Tell me why PV systems are not a scam

[Besoeker]

From Jo Nova's website:

"There are 673,540 households in South Australia and the Big Battery can supply 4% of them for an hour with electricity, or all of the state for a bit over two minutes."

Worth noting is that the South Australian government refuses to reveal the all-in cost for the battery facility at Hornsdale. Forbes magazine has estimated the cost at $A200 -240 million. So, the "generating" capacity of 100 MW is about $US2 per watt. A combined cycle gas plant would run you about 90 cents per watt. And as long as it has gas, it doesn't run out in an hour.

Nothing like a few numbers to put in perspective. And why, oh why, the number of households? Don't the commercial, industrial, and agricultural sectors matter?

 

[gadfly56]

Nothing like a few numbers to put in perspective. And why, oh why, the number of households? Don't the commercial, industrial, and agricultural sectors matter?

No, because they don't vote. :happysad:

More specifically, SA's energy policy has driven out almost all energy-intensive industry from the state. There's no one left to complain.

 

[wwhitney]

There is not a scintilla of evidence that with modern pollution controls that there are any "externalities" left to deal with.

Hah!

Wayne

 

[gadfly56]

Hah!

Wayne

Clearly you are a novice at debating.

Step 1: As the affirmative, you bear the burden of proof.

Step 2: You make a claim.

Step 3: As the negative, I merely have to say "Stuff and nonsense. Produce your evidence."

Step 4: You present your evidence. "Hah!" is not evidence.

 

[ggunn]

I'm sorry, something that came along about 70 years after the introduction of the automobile was a subsidy for kick-starting the industry? I think you need to review the principles of cause and effect.

IIRC, the reason for building the interstate highway system was to have the capacity for rapidly moving military vehicles around the country should a war in the future be fought on US soil. Its usage by civilians and the boon for the automotive industry were secondary considerations/effects.

 

[ggunn]

Clearly you are a novice at debating.

Step 1: As the affirmative, you bear the burden of proof.

Step 2: You make a claim.

Step 3: As the negative, I merely have to say "Stuff and nonsense. Produce your evidence."

Step 4: You present your evidence. "Hah!" is not evidence.

Ever see Ron White's account of his experience on the high school debating team? I can't enter the punch line here.

 

[ggunn]

It's been 40 years since I worked for Duke Power (now Duke Energy) in the production department. I had involvement in coal, oil, gas, and nuclear; we had hydro, but it was a different department.

I think your understanding of the ability to change output is over optimistic.

Nuclear, UNDER NORMAL conditions, can probably change less than 10% per hour; I'd guess more likely 5%. It also cannot (I'm guessing here) operate well at less than about 60% of nominal. From a cold reactor to 100% generation is more than a day, less than a week.

Coal is better. If designed to do so, (and when I left in 1978, none of ours were), steam turbine operation at 40% was about as far down as it could go; ours were practically limited to 65% or so. Cold startup is worse than nuclear because temperatures are higher ... maybe 650F for nuclear, 1050F for modern coal/gas/oil. But they can probably go from minimum to maximum, or the reverse, in about an hour without undue stress. A gas fired boiler won't differ much.

For reasonable efficiency, a gas turbine will be part of a combined cycle system, with waste heat boiling water for a steam turbine. The lower temperatures allow cold startup of the boiler in probably an hour; the gas turbine can probably be at full load in 20 minutes. Neither of these will operate WELL below 50%.

Hydro is the great one ... 0-100% in a minute or two. But IIRC, we got maybe 4% of our needs from hydro.

I don't think anything except hydro can handle the minute-to-minute variation of renewables. By allowing slight voltage and frequency variation, and with the small amounts presently talked about, fossil can do pretty well. But if solar approaches 20% of the system, even handling the 10AM to 5PM smoothly varying output won't be easy. A cloudy day, from the utility standpoint, is much easier.

As our Brit said, we've got to come up with some effective storage, probably (my guess) in the 10% of daily energy load, to handle 25% or more renewable generation.

I don't think batteries are YET worth considering, but AFAIK there isn't anything except them and pumped storage. Of course, perhaps the load can be leveled; businesses, schools, industries operating more hours of the day, especially in summer when the nights are relatively cool.

It's interesting that Duke's pumped storage systems were originally intended to allow the nuclear units to operate at substantially base load.

This is just my view, and I hope some CURRENT experts can shoot my pessimism (realism?) down.

I am not an expert, but I attended a presentation by one of the ERCOT engineers (ERCOT is the manager of the Texas grid) of the methodology they use to manage coal, nuke, gas, hydro, solar, and wind energy resources for grid stability. It's pretty sophisticated; it employs tons of realtime load monitoring, predictive algorithms for solar and wind, and balancing of the response times of the various resources. It was pretty impressive.

 

[wwhitney]

Clearly you are a novice at debating.

Internet forums are not formal debates.

I'll just say that in fact-based reality, it is well understood that even with modern pollution controls, combustion based electricity generating plants produce significant pollution. Certainly CO2 output is uncontrolled, and even the controlled pollutants are not reduced to zero. Burning coal still kills people. Even burning wood in a conventional fireplace in a dense urban setting kills people.

Cheers, Wayne

 

[winnie]

"Externalities" is social mumbo-jumbo and hand waving where folks get together and fabricate a cost model that "proves" renewables are a better bet. There is not a scintilla of evidence that with modern pollution controls that there are any "externalities" left to deal with. We now return you to the real world.

IMHO there is significant evidence, but not 'proof beyond reasonable doubt'. A _political_ question is how much evidence of a problem do you require in order to _force_ people to spend time and money fixing that presumed problem.

To make this clearer: there is significant evidence that man produced carbon dioxide has perturbed the natural carbon cycle enough to cause a change in the climate. This has not been proven; other factors outside of human control can change the climate. If you assume that the carbon dioxide influenced climate model is valid, it has not been proven that the climate change will cause net harm.

IMHO humans are changing the climate but we have not come up with the most economically viable or fair method to prevent this.

IMHO if we put no effort into preventing climate change, but rather put all that effort into adapting to whatever climate change happens, than we will probably see a bunch of extinctions and environmental changes, but there is a good chance that humans as a whole will be happier. (Longer growing seasons, fewer people freezing to death, etc.) This will require supporting people moving to different climates, changing crops, etc. It will also probably seriously change the political climate, eg. Siberia becoming the world's bread basket.

-Jon

 

[sameguy]

That is not accurate. In central NY we get around 3.5-4.5. Perhaps you are thinking of the winter average.

Was going by memory from getting my certification at the union hall years ago; still with out tax payer funding not good for our area.

 

[jumper]

IIRC, the reason for building the interstate highway system was to have the capacity for rapidly moving military vehicles around the country should a war in the future be fought on US soil. Its usage by civilians and the boon for the automotive industry were secondary considerations/effects.

Actually, you got that backwards.

While defense considerations were part of the reason, they were not the primary.

https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/originalintent.cfm

 

[Fulthrotl]

Ever see Ron White's account of his experience on the high school debating team? I can't enter the punch line here.

while mr. white is hysterically funny, i've gotten to the point where it's painful to watch.

that point was reached with the "Dr. Phil and the boat" story. i've heard an awful lot of
stories like that over the years, and remembering how they turned out for the participants
of those stories takes the fun out of hearing another one.

it's hard to watch someone that talented slowly burning to death.



*thread derailment is now complete. my work here is finished.*

 

[Besoeker]

No, because they don't vote. :happysad:

More specifically, SA's energy policy has driven out almost all energy-intensive industry from the state. There's no one left to complain.

I'm sure they still need water, sewage disposal, schools, shops, etc.

 

[zog]

while mr. white is hysterically funny, i've gotten to the point where it's painful to watch.

that point was reached with the "Dr. Phil and the boat" story. i've heard an awful lot of
stories like that over the years, and remembering how they turned out for the participants
of those stories takes the fun out of hearing another one.

it's hard to watch someone that talented slowly burning to death.



*thread derailment is now complete. my work here is finished.*

The "Baby goose P&^%y lip taco" story was over the top

 

[jaggedben]

I'm sorry, something that came along about 70 years after the introduction of the automobile was a subsidy for kick-starting the industry? I think you need to review the principles of cause and effect.

What, the auto industry paid for all the roads from the start? Your implying that the auto industry did it all by itself is simply wrong. You do realize that railroads were king in this country - with a lot of government support - and that the interstate highway system decimated them? (And that European countries after the war made an opposite choice and still have strong passenger railroad systems.)

Also, you do know that PV technology is about 70 years old, right?

 

[jumper]

What, the auto industry paid for all the roads from the start? Your implying that the auto industry did it all by itself is simply wrong. You do realize that railroads were king in this country - with a lot of government support - and that the interstate highway system decimated them? (And that European countries after the war made an opposite choice and still have strong passenger railroad systems.)

Also, you do know that PV technology is about 70 years old, right?

Railroads are still subsidized. Various strategic lines that many commercial carriers and Amtrak use are designated as vital to Defense under STRACNET.

While Interstates are valuable for moving some men and materiel quickly, trains are essential for large deployments.

Armored divisions and such cannot be moved without railroads.

 

[JFletcher]

perhaps the load can be leveled; businesses, schools, industries operating more hours of the day, especially in summer when the nights are relatively cool.

Years ago I had thought of running govt and other businesses 24/7 vs 9-5 for the purpose of alleviating heavy road traffic and the subsequent jams and the millions of gallons of fuel wasted yearly sitting in them. It's also remove or put off a for a few decades the need to upgrade your local interstate from 2 to 4 lanes (or 4 to 6 or 8...) as traffic would be more uniformly loaded 24/7... would work the same way for the electrical grids.

ofc the problem becomes who want to send their kids to school from 2am-10am, or work at a bank from 3pm-11pm?

 

[Saturn_Europa]

Railroads are still subsidized. Various strategic lines that many commercial carriers and Amtrak use are designated as vital to Defense under STRACNET.

While Interstates are valuable for moving some men and materiel quickly, trains are essential for large deployments.

Armored divisions and such cannot be moved without railroads.

I spent a 20 hour day loading bridging equipment onto a train in Fort Hood back in '03. Fort Hood has a pretty darn big railhead and 1st Cav and 4th ID deploy all their equipment from there to ports on the Texas coast.

 

[electrofelon]

Getting back to the original topic, I'm surprised all you sparkies don't have PV: you can get materials for wholesale, and install it yourself for "free". The payback would be quite quick. I just transitioned from being off grid, and will be installing my 13kw system this summer. Its a no brainer.

 

[K8MHZ]

Getting back to the original topic, I'm surprised all you sparkies don't have PV: you can get materials for wholesale, and install it yourself for "free". The payback would be quite quick. I just transitioned from being off grid, and will be installing my 13kw system this summer. Its a no brainer.

One word.

Michigan.

I think our insolation works out to about 50 watts per meter. If we had more sunny days a year I would consider it.