In Solar, the best answer is all of the above....

Today's post: Wednesday, 1-6-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Further, it’s extremely clear that the most supported and economically beneficial solution to add energy that does not use oil nor burn fossil fuels to release more CO2 into air that already has too much is to build massive amounts of new renewable energy production, particularly those that generate electricity & to dramatically increase energy efficiency and reduce the amount of energy that is now wasted.

And, of those the more important long range solution is to build massive amounts of new renewable energy generation.

Today’s post:

This past Monday, 1-4-2010, I found an article in the San Francisco Chronicle titled:

“Solar Power Debate: Is bigger better?”

David Baker, their staff writer who does most of their energy stories wrote it after hearing from advocates of lots of solar on roofs on or very near where the electricity will be used and from advocates of large solar farms, particularly solar thermal ones.

1. This is a nonissue in my opinion. It’s about like asking someone if they’d rather have air to breathe or water to drink. To be sure you’ll die sooner if you have no air. But you’ll die just the same if you have no water to drink. It just takes longer.

2. When we need to build about 100 to 200 times more solar electricity generation within about 20 years, we are surely in trouble if we fail to do BOTH things.

Building LOTS of solar on roofs on or very near where the electricity will be used IS extremely desirable.

You need virtually no new power lines built if this is done. There’s no need to wait for new ones to be built. Many of the buildings will then provide much of the electricity they need and there will be close to zero transmission loses. And in hot weather when the plentiful sunlight both increases the need for air conditioning to cool things off AND provides the sunlight to make a lot of electricity to power the AC, it will dramatically lower the need for new fossil fuel powered peak load generators to be built. And if there are problems on long distance transmission lines, there will still be a lot of locally generated electricity available. And, it’s also important today that you need no large bank to give you the loan to build huge facilities. Lots of methods on a much smaller scale can and will be used to finance each tiny to small piece. That combination will make this kind of solar MUCH faster to build.

If you do as California finally has done & pay homeowners and small and large businesses for any solar electricity they generate in excess of their own use requirements; & you pass a FIT, Feed-In Tariff, as Germany has that uses small initial increases in utility bills to offer solar electricity providers long term contracts paying enough to make the building of the solar collectors for sure profitable – and therefore financeable, and you make sure the costs of permitting are small & the permits are issued virtually the same day they are applied for, & you have virtually every community offer to finance solar and add the payments to the property tax on the building or property where they are installed as Berkeley, California has done, the following will happen.:

Home-owners will install solar, many apartment owners will install solar; most commercial business with flat roofs will install solar; and canopies will spring up over virtually every parking lot and will have solar collectors on them. In addition, companies like Nanosolar and GreenVolts will install small medium sized solar mini-farms near cities and/or existing power lines.

Should we do all that? We certainly should! It’s too bad every single piece of that isn’t already in place and happening in every state in the United States.

Is that better than large solar farms? When we need to build 100 to 200 times more solar electricity generation within about 20 years that question is extremely irrelevant.

That set of things IS likely to be faster, so it’s critical that we come as close to doing them all as we can. But that has virtually nothing to do with large scale solar farms!

3. In North America alone there is enough potential for large photovoltaic solar farms to generate most of the total electricity we now use. The cooler but sunnier parts of Canada and the Northern states in the United States will work well for this.

In the Southwest part of the United States and a bit in the Southeast and in almost ALL of Mexico combined, there is enough potential for large solar thermal electricity generation to provide more than double ALL of the total electricity now used in all of North America.

When we need to build 100 to 200 times more solar electricity generation within about 20 years, should we ignore all that just because it will take longer and we’ll need to build new power lines to get it from where it’s generated to where it will be used?

Should we ignore all that because we are already moving ahead on building LOTS of solar on roofs on or very near where the electricity will be used?

Heavens no! Not when we need to build 100 to 200 times more solar electricity generation within about 20 years.

There was a time there were no railroads or safe highways or intercity freeways too. But we DID manage to build them. We can and will build the long distance new transmission lines we need as well. I think we should try to do as much of that in the next 15 years as we possibly can. In addition to enabling us to make use of large photovoltaic and thermal solar electricity, it will dramatically increase the amount of wind generated electricity we can use.

4. In addition, the two sizes of solar electricity generation, solar on roofs on or very near where the electricity will be used that power air conditioners locally when it’s sunniest at those locations, and solar farms that can provide electricity to communities far away that are in the dark or heavily overcast &/or cold are complementary. The combination can much more successfully, completely, and reliably replace coal and natural gas burning generators of electricity.

In fact, a man from the solar thermal company Ausra, that I think has the best technology, explained --to a group he was speaking to that I was lucky enough to be in -- that the heated water or other media the solar heats can be stored in insulated containers for several hours and then used later with something like 95% efficiency to generate electricity.

That means that solar heat collected at 4 PM California time in Southern California and 6 PM Chicago time can provide electricity to people in Chicago from 6 PM to perhaps 11 PM even when it’s raining and dark in Chicago. That can, & I hope will, replace most of the electricity the people in Chicago now get from plants that burn coal.

Will this take 20 or 30 years to put in place? Probably. But since we need to build 100 to 200 times more solar electricity generation within about 20 years, we’d better start now to do it!

And, since the actions that will help put solar on roofs on or very near where the electricity will be used will take 5 to 15 years to work, and we need to build 100 to 200 times more solar electricity generation within about 20 years, we’d better start now to do that also!

We definitely should be doing both & doing each one soon.