[Demoth]

We are seeing more drives towards large scale wind farms, such as the first Pickens site, calls for nuclear and utility companies planning more solar systems and wind farms. All of this developement into the centralized grid systems is the wrong way we should be headed.

An energy grid has many inherent weaknesses- such as:

1. You pay what the utility decides to charge.

2. Grid goes down in a system failure or even warfare, your screwed. A central grid system presents targets for terrorists and makes us more vulnerable to a first strike attack on our main power supplies. Hurricanes would still take out power for large areas. Hackers can take down a grid. Just too many vulnerablilities.

3. Lack of R&D and competition in the market with only large scale projects being contracted for.

What we need to be striving for is a energy system that ultimately ends in the consumer generating and storing 100% of their energy needs on site.

As it stands now, in sunny locations, a solar system can provide full power to a home even using lead acid for storage (lots of it). The two problems are extreme cost and lack of proper storage. Both problems looks to be close to solved with many projects such as nano solar type systems and EESTOR just around the corner.

We will soon be able to print and even spray-on solar cells cheaply that will be able to pull energy from multiple spectrums and would not require direct sunlight. This means a full solar cover can be cheaply applied to a roof, over windows and even over concrete with a 20-60% efficiency depending on the angle of the sun and any shade factors.

Battery tech is finally advancing as is ultra capacitor work. These two technologies will combine soon into something that will have high energy output and unlimited lifespan.

Combine this with some roof top and many strategically placed wind turbines and even a densely populated apartment building could fully power the community while providing chargers in the parking lot for electric cars.

The biggest hurdle once the tech arrives is people getting used to the look of buildings and houses modified for maximum energy generation. We all know the condo associations and such will fight heavy solar paneling and wind turbines. If the ultimate choice is to pay $20,000 including a heavy government credit and get free energy for life, the end of oil for energy and a dependance on a fickle grid system will be upon us.

[essex]

Large scale can be very destructive. Personally I favor a democratic approach where the benefits are more directly available to individuals. PV panels, solar water heating, double glazing and architecture which uses the principles of passive solar and shading during summer should all be encouraged. The demand for electricity is insatiable if we model on the basis of eternal growth. Consumers need to be encouraged to do their bit and reap the financial benefits.
This is what is being proposed for our city. It is very divisive and environmentally irresponsible.
www.palmerston-north.info

[aahala2]

We are seeing more drives towards large scale wind farms, such as the first Pickens site, calls for nuclear and utility companies planning more solar systems and wind farms. All of this developement into the centralized grid systems is the wrong way we should be headed.

An energy grid has many inherent weaknesses- such as:

1. You pay what the utility decides to charge.

That's certainly true but why did you put that on your list?

I don't know about you, but I have never been able to
choose the price I wanted to pay for a big Mac, or any item
at Walmart.

[mos6507]

I don't know about you, but I have never been able to choose the price I wanted to pay for a big Mac, or any item
at Walmart.

Yeah, but McDonalds has a lot of competition which keeps prices down. Utilities are pretty much monopolies.

[aahala2]

I don't know about you, but I have never been able to choose the price I wanted to pay for a big Mac, or any item at Walmart.

Yeah, but McDonalds has a lot of competition which keeps prices down. Utilities are pretty much monopolies.

McDonalds does have a monopoly on big Macs. In places where utilities are monopolies, their prices and practices are controlled by state utility commissions.

[dissimulo]

People don't want to be involved in producing their energy or even think about it; they just want to have it.

[Demoth]

People don't want to be involved in producing their energy or even think about it; they just want to have it.

I agree. With currrent tech and an insane amount of money you can make almost any home or apartment complex run 100% solar/wind. That's including every occupant powering an electric car off the system. With current computer technology and good design, the unit would be as maintenance invisible as your home air conditioning system.

Of course, unless most of society undergoes a large smack to their egotistical ways, very few communities would allow people to replace a few trees with tall wind turbines and put up funky looking roof tiles.

The three biggest obstacles purely technology wise are high initial cost, battery replacement cost/hassel and battery space requirements to adequately store enough power for emergencies.

However, in a perfect capitalist system, the most beneficial way for energy generation to develop is in a non-centralized way. I'd rather see numerous companies vying for consumers looking for home power systems. Solar, wind and storage would develop along at a good pace even after the majority of the population was already self powered.

There will always be a demand for cheaper and even lower profile, better performance and aesthetically pleasing systems as the tech advances. It would futher help if governments would increase incentives for 100% clean renewables.

A few things to keep in mind about current wind turbines. They are silent, move too slowly to hurt birds and can be designed to look like anything from a Dutch windmill to modern art. Wind power is the perfect compliment to solar for a self contained system.

I do understand the initial deployment of something on this scale would negatively impact the planet and take years to show positive results. However, once done- free unlimited energy, low pollution, no more grid, no need for Russia or the Mid East.

[vtsnowedin]

Wind mills are hostage to the rule of circles that says doubleing the diameter yields four times the swept area or power output. Due to this for wind power larger is always better. The limits to wind power has always been the strength of materials used in the blades. A large windmill was built in Vermont in WW2 but one of the steel blades soon fell off and the project was abandoned. Todays carbon fiber space age material allow for successful three hunderd foot dia. rotors that are cost efficent while no smaller single house unit ever will be. Let the utilities build them and let the PS boards regulate the prices. When they wear out they can be removed and the environment will never know they were there.

[Starvid]

If Demoth thinks small scale distributed power generation is the best way, if suggest he starts a company doing exactly that, or at least invest his pension savings in that idea.

Me, I believe in economies of scale to lower average costs and that requires large centralized plants. And I'll hold on to my Exelon shares, thank you very much.

[mos6507]

I think there hasn't been enough industry interest in off grid equipment. It's a chicken and the egg thing. The alternative energy guys see how they can make a lot of money cutting a small number of big deals with utilities. There is no "Dell" of the off-grid world selling stuff at little profit, but large scale.

That's why most of the threads about PV technology are largely irrelevant to peal oilers. Do you think you're going to be able to order some of that dirt cheap thin film? No. The manufacturing capacity will be 100% tied up for the next decade in solar farm contracts.

Same deal with advanced batteries like AltairNanos or A123s or FireFly. These companies cut big deals with big industries. They are not going to sell them at Wal Mart. Could they? Sure! But it's maybe seen as not enough of a safe bet, and they think they have all the time in the world to evolve their business model.

Unfortunately it takes ages for cutting edge tech like this to tickle down into consumer sales. That's time that we really don't have.

So those who are waiting around to buy in when things get cheap are probably waiting for Godot.

[futuretrip]

The following is why we should promote and even subsidize RE...

I'm sure many are against tax credits, I am if they don't lower the cost of rooftop PV. Will taxes pay for the other half that we can't afford? But this kind of statement is shortsited.

There are many reasons to support it.
One, PV and associated industy costs should come down in price due to volume production caused by said credits.
Two, this is better than putting the money into conventional energy tech which already had (more than) their fare share of credits, subsidies, bailouts, ect.
Three, largecsale RE will become less expensive than it is now due to volume scale.
Forth, when oil becomes more expensive (again), it will be hard to develop RE due to lack of available resources! Thus we need to obtain experience in RE creation. With experience, the cost of fuel to make RE will not be such a show stopper since the production of RE plants will be more streamlined.
Fifth, at some point (nomatter what the costs) RE will be cheaper, and eventually, the only source until (if) fusion comes online.
Sixth, when fusion or something better than solar power towers is available (SPT's can provide electricity 24/7 by use of molten salt and graphite heat storage), the many billions of large mirrors would be decomissioned. Instead of "cleaning up the desert", simply position them as a giant flat mirror to offset negative albedo caused by the retreat of the little iceage and by global warming so

as to help prevent GW and ocean anoxia.


And seventh, RE is clean, unlimited and can sustain humanity. Without help, it might not be able to support billions of people after the coming oil crunch.

I know this sounds centralized, but I would rather have a green grid than anarky and deprivation. We need to use what available fossils to build the solar power towers (with heat storage and almost 24/7 elect gen). From there, the electric infrastructure can build upon itself.

Hydrogen is more costly than solar power towers and molten salt/graphite. It's only use (besides trivial) is the ability to store wind as fuel, but at a high cost inefficiency and containment. Batteries are becoming more advanced. NiMH has powered cars past the 100k mark on same pack (rav4 electric)!

Instead of assuming that all hope is gone, we should promote the solar power tower concept and advanced batteries for mobility. It's not the most efficient, but will be cheaper and better than hydrogen. We deal with centralism now. Solar energy is best generated from the desert, not from a shady rooftop!

fireofenergy

[mos6507]

Solar energy is best generated from the desert, not from a shady rooftop!

But if it's on your rooftop it belongs to you and only you. In a world where J6P is dependent on large entities for almost everything, it would be a good feeling to be self sufficient with electricity.

[futuretrip]

Right on. There are people doing the solar thermal thing in their yard too. If you are quite mechanicly inclined (electronics too), it would be cheaper than the grid. Solar thermal can be stored just for heat later at night.
However, electric companies don't charge as much as most other utilities. (I live in a small house and it's cheaper than anything else). If they were to charge too much, society would break down.
When fossils go up (again), it would be nice to already have the home system, but again, if anarky arizes, it won't do much good unless your whole town is prepaired to grow water, food and energy... Might as well have a green grid. That's why I believe in both high priced (per kilowatt) solarpanels and lowerpriced (per Kw) desert solar and wind.

[Demoth]

Transition from oil and coal to solar, wind and nuclear will happen. It is not a matter of if, just when. Taking the US and Western European viewpoint, we are far too dependant on Russia and the Middle East whereas the threat to national security outweights desires to protect money interests and maintain the status quo. Peak oil and environmental concerns don't even factor into high level government desire to become self sufficient on energy production.

There will be no anarchy here for the West. It will be a gradual transition, naturally limited to production speed. Even if you had all the funding in the world, there are only so many solar panels or wind turbines that could be produced each year.

The trend now is for private utilities to build large scale projects using bits and pieces of high priced patents. This type of structure I feel would not only be vunerable to threats, but would also slow the advance of renewable implimentation.

I have no problem with centralized grid systems. It will always be needed to provide energy at the city level. I also like the idea of even self sufficient systems being tied to a centralized grid to feed excess produced energy back into the grid system.

However, if even 25% of the population was willing and ALLOWED to use cutting edge technology to make themselves 100% off grid self sufficient, there would be a high enough demand to spur numerous companies into R&D and production. Also with so much competition, patents will be cheaper to get rights to so numerous propriatory tech, like possibly EESTOR, can be combined. People like MIT either sell it cheap to everyone or the Chinese will just steal it.

Remember, right now clean energy self sufficient homes are expensive and mostly limited to hobbiests. Much like the first days of the home PC or the home satellite system. Once the tech is cheap and can be installed for 10 grand by Sears, many people will want to be off grid. Cost savings over the long run and security will be a big draw.

Limiting projects to a handful of large contractors by keeping almost everything tied to a few players will definately slow the process of getting off oil ASAP.

Now, I do understand that most of our oil needs are not tied to the utility end of things. The other major component is battery development, hopefully again something like EESTOR, and soon. If we could get an electric car to hit a 300 mile range, recharge to 75% in 5 minutes on a modified outlet and have a 10 year battery life- the whole game changes. And the way things have been progressing, I would guess we are no more then 2 years away..

[cephalotus]

let's talk about Germany as an example (because I know the numbers here):

around 35% of the electricity produced is used in private households, the remaining 65% are used somewhere else.

I live in a 5 store building in a city, it would be next to impossible to make this building electricty autark.

Rooftop PV connected to the grid today is around 47ct/kWh for 20 years. (has to become cheaper by around -9% each year, see feed in tarife system)
Compared to the end user costs of electricity at around 20ct/kWh it is now about twice as expensive, but grid parity could be reached in maybe 10 years.

A 5kW system (see avatar) will provide around 5500kWh/a in Southern Germany, that's about 150% of the used electricity in that building during the year.
It's about 300% during summer months and around 30-50% during winter months.
Of grid the systen would need around 2-3 times more PV modules.
Of grid the system would need storage systems (and mabye even a backup system)

In the end electricity would cost around 200-300ct/kWh for an of grid system.

At least 3 times (more liekly 5 times) more energy would be needed to produce that system. Many times more ressources would be needed to produce that system.

It would be very difficult to use lots of electricity during the summer that is not used. You could drive an electric car (but it would be 5,000 to 10,000km per months in June and very little in the Dezember) or you could produce hydrogen (at an extreme cost, using even more ressources and lots of money to build that electrolyseur).

So in my opinion using the grid system is clearly the way to go. It is cheaper, produces much more energy (no loss for storage and no wasted energy during "over production"), doesn't need backup systems, uses much less ressources and will provide also energy for the industrie, buildings in the towns and so on.
The combination of wnd, solar, hydro and biomass/biogas conected via grid will also give a much more steady supply compared to of grid systems.

Germany now has around 1% photovoltaik energy and 10% seems to be possible in the near future (10-15 years). We will be able to pay for that with using current technology (some shrinkung prices wouldhelp of course, but that's to be expected)

It would be next to impossible to provide 10% photovoltaik through autark systems on houses and it would cost extreme amounts of money, even if you hope for some "new breakthrough technology".

on shore wind energy is now around 8-9ct/kWh (I doubt that it will become cheaper with raising costs of concrete, copper and steel) and I predict that we could grwo wind power from 7% today to maybe 30% in 10-15 years.

Add to that 5% biogas and 4% hydro and we will be available to generate 50% renewable energy in 10-15 years. It will come at some(!) cost, but imho it is doable.

From that point we should look even further...

The next step would be to uses more electricity in heating buildings and in the traffic sector.