This week at NexGen, we're tackling solar power:
We hear about it all the time... Solar power as a renewable energy source. Not a bad idea considering that spectacular star of ours isn't burning out anytime soon. According to Scientific American, a massive transition to solar power plants could supply 69 percent of U.S. electricity and 35 percent of our total energy by 2050--with $420 billion in subsidies to fund the infrastructure that would make it cost-competitive. So is a solar future really on the horizon and possible on that scale?
Naturally, your resident blogger has a few questions:
Before we all jump on the solar bandwagon, do readers think this is the way to go? And are local subsidies for private homes and businesses better than large-scale production involving transmission of electricity (accounting for associated loss)? Imagine a future where solar panels pave the desert between Phoenix and Los Angeles and consider whether that be worth the ecological footprint?
Check out my latest post on harnessing the sun's energy and weigh in with your take on whether it's feasible for our future, or a bunch of hot air.
More like this
Another one in the eye for the solarists. K. Rypdal, JGR VOL. 117, D06115, 14 PP., 2012 doi:10.1029/2011JD017283:
Over at The Island of Doubt, James Hrynyshyn has a post about solar skepticism on the part of some researchers, who think that claims of increased efficiency are often overhyped.
Solar gardens in the state have just reached the 100 megawatt milestone.
Sheril, there's a tagging error in the opening link.
On topic, I maintain that concentrated solar-thermal plants would be a wiser use of desert space than PVs, given cost, efficiency, active times, and environmental footprint. NextGen mentions it often enough, but people still associate "solar" exclusively with PV panels, in all their expensive, inefficient glory. This needs to change.
As for residential-scale microgeneration, I haven't looked into the details yet, but Germany's system (essentially a fixed-rate 'grid pays you' system for power you generate renewably; rumors tell of one farmer who converted a small parcel of land he owned into a solar plant for ~$10k and expects to have it paid off in three years, which is an incredible ROI) intrigues me. Shame that it won't fly except in regulated energy markets.
I think at this stage, you need to pursue both paths. Residential-scale solar energy my work very well for certain regions (e.g. the southwest) and at certain scales, but concentrated solar power will still probably win, despite transmission loss, in many areas of America due to its higher efficiency over photovoltaic solar cells. Of course, the great opportunity is that pursuing both of these technologies may lead to improvements that change this calculation. Wouldn't it be great to have even more alternative clean energy opportunities?
On YouTube there's a clip of a guy in NJ who went totally solar electric. During the day he uses the excess electricity to split water into H2 and 0. He stores the H2 then runs it through a commercially made hydrogen fuel cell (Used by the telecom industry oddly enough!) to produce electricity.
He also does geothermal for heating.
The problem is the H2 storage and geothermal require a fair bit of land. I'm all for doing PV on each roof in a 10 house neighborhood. Then bury a 10,000cf storage tank for the H2 and make a neighborhood wide fuel cell generation system.
It would require massive subsidies but be owned by the neighborhood, not a company like National Grid.
Soto: Entirely. I wasn't advocating one at the expense of the other, just that at the moment, the media doesn't even report on solar thermal.
Of course, the one thing missing from your overview summary is that solar thermal can generate power at night. Conventional PV cannot. (Tony P touches on a different method -- Generating H2 from excess solar electricity -- but the way I see it, it's easier, more efficient, and cheaper to store heat than conduct electrolysis. I do, however, think it is firmly out of the backyard generator niche, and I don't decry the NJ fellow at all because of that.)