Hesitant Texas is getting burned on solar power, experts assert

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.star-telegram.com/business/story/266770.html

Hesitant Texas is getting burned on solar power, experts assert

By VICKI VAUGHAN
San Antonio Express-News

Texas has been a leader in energy for 100 years, but the state isn't moving forward quickly enough to develop solar energy, two experts said Thursday.

"California, New Jersey, Colorado and Pennsylvania are moving more quickly than Texas" in developing solar power, said Bruce Kellison, associate director of the IC2 Institute, a think tank at the University of Texas at Austin devoted to fostering entrepreneurship and job creation.

"Greater development of solar power can bolster Texas' weakening semiconductor and materials industries" and create jobs, Kellison said.

...

[Scooter24]

1. Instead, we're building new nuclear plants.

joy...

[havocmom]

2. They can meter THAT kind of power.

The Haves and Have Mores have sunk lots of $$ into nuke power, so that is what gets served up.

[NNadir]

3. Um, did you ever measure dollars per exajoule?

There is NOT one anti-nuke, not ONE, who cares what poor people pay for power.

Nobody's trying to stop the cute solar industry anywhere on the planet. People have been cheering for it loudly for 50 damn years. So how come it's never produced an exajoule of energy? It's subsidized highly around the world, and still it is just a toy for rich people who want to feel less guilt about being mindless consumers.

How much did your solar system cost? Why don't you tell us all about it?

[havocmom]

4. Wow. You're fast tonight

:rofl:

[NNadir]

5. My you're evasive tonight.

Tell us about your solar PV system.

How much did it cost?

How reliable is it?

How many people do you know who have one like yours?

How do you explain the fifty years of cheering about solar toys and the failure to produce a single exajoule of energy?

I'm sure you think the illiterate anti-nuke business is funny? I don't. I have mindless anti-nukes in my state trying to stick their dangeroous fossil fuel waste in my children's lungs.

Out with it! How much did your solar PV system cost? How much energy does it produce?

And while you're at it, how about giving us a description of the energy storage system that you use to make your solar PV system continuous like coal.

By the way, if you must know, more than 50 percent of the electricity in my state comes from nuclear power. I'm calling for more of it. I pay 11 cents per kw-hr, retail.

[spag68]

7. I've said it before,

you are an idiot,further mone, some of us pay at a rate of 20.5c per kwh Payoff in 3.5 to 8 years. But think if you had an electric car, and if the power goes out ,you can run your house for 6to8 hours.all the while, not paying the electric co. wouldn't that be fun?

[pop goes the weasel]

9. where's your waste stored?

Is it permanently stored in your state? Or do you put it on a train to travel through countless unaware communities unprepared to deal with a nuclear accident in order to send it to another state that has been forced to accept your waste?

[NickB79]

12. Since Yucca Mountain hasn't opened, the waste is likely stored in New Jersey

Usually on-site at the reactors. To date, there hasn't been a nuclear accident injuring people due to a derailed train carrying nuclear waste in the US that I'm aware of.

Of course, the CO2 released by the coal and natural gas turbines that supply 70% of this nation's power is spewed directly into the atmosphere, and is causing a global warming disaster as we speak that will kill hundreds of millions over the next few decades.

[NNadir]

13. I have used nuclear fuel stored in my state. I want more of it.

I am very proud that 50% of our electricity comes from nuclear energy here, and that all of our nuclear plants have the vast majority of the products of energy production on those grounds - going back for nearly four decades, within the boundaries.

Note that there is not one shit-for-brains anti-nuke who can point to a dangerous fossil fuel plant from the dangerous fossil fuel industry - by which the anti-nuke industry is largely owned (look at Gerhard Schroeder's and Amory Lovins big paychecks from Gazprom and Royal Dutch Shell) - and claim that the dangerous fossil fuel waste is contained within. On the contrary, every single living human being on this planet has dangerous fossil fuel waste in his or her flesh.

The shit for brains anti-nuke industry couldn't care less, but it makes a big, big, big, big, big, big, big fucking deal about used nuclear fuel, about which it knows nothing and understands nothing.

Used nuclear fuel in my state has proved absolutely harmless, and it has helped to protect me from more dangerous fossil fuel waste - about which the illiterate anti-nuclear industry could care less - from accumulating in places like my children's lungs.

Now I have illiterate anti-nukes trying to vandalize and destroy our nuclear infrastructure here because they are as ignorant of science as creationists.

The illiterate anti-nuclear industry, paid off by people from companies like Gazprom, wants to pretend that only nuclear energy must be perfect, and that any other form of shit-for-brains energy - including their increasingly dangerous biofuels industry - can kill as many people as they want indiscriminately.

Not ONE of the ridiculous arguments from the paid (off) anti-nuke industry stands up to inspection by something called numbers. For instance, there is not one illiterate anti-nuke who has ever read the EXTERNE reports on the external cost of energy, because you can't get into the anti-nuke industry if you can do simple comparisons.

And now for something called numbers: http://www.externe.info/

[kestrel91316]

14. I guess I'm one of those "illiterate", "shit-for-brains" anti-nuke types -

AND PROUD OF IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[hunter]

16. Nuclear power would have been preferable to what we got.

I have no doubts about that.

We opposed nuclear power and the unintended consequence of this was that coal and natural gas fired power plants were built instead.

Of the three sources of power, coal and natural gas cause by far the most environmental damage.

[NNadir]

23. I guess I'd have to agree.

I note that Pat Robertson is proud of who he is too.

[spag68]

6. Has anyone told you lately

that you are an idiot!!!!!!

[diane in sf]

8. I don't know if NN is an idiot--I suspect he's a paid propogandist.

[hunter]

10. OMG.

Where's the sarcasm tag?

It's gotta be sarcasm, right?

[NNadir]

24. Sorry. Amory Lovins and Gerhard Schroeder are better businessmen than I am.

The anti-nuke Lovins gets paid between $15,000-$20,000/day from Royal Dutch Shell, Walmart and Rio Tinto.

The anti-nuke Schroeder gets 300,000 Euros, near half a million dollars per year, to shill for Gazprom.

There is not ONE anti-nuke who can address those comments based on data that I make. NOT one.

[OKIsItJustMe]

11. Conditions have changed

NNadir,

What you seem to wish to ignore is that for the majority of the time, solar power has been relatively expensive, while oil has been relatively inexpensive. Solar power was not widely adopted because there was a definite financial disincentive to do so.

Now, the cost of solar (and wind) power has come down dramatically, while at the same time the price of oil has increased dramatically. At this point there is a growing financial incentive (as well as an ecological imperative) to adopt solar power.

Consider Compact Fluorescents. They're not a new technology. They've been around for a couple of decades. What spurred their recent growth? The California power shortages of a few years ago. People looking to save money on their power bills started adopting a technology they had not previously, because there was now a financial incentive to do so.

The demand they created drove increased production and competition, which has resulted in better CFL's and in a dramatic lowering of the price!


Now, as for not caring about the poor, I take offense.

Going back to compact fluorescents; CFL's are less expensive to operate, but have a higher initial cost than an incandescent bulb. Over time, they more than pay for themselves, but the poor are liable to buy an incandescent bulb, because their primary concern is the up-front cost.

The same is true for roof-top solar power (only multiplied by thousands!) and that is the beauty of the Citizenrē/Sun Run business model (if they can make it work.) these complanies will allow people to switch to solar power without the up-front cost.


Now, tell me what the nuclear industry does for the poor? (Oh! I know! it uses their land to dispose of its waste!)

[kestrel91316]

15. kestrel's version of NN's response: "but, but, but......

DANGEROUS OIL POLLUTES THE AIR!!!!!!!!1!11!!!!!!1!111"

[phantom power]

17. three observations about your graphs...

1) you can see that the curves are flat starting at about 2000.

2) nuclear and coal are still quite a bit cheaper per kWh at these post-2000 plateaus.

3) neither of those two plots include cost (monetary, environmental or otherise) or storage, which, if you are going to propose an all-renewable solution for an energy policy, you have to have.

Renewable advocacy could gain some credibility by including the internal an external cost of large-scale energy storage in their energy story.

[OKIsItJustMe]

18. Re: your observations

1. you can see that the curves are flat starting at about 2000
   And... (I'm missing your point.) Assuming the cost is cut by about 7% a year the arithmetic cost decrease will appear to level out.
   Here's a recent projection from the DoE:
   


2. nuclear and coal are still quite a bit cheaper per kWh at these post-2000 plateaus.
   Nuclear power is cheaper. Coal is cheaper still. Do you advocate using coal? (If not, why not? Do you have environmental concerns about Coal generated power?)


3. neither of those two plots include cost (monetary, environmental or otherise) or storage, which, if you are going to propose an all-renewable solution for an energy policy, you have to have.
   I wasn't aware that I had proposed an "all-renewable" solution for an energy policy. That's impossible for some time. Are you advocating an "all nuclear" solution? If so, it would be much more realistic if you included the costs of storing high-level nuclear waste for millennia. And (just out of curiousity) where will you be getting all of the required uranium?

[phantom power]

20. I advocate eliminating all non-carbon-neutral energy sources.

I advocate total elimination because it appears that is the only way to even attempt climate change mitigation. Therefore, I focus on fossil-free energy policies. My personal position is that an energy policy involving fossil backup of intermittent renewable sources is unacceptable. That is why, when people start talking renewables, I start talking "storage." It's actually because I wish to take renewables seriously, contrary to what some people have assumed.

My basic position on the interplay between climate change and energy is this: climate change and peak-fossil are an existential threat to human civilization. They will with near total certainty kill billions of people (mostly due to famine and war) in the next hundred years. Nuclear power is a proven large-scale energy source that is cost effective. Nuclear waste will not kill billions of people in the next hundred years, or the next hundred thousand. Furthermore, most of what we currently call nuclear "waste" can, if we choose, be recycled.

Regarding predictions of future prices of renewables, I don't find them very compelling for two reasons: The first is that our problems are not in the future, they're already happening. The second is that predictions about cheap renewables are (in the words of Mary Poppins) pie-crust promises. Easily made, easily broken.

Regarding uranium supplies, there are various options, including:
Continue mining it.
Recycle the fuel we've already used. It still contains over 90% of it's useable energy.
Extract it from sea water.
Breed fuel from thorium.

These options are "expensive," until you factor in the energy density of nuclear fuel. Which is preposterously high. 20,000 times the energy density of fossil fuels.

So, for what it's worth, that is why I advocate using nuclear power as a major tool for surviving (if we should be so lucky) climate change and peak fossil.

[OKIsItJustMe]

21. Pie-crust promises ...

While I appreciate and share your desire to eliminate all carbon energy sources, it's not going to happen overnight.

Nuclear fission has too much of a downside for my tastes. Tell me that we have utility scale fusion, and I'll be interested.

However, I'm a realist. Currently, a very large percentage of our power is supplied through nuclear fission. I don't expect you will be able to eliminate both carbon and uranium plants simultaneously. The best we can hope to do is set a direction for the future.

I do not want a future that depends on nuclear fission.

http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/News/2006/uranium_resources.html

...

Uranium 2005: Resources, Production and Demand - also called the "Red Book" - estimates the total identified amount of conventional uranium stock, which can be mined for less than USD 130 per kg, to be about 4.7 million tonnes. Based on the 2004 nuclear electricity generation rate of demand the amount is sufficient for 85 years, the study states. ...

Presumably you would like to increase demand, which means we would run out faster. Current nuclear technology/policy is at best a stop-gap.

Some day, the sun will go out, but when that happens, we'll have bigger problems than how to power our cars.

[NickB79]

22. Why is the cost ceiling set at $130/kg?

How much uranium would be commercially recoverable at, say, $250/kg? Since fuel costs are a very small portion of the total cost of nuclear power, doubling the cost of fuel would do very little to increase the overall cost of nuclear power.

[bananas]

19. New nuclear per kWh is more expensive than wind.

wind: 6.5 c/kWh
nuke: 10.5-13.5 c/kWh

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/6/18/161052/155

<snip>

Place on top of that the finding that new nukes would cost 8-11 cents/kilowatt hour delivered at the plant, before around 2.5 cents delivery costs, and what emerges is that nukes are a very costly option at least 2 cents/kWh over new wind. And UCS has criticized that number as too low! So any nuclear revival would require public policy support, probably in excess of the $6 billion the feds put on the table in Energy Act 2005.

<snip>

In response to deezakin, no, the factors that are driving nuke to 8-11 cents kWh are pushing wind to about 6.5 cents, and that includes grid connections and balancing resources. Add another 2.5 cents to the nuke cost for a comparable figure. Also note that wind prices are up not just because of the general run-up in materials costs, but because wind is booming and the supply chain is still being built.

<snip>

The nuclear figures are based on latest construction experience and the figure of 8-11 cents new nuclear power was agreed to by all members of the collaborative including the nuclear industry. No cooked books. The wind figures are also based on current constuction experience.

<snip>