Thank you for all this good news. I plan on posting on Russian oil reserves and E&P very soon. Not that I think, at this point, that what I am going to report will improve the current "happy" situation world-wide much. And, aside from the stable situation in Iran, I think as I said here, Nigeria is looking very, very good as well.
2006 is starting to look like a big year, HO, don't you think?
Sometimes, I don't feel like I can get to the appropriate level of sarcasm, you know? Events overwhelm my ability to express cynical dark humor about them. So frustrating.
Dave - please don't post on Russian reserves. I don't doubt your research and information is good, it's just that the last thing the world needs is anything about reserves.
Please, please, please spend your time, energy, and much needed (and appreciated) intelligence on PRODUCTION.
As you well know, no matter what you say, Al-Naimi will just throw another 100 Billion Barrels your way. The more importance you place on Reserves vs. Production the harder those barrels will feel when they hit you. Do like me. Stay out of the way. Focus your guns on the real target. Kill the head, the body dies. Production is the only thing that matters.
Couldn't agree more with you OIL CEO but Russian reserves and their production levels are conflated--one can't post about the one without posting about the other. They are the 2nd biggest producer in the world. Since Westexas has thrown out the gauntlet and says that they are about to crash big time soon--this means that non-OPEC production is crashing soon--I find it necessary to do the post. I would not talk about their reserves without also talking about their near-term (next 5 years to 10 years) production capabilities and beyond.
Even ExxonMobil admits a non-OPEC peak by 2010. Russia represents almost 20% of that daily production. We all really need to get as clear as possible about this. It affects the peak in a big way. It has an effect on Stuart's "long slow squeeze". It is the most important question affecting near-term peak oil conditions I know of (outside the possibility that Saudi Arabian production just might crash as in Matt Simmons' predictions). I believe as of now that their production capabilities are hampered by internal political & economic policies although their actual URR may be quite robust. But this is a different question than saying that they simply have little recoverable oil to produce--which is the position Westexas has taken.
These are not production levels but changes in production (I'm not sure if they are from the year before or the previous month).
Note that if you had looked at the graph in July 05 (before the last 6 months' readings) and extrapolated forward you would have expected production growth to continue to decline and turn into a production decline (bars going below the axis instead of above). You would probably not have anticipated the turnaround starting in August with production increasing faster again.
It's hard to predict the future, and drawing graphs and extending lines forward is a risky proposition.
It must be growth over a year. If it were month by month growth the total growth would be the sum of the bars which I make about a 24mbpd increase, 28% of world production.
Tell me about solar energy. According to Wikipedia the total world installed solar panels have peak power of 2600 MWt. With (realistic) utilisation of around 15% this would yield half of the production of a standart nuclear reactor... some contribution for $13 billion worth of investments, isn't it?
Photovoltaic energy is at the beginning of a hockey stick market development. Many big banks have given a lot of money to this industry. Production capacity is growing swiftly.
It is normal for every product cycle, that in the beginning there needs to be investment. The rest will do economics of scale and the rising price of other "fossil" or "atomic" energy ressources.
This market is a good investment, probably one of the best which can be done at the moment. matthias, berlin
Anything with a 7 years of energy payback time is a bad long-term investment. Yeah, it is good now while the fossil subsidy is cheap. But not in the longer term. 7 years naturally sets the pace of doubling solar energy at more than 7 years, because if it is faster or equal to it you will get a negative energy yield from what you are investing in the meantime.
Now if solar energy doubles every 7 years from now, by 2054 it will provide 0.24% of the total energy we use currently; In the meantime the society will be at a net energy gain of 0 (zero, naught, nada). What will happen is, that the monetary subsidies you just mentioned will cover the cost of the fossil fuel energy we incorporate in building these solar panels and investors will be happy. But will this be rational, if I may ask?
I suspect with time/technology evolution energy payback time will go down but unfortunately PO is already at the door.
Why not use the cheap and stupid fossil energy that we have now to purchase a stable energy source like solar?
Suppose that the rate of energy price increase / energy inflation is going to be at or above 15%. This means that energy prices double every 5 years or less. I think this means it is less than 5 years for the solar to reach economic/energy break even. After that, as energy prices continue to escalate, second and third payback come even faster.
With money so cheap now, and with knowledge of coming energy price escalations due to Peak, investing in a fixed cost energy system based on solar seems like a sure win. Everyone should be doing it!
My opinion is the Photovoltaic will "never make it" as a major source of grid power. Wind, geothermal, hydroelectric (including microhydro), and limited biomass, yes. Reflecting mirrors in desert, maybe. Solar water heating is economic today (as well as PV for isolated villages, etc.) Fuel cells are another technology likely to be stillborn.
What other technology has taken over 40 years from first invention to workable marketplace economics ? Dr. Benz to Model T, discovery of double helix in DNA to first GMO crop, E=MC2 to atomic bomb, elelctricity, etc. And we live in a much more technological world with better communications, etc. today. And still the future of PV (and fuel cells) is "tomorrow" as is was in 1974 when it was the savior then as well.
Too much time, too much R&D and too little to show for it. I have written off PV and embraced wind, hydro, geothermal and some biomass as the workable alternatives.
Another issue with PV solar little noted is that they wear out.
The electrical output starts declining as soon as they are used (rate is related to heat exposure I believe). Earlier models were at well less than half output in a typically application in 20 years. Don;t know about latest versions.
How many atomic breeders do work succesfully in the world? There was really a lot of research and money for this technology.
OK, photovoltaic cells are - for the time being - a more cost intensive energy source. I agree with you. However already today, where is no electric grid, it is already cheaper. Especially in these rural areas, many people still depend on kerosene lamps or generators for light or electricity.
Even energy predictions from companies like Shell show in 50 years a very large percentage of solar energy in use. Writing off is as far as I can tell much to early!
Jürgen Kleinwächter has developed a model for solar energy supply to an African village with 50 inhabitants, the "Solar Power Village". Without photo voltaic it produces energy for cooking, pumping water, wheat milling and electricity.
.
.
Under the roof of a 30-40 sqm sized green house - this size may not be adequate for European conditions - a row of fresnell lenses are mounted and follow the movement of the sun. The fresnell lenses focus the sunlight on a focal line. Exactly in this focal line vegetable oil flows in blackened copper tubes that are coated by transparent glass tubes. Kleinwächter: "Vegetable oil is available everywhere in the 3rd World. Here the oil serves as a carrier of heat. As the oil flows through the concentrated energy zone it heats up easily to 220°C."
The green house is covered by a special layer. This allows more parts of the sunlight spectrum (especially UV) to pass through than usual layers do - supporting the growth of vegetables underneath and making the layer last longer. "By the way, the vegetables are of a very good quality - you can not compare it with the usual products from green houses", Kleinwächter declares. "The temperature in the green house is as comfortable as a day in spring, and allows the growth of salad even in the summer."
The special layer belongs to the few parts of the Solar Village that can not be produced in regional work. From the green house the oil then flows into a heat storage.
the lead selenide quantum dots they are working with could theoretically acheive a 65% conversion rate. The best silicon cells are at 21.6% and use a positive ground. Roughly a factor of 3.
Dr. Nate Lewis of Caltech has been crunching the numbers with respect to quantities of primary fossil fuels, oil, gas and coal. He's compared various alternatives and what they would mean to area useage such as the area to grow ethanol from corn to replace all 3 types of fossil fuels. Around 57 minutes in, he calculates how much PV it would take to replace all three. Interested? Here's the URL:
http://online.itp.ucsb.edu/online/colloq/lewis1/
I calculated that I could carpool, on average, 30 miles round trip every other day and power the trip using PV from my roof.
Your figure of 7 years for energy payback is well out of date. There has been some staggering progress recently with stacked junction cells in concentrator systems
Boeing-Spectrolab announced a record of 39.0 percent efficiency at a concentration 236 suns at the European photovoltaic conference in Barcelona, Spain. Arrays of tiny cells (2-3mm diameter) under individual concentrators allow the bulk of the incident sunlight to be absorbed while covering only a fraction of a percent of the area with semiconductor. The small size of the cells spread out on a heat dissipater allows the cells to run as cool, if not cooler than normal non-concentrator cells.
The system does require a mechanical tracking system and has almost no output in diffuse sunlight but perhaps surprisingly trackers have proved very trouble free. Since almost all other alternatives have moving parts operating under much higher stress levels it is illogical to to exclude trackers on the basis that they have moving parts.
A study "Energy payback time of the high-concentration PV system FLATCON®" by Gerhard Peharz and Frank Dimroth of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems Freiburg, Germany showed that a German build system installed in Spain had an energy payback time of 8 to 10 months including the energy of transportation, balance of system and system losses. The main energy demand in the production of such a high-concentration photovoltaic system was found to be the zinc coated steel for the tracking unit.
With such payback times investment at zero net energy gain for about 11 years (about the time it takes from planning to full power on a nuclear reactor) yields a 10,000 fold increase in installed capacity.
Consideration of how much investment it cost to get to this point is irrelevant to considerations of whether to go forward on this path.
Like many alternative energy systems, solar energy is intermittent and unpredictable and there is no low energy investment storage system for very large scale electrical energy storage. However a recent study of alternative energy in the UK showed that in the UK a suitable grid connected combination of alternative sources (solar, wind tide and wave) geographically dispersed could provide 30% of electrical generation with only a couple of percent extra conventional generation to supply back-up. The UK is better provided with such sources than many countries.
30% is not 100% and even with electrical powered trains and trams this still leaves an enormous gap to be filled after oil peaks that is not easily filled by non-liquid fuels but it is foolish to reject a partial solution just because it is not a complete system. If Stuart is right and there is a slow squeeze or the peak is not till 2010 as ASPO suggest it might make the massive adjustment required just very unpleasant and not a social collapse.
Why not reject it if there are better alternatives like wind?
IMO PV-s have their usage in remote areas for example, but wasting billions for connecting them to the grid is a luxury I don't agree with.
And BTW you can build nuclear plant for a year or 2 only. The rest is for licensing, overcoming NIMBY-sm etc.
Because wind is intermittent like solar energy but the two tend to have a negative correlation in availability in many climates. The greatest limitation of alternative energy sources is the lack of large scale energy storage. The cost and finite cycle life of batteries multiplies the cost several fold.
Connecting intermittent sources to the grid allows you to use the grid as a very large battery pumping power into the grid when there is a local surplus and taking it out when there is a deficiency at almost perfect efficiency. While the contribution to the total power use is small compared to the total is small this works well. Which is why the bulk of photovoltaic installations in Japan, Germany and here in the UK are grid connected. It helps that all these countries are densely populated so that grid losses are a small fraction of power use.
The problems arise when the percentage of intermittent sources rises. Spinning reserve has to be maintained to cover the potential drop out of the source. With a single source this is a grave problem especially if that source is locally concentrated. This problem can limit the percentage of alternative energy to about 15% before you have to add spinning reserve megawatt for megawatt of possible supply.
The study that I mentioned found that a crucial element in allowing the percentage of alternative energy to rise was diversity of sources and geographical dispersion to even out weather variations across the area.
The economics of photovoltaic generation is improving with time and has a potential for far greater improvement that can be hoped for in wind generation. Improvements in the economics of wind power tend to rely on ever bigger turbines leading to greater concentration. Photovoltaic power can be distributed at little cost penalty. The fact that photovoltaic power it is now cost competitive in Japan gives hopes that it will be elsewhere in the future.
When peak oil comes we will be very short of alternatives that do not greatly worsen global warming at a time when we desperately need to reduce our output of carbon dioxide. If we wait until then to try and develop a range of alternate sources we will be in deep trouble. Photovoltaic technology is not an expensive luxury but an essential part of what we need to salvage some reasonable standard of living for our children and grand-children.
Few nuclear power plants have been physically constructed from first earth breaking to full operational power in less than three years, four years is more normal and five or six years not unusual. The planning, licensing and local objections are part of the process and are not going to go away.
I accept that we will have to rely to some extent on nuclear fission but we cannot build a wall around the west. The crisis will be world wide. If developments in Iran cause you concern, read the previous post about Nigeria where 15% to 20% of the oil goes missing and internet fraud is said to be the third biggest earner of foreign currency after oil and cocoa and think about nuclear power in Nigeria.
I'm about as much afraid of the nuclear power in Nigeria than for example in Zimbabwe. The two years comment was based on a comment from Whitehall that the construction of nuclear plant itself, absent production bottleneck/unexpected hurdles takes about 2 years (he/she is actualy in the nuclear business; I follow this information by memory and would like to excuse me if I'm wrong).
IMO in future something will have to provide for those 85% that can not be generated by renewables, and I'd rather see nuclear than coal power stations doing that.
A possible large-capacity energy storage, leveling out production with demand are the hydro power stations acting as pumps during excess production and as generators during shortages. Unfortunately these have their own issues, so this usage will probably be limited.
In principle I tend to agree with your diversification argument but the cost per kwt installed capacity is so huge that I tend to thing that energy storage solutions like the one above would be a better investment. Even in the solar leaders - Germany and Japan the installed capacity ratio wind/solar is above 5, with solar having less availability (~10-15%) than wind (~20-25%). In this situation you are effectively putting an egg to counterweight a water-melon. In reality the slack is taken by some NG-fired station.
I know the solar idea is intuitively more appealing for the future; but somehow I think that the time for energy experiments is starting to run out and we're going to start picking those ones that actually work.
Of course if someone invents a 25% efficient $0.50/watt solar panel tomorrow or next year I'll be happy and even buy myself one. I'm giving the appropriate credit for the efforts in this direction, but it is not worthed the billions we are spending to buy expensive low-efficiency solar panels now.
"Islanding" is a VERY serious problem for distributed generation that has, AFAIK, not been seriously considered by advocates of distributed generation.
Basically consider a rural branch power line. Some small distributed generation on the line. At some time, the local generation exactly matches local consumption and there is a section of line with zero (or very near zero) amperage. An electrical island has been created.
By happenstance, this island effect persists for a "period of time". A period long enough for the frequency of the island to shift a very small bit. Say 1/200 of a second. And then when the load and generation no longer equal, a high energy conflict results between sine waves not in sync. BAD !
I agree that islanding is a serious issue for distributed generation, but what is described is not an island. Although there may be zero current in the line, the line will still be energized (has alternating voltage) so both ends of the line will be electro-magnetically coupled (i.e. in synchrony).
I noted that it took TrustPower of New Zealand just 12 months from ordering till in service for an expansion of an existing windfarm (slightly more than doubling). Same type, just more of them. Quite quick IMO ! And some of those new wind turbines would be in service several months before the job was completed.
Nuclear Power plants cannot be built in just two years (hard pressed to do a coal plant in that little time). Inspections and paperwork/quality control just take time. Supply chain issues develop (alternative suppliers are typically not allowed like in a convential plant). Testing alone takes over 6 months after completion of construction for a nuke (safety first !)
Also, in the US, overtime is limited when building a nuke. (Mistakes happen when people work very long hours).
The energy payback for the Vestas V90-3 MW is 6.8 months under "standard Danish conditions", up for 9 months for the Vestas V80-2 MW. Oddly onshore & offshore gave similar energy paybacks.
So seven years for PV panels is "underwhelming".
There IS a large scale energy storage system for electricity. It is called pumped storage. A bit better than 3 out for 4 MWh in. Hydro turbines also stabilize the grid and improve power quality in both motor and generator mode (something both wind and PV need).
Anything with a 7 years of energy payback time is a bad long-term investment.
But you aren't talking about PV.
As of 1999 (check the references), crystalline PV had a payback of less than 3 years and amorphous, right around 3. Improvements in the pipeline were expected to reduce that to as little as 1 year.
I expect that the cost of silicon has pushed the industry a long way towards that already. It's been 5+ years.
PV comes nowhere near the payback time of wind, but PV is improving faster and has much greater potential.
Thanx for the link. The 7 year payback was from the WIkipedia link.
The numbers you quote are for thin-film PV modules, but these are details. What I don't see included in the study are the energy costs for the inverter and the batteries (if needed) which would be quite significant especially for small residential panels.
The core of the problem is the low efficiency/yield of PVs. A single watt of rated capacity (costing currently around 5$) on average yields just about a kilowatt per year. Recently the industry has succeeded in reducing the costs, but this mostly at the expense of efficiency which has not been improved much during the last 30 years.
I agree about the potential of PVs, but realistically how much is the top of it? 15% efficiency and 2$ per watt? Some gain. I suggest solar dishes as a better direction to go.
In my link above concentrator cell efficiency of 39% at cell level and 30% at system level are obtainable now and energy payback times of 8 to 10 months are available now.
The hybrid monocrystalline/polycrystalline array that has been on my roof for two years is 17% efficient at system level.
I think you mean that 1 kilowatt hour per year is obtained from 1 watt rated capacity.
I am only saying this again because other people here aren't quite (solar dishes-- getting close). NASA tells us (look for space stirling power) that we have right now stirling engines that have heat to AC power efficiencies in the mid 30"s and that are intrinsically cheap as dirt ( dirt here being ordinary steels). So if we are discussing solar, we should keep this in mind.
And don't forget that those very same stirlings can run on biomass or other fuels when the sun is not there, like 70% of the time.
Sure, there are always the ifs, ands and buts. So again repeating myself, if we really want to know what is what, we need a big contest, with a prize big enough to attract serious players as well as all the monomaniacs like myself, to bring out ALL the ideas to the field (thermal machines, quantum PV, swamps of biomass fed by human poop, and all the rest), and we will have a chance to get the truth.
Sun and Wind are increasing in capacity and decreasing in cost at double digit rates. Nuke and Coal are increasing in capacity and decreasing in cost at single digit rates. The trend is not going to reverse.
Oil and Gas are running out and prices will go up till they are replaced. Dam, Geo, and Tide are mostly already developed in the OECD and are rapidly being developed in the rest of the world.
Wave is still experimental. Wood is at capacity.
The USGS says that there are 30,000 MW of undeveloped hydro in the US (most with low capacity factors and many "run-of-the-river" sites). Much more in Canada.
Hydro that coudl compete with $2 natural gas has pretty much been developed, but more is out there !
Lots of sites are possible but not economic because the sites use up valuable real estate. By definition dams are built on waterside areas and those are the most valuable real estate available.
Dam reservoirs are not attractive for residential use if the water level is allowed to go up and down, and run of river (where the level is not allowed to go up or down) gives power in the spring melt instead of in the cold and hot parts of the year when energy demand is peaking.
Not letting the level go up or down also means you can't use it for irrigation in the dry part of the year, or for navigation by deepening the water for barge traffic, or for flood control by emptying it during the summer to absorb a lot of water if it floods.
Which is more important than it sounds. We had a lot of full dams in California a few years ago. We had the dams at 96% of capacity and the farmers wouldn't let them spill any water because they wanted as much irrigation water as possible. Then we got a "pineapple express" storm from Hawaii and a billion dollars worth of flood damage in a week from overflow from the dams once they got to 100%.
The dams also put a lot of CH4 in the air the first few years after they are built as the biomass decays. Might as well go with coal or nuke.
Sure, we'll build some, or rehab some old ones. Might collectively equal another nuclear power plant. Or two or three. We should build as many as are economic. Keep in mind that as Alaska builds up they can use more power, and they have most of the undeveloped hydroelectric power sites where the reservoirs wouldn't be flooding housing developments. And it's not like Alaska has a problem with a little global warming methane in the air.
Micro and mini hydro, WKW, minimal damage of the kinds you mention, plenty of scope. All that is needed to make it take off is elimination of barriers (mostly financial) to connect to the grid and perhaps advantageous loans to help with implementation costs. Treat as distributed power stations, I'm sure it would be more cost effective. Heck, even the UK queen is having one installed in the Thames to power Windsor Castle.
Ronald Gotz of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs published this Working Paper in Dec 2005.
"Russian Energy and Europe"
http://www.swp-berlin.org/common/get_document.php?id=1510
Given what I've seen here, I'm suspicious of the production forecast page 9. Any comments?
2006 is starting to look like a big year, HO, don't you think?
Sometimes, I don't feel like I can get to the appropriate level of sarcasm, you know? Events overwhelm my ability to express cynical dark humor about them. So frustrating.
Please, please, please spend your time, energy, and much needed (and appreciated) intelligence on PRODUCTION.
As you well know, no matter what you say, Al-Naimi will just throw another 100 Billion Barrels your way. The more importance you place on Reserves vs. Production the harder those barrels will feel when they hit you. Do like me. Stay out of the way. Focus your guns on the real target. Kill the head, the body dies. Production is the only thing that matters.
Even ExxonMobil admits a non-OPEC peak by 2010. Russia represents almost 20% of that daily production. We all really need to get as clear as possible about this. It affects the peak in a big way. It has an effect on Stuart's "long slow squeeze". It is the most important question affecting near-term peak oil conditions I know of (outside the possibility that Saudi Arabian production just might crash as in Matt Simmons' predictions). I believe as of now that their production capabilities are hampered by internal political & economic policies although their actual URR may be quite robust. But this is a different question than saying that they simply have little recoverable oil to produce--which is the position Westexas has taken.
I do appreciate your concerns.
best, Dave
As you said - and this is extremey important, people -
"We all really need to get as clear as possible about this."
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/steo/pub/gifs/Slide12.gif
These are not production levels but changes in production (I'm not sure if they are from the year before or the previous month).
Note that if you had looked at the graph in July 05 (before the last 6 months' readings) and extrapolated forward you would have expected production growth to continue to decline and turn into a production decline (bars going below the axis instead of above). You would probably not have anticipated the turnaround starting in August with production increasing faster again.
It's hard to predict the future, and drawing graphs and extending lines forward is a risky proposition.
Apparently, not as big as we might want. According to this BusinessWeek article:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_06/b3970108.htm
we're already running up against supply-side barriers in our attempt to move to a differently powered society.
"The raw material shortage has slashed growth for the [solar panel] industry from more than 50% in 2004 to a projected 5% in 2006."
Sigh...
It is normal for every product cycle, that in the beginning there needs to be investment. The rest will do economics of scale and the rising price of other "fossil" or "atomic" energy ressources.
This market is a good investment, probably one of the best which can be done at the moment. matthias, berlin
Now if solar energy doubles every 7 years from now, by 2054 it will provide 0.24% of the total energy we use currently; In the meantime the society will be at a net energy gain of 0 (zero, naught, nada). What will happen is, that the monetary subsidies you just mentioned will cover the cost of the fossil fuel energy we incorporate in building these solar panels and investors will be happy. But will this be rational, if I may ask?
I suspect with time/technology evolution energy payback time will go down but unfortunately PO is already at the door.
Suppose that the rate of energy price increase / energy inflation is going to be at or above 15%. This means that energy prices double every 5 years or less. I think this means it is less than 5 years for the solar to reach economic/energy break even. After that, as energy prices continue to escalate, second and third payback come even faster.
With money so cheap now, and with knowledge of coming energy price escalations due to Peak, investing in a fixed cost energy system based on solar seems like a sure win. Everyone should be doing it!
What other technology has taken over 40 years from first invention to workable marketplace economics ? Dr. Benz to Model T, discovery of double helix in DNA to first GMO crop, E=MC2 to atomic bomb, elelctricity, etc. And we live in a much more technological world with better communications, etc. today. And still the future of PV (and fuel cells) is "tomorrow" as is was in 1974 when it was the savior then as well.
Too much time, too much R&D and too little to show for it. I have written off PV and embraced wind, hydro, geothermal and some biomass as the workable alternatives.
The electrical output starts declining as soon as they are used (rate is related to heat exposure I believe). Earlier models were at well less than half output in a typically application in 20 years. Don;t know about latest versions.
Still, not a permanent solution.
OK, photovoltaic cells are - for the time being - a more cost intensive energy source. I agree with you. However already today, where is no electric grid, it is already cheaper. Especially in these rural areas, many people still depend on kerosene lamps or generators for light or electricity.
Even energy predictions from companies like Shell show in 50 years a very large percentage of solar energy in use. Writing off is as far as I can tell much to early!
Solar Power for the Global Village
Jürgen Kleinwächter has developed a model for solar energy supply to an African village with 50 inhabitants, the "Solar Power Village". Without photo voltaic it produces energy for cooking, pumping water, wheat milling and electricity.
.
.
Under the roof of a 30-40 sqm sized green house - this size may not be adequate for European conditions - a row of fresnell lenses are mounted and follow the movement of the sun. The fresnell lenses focus the sunlight on a focal line. Exactly in this focal line vegetable oil flows in blackened copper tubes that are coated by transparent glass tubes. Kleinwächter: "Vegetable oil is available everywhere in the 3rd World. Here the oil serves as a carrier of heat. As the oil flows through the concentrated energy zone it heats up easily to 220°C."
The green house is covered by a special layer. This allows more parts of the sunlight spectrum (especially UV) to pass through than usual layers do - supporting the growth of vegetables underneath and making the layer last longer. "By the way, the vegetables are of a very good quality - you can not compare it with the usual products from green houses", Kleinwächter declares. "The temperature in the green house is as comfortable as a day in spring, and allows the growth of salad even in the summer."
The special layer belongs to the few parts of the Solar Village that can not be produced in regional work. From the green house the oil then flows into a heat storage.
http://www.nrel.gov/news/press/2005/1805_quantum_dot.html
the lead selenide quantum dots they are working with could theoretically acheive a 65% conversion rate. The best silicon cells are at 21.6% and use a positive ground. Roughly a factor of 3.
Dr. Nate Lewis of Caltech has been crunching the numbers with respect to quantities of primary fossil fuels, oil, gas and coal. He's compared various alternatives and what they would mean to area useage such as the area to grow ethanol from corn to replace all 3 types of fossil fuels. Around 57 minutes in, he calculates how much PV it would take to replace all three. Interested? Here's the URL:
http://online.itp.ucsb.edu/online/colloq/lewis1/
I calculated that I could carpool, on average, 30 miles round trip every other day and power the trip using PV from my roof.
Boeing-Spectrolab announced a record of 39.0 percent efficiency at a concentration 236 suns at the European photovoltaic conference in Barcelona, Spain. Arrays of tiny cells (2-3mm diameter) under individual concentrators allow the bulk of the incident sunlight to be absorbed while covering only a fraction of a percent of the area with semiconductor. The small size of the cells spread out on a heat dissipater allows the cells to run as cool, if not cooler than normal non-concentrator cells.
The system does require a mechanical tracking system and has almost no output in diffuse sunlight but perhaps surprisingly trackers have proved very trouble free. Since almost all other alternatives have moving parts operating under much higher stress levels it is illogical to to exclude trackers on the basis that they have moving parts.
A study "Energy payback time of the high-concentration PV system FLATCON®" by Gerhard Peharz and Frank Dimroth of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems Freiburg, Germany showed that a German build system installed in Spain had an energy payback time of 8 to 10 months including the energy of transportation, balance of system and system losses. The main energy demand in the production of such a high-concentration photovoltaic system was found to be the zinc coated steel for the tracking unit.
With such payback times investment at zero net energy gain for about 11 years (about the time it takes from planning to full power on a nuclear reactor) yields a 10,000 fold increase in installed capacity.
Consideration of how much investment it cost to get to this point is irrelevant to considerations of whether to go forward on this path.
Like many alternative energy systems, solar energy is intermittent and unpredictable and there is no low energy investment storage system for very large scale electrical energy storage. However a recent study of alternative energy in the UK showed that in the UK a suitable grid connected combination of alternative sources (solar, wind tide and wave) geographically dispersed could provide 30% of electrical generation with only a couple of percent extra conventional generation to supply back-up. The UK is better provided with such sources than many countries.
30% is not 100% and even with electrical powered trains and trams this still leaves an enormous gap to be filled after oil peaks that is not easily filled by non-liquid fuels but it is foolish to reject a partial solution just because it is not a complete system. If Stuart is right and there is a slow squeeze or the peak is not till 2010 as ASPO suggest it might make the massive adjustment required just very unpleasant and not a social collapse.
IMO PV-s have their usage in remote areas for example, but wasting billions for connecting them to the grid is a luxury I don't agree with.
And BTW you can build nuclear plant for a year or 2 only. The rest is for licensing, overcoming NIMBY-sm etc.
Connecting intermittent sources to the grid allows you to use the grid as a very large battery pumping power into the grid when there is a local surplus and taking it out when there is a deficiency at almost perfect efficiency. While the contribution to the total power use is small compared to the total is small this works well. Which is why the bulk of photovoltaic installations in Japan, Germany and here in the UK are grid connected. It helps that all these countries are densely populated so that grid losses are a small fraction of power use.
The problems arise when the percentage of intermittent sources rises. Spinning reserve has to be maintained to cover the potential drop out of the source. With a single source this is a grave problem especially if that source is locally concentrated. This problem can limit the percentage of alternative energy to about 15% before you have to add spinning reserve megawatt for megawatt of possible supply.
The study that I mentioned found that a crucial element in allowing the percentage of alternative energy to rise was diversity of sources and geographical dispersion to even out weather variations across the area.
The economics of photovoltaic generation is improving with time and has a potential for far greater improvement that can be hoped for in wind generation. Improvements in the economics of wind power tend to rely on ever bigger turbines leading to greater concentration. Photovoltaic power can be distributed at little cost penalty. The fact that photovoltaic power it is now cost competitive in Japan gives hopes that it will be elsewhere in the future.
When peak oil comes we will be very short of alternatives that do not greatly worsen global warming at a time when we desperately need to reduce our output of carbon dioxide. If we wait until then to try and develop a range of alternate sources we will be in deep trouble. Photovoltaic technology is not an expensive luxury but an essential part of what we need to salvage some reasonable standard of living for our children and grand-children.
Few nuclear power plants have been physically constructed from first earth breaking to full operational power in less than three years, four years is more normal and five or six years not unusual. The planning, licensing and local objections are part of the process and are not going to go away.
I accept that we will have to rely to some extent on nuclear fission but we cannot build a wall around the west. The crisis will be world wide. If developments in Iran cause you concern, read the previous post about Nigeria where 15% to 20% of the oil goes missing and internet fraud is said to be the third biggest earner of foreign currency after oil and cocoa and think about nuclear power in Nigeria.
IMO in future something will have to provide for those 85% that can not be generated by renewables, and I'd rather see nuclear than coal power stations doing that.
A possible large-capacity energy storage, leveling out production with demand are the hydro power stations acting as pumps during excess production and as generators during shortages. Unfortunately these have their own issues, so this usage will probably be limited.
In principle I tend to agree with your diversification argument but the cost per kwt installed capacity is so huge that I tend to thing that energy storage solutions like the one above would be a better investment. Even in the solar leaders - Germany and Japan the installed capacity ratio wind/solar is above 5, with solar having less availability (~10-15%) than wind (~20-25%). In this situation you are effectively putting an egg to counterweight a water-melon. In reality the slack is taken by some NG-fired station.
I know the solar idea is intuitively more appealing for the future; but somehow I think that the time for energy experiments is starting to run out and we're going to start picking those ones that actually work.
Of course if someone invents a 25% efficient $0.50/watt solar panel tomorrow or next year I'll be happy and even buy myself one. I'm giving the appropriate credit for the efforts in this direction, but it is not worthed the billions we are spending to buy expensive low-efficiency solar panels now.
Basically consider a rural branch power line. Some small distributed generation on the line. At some time, the local generation exactly matches local consumption and there is a section of line with zero (or very near zero) amperage. An electrical island has been created.
By happenstance, this island effect persists for a "period of time". A period long enough for the frequency of the island to shift a very small bit. Say 1/200 of a second. And then when the load and generation no longer equal, a high energy conflict results between sine waves not in sync. BAD !
Nuclear Power plants cannot be built in just two years (hard pressed to do a coal plant in that little time). Inspections and paperwork/quality control just take time. Supply chain issues develop (alternative suppliers are typically not allowed like in a convential plant). Testing alone takes over 6 months after completion of construction for a nuke (safety first !)
Also, in the US, overtime is limited when building a nuke. (Mistakes happen when people work very long hours).
So seven years for PV panels is "underwhelming".
There IS a large scale energy storage system for electricity. It is called pumped storage. A bit better than 3 out for 4 MWh in. Hydro turbines also stabilize the grid and improve power quality in both motor and generator mode (something both wind and PV need).
http://www.tva.gov/sites/raccoonmt.htm
In theory, one could run a stable grid with a combination of wind and pumped storage only.
As of 1999 (check the references), crystalline PV had a payback of less than 3 years and amorphous, right around 3. Improvements in the pipeline were expected to reduce that to as little as 1 year.
I expect that the cost of silicon has pushed the industry a long way towards that already. It's been 5+ years.
PV comes nowhere near the payback time of wind, but PV is improving faster and has much greater potential.
The numbers you quote are for thin-film PV modules, but these are details. What I don't see included in the study are the energy costs for the inverter and the batteries (if needed) which would be quite significant especially for small residential panels.
The core of the problem is the low efficiency/yield of PVs. A single watt of rated capacity (costing currently around 5$) on average yields just about a kilowatt per year. Recently the industry has succeeded in reducing the costs, but this mostly at the expense of efficiency which has not been improved much during the last 30 years.
I agree about the potential of PVs, but realistically how much is the top of it? 15% efficiency and 2$ per watt? Some gain. I suggest solar dishes as a better direction to go.
The hybrid monocrystalline/polycrystalline array that has been on my roof for two years is 17% efficient at system level.
I think you mean that 1 kilowatt hour per year is obtained from 1 watt rated capacity.
And don't forget that those very same stirlings can run on biomass or other fuels when the sun is not there, like 70% of the time.
Sure, there are always the ifs, ands and buts. So again repeating myself, if we really want to know what is what, we need a big contest, with a prize big enough to attract serious players as well as all the monomaniacs like myself, to bring out ALL the ideas to the field (thermal machines, quantum PV, swamps of biomass fed by human poop, and all the rest), and we will have a chance to get the truth.
Oil and Gas are running out and prices will go up till they are replaced. Dam, Geo, and Tide are mostly already developed in the OECD and are rapidly being developed in the rest of the world.
Wave is still experimental. Wood is at capacity.
Hydro that coudl compete with $2 natural gas has pretty much been developed, but more is out there !
Mainly smaller units.
Dam reservoirs are not attractive for residential use if the water level is allowed to go up and down, and run of river (where the level is not allowed to go up or down) gives power in the spring melt instead of in the cold and hot parts of the year when energy demand is peaking.
Not letting the level go up or down also means you can't use it for irrigation in the dry part of the year, or for navigation by deepening the water for barge traffic, or for flood control by emptying it during the summer to absorb a lot of water if it floods.
Which is more important than it sounds. We had a lot of full dams in California a few years ago. We had the dams at 96% of capacity and the farmers wouldn't let them spill any water because they wanted as much irrigation water as possible. Then we got a "pineapple express" storm from Hawaii and a billion dollars worth of flood damage in a week from overflow from the dams once they got to 100%.
The dams also put a lot of CH4 in the air the first few years after they are built as the biomass decays. Might as well go with coal or nuke.
Sure, we'll build some, or rehab some old ones. Might collectively equal another nuclear power plant. Or two or three. We should build as many as are economic. Keep in mind that as Alaska builds up they can use more power, and they have most of the undeveloped hydroelectric power sites where the reservoirs wouldn't be flooding housing developments. And it's not like Alaska has a problem with a little global warming methane in the air.