ON THE SOLAR THERMAL OPPORTUNITY

SUNNY DAYS

The New York Times has a piece worth reading on how Solar power may finally be ready for it's close-up.  Titled "Turning glare into watts", it lays out the base case:

"After a decade of no activity, two prototype solar thermal plants were recently opened in the United States, with a capacity that could power several big hotels, neon included, on the Las Vegas Strip, about 20 miles north of here. Another 10 power plants are in advanced planning in California, Arizona and Nevada.

On sunny afternoons, those 10 plants would produce as much electricity as three nuclear reactors, but they can be built in as little as two years, compared with a decade or longer for a nuclear plant. Some of the new plants will feature systems that allow them to store heat and generate electricity for hours after sunset."

The economics, while getting competitive with sky-high fossil fuel and coal alternatives, still require subsidies:

"The power they produce is still relatively expensive. Industry experts say the plant here produces power at a cost per kilowatt- hour of 15 to 20 cents. With a little more experience and some economies of scale, that could fall to about 10 cents, according to a recent report by Emerging Energy Research, a consulting firm in Cambridge, Mass. Newly built coal-fired plants are expected to produce power at about 7 cents per kilowatt-hour or more if carbon is taxed.

The solar plants receive a federal tax subsidy, like other types of renewable energy, which makes the economics work for builders but also feeds skepticism about the technology’s long-term potential. “Unless there’s a subsidy involved, it doesn’t seem like a very attractive technology,” said Revis James, a renewables expert at the Electric Power Research Institute, a utility industry consortium."

The whole piece is worth reading, especially if you've been wondering about what all the recent hoop la around solar is all about.  Along with wind, geo-thermal and wave energy, it's a critical part of the global renewable energy crusade.  It's going to be a long, bumpy road, but the journey may be worth it in the long run.

Comments

[greenskeptic]

Thanks for sharing this, Michael. Indeed, it's going to be a bumpy road for all renewables, but the two solar plays to watch are thermal and thin film. As for subsidies,the oil and gas industry in the US receives subsidies estimated at $15-35 billion/year, depending upon who is counting (and whether you include things like highway construction/maintenance, which I don't think is fair), and the coal industry is propped up by $60 billion in tax breaks since 1932, including $8 billion included in the Energy Policy Act of 2005. By contrast, the Production Tax Credit, which is supported by the Senate Finance Committee's own Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), amounts to A whopping $5.5Billion. Woot! Sure, alternative energy needs to compete on a level playing field with fossil fuels. But that means either clean tech alternatives should be given equal access to subsidies or subsidies should be removed for all and let 'em duke it out. Are subsidies generally considered pro-business? Bring on the New Green Economy!

[Alex Tolley]

We need to stop thinking about simple cost comparisons for renewables vs fossil fuels. It is almost irrelevant what carbon taxes we pile on to carbon emissions if we continue to increase the CO2 concn of the atmosphere and warm the planet. Finite resources like coal and oil will inevitably lead to competition for those resources, including potential hot wars. The minor war in Iraq should indicate what those costs are going to be like.

As mentioned by greenskeptic above, thin film solar looks like the most promising PV technology. We'll see how scale economies work out. Thermal systems like the nytimes article is only suitable for relatively cloudless sunny areas - fine for SW USA, but not for the EU. We're going to need to think a lot more about energy efficiency, much as we did back in the 1970s, but largely forgot about subsequently.