PV Gap

Carrie Said:

Solar power engineering? Major?

We Answered:

I suspect an Electrical Engineer (EE) would be the most applicable.

Curtis Said:

What do you think about California's new solar power projects?

We Answered:

I would like to make some general comments and then respond to David's. These 4 projects were pushed through at the 11 hour to meet deadlines for federal funds. This is done all the time and is an annoying suggestion that government doesn't work until there is money involved. Some may argue that with 6% of California's electricity coming from geothermal power and only 16% from coal there is no need to go further or try harder. When matched against budgetary problems this has some economic validity. If living is only about the money we save then this would be a conclusive argument. But we are primarily concerned with quality of life of which economics is only a part. California is only second to Texas in the amount of air pollutants put into the atmosphere each year: http://www.scorecard.org/env-releases/ca… There has been some criticism that California is importing dirty electricity from other parts of the west. These new plants are an opportunity to correct both the out of state pollution and improve the economics by reducing the cost of electricity from outside the state. Quality of life also requires interest and involvement. What is new and different does exactly this.

David is not complaining about the cost of a geothermal plant, a coal plant or even a nuclear plant. All these are old news. Solar plants even get the attention of negative comments and so stir the public interest. In this way even negative comments serve the public good. Cost has to be reasonable but as anyone who has ever hired a contractor knows, you don't necessarily go with the cheapest quote.

David quotes some sources that could be examined more carefully. For cost estimates he quotes a proposed solar thermal trough collector plant in a brief Wiki article. In this article we find this: "Solar thermal plants use substantially more water for cooling than other thermal generating technologies. Nevertheless, the Sierra Club supports the Solana plant, because it will be built on private land, and use "75 to 85 percent less water than the current agricultural use." Wiki articles are not necessarily written by one person. These two sentences suggest two minds. Only sometimes are the articles are useful.

And sometimes the math looks impressive and accurate but is not very helpful. We can compare the total cost of a Solar power plant to the MW capacity of the plant and get a number but that number can have little relationship to the cost of electricity. Every other comparison on David's list is a plant that requires fuel as a cost of ongoing operations. The cost of disposing of nuclear waste has been set and charged to the power plants but is unlikely to be a realistic figure. Private owners everywhere are paying high prices for solar panels because they know that they will never have to pay the cost of electricity again. Companies are making a similar bargain.

What is more important in that same wiki article and others like this one: http://www.solarpaces.org/Library/docs/E… is that the cost of electricity from such plants was at between 12 to 15 cents per KWH and may be expected to drop to about 1/2 that amount. Presently it is cheaper than some peak electricity produced by conventional means. In the future stored electricity from such sources may begin to reach parity with conventional fossil fuel and nuclear baseload sources of electricity with far less pollution.

At that point we increase our quality of life including our economic future.