@Caddyman - true, that’s why the replacement of coal by natural gas is such a big thing, greatly reducing CO2, without the cost of wind.
IMO, I would do away with all energy programs, if Congress would kill the Ethanol mandate in gasoline.
"Distributed power is a solution to some of the issues of the Grid."
Not sure what you meant by this. Just to clear up some things about “the grid”. You have the transmission grid. That is the high voltage (>115kV) lines you see hanging from those giant towers. They transfer power from power stations to local grids and interconnect many local grids.
Then there are the distribution (local) grids that use medium voltage (2400 - 34500 volts) to send power to the consumers.
I think you mean distributed sources such as solar cell on roof tops. On paper this looks good, but if this becomes more popular, the utilities will not be able to continue purchasing power from all the individual homeowners at the prices they now pay.
If a homeowner has to pay the full price of a solar cell system, about $75k, on their roof with no government subsidies and the utility companies will only pay the going wholesale price of around $.03 to $.06 per kWH, I don’t see many participating. However if the cost of solar cells drops enough, it might work. But what about night time? What do we use then?
@Keith
SolarCity said I would need 10 panels to approximate my historical use, If 20 panels are installed from Harbor Freight at $159/panel plus an inverter, control panel and permits and install, I think we would be far below $75,000.
The resident Redtails find a good perch on the towers. And the Ospreys seem to do well next to the substation.
Distributed energy is scalable, Localized, and more secure.
A few years ago, I saw/read/ that plugin-EV cars would be more beneficial in the areas where most of the electricity is derived from coal plants. The reasoning is that the steams plants need to run continuously to be most efficeient-however, during the night power is being dumped. EV charging would effectively be used as “energy shifting” or being a storage of power in time of excess electricity from steam plants.
The least beneficial use of EV is in the areas of extensive hydro, gas/wind turbine, solar point sources.
Interesting. I read just the opposite, that coal power areas are where regular hybrids come out on top, CO2-wise, with more net CO2 emissions from a plug in.
@longprime & @texases Coal fired plants do not “dump” power, they just turnn down the amount generated. Plants have multiple units; the ones for daytime peaking are usually gas turbines or gas fired boilers that are easily turned down. The MARGINAL cost of running a plant at full capacity at night is only the extra fuel used, all other costs remain the same. So, yes power at night could be cheaper for charging up electric vehicles.
HOWEVER, as texases points out, this flies in the face of what electric vehicles are all about; REDUCING CO2 EMISSIONS. In the respect, there is no net reduction; a large coal fired plant is more efficient than your car engine, but each KW generates more CO2, so there is no net reduction. In hydro supplied systems, there would be a significant reduction ion CO2, and hydro plants want to run around the clock as well.
CO2 was not mentioned in the treatise but efficiency of energy production.
@longprime I agree that off hours charging of electric cars makes sense and can be done at the marginal cost of power. Utilities will have time-of-day pricing as well then. Our local utility urges customers to wash their dishes later at night rather than during the dinner hour peak from 5:30 to 7:30 or the prime time TV watching period. They also urge their users not to plug in their engine block heaters till they go to bed or put them on a timer to come on at 5 am. It only takes 1.5 hours for the engine to reach a good starting temperature.
@Rod Knox,definitly yes the light colored roof will help a lot,they even have enginerred dark colors on the metal roofing to be more opaque and reflective to infrared part of the spectrum.You will definitely be able to tell the difference ,plus you will have a roof that will probaly not need replacing in your lifetime and as to reference to the waterheaters,you are probaly referring to" batch heaters" very cheap and effective in third world countries that have a lot of sunshine,sometimes the output of the solar cells can be fed directly to low voltage appliances-Kevin
Getting back to turbines.
I once worked with a guy who was jet engine mechanic in the Navy. I thought that this was an interesting job-No, he got jet blasted off the flight deck unto the elevator 30 ft below. Besides there just not that many parts in a jet-and only one moving part.
Those turbines are the secret behind reliable gas electrical power, both base and wind/solar backup. They’re also used to drive huge gas compressors at the Prudhoe Bay field to help produce more oil, compressing something like 7 billion cubic feet a day.
There is a lot more than one moving part in a jet engine. I spent many years on a flight deck and am acutely aware of what jet blast can do, almost got blown over the side myself one dark and story night.
As for 20 solar panels from Harbor Freight, I doubt it. The panels that SolarCity was talking about are not the ones from Harbor Freight. Twenty of the panel kits from Harbor Freight that cost $159 would only provide you with about 216kW hours per month, most people use over 1000kWH per month. You would need at least 80 of these kits, plus the inverters and batteries and mounting frames and hardware and a control panel etc.
@keith You are proving that a reliable and adequate solar sytem for a typical home will be very expensive, since 800-1000 kwh per month is typical and we use as much as 1200/mo. in the December-January period.
Amortizing all this stuff and maintaining it will cost more than just being hooked up to the grid.
I’m sure the day will come when we will have smart grid, and every house will be covered in solar panels that generate power and feed the excess back into the grid while drawing power during times of high demand. Until that day arrives, I’m on the grid.
I think that a distributed solar system will work for a part of our power needs in the future if the cost of the panels comes down enough. The big problem is that the utilities will not be able to buy and maintain enough batteries to store energy for night time use.
I am not a fan of nuclear power, at least not fission power, but unless we find an efficient fusion system, eventually we will have no choice but to embrace fission power. I believe that we ned to continue research on making nuclear power safer and find a solution to the long term disposal of used fuel rods (a mountain in Nevada comes to mind). To keep the number of reactors to a minimum, we need solar and wind solutions as well as conservation and efficiency.
My fear is that the tree huggers will be so successful at blocking any nuclear research and development that the day we need it, we won’t have it. Then when those same tree huggers start freezing in their McMansions, they will demand an instant relief. Then Nuclear plants will pop up everywhere and they won’t be as safe as they could be. And there will be accidents, but they will occur when we are more vulnerable than we are today.
I don’t worry about storing solar-generated electricity for night use, the peak a/c needs are during the day, matching the solar panel output. Storage adds a huge cost to any system, and should be avoided.
If this invention pans out, it could be a game changer.
I’m collecting HF’s free LED flashlights. :<))