Now, before you get all hot and bothered here, we should warn you that this study only uses information from within the great state of
North Carolina (where
Duke University is based, obviously), but the results are intriguing regardless. According to new data, the moment we're living in is a crossover one where the declining prices of solar panels may actually make sun-based energy more cost efficient to consider than nuclear. Duke found that the crossover price point was at around 16 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh), and for the first time ever in NC, the cost of one kWh of electricity from solar energy sunk below that. Of course, these results are apt to be even more impressive in sun-rich states like Arizona, Nevada and Utah, but it's fairly clear what the
real purpose of the investigation was: convincing the school to shell out for solar panels to energize Krzyzewskiville during week-long campouts for UNC vs. Duke tickets.
posted August 10th 2010 9:57AM
I think the best way to go is to have the nuclear (or fossil fuel) tech there in case of an emergency, but have a totally solar powered grid. Well thats coming from Australia, we get sun pissing from the sky and our government stares at the ground :P.
@TehSilentWolf Sounds great, except for the fact your power will cost twice as much...
@danwallie
er the above article talks about how because solar pannels are becoming cheaper the energy will cost less. Also you dont need to have that many nuclear power plants, you could just have a couple of coal fired ones (which are already functioning) to provide energy if say you get a cloudy week.
@danwallie
That might be a price worth paying, at least in the case of the US, where one could arguably make the case that we pay a hidden cost for our cheap energy by channeling our tax dollars towards the largest military force in the world (by $). Could we reduce or flow of money to other countries and governments if we could become less dependent on foreign sources of energy? How would that affect where we invest our tax revenues? How would that affect our involvement and entanglement in the events of the world which, outside of maintaining stable energy prices, really don't affect us? The math is more complicated than just the amount you and I pay for energy on a day-to-day basis. There are larger geo-political considerations and costs that you do not directly associate with energy that need to be taken into account.
There's been some recent press on Portugal's big shift to renewable energy. It's a good read: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/10/science/earth/10portugal.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1
@TehSilentWolf
"A couple" of coal fired nuclear power plants will not meet demand. Power plants in America already operate at 80% capacity, so every single power plant that currently exists and is planned would still have to be built and manned by personnel for every instant that a cloud crosses the sun.
The problem is storing any potential excess power generated from solar panels, which require costly, toxic, and quick to degrade batteries ... or the low efficiency catalytic conversion of water to hydrogen gas which can later be burned. These batteries would by their very nature be low voltage, so they cannot be centrallized. Best case scenario is, we would all have have our own generators.
Solar, as far as I can see, will only work if each house has its own solar panel connected to the grid ... and that still does not solve energy at night, and at current optimistic efficiencies that would still not power all of our energy needs. But it would be great to power a Nissan Leaf.
@danwallie
The problem with all of these 'comparisons' is that they don't factor in the requisite infrastructure. Consider what happens if we take solar to the extreme: the grid has massive unpredictable spikes based on time and geographical location during the day based on weather - and produces next to nothing after dark. The only possible way to balance solar is either to have true global generation and sharing (unlikely for all sorts of obvious reasons, would require ocean bottom superconductors to prevent loss, $$, politics, etc) or to have very difficult to design battery and capacitor based installations to store up peaks during the day and discharge at night. Battery tech isn't fast enough and certainly isn't cheap enough to make that economical anytime soon.
Solar helps but it is not, and probably with its limitations will never be, the utopian solution these type of folks seem to think it could be. Nuclear on the other hand is steady, always-on, grid-friendly generation. These plants are plug-and-play with our current grid.
We could be building new meltdown-proof Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) plants that use what we currently classify as 'waste' for fuel RIGHT NOW if Clinton hadn't scrapped the entire research program to pacify some hippies back in the 90's. Go do a search on "IFR program," it's all public knowledge; it actually took more money to cancel than it would have to finish! We need more nuclear generation, as soon as we can get it. What we have is aging fast, and no new plants have been made for too long.
@TehSilentWolf
Currently we use reservoir lakes for this function. They basically act like massive batteries.
The way they work, is by pumping water into a large manmade (typically) lake, when there is extra power. When there is not enough power they let the water flow out of the reservoir through hydroelectric generators.
These can be made with massive capacity, just by make the reservoir lakes bigger.
@jsondag
Think of the amount of land you're going to alter to switch to a decent % of energy coming from solar. Right now, Renewables make up single digit percentages of the energy supply. Those reservoir lakes can also be limited because there is plenty of fossil fuel supply of 'reserve' energy on the grid. Switching to say 80% Solar would require two orders of magnitude more lakes, which means a lot more water being used for reserve power. Since solar tends to dominant in dry sunny climates, I figure that water usage shift is much bigger problem then we could possibly imagine.
@M3
The problem trying use reservoirs as batteries for solar power, is that you need a real hydroelectric plant to get the energy back out. If that's the case, then why use solar at all in that location when the dam will provide much cheaper electricity anyway?
@SilverTrumpet
IFR you say? I'm more of a MSR (Molten-salt reactor) fan for the Gen IV lineup. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor
It's Thorium cycle can reprocess the nuclear waste too, and is in my opinion a lot more safer the IFR.
Except during the night time ... or when it's cloudy.
And of course the moratorium on building nuclear power plants has really increased the cost of maintaining older ones. Not to mention that radioactive isotopes are required for most medical procedures used today to detect and treat cancers and metabolic disorders.
France might be a better benchmark for the true cost of nuclear power, which comes out to $0.06/kWh, because they reprocess their fuel and use the latest technology, not to mention that the per person equipment cost of nuclear is able to be spread out over an entire region much more easily than solar (because a solar panel in one place only gets on average 6 good hours of sunlight per day).
Basically, the article is fallacious and not indicative of true efficiencies. Not counting higher equipment costs of solar panels and their limited usefulness during peak hours, solar is STILL 3 times more expensive per kWh in an idyllic situation.
I am 100% for renewable energies, who isn't? Even oil/energy companies, especially BP, invest a lot of their money in those initiatives. They better for national security if not for the environment. But the findings are fallacious and should not be generalized, that's all I'm saying.
If it really cost less, power companies would be knocking on our doors offering to install solar panels on our roofs that they'll maintain for us. That's the beauty of capitalism: the drive for larger profit margins, which renewable energies are prime for providing!
@James Sonne
first :it is not about photovoltaics cells but another different technology (CSP).
CSP are cheap, incredible effective and it can work even 5 hours after sunset. But it required some maintenance and some hard planning (photovoltaics are mostly maintenance free).
@James Sonne
There are solutions to this. One solution being a hybrid system that is used in Portugal whereby wind energy is used during off-peak hours to move water up-hill to store the energy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/10/science/earth/10portugal.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1
Of course the report negates to mention that it costs more energy (fossil fuel based usually) to make the solar panel than the solar panel will ever produce.
@d3sc3nd3ncy
Interesting. I know the metals used in solar panels are extremely rare and toxic, and figured there was a large energy cost in the smeltering and fabricating process, but do you have a link/citation? I'd love to be able to repeat your claim to others.
@d3sc3nd3ncy
What if those solar panel factories are using, you know, solar panels to power their facilities?
@charliedigital Like Colbert's infinite sandwich?
@terence
No, not really, given that it's pretty reasonable for these factories to use their own products to save money and to demonstrate their viability to their customers.
@James Sonne
That's a rather big myth. PV Cells do have an energy balance greater then 1, and I've seen numbers from as low as 3 to as high as 9. Gasoline has an energy balance of 9 to put those numbers into perspective.
The thing that really bothers me about PV Solar is the huge dependency on rare elements. Sure we're dependent on Coal and Oil now, but switching to 90% PV would only push us to being dependent on substances that are even more scarce such as Se and Te.
There's also no good methodologies on how to recycle solar panels, at least just to get the rare earths back. These are fragile slabs of silicon. They will break. They lose efficiency over time. Now, Recycling could seriously kill the energy balance.
@d3sc3nd3ncy Yes, please, forward your source. Solar might be all well and good in the middle of a desert, but what about a densely packed urban area...in the middle of the winter...under 6 feet of snow? Sure, the panels could be erected in the middle of Arizona, but what's the real likelihood that the juice is going to reach the northeast? Further, if the focus is on kwH, what type of real estate footprint are we talking about to produce enough electricity for, say, Chicago? If producing enough electricity for New York city and Chicago requires covering the lower 1/2 of Nevada, 2/3 of Arizona, and most of New Mexico, is this a valid method of producing that kwH of electricity?
@d3sc3nd3ncy
What absolute rubbish. In good conditions a solar panel can make back the energy used in it's construction within 2 years.
See these articles for an objective anaylsis that refutes your drivel:
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/03/the-ugly-side-o.html
http://www.csudh.edu/oliver/smt310-handouts/solarpan/pvpayback.htm
I hate coach k....that is all
@Alexpeegs
Seconded...
UNC Alum
PS: NCState has a nuclear reactor.
@Brad Green Yes, NCSU has a 38 year-old 1MW reactor, but Duke has TUNL, with its particle accelerators (and brought home two National Championships in 2010).
This article is garbage, it magically fails to mention that this is only true if you include the huge subsidies that the government gives for solar power; without them there is no comparison. But I guess money from the government is free and limitless right?
@Josh S
Are you saying the government doesn't give subsidies to the natural gas, oil, and coal industries?
@charliedigital
If you're talking about carbon taxes, when do we get taxes on chemical waste? You realize broken Solar panels are hazardous chemical waste?
@M3
They are talking about CSP (Concentrating Solar Panels). They are not the typical photovoltaics panels but "simple mirrors that boil water". So, a broken solar panel is mostly a broken mirror, and mirrors can be recycled almost indefinitely (excluding the turbine but the turbine is done mainly by steel and alloys and also can be recycled).
@magallanes
.... Read the Duke Report. It's comparing PV Solar to Nuclear, not CSP.
@M3
Broken anything is hazardous chemical waste. In fact, you can even get some nice Cadium laced drinking glasses at McDonalds.
@Josh S
Nuclear power also receives subsidies.
Without subsidies for either, solar is still more expensive, but judging by previous cost changes it's estimated unsubsidised solar will be cheaper than unsibsidised nuclear within 10 years.
@grobbo
Explain to me how a loan is a subsidy?
North Carolina also has this pretty great incentive called "NC Green Power" that allows solar energy producers to sell both the energy AND credits saying the energy was produced via "green" technology. These credits are then sold to companies who want to be able to say some percentage of their electricity is produced via renewable technology. The more credits they buy, the higher percentage they can claim. Most NC residential producers of solar energy go with a "buy-all sell-all" set up in which they sell all produced electricity at 21 cents and purchase all of their electricity back from the grid at around 10-11 cents. This significantly reduces the payback time on installing solar systems in NC.
Just want to point out that tenting for Duke vs UNC tickets goes on for much longer than a week -- Anywhere between 2 to 8 weeks is normal :)
The other point to go along with Josh's is real estate. How many solar panels, and how much real estate would it take up to get the same out put as a nuclear reactor? And what about cloudy and rainy days? I hate to say it, but solar energy just isn't practical on such a large scale basis.
On a home by home basis, sure. Maybe even an entire development. But a city? A State? Not with solar.
@JKassab
Why isn't it practical? If it's 'home by home' practical then it's practical to upgrade an entire city worth of homes and businesses (not tomorrow! I mean, over many years), assuming enough panels can be produced.
Most likely this would only provide a proportion of the power used, but you can get additional power through large concentrating solar plants (generally placed in desert or similar areas). CSP plants can also contain energy storage (basically if the electricity isn't needed at a particular time you heat up a large of something very dense instead, this can produce energy during the night or whatever).
In order to produce large quantities of renewable energy without needing to resort to 'balancing' fossil-fuel plants (or build ridiculous quantity of hydro-electric pump-the-lake-uphill schemes), a 'super grid' is necessary. This is a continent (or more) scale power grid that can transfer energy intelligently over large distances using high-voltage DC to reduce losses to a few percentage points. You can use it to transfer energy from wind generators where the wind's blowing to where it isn't, from solar where it's sunny to where it's cloudy, etc.
You can also use this to transfer power from suitable solar power sources, such as large deserts in the middle of nowhere, to places where people actually live and work.
Basically, yes large-scale renewable power production does require a huge investment in new technology (something that no doubt most of the readers of this blog would be against... oh wait) and it will probably help if there is also small-scale renewable generation in addition so that demands on grid energy are lower. But it's feasible to produce a very high proportion of energy with renewable sources, when using a large-scale power grid that can transfer energy.
For research papers and discussion about this in a Europe/North Africa context, see some of the references on:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_grid
Many folks do not even know what the costs are to put out a nuclear power plant, its rated lifecycle as a plant, and the costs involved therein to retire a plant. I actually did a Nuclear vs. Solar debate back in 1989 in a speech class, and I can say with the exception of my partner (on my side of the debate) everyone, including the teacher, were ignorant about a lot of facts at that time.
This included the federal government subsidies for building nuke plants, and the federal costs to retire a plant (think ~$150 Million in 1989 dollars) for each plant, which is probably now near, if not over, $1 Billion.
That is great and all, but where I live, there is little sun almost every day, but I guess that is what you get for living in the 2nd cloudiest city in the US(statistic, 2nd most cloudy days a year according to meteorology). So this would be completely useless, unless we put them up above the clouds. Which would cost billions to do.