Eschew Obfuscation: Category Sustainable Energy

BioEnergy Atlas

Max Dunn — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 13:59:00 -0700

For all of you energy geeks, especially ones involved with biofuel/energy projects NREL has released this fancy interactive map that shows biomass feedstocks and biopower by location. You can select biomass/biopower/feedstock layers and see it on an overlay map of the US. Pretty interesting to see the graphical depictions. (From Jeff Milum.)

BioEnergy Atlas

This is a really cool tool – thanks Jeff!

Energy Flow Diagram

Max Dunn — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 14:37:00 -0700

Have you ever wondered where energy comes from and where it goes? Well, wonder no more – here is a great energy flow diagram from Lawrence Livermore Labs that presents this information in a straightforward way:

Comparing the tiny, thin lines from solar, geothermal and wind against the big, fat lines from fossil fuels shows us that we have a long ways to go to a sustainable energy infrastructure!

Cheap Solar PV

Max Dunn — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 09:52:00 -0700

Prices of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems have come down drastically in the last few years. Many solar modules can now be purchased for less than $2 per watt. There has been some speculation that these low prices are due to a glut of solar capacity that is causing manufacturers to sell below their cost. However, a tidbit in a Pike Research blog entry revealed this:

First Solar’s 11.2% efficient modules cost $0.76/W to make according to company reports, and total manufacturing cost of c-Si modules produced by the most competitive companies has plunged to about $1.20.

So in actuality, the solar manufacturers can still make a healthy profit by selling their modules at $2 per watt. Let’s hope that prices comes down even further!

Oil Company Tax Breaks

Max Dunn — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 20:05:00 -0700

I have long heard that oil companies get a lot of special tax breaks, but no-one has ever been able to explain clearly what those tax breaks actually are. Now an article in the New York Times As Oil Industry Fights a Tax, It Reaps Subsidies provides the best explanation I have seen. Some of these tax breaks are:

Moving corporate headquarters offshore to avoid taxes in the US
Capital investments like oil field leases and drilling equipment are taxed at an effective rate of 9 percent, significantly lower than the overall rate of 25 percent for businesses in general
Leasing rigs, like the Deepwater Horizon, to take advantage of a special oil industry tax break that allows them to write off 70% of the leasing cost
A lingering provision from the Tariff Act of 1913 that allows many small and midsize oil companies based in the United States to claim deductions for the lost value of tapped oil fields far beyond the amount the companies actually paid for the oil rights
Reclassifying the royalties charged by foreign governments to American oil drillers as taxes which entitles the companies to subtract those payments from their American tax bills

While some of these ploys are also employed by other industries, like moving their headquarters outside the US, the US tax code makes it especially easy and profitable for oil companies to employ these tactics.

Furthermore, many of these tax breaks no longer have any valid reason for existence since they were enacted a century ago to encourage oil exploration in the fledgling industry and then later in the 50s to decrease Soviet influence in the Middle East.

It is estimated that these tax breaks averaged $12 billion from 2006 to 2008. While this is a large number, it is only a small fraction of the $280 billion the oil industry was taxed in this period.

Nonetheless, with a growing deficit, dismantling these archaic tax breaks for the oil industry would raise badly needed revenue and help reduce the unfair advantage that the oil industry holds over cleaner forms of sustainable energy.

Electricity vs Water

Max Dunn — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:03:00 -0800

What is better – to save water or to save electricity? This is a tradeoff that businesses and industry concerned about sustainability often need to make, and it is not an easy one.

However, an article in the November 6th, 2009 edition of The Economist called Current thinking: Cheaper desalination provides this tidbit: “Even the best reverse-osmosis plants require 3.7 kWh of energy to produce 1,000 litres of drinking water.”

Converting to gallons, this means that 70 gallons of water can be produced from salt water with 1 kWh of electricity. So there we have it – a way to compare water savings to electricity savings.

Windmill Net Energy is Very Good

Max Dunn — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 19:26:00 -0700

Here is a study that looked at Energy Return on Invested (EROI) of windmills and found they returned over 20 times the energy use to make them, which is favorable with fossil fuels, nuclear and solar power.

Meta-analysis of net energy return for wind power systems

Solar PV Energy Payback

Max Dunn — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 14:25:00 -0700

Some people claim that more energy goes into making a solar photovoltaic (PV) panel than it will ever produce. While years ago that may have been the case, it certainly isn’t true any longer.

The US Department of Energy looked at several studies and concluded that multi-crystalline PV has an energy payback of less than 4 years and this will likely go down to below 2 years soon. Thin-film technologies have an even shorter payback period. With an estimated 30-year life, solar PV is actually a very good energy investment!

Cost of a Solar Panel Factory

Max Dunn — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 07:19:00 -0700

When looking at the economics of building solar panels, one important factor is how much the factory costs.

By comparison, the fuel for a nuclear power plant is very inexpensive and the main reason why nuclear power is so expensive is that the nuclear plants cost so much to build. Is this also true for solar panels? Do solar panel factories costs so much that even if the marginal cost of producing a solar panel comes down, will the cost of the factory still keep the prices high?

If the recent announcement of a thin-film solar panel factory is any indication, then solar panel plant costs are very low.

This factory will cost about $150 million dollars and produce 100 MW of solar panels per year. Over 10 years, this will add only $0.15 per watt to the cost of the panel. Considering that we only need to get solar power down to about $2.00 per watt to be competitive to coal, the cost of the factory is not a problem.

So it appears that the cost of solar panel factories will not be the limiting factor in bringing down the cost of solar power.

Why a Scooter and the Prius Get the Same MPG

Max Dunn — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 07:57:00 -0700

A friend of mine recently got a 400cc Suzuki Burgman scooter and loves it. He gets 53 MPG which is pretty good, but realized that it was about the same as a Prius that gets 48 MPG. “Why is this?”, he asked. The Prius weighs about 3000 lbs while the scooter is only 400 lbs.

Let’s look into this.

Regenerative Breaking

Even though the scooter is a lot lighter, the Prius captures about 50% of the energy when breaking and uses it to accelerate. So this brings the effective weight of the Prius down to 1500 lbs.

Wind Resistance

Even though the scooter has a frontal area 4 times smaller than a Prius, a scooter is not very smooth going through the air. It has a coefficient of drag (Cd) of about 0.9 versus about 0.26 for the Prius. Adding this up, the total drag coefficient (Cd x A) for the Prius is 6.24 and the scooter is 5.4. This means that the scooter takes almost as much energy to overcome wind resistance as the Prius!

Motor Efficiency

Small engines are not very efficient, while Prius engines are very efficient.

Conclusion

Add them up: the extra weight is not as significant because of regenerative breaking, the wind resistance is about the same and the motor is much less efficient. Given all this, it is not surprising that the scooter and the Prius get about the same gas mileage!

Coal Supply May Be Vastly Overestimated

Max Dunn — Tue, 12 May 2009 09:11:00 -0700

- Michael Reilly, Discovery News, May 11, 2009 – Forget peak oil, a series of new estimates of the world’s coal supply suggests reserves may be vastly overestimated, and if the planet isn’t running on a majority of alternative energies within the next few decades, we could be facing an unprecedented global energy crisis.

On the flip side, a dwindling supply of coal could also throw the breaks on global warming, some argue.

Common knowledge about coal is that major producing nations like China, the United States and Australia, have enough to last hundreds of years, far beyond the reach of oil, which may already be in its twilight years. But worldwide coal production could plateau as early as 2025, according to one new estimate, and a growing group of scientists are concerned that fossil fuel supplies may begin dwindling by mid-century.

Last year, David Rutledge of the California Institute of Technology analyzed the coal production patterns of five regions around the world – eastern Pennsylvania, France, Germany’s Ruhr Valley, the United Kingdom and Japan – each of which was producing at less than a tenth of its peak levels.

He found that each of the depleted regions followed a rough bell curve of production; initial production was followed by a steep ramp-up, a plateau near peak levels, and then a consistent decline.

When he applied the same formula to coal data from around the world, the results were startling: the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s maximum estimate for extractable coal is about 3,400 billion tons. Rutledge’s calculations suggest just 666 billion tons.

Paper versus Polystyrene Cups - Again

Max Dunn — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:46:00 -0700

Many organization are looking for ways to reduce their garbage and increase composting of the disposable cups. However, it turns out that the styrofoam (also known as extruded polystyrene foam or XPS) versus paper question is more difficult than it first appears.

One big problem is that the coating on the paper cups which keeps it from leaking also makes it difficult to recycle or compost. And the cups themselves contain very little recycled paper.

An old study from Science shows that on almost every count, except cooling water and biodegradability, the styrofoam cups are more eco-friendly.

A newer study also concludes that to process the raw materials about six times as much steam, 13 times as much electric power, and twice as much cooling water are consumed to produce the paper cup as compared to the styrofoam cup.

The same study found that landfill disposal of the two items under dry conditions will occupy similar landfill volumes after compaction and neither will decompose much. Under wet conditions, styrofoam will not readily degrade but may help other materials to do so, while the paper will decompose giving off methane, a significant greenhouse gas.

Another possibility is to recycle the styrofoam cups, although this is hard to find. There are mail in recycling centers in Redwood City and Hayward that take them and Imagine Surfboards makes surfboards out of used styrofoam cups.

It is too bad that there isn’t an easy solution to making disposable cups more eco-friendly.

A Real Market for Negawatts!

Max Dunn — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 06:39:00 -0700

Negawatts is term coined by Amory Lovins to describe “negative watts” or conservation. It makes sense – instead of constantly building power plants to add more megawatts to the grid, why not let people bid on saving power through negawatts? That’s what New England’s independent system operator started doing last year.

In its Forward Capacity Market, the ISO projects how much power the region will need three years ahead and then runs a descending-clock auction for the right to provide it. The ISO doesn’t care whether it gets its power from increased production of megawatts or from conservation through negawatts. Result: money saved in power plants and wires, more stable electricity bills, and a homegrown incubator for getting bright green ideas off the drawing board.

(Source: Wired Magazine Trade – Electricity Like Pork Bellies)

Wind, Water and Sun Best Energy Alternatives

Max Dunn — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 12:29:00 -0700

A recent study by Mark Jacobson at Stanford ranks clean energy options and found that wind was by far the most promising. The best to worst electric power sources Jacobson found were:

Wind power
Concentrated solar power
Geothermal power
Tidal power
Solar photovoltaic
Wave power
Hydroelectric power
Nuclear/coal with carbon capture

Jacobson also comes down hard on biofuels, “Biofuels are the most damaging choice we could make in our efforts to move away from using fossil fuels.” He added, “Ethanol-based biofuels will actually cause more harm to human health, wildlife, water supply and land use than current fossil fuels.”

(Reference: Wind, water and sun beat other energy alternatives, study finds)

Electric Generation Costs

Max Dunn — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 20:30:00 -0700

What does it cost to build a new electric power plant? Here is a graph that shows this:

However, you do need to adjust this for utililization, since nuclear operates about 90% of the time, while solar operates only about 20% of the time:

(Source: What does Sustainability Mean for Energy?)

Coal Tax Needed

Max Dunn — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 20:00:00 -0800

I just went to an interesting talk about distributed solar and found out that prices of solar PV panels are dropping dramatically. Soon, PV will be about $4 per watt installed (in large installations) which works out to about $0.17 per kWh.

By comparison, coal-fired electricity sells for about $0.05 per kWh. This includes about $0.02 for the coal itself ($2.15 per MMBtu and 1 MMBTU produces about 100 kWh) and $0.03 for all other expenses.

Adding in a $30 per ton CO2 tax would add about $0.03 per kWh to this price, (coal produces about 2 lbs of CO2 per kWh) for a total of $0.08 per kWh.

So even with a CO2 tax, coal electricity will still be half the cost of PV.

Therefore, for coal electricity to cost about the same as PV electricity, a tax of 400% would need to be added to coal!

Electric Power Plant Cost Comparison

Max Dunn — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 16:43:00 -0800

While looking for the external costs of coal, I ran into a great table that shows how much it costs to build and run various types of electric power plants.

It is interesting to note that while a convention coal plant costs much less to build than a solar thermal plant, the coal plant costs more to maintain so over 30 years, the total costs would be equal.

Table 1: Specification of electric power technologies used in GMM model. All costs are given in $(1998). The progress ratio (pr) is the rate at which the cost declines each time the cumulative production doubles. The data presented in the table comes from various sources: IIASA MESSAGE model database, literature reviews. Characteristics of technologies with CO2 removal are adopted from [8].

(Reference: Internalisation of external cost in the power generation sector)

The True Cost of Gas

Max Dunn — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 17:35:00 -0800

The price we pay for a gallon of gas at the pump doesn’t include all the costs associated with it, like environmental costs and tax subsidies. One older study found that if we included all of these, we would be paying and extra $5 to $14 per gallon!

However, if we look at just the cost spent on military defense of oil in the Persian Gulf, it would be less than this.

One rough estimate would be to assume that 15% of the $430 billion DoD budget was spent on defending our oil interests in the Persian Gulf. Spread over the 142 billion gallons of gas we use each year, it works out to $0.46 per gallon.

Of course the hard number to determine is how much of the military budget goes to just protecting oil in the Persian Gulf. The $65 billion seems to fall in the middle range of what is spent on that region, but there is a lot of differences in opinion over how much spending would be reduced if we didn’t need to protect the oil there.

Here are some of the studies and what they determined we would need to add to the price of a gallon of gas to cover the cost of protecting oil in the Persian Gulf:

$0.02 to $0.20: Mark A. Delucchi, 2007. Resources for the Future: The Cost of Protecting Oil in the Persian Gulf
$0.03 to $0.15: Mark A. Delucchi, James J. Murphy, 2008. Institute of Transportation Studies: US military expenditures to protect the use of Persian Gulf oil for motor vehicles
$0.35 to $1.05: Ogden, J.M., Williams, R.H., Larson, E.D., 2004. Institute of Transportation Studies: Societal lifecycle costs of cars with alternative fuels/engines

So don’t assume the price you pay at the pump is the true cost of gasoline. There are a lot more costs hidden away in making that gasoline available and in the environmental problems it causes that you pay for elsewhere.

Climate Change Recalculated - Saul Griffith

Max Dunn — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 22:41:00 -0800

On January 16th, the Long Now Foundation sponsored a very interesting talk at Fort Mason by Saul Griffith entitled “Climate Change Recalculated”.

Saul first went through a calculation of his energy usage. However, he did it in a different way – instead of using energy (kilo-watt-hours or kWh) he used continuous power expended (kilo-watts or kW) because this made it easier to add up and compare.

After adding up all his plane trips, driving, food, energy usage and embodied energy in the stuff he buys (which accounts for 1/4 of his energy use), he calculated that he used 18kW. By comparison, a person in Qatar uses 27kW but the average person in the US uses 11kW and the global average is 2.2kW. So he uses a lot more than the average American and way more than the global average. So he decided to shoot for 2.2kW and see how he would have to change his life.

First, he would be able to fly to the East Coast only once per year, and fly to Australia only once every 5 years. He would need to have a car that got 100 MPG, and then could only drive 20 miles per day. He could eat meat only once a week and would need to buy 1/10 of the stuff he does now and make it last 10 times longer. He isn’t quite there yet but has cut down on his travel and the stuff he buys and now is using only 12kW. Interestingly, this has also increased his quality of life. For instance, he isn’t traveling as much so is spending more time with his family.

Next he talked about climate change and what would be necessary to hold CO2 to 450 ppm. Humanity currently uses 16TW (tera-watts or 10^12 watts or a million-million watts) and in order to hold the CO2 limit, we can only burn 3TW of fossil fuels. Since 1.5TW already comes from renewable resources we would need an additional 11.5TW from new renewable sources. To meet this, we would need to produce 2TW of power each year for the next 25 years (not sure how he got this from the 11.5TW figure?), and this would require installing:

Photovoltaic: 100 m2 per second
Solar thermal: 50 m2 per second
Wind: one every 5 or 6 seconds
Nuclear: one new plant every 3 weeks

This is a lot! However, if GM and Ford stopped making cars and started making just wind turbines, they could meet the goal of creating a wind turbine every 5 seconds.

Summary: We need to reduce the power we all use – which we can do but is not easy. We also need to dramatically increase the amount of renewable power production – which we can do but it won’t be easy.

(For more details, see Climate Change Recalculated)

The next by the Long Now Foundation is Social Collapse Best Practices on February 13th and features Dmitry Orlov who witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union and how it survived and applies these insights into how the US might not be able to cope as well with a similar collapse. Should be interesting too!

Military Cost of Oil

Max Dunn — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 08:43:00 -0800

It is well known that a large part of our military expenses goes to protecting the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf. What has not been as clear is the actual cost of this protection. However a recent study sheds some light on this hidden expense.

In this study, Mark Delucchi of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis estimates that American taxpayers spent between $27 billion and $73 billion in 2004 (which was the most recent year data was available) for military protection of US oil interests in the Persian Gulf region.

While this is a huge number by itself, it works out to only $0.03 to $0.15 cents per gallon of gas for motor vehicle use.

Paper versus Polystyrene Cups

Max Dunn — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 07:29:00 -0800

I just finished my Sustainable Design class in the Stanford Continuing Studies program taught by Mark Martin. It was a really interesting, well taught class and I learned a lot.

One of the main points that Mark made was that it is difficult to tell how eco-friendly a product is without a in-depth study. As an example, he had us discuss which we thought was more eco-friendly: paper or polystyrene coffee cups. (Polystyrene is sometimes called Styrofoam or Polyfoam.) We all pretty much all agreed that paper cups were better, and then Mark showed us this study:

On almost every count, except cooling water and biodegradability, the polystyrene cups are more eco-friendly.

In a more recent study polystyrene was also found to be better:

In raw material requirements the paper cup required about 2.5 times its finished weight of raw wood and about the same hydrocarbon fueling requirement as is needed for the polystyrene foam cup. To process the raw materials about six times as much steam, 13 times as much electric power, and twice as much cooling water are consumed to produce the paper cup as compared to the polystyrene foam cup. Emission rates to air are similar and to water are generally higher for the paper cup.

Another interesting ramification this study pointed out is that in a wet landfill, the polystyrene will remain stable while the paper will decompose giving off methane gas and contributing to the instability of the land surface.

This just goes to prove what Mark taught in this class – it isn’t always obvious which products are eco-friendly.

CFL versus LED bulbs

Max Dunn — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 07:05:00 -0800

I have always thought that LED bulbs should provide the best energy efficiency and lowest lifetime cost of any bulb. However, looking into this more, I am not so sure.

An article on Salon by Ask Pablo (who happens to be a graduate of the Presidio School of Management) showed this comparison:

Bulb	Cost	Output	Power	Efficiency	Lifetime Bulb Cost	Lifetime Power Cost	Lifetime Total Cost
CFL	$7	500 lumens	10 watts	50 lumens/watt	$35	$55	$90
LED	$60	500 lumens	7 watts	71 lumens/watt	$60	$38	$98

(Note: Lifetime is 50,000 hours, and I used an electricity cost of $0.11/kWh)

Even though LED bulbs are much more expensive than CFLs (compact fluorescent), they are also about 40% more efficient, so adding in lifetime electricity costs their total cost would be about the same.

However, there is a catch. If an LED bulb is used 4 hours per day, it would last almost 35 years – and what is the chance that over those 35 years the LED bulb gets broken or there is a power surge that damages it? Probably pretty good! So assuming that LED bulbs actually last on average only 10 years, this would make them twice as expensive as CFLs.

So until the cost of LED bulbs come down quite a bit, CFLs will still be the better buy.

U.S. Renewable Electricity At 11%

Max Dunn — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 07:25:00 -0800

According to the EIA’s Monthly Electricity Review, net US generation of electricity from renewable energy sources surged by 32 percent in June 2008 compared to June 2007.

Renewable energy (biomass, geothermal, hydropower, solar, wind) accounted for 11.0 percent of net US electricity generation in June 2008 compared to 8.6 percent in June 2007.

Hydropower still accounts for a large part of this renewable energy, but over this period wind power leaped by 81.6 percent and solar surged by 42.6. Now non-hydroelectric renewables account for just under three percent of total net U.S. electricity generation.

Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES)

Max Dunn — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 08:10:00 -0700

Much of the criticism of solar and wind energy is that they don’t produce power all the time and that we don’t have any good way of storing electricity. There is some pumped hydro storage, but it is only able to contribute less than 3% of the power, and it is not likely that we will be able to build more.

However, another way of storing energy is to compress air underground. There are a lot of areas that can be used for this underground air storage including underground aquifers, carved out salt caverns, depleted natural gas wells and old mines.

The air is compressed using an electric turbine which can be driven by solar, wind or even off-peak electricity. Then when it is needed, the compressed air is fed into a natural-gas fired electric plant which normally would need to use a lot of energy to compress the air. This makes CAES systems almost 3 times more efficient than single cycle gas-fired plants, and almost twice as efficient as combined cycle plants. In addition, CAES equipment is simpler and has lower operating costs.

Currently there are two CAES plants in operation around the world. A 290 MW plant in Germany operating since 1978, and a 110 MW plant in Alabama operating since 1991. Now, there is a third 200 MW CAES plant being built in Central Iowa (ISEP) that received a federal funding earmark in 2009 for $1.5 million.

CAES is a very promising technology that can make sustainable energy much more practical and we should be working harder and faster and devoting more money to develop this technology.

References:

Growth of Wind Power

Max Dunn — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 11:07:00 -0700

Many people are dismissing wind power as irrelevant in solving our energy problem since wind power has been in production for a long time but the total output is still relatively small. However, it is useful to compare the ramp-up of wind power to nuclear power:

It is interesting how closely these two growth curves align! In the US today, nuclear provides about 20% of our electricity so it is not unreasonable to assume that wind power can be ramped up to eventually provide the same percentage of power.

(References: The Oil Drum – Making the case for wind, again and Pure Power – Wind Energy Scenarios up to 2030)

GCEP Fourth Symposium

Max Dunn — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 09:45:00 -0700

The Global Climate and Energy Project (GCEP) held its fourth annual energy research symposium at the beginning of October.

GCEP is an interesting group based at Stanford University that seeks new solutions to one of the grand challenges of this century: supplying energy to meet the changing needs of a growing world population in a way that protects the environment. With funding of $225 million from Exxon, GE, Schlumberger and Toyota, GCEP supports a lot of diverse high-risk and high-reward projects in areas such as solar energy, batteries, cellulosic ethanol, hydrogen, CO2 capture and storage, advanced combustion and more

This was a fantastic symposium where researchers from Stanford and around the world discussed GCEP’s projects. Some of the highlights for me were:

Burning coal in super-critical water to capture all CO2 and other emissions
The benefits of using miscanthus for cellulosic ethanol (which is better than switchgrass)
Using nano structures to improve photovoltaics
Using biological organisms to split hydrogen
Various techniques to make fermenting cellulosic ethanol a reality
Improvements in lithium-ion battery cathodes

For more information, see my notes of the symposium presentations..

Nanosolar 1GW Machine

Max Dunn — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 20:21:00 -0700

It is so incredible it is a little hard to get my brain around. Several months ago, without any fanfare, Nanosolar showed off its new production tool that can produce 1GW (gigawatt) of solar cells per year.

To put this in perspective, most plants produce less than 100 MW (megawatts) per year, less than 1/10 of Nanosolar’s 1GW machine. For instance, here is a Masdar plant being built in Germany that will produce 70MW a year and cost $230 million. So it would take 14 of these plants to equal the output of one of the Nanosolar machines.

The cost of the Nanosolar machine? $1.65 million! This is 2,000 times less than the Masdar plant! (While this is a comparison of a production tool to an entire plant, it is still an astounding difference.)

[Also: Higher-resolution download of video (6.5MBytes)]

3rd Generation PV

Max Dunn — Thu, 29 May 2008 20:42:00 -0700

There was an interesting talk at the Woods Energy Seminar at Stanford yesterday by Dr. Gavin Conibeer about 3rd generation photovoltaic (PV) devices.

The 1st generation are the PV cells we have now that cost around $6/watt and are around 20% efficient. The 2nd generation are the thin film cells which cost around $1/watt but are only about 12% efficient. The 3rd generation cells will use quantum dot technology created using thin-film manufacturing methods, so they will be a lot less expensive than 1st generation devices but will also use a variety of techniques to boost efficiencies up to 65% which will drive the cost down to $0.20/watt.

This sounds pretty great! However, the catch is that when asked when these 3rd generation PV cells would start going into production, his answer was “It is still a long ways away.”

Following are the notes I took during his talk:

Clouds and Gusts = Regulation Problems

Max Dunn — Wed, 28 May 2008 12:26:00 -0700

All of the major electricity generating systems in use today have a fairly steady output. Whether they are powered by nuclear, coal, hydro or natural gas, the electricity output will be fairly constant unless there is a malfunction. However, solar and wind systems aren’t consistent – clouds can dramatically affect the output of solar systems, and lulls and gusts can affect wind systems.

In our electrical grid, it is important that the supply of electricity consistently matches its demand. This will become more challenging once solar and wind systems are producing a larger percentage of the total electrical power, and there are currently no good ways to smooth out these fast fluctuations. Spreading the solar and wind units far apart helps so that clouds and gusts won’t affect all the units at the same time. Also pumped hydro (where water can be pumped up into a dam using electricity as well as letting it out to produce electricity) can help smooth things out as well as using natural gas spinning reserves.

However, we will still need more regulation that is much faster than these, and this is where Vehicle-to-Grid can help. If we can reach a level where a significant amount of electric vehicles are hooked up to the grid with fast command communication, they will be able to quickly smooth out the electrical surges and lulls from solar and wind systems. Otherwise, we will likely run into severe regulations problems with these systems due to clouds and gusts.

Hydrogen 13 Times More Expensive Than Electricity

Max Dunn — Mon, 12 May 2008 08:59:00 -0700

Here is another illustration of how expensive hydrogen is. Popular Mechanics looked at how much it would cost to drive across the country in vehicles using different types of fuel. As a baseline, a car getting 33 MPG would cost $213 (with fuel at $2.34/gallon). A hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle would cost $804, while a battery electric vehicle would cost only $60!

Popular Mechanics: Fuel of the Future

NanoSolar: The Company That Might Save the World

Max Dunn — Thu, 01 May 2008 07:44:00 -0700

Yesterday, I shook the hand of the man whose company might just save the world.

He is Martin Roscheisen, CEO of NanoSolar. He alluded that they are producing solar panels at about $1 per watt with a complete system cost of $2 watt when installed in municipal scale of 1MW to 50MW. This is about the same cost as a coal-fired power plant!

Furthermore, their panels can be installed at the rate of 1MW per day, and need 5 acres per MW, which means a municipal sized system of 50MW can be installed in about two months. This contrasts with coal-fired plants that can take 4 years or more to build.

Drawbacks? Their German plant is producing only about 420 MW of solar capacity per year and their San Jose plant which will open in 2009 will produce about the same. While this is very high by normal PV standards, it would help the world greatly if this went up by several orders of magnitude.

Just think – instead of building more coal plants we can start building clean solar power systems at about the same cost!

Feed-in Tariffs

Max Dunn — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 10:27:00 -0700

Wind power can now produce energy as cheaply as coal, about 5c per kilowatt hour (kWh). Solar power is almost to the point where it can produce energy at the marginal electrical rate of about 10c kWh. So with oil prices over $100 barrel, natural gas prices doubling, and all the concern about CO2 and other noxious emissions from coal plants, why aren’t more wind and solar projects being built?

GreenVolts Seminar

Max Dunn — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 09:59:00 -0700

Last night I attended a seminar put on by the Going Green! meetup group and the speaker was Craig Lewis who is VP Government Relations with GreenVolts. GreenVolt’s goal is to “deliver power to utility companies at fossil fuel costs”.

Craig talked a little about the GreenVolts product, which is a concentrating solar collector system with advanced tracking and is designed to be interconnected at the 12kv distribution level in sizes ranging from 1 to 20 mega-watts (MW). However, his main topic was “Accelerating the Transition to Smart Energy.” His conclusion was that to make alternative energy sources take off, the government needs to shift the subsidies paid to oil companies into long-term feed-in tariffs, i.e. requiring the electric companies to buy power at a set price for the next 10 to 15 years. This would allow alternative energy projects to have a guaranteed return and thus enable them to get long-term financing.

While Craig wouldn’t divulge the cost of their system, he did say it was about half of a typical flat-panel installation, so I am guessing that the cost is about $4 per watt, which would mean they could produce power at less than 9.5c per kilowatt, which is the rate they would be selling it to the utilities.

He also threw out some other interesting numbers:

Their system requires 3 acres per MW or 100 MW per square mile, which is a higher power density than other systems
Oil imports comprise more than half of the U.S. deficit
Oil companies received about $17 billion last year in subsidies while solar industry only got $200 million.

Here are the complete notes:

Cost of a Solar Nation

Max Dunn — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 21:36:00 -0700

How much would it cost to build a solar nation? Here are some interesting numbers:

The IEA estimates that it will take a worldwide investment of $5.4 trillion dollars in oil exploration and development in order to meet the demand for oil in 2030, if oil usage continues to grow at its current rate. Since the U.S. uses about 25% of the worlds oil, our cost would be about $1.35 trillion.

Scientific American estimates that if we provide less than a third of this amount as a subsidy – $420 billion – then we can build a solar collection, storage and distribution system that would provide 69% of America’s electricity and 35% of it’s total energy by 2050.

So, can anyone say that building a solar nation is too expensive?

Solar Concentrators Below $1/watt

Max Dunn — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:58:00 -0700

Today I went to an interesting Energy Seminar at Stanford. The speaker was Scott Elrod who works for Parc and studied Applied Physics at Stanford. He was talking about a product they are working on called the SolFocus which is a concentrating solar collector and their hope is to get this down to $1/watt. Here are the notes from the talk:

Hydrogen Fueling Station: 10 Times Less Efficient

Max Dunn — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 13:21:00 -0700

A new $3.2 million hydrogen fueling station opened in Sacramento last week that has 80kW of solar PV panels are used to produce the hydrogen, so it won’t use any outside energy. Let’s take a look at how efficient this is:

SOLAR OUTPUT:

80 kW * 5hrs = 400 kWh per day

WITH FUEL CELL CARS:

400 kWh / 65 kWh per kG (Stuart Energy) = ~6 kG per day (AT 5000 PSI)
6 kG * 45 miles per kG = 270 miles per day
100,000 miles per year

WITH ELECTRIC CARS :

400 KWH * 3 miles per kWh (RAV4 EV) = 1200 EV miles per day
438,000 miles per year

Considering the solar array probably cost probably cost around $10/watt, or $800,000 out of $3,200,000, the hydrogen “refueling station” cost approximately $2,400,000.

If that money had been used to build $2,400,000 of solar installation plus $800,000 of EV chargers – about 240 kW of solar and 160 EV charger stations – enough for well over a million miles per year (80 cars worth) instead of just a hundred thousand hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle miles (8 cars worth). So the hydrogen fueling station is only 10% as efficient as building solar recharging stations for battery electric vehicles.

(From RAV4-EV Digest, Vol 58, Issue 12, comment by William Korthof of EESolar)

Hydrogen Powered Vehicles are Not Viable

Max Dunn — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 17:46:00 -0800

Regardless of what Bush thinks, hydrogen powered vehicles are not a viable alternative.

First off, hydrogen is not something that can be “mined”, but instead must be produced using other energy sources [1]. With current technologies, electricity from hydrogen fuel cells is four times more expensive than electricity from the grid [2]. Secondly, hydrogen is very difficult to ship and store. Leave a hydrogen car at the airport for two weeks and half of the fuel will be lost due to evaporation [2]. Thirdly, while hydrogen fuel cells are clean, currently hydrogen fuel cells are costly to produce and fragile [3] and only about 50% efficient [4]. Lastly, hydrogen is not very dense so cars would need to have a tank 2-3 times larger than their gasoline tanks [3].

With all things considered, it doesn’t make sense to power cars with hydrogen; instead, just put batteries in the car and use the electricity directly.

References:

Can Battery Backups Make Money?

Max Dunn — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 10:12:00 -0800

I don’t have a lot of confidence in PG&E. It seems that every time we have a big storm, our power goes out. Once, it took 3 days for them to get the power back on! So I have been considering installing a battery backup system for my house to get through these power outages.

If I install a battery backup system, I was wondering if it would be profitable to charge up the batteries at night when electricity costs are low, at $0.05/kWh, and then use it during the day when electricity costs are high, at $0.11/kWh to $0.29/kWh [9]?

Strangely, Power Company Rebates Make Sense

Max Dunn — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 17:17:00 -0800

It seems awfully strange that a company that sells power would subsidize compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) that use less energy, and give rebates for energy efficient appliances. This would be like Starbucks giving awards to people who cut down on their coffee drinking! But even though this seems strange, power companies trying to cut power consumption actually makes sense.

Hot Tub Energy: Electric vs Gas

Max Dunn — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:38:00 -0800

Nowadays, if you are looking to install a hot tub, your only option is likely to be a hot tub that heats with electricity. The salesman will tell you that they are very well insulated (which they are) and that it will only cost about $30 per month of electricity to heat it (which is possible but optimistic.) Let’s look at the math and physics behind this.

Primitive Electrical Distribution in the US

Max Dunn — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 08:58:00 -0800

We like to think that we live in an advanced society where the miracles of technology provide a high quality-of-life. However, the recent storm in California proved what a primitive electrical distribution system we have.

This storm was nothing special; it didn’t have hurricane power winds or particularly spectacular lightning. It was just a run-of-the-mill winter storm that we expect every year or two. Yet it was able to knock out electric power for more than 1.6 million people, of which 420,000 people still didn’t have power after a few days.

It is not hard to see why our power system is so antiquated – just look up in any neighborhood. There you will see power lines strung on poles, the same as they were a hundred years ago. This system is very fragile and will continue to break down in high winds and lightning strikes. We do have a better solution – bury the electrical cables underground, which will make them impervious to these common elements of nature. But we live in a fairly backwards country where we would rather suffer through losses of power every year and frantically send out crews to fix problems after they occur rather than spend the money to solve the problem once and for all.

Cheap Solar Panels to Save the World

Max Dunn — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 09:22:00 -0800

Nanosolar announced that is is starting to ship its thin-film solar panels that cost less than $1 per watt! Could these panels save the world?

Maybe, but Nanosolar is being very tight about information, citing patent concerns:

“Technical Data Sheet? We presently share product data sheets only under Non-Disclosure Agreement with qualified volume customers. This is so we can extend the period of protection for certain proprietary features we have developed.”

Their first 12 months of production is already sold out and is going to commercial installations, so maybe it isn’t efficient enough to put on a house. But there was one tidbit where Nanosolar’s CEO said they could produce about as much energy as the a silicon wafer.

It also received Popular Science’s Green Tech product of the Year award

Solar vs Coal: Who Wins?

Max Dunn — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 16:09:00 -0800

A new solar power plant just opened up at Nellis Air Force Base in southern Nevada [1]. Currently it is the largest solar photovoltaic system in North America with a capability of 14 megawatts (mW) of peak power, and producing about 25 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity per year [2].

However, it cost $100 million to build, which is about $7,000 per kilowatt (kW). This is a lot more than a coal-powered plants which costs about $3,000 per kW to build [3]. But since the sun is free and coal-powered plants have to pay for the coal, shouldn’t this make up for the additional cost of solar systems?

It turns out, that it doesn’t. To see why, let’s look at the numbers.