Solar to provide 20% of energy by 2027

[DanKegel]

What I have a problem with is the lack of cooperation that some of those countries show...
Unfortunately we live in a world where there is a lot of distrust and greed. That does not make for a world united that works together to solve any type of problem. ...

India, China, and the United States are currently all cooperating very nicely to increase deployment of clean energy and reduce future carbon emissions; all three are investing heavily to move towards carbon-free sources of energy.

However, the official policy of the United States is about to make a U-turn; the president-elect wrote

There has been a big push to develop alternative forms of energy--so-called green energy--from renewable sources. That's a big mistake.

So, while there will probably be a lack of cooperation on renewable energy, India and China will probably continue cooperating on it as they have been (as will California); it's the United States which will probably stop cooperating... at least for four or so years.

[Mike90250]

......Surely it is up to those that have the largest per capita emissions to reduce their emissions and for the those with the least to limit the increase in their emissions..........

Or not. Maybe let the "COST" of energy not be artificially adjusted with tax breaks, incentives, support, capping exec compensation. Drop the monopolys, and let the market be free. When all the dams are busted down, nukes mothballed, bird shredding turbines halted, desert habitat solar farms banned, we'll have a true price of power, Importing Lithium from foreign countries and banning lead from long lasting electronic gear ought to help too.

[SunEagle]

I don't think it is good enough or equitable that we just reduce our increase in electricity consumption, we have to reduce our consumption. Of course countries like India and China are increasing their consumption. Why shouldn't they have the right to improve their lives by consuming more electricity just like we have done in the last century. It is in all our interests to make sure that their increase in electricity consumption comes with a smaller carbon footprint than ours. We should be helping them to achieve better living standards at a lower carbon footprint.


Simon

Simon

I have no problem helping others into the space age by getting them past the low efficient high consumption era of the industrial age that we went through.

What I have a problem with is the lack of cooperation that some of those countries show by their willing to accept our aid and not being open to helping us at all with anything in return. Why should we bankrupt our county and they not help ours. Shouldn't they be giving us resources that help us reduce our carbon footprint if that is the overall goal.

How about free solar panels from China? And I am sure there is some raw material that we need that can come from India. If they need our help there should be some type of sharing that works both ways.

Unfortunately we live in a world where there is a lot of distrust and greed. That does not make for a world united that works together to solve any type of problem. Real or Conceived.

[word]

Cheap solar and wind will be a boon to the entire world and especially to developing contries.

[karrak]

What you are looking at is past history. What you are not including is the rate of expansion in some countries that are increasing their usage of electricity much faster then countries like the US. Where we have been reducing our consumption. Also our birth rate has been pretty flat.

While in a country like India both the electrical consumption and birth rate are opposite of ours. Also the power generation is mostly coal generated. That kind of skews the future per capita emission numbers. And I am sure that will happen for other industrial growth countries.

I don't think it is good enough or equitable that we just reduce our increase in electricity consumption, we have to reduce our consumption. Of course countries like India and China are increasing their consumption. Why shouldn't they have the right to improve their lives by consuming more electricity just like we have done in the last century. It is in all our interests to make sure that their increase in electricity consumption comes with a smaller carbon footprint than ours. We should be helping them to achieve better living standards at a lower carbon footprint.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Co2_cumulative_emissions_1970-2013.svg

Simon

[SunEagle]

Surely we have to look at per capita consumption, if we look at the following graph from here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...xide_emissions



Surely it is up to those that have the largest per capita emissions to reduce their emissions and for the those with the least to limit the increase in their emissions.

Big difference is the rate of change in temperature and the amount of change. I suppose for all the high emitters who are middle aged and older it probably doesn't matter as it may not effect us too much in our lifetime. Who cares about about the future generations, all the people who are not as fortunate as us and all the other living things on the planet. Then again there are allot of people who could be adversely affected and those people might get very very angry...

Simon

What you are looking at is past history. What you are not including is the rate of expansion in some countries that are increasing their usage of electricity much faster then countries like the US. Where we have been reducing our consumption. Also our birth rate has been pretty flat.

While in a country like India both the electrical consumption and birth rate are opposite of ours. Also the power generation is mostly coal generated. That kind of skews the future per capita emission numbers. And I am sure that will happen for other industrial growth countries.

[karrak]

Get India and China signed up first. Not going to happen. California's "green" grid is life support and has to import power at peak rates, at peak usage times
Unless it's caused by the sun.

Surely we have to look at per capita consumption, if we look at the following graph from here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...xide_emissions



Surely it is up to those that have the largest per capita emissions to reduce their emissions and for the those with the least to limit the increase in their emissions.

Remember, Global warming has been going on since the last Ice Age....

Big difference is the rate of change in temperature and the amount of change. I suppose for all the high emitters who are middle aged and older it probably doesn't matter as it may not effect us too much in our lifetime. Who cares about about the future generations, all the people who are not as fortunate as us and all the other living things on the planet. Then again there are allot of people who could be adversely affected and those people might get very very angry...

Simon

[DanKegel]

Proving once again that your grasp of the standard is astounding. Thank you for describing the obvious.

"Water Rates and Charges, RATE MAKING 101" from

http://www.allianceforwaterefficiency.org/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?ItemID=720

says "Marginal costing methods recognize that the dividing line
between fixed and variable depends on the period of time used for the analysis",
which supports the point I think you were objecting to.
But it's hard to tell, since your reply was ad hominem rather than directed at an actual issue.

[Mike90250]

I was quoting your carbon tax statement, you respond with PV panels. Because China and India (and other developing countries) need cheap power 24/7 now.
Taxing developed countries without taxing cheap imports from countries without environmental or social regulations is insane.
Make the price of a enviro/social responsible product the same as imported junk, and then see what happens. But no, import taxes are being flattened with all the global trade agreements with no enviro/social responsibilities, That's going to end badly,

[word]

Get India and China signed up first. Not going to happen. California's "green" grid is life support and has to import power at peak rates, at peak usage times
Unless it's caused by the sun. Remember, Global warming has been going on since the last Ice Age....

I'm behind that. And corn, ethanol, tobacco...

China has the most installed solar PV at 43 GW, plus their panels are the cheapest and chinese manufactures have driven solar panel wholesale prices down to 39 cents a watt. In a couple of years consumers will be pay 20 cents a watt for their solar panels which is amazingly low.

[J.P.M.]

? I'm just describing standard practice.

Proving once again that your grasp of the standard is astounding. Thank you for describing the obvious.

[DanKegel]

OK so it's "clearly possible." Could you describe how that will be accomplished?

It won't be any one thing, but for starters, let's look at how much power each person needs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ty_consumption says US and EU per capita electrical power consumption is 1843 and 788 watts, respectively.
The EU is an existence proof for having a high standard of living with less than half the power, so that's clearly possible (but not easy).

2. During even overcast days, PV can provide enough energy; you just have to have enough panels and/or transmission lines.
(My house pretty much doesn't use any grid power during the day, even on cloudy days.)

3. Wind is usually blowing somewhere; you just need to have enough wind turbines and/or transmission lines.

4. Thermal energy storage in cooling and heating systems can help, and is starting to be deployed.

5. As the vehicle fleet is electrified, many of those vehicles' batteries can be charged during
the day, soaking up more of that delicious daytime PV.

6. Relatively small utility scale batteries can be used to reduce fossil fuel consumption at
new peaker plants by handling the first 20 minutes of rampup, giving them time to
use more efficient combined cycle peakers rather than quick-start simple cycle peakers.

7. Modern 100MW solar power towers which use molten salt and can store energy for use all
night are commercially available; several are in operation already.

Each of these tweaks gets us closer to handling a very large percentage of load with clean energy, using nothing like the quantity of utility grid support batteries you were thinking about.

For a more detailed plan, see e.g.

http://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/USStatesWWS.pdf

I don't think it's going to be easy or cheap, not by a long shot. But it's possible.

[Mike90250]

The most fair and practical way to combat climate change is to implement a carbon tax so that the effect of dumping carbon in the atmosphere is account for in the price of fossil fuels.

Get India and China signed up first. Not going to happen. California's "green" grid is life support and has to import power at peak rates, at peak usage times
Unless it's caused by the sun. Remember, Global warming has been going on since the last Ice Age....

The USA then should get rid of all subsides for fossil fuels, wind and solar. ......

I'm behind that. And corn, ethanol, tobacco...

[jflorey2]

It's clearly possible to provide enough storage - and shift enough load to daytime, and reduce enough load with efficiency improvements - to cover a very large % of usage with a combination of wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, and geothermal. The question is schedule and cost.

OK so it's "clearly possible." Could you describe how that will be accomplished?

My thinking:

In the US, average power usage is about 2kw per person. So that's 48kwhr per person per day, or 14 petawatt-hours of storage required for even one day of storage. That's approximately 1 trillion li-ion cells of the most common type (18650's.)

The Tesla gigafactory, the largest planned battery factory in the world, can produce 35 gigawatt-hours a year of cells if it works out. So you would need to run that plant at full output for 400 years to build enough cells to provide even one day of storage for the US. Or you'd need 40 of them to produce enough within 10 years. Or 80 of them to make enough AND replace the ones that are wearing out. Assuming we have enough lithium, which we currently do not.

So how would your plan work?

[HollySprings]

[QUOTE=DanKegel;n336971]

Maybe he meant $0.0299/kWh? Supposedly that's what the bids came in at for phase III of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park. It's not alone; there are others in the same ballpark. In the US, low bids are a bit higher, like $0.06/kWh.


Yes, the article I googled references $0.0299/kWh. Just call it $0.03 / kWh. That's in Dubai, by the way. I don't have UAE in SAM so I couldn't "try" it out with a comparison in NC. But I looked up Dubai in solar irradiance tables and Holy Cow! Their numbers are huge. Probably like that in the desert SW in the US I would imagine.