A Solar Grand Plan

The January 2008 issue of Scientific American has an article titled "A Solar Grand Slam" which outlines a plan in which solar power could end U.S. dependence on foreign oil and slash greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. In a massive switch from coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear power plants to solar power plants, the U.S. could supply 69 percent of its electricity and 35 percent of its total energy by 2050. The four key elements of the plan are:

• A vast area of photovoltaic cells would have to be erected in the Southwest. Excess daytime energy would be stored as compressed air in underground caverns to be tapped during nighttime hours.
• Large solar concentrator power plants, with molten salt storage, would be built as well.
• A new direct-current power transmission backbone would deliver solar electricity across the country.
• $420 billion in subsidies from 2011 to 2050 would be required to fund the infrastructure and make it cost-competitive.

The article goes into quite a bit of detail about how the plan would be implemented and financed.

The plan also states that "If wind, biomass and geothermal sources were also developed, renewable energy could provide 100 percent of the nation’s electricity and 90 percent of its energy by 2100."

This comprehensive study is well done and well worth a read.  I disagree on their definition of what is a vast area of photovoltaic cells, which I find reasonable, especially as their estimate of the land required is very conservative compared to other studies.

I also do not see why so much power has to be provided by solar, as other, just as clean sources, could contribute considerable power, especially in the short run.

Unfortunately their study ended before two recent announcements:

1) That Nanosolar producer of thin-film CIGS solar cells, made using nanoparticle ink and roll-printing technology, has begun production of cells that will sell at $0.99 a Watt when their 430. ,000 Mw production facility in CA and a similar facility in Germany are completed. Costs are reduced because, not only by their production technology, but also because their cells and panels are the first ones to have been designed specifically for utility-scale power generation.

and 2) That Ausra which is providing a 177 Mw thermal solar facility for PG&E has begun construction on a 700 Mw production facility which is scheduled to start delivering equipment in April 2008. Ausra claims that It can generate electricity for 10 cents/kWh now and under 8 cents/kWh in 3 yrs (presumably not including storage, which would add another 2 or 3 cents). They claim that all U.S. electric power, day and night, can be generated using a land area smaller than 8,500 sq miles using their equipment.

Comments

[Clee]

Thanks for posting about the Scientific American article.

On the other stuff, I thought it was pointed out that the Nanosolar plant is 430 MW or 430,000 KW capacity.

I was also under the impression that the plant in California produces the PV cells and that the plant in Germany takes the cells from California and fabricates them into panels, and so the plants are not at all similar. But I could be mistaken in my impression.

[eric]

For those who say that this is far to much money to ever consider spending on all of this, we have to date currently spent 480$ billion on the energy policy known as the Iraq war. With no end in sight.

[Cyril R.]

This comprehensive study is well done and well worth a read. I disagree on their definition of what is a vast area of photovoltaic cells, which I find reasonable, especially as their estimate of the land required is very conservative compared to other studies.

Absolutely true. Let's take Ausra as an example: 8,500 square miles. The total US land area is 3,537,438 square miles. So: 8,500/3,537,438 = 0.24% of total US land area. Just a fraction of a percent.

The question we need to ask ourselves is:

For something so vital to modern life, to our economy, to our security, to the protection of our environment (yes!), indeed to the very continued existence of our society, why would we not be willing to allocate 0.24% of our land area to the generation of electricity? And that is assuming 90+% solar thermal but in reality we will have many clean sources.

When one realizes that the required land area is also of such a nature that it has little other economic purposes, and that solar plants do not "annihilate ecosystems" or some such unsupported nonsense, there can not be any rational reason not to do it.

You can see a pie chart of the US landuse by type here. Notice that "Federal land" takes up more than a fifth of total land, many, many times more than the land area required for solar thermal electric generation. The latter would be barely visible in the pie chart.

[PowerPointSamurai]

The biggest problem with that article is that it transitions us to one, single source of energy rather than a diverse set. This means all the energy produced by this system have the same vulnerabilities and shortcomings. The demand for implementing something like this would send materials costs up geometrically. It's easy for a physicist to say something is theoretically possible, it's an entirely different thing for engineers to make it practical and meet that vision.

I know the focus was on solar (for some reason), but I didn't see one word in there about wind power, which already is economically viable (unlike solar). They mentioned "renewable energy" could take 100% of the electricity and 90% of the energy by 2100, but no mention of other viable forms of renewable energy. Oh, and why eliminate nuclear right away (or ever)? Right in the key concepts block, they talk about a "massive switch from coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear plants"... Why? Keeping nuclear would help displace fossil fuel plants even faster. If the argument is "waste", that might be valid if a lot of "waste" didn't already exist. Moreover, that "waste" can be recycled and burned. Terrorism? I would say thousands of square miles of solar panels all in the same area and centralized production of electricity with a few grid trunks running out of it is far more vulnerable that a nuclear plant. One of the virtues of solar is that it can be DISTRIBUTED, and instead literally turned America's deserts into glass. I'd like to see the study redone with the assumption that every building in the Southwest had to replace their roofs with solar arrays--both commercial and residential. Or even a mix of that and "green roofs".

[Cyril R.]

And PV for 6 cents/kWh by 2020? Not as plausible as solar thermal breaking that price barrier even before that.

Cadmium telluride? Well maybe now but nano-silicon and nano-carbon are far more promising materials for PV in the future.

I don't think utility scale PV is a good idea at all. It's power is in distributed markets. If we're going to build a big HVDC network, then using the solar thermal plants for utility generation in good Mojave locations and PV for distributed markets (but grid-tied since we're going to have a HVDC grid anyway we might as well use it for distributed PV too whenever possible), makes more sense to me.

[PowerPointSamurai]

Another thing that annoyed me about the article was the assumption built into their "payoff" block that said "Global tensions eased and military costs lowered". That's not necessarily true. First of all, there is no guarantee that other nations would adopt this system if we did, and China and India's demand growth alone will more than take up our slack. Others around the world will continue to play petro-politics and we will have to be involved because disruption and instability anywhere will ultimately affect all of us.

Let's assume others DO follow us and all of the oil producing states (including Russia, #2 oil producer in the world) suddenly has a loss of income. That could cause massive instability as well.

Finally, water is emerging as the replacement for oil as the resource in conflict. Ironically, the same area this article wants to build massive solar arrays on is at the heart of it in our country, with California sucking the rest of the Southwest dry. It's much worse in many other places in the world.

[PowerPointSamurai]

eric,

As for the war in Iraq being an energy policy, as you stated, do the math. At the most, Iraq provided something like 5% of our imports. If it were about oil, Venezuela would've made a lot more sense. Or better yet, Canada. (our #1 producer)

[Cory D]

Just a quick off-the-top thought for Cyril R: He comments "there can not be any rational reason not to do it." What about this one: How do you protect a crucial infrastructure element covering 8500 square miles from terrorist attack? (These days, this is a very real issue considered with conventional power plants.) How do you distribute and modularize the generating capacity so that if one "module" is taken out, the rest is not affected? Granted, that issue already has to be taken into account with conventional plants (and arguably it is worse there, since a single conventional plant has far higher power-generation "density" - power generated per area of footprint - so a single strike takes out far more capacity). But the image of such a large area having to be protected from sabotage or outright attack makes me a bit nervous. Anyone know if studies on "reliability/robustness of distributed renewable power-generation facilities" has been carried out and published in the public domain? I would suspect not....

[PowerPointSamurai]

Cyril,

Rather than make roadrunners and other desert animals homeless, and cut down all those Saguaro cactus to build these solar arrays, why not look at another significant unused piece of land--buildings. Why not implement this as a distributed project with rooftop solar arrays on all buildings, residential and commercial, over Walmart parking lots, the whole enchilada? Covering parking lots with solar arrays would also make all those shoppers happy on those rainy days, and Walmart could provide charging for their PHEV or electric car (for a nominal fee) while they shop.

THEN they could continue to build some plants out in that so-called waste-land, which many of us actually thinks is quite beautiful as it is.

[Andre Angelantoni]

I love this plan as a start.

Now in revision two they need to factor in:
1) Cyril's and PowerPointSamurai's points re: distributed energy and solar thermal instead of solar cells
2) how to accomplish it while we are dealing with a worldwide oil shock

From the Hirsch report:

"...as peaking is approached, liquid fuel prices and price volatility will increase dramatically, and, without timely mitigation, the economic, social, and political costs will be unprecedented. Viable mitigation options exist on both the supply and demand sides, but to have substantial impact, they must be initiated more than a decade in advance of peaking.”
— Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation and Risk Management
Department of Energy, 2005

Definitely read the Hirsch report because it is widely considered the first public acknowledgement by the U.S. government of peak oil.
www.inspiringgreenleadership.com/downloads/Hirsch-PeakingOfWorldOilProduction.pdf

Andre'
------------------------------------
Peak Oil, Climate Change and Business
Free, Bi-Weekly Executive Briefing
www.inspiringgreenleadership.com/peak-oil-climate-change-and-business

[Cyril R.]

would say thousands of square miles of solar panels all in the same area and centralized production of electricity with a few grid trunks running out of it is far more vulnerable that a nuclear plant.

You don't know what you're talking about. Even a MOAB won't damage more than one square mile and last I checked terrorists don't have MOAB's. If they do, they would probably throw it at the nuke as they would get more "bang" for the buck as we could say. Nukes are not built to withstand a direct hit from a MOAB or similar massive payload bomb. The solar thermal plants would also be distributed over the best locations in the Mojave.

Transmission vulnerability will not be an issue for this same reason: plants won't be in one location so there will be many transmission lines. Even nukes need transmission lines. What, did you think multiple GW of electric power from a nuke *magically* arrived to your home sockets? The nukes would be even more vulnarable in this regard because of larger unit sizes and because they are concentrated in one location.

That said I agree we should keep all the nukes on-line. In fact upgrade and revise them, eg with thorium capability, and make them safer. That, with regards to realism, I think is even more important than building new ones. I'd rather the subsidy money from the govt that is going to some of the new nukes went to research so we'll have better nuclear technology in the future. Heavily subsidizing new commercial reactors is just silly.

[Cyril R.]

Because they are commercial reactors, to make myself clear.

[Cyril R.]

It may be easier (but still extremely unlikely) for the terrorists to have their own bunker buster type missile and destroy a big reactor. Even the concrete reactor core won't withstand such an attack.

Such a bunker buster wouldn't do much damage in the solar thermal case. Throwing it at the solar field is relatively useless Throwing it at the turbine will only knock one medium sized plant out but it could be rebuilt fairly quickly without long lasting radiotoxic or chemical damage, and with reasonable cost. A reactor meldown however, is going to be a big mess and it will be almost impossible to finance the cleanup.

If you're really worried about terrorist (I'm not) then solar thermal is hard to beat.

[Cyril R.]

Cory D I think I just answered your question as well.

[DaveMart]

I'll reproduce a post I put in SciAm here:
A stand-alone case can be made for taxing toxic emissions from coal, and perhaps from CO2, but if they are viable at all I cannot understand why your proposals need the subsidy.
This chiefly arises from the nature of the solar resource available in the States.
Within the South-West it tracks use very well, and to the extent that it doesn't you have excellent opportunities to gradually expand storage capacity, acquiring expertise as you go.
So you don't even need initially to compete with base load, just peak use..
There is a very large market for this is the first place, and if this cannot become viable without subsidies it is certainly not viable to store the energy for base-load use or transmit it huge distances.
Subsidies also have the effect of encouraging the widespread adoption of inappropriate technologies, for instance perhaps the CAES you suggest would not be best, but hot-water storage might be, so that going firm on the first might lead to missallocation of capital.
It all depends, of course, on how great a delay would be incurred by not subsidising as you suggest.
If we were talking about 50 years, then perhaps a subsidy would be a good idea.
So, if you run the same assumptions on cost reduction as were in your model, how mush do you delay the same reduction in CO2?
Bear in mind that the alternative, perhaps with a charge for emissions, at least of the toxic variety would not involve 'picking winners', and hence would certainly be more optimised.
It is also possible that the total emissions as well as costs over, say 50 years would be less.
To give an example, your assumptions about wind power assume do not take into account proposals for harvesting wind, which if it works at all are likely to have much lower costs than anything current, have a much bigger resource base and is better geographically distributed.
Suppose that Google's efforts bear fruit, by. say, 2025 you might have subsidised a lot of unnecessary transmission lines and solar arrays.
Now I don't know if high altitude wind-power will pan out, but since we are going to get a very substantial roll-put of solar in the South-West anyway, throwing another $420billion or so at it does not seem like a good idea.
So how much do you calculate that the $420 bn you propose would speed things up?

[Cyril R.]

I will tell you now what will likely happen.

The nuclear propagandist are going to pose as concerned citizens, talking about the environmental impact of solar thermal. Like wolfs in sheeps clothing. However they will not provide credible references to support such bold claims. That is because it is a load of bullsh!t.

Then there are the enviro-wackos, arguably even worse. They will also pose as concerned citizens, this time with the hidden agenda of what some would call "enviro-irrationalism" or even "enviro-terrorism". I would give these people the choice of solar thermal plants or coal and natural gas. Rooftop PV is great, but let's not idealize the situation. PV, in it's current form and without reasonable storage, cannot yet readily replace coal, and there is no credible reason that it will in the near term. In the future, yes no doubt, but not now. It's not necessary either, PV can alleviate things like A/C needs which is great. The way it looks now is both PV and solar thermal are going to play their part. Also, not putting all our eggs in one basket would be prudent strategy.

[bigTom]

But we are an ideologically driven people. Subsidy is a four letter word. We'd rather spend trillions in a vain attempt to steal someone elses oil.

Of course distributing the generation makes the most sense. It reduces transmission costs, and reduces variablity. If PV makes it into utility scale generation, unit sizes are likely to be a few MW, and distributed relatively close to the end users. Solar thermal needs larger scale units to be competitive.

[Cyril R.]

Perhaps the biggest technical task of the government would be to provide the right context for alternative energy. That means the right, speedy siting legislation and certification, political backing but also the financing of a big part of the grid expansion costs, so private companies will build them really fast. I think direct subsidies are generally a not the best idea, but I wouldn't mind the govt spending big $ on electrical infrastructure financing together with private companies.

[Cyril R.]

Ausra claims that It can generate electricity for 10 cents/kWh now and under 8 cents/kWh in 3 yrs (presumably not including storage, which would add another 2 or 3 cents).

In the case of Ausra, the opposite would be true - under the condition that their figures roughly work out in reality. In their case, thermal storage actually reduces cost per kWh. This has been explained several times in this thread. Don't you read your own blog's comments Jim? :)

[PowerPointSamurai]

Cyril,

Yes, I do know what I am talking about. A reactor containment building is designed to withstand a hit from a jet. A MOAB (if a terrorist had one) would NOT penetrate the building because it produces a low-impulse, wide area effect. I see your point about the solar array though, but I think you misunderstand what I'm saying. All of that electricity would have to be concentrated at key nodes and transmitted along main grid lines. If we really generated 100% of the US electricity from this single part of the country, it would be easy to knock out the whole country by taking out a few key nodes. Not so if this were distributed and diversified (i.e. a few wave plants along the coast, a few wind farms in the mid-west and other viable areas, etc.). I know nuclear electricity does not magically get to the socket, but those 100+ plants are also distributed widely across the country. If you look at the map from the article, it looks like Arizona would be pretty much the epicenter of our energy system.

As far as the arrays go, forget terrorists, how about vandalism? Solar panels are quite expensive and fragile. This would drive the costs way above the projections here and the only thing I see protecting them is the remoteness from bored miscreants. It's a little tougher for some idiot to mess with a wind turbine, and someone would at least have to have a boat to smack into a wave generator.

I also agree that I would like to see some Thorium nuclear plants, but I would like to see some next-gen plants for recycling the used fuel too.

[Cyril R.]

People like Powerpointsamurai should read the references I've provided about US land use. 0.24% of the US land for solar thermal plants. And that is already excluding water bodies. Even if you think solar thermal plants are ugly, and like the desert it's just 0.24% of US land, which is just a small part of the Mojave. Don't be irrational. There will be plenty of deserts left to look at.

Still think it's a bad idea? OK how do you like coal plants? Better than solar thermal plants? No? How are you going to replace coal plants with current generation rooftop PV? Are you going to pay for the expense of PV kWh's with storage? Or are you just another hypocrite? Maybe you want more nuclear power? No? What then. There are no alternatives left. Or maybe cold fusion :)

Anyone else in need of a reality check?

[Green Assassin Brigade]

I think the article is naive in several aspects.

One they discount the possibility of material shortages without showing any calculations showing there is enough of all the rare earths and such needed. (unless they make big gains in organic dye cells there will be shortages, some short term some sustained)

Two they see the U.S. project in a vacuum that does not need to deal with other countries demanding the same silicon, rare earths, technical expertise. politial tension will not just be over access to oil and water, all strategic materials will soon come into play as seen by China's recent moves to ban exports of certain materials.

While flawed I think the biggest point of this article is to show people it can be done, that we need not be dependant on the status quo for energy.

Getting it through those cement heads in Government that it is feasable, is the first and most important step.

Making a detailed plan showing several kinds of solar thermal, solar electric, geo thermal, wind/wave/current would just confuse the poor ignorant idiots. Enen just as an arguement that it can done makes this is an important study. Whether it should be done this way is irrelevant for now as long as it serves the purpose of focusing attention to the idea we have viable options.

Once there is a understanding something can be done, and gov develops the will to do something it will be much easier for a Geo thermal group as an example to say we can give you 1000MW at 2 cents cheaper than solar. Once the will to act is in place the other options will share in the boom diluting the scale of the solar component and lessening the concentration that is scaring the Terrorphobes.

[PowerPointSamurai]

Cyril,

I was a little bewildered by your last post talking about nuclear propagandists opposing solar thermal. Why would they do that? In concert with other sources it really makes sense. I'm also a little confused why you don't like rooftop PV. Yeah, it's less viable than solar thermal, but it has other virtues, like distributed production and it might get Joe Citizen more aware of his energy footprint if he had the opportunity to make his meter spin backwards. Right now dark-colored roofs do absolutely no good for anyone except the home-owners association and their concern for pretty houses.

[Brian Wang]

100GW (800 billion kwh) of nuclear power for 20% of electricity now

Thermoelectric conversion in 2010-2020 to capture 50% of the heat as electricity. (DOE freedomcar, quantum well and quantum dot 70-90% carnot thermoelectric conversion efficiency). Less efficient thermoelectric currently used for car seat warmers and beer coolers.

50% power up rate using MIT donut shaped fuel and nanoparticles

30 more reactors by 2020-2022. 9 nuclear license applications in the USA in 2007.

Almost 300 GW by 2022 (thermoelectric, new power uprate and the new reactor build from the 2005,2007 energy plan loan guarantees and other incentives.

100-200 more reactors by 2030 (assuming the likely passage of the climate change bill in 2009 to make coal a lot more expensive) (the new reactors would also have the power uprates and the increased thermoelectric efficiency

Get to 500-800GW by 2030.
Thus relatively mundane nuclear power technology can achieve the goal of displacing fossil fuels for electricity 20 years earlier. Nuclear does not have to do it all by itself. More solar, biofuels, geothermal and wind (particularly things like kitegen) can also help displace fossil fuels.

New reactors like Molten salt and uranium hydride can also increase the percentage of uranium and plutonium that is burned. Reducing the amount of existing and future unburned fuel (what is called nuclear waste)

[PowerPointSamurai]

Cyril,

You say it's a small amount of land, but it does not include the road infrastructure, temporary (and permanent) support and living facilities during construction and operation, etc. I've also been out to that area and it's not a pool-table flat idealized landscape either, so your available land shrinks some more.

As for alternatives, I gave you several in previous posts. Nuclear (esp. Thorium and fast-reactors to burn used fuel), wind, rooftop PV, wave, etc. Oh, *AND* solar thermal! So I'm a little confused why you seem to feel the need to get hostile about this.