Does Solar Power Math Add up to an Alternative Energy Solution?
The Obama administration just announced that it has guaranteed 3/4 of a billion dollars for a new Solar Power Plant to be constructed by a company called Solar Reserve.
These funds are going to be spent producing a massive solar project in the desert of Nevada.
When completed, the 2,950 acre plant is projected to output 100MW of power under optimal conditions.
Needless to say, this isn't a project that would have happened without government intervention.
Solar Reserve needed Federal loan guarantees, because private investors wouldn't have lent money under such favorable terms otherwise. In addition, the company acknowledges that the plant is needed due to a government mandate. Nevada law mandates that 15% of it's power must be produced from renewable sources.
So, why is so much government interference needed? The answer is that the numbers just don't add up. A free market wouldn't choose it outside of a few niche applications like places far off the electrical grid with very low power demands, or spacecraft which don't have to deal with power losses due to having an atmosphere in the way.
Some people have taken issue with my previous criticism of solar power because I used the "Solar Two" power plant as my benchmark. The Solar Reserve effort actually relies upon that exact experience as proof that they can succeed with this plant. The Solar Two plant was famously wildly over-budget, and produced no where near the rated output.
This plant hasn't been built, so I can't look at the actual cost or power output. I can only analyze the marketing claims the company has made. However, let it be understood that we have good reason to believe this project will also be over-budget and under-performing by the time all is said and done.
First, let's look at the claimed energy density. The solar two plant that I previously analysed was an abject failure because it produced an average of 12.3kw per hour from an acre of solar plant, and each acre cost over a million dollars. For reference a small diesel generator, capable of fitting in the back of a truck could accomplish the same feet for less than 5k.
The company's brief says the Tonopah power plant will be rated at 110 MW / hour, and due to the liquid salt storage media it has a claimed ability to produce a limited amount of power during the night unlike traditional solar plants. They don't specify exactly what the expected portion of time that the project will produce its rated power output though. Traditional solar availability is only 21.7%
The main generating portion is planned to cover 1530 acres. The projected cost is 800 million dollars. So, let's start to do some math.
First let's figure out the power output of an acre of this plant. 110 Megawatts divided by 1530 acres yields .07 MW per acre in nominal performance. That's 70kw, and a huge leap forward from the Solar Two yield. Of course, the plant obviously cannot perform at this level 24/7, so the real world results will probably be significantly lower.
Next, let's look at the cost per acre. 800 million divided by 1530 acres is $522,875. So that means it will cost over half a million dollars to produce a nominal 70kw of power.
In comparison, this generator is capable of outputting 100kw for just 25k. It might not fit in the bed of most trucks, but at 2700 lbs, it certainly small enough to be pulled by virtually any pick up on the road today. The remaining half million dollars sure buys a lot of diesel fuel. There's no worries about power output during the short winter days or cloudy days either.
So we see yet again, that even the latest and greatest solar technology falls comically short of "traditional" power generation methods. Even using the company's claimed budget and output numbers, the plant is hopelessly expensive, and impossible large. It is still orders of magnitude to big, and too expensive to provide the electricity America needs to be prosperous.
The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) projects that we will need 925GW by summer of 2017. That's 925,000 MW. To power our country with "Solar Reserve" plants (again making the impossible assumption that they will produce their rated output 24/7) we would need 8409 plants. Those plants would take up 24,806,818 acres. We also need $6,727,200,000,000
We simply don't have that kind of spare room. We certainly don't have the cash laying around. Don't forget that even these ludicrous numbers assume the project doesn't go over budget, and that they produce their rated output without fail. In the real world, the cost would be higher, and we would need far more than 8409 plants.
Not everywhere is as sunny as the Nevada desert, and we simply don't have enough deserts to put all these plants. Would the environmentalists be willing to let us build on 30+ million acres of pristine desert habitat even if we had the money laying around. Of course not. Alternative Energy is a scam.
Comments
I have trouble with the phrase 'global warming is a scam' as well. Global warming is real - as real as global cooling. The cause perpetuated as human intervention is the scam.
This seems like an almost deceitful place to abruptly stop actual math, given that the fuel burned to make the electricity is going to be a far bigger expense than the generators.
So... what, the price difference only buys you two or three years of power from an increasingly-expensive fuel resource? By comparison, what's the operational lifetime of the solar array?
-wikepedia
I have heard that the average shelf life of most electronic components is closer to 20yrs which explains a alot about my 1992 crown vic I drive :-(, great article though I have often thought that solar panels were just not a viable source of electricity as a replacement to the current methods.In time that may change with the new generation of panels but not yet.
RSS feed for comments to this post