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This discussion relates to Technology Review's article Chasing the Sun.

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  kitk
  

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  06/24/2009 01:41 AM

  Stimulated Paybacks

  In other words, the energy package will mostly blow money on fragile, inefficient, expensive, and vulnerable projects. Viva democracy,,,.
  This Chicago solar project will what, provide power for like one third of a percent of the city, during good weather, by day? And unless all carbon fuels are outlawed, it will forever be a money drain. And, if, God forbid, we are under an EMP attack, it will break down even before anything else.
  This makes so much sense you know we have a popular government.
  One modern nuke plant could power half the city, and provide warm water for fish farming or greenhouses. But, I dream.

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  demre
  

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  06/24/2009 02:36 AM

  capacity factors

  There are very few numbers in this article, and they are not used correctly.
  
  When you consider the "generating capacity" of power plant, that is the not the meaningful economic figure; rather, it is the amount of energy actually generated. With baseload power this is simple - the power plant runs at constant load 24/7, and energy generated is just power * time interval. But here you mix all sorts of intermittent power sources - wind, solar, hydropower, natural gas (peaking power) - and they all have very different capacity factors, that is, the ratio of average power generation to capacity. For example: from EIA figures, the average capacity factor of hydropower, wind, and solar in USA in 2007 were respectively - 36%, 24%, and 14%:
  
  http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat2p2.html
  
  http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table1_1.html
  
  Obviously much of the article freely conflates INCOMPARABLE generating capacities. For example: when you mention capital costs such as $6/W for solar and $2/W for wind, this is meaningless because the wind watts yield twice as much energy as the solar watts. Similarly with the natural gas watts, which in theory can yield up to six times more energy than the solar watts, because gas turbines are a completely on-demand energy source.
  
  (But then, you also completely ignore the FUEL COSTS of natural gas, which are the largest part of its expenses. This is just another way in which listing off capital costs ($/W) is completely meaningless).
  
  Likewise, when you graph "renewable energy generating capacity", the current baseline is mostly hydropower. And when you add on "new" generating capacity, mostly solar, it is completely misleading because the solar watts yield 1/3rd as much energy as the hydro watts (under current US conditions). In this way, you exaggerate the tiny impact of an additional 50 GW solar power by a factor of three.
  
  I suggest you use less misleading units, such as actual energy generation in units of kWh/year.

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  mahonj
  

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  06/24/2009 05:48 AM

  Sunny city / Windy city

  It seems crazy to put solar in Chicago.
  How about some wind turbines ?
  or
  Why not build some houses there to reduce people's commuting energy, and stick solar panels on the roofs if you really want it (or solar water heaters).
  or maybe
  You would be better off putting a couple of hundred MW of wind somewhere within 100 miles of Chicago. 10MW nominally of Solar only benefits the people supplying and building the farm, it doesn't do much in terms of electricity supply.
  
  Or spend the money promoting CFLs and energy efficiency.
  
  But Solar that far north seems crazy, when you have sunny regions further south.

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    NorthernPiker
    

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    06/29/2009 10:05 AM

    Re: Sunny city / Windy city

    You're right. Solar in Chicago does not make sense now, but it will in 10 years - far beyond any politician's term of office.
    
    It would have made more political sense to slap some solar cells on a south-facing roof of an inner city community center that had been refurbished with insulation and other energy saving upgrades. Then the pols could have distributed CFLs at a ribbon cutting ceremony.
    
    Now, solar in California or Florida makes sense in some areas with high peak electricity rates, particularly if the solar installation is financed with a mortgage. These and other areas in the world should produce enough demand for solar to keep the cost decreasing at its historic 8% annual rate.

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  YankeeBruce
  

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  06/24/2009 09:17 AM

  Cost Efficeincy

  A $60M project that will service 1500 houses yields a cost per house of $40k.  No wonder nobody will sink funds into this turkey. 
  
  The cost of the replacement panels will be a regular expense over the life of the facility (every 5 - 7 years??), adding to the consumer's  expense. 

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    kstauff
    

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    06/24/2009 01:43 PM

    Re: Cost Efficeincy

    No wonder nobody will sink funds into this turkey.
    
    Except for our government. Please wake me up when this nightmare is over.

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      erbium
      

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      06/25/2009 08:49 PM

      Nobody will sink funds into these turkeys

      General Motors
      Chrysler
      
      The tens of billions we spent to prop up these walking zombies of corporations who were sold off or went bankrupt anyway would have bought alot of renewable energy capacity instead of squandering it to produce devices (autos) that spew out even more GHGs

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  • 
    kd brown
    

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    07/03/2009 02:12 PM

    Re: Cost Efficeincy

    Solar panels are usually guaranteed to operate at full efficiency for 20-25 years, after which they usually operate at 95% efficiency. There is degradation over time, but certainly they in no way need to be replaced in 5-7 years.
    
    BUT! I have a problem with land being dedicated to solar. Much better to place solar on the millions of square feet of roof space in the US that is being used solely for keeping the rain out. The trees that are growing on the site should be measured for their GHG sequestration potential! ; P

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  carlhage
  

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  06/24/2009 01:40 PM

  Housing Upgrades

  The article was a nice overview of solar energy, but isn't Chicago loaded with older houses that are typically energy inefficient? For rental property, a landlord has no economic incentive to increase property cost to make the renters energy cost lower. Wouldn't a much better approach to stimulus spending be to upgrade buildings so they use less energy? Instead of high capital cost, it's mainly labor and also the kind of labor affected by the housing bubble. As for cost efficiency, it should be an order of magnitude less than solar energy creation (especially in Chicago), and cost effective enough that as a loan attached to an energy bill it would result in lower bills even after loan payments are taken out. I'm disappointed the news about such demand-reduction/efficiency efforts is rare in comparison to energy sources.

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  • 
    kd brown
    

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    07/03/2009 02:17 PM

    Re: Housing Upgrades

    Cheers to this idea! Proven to be a much more effective stimulus of the economy and a much more effective way to staunch the flow of GHG. The benefits are so clear that I am surprised that the City of Chicago and the State of Illinois are not supporting this with their own funding.
    
    We MUST pick the lowest hanging fruit first - do what is right in front of us.
    
    That said, engineers from Sharp and Kyocera announced back in 1991 (Japan Times, Tokyo) that all that was required to make photovoltaic competitive with other forms of electric generation was to ramp up production and gain production efficiencies. Now if I can catch up with them to see what they think currently...

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