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Challenging Conventional Wisdom on Renewable Energy's Limits
In making the case for a rapid conversion away from heavily polluting energy sources like coal and nuclear power to cleaner generation, renewable energy advocates often confront the argument that their scheme is impossible due to the intermittent nature of sun and wind.
But a groundbreaking study out of North Carolina challenges that conventional wisdom: It suggests that backup generation requirements would be modest for a system based largely on solar and wind power, combined with efficiency, hydroelectric power, and other renewable sources like landfill gas.
"North Carolina utilities and regulators and those in other states should take this template, refine it, and make a renewable electricity future a reality," said IEER executive director Arjun Makhijani. (photo by flickr user Johnny Jupiter Photo) "Even
though the wind does not blow nor the sun shine all the time, careful
management, readily available storage and other renewable sources can
produce nearly all the electricity North Carolinians consume," said
author John Blackburn, professor emeritus of economics and former
chancellor at Duke University in Durham, N.C.. He's also the author of
the books "The Renewable Energy Alternative" and "Solar in Florida."
The study was published last week by the Maryland-based Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, whose executive director, Arjun Makhijani, called it landmark research. "North Carolina utilities and regulators and those in other states should take this template, refine it, and make a renewable electricity future a reality," he said.
Blackburn used hourly North Carolina wind and solar data for a total of 123 days in the sample months of January, April, July and October, with samples taken at three wind and three solar sites across the state. Solar and wind power generation were then scaled up to represent 80% -- 40% each -- of average utility loads for the sample months, with the rest coming from the existing hydroelectric system (8%) and assumed biomass co-generation (12%).
The study figured in projected energy efficiency by assuming an annual utility load of 90 billion kilowatt-hours, slightly less than the current 125 billion kWh load, and by calculating average hourly loads from Duke Energy's 2006 load profile with modifications to show some reduction in summer and winter peaks due to more efficient buildings. It also assumed increased storage capacity from a smarter electrical grid.
In the end, with those conditions met, Blackburn calculated that the required auxiliary generation from conventional power plants to fill in the gaps would amount to only 6% of the annual total generation required to meet demand in North Carolina.
"This goes to the heart of the argument by power companies that have long dismissed solar and wind as future technologies," said Jim Warren, executive director of the N.C. Waste Awareness and Reduction Network, a Durham, N.C.-based nonprofit that provided research assistance to Blackburn.
The study was released just days after a new poll from Elon University in Elon, N.C. found overwhelming public support in North Carolina for developing the state's renewable energy capacity. Nearly 80% of the poll's respondents said they favor new wind energy facilities in the mountains or on the coast, while more than 83% favor construction of solar facilities.
- Posted in
78 Comments so far
Show AllAh ha, knew alternative energy was a winner! We have amy sources for power even beyond the best known, plus great savings in efficiency. There is even a new way to harvest the heat we waste in colling towers and other heat sources. Thanks to another poster for point out the vortex engine. See:
http://tinyurl.com/yhpcd6p
So we can get by with green power. Screw the fossil fuel energy companies. They will try to discredit this through their bought and paid for think tanks but we know the truth.
Gary
PS doesn't CD have a proofreader for headlines?
"Only Americans can hurt America."
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Having put US taxpayers on the hook for massive nuclear power plant construction programs and operation costs, Obama has made the nuclear power industry too big to fail.
The Obama Regime and its successors will therefore need to keep infusing more taxpayer money into the nuclear industry, thereby creating artificially low prices for power that will make it even more difficult for renewables to compete.
The old standby for storing renewable energy is pumped hydroelectric power. Perhaps 100 pumped hydro stations have been built. One example is at Storm King Mountain on the Hudson north of New York City. Water is pumped uphill to a pond at night and let down through turbines during rush hour. A simpler method uses existing hydroelectric dams, turning them on during rush hour and saving water at night. A small pond at the bottom of the dam maintains a minimum stream flow at night.
One newer storage medium compresses air down into an abandoned oil well or mineshaft, then releases the air through turbines during rush hour.
Power storage capacity also helps with the power shipping business, through low-loss (and no leukemia) HVDC lines of course.
This idea has potential (energy).
Joe
This is good news, especially since this study focused on generation in North Carolina, which is not particularly high on the list for wind or solar potential.
I don't think ther is much pumped-storage hydro potential. There are few places left where the required mountaintop or high-valley dam and reservoir would be environmentally acceptable.
I suspect that with an efficient continental grid (using HVDC as mich as possible as) the enormous wind potential of the central plains could be tapped with little storage needed. Between Texas and Saskatchewan, the wind is always blowing somewhere.
Makes sense to me. There are sections of SE California where it just howls day and night, too. There are smaller models and turbine models that work wonderfully around residences.
Small scale home wind turbines are only practical at rural homes. Most poeple, if they are serious about reducing their carbon footprints, by reducing or eliminating car use, should be living in communities of far to high density to allow backyard wind turbines.
There is also efficiencies of scale, the larger wind turbine and associated transformers and control equipment are far more efficietthan a home setup.
Expect the paid shills of carbon-based fuels (coal, oil, & natural gas) & nuclear to go into media obfuscation overdrive on this one.
For if this gains traction, said harmful energy industries face the very real prospect of eventual obsolescence well before all available resources are extracted from the planet (Business 101: maximize prior product life cycle before introducing new product as much as possible). They would go from smug, arrogant corporate douche bags to this era's version of horse buggy salesmen in 1910 fairly quickly.
As for the nuke operators, one of their main arguments, no other alternative that is not a cause of global warming, goes away, and they are stuck with toxic non-performing assets that are lawsuits waiting to happen.
Considering the venality and rapacity of the suits who run these massive multi-national corporations in the past and up to present times...it would be a fate well deserved.
But as the fossil fuels industry tells me, through TV ads everywhere, the fossil fuels industry creates a lot of jobs! Thats important in these jobless times. If we switch to renewables, those jobs will go away! Apparently, renewables doesn't create jobs. Renewable energy systems just build themselves...
Nuclear power creates even more jobs when you consider that it will generate many new jobs for the next 5,000 years cleaning up and containing nuclear waste. With Obama providing endless corporate welfare to the nuclear industry, job security doesn't get any better.
The half-life of nuclear waste is so long that clean up, containment, and management of said waste will last into the next three or four evolutionary steps (250,000 years, give or take) beyond the current edition, Homo homo sapien. There's also the lovely possibility of how radiation will affect the long term evolutionary development of our species. Simply put, nukes are just about the worst scientific advance ever put forward by mankind...as it is simply unable to "manage" it in any manner vaguely resembling responsible.
corporations need to loose their status as "humans" that the Supreme Court has cristened them with.
In a recent NYTimes article a comment was made that since it is treasonous to do business with Iran and now we find a lot of companies that have indeed been dooing just that-- the next step is to sue the companies for treason-- because they are Human being according to the Supreme Court and can be sued like a human being--- this comment got a huge number of supporters agreeing with it!!
Now all we have to do is reelect Obama as long as possible until he changes the Supreme Court with such excellent choices as Sottomayor and then we can get some real law accomplished as to the power of the corporations.
Meanwhile we all must push for a spiritual as well as a intellectual life not a consumer driven idiots- demanding the latest crap.
Well, I'm about to try to find and read the actual study.
But I assume this whole focus is on utility companies, and not individuals (homeowners and farmers) contributing back to the grid (decentralized energy production)? Just think of all those rooftops and fields!
The problem is, most people cannot afford such a syatem, don't have a suitable site for such a syatem, nor are they willing to go through the costly maintenance involved.
Home generating is fairly limited in it's ability to contribute, and farmers are already getting wind energy leases in many wind-rich areas.
I rather like the existing system. My electricity is furnished to my home and all I need to do is pay a bill once a month. I just want more of it to come from renewables. For now, I send Iberdrola/Community energy 8 dollrs per month as "wind energy offsets" to support wind energy development in my area.
Every single house on my three mile long road is photovoltaic.
They are not costly to maintain, just add distilled water occassionally and buy new batteries every ten years.
If there is in fact a photocell, photo to hydrogen available even batteries will no longer be necessary, just fuel cells.
And if the subsides of fossil fuels were shifted to renewables and with economies of scale in production they become affordable. I am poor but I afford it.
The more progressive Architects are designing renewable energy buildings and in my nearby city all new building has a zero carbon emissions footprint.
Every developed country except the USA can move forward on renewables.
Even a smart green grid loses energy and you are at the mercy of the corporations.
Billy 6:14 ---- The Hindenburg burnt because of its new coat of highly flammable metallic paint was struck by lightening.
I can just as easily store Hydrogen as I store propane and the just as flammable as hydrogen, gasoline(fumes).
Sorry you can only fool the ignorant uninitiated.
You can store hydrogen in a baloon at atmospheric pressure if you have a big enough baloon. It doesn't need to be pressurized. Glenn's point about storing Propane or Gasolene is right on the mark.
One of the keys to future energy usage is to shorten the distance from generator to consumer. Even superconductor lines lose energy over distance. Big AC hi-tension lines shed a vast amount of energy, enough to light up a flourescent tube held out in the air thirty feet below the wires! Putting massive power stations hundreds or thousands of miles away is foolish. And it creates an ecologial waste strip 100 feet wide and however long that must be defoliated every few years.
But at the top of nearly every building, in most cities, there is constant wind. And all those bigbox stores out on Mall Road have big flat roofs, just aching to be covered with PVs. Even without storage, PVs can alleviate much of the grid's peak demand during it daytime peak, when offices and stores are open and AC is sucking down the juice.
The key is proximity. Forget Arizona supplying the Northeast with Solar Power, use what we've got where we are for what we need.
Many areas are very poor in renewable resources. Your idea would consign such areas to poverty.
And actually, electric power and transmission efficiency increases greatly with scale. The localized syatem you propose would actually be less efficient.
I remain confused by this knee-jerk localism. Being "off the (efficient, reliable) grid" is good how? Most of this "get off the grid" impusle seems to be just a maifestation of cowboy-individualism to me. We know how well that attutude worked in US history.
And looking at the bigger carbon footprint issue, we also need to get rid of suburban malls and big box stores too. Sprawling Arizona car and air-conditioning dependent masses of suburbia like Phoenix are carbon-emitting obscenities.
From an efficiency and reliability standpoint, it is far more efficient just to charge a battery bank, Lithium-ferrous-phosphate batteries are both very efficient and environmentally benign. I started my third season of using them to power my way to work today.
Most people cannot afford to pay full up front for the system that would cost them less over time. However, government could solve that for far less money than a brace of nuclear plants will cost, even before the errors and upkeep and medical costs and thousands of years of waste storage start getting factored into the picture.
Virtually everyone with a home has a suitable site for photovoltaic cells: All you need is access to the sky. It's a little more complicated on Manhattan Island, I expect, but most of the rest of the country should do just fine.
Windmills do have some problems on occasion with loose blades and so forth. But designs already exist that fix this and enable smaller wind turbines to be fixed on top of all manner of building without danger.
Smaller companies could be hired for energy production, but part of the problem with industry figures for renewable electricity generation is that they regularly assume having to pay for dedicated land, which simply is not necessary.
One poster mentioned solar cells directly to hydrogen( no electrolysis), I have yet to research the existence of this technology, but it would be a boon.
A poster below mentions compressed air and there is also solar heat pumped into mines and caverns, into salts and released to run turbines at night.
One proven heating/ cooling method is Geo thermal storage and release of interior building space air in buried pipe fields, Universities are using this for their entire campus but it may also be used for an individual residence.
There is the garbage/algae to heat/biofuels conversion but I am not sure of the ratio of water involved.
in 2008 Scientific America had an article that spelled out the cost to implement a total conversion to solar electric by 2050, including every car being electric.
Our Senators got funds for a drone command center but nothing for our planned smart green grid..
I read an interesting thing about electric vehicles. They recharge at night, when excess generating capacity is available and rates are cheaper. Most generating capacity is designed for peak usages in the afternoon and early evening. Hence, if you replace gas powered vehicles with electric vehicles you don't actually have to build more electric power plants: the existing ones will do just fine and actually function better when used continuously rather than intermittently.
But it gets better: when commuters return to home in the afternoon/evening and start turning on the air conditioning and lights, they can actually plug in their electric vehicles and use the vehicles batteries to supply excess power to the power grid, offsetting the requirement for peak power plant power even more. Once its drained, the battery can be programmed to recharge in the late evening, when demand is otherwise low.
Pretty cool, huh?
Except you do the same thing with renewables and forget the fossil fuels and you use geothermal storage instead of ac or heating.
Better yet, get them to do without AC. Somehow, 50 years ago, civilization thrived jsut fine, even in Atlanta or new Orleans, without AC.
pjd412, good point about cutting back on consumption - you cannot overemphasize that enough. Make do with less, and *most* of the problems can be solved without even doing anything. And for the remaining "problems", choose from clean, efficient and sustainable options whenever possible - we should be home free.
What, exactly, are we going to build all these solar panels and windmills out of, given that China controls ~95% of the world's supply of rare earth metals? Who really thinks they're going to continue to share with us when they're having their own problems?
We use fossil fuels to get the raw materials out of the ground and get them to the construction site. We use fossil fuels to do the construction. We will no doubt use fossil fuels to do the maintenance.
"Green energy" is a boondoggle. Our efforts would be better spent on simply not using so much energy in the first place. We're going to have to adapt to that reality one day, whether we want to or not.
Inverse 3:28 Even if China did really control rare earth production, ignoring Canadas reserves.
There is no rare earth in a wind turbine (just a generator on a tower)or in photovoltaic cells ( gold and silicon waffers)
IT is cell phones that need rare earth not renewable energy.
And one may use renewables to build the renewables, just as the sun is powering my laptop all the time.Anyway all that is necessary is a gradual transformation.
It is this total, purposely fostered ignorance that has kept renewables from being implemented.
The USA has way to many fools for fossil fuels.
Your argument has as much merit and is as harmful as saying we are fighting Al Queda in Afghanistan
In fact your argument promotes the Oil Wars.
Your facts are false and your agrument without merit, your suppositions are a detriment to the world and all within.
No rare Earth? Generators in industrial size windmills are built around large and very powerful neodymium magnets. I'll let you Google who produces most of that rare Earth neodymium yourself. Who's facts are false and without merit?
To ubrew12; Windmills and solar panels are not the same thing. And much more goes into a solar panel than "heated sand". Many alternative materials are currently being developed as well since crystalline silicon is expensive and not easily acquired.
Catus 4:15 -- Yes China produces most now because they drove down the price so much that the other nations such as Canada,Austraila,USA, Brazil, India and Sri Lanka closed their mines. Production does not equate with reserves.
Wiki says Neodymium even though it "is called a rare earth metal it is not rare in quantity"
It is used in loudspeakers, mikes, guitar pickups "numerous appliances" and glass.
So goodbye rock and roll and household appliances, according to your argument.
And home wind generators as you imply need none.
And you do not claim photovoltaics have rare earth.
crystalline silicon is produced for computer chips, in fact reject poor quality silicon is what is often used in photovoltaic cells
You mean to say we can produce all the high quality silicon crystals for computer chips but not the lower quality for photovoltaics?
Have anymore false meritless arguments?
Well done, Glenn!
Neodynium is used in high-power permanent magnets. Those super-powerful magnets that many people take out of old hard drives are neodynium magnets. Not sure about generators, but as an EV experimenter, I do know that permanent-magnet motors are by far most efficient type for use in vehicles - although the low curie point (temperature in which magnet loses it magnetism) of neodynium magnets limit their application in vehicle motors - so alnico magnets are used instead.
At any rate, even if China has most such rare earth resources, it is a simple matter to simply buy the resource, or the finished goods that uses the resource, from the Chinese. The lithium-ferrous-phosphate cells I use in my EV's come from China.
windmills out of rare earths? Solar panels are mostly reduced silicon: heated sand.
The rare earth comment is probably a reference to the strong permanent magnets used in wind power generators.
inverse_agonist:
Over 90% of solar panels are made from silicon--sand. No "rare earth metals" are necessary to make solar cells or wind turbines.
Granted, today we use fossil fuels to mine, transport, manufacture and construct just about everything. Solar is 89% green because the process for making solar panels must use conventional electricity currently available. As more solar and wind power come on line, these technologies become greener in the manufacturing process. Regarding transportation, rechargeable electric cars (eventually using green electricity to charge them) and fuel cell alternatives are already making inroads.
As energy goes, the only boondoggle is in continuing to use coal, nuclear (talk about rare earth metals!) and natural gas to produce electricity.
http://freesolaradvice.blogspot.com
According to an ITN report by Lindsey Hilsum from last December, a 3-MW wind turbine requires 2 tons of rare earth metals, mostly neodymium. Her report begins: "Rare earth processing in China is a messy, dangerous, polluting business." Even China had closed many of its mines because of the environmental devastation. But now they're reopened because of the demand for wind turbines.
Please read, download free, Plan B4.0 by Lester Brown, President of the Earth Policy Insitute. You will find overwhelming records of what is actually being done here and elsewhere, including China, India, Japan, Europe-and what is coming on line... Being informed is actually more interesting than being opinionated.
m.
thank for the advise that getting informed is actually fun and I agree with you that it is is an underused method of fighting depression and hopelessness.
YES-- lets all read the excellent resources that have been mentioned in this particular conversation form several folks.
This is what Common Dream is uniquely good at-- connecting not the dots but people who know something.
There is no need for special materials, Chinese or otherwise, to build windmills.
Conservation's a great idea, too, but there's no point limiting ourselves to a single idea.
Of course it's near at hand.
Nanosolar in California is able to create solar cells building them up from the molecular level and an outfit in Portland is using inexpensive.plastic cells to capture 96% of the light enetring the panel.
Beware of your sources for there is a vested interest at the top in maintaining the status quo when it comes to energy.
Just think of the ramifications if millions didn't have to pay that $400 power bill every month.
If you are paying $400 a month for electricity, you are a power glutton or live in far too large a home anyway. You need to change your extravagant lifestyle.
Even in the dead of a W. Pennsylvania winter, my combined gas and electricity bill is only half that amount.
A terrible mistake to confuse addiction with outright dependency for always on tap fossil fuel electicity. Our lifestyle has grown around the electricity supply. We can just as easily adapt our lifestyles to the storage and supply requirements of renewables. Do not confuse the necessity for profits of fossil fuel electricity with the demands for livability of our ecosystem.
The whole world.....perhaps the whole Universe even.......works off electricity.
Not fossil fuels, oil or coal.........Electricity.
Time to move beyond the last 120 years.
The new paradigm needs to take over.
Virtually everything we do requires electricity and everything else is used to convert Carbon into those little electrons who run our world.
Solutions??
Look up.
See that bright object up there? It provides 100 watts per square foot directly.
12.2 trillion watt/hours/square mile per year.
http://www.ecoworld.com/energy-fuels/how-much-solar-energy-hits-earth.html
Still not enough juice for you?
Go down to the beach and look over the waves.
How much energy do you think those waves have coming in ever 8 seconds?
Don't you think it's possible in the 21st century to get them to lift and drop a buoy attached to a dynamo to convert that motion into electricity?
It's high time to get out of that itty bitty box Mr. Rockefeller and his buddies put us in 100 years ago!!
It's been knows for a century that renewable energy is feasible, assuming a reasonable cap on consumption. But the elephant in the USan living room has all along been the elites' relentless campaign to expand consumption, to expand economic activity, to expand the empire, to expand elite egos.
The "groundbreaking study" referred to in this article is framed with the assumption that the people may want to fix current consumption and let the elites shift the energy paradigm from fossil to renewable.
While a Demok triangulator would readily embrace this idea, the people won't. The people want full emancipation from elite oppression, which means shifting ownership/control of energy production over to the people.
rtdrury, it's interesting and significant that you used the words "consumption", "empire", "elite" and "ego" in the same sentence - they are all *so* closely related.
The Sun Ain't Going OUT for 4B YEARS, NUKING FUTS Obummer!
Whether this report is correct or not is irrelevant to the fact that renewables were viable thirty years ago and only vested interests have prevented it.
China, Europe and Japan are forging ahead while the USA drags its knuckles in disinformation propaganda.
My state is planning three smart green grids to sell renewables to the other states not bright enough to move into today.
The leading edge photovoltaic cell manufacturer in Germany was in fact a Canadian firm. They developed the technology and science in Canada. They asked Ontario Hydro to give some guarantee that they would implement the technologies in the power grid.
Ontario Hydro deliberated and then concluded that going Nuclear would be "cheaper".
The firm was contacted by the Government of Germany and promised tax credits for the research along with the guarantee that the product would be purchased.
The packed up and moved Lock stock and barrel, employ many thousands of employees and have a market for more then they can produce which sees them greatly expand their production.
GwNorth, that's unfortunate - in more ways than one. The lost opportunity to establish an industry for the future (well, not really lost, but certainly set back by years) is probably the biggest loss.
As for the Ontario Hydro going for nuclear, I have no doubt that including all the subsidies in all forms will show the nuclear option to be anything but "cheaper". And the fact that the Germans are not that stupid should make people mad - if they are paying attention.
Yes, this is just like the killing of the electric car decades ago.
There's nothing particularly unreliable about longtime anti-nuclear organizations, though of course one should certainly get other POV's as well.
The situation is not the same as trusting the power companies or construction companies themselves because the antinuclear organizations do not have a profit motive behind their ideology.
Meanwhile, the fact that renewable power is practical is not as new as this article seems to imply. SCE had economical wind plants by the mid-1980's. Photovoltaic cells pay for themselves in fewer years than a nuclear plant takes to even get up and running.
If renewable power had a sliver of the subsidy that has been given nuclear power, it would dominate the market by its greater efficiency and reduced overhead.
The Sierra Club is indeed rather compromised by various corporate connections.
When a coal-burning power plant was proposed near Morgantown WV, which would have serious SO2 pollution impacts to wild areas downwind (Dolly Sods and Shendandoah NP), the Sierra Club intervened and provided just the green-cover for approval and construction to proceed. The SC's "victory" was that the generator agreed to buy sulfur credits from another plant being fitted with scrubbers - in Utah.
Fuck the sold-out, co-opted Sierrra Club.