San Jose to Welcome Underwriters Laboratories' Solar Testing Facility

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/City-Of-San-Jose-California-876227.html

Jul 07, 2008 15:04 ET

San Jose to Welcome Underwriters Laboratories' Solar Testing Facility

Largest Site of Its Kind in North America to Provide Photovoltaic Module Testing and Certification

SAN JOSE, CA--(Marketwire - July 7, 2008) -

WHAT:   On July 14, San Jose, California will welcome the opening of the
        new Underwriters Laboratories Photovoltaic Technology Center of
        Excellence, a 20,000 square-foot facility intended to increase
        testing capacity for the renewable energy industry and get
        UL-Listed photovoltaic (PV) products to market faster.

...

BACKGROUND:

Underwriters Laboratories (UL) decided to develop its testing facility in San Jose, the largest of its kind in North America to date, to partner with the growing community of solar start-ups and existing companies who are bringing new technology, including thin-film PV, concentrated solar power and other cell technologies into mainstream production.

UL's decision to establish their Photovoltaic Technology Center of Excellence in the City of San Jose was based largely upon a foundation consisting of strong support from City government and the many surrounding businesses dedicated to researching and developing progressive renewable energy technologies. Their decision also complements Governor Schwarzenegger's renewable energy direction for the State of California.

The move by UL will also help San Jose to help achieve its Green Vision plan, an aggressive set of goals to enable San Jose to lead the nation in becoming a model of how cities can be environmental responsible and creating economic opportunity at the same time.

...

[Canuckistanian]

1. Congratulations, San Jose

Nice to see them on the cutting edge of technology.

Again.

[NNadir]

2. Just don't drink the water.

FAIRCHILD SEMICONDUCTOR CORP. (SOUTH SAN JOSE PLANT)

Region 9: Superfund

Description: The 22-acre Fairchild Semiconductor Corp. (South San Jose Plant) site is a former semiconductor manufacturing facility. Operations were conducted at the site from 1977 until 1983. Manufacturing operations required the use and storage of industrial solvents. In 1981, Fairchild discovered that an underground organic solvent waste tank had failed, resulting in soil and on- and off-site groundwater contamination by a mixture of solvents. Contamination exceeding drinking water standards was discovered in a public supply well located approximately 1,800 feet downgradient from the site. The well subsequently was plugged and abandoned. Fairchild has been investigating and cleaning up soil and groundwater pollution at the facility since contamination was first detected in 1981. This is one of 28 NPL sites in the South Bay Area of San Francisco. Facilities at these sites have used a variety of toxic chemicals, primarily chlorinated organic solvents. Although these sites are listed separately, the EPA intends to combine cleanup activities at some of the sites as part of an area-wide approach to the contamination. The City of San Jose has a population of approximately 750,000. The Great Oaks Water Company provides drinking water to 18,500 connections in southern San Jose, including the site area. Drinking water is obtained from groundwater production wells, several of which are located in the area adjacent to and downgradient from the site. There are 25 known private wells in the area surrounding the site. All but three of these wells have been sealed or properly abandoned. Of these three wells, two are used for agricultural irrigation and one is used by Fairchild as a monitoring well.

There's nothing like a "properly abandoned" well, I guess.

The semiconductor industry - that would be the same industry that makes solar cells - was lured to California by California officials on the grounds it was a "clean" industry.

The groundwater below those plants will never be clean again.

[Canuckistanian]

3. Fairchild?

Damn, that's too bad.

Why haven't any tech workers spoken out before?

[NNadir]

4. I actually know a woman on another website where I write who swears that

her cancer, as well as that of many of her friends, derive from her status as a pioneer in the semiconductor industry.

That's anecdotal, of course, but it is well known from years of research that the crap in the water under San Jose is carcinogenic.

I mean there is a reason that the city is a superfund site.

I have just finished a diary on another website that points out according to Swiss life cycle analysts, that in <em>Switzerland</em> it would take 50 years for a solar cell to pay back its external cost of solar cells in toxicity benefit.

Life Cycle Analysis of Solar (And Wind) Power in Switzerland


(The case applies to Switzerland - and probably by extension Germany - because the capacity utilization of solar energy in Switzerland is rarely 10% or higher. There are places in the United States where the weather allows capacity utilization of solar facilities that is as high as 25%, but very rarely higher.)

The main reason this is missed in the solar case, is that solar energy is a terrible failure and has never managed to work on an exajoule scale anywhere on the planet. I assure you that if solar energy ever gets to an exajoule, they'll be lots of people suddenly complaining that it's not "clean."

[kristopher]

7. What kind of a person cites their own blog

What kind of a person cites their own blog as some sort of meaningful source? When you go there all you'll find is the same confused ranting that is displayed on DU.

But please, do visit and confirm.

[NNadir]

8. Well, I note that you have zero comments on the contents of journal article.

but, with your ever falsetto gravitas, you demand - and yuppie brats with poor educations are always demanding this or that - to know "What kind of a person cites their own blog as some sort of meaningful source?"

I do.

The work contains references, and I discuss them there.

I note that there are very few anti-nukes here who cite references unless they are cherry picked from the self referential miasma of anti-nuke websites.

Now.

If you are here to assert that it does not say in the International Journal of Life Cycle Analysis, Vol 10, Issue 1 on page 30 in the paper running from page 24-34 that...

Valuating the impact with the method of ecological scarcity (Umweltbelastungspunkte - UBP) gives an environmental payback time of about 25 years (Brand et al. 1998, Frischknecht et al. 2004c), while the pay-back time evaluated with Ecoindicator 99 (H,A) is slightly higher than for the energy demand.
With human toxicity (Guinée et al. 2001) as an indicator, it might be even higher than 50 years and thus longer than the expected life time. The reasons for these large differences between the selected LCIA methodologies are manifold: in EI99 (H,A), the consumption of fossil resources is considered as very important, but not so important in ecological scarcity and not included in the human toxicity category indicator; the PV chain produces higher emissions of human toxic species than the gas chain.

...you are free to register such a denial. But note that registering such a denial would involve reading the paper and understanding its contents.

Since I did do the work of reading the full article - which is not available to the general public but must be obtained either at scientific libraries or by subscription - I feel absolutely free to refer to that work.

On the other hand, in all of the drooling discourse I get to see from the newest "solar will save us" barons here, there is no evidence that any member of that set either reads or understands, or cares about the contents of this literature.

Ignorance thrives on ignorance.

You seem to think that everytime you drool invective on a keyboard, my response should be to do research and rise to your self declared "challenge."

You have apparently mistaken me for someone who has a shred of respect for you, and that's hardly my fault. I have never represented that I regard you as a force with which to be reckoned. On the contrary, I have consistently indicated that I have a very low opinion of you, that I think you are lazy and muddledheaded. (Note this is my own opinion - I'm sure that some of your fellow equally pathetic anti-nukes think highly of you: That's how circle jerks work.)

I have already covered the material of expressing my opinion in a blog for which I take full responsibility. I am proud of me my opinion there, into which many thousands of hours of study and research are invested.

I do not owe lazy people anything, particularly people who make pompous assinine pronouncements of "fact" while they are too lazy to cite references, demonstrate knowledge of general scientific consensus or have a shred of intellectual credibility or, on a deeper level moral credibility?

Maybe you think I should rewrite a completely original text every time some dumb anti-nuke drools lazy crap or makes a dumb googled link to some website as stupid as he is.

I don't agree.

I work hard to fight ignorance. It's not an easy task, because ignorance has a way of pepetuating itself.

Now, if you have a problem with the contents of the paper, you are free to submit a conflicting paper to the publishers of the International Journal of Life Cycle Analysis. Given what I've seen you write here though, I am certain that it will never get past the reviewers. So it should be.

[kristopher]

9. Not the paper, your typical misuse of its contents

...The photovoltaic plants in operation in Switzerland show an
average yearly electricity production of 819 kWh per kWp.
(Average yearly production in US is 1800kWh - K.)

...An important yardstick for the assessment of renewable en-
ergy systems is the estimation of the energy and/or environ-
mental pay-back time. This describes the time until environ-
mental impacts from the production of the plant have levelled
out due to avoiding resource uses and/or emissions of a con-
ventional reference system that produces the same amount
of electricity. Here, we consider a modern natural gas-fired,
gas combined cycle power plant as the reference system
(Dones et al. 2004). It is assumed that the use of photo-
voltaic power plants can avoid the installation of such a
facility.... the pay-back time for the indicators
non-renewable and non-renewable plus hydro cumulative
energy demand. This time is between 3 and 6 years for the
different PV plants. This means that the energy use for pro-
ducing the photovoltaic plants is as high as the energy use
for the operation of the gas power plant during 3 to 6 years.
Thus, it is five to ten times shorter than the expected life
time of the photovoltaic power plants."

The widespread deployment of PV in the US would be aimed at eliminating COAL. The article acknowledges the sensitivity of their method to the assumption of the energy source it is displacing .

"...Differences for the situation in other countries,
in comparison to the data modelled for Switzerland, are
mainly due to different solar irradiation. It should be con-
sidered that the inventory may not be valid for wafers and
panels produced outside of Europe, because production tech-
nologies and power mixes for production processes might
not be the same. For the modelling of a specific power plant
or power plant mixes outside of Switzerland, it is advisable
to consider at least the annual yield (kWh/kWp) and if possible
also the actual size of the plant in square metres...."

As for your assertion regarding the environmental consequences of PV, here is the full statement from your source. Note the difference from your cherry picked version:
(continues from above quote - K)
"...This picture changes if emissions are taken into account.
Valuating the impact with the method of ecological scarcity
(Umweltbelastungspunkte - UBP) gives an environmental pay-
back time of about 25 years (Brand et al. 1998, Frischknecht
et al. 2004c), while the pay-back time evaluated with Eco-
indicator 99 (H,A) is slightly higher than for the energy de-
mand. With human toxicity (Guinée et al. 2001) as an indica-
tor, it might be even higher than 50 years and thus longer than
the expected life time. The reasons for these large differences
between the selected LCIA methodologies are manifold: in
EI99 (H,A), the consumption of fossil resources is considered
as very important, but not so important in ecological scarcity
and not included in the human toxicity category indicator; the
PV chain produces higher emissions of human toxic species
than the gas chain. The outcome of such a comparison is in-
fluenced by the choice of the reference system, on the one
hand, and by the indicator, on the other. The analysis of the environmental impacts with different
LCIA methods shows that it is quite important to include
process-specific emissions of the production chain into ac-
count. It is necessary to evaluate all types of environmental
impacts with different (midpoint and endpoint) LCIA meth-
odologies, if photovoltaic power plants are to be compared
with other energy systems. The results of such a comparison
are quite dependent on the choice of LCIA methodology.
The approach in the ecoinvent database for dealing with
multi-output processes has several advantages. The alloca-
tion is done in a fully transparent way, because all alloca-
tion factors are reported. The LCIs of all co-products in the
database are fully consistent. If necessary, allocation factors
may be changed and LCI results can be recalculated."



Here is a similar analysis proposal with summary of results conducted in Ann Arbor MI. http://css.snre.umich.edu/main.php?control=detail_proj&pr_project_id=76

It's unfortunate that the chart showing the payback periods against fossil and nuclear isn't able to be posted here.

[XemaSab]

5. Don't worry

San Jose won't build on polluted brownfields. They will build on virgin pastureland south of the city. :eyes;

[NNadir]

6. Oh good. I feel better.

I wonder if any of the people who are always running around tracking every atom from Hanford and it's motion in groundwater are also chasing every molecule of vinyl chloride under San Jose.

I could be wrong about this, but it does seem possible that some of that groundwater just might make it to those pasturelands before the bulldozer gets to them.

[kristopher]

10. So let me get this straight.

You point to the defective 1980 storage of harmful chemicals as an inevitable result of the harm associated with PV technology, yet you insist that there are no risks associated with the storage of wastes from the thousands of nuclear plants you'd like to build?

Some people might find that a perverse piece of reasoning...

[Tesha]

11. You're opposed to *EVERYTHING* except nuclear fission energy, aren't you?

Here you are on this thread deriding solar power.

On another thread, you're completely discounting
any possibility of carbon sequestration and storage.

Recently, you were elsewhere deriding the wave-powered
boat and seeming not to understand its technology, even
though the article explained pretty well how it turned
the up-and-down motion of waves into longitudinal thrust.

You're a one-trick-pony, and an embarrassment to people
trying to design a safe, sustainable future.

Tesha

[NNadir]

13. Pretty much.

I'm big into external cost calculations.

I believe that the world is impoverished and must maximize the best proved form of energy.

[kristopher]

14. More likely you're in the tank with a dead stock pick.

[NNadir]

15. Um, let me guess yuppie? This is supposed to mean something?

Let me tell you something kiddie - and I'm sure this escapes your little brat reality - but people still do things for ethical reasons.

Now why don't you whine about how you like personal transportation or some other pathetic bullshit about how you're going to maintain your continuous 12,000 watt life style with a bunch of solar cells and batteries.

What a twit.

[kristopher]

16. Yes, some people do things for ethical reasons.

In fact, most things people do have some sort of ethical base.

Watch any deviant try to explain their actions and they invariably consider themselves to be a "good person" doing the best they can. Peddling the crap you do about nuclear energy with lies, misinformation, false argumentation and invective and then claiming to be doing it as some sort of ethical crusade is exactly the type of moral vacuousness that enables the architects of the Iraqi invasion to believe the million plus Iraqis that died are just the price of freedom.

How much does the NEI pay you for the 20,000+ posts you've made on their behalf here?

[One_Life_To_Give]

12. San Jose is HQ of UL's Western Division

With additional offices in Camas, WA and Brea, CA. This probably has as much to do with ease of management oversight and Public Affairs as location of technically competent resources.