Evidence that solar power in its current form may increase pollution
Now, it appears there is hard data clearly demonstrating that solar power is contributing to higher levels of air pollution in North Carolina, which has the second-most solar of any state in the country.
This probably sounds counter-intuitive at first, but after further investigation in makes sense. Solar power ramps up and down based on the sun, as a result, natural gas plants need to ramp their output up and down to make sure the grid isn’t overloaded.
This constant ramping increases the amount of pollution emitted by the natural gas plants to a level that is at least 44 percent higher than if there were no solar panels on the grid at all and the natural gas plant was simply allowed to run at a steady pace.
Adding solar to the grid is like forcing a car to drive in town with the constant start and stop of traffic instead of allowing it to drive in cruise control on the highway.
It seems it’s not the solar power itself that causes the problem, but the way solar and gas power work in concert.
NOTE: And in other climate-science news, read Mark Steyn with the latest on Michael Mann.
https://www.manhattan-institute.org/green-energy-revolution-near-impossible
Solar technologies have improved greatly and will continue to become cheaper and more efficient. But the era of 10-fold gains is over. The physics boundary for silicon photovoltaic (PV) cells, the Shockley-Queisser Limit, is a maximum conversion of 34% of photons into electrons; the best commercial PV technology today exceeds 26%.
With regard to Mann, here is the background on the stunning court ruling throwing out his libel suit: http://www.mikesmithenterprisesblog.com/2019/08/the-iconic-image-of-global-warming.html
When you have intermittent sources like wind and solar, what to start up when they aren’t running is a relatively small problem compared to what to shut down when they are running.
The problem is most extreme with wind. A wind farm averages 25% of its rated maximum capacity, and so you know when the wind is not blowing you have to supplement 0.25 MW for every MW the wind farm is rated for.
But when the wind farm is at maximum, you have to SHUT DOWN 0.75 MW for every MW the wind farm is rated for.
So what can stop and start on a dime, since the wind speed can be changing every half hour?
1) Hydroelectric can, but that’s one form of carbon neutral energy substituted for another. Dams must also accommodate flood control, irrigation, and salmon migration. In the Pacific Northwest dams have the highest demand to release water when the wind is blowing hardest, in the spring.
2) Next best, natural gas. Every wind installation requires 3 times the capacity of hydro or natural gas ready to come off the grid at short notice.
Why don’t wind farms just pump water uphill to be released when needed, the cheapest form of energy storage available? Because tax credits require the power to be put on the grid, and wind farms don’t make money without tax credits. If super-expensive battery installations are used to store the energy, or new technologies in capacitors or whatever, the same problem will apply…
I really enjoyed Steyn’s hilarious linked above take down of the phony “scientific analysis” of the prominence of the views of “scientists” vs. supposed “climate denialists” in publications, this study really just a way to justify a demand that those the authors of this supposedly “scientific study” finger as “climate denialists” be denied space in print, and be forced to just “shut up.”
This supposed “scientific analysis” just as phony as the many “scientific analyses” that supposedly prove the reality of man caused “global warming”–oh, pardon me, now make that “climate change.”
The effect of massive solar installation in California is known as the “Duck Curve,” or sometimes, “The California Duck.” Lots of solar power is generated when the sun is high during the day, but as it sinks below the horizon, air conditioning loads remain strong…but little or no solar.
GE has been working on the development of turbine technology to address the efficiency of turbines when they are working at low load, and hopes to sell a lot of the upgrade kits in California:
https://www.ge.com/reports/quack-fix-this-tech-will-help-californias-gas-turbines-ride-out-the-duck-curve/
The article doesn’t mention a price for the upgrade, but I’d think power companies would be concerned about sinking too much money in gas-generation technology when we have a whole political party that pretty much wants to shut it all down.
Wait — you mean the experts are wrong about something?!
I need a minute…
It seems to me that one of the main problems is the storage of energy for later use i.e. batteries.
Some 20 years ago Congress was funding and the Department of Energy and various contractors were doing a lot of research, intended to produce batteries that would be able to store much more energy for much longer periods of time without significant loss than the then current batteries.
There was also talk of alternative storage methods such as, if I remember correctly, things like “flywheels.”
I realize that electric cars have improved–but, I’ve read, heavy and very expensive to replace–batteries. But, other than this, have there been any remarkable breakthroughs in energy storage technology?
I am not aware of any.
Here in CO there is an active movement to shut down Fracking. They are taking little bites at a time, but ultimately I believe that goal is no Fracking. They just do not understand anything about Oil and Gas being required in a modern society. Sure you may eventually not need Gas for power but is there a replacement for Oil? China would be happy to supply all the Rare Earths needed in solar panels – at a price of course.
CO is pushing for all electric cars too thinking that that will save the Planet. Again no understanding that the power plant is only a small part of the vehicle. No Oil – no tires, no plastic parts, no composite parts. No word yet on recycling the batteries.
Along with this nonsense is the push to recycle household waste. Now that China is putting a halt on taking so much of the waste it is going into landfills. Yet the push remains to recycle.
Idjts.
Snow on Pine…there has indeed been a lot of work on battery technology, and they have gotten cheaper on a capacity basis:
http://sustainableskies.org/total-operating-costs-batteries-included/
(these number *do not include* auxilliary equipment such as the inverter)
…but IMO, not cheap enough to provide anywhere near the total storage that would be required for an all-renewable (ie, intermittent) energy system. It’s not just that there are daily periods of night and/or no wind, there can be *days* of overcast or snowy skies and still winds.
See my post Freezing in the Dark:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/59310.html
Yup. My husband, with a long career in the electric power industry, favors solar units on houses in suitable climates to heat hot water. When these “green” intermittent sources are required to be connected to the electric grid, grid instability is the result.
The San Diego region has been required to provide battery storage for the grid, by law, for a long time now. This is a recent update. It is not ready yet. Big surprise. Their planned battery systems are good for about 1 hour of runtime at max power, or perhaps 2 hours at half power. Then there are the longevity, cost, and disposal issues.
“1) Hydroelectric can, but that’s one form of carbon neutral energy substituted for another.”
eventually, but after a dam is built the newly created lake which covers forested land leads to decay of all the greenery releasing both CO2 and methane
If the conversation does not include 3rd generation and 4th generation nuclear power as the energy source, it is just so much hot air blowing in the wind.
So, as I understand the current state of play, in the U.S. we only get about 5% or less of our total current national energy needs from wind, solar, and other “renewable” energy sources.
Moreover, all of the proposed renewable sources of energy–wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, tidal, etc.–made to seem in proposals and speeches by the Left as ready to replace all of our current “eeeevil” coal, petroleum, and gas as sources of energy–are still, essentially, not ready for prime time–are still too expensive, and still have technical problems that need to be solved before they will be commercially, technically, and economically viable.
Thus, this talk of just replacing our current sources with these renewables–as if these renewable sources of energy were available off the shelf, and just ready and rarin’ to go– is just bullshit, which those on the Left have to know.
In sum, all of these proposals for new, renewable, “clean” energy sources (as with their attempted takeover of our health care sector with Obamacare) are a facade, meant to cover and justify the Left’s real aim, which is for government to–sector by sector–take over our entire economy, to institute a top down “command economy,” i.e.Socialism.
The solution, of course, is to go all solar. Presto! No pollution! No lights at night, either, but that’s okay, you don’t need them. The Important People will have gasoline-powered generators or efficient and expensive batteries purchased with free government money.
Cont’d–While, in addition, there may be aesthetic objections to all of those unsightly gigantic windmill blades–I noticed that–was it the Kennedys or Jean Francois Kerry who manged to nix some wind turbines that were going to spoil their views of the ocean off their estates?–there are also more substantial objections.
Most substantial is the number of birds such rotating blades kill (very efficiently incinerating birds is also a reported accomplishment of one of the power generating systems that uses mirrors to focus the rays of the sun on a tower to heat a liquid and generate power).
Then, there are the subsonic frequency vibrations that such turbines reportedly generate, and which people who live near such installations complain give them headaches, disturb their sleep, etc.
Wind power has its problems as well:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/08/20/paying-much-more-for-much-less/
Both wind and solar need a renaming. They are not “renewable”, they are “weather dependent energy sources”. Calling them by their real name helps explain the problems inherent in that technology.
And Andy has it right on the limit of photovoltaic sources. But let’s do a little math: The average solar constant in the US from NREL is about 5 kWh/m2/day; more in the southwest, much less in the northeast. this number takes into account total hours of sunlight as well as cloud cover. That translates to about 208 W/m2. At 34% efficiency, we get about 70 W/m2, which will never be achieved as it’s a thermodynamic/quantum limit, so let’s say 30%, which is about 62 W/m2. But that’s DC power, which has to be run through an inverter to convert to 110V AC. Inverters generally have an efficiency of around 80%, so we lose another 20%, and now down to around 50 W/m2. So your 1m2 solar panel doesn’t produce enough power to light a standard 60W light bulb. I’ll let everyone else calculate the area of panels needed to run the US.
Hmmm, it is fossil fuels and nuclear reactors that supply most of the energy to mine the resources, transport those resources, refine those resources into ‘renewable and clean’ sources of electricity, and then transport turbines and solar cells to a desired location.
Ask an owner of an electric car about the power source that provides the electricity to recharge their battery and you will obseve that they are blithely unaware that is coal, natural gas, or a scary, wet their undies reactor. These people should never be allowed to vote.
Go nuclear and drill baby drill.
“Ask an owner of an electric car about the power source that provides the electricity to recharge their battery and you will obseve that they are blithely unaware that is coal, natural gas, or a scary, wet their undies reactor.”
From what I’ve seen, a lot of them understand that these are the sources NOW…but that these sources can easily be replace with wind/solar, and that only the greedy fossil fuel companies are preventing this from happening.
neo’s Steyn link and Mark Smith’s marksmith link mention Dr. Michael Mann, the climate scientist who invented the Hockey Stick and this week lost his libel suit against Dr. Tim Ball. Not only lost, but Mann had to pay Ball’s court costs!
This is a big, big deal — I almost did a Snoopy happy dance when I read of it — because Mann would not submit a single page of his climate research behind the Hockey Stick when requested for discovery. Thus, Mann lost.
Which means the Hockey Stick, if one is not in the mood for careful qualifiers, has been an outright fraud from Day One, as “deniers” charged, and Mann knew it.
While the engineering problem described in this posting is solvable, there remains a fundamental problem with all weather dependent sources of energy. Because generation of energy is not constant but the demand is, that means all such energy sources require 100% backup by traditional means. That means that whether we use it most of the time or not, we still have to build traditional power plants. All that we are saving when we are generating with wind or solar is the fuel cost. The other plants are still built and manned. So, we have doubled up on our infrastructure and maintenance costs and only saving on fuel.
The only reason that this is commercially viable is due to the government’s thumb on the scale, offering subsidies and tax credits for these technologies. Without the government’s intervention in the market, all those solar and wind farms would never have built. Also, your power bill and taxes would be lower. And, at least in this case, the environment would be cleaner.
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
}}} It seems it’s not the solar power itself that causes the problem, but the way solar and gas power work in concert.
It’s not how solar causes the problem, but solar makes its own pollution. It just hides it away by dumping its waste at the place of manufacture, rather than the place of collection.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/05/23/if-solar-panels-are-so-clean-why-do-they-produce-so-much-toxic-waste/#289a9072121c
This is IN ADDITION to the major problems you’re noting.
The thing to realize, FURTHER, is that there is substantial argument that, when you consider the whole power cycle — from mining, refinement, construction, deployment, cleaning (panels need to be cleaned regularly, or their power output goes down rapidly — 20% “dirt” can reduce power output by 50%), end-of-life recycling — that solar panels may well use up MORE power than they actually generate in their primary life span of about 15-20 years. Especially when you grasp that the kind of toxic waste that is a side product of solar panels is one of the more vile and expensive-to-“clean” byproducts of all things humans do.
Solar, like wind, is a stupid idea on multiple levels.
DF,
If anyone who be?ieves solar and wind can “easily” replace fossil fuels and nuclear power is clueless. They might as well believe extraterrestrial, highly intelligent unicorns from galaxy LBGTQXRT are coming to show us how utopia can be achieved.
Huxley,
The Mann decision was sweet justice. Therefore the msm will never report the ruling.
“If anyone who be?ieves solar and wind can “easily” replace fossil fuels and nuclear power is clueless’
The % of the population that understands energy *at all* is alarmingly small. Few journalists…including business journalists…understand the difference between a kilowatt and a kilowatt-hour, which is pretty fundamental when talking about energy storage.
LYNN HARGROVE on August 26, 2019 at 11:48 am said:
Here in CO there is an active movement to shut down Fracking. They are taking little bites at a time, but ultimately I believe that goal is no Fracking. They just do not understand anything about Oil and Gas being required in a modern society.
* * *
Some people in Colorado are reaching the point of not understanding much of anything at all.
My DiL speculates that all the increased (or at least now-visible) marijuana smoking – direct and second hand – is simply lowering the IQ of the masses en masse — which I can believe.
That also would explain San Francisco and much of California.
They will not be content to shut down fracking. After that, they will want to shut down all oil and gas. Their goal is to shut down The United States of America.
If they succeed, they will probably be be some of the first to die in the chaos, but that won’t stop them as long as they take down the rest of us with them. They are, in fact, suicidally crazy.
Kate on August 26, 2019 at 12:36 pm said:
Yup. My husband, with a long career in the electric power industry, favors solar units on houses in suitable climates to heat hot water. When these “green” intermittent sources are required to be connected to the electric grid, grid instability is the result.
* * *
My in-laws had a solar water heater in Albuquerque; it was good when it worked, but prolonged cloudy weather made for some cold showers, and it always needed repairs.
I’m fine with solar for small, local uses — and for back-up power (just got a solar-powered “generator” for emergencies) — but the problems and pollution have been know for decades to all but the readers of the Lyin’ Times and its ilk.
David Foster on August 26, 2019 at 11:56 am said:
…
See my post Freezing in the Dark:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/59310.html
* * *
Thanks for the Blast from the Past (well, coupla months ago, anyway).
I recommend the comments there to any hardcore fans of energy information.
The corollary to Freezing in the Dark is Boiling in the Daylight.
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2019/08/environmentalists-killed-more-europeans.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FromNyToIsraelSultanRevealsTheStoriesBehindTheNews+%28from+NY+to+Israel+Sultan+Reveals+The+Stories+Behind+the+News%29
David Foster Says: (in his post linked above)
March 6th, 2019 at 11:44 am
If this approach will scale up, it might be an approach to renewable railroading in the AOC world:
https://www.facebook.com/markpark1111
* * *
Spoiler: it’s a hampster.
I see that Biden is now saying that his renewable energy plan will offer a $25 dollar an hour wage to those working in this field.
Is this bribe sufficient, or should Biden go higher?
See https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/08/biden-promises-25-an-hour-minimum-wage-for-renewable-energy-workers-video/
P.S.–With him saying that “I’m not going nuts” at an afternoon rally yesterday, after he couldn’t remember where he gave a speech that morning, I think that his accumulating “senior moments'” are shortly going to force Biden out of the race.
It is just increasingly–and more glaringly obvious by the day–that Biden–if he ever did have it, no longer has the mental capacity to perform the extremely high pressure, memory and decision dependent, man-killing job of being President.
“I think that his accumulating “senior moments’” are shortly going to force Biden out of the race.”
The media and party won’t give him the cover they provided for Hillary’s manifest health problems.
She was never going to be anything but a figure-head president.
Head of a hydra, in fact, which is why the Democrats have to be shut out of national office for a couple of more decades.
I think that the MSM’s array of exculpatory excuses such as “that’s just Biden,” and “no biggie, he’s been doing this for years,” or even the most recent one that making such incessant gaffs “just means he’s human,” and somehow even, “more likeable,” just ain’t gonna cut it.
Do we want forgetful, confused, disoriented, stuttering, close to drooling Uncle Ned in charge of our Nuclear Weapons, making decisions of War and Peace, trying to face down enemy leaders, trying to understand and negotiate complex international agreements?
I think it’s getting more obvious by the day that Biden is just not up to the task, and should gracefully retire from the field, to retreat into silence and well-deserved obscurity.