Anti-Fossil Fuel, Anti-Nuke People: What's the Solution to Our Energy Problem

[Le_Jacquelope]

@Whack-a-Mole

Solar efficiency does not “double” every year. In fact, there are hard limits in solar efficiency. The Shockley–Queisser limit places a hard cap of 33.7% efficiency on solar panels with a single p-n junction. With multiple layers that can be improved upon but even with a theoretical infinite number of layers the limit is 86% efficiency. Such theoretical efficiencies will never be achieved. If we doubled solar efficiency every two years, as you claim, we’d be at that limit already and we are nowhere close (I have seen 40% claimed for some new technologies).

Great attempt. From your cite, however:

The Shockley–Queisser limit only applies to cells with a single p-n junction; cells with multiple layers can outperform this limit. In the extreme, with an infinite number of layers, the corresponding limit is 86%

So basically there is a way around that limit.

Also, Boeing-Spectrolab has developed a solar cell that can convert almost 41 percent of the sunlight that strikes it into electricity.
So circumventing the 33.7% barrier has already been achieved.

Other ways around that limit (depending on whether you believe they can reach their theoretical limits of 60% or something in between 30 and 60%)… yet another proof-of-concept invention that is far ahead of the zero point energy race.

As for collecting solar energy at night I have seen infrared solar cells which in theory will convert infrared energy emitted at night and convert to electricity. I have not seen a working prototype or an analysis of its efficiency. If you want to debate hypothetical power sources fine. Maybe someone will invent a way to capture infinite zero-point energy tomorrow. We cannot make energy decisions today however in the hopes some magic future tech will save us.

Solar Impulse Achieves First Nighttime Solar Flight

The plane was flying, as company partners and engineers have said, at the limits of the technology, and made it to 26 hours after takeoff, with as much batter power as when it took off.

…

The record-setting fuel-less flight is a major breakthrough in zero-combustion transportation, demonstrating that as technology evolves, zero-combustion air travel is possible. The achievement is also a major demonstration of the revolutionary potential of photo-voltaic solar power.

Zero-point energy futuristic treknobabble? Nope. Looks to me like solar power at night has been achieved already, and demonstrated in the form of this aircraft.

Oh and unlike Zero-point energy, infrared solar systems are already at or past the proof-of-concept level. All they need to do now is convert infrared energy to usable electricity. How far along is harnessing zero-point energy in comparison?

As for solar energy being “free” it is far from “free”. You are merely front loading your costs for electricity.

Good clarification. The sunlight is free, compared to harvesting coal and oil.

According to this calculator when I input $150.00/month of electric usage for my zip code (Chicago) and Commonwealth Edison as my electric provider it tells me I’d need to spend $112,680 to achieve 100% energy independence. With incentives my cost is $55,213. For that I will need 1,600 feet solar array (close to my whole rooftop).

Is this assuming a ~30% sunlight-to-energy efficiency?

At $150/month it’ll take me a little over 30 years to recoup my investment. Problem is solar panels have about a 25 year lifespan. They also become less efficient over time (after 25 years somewhat better than 80% efficiency from what I have read). There is also some maintenance costs with solar. Not much but some.

That’s current technology. Ok, actually, not so current.

Spray-on solar panels have already been invented, which use nanocrystals. This existing invention may very well change the game about the longevity of solar panels; not to mention the game of how much they’ll cost once the patents run out and it becomes a commodity.

Oh and your figure of 25 years is becoming obsolete.

Moreover, companies like Sunrgi claim they can produce solar power at 5 cents per kWh using XCPV with a potential of 37-47% solar efficiency, again circumventing the 33.7% limit.

So, solar makes no sense price-wise for me (it might if you live in a desert or something). In order to even come close it needs substantial incentives (which means you would be paying for my solar setup). Without incentives it needs to drop HUGELY in price. While solar prices have been falling input prices (silicon in particular) have been rising recently.

This rise in silicon prices is not a permanent situation.

My problems get worse though. I live in a condo. There are eight units in the building. So far I have used my whole roof to provide myself with 100% of my electrical needs. What about the other seven units? How can they use solar to achieve energy independence? Where will the solar panels go?

You’ll probably need to rely on some utility power. However, as I originally said, the need for centralized utility power will be greatly reduced with a mass rollout of solar energy. They hate this because it severely cuts down on their profits. I was certainly careful not to say they’d go away completely.

It is all well and fine for you to say this is doable if you have plenty of land to plop solar panels on. It does not work so well in areas with high density living.

It works to drastically reduce the amount of electricity needed by centralized utilities; and thus it threatens their profits. Which is why corporations would be against the mass rollout of solar.

So, while I agree power generation is big business and they will do their level best to squeeze out competition you have in no way shown how your free sunshine world would actually operate (not to mention operate at a cost that is not exorbitant).

Objections duly noted. Some of the barriers you’ve mentioned are already obsolete. Solar technology is advancing rapidly, and its efficiency is not just subject to the SQ limit; there are ways around that which have already been developed and demonstrated.

You’re good at looking for ways to make solar not work, I’ll grant you that; your condo is an argument for keeping energy utility companies around to serve a more limited role. (Condos, data centers, etc.) But there are plenty of existing technological achievements that are threatening to drastically reduce the need for utility companies; they just need to get to market. And it may take a while, too - hell, perpendicular recording was shown to be viable in 1986 and didn’t come to market until 2005.

Still, the fossil fuel industry sees this pace of innovation, efficiency and cost reduction repeating itself in the solar energy industry just as it has in every other high-tech industry.

[Le_Jacquelope]

@matt

Asked and answered, post 75. Nuclear power requires about ten times LESS concrete and steel per unit of energy compared to wind, coal about 5 times less of each, and natural-gas combined cycle uses a rather impressive 150 times less steel and 40 times less concrete than wind.

But then you’ve also got nuclear fuel, coal fuel, and I’m betting quite a few rare earth metals being used in nuclear reactors, which probably cost more than steel and concrete.

I can’t wait until spray-on solar, which has already been invented, hits the market and comes into competition against all of this.

From one point of view it doesn’t matter. A tonne of steel starts life as a few tonnes of dirt (ore) and a half-tonne of coal. Process them together and turn them into a wind turbine tower, in a few years the electricity generated has saved the same amout of coal from being burned in a power plant and then continues to save coal. Overall we save coal, and iron ore is abundant.

Yes, the costs are paid up front.

From the point of view of meeting the world’s growing energy demand, especially for giving China an alternative to building coal and nuke plants, it absolutely does matter. We’re talking about significantly increasing the world’s production of basic construction materials to cover the manufacture of all these turbines. Building the plant to rip more iron ore and coal out of the ground, the blast furnaces to smelt them together etc. is no small undertaking. Powering the world with wind, or even 50% of the world with wind, will require restructuring our current civilisation’s hardware in more ways than one.

Jobs, jobs, jobs.

Windfarms that you can drive through for days without coming to an end, electrification of light transport… interesting times.

My jury is out on windfarms. My gut says they take more maintenance than solar panels, especially emerging spray-on technology.

I agree! And I wish we had built the Moon bases. Certainly more constructive than all the military hardware we’ve built, maintained, and scrapped in the intervening years. The question is, do we have the will to do the renewable power thing large scale when we have the alternative of burning fossil and just seeing what happens, or developing a nuclear-powered world for a lot smaller cost resources-wise?

If we do not have the will to look for newer and better ways to solve our need for energy we have a bigger problem on our hands than a comparison of fossil fuel vs solar vs wind. We have, in that case, the inability to adapt.

I started out as pro-nuke, anti-wind, and willing to consider solar. My opinions on wind and solar were based on the relative land requirements I calculated. I’m gradually coming over onto side of wind rather than solar on the feasibility point of view. Solar may require 5-10 times less land than wind but ALL that land has to be covered with photovoltaics or sun-tracking mirrors or dishes.

Solar is constantly getting more efficient. We’ve already found ways around the 33.7% limit. Less panels for the same amount of power. Plus there’s the Beowulf Cluster effect of spray-on solar panels* on a billion rooftops. LOL it’s like an economic denial-of-service attack on utility companies!

I’m thinking that in terms of basic resources, solar may be even harder than wind. Wind turbine load factors are improving - I thought 25% was typical and 33% optimistic, but 36% is apparently typical for newer turbines with 40% in sight. OTOH, this may mean large windfarms have to occupy even more land - doubling the spacing means 4 times the area!

Your estimates would be right for traditional solar panels; however current innovations are taking us past those big bulky things.

Like bases on the Moon, powering the world with wind turbines or desert solar is clearly, even trivially, possible. Whether we have the will and stomach to do it is another matter. In the short-to-medium term, there will be a cost. The long-term benefit is power without CO2 or nuclear waste/accident risk. People with a visceral dislike of nuclear power or a belief that increasing CO2 will lead to catastrophe will weigh that cost-benefit rather differently to me.

We are hobbled by quarter-by-quarter thinking and 4-year election cycles. I am not sure if America has the will to do much of anything “big” anymore. We’re being strangled to death by the creeping scourge of entrenched industries, both economically and culturally. This entrenchment creep has even tried to invade the internet.

• Damned thing has already been invented. Get it to market, people!!! It’s that willpower thing again…

[DSeid]

@matt

… My opinions on wind and solar were based on the relative land requirements I calculated. …

To paraphrase - I don’t get you. You are not innumerate. …

Really though. What part of the fact that wind farms not significantly interfering with other uses of the same area do you not get?

[DSeid]

Oh, this may also be of some interest.

the US Department of Energy has selected three consortia for up to $112.5 million in funding over five years to support the development of advanced solar photovoltaic (PV)-related manufacturing processes throughout the United States. … DOE’s SunShot Initiative aims to reduce the total costs of photovoltaic solar energy systems by about 75% so that they are cost competitive at large scale with other forms of energy without subsidies by the end of the decade. Achieving this goal—equivalent to approximately $1 a watt or roughly 6 cents per kilowatt-hour for utility systems—would allow solar energy systems to be broadly deployed across the country, the DOE says …

[Zeriel]

@Whack-a-Mole

According to this calculator when I input $150.00/month of electric usage for my zip code (Chicago) and Commonwealth Edison as my electric provider it tells me I’d need to spend $112,680 to achieve 100% energy independence. With incentives my cost is $55,213. For that I will need 1,600 feet solar array (close to my whole rooftop).

At $150/month it’ll take me a little over 30 years to recoup my investment. Problem is solar panels have about a 25 year lifespan. They also become less efficient over time (after 25 years somewhat better than 80% efficiency from what I have read). There is also some maintenance costs with solar. Not much but some.

So, solar makes no sense price-wise for me (it might if you live in a desert or something).

Interestingly, that calculator asserts that for my average-temperate central PA location, I’d be paying $60-72k up front, and with incentives it asserts that I’d be making $7-8k in profit. I wonder if the calculator is assuming I’m going to sell power back to the grid or something.

Either way, though, certainly something to think about as soon as my college town notices that housing prices were supposed to drop a few years back and gets around to it. =P

[Whack-a-Mole]

@Zeriel

Interestingly, that calculator asserts that for my average-temperate central PA location, I’d be paying $60-72k up front, and with incentives it asserts that I’d be making $7-8k in profit. I wonder if the calculator is assuming I’m going to sell power back to the grid or something.

Dunno…here is what it tells me with the inputs I mentioned above:

Solar Radiance: 4.47 kWh/sq m/day

Avg. Monthly Usage: 1,732 kWh/month

System Size: 16.10 kW

Roof Size: 1,609 sq ft

Estimated Cost: $112,680.66

Post Incentive Cost: $55,213.52

Maybe it knows I live in a city and includes some city taxes or something. No idea but that’s what it tells me.

ETA: Note I put in a 100% electric offset…want to be energy independent was the goal. I could go less and save money but then still rely on the power grid to some extent.

[levdrakon]

@xtisme

The technology you are talking about in a spaced based solar transmission system is…well, not complete fantasy, but far from reality. And since I’m a huge advocate of manned space flight and utilizing space for commercial uses I’d LOVE for it to be reality. But it’s not, nor is it likely to be any time soon.

-XT

I just snagged this article from a different thread: Yahoo News: Latest and Breaking News, Headlines, Live Updates, and More

I was originally dubious about Obama’s plan to gut NASA some more and hand space off to private industry, but now I’m starting to think Obama may have been right again. I hate it when he keeps doing that.

Anyway, that article provides some hope of launch costs actually coming down, making space a much more attractive place to try out new ideas.

[Zeriel]

@Whack-a-Mole

Dunno…here is what it tells me with the inputs I mentioned above:

Maybe it knows I live in a city and includes some city taxes or something. No idea but that’s what it tells me.

ETA: Note I put in a 100% electric offset…want to be energy independent was the goal. I could go less and save money but then still rely on the power grid to some extent.

Yeah, I got

System specifications for: State College, PA
Utility: Other

Solar Radiance:	4.22 kWh/sq m/day
Avg. Monthly Usage:	840 kWh/month
System Size:	8.25 kW
Roof Size:	825 sq ft
Estimated Cost:	$57,780.26
Post Incentive Cost:	($7,654.63)

[Whack-a-Mole]

@Zeriel

Yeah, I got

System specifications for: State College, PA
Utility: Other

Solar Radiance:	4.22 kWh/sq m/day
Avg. Monthly Usage:	840 kWh/month
System Size:	8.25 kW
Roof Size:	825 sq ft
Estimated Cost:	$57,780.26
Post Incentive Cost:	($7,654.63)

Weird.

If I input my numbers in the 16801 zip code and choose Pennsylvania Electric or Pennsylvania Power my un-incentivized costs are about the same as in Chicago. With incentives the difference is dramatic (read loads cheaper).

Perhaps Pennsylvania kicks in incentives Illinois does not.

Or I am not understanding just how these incentives work.

[XT]

You guys must be getting some kick ass incentives. When I input my area code, 50% for what I want to get from the solar and my monthly bill ($150 average…I’m guestimating since I have an older solar system and it’s like $80 atm) I get $39,266.63 for the estimate and $24,737.98 for the incentivized cost. I mean, that’s nice that I get approx. $15k off the price from incentives, but $24k is still a lot of money, considering I’m going based off of a $150/month bill.

(That said, I figured a new system would cost me around $25k, so I’ll probably upgrade my system in the next year or so…I just love the coolness factor, if nothing else. What I want to do is build some battery backup in my shed as well, that I can use to charge up my electric appliances and such…mower, trimmers, hand tools, carts, etc)

-XT

[Zeriel]

@Whack-a-Mole

Weird.

If I input my numbers in the 16801 zip code and choose Pennsylvania Electric or Pennsylvania Power my un-incentivized costs are about the same as in Chicago. With incentives the difference is dramatic (read loads cheaper).

Perhaps Pennsylvania kicks in incentives Illinois does not.

Or I am not understanding just how these incentives work.

There’s a per-kWh incentive listed but no description of how it’s intended to work. I wonder if the cost is essentially attempting to amortize that incentive over the useful life of the solar panels.

[levdrakon]

@xtisme

Whack-a-Mole already answered this but…huh? What are you talking about? Did you not know that several have been built and actually gone through entire life cycles of commissioning and decommissioning?? Again…it’s not a matter of technology or engineering…the things haven’t been built because of political considerations. As with most things nuclear, it’s not a matter of if it COULD be built…it’s a matter of if it will be ALLOWED to be built.

-XT

Sure, I’ve read all that stuff. Test reactors get built, they struggle, they fail and get closed. You’d think France would have scads of them by now. There’s only the one “commercial” reactor in Russia, and it’s never used plutonium, which is what it was designed for, wasn’t it?

[Whack-a-Mole]

@levdrakon

Sure, I’ve read all that stuff. Test reactors get built, they struggle, they fail and get closed. You’d think France would have scads of them by now. There’s only the one “commercial” reactor in Russia, and it’s never used plutonium, which is what it was designed for, wasn’t it?

Easier to just quote this:

Some breeder reactors are in use ( such as the Pheonix reactor in France ). However, in many countries nuclear power has been opposed politically and thus many breeder reactors have been shut down, or are planned to be shut down, with various justifications. As an example, the US currently bans reprocessing of spent fuel and closed down EBR-II as a consequence. In France a large breeder reactor called Superphoenix was shut down because it was deemed more expensive than PWR reactors ( tho there are allegations of this decision being politically rather than economically motivated ). In the UK the breeder reactor program was slashed as the government withdrew support from the nuclear industry in general. India runs a few breeder reactors and are planing building more. Japan has a breeder reactor, Monju, scheduled to be reopened in a few years after having been shut down for repairs and safety inspections following a sodium leak that damaged it’s secondary coolant loop. All in all there are a few breeder reactors actually used for power generation, there are a few planned, and quite a few are being used for research related to the Generation IV reactor initiative. Additionally, several countries, including the UK and France, run reprocessing programs to extract the plutonium breed from their thermal reactors. Most of this information can be found in the fast breeder reactor and nuclear reprocessing articles.137.205.192.27 22:38, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

SOURCE: Talk:Breeder reactor - Wikipedia

[matt]

@DSeid

To paraphrase - I don’t get you. You are not innumerate. …

Really though. What part of the fact that wind farms not significantly interfering with other uses of the same area do you not get?

Touché! I think I already acknowledged that point somewhere, at least for farming. In principle, I still like a predictable 20-40 watts/sq. m from a solar farm in the desert more than an unpredictable 3 watts/sq. m from a windfarm (although if there’s any truth in the cite from my last post, that could fall to below 1 watt/sq. m for very large windfarms since you have to almost double the tower spacing. I hope that’s wrong.)

Wind has grown on me somewhat over the course of the thread. The maintenance doesn’t work out too bad with a 10-year MTBF and the 20-year lifespan is for the gearboxes and pinions. The towers should last 40-80 years, depending on environment and how well they’re galvanised, and the blades last up to 40, so I think we’re talking a major refurb every 20 years rather than full-on replacement.

OTOH, the USA has the luxury of a small enough population density to be able to consider substantial or even 100% generation with windfarms. The UK by contrast wouldn’t meet its electricity needs if it used 100% of its land area as a windfarm! Not sure how China fares in that regard.

When comparing wind to solar, we have data from real-world wind farms to work with whereas large scale solar is still experimental and I’ve had no luck finding any operation data. My hunch is that current solar technology will be even more resource-hungry to install than wind, and wind is bad enough.

@Le Jacquelope

But then you’ve also got nuclear fuel, coal fuel, and I’m betting quite a few rare earth metals being used in nuclear reactors, which probably cost more than steel and concrete.

I can’t wait until spray-on solar, which has already been invented, hits the market and comes into competition against all of this.

Fuel costs for nuclear are supposedly negligible compared to coal although I haven’t looked at any figures. Coal cost is a major part of the price of the generated energy. Fancy (and expensive) stainless steels and inconels are the pricey alloys in nuke plants, and a very high level of certification and quality control. But dollar cost wasn’t really my point, so much as whether it’s feasible to build large amounts of generating capacity using the various competing technologies in the next few decades. Installing even 30% wind worldwide will stretch our steelmaking and concrete-making capacities considerably, for example. I don’t know the answer.

I read your Popular Mechanics cite: fascinating! That should really pull down the cost per watt – glass lenses are way cheaper than photovoltaics! A quick Google of spray-on solar reveals a vaccuumless manufacturing process and a quite-different quantum-dot nanotech technology. I presume you’re talking about the latter but it’s nowhere near rollout yet. I haven’t found a cite showing it’s been demonstrated for more than a single quantum dot! Perhaps you have some more detailed information?

[gonzomax]

The problem with fuel in nuclear plants, is there is not enough of it. They are running out and the fuel is getting very expensive.
What happens when it is no longer readily available?

[levdrakon]

@gonzomax

The problem with fuel in nuclear plants, is there is not enough of it. They are running out and the fuel is getting very expensive.
What happens when it is no longer readily available?

Run out of fuel? I think we’ve probably got about 1,000 years’ worth of uranium before the price and growing scarcity of it would justify the expense of a breeder reactor. That’s so far in the future - it’ll be really embarrassing and pathetic if in 1,000 years we’re still getting energy from any of our current technologies.

[Whack-a-Mole]

@gonzomax

The problem with fuel in nuclear plants, is there is not enough of it. They are running out and the fuel is getting very expensive.
What happens when it is no longer readily available?

Huh?

There is plenty of fuel left for current reactors to run on for a long, long time.

Use a Traveling Wave reactor or other breeder designs and there is fuel for a thousand years already mined and just sitting there.

Use a thorium reactor and you have another few thousand years (thorium is as abundant as lead…which is lots and currently we view it as crap with no other use).

After that, in a couple thousand years, maybe someone will figure fusion power will be 20 years away.

[gonzomax]

Lack of fuel may limit U.S. nuclear power expansion | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology As a matter of fact, there is not plenty of fuel available as this MIT article will explain. There will be problems with getting fuel in the near future let alone down the line .

[Whack-a-Mole]

@gonzomax

Lack of fuel may limit U.S. nuclear power expansion | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology As a matter of fact, there is not plenty of fuel available as this MIT article will explain. There will be problems with getting fuel in the near future let alone down the line .

We have linked Traveling Wave reactor designs. We have linked Thorium Reactor designs.

TW reactors can use fuel that is already sitting around nuclear plants. This is considered junk and there is enough there to power the US with this design for 800 years or more. When that runs out they can extract from seawater enough to continue indefinitely.

Thorium reactors, as the name suggests, uses Thorium. Currently when it is mined (usually as a part of other stuff they are after) it is thrown out. It is about as common as lead (read there is lots of it).

The stuff running out is fossil fuels (except coal…seems we still have lots and lots of that).

[Le_Jacquelope]

@DSeid

Oh, this may also be of some interest.

What!!! That’s unpossible! Whatever happened to the $112,680.66 cost? You mean it could be going down and going down fast? :eek: