California Adds 8,600 MW New Renewable Power: Meets RPS Goals

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://cleantechnica.com/2009/09/08/california-at-8600-new-megawatts-of-renewable-power-meeting-rps-goals/

California Adds 8,600 MW New Renewable Power: Meets RPS Goals

Written by Susan Kraemer
Published on September 8th, 2009

Since the Renewable Portfolio Standard began in 2002, the California Public Utilities Commission has now approved contracts for more than http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/NR/rdonlyres/EBEEB616-817C-4FF6-8C07-2604CF7DDC43/0/Third_Quarter_2009_RPS_Legislative_Report_2.pdf">8,600 megawatts of new renewable energy, nearly all of it solar, signed with the state’s largest utilities. Most of the state’s renewable energy already on the grid till now has been wind power.

As of June, the CPUC total was 8,334 megawatts, but in August CPUC approved PG&E contracts with http://www.brightsourceenergy.com/">BrightSource totalling an additional 1,310 megawatts.

It’s an unusual contract. PG&E agreed to pay a higher electricity rate if Brightsource fails to secure a Department of Energy loan guarantee to help finance the construction of the two solar plants in the Mojave desert, per http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/a-rare-peek-at-green-energy-economics/#more-21285">Todd Woody at the NYT. And in return, Brightsource will pay PG&E royalties based on the worldwide sales and licensing of http://www.brightsourceenergy.com/technology">BrightSource’s solar Power Tower technology.

…

At just the half year mark, another 1,574 megawatts were approved, and with the additional contracts from http://www.brightsourceenergy.com/">BrightSource, the total is now 8,600 Megawatts approved. The CPUC is still reviewing 13 more signed contracts which would add another 5,941 MW.

…

[madokie]

1. Another step in the right direction

Solar, wind and geo is the way to go.

[NNadir]

2. What a load of happy horse shit.

There is NOT ONE "renewables will save us" advocate who can tell the difference between power and energy, and at this point, the fraud can only be deliberate.

The fact is that 8,600 Mega"watt" contracts are, well, soothsaying on one hand, and were they not more than soothsaying, they would ignore the fact that no solar facility on the planet has ever managed 30% reliability, in fact, most of them have trouble making 15%.

A 8600 Mega"watt" facility that runs 20% of the time is actually the equivalent of continuous plant that is equivalent to a single 1700 MW plant, the environmental and thermodynamic costs of either back up or spinning reserve not included.

Even were it not soothsaying - and it is - after 50 years of solar blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, a 1700 MW plant isn't even as big as the single dangerous natural gas plant at Moss Landing: http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/st_profiles/sept02ca.xls">The Ten Largest Power Plants in California.

The number of "renewables will save us" anti-nukes who give a rat's ass about the fact that there is no means of collecting, containing, or storing (for eternity) the dangerous fossil fuel waste dumped by the Moss Landing Power plant is same as it has been all these years here: Zero.

In fact, in the real world, California is committing to gas, gas, gas, gas, gas and then more gas, just like the rest of the US.


If Solar and Wind are so great, how come California's building so much dangerous natural capacity?

Even if one ignores the fact that a renewable wind or solar plant cannot approach its nameplate capacity as closely as a dangerous natural gas plant, new name plate dangerous gas capacity coming on line as in new, exceeds wind and solar combined by better than a factor of 2.5.

Nationally the picture is even more graphic:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat2p5.html">Planned US Capacity Additions, 2008-2012, by energy source.

In fact, in both fabulous "renewables will save us" percent talk, the general trend for renewable energy in California has been to decline, and not rise, although I fully expect some "renewables will save us" guy to show up and announce that http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/st_profiles/sept05ca.xls">11.8 > 12.6

None of this will prevent the gas, whoops, I mean the "renewables will save us" industry from doing anything other than sticking its head in the sand, yelling "Nyah, Nyah, Nyah!" and announcing their great "victory."

Heckuva job:

[AlecBGreen]

3. thats me

'There is NOT ONE "renewables will save us" advocate who can tell the difference between power and energy..."

I dont get the difference b/w watts, joules and watt-hours. Ive read several explanations but it just wont sink in. Can you offer any insight? I teach Earth Science & Biology but for some reason energy, electricity & magnetism are just like foreign languages to me. They just dont "click" like molecular bio or plate tectonics... Thanks.

Alec

[NNadir]

4. The fundemental unit of energy is the joule.

Power is a unit of energy divided by time. If one uses 100 joules over 10 seconds, one is using 10 watts.

Now, a unit that produces 1 kilowatt or 1000 J/sec for one hour (3600 seconds) produces 1 kw-hr or 3,600,000 Joules.

A system (like a solar PV system that produces its peak power rating (and this is always what they refer to in solar hype) cannot produce this power at night, obviously.

However, if it produces 1000 W of power for 10 minutes at noon on a cloudless day, the "solar will save us" crowd call it a 1000W solar cell, even though from sun down to sun rise it's a zero watt solar cell. A system that produces 1000 wats for one hour and no where else has an average daily power of 1000*3600/86400 = 41 watts. (There are 86400 seconds in a day.)

The base way is to integrate the power of a 24 day, 86400 seconds and otain the energy.

I have done this type of analysis using live data from a large expensive solar installation in Massacusetts on another website:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/3/1/703151/-Live,-From-the-Massachusetts-Museum-of-Contemporary-Art:-The-Solar-System.">Live, From the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art: The Solar System.

For this system it was found that it operated to produce about 10.6% as much energy as a continuous plant with the same name plate capacity.

If you're going to teach science you absolutely must become familiar with these things. It's very important that the next generation be fully equipped, given that we will have left them with such a disaster out of ignorance and self-delusion.

[AlecBGreen]

6. Thanks for the explanation

What hangs me up is:

If you use 500 watts that could mean anything.... It could mean you used 500 joules for one second or 10 million joules for roughly 5.5 hours. I guess wattage just indicates a rate, like speed. It could be an instantaneous snapshot of your current velocity or it could be an average over an extended time.

I think I just have a mental block. Some of my students are the same way about basic math. When you ask them a math question, they instantly go on the defensive with "I dont know any math!" Its not like Im asking them anything difficult, they have just decided, for wahtever reason, that they dont "do" math. I dont know why, but electricity & magnetism are the same way with me. Maybe I was shocked as a baby :shrug:

[OKIsItJustMe]

7. "…the difference between power and energy…"

Watt is a measure of rate of energy usage or transmission. (AKA "Power.")
Hour is a measure of time.
Watt-hour is a measure of energy used. (So are Joules and BTU's, and they have the advantage of not having that confusing "hour" term.)

A 100 watt light bulb, lit for one hour will use 100 watt-hours (360,000 Joules or about 340 BTU's.) The same 100 watt light bulb, lit for one minute will use 1/60th of a watt-hour…


Think of a car:
"I'm driving 60 miles per hour!" (Rate of travel.)
"I drove for one hour." (Time)
"I drove 60 miles." (Distance traveled.)
The equivalent to "watt-hours" in this case would be 60MPH-hours.


If your rate of travel varies (as it usually does) then the calculation isn't as clear.

---

A man needs to drive 10 miles to work each morning, on a highway, where he averages 60 miles an hour. He allows himself 6 minutes in which to do it.

One morning, traffic is slow, and he travels the first mile at 10 miles an hour. How fast will he need to drive the remaining 5 miles to get to work on time?

[tinrobot]

5. And how many gigajoules of nuclear went online in California last year?

[NickB79]

8. How much of this has actually been constructed to date?

The fact that these are just approved contracts is worrying; contracts can be canceled depending on economic conditions.