What the dormouse said

Note: Mr. DeVore has responded in comments linked below.

I don't know why Chuck DeVore, Orange County Assembly Person would insult the California utilities he says he wants to help, but he seems to be a bit deranged in most of his arguments. He wants to repeal a long standing law in California that bans new power nuclear plants. To open, he insults Californians, calling them hypocrites because 80% of them don't carpool or use mass transit. He is outraged that California will cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25% in 13 years while growing 20% in population. For 7 million new people, that's about 400 new homes a day. Every day I hear of a new housing development in California with solar power built in. What part of 2 gigawatts doesn't he understand? And, what of existing homes? While new applications for rebates for solar installations were falling off earlier this year owing to time-of-use rates, applications for rental of solar power systems were more than covering the deficit. As of today there are more than 3,600 applications for no-rebate systems which don't immediately show up on the million solar roof books. Will the existing homes in California have fewer installations than the new homes? What part of 6 gigawatts doesn't he understand? Why, this is the capacity he is proposing for new nuclear power all in thirteen years.

He has particular problems with understanding electricity. He proposes that out-of-state power sources would suffer huge transmission losses and argues that nuclear power should not be sited out of state because of this. But he must not know that the Pacific Intertie already supplies LA from Washington and manages this distance quite well. But, since LA already sucks the Colorado River dry, north is about the only direction he can go to site new out-of-state nuclear power while closer solar installations like Solar One will require less in the way of new lines. In fact, north is the only direction he can go for new nuclear power even in-state since coastal sites will face the risk of sea level rise and are unsuitable for new nuclear power plants. So, what he really wants is for the City of Sacramento to build four new nuclear power plants to power southern California. But then he'll have to wait for the levy system to get repaired because Sacramento faces its own flooding issues. And with the changing flows that loss of snowpack will bring, the Sacramento and American Rivers may experience the same kind of problems that shut down reactors on the Tenneseee River and in Europe. So, four new nuclear power plants in the middle of the State Capital to be started after the levies are fixed (10 years) and the law is changed (? years) and taking 6 years for completion gives a minimum of 16 years before any electricity is produced at all with no certainty that the plants can even operate under changing flow conditions. The lack of realism is astounding. Perhaps it is not so much that the utilities are risk adverse as he demeans them, but rather they not raving mad.

He makes another astounding statement: converting transportation to electricity would require doubling generation capacity. This shows a complete lack of understanding of the poor efficiency of the internal combustion engine. Electric transportation is much more efficient and would require at most a 30% increase in generating capacity and likely much less. But most roofs can provide this, so the 8 gigawatts of solar capacity that we may easily anticipate from home roofs alone make a very good start on this.

Others of his deluded statements include that life cycle carbon dioxide emissions from nuclear power are lower than for solar power: Nuclear plants can't be built without fossil fuels and concrete and nuclear power plants can't be recycled while solar panels don't require fossil fuels to make and recycling makes their net energy ratio higher than any other power source.

His plan to change the law in California also apparently hinges on a plan to change the federal law aimed at preventing weapons proliferation. So, now he has to change two laws and meet a 13 year deadline. These are talking points, not serious proposals. The people of Orange County should take a good look at who is paying for the nuclear kool-aid he's been drinking and give him a good long rest.

Tuppence in the Sun

Mr. Dawes Sr. If you invest your tuppence wisely in the bank, safe and sound, soon that tuppence, safely invested in the bank, will compound! And you'll achieve that sense of conquest, as your affluence expands! In the hands of the directors, who invest as propriety demands!

The lyrics to the song that follows this bit of wisdom in the musical Mary Poppins can be found here. The next song, Step In Time is much more energetic and it is perhaps understandable that a song about compound interest would fail to catch on.

We are seeing a lack of propriety these days in a number of financial transactions. The slicing and dicing of risk seems to have led to a question of what value many securities have if any at all. But, if you want to take on projects that extend over a substantial period of time, credit markets are likely to be a part of what you do.

One thing we need to do is transform how we get energy and a number of options include long term components. Nuclear power, for example, extends so far into a climatically uncertain future that it is seeking extra help with finance through federal loan guaranties.

While renewable energy is forever, its implementation can be taken in 10 to 25 year chunks so it fits much better with standard lending terms. Further, risk is low so while raising capital though venture mechanisms can happen, it is also attractive to banks, especially since renewable energy equipment can serve as insured collateral. This is why so much of the financing for renewable energy is coming from institutions like Credit Lyonnais and Morgan Stanley especially in the commercial sector. In the residential sector, solar power equipment is being rolled into a mortgages for new home construction while installers for existing homes are getting savvy at helping customers find financing through secured credit based on increased equity.

But, what if you want to follow the commercial sector model of separating ownership of the equipment from the use of the equipment in the residential sector. Individually financing each deal, as might work for supplying Walmart with solar power, becomes time consuming and thus expensive. What is needed is an aggregate instrument. One way that aggregation has been used with propriety is the securitization of leases. CVS, for example, financed its eastern expansion based on the security provided by the fact that it had property leases to conduct its business. This brought them lower cost financing since the aggregated leases were more secure than individual leases.

One way to secure low cost credit to allow the long term use of solar power on homes is to secure the credit on the basis of an aggregate of rental contracts which assure repayment of the debt. So long as those contracts are sufficiently attractive that few of them are likely to be broken (they save customers money) then you have a low risk security that does not require high interest. This is the form of financing that Citizenre has adopted for its solar power equipment rental business. Shaving the cost of financing puts it in a better competitive position than attempting to work out deal-by-deal financing, so much so, that it can afford to ignore state-level rebates available to individual purchasers of solar power equipment.

There is certainly room for venture capital in the solar power business, especially for high risk new technology development. But, for deployment of proven technology, the model being adopted in the commercial sector using more traditional financing leads to cost savings that are important for market competitiveness. Carrying this over to the residential market, with its much larger roof space resource, will likely rebalance the solar market towards an acceleration of its current 30% annual growth.

Cliffhanger

People who should really know better are beginning to say we should consider nuclear power as an alternative to coal power as a way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. One person, who should be careful, has made history by being the first female Speaker of the House of Representatives. Her district strongly opposes nuclear power, and it is even illegal in her state to build new nuclear power plants. She may feel that she now represents the other members in Congress who elected her speaker, but she won't be Speaker for long if she stops representing her district. She is not required to abandoned the positions that got her elected to Congress just to be Speaker unless she became Speaker in a dishonest manner, promising to betray her constituents in exchange for power.

Another person who should be too smart to go for nuclear power is James Lovelock. His work towards understanding why the environment of the Earth is suitable for its inhabitants has been quite interesting. His thinking is that the world appears to take care of itself, adjust its atmosphere to keep a stable temperature, for example, because of feedbacks within the ecosystem. The ecosystem, viewed as a whole, acts to preserve itself in the same way that your body "acts" to keep its temperature stable. I was so impressed with his review of his work on a model called Daisyworld that appeared in Nature some years back, that I sent a copy to my daughter. It is a very simple model that acts as though it "knows" what is best for itself. Just a few simple behaviors on the part of some flowers controls the temperature of the whole world even as the luminosity of the Sun increases. In other words, life preserves itself as though all of life were aimed to do this without requiring collusion. Niches are adaptive in addition to species adapting to niches. Perhaps the problem is that Lovelock is looking for simple solutions, but he does not realize that nuclear power does not follow simple rules and so cannot fit into a self-stabilizing model.

Let's look at how this would break down. In the Power Plant World we have black power plants that warm the Earth and white power plants that cool the Earth just like the flowers in Daisyworld. As the Earth warms, a shift from black power plants to white power plants ensues. But, in Daisyworld there are simple rules, in Power Plant World there is an additional rule that the waste from the white power plants cannot touch the water. Now, we set the model to run. The temperature initially increases spurring a decrease in black power plants and an increase in white power plants, but the temperature continues to climb, as it must, because there is lag that is not present with the albedo mechanism used in Daisyworld. This means that the water level rises even as white power plants become more numerous and black power plants less numerous. And, the rule that the waste from white power plants can't touch the water has a devastating effect. It is so expensive to keep the waste from white power plants from touching the water, that when they die, their cores, which are very dangerous waste at that point, are usually just buried in place. But, when the water level rises, these cores have to be moved and buried somewhere else because of the don't touch the water rule. Moving the cores requires more energy than the white power plants produce in the first place so the whole system collapses.

Actually, in Power Plant World things are not really as black and white as they are in Daisyworld. There are also green power plants that can produce much much more power than either the black or white power plants can, so there is a happy ending which would not occur if white power plants were used.

Now, the purpose of the Daisyworld model is not to represent the full complexity of ecology, it is just to show that simple rules can lead to self-regulation. The purpose of Power Plant World is to show that adding more complex rules can destroy that self-regulation. We might add more and more rules to the construction of white power plants to perhaps avoid problems like sea level rise inundating their sites or warming temperatures requiring large cooling towers. We might anticipate where river flows will be large owing to climate change and put new white power plants there. In Daisyworld there is no planning, which is kind of the point, but in Power Plant World, there would not be more white power plants without anticipating the effects of the black power plants.

In fact, Power Plant World runs on good intentions with imperfect foresight, a combination that can lead to hellish results. But, it is pretty adaptable. The white power plants were never intended to regulate the temperature of the Earth, but rather as a bribe to limit the number of countries with nuclear weapons so that the chances that we'd blow ourselves up would be reduced. The idea that they might be used for temperature control only came up after it was realized that temperature control might be needed. Both white power plants and black power plants tend to kill those who are involved in running them disproportionally, so it is strange that the people who run them love them so much. But, this strange love, like a moth at a candle, has meant that there has been acceptance among the white power plant lovers that the rising temperature caused by the black power plants is a problem so they might be able to make more white power plants even though most people don't like them.

Nuclear power plants are very wasteful so they are very thirsty. To compete with the coal power plants, they have to be big to reduce costs, and since they waste most of the energy they produce, they need a way to get rid of that wasted energy so they pretty much need to be sited near a flow of water. Big coal power plants have similar problems because they are also wasteful, but they still try to get bigger to compete with the white power plants. They have somewhat fewer constraints though because they can shut down more easily if the waste heat becomes a problem, and they send a lot of their waste heat up a smoke stack, reducing their dependence on a flow of water.

Let's look at a particular example since we can see that the Power Plant World model has too many variables and interrelationships to be all that helpful. Calvert Cliffs has been a favorite of the strange love crowd because it got a licence extension even after the Three Mile Island accident made it quite clear that nuclear power is a very bad idea. It was a matter of letting thing cool down politically, and, as we will see, cooling down, in a radioactive sense, is going to be the issue that will make this license extension look very very foolish. Calvert Cliffs is a little unusual because it does not have cooling towers but rather relies on predictable tidal currents to carry away waste heat. It is located on the Chesapeake Bay right at current sea level. It has also recently submitted an application to build a third reactor at an estimated cost of $2.35/Watt, construction only, much higher than the capital cost of a wind farm ($1.30/Watt) which does not require fuel. You can see already that political rather than economic thinking is at work here. And, there are further political considerations. Maryland will be meeting all of it's new generation need with renewable energy as a result of its Renewable Energy Standards Portfolio, so the new generation from Clavert Cliffs will be for export, saddling the people of Maryland with the risks of nuclear power without any benefits.

Let's look at the 20 year license extension granted in 2000. The current reactors will be running until about 2035. But, the climate reports we have been studying predict that sea level rise is going to be more that two feet possibly before the end of the century. Non-linear effects on the ice sheets could bring this up to 15 feet by the end of the century. But, because of the international treaty, it is not legal to dispose of nuclear waste in the oceans. So, the reactors will have to be moved. Basically you can not move a reactor until it has cooled for a century so the licence extension means that the reactors cannot be removed to comply with the treaty until 2135. But, sea level rise will be 3 feet by that time pretty much for certain and the reactors in noncompliance with the treaty without drastic engineering on inundated and very soft muds. So, not only does the sea level rise imply that a never before tried reactor removal must be undertaken, but the license extension means that it must be done at even greater expense. The correct way to proceed would be to revoke the licence extension and even the license to operate so that cooling of the cores can commence now. A cost estimate for removing the cores in 2107 should be developed now, and a surcharge placed on other nuclear generation to cover this cost.

As noted above, the new reactor under consideration will be much more expensive than other forms of power, and it makes no sense to build a new reactor in a place that will be underwater even before the end of its design lifetime. But, even granting that it can be designed to remove the reactor as soon as needed rather than waiting for the hottest elements to decay, its construction costs cannot be levelized over the anticipate design lifetime, but only over a much short site suitability period. This likely brings the cost of power above $0.09/kWh, especially since credit markets are becoming aware of the risks associated with sea level rise. Federal loan guarantees don't really help this situation since they merely guarantee that default will occur, shifting costs onto the taxpayers. Similar conclusions have been drawn about proposed new reactors in England.

Nuclear power is anything but nimble. Very long timescales must be considered. The fact that the industry has been invoking global warming as a reason to build more plants, taken together with the fact that they have made Calvert Cliffs their success story example makes clear the need to scrutinize all of their proposals with much greater care than was taken in granting the license extension. The consequences of climate change: sea level rise, changing river flow patterns and heat balance need to be independently assessed for current reactors to see what increased costs are coming so that they may be added as surcharges now. There are a number of plants whose reactors will need to be removed to higher ground by the end of the century and these need to be identified and shut down to allow cooling time. Granting licences for new plants should be put on hold until such a study and surcharge apportionment can be completed. The industry's obvious inconsistencies in the case of Calvert Cliffs make their own assessments nearly useless. Either they have been disingenuous in their claim that a license extension was justified or they have been disingenuous in their claim that they have the foresight to make such a case since they quite obviously acknowledge the reality of climate change.

Will those who ought to know better come to their senses before they drive up the cost of energy by a factor of two or more while delaying real action on climate change? To be continued....

The Roof Pitch

Abstract: This one is long enough for an abstract so here goes:
An estimate of the available US residential roof surface area is made and the fraction of current net generation that can be replaced with solar power is as much as 46% using this area. Policy issues that could hamper full attainment are discussed. A new fast Norwegian model for electrifying transportation which also provides 0.5 days stationary storage of total generation is considered and found likely to move rooftop solar from its policy limited maximum fraction of 22% towards 46%. Utilities are advised to avoid long term purchase contracts for new nuclear power.

All the trees behind my house were cut down during nesting season with machines straight out of The Lorax. The machine would grip the trunk and, with a high pitched whine, the machine would sever the tree from the ground in about 4 seconds, then back off carrying the tree upright and drop the tree somewhat indiscriminately out off the way. Last fall I put together a new metal shed (with much cursing for the last bits of roof that were hard to get to). It turns out that the old wooden shed was on property that is to be developed in front of the house and it was so old it could not be moved. Doesn't leak though. Nothing has been happening though since the trees were all cut down out back. It could be that houses won't sell for what the developers thought they might so they are holding off.

I don't quite know why we are building so many houses. There aren't that many more of us. Maybe it is the divorce rate. We need two houses per family.

Trees are what grow over most of my neighbor's homes. I picked mine to have sun and a south facing roof. I used to live under a ginourmous sweetgum tree and it's shade cooled that house in the summer, but a good bit of insulation in this house seems to work better. But, with trees being slaughtered using those strange contrivances which, I'm sure, violate Dr. Suess' intellectual property rights, I'm not going to suggest that my neighbor's homes be included in these calculations. We'll estimate assuming all roofs get sun, but there is no suggestion that those that don't should. And, with things slowing down in the building trades, we'll use numbers from a couple of years ago which might compensate for some shady roofs.

What are we doing? We're going to calculate how much sunlight can be turned into electricity just using home roofs. The thing is, FedEx, Google, GM, Coke, Walmart, Kohls, Target, BJs, Cosco, Staples and other businesses are all turning sunlight into electricity using their roofs so they can save money. But, their buildings use so much energy that only about 30% of what they use can be covered this way. But, a house can cover what it needs pretty easily because we tend to like a little less activity at home. Keeping the doors open for shopper past midnight to sell a book about a boy wizard would not allow us much rest. So, can houses make up the difference so that businesses can run on 100% real energy too?

These calculations came about because Robert Rapier had been looking at biodiesel and finding that it would be quite hard to cover transportation with what could be produced. Robert is a contributor to The Oil Drum which we've scolded before. His conclusion was that the future is solar. The main reason is land use. If we use rooted plants to get real energy, they don't put all their efforts into just converting sunlight into stored energy. They are more interested in their social life, hobnobbing with bees, sharing delicious seed holders for dispersal and generally sharing news through their roots. So, as we've seen, only a little bit of real energy is available for harvest compared to all that was used. Robert decided that if we want to have food, we can't also grow fuel at the level that we use it. Now the standard example came up that a square of land in Nevada about 80 miles on a side running a solar thermal plant at 20% efficiency can produce all the energy we use. This is an easy calculation: Nevada has regions that get 9 kWh per square meter of sunlight per day on average over a year, or 375 Watts per square meter of average power. At 20% efficiency you get 75 of those. So we just divide the 1.2 TW of energy we use that we calculated earlier by 75 W per square meter to get the number of square meters we need. Divided again by a million gives 16000 square kilometers. The square root of this, 126 km, gives the length of the edge of the square which is about 80 miles.

Now, many people objected that this was impractical even though it was just an example of how little land is actually needed compared to what we farm. So, we set to calculating what could be done with roofs since this is surface area that is already being used. We need an estimate of the size of a typical roof, how many roofs there are and what the typical available sunlight is. This is a rough estimate (remember the trees) so we won't do anything fancy like match houses in states with the solar resource in that state.

Let's begin. For a home size we'll take 1700 sq ft from 2002, for the number of houses we'll take 124,500,000 occupied and vacant from 2005 and for the available power we'll take 5 kWh/m^2/day from the middle of the country. We're going to adjust the home size which comes out to be 158 m^2 down to 100 m^2 because some houses have more than one story. We'll only use half the roof (50 m^2) assuming that this is the south facing side, or if we cover east and west facing surfaces we only get to use half at one time. Then we'll take a system efficiency of 17%. Each roof then produces 1.8 kW as average power (5 kWh/m^2/24 hours* 50 m^2 *0.17). All roofs produce 0.22 TW. In 2005 average net generation in the US was 0.46 TW (4.055e12 Wh/365 days/24 hours). So the roofs can provide 46% of the electricity the nation uses. But the residential sector uses 37% of the whole generation. The roofs can thus provide extra power for the businesses but they can't cover the whole thing, only about half of what businesses can't do for themselves. Hydro and wind provide about 9% of generation so we are looking for another 100% -(30% of 35% = 10% commercial solar)-(46% residential solar) = 35% to cover the rest of the commercial and also the industrial sectors. Wind power can certainly do this while, as we saw in the case of the Nevada example, solar farms on non-agricultural land can also work.

Just like the businesses that are converting as much of their power use as they can to save money, homes can do the same thing and it turns out we can get a majority of our electricity using just roofs. All of this works essentially under net metering and 41 states have such laws. But many allow the utilities to confiscate the excess power produced within a year of generation. So, unoccupied homes should not be counted in this circumstance. Also, their are few incentives for landlords to save their tenants money so we might want to consider only owner occupied homes. With these limitations, we only get 60% of the residential sector or 22% of the total. These restrictions would seem to be more important than shading from trees. There is some transfer between the rented, owned and vacant buildings so we'll likely get to close to the whole residential sector eventually, and, for the vacant homes, with the utilities confiscating over production, there should be little reason to maintain artificial caps on net metering capacity since they'll see a very healthy overall 11% profit if the owners of the vacant properties don't put in server farms or some other means of using the power generated at the property. We should note that this is actually a huge profit because distributed generation means that expensive upgrades to much of the distribution system can be delayed or avoided all together. In fact, it may well be that utilities can maximize profits by paying a fraction of retail for generation above use rather than nothing. In that case, as the cost for panels comes down, their may be an incentive to use all of the roof.

But, there is a much more important thing coming that will increase the fraction of roof area that is used. The ghost energy depleting industries that we want to displace like to use talking points that emphasize how little real energy we a using right now. They'll sometimes acknowledge the 30% growth per year in renewables, but then pick a date about 15 years before that growth shuts them down to say that the amount of generation will still be small. Then they say that we need more coal, oil, gas and uranium to meet projected demand, hiding the fact that new capacity there will be very expensive because it won't ever be used for its design lifetime. They also ignore the fact that the dollar cost of real energy is plummeting while the dollar cost of ghost energy is only going up. The effect this has of the growth rate can only be positive, especially since renewable energy fabrication is so nimble compared to power plant construction. So, a 150% annual growth rate may not be out of the question. A number of individual companies are planning 100% annual growth just to keep their market share high, a number than investors look at closely. Planning for 100% annual growth takes some doing, but it is much less cumbersome than gaining approval for a new nuclear plant, especially in today's security environment.

The thing that is coming is actually a new business model for transportation that will increase the amount of power people use at home while decreasing the amount of gasoline they use. Companies that manufacture hybrid vehicles are saying that they expect the cost to manufacture these will be the same as for their other lines in a few years. The reason for this is that though the systems are a little more complex, the cost of retooling per unit goes down as the share of production goes up. These vehicles can be modified to have electric only operation with a range of about 40 miles by adding more batteries. But, the batteries are expensive even though the cost of running the vehicles is much less expensive. Batteries, like solar panels degrade in performance over time but for different reasons. For solar panels it is high energy particles which degrade performance while for batteries it is use which degrades performance. The behavior of solar panels has interesting implications for the estimation of the quantity Energy Returned Over Energy Invested (EROEI) because this becomes quite dependent on what level of performance you are willing to accept. If you cut off at a 20% degradation in 25 years, with a 2 year payback time, you get a value of 12.5 trending towards 25 with recycling (because you don't have to purify the silicon again). But, if you accept a 60% degradation you get a value of 33 trending towards 66, the highest for any energy source. You might be willing to accept a 60% degradation if you are replacing the lost performance with less expensive more efficient panels as needed so long as you still have roof space. With batteries for transportation, you really have to set a lower acceptance criterion for performance degradation because the car won't get so far with degraded batteries. Battery degradation also depends on the manner of use. Transportation is a tough environment while managed power storage is a benign environment because an individual battery can be treated gently.

The new business model for transportation takes advantage of this behavior of batteries. Noticing that at least 75% of a battery's useful life will be outside of a vehicle, a company in Norway is planning on leasing about a quarter of the of a battery's life for transportation then selling the remaining battery life to utilities for the power storage we need. Stationary storage does not need nearly the performance levels required by transportation. Now, transportation is about 28% of our total energy use with most of that in trips under 40 miles. By passing batteries on to utilities, the transportation sector will be providing storage for about half of our total energy use. You might think it would be 84%, but using batteries is much more efficeint than gasoline engines so the transportation sector energy use will shrink by about 2 thirds. The business model greatly reduces the cost apportioned to transportation for batteries, making electricity as a transportation fuel very attractive, while at the same time saving utilities money on their most expensive generation costs by allowing storage to cover peak demand. This makes mostly electric transportation the least expensive, especially since people will add capacity to their roofs at lower costs when this mechanism comes in over the fleet replacement timescale. The effect of this is to increase residential use of electricity by about 30%, and similarly increase the contribution of the residential sector to distributed generation. But, the businesses that are adopting solar power now, won't get this energy because it will be displacing gasoline use instead. Notice, though, that the increase in electricity demand this implies is met with real energy even under current net metering policies (excluding overall caps).

In consideration of this, to maximize profits, investor owned utilities should be pursuing a policy of divesting themselves of ghost energy generating capacity, avoiding like the plague very long term ghost energy purchase agreements, especially for any new inflexible nuclear generating capacity, and encouraging rooftop solar as much as they possibly can while working out clever ways to profit from the approximately half day of energy storage they can anticipate coming in from the transportation sector. In short, they should adopt a supermarket or warehouse business model, where they profit by the continual exchange of real energy that their distribution networks can provide. And that is the pitch for rooftop solar.

New Mexicans Conspire?

In a stealth move, New Mexican Senators Domenici and Bingaman inserted unlimited loan guarantees for nuclear power in the Senate Energy Bill. This provides the ability to obtain very low interest loans for the construction of new nuclear power plants. You might think that this is just standard corruption, a quid pro quo for financial support from the industry. But is it? None of the proposed new reactors is intended to be sited in New Mexico. You'd think that covertly adding such a thing to the legislation would at least have some kind of benefit for New Mexico like construction contracts or other pork. What is going on here?

We should not forget that the Governor of New Mexico is a former Secretary of Energy. While the Arizona Corporation Commission dithers about net metering, the Governator fumbles the million solar roof project, the Nevada legislature can't meet for long enough to keep up with technology and Utah is lulled by Northwest hyrdo, he is cornering the market on big solar. Why shouldn't he? New Mexico is right in there in the best resource. But, how to preserve the market in electricity? That is tricky. Texas has wind that is getting too cheap to meter, the Northeast states are implementing renewable energy standards. It is just the South and Midwest that are complacent in their coal use. What is needed to keep them off their own Real Energy long enough for his efforts to make them dependent on New Mexico and it's ultracheap solar power? Remember, once you go renewable, there is no reason to switch again, so if there are going to be non-local renewables, the markets have to be developed NOW.

Bait and Switch is an old game. Promise nuclear power, then just run it out of business with the taxpayers taking the fall. A single high-voltage high-capacity direct current transmission line from New Mexico to Georgia puts twelve of the proposed new plants out of business only a quarter of the way into their design lifetime with only a quarter of the very low interest loans paid off. Upon default, the taxpayers take the fall and the Richardson Solar Power Monopoly is in place for the next two centuries at least. Make no mistake. The Department of Energy has always been all about playing hardball, beating the Soviets in bombs, running weapons labs in complete disregard of nuclear safety, and crushing foreign uranium markets. For DOE, civilian nuclear power has always been a useful idiot rather than a real priority. Richardson is looking centuries ahead in the solar power projects he is supporting in New Mexico. Just look at this small sample:


Solar Reduction of Carbon
Pueblo of Pojoaque / SolareC - $363,000
This innovative development effort will test a full-scale concentrating solar power system. This system uses sunlight to break down CO2 and allows direct production of electricity and hydrogen, which can either be burned at night to provide electricity or to produce synthetic fuels. If successful, this technology could revolutionize the solar energy world by providing an innovative means of storing solar energy power for later use.


Solar Combined Heat and Power Project
New Mexico State University / Heliodyne--$280,000
This project will provide a demonstration facility that uses solar energy to produce electricity for a large building while using the waste heat from the system to heat and cool the building. This approach could provide a highly efficient system that could be employed in commercial and state buildings across New Mexico.


Utility Scale Concentrating Solar Project
UNM / SkyFuel--$226,000
This project will develop an improved capability to produce efficient concentrating solar power panels at a lower cost than is presently available. It could result in development of megawatt scale solar power installations in New Mexico and elsewhere along with new manufacturing facilities in New Mexico.

The question is, does this count as a conspiracy or is Richardson just making convenient use of the state delegation's penchant for pampering their funders? It may be hard to tell. What is for certain is that Richardson is preparing for a future of large scale dispatchable solar power at costs that will drive new nuclear power plants right out of business because base load is just not going to matter anymore. Convenient corruption or sly scheming, it is the taxpayers who will foot the bill for keeping competitive local renewables out of Richardson's intended market. Even the Sunshine state, with it's 10 kW limit on net metering, should watch out for the trap. At least, if we are lucky, giving the nuclear industry enough rope to hang itself, even at tax payer expense, will be a less ignominous end than another Three Mile Island. Have you run your evacuation drill lately? Did it work? Just like New Orleans?

Richardson is running for President, and he might be a good one depending on his ability to look past New Mexico's interests to those of the country. But this development should give even his staunchest supporters second (or third of fourth) thoughts.

Facile Fables

Here it is, the report that will put us all at ease about fossil energy: Facing the Hard Truths about Energy.

Again, it is necessary to thank Alan Kelly for acknowledging that global warming may be a problem, or at least regulations related to controlling global warming could be a problem for oil companies. First, let's just note that factual errors of the most significant kind seem to be present in the report. The loudest howler seems to be this: on the core question, "Can incremental oil and natural gas supply be brought on-line, on-time, and at a reasonable price to meet future demand without jeopardizing economic growth?" they seem to have misquoted those who have tried to answer this question independently by a factor of two. Misquoting in that way seems just the sort of thing they like to do, so at least we know we are in for more of the same.

So, let's take their key findings in turn to see it there is anything worth knowing:

Findings:

1) Coal, oil, and natural gas will remain indispensable to meeting total projected energy demand growth.

As we have seen here, we can dispense with coal rather quickly and while achieving the efficiency to use photosynthesis to meet our current liquid fuel use is not possible, advances in this area suggest that meeting a good fraction can be done. The improved efficiency that comes with shifting the rest to wind and solar far outpaces the moderate efficiency measures they are calling for.

2) The world is not running out of energy resources, but there are accumulating risks to continuing expansion of oil and natural gas production from the conventional sources relied upon historically. These risks create significant challenges to meeting projected energy demand.

Here we may agree, to a point, we are only just beginning to participate again in real energy and there is more than enough, but what they mean is that the world is not running out of coal, oil and gas, and on this, it is very hard not to laugh. The world is always running out of these things so long as they are being used. Perhaps they are admitting that "conventional sources" the kind they have always said there are plenty of, are depleting to the point where they can't meet demand.

3) To mitigate these risks, expansion of all economic energy sources will be required, including coal, nuclear, renewables, and unconventional oil and natural gas. Each of these sources faces significant challenges—including safety, environmental, political, or economic hurdles—and imposes infrastructure requirements for development and delivery.

Of the sources listed, only renewables are economic and have the capacity to expand, everything else is more expensive and hastens depletion. It is also interesting that safety, the environment, politics and the economy are considered hurdles rather than just the things we want to sustain. I guess when you are in the business of creating oil spills, everything looks like a beach to defile.

4) “Energy Independence” should not be confused with strengthening energy security. The concept of energy independence is not realistic in the foreseeable future, whereas U.S. energy security can be enhanced by moderating demand, expanding and diversifying domestic energy supplies, and strengthening global energy trade and investment. There can be no U.S. energy security without global energy security.

We must hitch our wagon to dictatorships. Almost all of the projected growth of supply (yes the report projects growth) comes from the Middle East. Brazil, on the other hand, may seek energy independence since they are a smaller portion of the the market and so are less important to the National Petroleum Council's business interests. Oh well, who would expect any patriotism from multi-nationals? Best to cut them out of the energy supply entirely. We're not dipping too deeply into the report here, but it should be noted that their idea of security seems to include the notion that strategic reserves allow for Venezuela or Iran to be taken off-line for more than a year each (ES p. 27). More wars for oil would seem likely to do for US security what the current oil war does. Multi-nationals may not be the best source for advice on these kinds of issues. They would like us to provide security services for them but this does not enhance our security.

5) A majority of the U.S. energy sector workforce, including skilled scientists and engineers, is eligible to retire within the next decade. The workforce must be replenished and trained.

Apparently we need to encourage students to train for jobs in a dying industry. Now, if this industry can't fund it's own training program then they must know they are cooked. But, we should look to bar the treasury doors since the retirement of this work force that they warn of here may, in part, be insured through the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation even as these types of companies move their assets offshore. Renewable energy is where the job growth potential is.

6) Policies aimed at curbing CO2 emissions will alter the energy mix, increase energy-related costs, and require reductions in demand growth.

This statement seems nowhere supported by facts. What we know is that wind is cheaper than gas wholesale and solar is cheaper than coal retail except very close to the mines. The only place where wind and solar compete directly now with oil (which is too expensive to really compete with coal except on a few islands) is in home heating. In most places, geothermal heat pumps make wind and solar the better deal. While it is silly to burn coal at a power plant and lose more than half the energy up the stack to run baseboard heaters, running efficient electric heating with wind or solar, which are not heat engines, makes loads of sense. So, yes the energy mix will alter, but costs will come down. Supply growth can lessen because wind and solar are not nearly as wasteful as combustion. Requiring reduction in carbon demand growth will reduce energy related costs (except for oil, coal and gas shareholders) rather than increase them.

Now, let's just run through those findings one more time: 1) We have to have oil, coal and gas to meet demand. 2) We're not running out but we are. 3) So, need to rely on other sources. 4) US security is hostage to oil company security: need a hand-out. 5) Need another hand-out to handle retirement of work force. and 6) Global warming is expensive so demand can't be met.

Laughter is the best medicine: Hope you'll see the humor in this even through the bathos.

Closets

The closets of ghost energy are crammed full of skeletons. It is long past time to clean them out and as it turns out, real energy may need the storage space, not for skeletons, but rather to smooth the transition to full participation in and celebration of real energy.

Two newspaper articles are out talking about storage of real energy. Both articles fail to notice that the US grid already runs on about 20% stored real energy through hydroelectric power. About 24 GW of that capacity can run backwards rather than just throttle so we already have quite a lot of what we might need. And, the articles don't notice that distributed renewable power is not very intermittent. The wind is always blowing somewhere and clouds rarely cover all of a continent. The trick is to shuttle the power from where it is produced to where it is needed. If you have enough capacity to meet the peak use, then you don't really care about storing the extra power you don't need when you are using less, you just find something fun and interesting to do with it. Remember, real energy is extravagant. Think of the amazing fecundity and diversity of a rain forest. It is about prosperity not scarcity.

But, before we get to the point where we produce more energy than we use most of the time, methods of storage can help to retire ghost energy plants more quickly. So, lets just list the kinds of storage that are covered in the articles and here on the real energy blog so we know a few of the options. We'll organize it in the types of energy physicists like to use.

Thermal:

Hot or cold, thermal storage adds a certain amount of extra time to use the energy. In some cases like the high thermal mass house, you are just avoiding using energy that you don't really need. The daily fluctuations of external temperature are not important with good insulation and a high heat capacity. In one article ice is used to shift electricity use from day time to night time and also save on over all use while in the another, molten salts are used to keep solar energy for use at night. You can see how these might work together.

Chemical:

Batteries have the potential for large scale storage and are mentioned in both articles. The anticipated sizes run up to 6 MWh. The batteries mention in the article are not exactly flow batteries which are also used together with wind farms and run up to 12 MWh. We have also looked at using ammonia as a chemical storage method and producing hydrogen for later use is also a chemical method though it experiences high thermal loses. Aluminum can also be used for chemical storage and used to produce hydrogen on demand.

Mechanical:

Here we have two choices, potential energy or kinetic energy. Both articles mention gas pressure storage, essentially a form of potential energy similar to damming a river. The size of the facility mentioned is about 100 MW and presumably can run for a day or two. About half the energy comes from compressed air and half from natural gas. One article mentions flywheels which store kinetic energy. In this case the flywheel stores 18 MWs or 5 kWh. One can reduce the tensile strength requirements for a flywheel and increase its capacity by usinging a magenetic track. Then the strength requirements are compressive and, so, much simpler.

Electrical:

Capacitors are used to store power when very large currents pulses are needed as for example in inertial confinement fusion. These capacitors store about 3 kWh. Super capacitors are less bulky and are being developed for transportation applications.

Magnetic:

Superconducting Magnetic Energy Storage is used in some applications with capacities moving toward 20 MWh.

Electromagnetic:

For very high energy density, excited nuclear states might be used. This is actually a new listing, but not very practical just now.

The complaint in the articles is that power storage adds cost to the the electric power distribution system. But, pretty clearly, the decreasing cost of renewable energy is making storage more attractive to utilities. Thermal storage in solar plants that work with thermal energy anyway is a natural extension to their capabilities. Similarly, those that work using chemical energy are designed to store energy from the beginning. It is clear that flywheel and magnetic storage are already being used for power conditioning. Very shortly, the cost of renewable power will drop well below the cost of other sources. For wind, it is already the cheapest way to produce power in many places. As it turns out, once we're ready to chase the skeletons our of the ghost energy closet, we'll be able to put in a great new closet organizer with slots for all kinds of storage that will make the exorcism of the ghosts all the more rapid. Energy storage is not an Achilles' heel for real energy, but rather a stepping stone to full abundance. Daniel Arvizu should know better.