Solar and Wind Need to Step up to the Plate

Over the last few years there has been a steady back and forth between various individuals and groups about the viability of wind and solar power to account for a vast majority of the future energy infrastructure. Despite legitimate concerns with the potential effectiveness and consistency of such a system, wind and solar proponents continue to place their faith in its viability with no scale evidence validating this faith. In addition proponents of these technologies believe that the public must be made more aware of the “adaptability” of solar and wind versus fossil fuel generators. However, why does the solar and wind manufacturing and deployment community allow this uncertainty to linger instead opting for its new plan of engaging in a new more aggressive marketing plan to “sell” the public on the idea of solar and wind? Providing evidence to support one position or the other is quite possible; at least it must be for numerous wind and solar power supporters continue to claim that the limiting factor to “greening” the energy infrastructure is the deployment rate for wind and solar plants over existing technology.

Note that this experiment must exceed the testing irrelevancies of electricity aggregation or renewable energy credits (RECs), which do nothing significant to demonstrate the reliability of wind and solar energy providers. Wind and solar proponents envision an energy infrastructure that incorporates wind and solar into comprising at least 70%+ of the entire electricity providing system (maybe even 70%+ of all energy at some point eventually), thus that number seems to be a good threshold point. However, this dream should only be pursued if these technologies are actually able accomplish this goal; therefore, as stated above the current legitimacy of this system must be tested and its strengths and weaknesses must be adjudicated. So how would such an experiment be conducted?

A simple starting methodology must include, but not be limited to, the following boundary conditions/rules:

- Approach a small city (approximately 10,000-15,000 population) and receive permission to change the electricity provision infrastructure from the current existing mix to 70% solar/wind with a 30% other;

- At no time could the electricity provided to the city from non-solar or wind sources exceed 30% or the test would be considered a failure of the experiment (note this condition includes all electricity derived from storage sources like batteries); note that this condition could be modified based on how many brownouts/blackouts the selected city was willing to accept;

- All participating companies will have a year to prepare for the switch from existing mix to solar/wind dominated mix; a good idea would be for a coalition of solar/wind companies to select a city by July 31, 2013 and then start the experiment on July 31, 2014.

- An independent auditor will track electricity use and costs associated with that use and any addition construction related to that electricity infrastructure;

- The above point must consider net electricity use not gross electricity production. For example suppose 1000 MW are produced, but only 500 MW are used due to a lack of storage, the produced count must be 500 MW not 1000 MW in percentage calculations in order to not overstate the used production rate of renewable sources; i.e. utilized reserves is what matters not name plate capacity.

- Note that the city does not have to remain static once the test has begun, it can still add or subtract electricity infrastructure features; however, these changes must be incorporated into the evaluation metric for the efficiency and validity of the renewable sources tested;

If the simplicity and viability of the above methodology is to be believed then what is stopping one (or more through a coalition) of the various solar and wind companies from administering it? Realistically there seem to be only two reasons. First, wind and solar proponents are not accurate in their assessment that these energy technologies are advanced enough to effectively substitute for fossil fuel technologies and wind and solar companies know it, but don’t want to admit it. Second, solar and wind companies are not sure whether or not such an experiment will be successful and are afraid that if it is implemented and fails the negative publicity surrounding such a failure will produce a significant handicap to their future growth.

This potential “fear of failure” attitude is interesting because most intelligent people realize that failure is an integral part of technological growth, so why pass up an opportunity to explore the strengths and weaknesses of what numerous people hope is the future energy infrastructure in a real experimental environment over the worthless rooftop-like piecemeal “experiments” that are currently conducted? One possibility is that these companies believe that a failure in the above type of experiment will be regarded by society not as a learning experience, but as an inherent flaw in the technology itself, thus a higher probability of possible abandonment and lose of millions. This is a fear that solar and wind companies need to get over if they want to better serve society both now and in the future because if the technology does have flaws that are not corrected for before their application then society loses more than just money.

Despite the above concerns the apparent trepidation by solar and wind energy companies when it comes to this type of experiment is disconcerting. If they were confident in the maturity of the technology and its ability to provide consistent electricity to a populous then such an experiment should have already been conducted. Success would produce a valuable and powerful point of evidence that would support the rapid expansion and deployment of solar and wind energy technology and further demonstrate what strengths would benefit society from such a system and what weaknesses exist, which could be improved upon over time.

Two final notes, first some may point out that the city of Lancaster, California has recently spearheaded a large growth of solar power, but understand that it is no where near the capacity necessary to power the city and is probable too large a city for this initial test (population 157,000+).

Second, some may argue that Portugal’s 2013 1st quarter success of 70% power generation from renewables demonstrates its validity as the future energy infrastructure. However, when looking at the details of the renewable breakdown this success becomes less and less impressive and repeatable in the short-term. For example while Portugal is an above average producer of energy from non fossil fuel sources, favorable weather is more of a reason for the higher renewable percentage than anything else. A large spike in existing hydroelectric efficiency (312% increase) drove most of the change with no significant new project builds. In fact Portugal solar photovoltaic penetration only made up approximately 0.7% of energy use (in 2012), which is in direct contrast to most plans put forth by solar enthusiasts regarding massive solar deployment and is counter to the challenge presented in this blog. Therefore, Portugal’s success proves nothing about the validity of a solar/wind energy infrastructure, just the usefulness of hydroelectric power.

Overall if the benefit of success is a significant increase in growth rate of the industry, why has no one in the solar/wind industry attempted such an experiment? This lack of experimentation reminds one of the blind faith that some have in electrical vehicles acting as mobile storage batteries to augment solar and wind power, yet no one has ever demonstrated the viability of such a strategy in a community of 5,000 people let alone a country of 300+ million. If the solar and wind industry want their technology to be taken seriously as a substitute for existing fossil fuels by all parties then they have to demonstrate the ability to do the heavy lifting with minimal assistance from other energy providers. Otherwise why waste time playing with expensive toys in lieu of proven fossil fuel substitutes like nuclear and geothermal?

Determining the Future of the U.S. Electrical Grid

Although the official position of the government is not to attempt to select winners and losers through application of certain policy, the situation involving the environment is becoming dire. It is time for the government to realize that the free market is not capable of developing the appropriate grid demographic to substitute for the electricity provided by coal in the necessary allotted time frame to avoid severely detrimental consequences. This failure of the market is largely because of all of the lobbyists and the ‘so-called experts’ that are unwilling to accept the potential shortcomings in their preferred power medium. Normally even in the face of this common market bias people have faith in the market that the best option will outmaneuver the lesser options eventually controlling the market; however, on the doorstep to the end of ‘cheap oil’ with the era of ‘no oil’ not that far behind, decisions need to be made now, something the market is incapable of doing.

Almost all infrastructure is dependent on oil for its construction due to material transportation and construction operation and in an era of constant $150+ a barrel oil it will be incredibly difficult to construct an effective new electricity grid when the market is still deciding upon a winner because of its inefficiencies and imperfections. A wide range of piecemeal energy infrastructure (solar plant there, wind farm here, nuclear plant there, geothermal plant here) will not solve the energy problems of the future and yet that is exactly where the market is leading energy infrastructure. Therefore, the government MUST convene a legitimate and thorough energy conference to determine what one or two power mediums will be supported by government funds and which power mediums will be left out in the cold (from a government funding and subsidy perspective). It is time for the U.S. government to step-up, do its job and stop relying on the ‘all-powerful’ market to do a job that it is ill-equipped to do. Below are some concerns regarding most of the viable candidates to replace coal to get the ball rolling.

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Some Issues about Nuclear Power –

1. With the lack of commercially viable Generation IV plants and none predicted to be available until 2021 at the very earliest, can Generation III plants carry the load for nuclear investment in the near-future from a cost prospective for clearly the cost effectiveness of Generation II plants is lacking.

2. Generation III plants do not appear to be able to create a negative radioactive waste load, so until Generation IV plants are created and fully commercialized in, at the earliest, 2025 where does all the excess radioactive waste go?

3. Although the probability of nuclear accident/meltdown is extremely small in modern nuclear plant designs, there are still lingering questions about who will foot the bill in the case of an accident.

Note the issue of ‘target for terrorist theft or strike’ seems irrelevant as no nuclear power plant has been destroyed by terrorist attack in decades of operation and with Pakistan, North Korea and in due time Iran all having nuclear bomb capacity, the impact and probability of terrorists stealing substandard and improperly enriched materials from a nuclear plant seems significantly unlikely when they can more easily acquire it from these countries.

Some Issues about Geothermal Power –

1. Without enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) is geothermal even worth pursuing as a baseload power source?

2. Can EGS be commercialized fast enough for geothermal to become a chief baseload provider warranting a rapid ramp-up of geothermal or should expansion be slow and steady pursuant to a back-up baseload provider?

Some Issues about Solar Power –

1. Will storage mediums ever move from uneconomical proof-of-concept plants to something which is actually realistic for a 500 – 1000 MW plant?

2. When will transmission lines be upgraded to dramatically reduce efficiency losses to warrant the massive economic investment of solar power in out-of-the-way desert and other high sun-low functional regions?

3. Will solar power ever become affordable relative to other options or will proponents continue to sell the yet-to-be-proven idea of scale-up significantly reducing prices? For decades solar proponents have professed that if only given a fair chance solar power could economically compete with fossil fuels and yet this proclamation for all intensive purposes remains false.

4. How will large-scale deployment of solar power handle large volcano erruption events? What is the attitude regarding the confliction between using solar power and the geo-engineering technique of seeding the atmosphere with sulfur dioxides?

Some Issues about Tidal Power –

1. Can tidal derived power even begin to produce any meaningful level of power required within the appropriate time frame of climate change? Basically is it even worth talking about tidal power?

Some Issues about Wind Power –

1. No one, wind proponents or wind opponents, seem to address the very real possibility of slower average wind speeds in the future due to higher average air temperatures in the Arctic brought on by climate change taking a significant bite out of wind power generation potential. Here

2. The concern that cost per MW for wind power is actually moving upwards not downwards as the best land-based locations for wind power have already been developed. Note: Offshore wind farms have yet to materialize in any significant capacity to develop a real and valid cost estimation to how their future development would influence overall wind prices per MW.

3. There is still the issue regarding how much emission savings wind power actually generates. Initial intuition leads to the conclusion that additional wind power that directly replaces coal or natural gas should reduce carbon emissions and while correct that intuition could be too simplistic. The problem with wind power relative to coal or natural gas is that wind power has only intermittent capacity, which demands backup power from more reliable sources (coal, natural gas, nuclear, geo-thermal or some form of storage medium). Unfortunately wind power advocates continue to downplay this need for effective and efficient power storage strategies to augment widespread wind power deployment on legitimate scale up grounds. Most pro-wind arguments make very optimistic estimates about the ability to scale up wind power via potentially unrealistic assumptions, like an average wind power failure with a very low standard deviation a la Diesendorf’s “the wind is always blowing somewhere” comment. Exactly how much backup is needed? Not surprisingly wind proponents cite almost nothing and wind opponents cite almost 100%. What is actually the right answer?

Also there is the issue of natural gas. Natural gas proponents feature natural gas as a cheaper and more reliable source of electricity over alternatives like wind, geothermal, solar and nuclear in the short-term. Such a strategy could be troublesome because widespread expansion of natural gas could be viewed as a significant waste of money because natural gas is not an endpoint energy solution, even if society wanted it to be one. While switching all coal plants to natural gas would cut total U.S. carbon emissions anywhere from 10.5 to 13.1% (derived from 2007 EIA data depending on natural gas plant efficiency), such a strategy is only a stop-gap measure because if emission targets to evade the worst consequences of global warming are to be met natural gas use as an electricity source must be minimized. With that reality would any significant scale-up of natural gas use for electricity be regarded as a waste of money if it has to scale back down 10 years later when that investment could have better been distributed to a cleaner and more permanent energy generation technology like geothermal, nuclear or solar?