Solar Powered Car

[PADemD]

How hard and expensive would it be to convert a car to solar power? My car sits in the company parking lot all day soaking up the sun. Why not put it to good use?

[mahatmakanejeeves]

1. Prohibitively

.

[NNadir]

2. First let's do a back of the envelope calculation about the solar energy

incident on your car.

Suppose you had a Toyota Prius that could be charged directly with solar power.

We are told that a Prius is 67.9 inches wide and 175 inches long. Converting this to metric and ignoring the fact that some of the car is winshield and rear window we find that the car has, as a flat projection, 7.6 square meters of area.

http://www.toyota.com/prius/specs.html

The mean solar power reaching the earth's surface during daylight hours is about 680 Watts per square meter, according to this calculation at Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth's_energy_budget

But let's say you live in a sunny area that does better than average and receives 1000 W m^-2.

Suppose you have a super duper CIGS solar cell and get 15% efficiency.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell

And let us suppose also that you live in an area that gets 8 hours a day on average of 1000 W m^-2.

Since there are 86400 seconds in a day, when you do the calculation, you find that the energy that could be generated on an average day is about 22 MJ (megajoules). A gallon of gasoline contains about 132 MJ of energy:

http://bioenergy.ornl.gov/papers/misc/energy_conv.html

Thus you could recover enough energy to eliminate 0.15 gallons of gasoline each day.

I hope this helps you with your decision as to whether you should so invest.

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[NNadir]

6. Well maybe you can appeal to Skinner to investigate me.

I am simply doing a calculation.

If you have any problem with the numbers please point them out. I'm sorry that you don't like the numbers, but they are just numbers. Note I did not tell the poster what to do, I simply helped him clarify the issue.

I suspect that your call for an investigation reminds me of a historical precedent in which the Pope didn't like Galileo's numbers.

If you are convinced that you can refute what I say, why don't you tell me all about your solar powered car. I'm sure this would be more illustrative than my use of numbers.

As for any agenda I might have, I think it's pretty damn clear. The clearest representations of it I have displayed in my journal which can be accessed by any DU member at any time. It involves global climate change.

[skids]

9. OK.

(EDIT: ...to the pointing out problems with the numbers part. I think we all know that NNadir doesn't require investigation at this point, since he's a well established grumpy old man :-) )

Converting this to metric and ignoring the fact that some of the car is winshield and rear window

Which was good of you, because there are indeed solar cells that double as window tint (XSunX) though to be fair they are less efficient than opaque cells and not really commercially available for automotive use yet.

Suppose you have a super duper CIGS solar cell and get 15% efficiency.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell

...which would be the correct type of cell to use in this case.

And let us suppose also that you live in an area that gets 8 hours a day on average of 1000 W m-2.

And 8 hours is about the amount of time a commuter car spends sitting in the sunny parking lot at work.

Since there are 86400 seconds in a day, when you do the calculation, you find that the energy that could be generated on an average day is about 22 MJ (megajoules). A gallon of gasoline contains about 132 MJ of energy:

http://bioenergy.ornl.gov/papers/misc/energy_conv.html

Good so far. Though why you always insist on converting both sides down to Joules is beyond me. Watts are SI units, too, and so are hours, and everyone is pretty comfortable with watt-hours.

7 square meters * 1000 Watts/m * 8 hours * 0.15efficiency = 8.4KWh

...and a gallon of gasoline is 125000 BTU for us old-fashioned non-SI folks * 0.29 Wh/BTU = 36.25Kwh

Thus you could recover enough energy to eliminate 0.15 gallons of gasoline each day.

8.4/36.25 gets me abot 0.23, but given that this is a high-side estimate we can go with 0.18,sure.

But there's the snag -- what the definition of the red "is" is, to quote our beloved Bill, above.

If you intend to use it as a heat source to keep yourself warm in the winter, a gallon of gasoline burned (assuming no flu loss) is indeed the same 36.25KWh of electricity pumped through a space heater.

If you intend to put it through an internal combustion engine, even one in a hybrid with its optimizations, a gallon of gas represents about 40% to 60% of that value in "useful energy" due to energy loss in the internal combustion process. That's comparing it to electricity stored in a Li-ion pack which has a "useful energy" in the mid to high 90%'s round trip. Let's say since it is a nice round number, and since we are probably talking about a PHEV here, one gallon of gas is about 20KW of battery pack "useful energy" equivalent.

Which means that each day one can save on the order of 1/3 of one gallon of gasoline. At current prices, about a dollar, if one views it as a pure economics problem. A dollar a day will pay for 7 square meters of solar panels, at current prices, in about half the lifetime (assuming 10 years) of a car. As we know all market indications point towards a rise in gas prices, and a fall in solar prices (which are just now starting to plateau from that temporary silicon feedstock shortfall.)

But let's take this beyond the pocketbook shall we? Unfortunately the census bureau doesn't do it by mileage, but we can tell from their data that the average commuter spends about 26 minutes a day travelling to and from work. Now a PHEV owner would have charged his car at night off normally-wasted baseline power for the morning commute, so we divide that in two: 13 minutes. Even were we to assume that the average commuter spent those 13 minutes zipping along above the speed limit at 75mph and getting a meager (for a hybrid) 40mpg, not stuck in a traffic jam, they would use about 0.4 gallons of gas on the trip back home from the sunny parking lot.

And since the car is parked, why restrict ourselves to solar panels that are hard-cast into the car? There's plenty of room in a parking space for roll-out panels to be extended, perhaps even automatically for the luxury models.

The only major flaw in this idea is exposure of expensive panels to parking-lot vandalism by jealous or contrarian co-workers.

[NNadir]

11. Well I like your calculation. It's well done, but I don't believe the

thermal efficiency of a gasoline engine, even in a cool hybrid, is anything like 40% -60%.

However I recall that some time ago you told us about thermocouples - an idea that I misunderstood at the time and about which I was characteristically rude. (So here's a mea culpa.) This sort of approach would represent something almost like a combined cycle system in a hybrid car.

If you care to refresh our memories on this score that would be interesting.

Here are the usual caveats about these ideas: They are for people who can afford them. No one would object to a person spending money to have a really cool solar system to charge his or her electric or hybrid electric car. The jealous co-worker caveat you apply is about as telling as anything.

The fact is that with all of these wonderful ideas there is still not an exajoule of solar electrical energy produced on earth. There is a reason for that, and it's not that solar prices are coming down.

The reason I use joules is because that is the standard unit of energy. The watt-hour is a derived unit, requiring the use of a unit of power, the watt, Js^-1 times a unit of time 3600 s hr^-1. This is a little convoluted, I think, or maybe not merely convoluted so much as tortured.

The link I provided gave the energy content of gasoline in MJ/gallon. Personally, I would prefer MJ/liter, but that's not how Americans think, if in fact they think at all. Of course, in solar-will-save-us parlance watts are generally confused with units of energy. Ninety-five percent of the grand renewable announcements we see refer to watts without any information whatsoever on capacity utilization. But world energy demand is routinely reported in exajoules or, unfortunately in the US, Quads, quadrillion BTU's.

However, I have made an important error that you have pointed out. The efficiency of the conversion ignored the relative thermal efficiency of the different devices employed, the battery and the electric motor as opposed to an internal combustion engine. On this score I stand corrected.

So let's return to your contention about the less than egalitarian solar powered car. It was 110F in Pierre, South Dakota today. Are you going to tell me that the end of the "temporary" silicon shortage which you now announce has put solar prices on a downward track is going to save the world? Personally, under the circumstances I have no objection whatsoever to rich people indulging in the solar game so they can be really cool in front of their co-workers and neighbors. I am for anything that is not fossil fuels, anything at all. If everyone on earth showed up with a roll-out solar system I certainly would not be wailing and moaning or in tears.

My beef, to reiterate, is with those poor thinkers who argue that the goal of producing solar energy should be to replace nuclear energy. If this isn't ass backwards, I don't know what is. This is very, very poor thinking indeed, since solar PV is still to the extent that it exists, a intermittent, and (sorry to say) trivial energy source. Not 1 exajoule of this energy has ever been produced in a single year on earth. World energy demand is still 440 exajoules, and many people don't have access to enough energy.

When I look at the front page of www.solarbuzz.com the price/time slope does not look negative to me yet. Note that www.solarbuzz.com is not a "mean old NNadir" website. On the contrary, it is a pro-solar site maintained on behalf of the solar industry.

Here is an excerpt solarbuzz report on grid connections:

Meanwhile, US based PV companies raised a total of $1.1bn over the last 18 months to support their growth.

The delivery of a 290 MW market by 2010 will require some key political and funding hurdles to be overcome. The Upside Case in the market forecast section of the report contemplates a market size of 390MW by 2010. This outcome will require the successful delivery of a full industry and marketing agenda.

http://www.solarbuzz.com/USGridConnect2006.htm

I can't imagine what "political hurdles" solar energy must overcome. As far as I can tell everyone, even mean old NNadir, has any objection to the installation of solar capacity. Everyone is for it.

Now, let's play the watt/joule confusion game for a moment and pretend that this 390 MW of putative solar watts is the same as physicist watts, physicist watts, of course, being Js^-1 the same as they have been for many years. This entire nationwide installation that is hoped for if the key political and funding hurdles can be addressed is one half of one unit at the coal fired Mohave Generating station in Laughlin Nevada.

http://www.sce.com/PowerandEnvironment/PowerGeneration/MohaveGenerationStation/

Last week more than 100 people died in California from the heat. (If they'd been killed in a nuclear event at San Onofre, they would be discussed for decades, but they will be forgotten by October.) I have no idea how many died in Europe last week but in 2003, according to this website, also not a "mean old NNadir" website, 35,000 people died from the heat.

http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update29.htm

So if you want me to jump up and down with wild enthusiasm about the cool car that will be so envy inspiring as to induce vandalism because of the cool automated roll out solar cells, please excuse me if I decline on the grounds that I am in mourning.

[skids]

12. Thermoelectrics and Thermophotovoltaics for autos.

Of course I don't need to explain the principle of heat recovery.

Current thermoelectrics available for sale now run in the $8 to $10/W range and are not especially efficient. I think we figured out that a heat recovery system using these units would only make financial sense for high-duty vehicles like taxis or suburban odd-lot delivery (e.g. pizza and auto parts.)

http://tellurex.com/online.html
http://hi-z.com/websit40.htm

Thermoelectrics based on quantum wells could drastically alter that equation for the better, with double or more the efficiency, but are still on lab benches.

Thermophotovoltaics are also hard to find (I haven't even bothered to google for them) but those would be used a replacement prime mover, wherby the ICE is removed entirely and replaced by a gas burner to produce a system that is for the most part solid state (minus the fuel of course) and at current technology levels only rivals the efficiency of an ICE, but will likely improve further. Also, however, still science fiction when it comes to mass production.

Now as to solarbuzz, you'll note that I used the word "plateau." That doesn't mean decline, it means that the solar market has now priced in the Si shortage. (I may be making the call on this early, admittedly)

However, the overall number of price movements is some way off the peak seen in April and May of this year. Most of the upward movement occured in the US this month, whereas European price adjustments were minimal.

Overall, this left the US index up another 4 cents per Watt to $5.44 per Watt, while the European index was left unchanged at Eu5.82 per Wat

http://www.solarbuzz.com/Moduleprices.htm

A 4 cent (1% roughly) rise in U.S. prices is just inflation being priced in as our dollar circles the toilet bowl.

Next month will, knock on wood, establish a new steady-price "trend." Admittedly again that's speculation but I'm satisfied just to wait the month out rather than argue that point. How long the steady prices will last before the price decline starts is unknown, but nobody in-the-know seriously doubts that will happen at this point.

Now, on to production capacity. The error you make in choosing those numbers is that those are only the "grid connect" portion of the market. It totally neglects the contribution of solar in off-grid and power-offload applications, where grid feedback is not used and the effect on the grid is merely to reduce the usage of it.

Unfortunately accurate numbers for U.S. based installations are very difficult to come by.

Instead, we can look at worldwide production:

http://www.iea-pvps.org/isr/31.htm

...though the figures are now 1.5 years old I think that page gives a very excellent overview.

So per year the solar industry is adding 1200Wp (solar peak watts, or as you prefer "magic solar watts") which you can divide by about 3 to arrive at an approximation to a baseline power facility.

Since the Mohave plant was built using 1971 dollars, it doesn't serve as a convenient example. Just as an aside:

Its upcoming decision on whether to invest in expanding the Intermountain Power Project is likely to be intertwined with the fate of another coal plant, the Mohave Generation Station in Laughlin, Nevada. Mohave -- owned jointly by Southern California Edison, the department, the Salt River Project, and Nevada Power Co. -- has operated since 1971. The federal Environmental Protection Agency is requiring the operators to reduce the plant's sulfur dioxide emissions by 85 percent by 2006 because it diminishes visibility at the Grand Canyon. It is the single biggest source of the acidic emissions in the western United States, producing about 41,000 tons of the pollutant a year.

The 273-mile slurry pipeline that supplies the plant with coal from the Black Mesa Mine is depleting the local aquifer of the Navajo and Hopi Indians and the mine itself faces eventual depletion. Given the prospect of having to internalize some of the costs of the pollution and resource depletion, instead the department and other Mohave plant owners may simply walk away and close the plant in 2005. This would cut the department's capacity by 158 megawatts, which is 10 percent of the plant's total 1,580-megawatt capacity.

http://www.alternet.org/story/17504/

Let's instead look at a coal power plant to be built in "2006 dollars", if we can even use full years as dollar qualifiers anymore now that things have turned volatile.

None of those match the scale and impact of The Desert Rock Energy Project, though. Proposed by Sithe Global Power, the $2.2 billion, 1,500 mega-watt coal-fired plant would sit on 580 acres on the Navajo Reservation at the mouth of the BHP mine, south of Shiprock, NM. It would supply power to Las Vegas and Phoenix \u2013 both up-wind cities -- via a new powerline, the construction of which, critics charge, would make sure the region is a major coal-burning region for at least the next century.

http://www.newwest.net/index.php/main/article/5571/

Suppose investors instead put that money into a companies like nanosolar or evergreen, allowing them to start bigger. Currently for nanosolar 100 million seems to be the price tag to break ground on a facility that has a final capacity (likely a decade out) of 430MWp/year. Neglecting for a moment the realities of scaling, 2.2 billion dollars would allow construction of 22 such plants, in a decade's time producing the baseline "equivalent" of two Desert Rock Energy Projects every year. Projected mass-manufacturing cost -- in the $1/Wp range.

Quite a bit, it turns out. Three years later, things are looking much brighter. In the next six weeks, NanoSolar plans to begin building a factory in the San Francisco Bay area that could pump out as many as 200 million solar cells\u2014semiconductors that convert sunlight to electricity\u2014each year. That will be enough to fill 2 million average-sized panels.

The company expects to assemble the cells into more than 1 million solar panels annually in another factory near Berlin that it plans to open next year. It figures that making its panels will cost as little as 10% of what it costs to turn out current panels, eventually putting them within financial reach for lots more consumers.

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2006/tc20060626_804634.htm?chan=technology_technology+index+page_science

(Technical note -- the businessweek article is confused onthe cell details -- these are CIGS.)

Or it could finance the start of again about 20 or so Ever-Qs, a slightly less promising technology but one which is further underway (read: actually producing bulk quantities now as we speak) producing by 2010 the equivalent of 1 and 1/3rd Desert Rock Energy Projects each year.

In the String Ribbon technique, two high temperature strings are pulled vertically through a shallow silicon melt, and the molten silicon spans and freezes between the strings (diagram below). The process is continuous: long strings are unwound from spools; the melt is replenished; and the silicon ribbon is cut to length for further processing, without interrupting growth. This advantage in material efficiency means String Ribbon yields over twice as many solar cells per pound of silicon as conventional methods. Additionally, the resulting distinctive shape of the solar cell allows for a high packing density.

Third and current generation furnaces, their Gemini platform, grow two 3.2-inch-wide ribbons at a much faster speed than their original furnaces. Current ribbons are ~200 micrometer thick; 100 micrometer thick ribbons and four-ribbon technology are under development.

The photovoltaic modules will be manufactured at Evergreen Solar's plant in Massachusetts with a 15 MW/yr capacity and at the new 30MW/yr EverQ factory in Thalheim, Germany. The EverQ factory began volume shipments in April of this year. Evergreen intends to expand EverQ's capacity to 80MW in 2007 and up to 300MW by 2010.

http://energy.seekingalpha.com/article/13921

All for the cost it takes to spend building one coal plant. Oh and when would that coal plant be available for use?

The company hopes to have the plant in operation by 2010. The plant still needs several key approvals, though, before advancing. A draft environmental impact statement is also expected soon.

So 2 or three years less build-time than Ever-Q. Woohaww.

But of course I know you hate coal plants as much as me. So let's see the numbers for nuclear, shall we? Show us the build times and initial cost for one of your precious babies. Not from a whitepaper, but from an actual project that is moving forward or already started.

But in the meantime, consider this: most heat deaths happen during the day, when solar power is contributing it's full capacity. So if you are going to bring them up as a moral imperative in support of nuclear power, I am afraid that you will either have to address the issue of how the baseline night-time power gets to the elderly people sweating it out in the noontime sun, or you have to do the following: count solar "magic fairy watts" at their full value and divide nuclear "only half there when you need them" watts by, let's say, two, for the purpose of determining their air conditioning utility.

And finally, while we are on the subject of moral imperatives, let's ask ourselves the question as to why total investment into all the solar technology ventures this year in the U.S. was about half the investment cost of a single coal power plant in Shiprock, NM. I would have to say one of the factors is that when prospective investors, usually a very bland and closed-minded lot, cast around for insight into whether there are solid money-making opportunities in the field, they inevitably run into a nuclear power advocate relentlessly trashing solar power.

So we don't get to have our massive solar scaleup, at least not in the expected remaining lifetime of many of our elderly, in small part because of folks like you, who decide that just because people that don't like nuclear power tend to like solar (just like some of the people who do like nuclear power,) you'll badmouth it, even though you "support" it from an "anything but coal" standpoint.

A more responsible approach might be simply advocate your beliefs as to nuclear power's good points, and defend against what you view as incorrect criticism of nuclear power, rather than dragging solar into the argument. I mean, nuclear power supposedly has very compelling merits, right? Let it stand on them, not on solar's neck.

[NNadir]

14. First of all, it is not I who brought the idiotic solar/nuclear "fight"

into this forum. We have lots of people here demanding the shutting of nuclear power plants, all speaking loudly (and calling a small stick) about the grand renewable future. If these morons were speaking about shutting the worlds fossil fuel plants, I still would question if they can do what they say, but so long as they didn't carry on about nuclear power, I wouldn't say a word other than words of praise.

I am a child of the sixties and the seventies. I am a veteran of the "ban nuclear" because "solar-will-save-us" battles. I have been captured by my former enemies and I have switched sides. So I know how the "solar-will-save-us-and-so-we-must-ban-nuclear" crowd - to whom I will now refer as SWSUASMBN - thinks, which is none too clearly. (My excuse is that I used to smoke pot.)

In the immediate present, it is others, not I, who have pretended that the "solar will save us" mentality is a fight against nuclear power. While noting the solar power contribution has failed as yet to produce an exajoule per year - because I am trying to undermine any shred of credibility that the SWSUASMBN crowd has - I have consistently stated that nuclear power is not as currently run suited to address peak loads. It is base load power, and the only things that compete with it are coal plants and where suitable, geothermal plants. I have been pointing out for many years here about peak use loads fitting solar power and, further, in a deliberate and clear argument that nuclear power is not suited for this load.

However, solar power advocates have been crowing for my entire adult life about their technology. At this point all of your wonderful predictions about the future of the technology notwithstanding, I'll believe it when I see it.

You want to imply that it's a matter of money. Could it also be that investors are jaded by big promises? The Luz built solar thermal plants operate today in the Southern California deserts, still operate, but the people who invested in building them lost all of their money. The plants were sold off in bankruptcy proceedings, and now are fully depreciated because the builders got nothing.

That wasn't my fault. By the way, those events were almost 20 yeas ago.

Now, if the government announced plans to place a two billion dollar tax on natural gas to build your solar production plant, I would approve, because I think the external cost of natural gas is unacceptable. Do I really believe that 22 nanosolar plants putting out 430 Wp per year will be built with this money? If I look at past performance, I doubt it. However the risks of continuing to burn natural gas is enormous. Therefore it's worth a shot. Even if it were as successful as you say it could be, it doesn't even scratch the surface of the announced natural gas build-out in the US:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat2p4.html

Still however much it can help, it's worth it. Still we need to think in terms of scale.

When I referred to the recent heat waves which have enveloped almost the mid latitudes of almost the entire Northern Hemisphere, I was not trying to make the point that we need more nuclear power to do what, again, it cannot do, provide peak power. Such an interpretation completely and totally and absolutely and fully misses my point. My point has to do with something that is occasionally mentioned obliquely in a sort of half hearted aside way: Global climate change.

I am not trying to see if I can run the old people's air conditioners when the temperature is 40C - because not everybody on earth has an air conditioner - what I am trying to do is to prevent them from experiencing 45C. Your approach is analogous to giving chemotherapy to a cancer patient. My approach is to try to get the patient to stop smoking before he or she gets cancer.

Maybe over at solarbuzz, they haven't heard about it, but the IPCC best case scenario B1 calls for stabilization of carbon dioxide at 500 ppm whereas it is 370 ppm now. The worst cases have much higher levels.

And that's the problem that the cool solar cells at $1/Wp -a price higher I think than the price I heard promised for them by 1980 in 1970 by the way - they do nothing about coal.

Now maybe, as you described the wonderful roll-out solar cells in the parking lots everywhere, solar can contribute something to transportation. If grid interfaces with solar cells run electric trains in the afternoon rush hour, I'm all for them. On the other hand, nobody is fighting against solar doing that.

As for nuclear energy, it produces nearly 30 exajoules of primary energy year in and year out. Four-hundred and forty operate. More than 25 nuclear plants around the world are financed and under construction. A little less than 40 are on order. One hundred and fifteen reactors are being planned, including 19 for which the intention to file COLs in the US have been announced by utilities.

So the question of whether nuclear energy can make it on its own merits is pretty clear. In fact the only thing you hear regularly as an impediment to nuclear power is "public acceptance," and "waste." Of course the "public," to the extent that it declares so called "nuclear waste" as the only form of energy waste worth worrying about, consists largely of idiots.

The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa 6 and 7 units, Gen III Advanced Boiling Reactors were built in Japan in 39 months from the pouring of concrete to commercial operation in the late 1990's. Each of these reactors are 1380 MW and if they're typical of nuclear plants in the developed world, they probably have about 90% capacity utilization. Each reactor alone produces more energy than all of the peak power of all the world's annually installed solar PV modules. They do it on a few hundred hectares of land.

The schedules for the current round of new nuclear reactors in Japan, totally about 15,000 MW and producing (again at 90% capacity utilization) about 0.4 exajoules of energy, is less aggressive. Here are the schedules for the 15 reactors Japan has in process. Note that the Higashidori plant that went commercial in Dec 2005 was two months late and the Shika plant went on line exactly on schedule, early this year:

http://www2.jnes.go.jp/atom-db/en/ippan/ke030.html

Japan will be routinely building nuclear power plants with construction times of between 4 to 6 years.

I know of no physical reason that any other nation on the planet cannot do what Japan does.

In 2011 Japan will reach a milestone that is important to all people now breathing. For the first time it will produce 50% of its electricity by more or less greenhouse gas free means, nuclear and hydroelectricity. One would hope that they could go as high as France, but we'll see what develops.

http://www.japannuclear.com/nuclearpower/program/sources.html

Note that this website is maintained by the Japanese Nuclear Power industry. Note the very kind words offered on this site toward renewable energy, solar and wind. (Japan also has significant geothermal resources that we all hope will be developed.) You can click around on this website and find out all about Japan's renewable program which now produces 15 MW of wind energy and 4 MW of solar capacity. Everybody, the nuclear people included, is hoping for more.

Here is what they write on the Japanese nuclear web site:

Electricity companies should also be fully engaged in raising generating efficiency, lowering costs, surmounting the technological hurdles to integration between power generating systems and developing natural energy sources. There are still a host of technical matters to overcome before a richly diverse and stable supply of energy can be achieved; however, while making use of regional characteristics it is important to strive toward this end. And to encourage the development and use of alternative energy sources, a "Green Energy System" (see graphic below) was launched from October 2000.It promotes alternative energy use by offering financial incentives to customers in favor of using alternative energy and support to those who install such systems.

http://www.japannuclear.com/nuclearpower/program/sources.html

My world standard for nuclear performance remains France, where coal burning is trivial. But the Japanese are right up there. They're making progress. They are rational and they are realistic and they are acting on the problem.

Of course, as always, when the world has fully phased out fossil fuels, I will be happy - thrilled actually - to discuss the relative merits of what has replaced them. (I actually doubt that I will live long enough to have such a conversation so this statement is purely hypothetical, like $1/Wp solar cells.) But we must phase out fossil fuels. I am for anything that accomplishes that important, critical goal.

[skids]

15. Figures.

I think I pretty much disproved your assertion that PV contribution is as low as you say.

Global PV production amounted to 1.7 gigawatts (ed -- peak watts) in 2005.

http://www.sharp.co.uk/pressroom.aspx?pressid=411

...and the previous article I posted showed that 2004 was about 1.2GWp, and in 2003 0.7GWp. Even say we flatline solar production at 2005 levels, the half of 2006 we have already gone through comes out to about 0.8 Gwp.

Add those up and divide by 3. There's your > 1380MW baseline you claim to be greater than solar's contribution.

I know that won't stop you from saying otherwise for a while, because you're just slow to adjust your rhetoric (though you do eventually.) As an interesting sidenote, though, I discover that doing what you were doing -- counting only grid-feeding solar installations -- is especially innaccurate if done, as you did, for the U.S. market, where apparently over half the solar PV capacity is not grid connected:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power#World_solar_power_production

This makes the U.S., not the most progressive of PV countries to start with, rather unusual in comparison to other countries.

Funny you should qualify as to "physical reason" because frankly I don't have a problem with nuclear plants done right. My personal take is I just don't think that this country especially, as well may be the case in many others, is socioeconomically capable of running them responsibly. Our market pressures are too severe, our business institutions too corrupt/incompetent, and our government oversight is entirely out to lunch on many levels.

Maybe we can build a big high-voltage line to someplace else and import some electricity from a competently run reactor.

[NNadir]

16. Whatever. You assume that the coal plants are run right?

That argument that "My personal take is I just don't think that this country especially, as well may be the case in many others, is socioeconomically capable of running them responsibly. Our market pressures are too severe, our business institutions too corrupt/incompetent, and our government oversight is entirely out to lunch on many levels," is a case of what I call "nuclear exceptionalism," the application of a problem that applies to all energy production (including the disposal of chemical wastes from solar plant manufacturing sites) and saying they only matter in the nuclear case.

Your argument that we are incapable of running nuclear power plants in this country begs a question about where there is a single loss of life because of American nuclear safety incompetence. Got one? I've been asking for such a case for years and still no answer. If someone ever does produce such a case, of course, I will demand that they produce as many cases as involve fossil fuels.

I also note that US regulators have no standards whatsoever about the release of the most dangerous pollutant on earth, carbon dioxide.

Your rhetoric in this case, is nonsensical, and consists of the usual contention that somewhere somehow there is a form of energy that is risk free.. In thousands of posts on this website, I have repeatedly pointed out that nuclear is not risk free. It is risk minimized.

You can't understand that? That's beyond you?

All the gyrations about whether or not the annual world solar production capacity in the world can or cannot equal the energy production of a single nuclear reactor is irrelevant. Which part of "nuclear competes with coal" did you not understand?

Are you concerned at all about whether the US can competently manage coal mines? Do the dead last year not impress you? Do you have any information about whether or not the US is competently managing air pollution even excluding the most important pollutant, carbon dioxide?

The United States is the world's largest producer of nuclear energy. When I look at the course work at universities involving nuclear engineering, I see a rigorous and challenging program requiring the efforts of very bright people. These are people who have mastered rigorous course work in materials science, nuclear physics, chemistry, thermodynamics, thermal hydraulics and, yes, some electrical engineering, all based on a rigorous program involving course work through the routine application of multivariate vector calculus. Of course, if you analyze energy by watching TV - although I have never actually watched the show myself - these people are charactered by Homer Simpson.

As it happens, the people who run nuclear power plants in general are not useless MBA's with degrees in socioeconomics.

Do they do everything right? No. Are they perfect? No. Will there be setbacks and failures in the future nuclear industry? Absolutely.

Will this make the nuclear industry different from any other industry? No, except that people will only pay attention to nuclear setbacks.

I submit that the heat wave is a pretty big setback for the coal industry, and still you are talking about the need for long high tension lines from somewhere else because nuclear "cannot be supported by our socioeconomic system." Excuse me while I throw up.

You may hold American nuclear engineers, including those who work at the NRC in personal contempt, but I think that's just fucking spin, exceptionalist spin. You damn nuclear with faint praise, but I note that you do not damn the alternative. The most dangerous form of energy in the United States is still coal.

We're not sure yet how dangerous coal really is, but what we've already seen should be enough for any rational person.

But while we're quibbling about one another's calculations, where the did you get the idea that I buy the nonsense that the capacity utilization of solar PV cells is anything like 30%? I could be wrong, but I think the actual capacity utilization in Germany, which I think we all agree is a huge part of the solar market, can be calculated from this slide:

http://www.southeastgreenpower.net/members/presentations/Atlanta_TA_3_06.ppt#11

Of course, that's in Germany, where sometimes it gets cloudy, so let's try Tuscon, Arizona where there's yet another "world's largest" solar system:

http://www.pvresources.com/en/sgs.php

This link is just chock full of technical stuff about this plant, few on which I am competent as you are to comment. I'll just cut to the chase and talk about the stuff I do know about, and you can check my calculations for mistakes.

Here's the peak power rating of the plant, DC:

Total PV DC Array Capacity Rating (STC):
4,590 kW

Now in all my calculations I use 86400 seconds per day and 365.26 days in a year. Thus my claim is that there are about 31,600,000 seconds in a year. Multiplying this last number by the 4.59 megawatts I believe that the correct number for a 4.59 facility running at 100% capacity is 145 trillion joules where I have again indulged my preference for the joule as an energy unit.

Here is what the link tells us about the energy produced by the plant in Tuscon, Arizona, an area widely believed to be a desert.

Actual 2005 Annual Net AC Energy Production:
7,532.42 MWh

They have indulged their (consistent in the electrical energy industry) preference for the derived unit, MWh and I will indulge my preference by converting it, again, to joules by multiplying 7.53242 X 10⁶ by 3600, the number of seconds in an hour. When I do that, I come up with 27 trillion joules. When I divide 27 by 145, and multiply by 100 to get percent, I get 18.6%, in a desert.

A sunny desert.

Again this data doesn't come from a "mean old NNadir" website. It comes from yet another solar promotion website. These guys are really, really, really, really into solar energy. It sounds like they could wax romantic for days on the subject. Maybe you should look them up.

But again this has nothing to do with coal though.

Getting back to your idea about real, real, real, real, real, real long power lines to keep the bad old nuclear plants in some fantasy land where everyone is perfect and perfectly competent, I note that the same happy circumstance has already been tried with coal, which I, at least, contend is more dangerous than nuclear. In order to keep dangerous power operations that could possibly hurt someone if it isn't so perfectly safe that it will avoid injuring any human being in a billion years, we have decided to send most of our manufacturing operations to a little nation called China. They burn the coal for us, but we don't have long, long, long, long power lines running all the way to China. We've found another mechanism for doing exactly the same thing.

[skids]

17. In answer to your question...

No, I don't think U.S. business culture is capable of responsibly running a coal plant.

I don't consider nuclear power to be "exceptional" in the respect in the least, you just put those words into my mouth because it was a convenient segue.

The comment about high tension lines was a quip. I've been pretty clear I favor community based micropower, except for urban areas where that is impractical.

And we both know that as far as investment opportunities go in mitigating global warming, it is silly to even talk of new power systems when not nearly enough is being done in the area conservation products, since that is where the best value for our labor and capital is to be found.

[NNadir]

18. Well, quips and words in mouth aside, I'm not sure we agree on the

last score either.

I'm not sure that the environmental impact of conservation is all that straight forward in labor, capital, and materials.

I have quibbled quite a bit whether the solution is really "all new stuff." If I am going to go the "all new stuff" route, I certainly think that some of the "new stuff" must include new power systems, since the old ones are clearly killing us.

I like some conservation strategies - the best I've seen in the last 20 years is the compact fluorescent bulb which is a huge success, even if it is a point source pollutant (mercury). (I've argued that so long as coal is used for electricity generation, the CFB is a net mercury reduction agent.) I have spoken many times on other approaches to conservation, including things like trains and walking. But in my opinion Amory Lovins is an elitist rich fuck issuing oracles from his McMansion in Snowmass near Aspen. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that once in a while he motors down to Little Nell's for a great breakfast and a a few morning runs on Aspen Mountain's slopes while issuing nonsense statements about the horrible dangers of nuclear energy. I certainly wouldn't want to spend ten minutes stuck on a lift with him while he dodders on. His fucking house is worth millions of dollars.

He ain't talking about Africa, baby.

I'm not talking about Africa necessarily either. This may come as news, but we have to do what we can with the system we have now, immediately. There is neither the money, the equipment or the time to make a magical libertarian future where everybody gets their power from a cute co-op or a bank of lithium batteries piled up in a little room. Time is, in fact, up.

I definitely don't agree either that 'micropower' systems are necessarily wise or environmentally friendly. The most common 'micropower' distributed system I can think of is the automoblile which probably represents the single largest point source environmental catastrophe launched on the planet ever.

I've been very clear in my contempt for the automobile although I'll be the first to admit I use one.

I have a stream next to my property and I'm not sure I really want all of the upstream neighbors putting up little dams. We have a big problem with little old dams here in New Jersey, and I believe you have similar problems up in Massachusetts in places like Tilton. More broadly, I've had about as much of this libertarian "every man for himself" stuff as I can take.

I have frequently referenced recently the case for stabilization wedges, a reference that is included in my journal. I certainly agree that conservation should be an element of any approach, but I insist again that conservation isn't an approach that can carry the emergency all by it's little self. We all try to conserve. I'm years into my use of compact fluorescents and I was bicycling as my exclusive form of transportation back in the 1970's. (I don't do that now.) The fact is that I'm worried we are about learn something more about a new approach to conservation: Mass deaths a la Easter Island.

[skids]

19. My point isn't that conservation is the end-all solution.

My point is that it is the lowest, ripest, fruit on the tree, and our investment in it can be used as a gauge as to how serious we are about addressing climate change. If we do not invest powerfully in conservation, it is a clear indication that we are not serious about it, and as a result we are doomed.

Right now, as evidenced by the collective influence-weighted average global attitudes towards saving energy (a figure that can only be guessed at, but for which indicators are easy enough to find), which are meekly positive but not enough to inspire major conservation initiatives, we fail that litmas test.

Failure is pretty much equivalent to a mass population reduction through famine war and disease, as well as a general dilution, if not outright collapse, of civilized behavior globally, whether a nation state is participating in the bloodshed or not -- our human dignity will take a back seat to the basest of survival struggles.

Hate to say it, but that's where we are headed.

No amount of solar, wind, nukes, or whatnot are going to save us, because we aren't serious about it, as a whole. We aren't. Where we are heading as a species is our own fault, collectively. Not that it's fair that those who are awake to it have to suffer alongside "the problem children" but that's just the way life works these days.

Ergo, my support for small localised systems. It's not a matter of "libertarianism" or or an obsession with self-sufficience. It's that it's pretty much the only moral advice I can offer anyone at this point, given any large infrastructure is destined for collapse and only localized systems have a chance at survival.

In the not-so-apocalyptic future fantasy which I sometimes allow myself to indulge in for sanity's sake, where large systems still manage to function, I still support such systems as a way to prevent centralized control. And no, it's not the government I'm worried about, but corporations, as we have seen what happens when they are allowed to operate in a lightly civilized area and then given control over large water distribution systems. The same will happen with centralized power in our lifetimes.

It's not that I do not appreciate the power of large scale organized human cooperation, as you are doubtless thinking at this point. It is that I have no confidence whatsoever that such cooperation will be done in a manner that prevents its eventual seizure by a powermongering entity, be it public or private sector. I think we have demonstrated as a species and in just about every variety of culture we have chosen to express, time after time after time, that we are too pollyannaistic to build such large systems with proper safeguards against the collapse of egalitarianism.

So take your pick -- total armageddon or globalist creep, small localised facilities still make sense to me in both scenarios.

Or show me a sea change in people's awareness of what constitutes civilization, social responsibility, ethics, and societal participation, and maybe I'll have a different perspective than that to offer. Until I see that, though (and I'm not holding my breath) I pretty much view things as stated above.

[ladjf]

4. Your idea has merit. As PV technology continues to improve, the

kind of energy source you selected will be among many that will contribute to the use of alternate energy sources. In terms of current technology, your idea would only suffice to partially supply the electricity to run your car.

Note that Toyota and other manufacturers have decided to move forward with pluggable hybrids. The significance of this is that the pluggable cars can accept recharges for multiple sources, i.e. home grid, wind, and solar. As you add up the possibilities, it begins to make sense economically.

[jpak]

5. Solar race cars have been around for years

They have achieved average course speeds exceeding 50 mph....

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMMLK7O0MD_index_0.html

http://160.94.140.26/history_files/aurora2/press_rel/NewRecann.html

http://www.americansolarchallenge.org/

http://www.wsc.org.au/2007/

http://www.winstonsolar.org/challenge/

http://www.aurorasolarcar.com/main_frame.html

Unfortunately, they were not designed for everyday commuters/soccer moms.

There is no reason, however, why small one or two passenger all-solar vehicles can't be built.

Finally, there is a reason why there are no nuclear powered cars....

:evilgrin:

[Dead_Parrot]

10. Well, one could argue....

...that all the electric cars in France are (mainly) nuclear powered...
:hi:

[megatherium]

20. I saw a solar powered race car in Minneapolis a few years ago.

I was visiting the Twin Cities campus of the University of Minnesota, and one chilly Saturday I saw the engineering folks across the quad tuning the car up. After a while, it was zipping around nicely. It looked like a big surfboard, its upper surface covered in PV cells, with a plexiglass bubble for the driver to see out (his driving position was horizontal, on his back). The wheels looked like small bicycle wheels.

Maybe the folks who stage solar races can come up with a new type of contest: build purely solar-powered vehicles that someone can commute in; the race would be held on city streets with grades and various patches of shade. Kind of like the DARPA contest to design vehicles that can pilot themselves through urban settings.

[morningglory]

7. Put a pot of stew on the dash every morning, and you will have

supper ready when you get home.

[Ready4Change]

8. It can be done, but not by putting PV panels on the car.

To gather a practical amount of sunlight for powering an electric car, you need a larger solar array. Something like a fair percentage of your homes roof. (Probably.) Plus, since your car is going to be away from home most of the day, you either need a large bank of batteries to store the gathered power, or feed power into the public grid during the day and pull it back at night.

I recently met someone who was well on his way towards doing just this. He already owns an electric vehicle, and his house is already pretty much powering itself with a combination of PV arrays, solar water heaters, and efficient appliances and lights. However, charging his car was exceeding his generation abilitys. So, he was looking to install a bunch more panels and a bank of batteries.

[lindisfarne]

13. Put solar panels on your house and garage first. They soak up sun all

day too. And you can qualify for federal tax credits and in some states, state tax credits.