4 that can maje extra moola via h2 and more power using far less fuel and at alot lower cost.

I expect by 2030 600 type 4s will be on plan.

Good nes as the more nat gas plants they close the more nat gas cars and trucks we can make between now and the end of ice.

Posted by: wintermane | Apr 19, 2008 9:29:37 AM

wintermane,

Gen 4 will eventually be container sized 200 MW plants. They will be built by the thousands and delivered by truck.

Posted by: Helen | Apr 19, 2008 9:33:28 AM

Helen,

None of your answers make any sense nor are they based on any simple provable facts or truth.

You obviously have no clue at all what you are talking about.

You either lie on purpose or you enjoy insulting people for no particular reason.

I guess one should feel sorry for you instead of trying to teach you any facts.

Posted by: globi | Apr 19, 2008 3:28:27 PM

globi,

Actually they make a lot of sense. But let's pretend they don't. It should be easy argument against them instead of just pretending not to see them. Not?

I understand that life can be easier if you choose to see only what supports your own beliefs.

I'm sorry. In electricity production two things are needed:

A)Production and consumption must correlate 100%

B)The price of production must be lower than what the consumer pays for it.

Could you PLEASE explain why there is so much un-used hydro power capacity in "the Alps". Why have so many coal power plants been built in central Europe? Is it because the Europeans are evil? Stupid? Bad at matemathics? Bad at economics?

Could you PLEASE explain why not a single wind power plant is built without the taxpayers paying a huge part of the cost. Same question for solar.

Should I just trust your word on these? No explanations?

Posted by: Helen | Apr 19, 2008 3:56:30 PM

mahonj,

You're right there's no solution fits all. But nobody has asked for a solution which fits all so why care?

The biggest hurdle is the fact that renewable requires often more decentralized power and regionalized power solutions and also promote efficiency which contradicts the business model of the power companies currently in charge.

Keep in mind you can easily transport electricity over long distances. HVDC has a loss of less than 4%/1000km.
Even if the next hydro dam is over 1000 km away the grid loss is smaller than 10%.
Unfortunately the current power companies are also in charge of the power distribution and are definitely not interested in any power highways possibly bypassing their current coal and nuclear power plants.

Base load is not a physical necessity.
There's no reason that heat pumps cannot be turned on when electricity is cheap - cell phones are smart and so can heat pumps.
In addition, vanadium redox batteries are indeed utilized in Ireland to store windpower.

China may install lots of coal but fact is that the average American still requires almost 10 times more power than the average Chinese person. And China actually does produce consumer goods for the world market and the US does not.
And China has also a lot more solar thermal installed than the US.

As far as the nuclear reactors are concerned:
Besides the fact that they need back-up power, are extremely inflexible, require waste storage, are always a security risk and are prohibitively expensive:
The known uranium resources only last 80 years according to IAEA and this at the current consumption.
And nuclear power currently provides only 14% of the world electricity needs.

Unfortunately Gen IV reactors do not exist and this despite the fact that nuclear power received over 50% of the R&D public energy funding of all industrialized nations for the last 60 years.

On the other hand: Efficiency, large hydro, small hydro, geothermal, wind, solar thermal, photovoltaics, biogas, biomass, tidal, wave and HVDC does exist NOW.

Posted by: | Apr 19, 2008 4:02:42 PM

Helen:

Many people and experts still believe that Hydro power should only be used as base load and other variable renewable sources for peaks.

A more practical approach would be:

1 - to colocate hydro and wind power (as much as possible to reduce interconnection cost).

2. - since hydro's output can much ajusted quickly and has huge reservoirs to stock the unwanted energy, it should be used to supply peak demands + periods when variable sources are not producing enough.

3. - use wind (and eventually sun power) power to supply base loads.

This way, no power is lost and no batteries are required.

Hydro sites could be over-equipped to meet larger peak demands.

Posted by: Harvey D | Apr 19, 2008 4:26:52 PM

Dear No Name,

I hope you're not serious with your writing. So you mean it's a conspiracy not to build the global HVDC lines that solar and wind would need? You realize that the majority of coal plants will be closed down during the next 20 years? The power companies are desperate to get something else in place. The problem is that the whole electricity production cannot be paid by tax money. The money has to come from somewhere. What you're proposing is to build a global installed base with a redundancy factor of 20. You need one but you have to build 20. Ore are you going by the yearly average and settling for factor of 5?

Heat pumps are lousy on storing energy. The heat pump is based on small differences in temperature. Good luck in storing heat at room temperature for a couple of weeks. Did you have any idea how to do it? Who would pay premium price for power that you get only when it suits the producer? Expensive to produce. Very hard to sell. Excellent bussines idea!

Tell us more about the cost of these vanadium redox batteries. The cost/kWh please!

What is BS is your statements about the nuclear industry. I almost suspect that you belong to the same organisation as globi...

Things don't exist at a commercial scale before they manage to produce below the consumer prise.

Posted by: Helen | Apr 19, 2008 4:34:39 PM

Even with once through old low eff type 2s er have ALOT of nuke fuel left.

With new type 3s we get alot more power as they are far more eff and they use somewhat more of the fuel.

But type 4... relize folks that in every kilo of fuel used today there is only actualy 30 grams of fuel and of that 30 grams only 1 gram is used. But in a type 4 that ecavt dame kilo of fuel has about 998 grams of fuel avalable and it will eat every last gram of that 998 abd keasve very little waste. Oh and again it makes cheaper more pentiful power AND h2 all at the same time... and if placed on or near an old nuke reactor it can eat that reactors store waste...

Thats a metric arseload of power for a gobstoppering long time.

As for why nuke and not wind and solar and hydro... because they mar the landscape blot out mother nature and worst of all right now... are completely at the mercy of weather patterms we KNOW will change BADLY.

In short we dont KNOW where the sunny days will be we dont know where the wind will blow and we dont know where the rain will fall... but we do know ehere the locals will have an extra special glow'/

Personay I low windmills and want solar on my roof someday... but I know im abinormal.

Posted by: wintermane | Apr 19, 2008 6:54:45 PM

The Eon report is about the area they themselves control. It is not a general indication of what exists in alternative power.

When the wind blows in colder temperatures, the efficiency increases because the air becomes denser. The amount of energy extractable is related to the density of the medium. Just because the placement of some of Eon's wind turbines is seasonal is a developement problem, not a technology one.

The 25GW to replace 1 GW is a misrepresentation. The report states that the replacement is around 8% presently. Without storage, a certain number of most likely gas turbines must be kept in use in case of power variations. It doesn't mean you generate 1 GWe for 25 GWe installed wind capacity. It means that for every 25 GWe of installed wind, 1 GWe of coal (or other baseload) can be permanently retired. This can be increased by better site placement, grid connectivity, energy storage. The cheapest storage would be a pumped water systems. Another fairly cheap means of energy storage would be compressed air energy storage (CAES).

The compressed air is used to run gas turbines and reduces fuel consumption to generate power. Test versions have been built in the US and Germany. The US one built in 1991 uses 1.17 KWh of natural gas and 0.69 KWh of electricity (for air compression) to generate 1 KWh of on demand electricity. Regularly 1.67KWh of gas is needed. A version combined with wind power is being designed for use in the US. Effieciencies can be increased by heat storage of the gas as it compresses. Theoretically CAES would add 3-4 cents/kWh to the cost of electricity production but would effectively increase the number of base generation wind could replace.

The cost of electricity is not static but fluctuates in a diurnal cycle. Peak demands can easily cause the price of electricity to exceed the costs of production for solar in many jurisdictions. For example it may be cheaper to produce electricity in Arizona but it is far more cost effective to make and sell it in MA according to the DOE because the demand increases in price easily compensate for the increase in cost of production.

As for the alternative power not being built without huge tax incentives and such. Well take a good look at the amount of subsidization occuring in the regular power suppliers. Also it should be noted that though the fuel is free, the infrastructure to get it is not. It takes more up front money to develope alternative power than regular sources. How many houses in the US have on demand hot water systems? They have a payback of 5 years but are more expensive than tank systems. Guess what dominates?

The expectation that genIV would be that size is the assumption that the HTGR of S.Africa pebble bed reactor is successful. Counting the success before it is operational? It has a lot of likeable things but also a lot of unlikeable things such as the the waste is locked in a carbide matrix making it prohibiitive to reprocess fuel if that is deemed necessary at some future date.

As for electricity production needs.
A)Production and consumption must correlate 100%
Not nessessarily. Brown outs occur and have occured, rolling or not. They usual necessitate that power be imported or that higher cost of production electricity be brought online. Ideally production is greater than or equal to consumption. Any creation of production greater than consumption requires exportation of that power, or standing it down. In any case it gets amortorized over to the consumers.

B)The price of production must be lower than what the consumer pays for it.
That is not correct. It is the levelized cost of energy not just the price of production. All costs including the infrastructure costs create the LCOE. The cost of production is the mantainence and fuel costs. Very distorted picture looking at just that. Not only that but no one just looks at the price of production and consumer costs. There are external costs and benefits to be weighed in and have been weighed in for all decisions whether traditional or alternative. How much has coal fought nuclear for funding? There is a tax credit for the next 6 GW of nuclear capacity that is to be brought online including insurance for cost overuns on the building of the next 6 GW of reactors.

No one energy source is perfect. Best practices in utility operations state that the sources be varied to protect against changes in the different changing conditions that the utiiity operates in.

As to the comments of the no named poster. There's not a lot to actually say that he/she has said that can't be really backed up by the EIA or DOE or other reliable sources. I'm not too sure about the 14% but I'm pretty sure it's in that ball park and I haven't checked out the nuclear R&D costs but the other stuff can be backed up with cogent arguements.

Posted by: aym | Apr 19, 2008 8:45:29 PM

@Wintermane,

That isn't how nuclear reactors work. The limitation of gen 2 reactors to burn is limited by the the use of regular light water, which turns out to absorb neutrons. This necessitates enrichment.

Enrichment on the other hand increases the burnup rate and the breeding ratio. This slows down the need to change fuel bundles and allows the reactor to operate longer. A breeding ratio of 1 would mean that the reactor would generate as much fuel as it used.

The "waste" from a light PWR contains about 1.5% fissionable Uranium & Plutonium, the ratio dependent on the breeder ratio. If you really wanted to reduce it, you could build a PHWR like the Candu. The neutron efficiency of the heavy water would allow you to reduce the levels of this material to about 0.2%, which is the level from the tailings from enrichment plants ie. depleted uranium, although it would contain other waste material. This is the DUPIC fuel process and results in lower wastes than traditional reprocessing. Of course the core of the typical PHWR is larger than a typical PWR design with higher costs but an economic case can be made since it also doesn't require enrichment facilites.

The various gen IV designs all have different methodologies. You cannot say that they will all be equally efficient or that the very incoherant statement you made would work the way you didn't describe.

Posted by: aym | Apr 19, 2008 9:09:35 PM

aym,

Yes, the container sized reactor is just a guess of how things will look in 50 years. Not anything I expect to buy next year. For the next 40 years we'll have to do with 1-4 GW plants.

The EON report is not perfect. But it is based real meassured data. Not on wild assumptions, guesses and hopes like most reports on renewables. The electric grid has to work in the real world as well. It's not enough that it works based on some assumptions but when is not there when you need it.

The goal is to replace coal. You don't run coal in loaed levelling cycle. In Germany to replace 1 GWe coal you need 25 GWe wind. Period. There are HUGE amounts of coal plants that will become old within the next decades. They will need to be replaced by something. For now they are planning to build tenns of GW of new coal in Germany. This is not because of the coal maffia conspiration or because they are evel. It's just because they know they'll need new capacity and nuclear is politically no no. Same situation in GB. There nuclear is not no no. Wind is nice, but the electricity still has to be produced somehow.

Before telling about great ways of storing energy, please do the calculation just how much storage is needed e.g to assure 1 GW for two weeks. It's just not vieble on large scale. With the storage and conversion you loose half of the energy. With the additional cost of storage you need the primary electricity to be very cheap. This doesn't sound like the typical renewable... If energy storage with renewable makes so much sense, it would make even more sense with nuclear. Why hasn't it been used on large scale? Meybe because it doesn't make sense? Usually the things that in real world make sense, are those that are in use. If something new is invevted it will quickly conquer the market. That's how it works. If a good idea doesn't qonquer the market, it usually tells something about how good the idea really was. The conspiracy theories can be forgotten about.

In electricity production really have to 100% correlate. But, yes. The consumption can be in another country. There's nothing magical over export or import. It just means that consumption/production takes place on the other side of some boarder. Every single joule of electricity produced has to be consumed the same time. There's no way around it.

No industry will survive if the production price is higher than the selling price. You cannot bend on that rule.

The electric grid needs base power and load levelling power. If the power source is anything else, its a disturbance that increases the need for base/levelling power. There's no way to get around it.

OK. There is one way. You get load that correlates with production. How viable is that on large scale?

It maybe true that the grid can HANDLE something like 10% of non-predictable power sources. This in practice means that there for some reason is spare load levelling capacity that can be taken into use. Why would that have been built?

Most of the No Name nuclear statements were sobjective opinions. Not facts. Doesn't it tell something that the power companies are begging the governments for permission to build nuclear power plants with their own money? The same companies are begging the governments for money to build more windpower.

Posted by: Helen | Apr 19, 2008 11:47:23 PM

Yucca mountain: The repository project's price tag could total in the range of $77 billion http://www.lvrj.com/news/10257277.html

50 billion dollar tax safety net for nuclear industry:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15545418
Laws are passed such that nuclear power operators can bill consumers before the plants go online.

Up to 24 billion Dollars for only 2 nuclear reactors (1154 MW per reactor). And the consumers have foot the bill in advance.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89169837

It is a simple fact that nuclear has received a majority of the public energy research funding for the last 60 years.

The Superphenix breeder reactor cost 9 billion Euros and produced for 3 Euros per kWh not including disposal costs.

Germany built even a breeder reactor for 7 billion Mark which never produced one single kWh but consumed a lot of kWh to keep the sodium in its molten state.

The nuclear power companies have received and still receive way more public funding than any other generating power option (see above). In addition, coal power has received massive tax subsidies in Germany over decades.

Jenni built a multi-houshold building which stores solar heat for an entire winter: www.jenni.ch

Power companies can definitely not make any revenue from houses generating their own heat and electricity.

Windpower grew 28% and photovoltaics grew 52% last year.
The electricity production from new renewables has doubled since 2004 (wind, geothermal, wave, tidal, PV, solar thermal, biomass etc).

Posted by: | Apr 20, 2008 1:15:05 AM

No name (same as before?)

When building future electricity producing capacity what counts is what the price /kWh is. What the environmental effects are and how well it serves as either base load or load levelling.

Why should past expences be taken into account? PAst expences are an investment. Now it's time pick the fruits of the investments. New nuclear electricity costs around US$ 0.03 /kWh. Including waste disposal. The environmental impact and CO2 emissions are smaller than with wind power.

If you've paid 200k for your education, would you take that for an excuse not to appy for a high paid jobb, because the education was so expencive?

How many kWh did PV produce last year? Wat was its guaranteed power? Same question for wind.

So you suggest that the current buildings should be removed and every buildin in the world to be built the Jenni way? Why don't you suggest that people could keep cattle inside? That was a good way of providing heating in the past.

Cheap nuclear electricity. Heat pumps and passive AC. Better insulation and heat recovery in ventilation. Solar collectors. Electric cars. With those the CO2 emissions can be dropped. Windpower hasn't dropped the Danish CO2 emissions a bit.

Posted by: Helen | Apr 20, 2008 2:33:35 AM

Last year Europe installed:

8554 MW Windpower
8226 MW Gaspower
-1203 MW Nuclear power

And this despite many European nations still massively subsidize nuclear power and this despite nuclear power is apparently way cheaper than gas and wind.

Facts about Fission:
http://ihp-lx2.ethz.ch/energy21/energylecture_78.pdf

Facts about Fusion:
http://ihp-lx2.ethz.ch/energy21/fusionillusions.pdf

Unfortunately Gen IV reactors do not exist and this despite the fact that nuclear power received over 50% of the R&D public energy funding of all industrialized nations (OECD) for the last 60 years.

Gladly, the nuclear industry will develop container sized 200 MW Gen 4 reactors without tax money (because massively funding them with tax money has not produced any useful results), which will be capable to produce electricity for just 1 cent/kWh by 2030.

Until then the world will continue to expand efficient systems, large hydro, small hydro, geothermal, wind, solar thermal, photovoltaics, biogas, biomass, tidal, wave, smart systems and HVDC.

Actually, the average household in the developed world spends at least 10 times more on rent than on electricity. Cheap rent would give households much more benefit than cheap electricity, but this is another topic.

Posted by: | Apr 20, 2008 5:25:30 AM

Helen: You seem to have a very localized (Germany) point of view. If Germany thinks it's faced with a choice between Coal and Nuke, then it's because it's a postage stamp sized country with way too many people in it. The rest of the world still has massive potential for additional geothermal, thermal solar in deserts, micro-hydro, run-of-river hydro, BNG, tidal power, river turbines etc... Not to mention some other technologies currently being worked on such as high altitude wind. You just have to see the possibilities instead of stubbornly sticking to old paradigms.

Even within Germany there are ways of using renewable in a larger capacity. Check out Dutch plans to load level variable wind power with the intelligent use of existing cold storage facilities. (make sure to note the total capacity)
http://www.tno-refrigeration.com/mediapool/48/485045/data/D.1.1.b_Start_Document_Night_Wind_-_Public.pdf

The EVs you are complaining about all contain large batteries, even if only a small fraction of that capacity is used to load level with V2G the impact is tremendous. You don't even have to go as far as V2G to see the benefits of EVs on our ability to make use of a higher percentage of variable renewables. Just use intelligent chargers and have them charge when line voltage is highest.

100% Coal? Total BS!

(I can't believe you tried to tell us that solar panels require more energy to create than they produce ... LMAO)

Posted by: Neil | Apr 20, 2008 8:37:30 AM

You do not need to replace 1 GWe with 25 GW installed of wind. That is obviously your interpretation of what it says but it is the most pessimistic interpretation of what it says. What it does say is that it will produce on average 20-40% of installed capacity yearly and that the minimum on any given time will be 1 GW. That is highly different from your interpretation. To level that out it can easily be imported from different juridictions with different time user levels, or from variable sources, ie hydro or in the example I gave CAES. Putting those in the equation would allow wind combined with this other source to effectively remove more than in EON's case 1GW of coal. According to a 2007 Stanford study 33 to 47% of the total energy produced can be used as reliable, baseload electric power, as long as minimum criteria are met for wind speed and turbine height when 10 or more wind farms are interconnected.

The amount of energy storage to assure 1 GWe for two weeks is totally variable. It would take the use of the mathematical field Operational Research or similar to crunch the numbers in a specific location with the specific variables to really get a number. No, you don't need to store 1GW for two weeks. You need to feed the system's demand difference from what is produced to what is demanded. The storage could just as easily store energy at night when demands are low.

Cost of production for energy is the fuel and maintenance costs divided by the production. Between nuclear and renewable wind or solar, guess what has the cheaper cost of production? It's the alternatives. Why? Fuel is free and maintenance is typically low. What kills alternatives is the upfront infrastructure costs.

Typical utility operations on a day to day basis is that the lowest production cost electricity is brought online first and keep on with higher cost of production brought on as needed. That is because infrastructure costs are already sunk in so they are ignored in cost of production decisions of what is needed to be brought online.

Pumped storage systems are used presently for coal and nuclear. The US had over 19.5 GW as of 2000. They are 70-85% efficient in recovering the energy used to pump the water up. A lot of that is used for peak power. It allows coal and nuclear to run at higher peak efficiencies and alleviates the need to build peaking plants.

As for ideas that make sense conquering the market? Not necessarily. A number of factor can be used to stiffle ideas such as patents, market inertia, market dominance, freeloading, changing laws, etc. These can eaily stiffle or kill new ideas or products. You don't need a conspiracy theory but it's interesting that you think that the other side does.

No industry will survive if the production price is higher than the selling price. You cannot bend on that rule.
Subsidization occurs in many industries. Corn farming comes to mind since I just saw a corn documentary. So could the government indefinitely keep it up. Yes it can. As long as it's willing to take from somewhere else. The long term viability is totally dependent on the balance it creates. The subsidized corn subsidizes cheap beef and feedstocks to various industries including ethonol. As long as it is felt that the good is outweighs the cost then they can indefinitely continue the policy.

Those policies includes the tax incentives and insurance of the Energy Act 2005, and the nuclear power 2010 program.

The grid can stand up to more than 10% from variable sources. Even the electric companies themeselves say so. I read reports from the English to American grids that at least double or triple that amount.

As for no name's nuclear comments. I still stand by my original opinion with the same caveats.

Lastly, the cost of nuclear is not 3c/KWh. The LCOE in the US was estimated in 2006 by the DOE was that wind cost was estimated at $55.80 per MWh, coal at $53.10, natural gas at $52.50 and nuclear at $59.30. MIT's Cost of nuclear power pegged it over 6.7c/KWh. It is dependent on overnight capital costs, interest rates, plant life, etc. The nuclear associations consistantly put the overnight capital costs at 1500 to 2000 /kW of capacity but all new reactors built have much higher costs. Estimates put it in 3000 to 6000 range. The cost of production maybe is at 3c/kWh but that totally ignores the plant costs. Meanwhile I'm sure that when comparing it to alternatives people are comparing the LCOE of alternatives to the cost of production for others. They are not the same and it totally distorts the picture of the true costs.

Posted by: | Apr 20, 2008 9:09:27 AM

"China may install lots of coal but fact is that the average American still requires almost 10 times more power than the average Chinese person. And China actually does produce consumer goods for the world market and the US does not.
And China has also a lot more solar thermal installed than the US."

How does consumption volume deny the need for clean air? China has 16 of 20 of the world's most polluted cities. Athletes training for the Olympics have to do so in other countries for HEALTH reasons.

US does not produce consumer goods... ummm 50% of the world's corn/grain is produced by USA. Maybe they should stop producing?

Actually the world's largest solar thermal installation is in the Mojave desert generating 364MW/annually. But when it comes to CO2 and China - who needs facts?

Posted by: | Apr 20, 2008 11:02:40 AM

No Name and Neil,

You almost got me convinced.

But there're a couple of things that havent been explained...

Why are people begging the governments to grant them permission to build nuclear plants WITH THEIR OWN MONEY?

Why are companies demanding goverments to pay more subsidies to build renewable?

Why do they plan hundreds of nuclear plants if the production costs are the most expensive?

You know that reports can be made to show whatever you want. It's just a question about what assumptions you make and which data you choose to consider. If you want to now the real truth you have to follow the money. Where are people willing to invest their own money? In what are they willing to invest a second time?

You are worried about the cost of energy for the households? Remember that energy is the biggest raw material in most commodities. So with the price of energy all other costs go up as well. We're now seing what happens to food prices when the cost of oil has skyrocketed.

To "save the world" we need to replace all polluting activities (energy production, transportation, food production, housing, production of commodities etc, etc) with alternatives that don't pollute or pollutes significantly less. The biggest single source of pollution in most activities is the burning of fossile and non fossile stuff to get energy. If we want to replace the burning of stuff we need to have an alternative that's cheaper than the burning. And it should be cheaper without tax financed subsidies. We're talking solar collectors. We're not talking renewable energy.

About the nuclear statements made by "no name"

All power plants need back-up or a plan how to handle a failure. Since a nuclear plant don't close down on daily basis the backup plan can be to close down same amount of consumption (a factory). Expensive but viable because it happens so selldom. With wind you need to have a backup plan for daily failure for the whole installed capacity.

Nuclear plants are not inflexible. The power can be decreased any time. All you need to do is to lower the pressure of the steam. They can even be designed to give adjustable power. But because the fixed costs are so much higher than the variable costs, there really isn't any sense in doing that. The smartest thing would be to build the capasity according to the daily peak load and then use these "extremly cheap" ways of storíng electricity that we've heard about here to provide capacity for the weekly or monthly/yearly peak load.

Security risk, prohibitivly expensive. According to who? Those are just subjective statements.

14% of world electricity? Migth be. What's the point? How many % does wind power provide? Solar? What it tells is that hydro and coal are cheap.

Gen IV reactors do exist. Not commercially. Neither do wind, solar or wave. Not commercially. Only as subsidized R&D installations. Has any windpower plant ever made profit without draining the taxpayers?

Follow the money!

Posted by: Helen | Apr 20, 2008 11:12:17 AM

For how long does the Mojave installation deliver 364 MW. One hour/year? Where is the energy stored for the rest of the year?

The problem with these renewable advocates is that they very seldom know the difference between energy and power. They think that "on average" means the same as "constantly". They even think that people are willing to pay premium price for electricity that's not on-demand.

Posted by: Helen | Apr 20, 2008 11:18:38 AM

Anym you just said what I said just with more techieness.

On AVERAGE the current us reactors not only arnt all that good they also cant use much of the FUEL and leave the vast majority unused.. thus reprocessing recovers soo very much.

BUT not only does a type 4 manae to use all the enriched uranium it uses ALL the uranium and plutonium and blah blah blah.

And again on top of all that even the ap1000 is maredly more effiecent then the old reactors were and SUPOSEDLY the type 4s are hoped to be even better.

As for cost the first 10 new us reactors will likely cost us more then the last 100 will.. mainly because it takes one hell of alot of pork and bribes to grease these heels.

Anyway no matter if the manage it or something else or totaly fubar everything up ibw rgubfa die ayew.

We kucw ub vwry interesting times and alot of people are gona e VERY unhappy.

Posted by: wintermane | Apr 20, 2008 11:41:54 AM

wintermane

Has anyone ever told you that your spelling could need some fine tuning? Maybe you could move your keyboard one key to the left?

Posted by: | Apr 20, 2008 12:15:35 PM

The capital costs of nuclear are meanwhile almost 10 times higher than wind. No wonder they tax credits and special laws that allow nuclear power corporations to charge the consumers in advance to foot the bill.

24 billion Dollars for only 2 nuclear reactors (1154 MW per reactor):
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89169837

It's always a little odd when one claims that nuclear power is significantly cheaper than wind:
1. Capital costs are extremely high (up to 10 times higher)
2. Uranium needs to mined, processed, enriched and shipped
3. Operational and maintenance costs are higher.
4. Dismantling of a nuclear plant is incredibly expensive.
5. An ultimate storage repository is necessary.
6. Nuclear power plants have extremely high power ratings and therefore require extremely high back up power.
7. It needs special protection to prevent accidents and avoid attacks.
8. Nuclear power plants often deal with construction delays.
9. Nuclear power plant deal with unplanned shut downs.
10. It does increase the dependence on foreign resources.
11. Windpower has a yearly growth of over 25% and nuclear doesn't.

Also, in many countries one doesn't even have to choice to choose the power operator and is therefore forced to buy from a nuclear operator.
Not being allowed to choose the power provider has nothing to do with an open market.

It's definitely not in the interest of a large power operator to facilitate decentralized renewable power or efficiency in any ways, because this will inevitable lead to a loss of revenue, more competition and loss of market share.

EON still produces 9 times more fossil and nuclear power than windpower. It is very much in their interest to promote nuclear and coal. Needless to say that many German windturbines are operated by smaller companies.

The average German person finances renewable power with only 0.7 Euro per month. And they actually get more in return than what they pay for this instrument:
http://www.bee-ev.de/presse.php?pr=1178
Due to the fact that more renewable electricity is fed into the grid, more of the most expensive conventional plants can be shut down.

And this does not even take into account that Germany generated a lot of jobs in the renewable sector and is exporting almost 80% of the wind turbines produced in Germany.

Posted by: | Apr 20, 2008 1:16:27 PM

Didn't you in Germany some time ago generate a lot of jobs by building Autobahns?

At least they could be used for something practical.

Posted by: | Apr 20, 2008 1:22:28 PM

0.7 EUR/month!

BS! Germany is notorious for it's high price of electricity. It costs almost tree times to that of the neighbouring countries. Denmark is also known for its high consumer prices.

There is a clear trend. The higher percent of windpower, the more expensive electricity and the higher CO2/kWh emissions.

On the other hand with nuclear power it's completely the other way round. Look at France, Sweden, Finland.

www.be-ev.de. Do not trust what a lobbyist organisation writes on their home pages.

That much is true that when it blows there is an surpluss of electricity. This causes the price to plummet. But the multiple capacity need causes the price to rocket when it's not blowing (or it blows too much).

Posted by: | Apr 20, 2008 1:45:29 PM

Helen: I have no particular problem with Nuclear power (I prefer something cleaner like two phase geothermal or wave power). I just object to the "long tailpipe" argument against EVs. It's not an argument, it's a caveat.

Have you checked out the V2G and the dutch load leveling concept?

Posted by: Neil | Apr 20, 2008 2:11:48 PM

The costs of the feed in tarifs for renewable power are currently financed with 1 cent per kWh at almost 16% contribution.
This means that this 1 cent pays for all the renewable power installed in Germany and whatever they produce conventional power does not have to produce.
http://vdn-archiv.bdew.de/aktuelledaten_eeg.asp

And since the most expensive conventional plants do not have to operate anymore there is a net cost reduction for the consumer.

And this is besides the fact that German and Danish companies lead the world market in windturbine production, export most of them and create thousands of jobs and reduce the tax burden in general.

Since the German consumer pay over 15 cents per kWh this 1 cent can obviously not be responsible for the high elecricity prices even if this one cent was not responsible for 16% of the total power production.

Electricity prices in Germany are controlled by the big power operators and they run an oligopoly and this is the main reason why the electricity prices in Germany are relatively high.
The German cartell office is currently taking legal actions against E.on, RWE, Vattenfall and EnBW for this very reason.
http://www.zeit.de/online/2008/16/verfahren

Posted by: | Apr 20, 2008 2:18:39 PM

Neil,

this is like asking a very religios person: Have you noticed that Dinosaurs existed long before Adam and Eve?

Posted by: | Apr 20, 2008 2:30:47 PM

Neil,

The article has its merits. It shows that EVs are no silver bullet if the grid is fed by fosile fuel. Where do we get ADDITIONAL huge amounts of power that is not fossile? The answer is not wind...

Yes. I know V2G and "the Dutch consept".

V2G has a couple of problems... When you charge your car you want it to be fully charged. You don't want the grid to drain the battery. Because battery capacity is expensive, you want to use the smallest possible battery that gets you your daily commute. If the grid drains the battery, you don't have any juice left to drive with. So, after a calm nigth everybody would be forced to stay home.

Powering the grid with your car's fuel cell or ICE is just plain stupid. Big units are always more efficient. Everything has a lifetime. Why waste your car's hours on feeding electricity to the grid, when the power company can do it with a fraction of the EUR/kW cost?

Battery has also a lifetime of cycles. Constant charging and draining kills the battery sooner. Unless EEStor comes up with something...

Dutch consept is great. The question is only, why would the freezer facilities pay premium price for second-rate electricity? Same works with heat storage. With that there's usually a cheaper rate during nigth. It would have to be really cheap if the electricity can be used only when it blows...

Posted by: Helen | Apr 20, 2008 2:39:41 PM

You really are someting.

Germany produces with wind PV and biopower 6%. Your calculating old hydro into this 16%. Hydro doesn't need any feed tariffs. Windpower gets a guaranteed 0.1 EUR/kWh. That is about double the normal consumer price of electricity.

Maintaining the rotating spare power is expensive. Thats why the German electricity prices are high. First the goverment refuses anyone to build new capasity. Then when it becomes expensive to import power from abroad and to maintain age old power plants and this shows in the bill, the goverment tries to get the price down by legal actions. They tried that on food in Zimbabwe. The result: No more food in the stores. Does the government think they can force the companies to sell electricity below the production costs?

Ps. It's the most expensive plants that have to be kept running as quick spare power.

Posted by: | Apr 20, 2008 3:07:26 PM

Some nuke plants may cost 10x more then wind to put in... until the costs go down and the lawsuits get squished. But nuke power runs very near 100^ wind.....

I love wind and lice surrounded by them. I jusy expect alot of baseload nuke as well.

And remember most of nukes cost is lawsuits and delays and bribes/pork. Besides as long as they can counr on that cost and recovering even 3 cents per kwh they can pay it back for cheaper then nat gas plants and cheaper then future clear coal and clean nat gas plants.. or have you forgotten all those plants will have to spend TRILLIONS on co2 cap tech very soon.

Posted by: wintermane | Apr 20, 2008 4:17:04 PM

re V2G: Let's get rid of some of the misconceptions. First, Nobody's going to drain your battery. With todays batteries you aren't going to allow the grid to pull more than 3% of each batteries total capacity. Second, at that level of discharge there is virtually no (none,zilch,nada) wear and tear on the battery.

If each car had a modest 16KWh (PHEV sized) battery that would give us about half a KWh of available storage. Multiply that by the number of cars in the country (say 200 million in the US) and that gives you 50,000 MWh of load leveling storage. Diversify your renewable and clean electricity sources (not just wind in a single location) and you may even reduce your generating costs by making full use of every Wh produced.

Posted by: Neil | Apr 20, 2008 4:17:51 PM

In California, we tried renewable electrical power that cost more and people lined up waiting to get it. It was not available for all that wanted it