Environment & Energy
In reply to the discussion: Arctic Methane - This Does Not Sound Good... [View all]wtmusic
(39,166 posts)This is what I mean when people who suggest we can get by on renewables only are not only looking at them through rose-colored glasses, they're in firm denial of facts.
If Nevada Solar 1 were scaled up to produce the equivalent annual electrical production of a AP-1000 nuclear plant. Our solar power plant would occupy about 42 square miles of desert, and would cost $17 Billion. Overnight storage of heat, electrical transmission lines, and interest would carry additional costs. Our 1 GW solar facility would annually consume nearly 27000 acre feet of rare desert water.
In contrast, the two 1.7 GW Mitsubishis Advanced Pressurized Water Reactor (APWR) Luminant Energy is planing to build at Comanche Peak are currently estimated to cost $5-6 billion each.
Ausra (line focus) claims $100/m2, BrightSource (power tower heliostats) $150/m2, Matrix Solar Dish (me) $100/m2.
Lets do a little analysis. A square kilometer at $100 per square meter would cost $100X1000X1000 = 100,000,000 per square kilometer or $247,000,000 per square mile. This represents an improvement over the $260,000,000 for 400 acres figure we got for Nevada Solar 1, or the $1 billion fir 1900 acres figure we got for Solana, but again the word inflation did not appear in the discussion.
The 150/m2 estimate gives us $370500000 per square mile, still a little better than Nevada Solar 1 in price."
http://bravenewclimate.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/peter-lang-solar-realities.pdf
If you feel the need to reply, please be prepared to refute Lang's thorough analysis. I'm not going to debate "what-ifs".
He concludes:
"Solar power is totally uneconomic and is not as environmentally benign as another lower-cost, lower-emissions option nuclear power. Advocates argue that solar is not the total solution, it will be part of a mix of technologies. But this is just hiding the facts. Even where solar is a small proportion of the total energy mix, its high costs are buried in the overall costs, and it adds to the total costs of the system
The capital cost of solar power would be 25 times more than nuclear power to provide the NEMs demand [$2.8 trillion for the least-cost solar solution with backup versus $120 billion for nuclear]. The minimum power output, not the peak or average, is the main factor governing solar powers economic viability. The least cost solar option would emit 20 times more CO2 (over the full life cycle) and use at least 400 times more land area compared with nuclear (not including mining; the mining area and volumes would also be greater for the solar option than for the nuclear option)
Government mandates and subsidies hide the true cost of renewable energy, but these additional costs must be carried by others."
Dirty PV cells are the least of solar's problems.