Will Solar Power Outshine Oil in the Near Future?

[mheslep]

Fun article in Nature about this conflict:

Energy researcher sues the US National Academy of Sciences for millions of dollars

Rare move stems from a conflict over two journal articles about renewable energy.
Chris Woolston
03 November 2017​

As a seventh generational techno-greenie, I of course side with Prof Jacobson, in spite of my differences of opinions on some minor details with him.
No need to through out the baby with the bath water.

Go Solar! (et al)

Maybe you also like to do a lot of biking. I do. Where do you come down on Lance Armstrong? Great physical talents. Also, a colossal fraud, with lots of law suits against detractors.

 

[OmCheeto]

I cannot understand your stance on this conflict.

Nor can I understand anyones stance on not going 100% renewable.

If you support solar and renewables in general, you should also support accurate presentation of the information.

Duh.

Disinformation and over-promising can only result (in the long run) in hurting progress in these areas. And if the promises are accepted, money will be thrown at it, and much of that would be wasted, and could be applied to real solutions, instead of chasing unicorns.

Blah blah blah blah blah.

ie, nothing here.

I am seriously getting tired of vacuous posts.

A, hmmm... Doesn't PF pride itself on being a "low noise" venue?

Here's another link with some of the back-and-forth. The most notable and easy to understand (for me) is the section addressing Jacobson's rebuttal on his use of 1300 GW for future hydro power. Jacobson claims (though apparently never mentioned in his paper) that that was just a peak capacity (to smooth solar/wind), with no increase in average annual output. But current installed capacity of hydro in the US is ~ 80 GW. So that is an ~ 15x expansion, that Jacobson says would be done by adding turbines to existing plants.

As Clack points out in the rebuttal of his rebuttal, increasing peak capacity 15x is fraught with issues. 15x larger penstocks, is there enough space for that many turbines, and how can the downstream accept 15x the flow? That is no small detail!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/n8oxg2xykc8j3dx/ReplyResponse.pdf?dl=0

I'm all for clean energy and conservation, but so many proponents just seem to "hand wave" the realities that face the intermittent issues of wind/solar.

The 80 GW and 15x expansion, and the lies about it, were addressed by Mark, and are the reason for the $10,000,000 lawsuit.

LYING IS NOT OKAY

 

[NTL2009]

Nor can I understand anyones stance on not going 100% renewable. ...

Going 100% renewable would be fantastic (if it were obtainable at reasonable cost and environmental impact).

But misrepresenting how easily we can get there and ignoring/downplaying environmental impacts is not, and will only cause problems.

... The 80 GW and 15x expansion, and the lies about it, were addressed by Mark, and are the reason for the $10,000,000 lawsuit.

I'm not following this. Was there some "addressing" of this outside what I mentioned (that Jacobson said it was peak power)?

If not, I just don't consider a 15x expansion of peak power with existing hydro sites to be feasible, at least not without some detailed analysis of how you get there. And the biggest issue I see (admittedly no expert) is how can you release a burst of 15x the flow downstream? I just can't imagine that the current hydro sites could accommodate that - it would have some huge environmental affects. You might be able to install 15x the turbines, and you might be able to enlarge the inputs to 15x the flow. But dumping it downstream I just can't see. Plus the large swings on the input side must create problems as well.

 

[mfb]

Increasing the peak power of hydro isn't that challenging - although it will cost a lot, especially with a factor 15. But that does nothing to increase the storage capacity or the overall production from it. It doesn't help if you can empty/fill your reservoir in a single hour if there is no demand for it and if you want to cover the daily cycle with it.

 

[russ_watters]

As a seventh generational techno-greenie, I of course side with Prof Jacobson, in spite of my differences of opinions on some minor details with him.

I cannot understand your stance on this conflict. If you support solar and renewables in general, you should also support accurate presentation of the information. Disinformation and over-promising can only result (in the long run) in hurting progress in these areas.

Nor can I understand anyones stance on not going 100% renewable.

Going 100% renewable would be fantastic (if it were obtainable at reasonable cost and environmental impact).

But misrepresenting how easily we can get there and ignoring/downplaying environmental impacts is not, and will only cause problems.

I think I get it. There are some people who treat these issues like ideological battles to be won rather than technical problems to be solved. To such people, promising 10 MW of solar and getting 1 MW is still a win because you got "more solar", which is the ultimate goal for some people.

This is why I like to try to focus the issue by asking: "What do you want?"
-"Reduced CO2 emissions" (while keeping reliability and relative affordability) is what we all should want.
-"More solar/renewables" (or: "anything but nuclear/coal") is an ideology, not a solution to a technical problem.

These positions are not mutually exclusive of course, but where non-technical/uninformed people fall into a trap is believing the positions are equal; that you can get to substantially reduced carbon emissions (and nuclear power) with "renewables" (and sorry, OC, but that's you). But it's a simple reality that today you can't*.

What is so bothersome about Jacobson is that he appears to be a "more solar/renewables" ideologue with credentials. He not only has the ability but the responsibility to use his credentials honorably/professionally, but he isn't doing it. And that just feeds into the problem of providing fodder for less informed ideologues to turn further harden their positions and turn away from technical solutions/realities.

*Caveats in case someone reads that too strictly: it is theoretically possible to run an all solar or renewable grid, but:
1. The technical solutions required to do it on a utility scale haven't been tried yet so we don't actually know how to do it in reality. For Jacobson's paper specifically, how to actually upgrade a hydro plant in the way he suggests is not even minimally explored.
2. Because of #1, we don't know how expensive it will be, so the best estimate we can give of the cost is "ridiculously expensive".

 

[russ_watters]

The 80 GW and 15x expansion, and the lies about it, were addressed by Mark, and are the reason for the $10,000,000 lawsuit.

LYING IS NOT OKAY

OC, please don't fall into the trap. Such lawsuits are rare/unusual and unlikely to be won due to the fact that if the complaint had merrit, he wouldn't be addressing it in a lawsuit. Lawsuits are what crackpots do when the scientific community rejects them.

Blah blah blah blah blah.

ie, nothing here.

I am seriously getting tired of vacuous posts.

A, hmmm... Doesn't PF pride itself on being a "low noise" venue?

Yes, and since it is, and after I get a chance to review the matter in more detail I'll probably be deleting this noise and your blog post link. If a statement has to be interpreted with a "what he really meant was", then it is tough for any response to it to be a lie: the statement was at best incoherent to begin with. Regardless of the details (which as I said, I'll dig into later), I read as far as where the blog poster started confusing power and energy and then stopped.

 

[gmax137]

Reading the blog Om links to, and the comments, this is what I see: Apparently (?) if you integrated Jacobsen's hydro output over a year, you would get a total consistent with the current integrated output. Sounds to me like this is simply saying the rainfall total is correct. The "modeling error" is when he sometimes assumes instantaneous hydro output exceeding the capacity of the generators, with the idea that we could just build more "turbines." As one of the blog commenters notes, that "assumption is so outlandish that it makes anyone working with power systems laugh."

The thrust of the of the blog seems to be that it isn't an "error" if Jacobsen did it on purpose. And that Clack et. al. knew Jacobsen did it on purpose. So their calling it an "error" is a "lie." Semantics.

 

[russ_watters]

The thrust of the of the blog seems to be that it isn't an "error" if Jacobsen did it on purpose. And that Clack et. al. knew Jacobsen did it on purpose. So their calling it an "error" is a "lie." Semantics.

...and at least as a starting point, reviewers must assume "error" because the alternatives are worse (fraud, idiocy, etc.). Saying "error" is the respectable way to frame an objection to a perceived incorrect piece of data, analysis or conclusion.

 

[mheslep]

Increasing the peak power of hydro isn't that challenging - although it will cost a lot, especially with a factor 15.

I would guess the opposite, that, say, improving the *existing* Hoover Dam from 2 GW to 30 GW is challenging in the extreme, and probably impossible to do without making the dam-reservoir-downstream system unsound. Is there some literature from the engineering community indicating this is the case, that the increase in mechanical loads, the head, downstream increase/decrease in flow, the spillway flows in a newly constructed dam on the same site is feasible, never mind modifications to an existing facility, is just a matter of expense?

From Clack et al:

...To demonstrate the difficulty of getting the energy needed, consider Hoover Dam. It has a capacity of 2.1 GW. If we assume there needs to be 10x capacity nationally, this would rise to 21 GW. Currently there are nineteen turbines in the power plant. The power produced by a hydroelectric plant is

P = E ∗ D ∗ F ∗ g ∗ h,

where P is the power (W), E is the efficiency (%), D is the density of water (kg/m³ ), F is the flow rate (m³ /s), g is gravitational acceleration (m/s² ) and h is the head height (m). If we assume Hoover Dam has a head height of 180m and an efficiency of 80%. We can see the maximum flow rate today should be

Fmax = (2.08 ∗ 10⁹) / ( 0.8 ∗ 1000 ∗ 9.81 ∗ 180) = 1472.4 m³ /s.

The average capacity factor (1947–2008) of Hoover Dam has been 23.05%⁸ . Therefore, the total volume of water used on an average year is 10.7 km³ (or 54.7% of Lake Mead’s active capacity). In 2015, the capacity factor was 19.8%⁹ , illustrating the lower water availability for hydroelectric power in much of the U.S. in recent years. Since, the authors of ref. [11] assume an increase of 43% from historical average values (see our Fig. 3), then Hoover Dam must produce 43% more electricity for a total of 6.01 TWh¹⁰. Using the calculation above, the increase in electricity production would require an additional 4.6 km³ of water. Thus, on average Hoover Dam would be required to use 78.2% of the active capacity of Lake Mead.

The calculation above is simply one of water use. It is clear that more water would need to be passed through the turbines at hydroelectric power plants, regardless of the capacity. The additional need for water is not explained in [11] or [12]. Further, to compound the issues, the higher capacity is used to generate more power when necessary. This extra power results in more water moving downstream. From the calculations above, for Hoover Dam to have 21 GW capacity the maximum flow rate would be 14,724 m³ /s, which is greater than the capacity of the spillways at Hoover Dam. The extra water will cause issues downstream for all the other uses of the water, particularly irrigation. At other times, the power plants will be shutdown to store the water, presumably leaving the river to dry up downstream.

In the unpublished Clack et al response:

...If the capacity at all major hydropower facilities are assumed to expand by the same relative amount, the Grand Coulee Dam would have a new peak power rating of 101 GW – more than all hydropower in the US combined today, and 4.5 times larger than the largest power plant of any kind ever constructed (the Three Gorges Dam). The required flow rate through the upgraded Grand Coulee Dam at full power would regularly need to be 5.5 times higher than the largest flow rate of its part of the river ever recorded in history, which occurred on June 12, 1948, during an historic Columbia River flood period (US Bureau of Reclamations 2017). This flow rate corresponds to 13 times the average discharge rate of the entire Columbia river system, 9 times higher than the peak discharge rate ever in January (when the Jacobson et. al. system assumes 1300 GW of total output), and 3.5 times the maximum spillway capacity of the Grand Coulee dam. One can only imagine the environmental impacts of the massive flooding of lands, towns and cities downstream of such reservoirs once water is released so rapidly.

The Robert Moses dam at the Niagara river (the 4th largest US hydro plant), once it is “upgraded”, would then be relied upon to occasionally deliver up to 36.43 GW (by then also far larger than the world’s largest-capacity power plant today). This would require a flow 6.3 times higher than the highest ever recorded flow rate of the entire Niagara river (recorded in May 1929), and about 18 times higher than its average total flow rate. To put it mildly, this project is hardly likely to be popular either with tourists, downstream and upstream residents or with the Canadians power plant operators drawing water from the same river.

The same type of examples as those above can be made for essentially all other major hydropower facilities in the US...

 

[OmCheeto]

2. Because of #1, we don't know how expensive it will be, so the best estimate we can give of the cost is "ridiculously expensive".

I believe Mark addressed that; "This amounts to ~$494 billion for all of the additional turbines proposed here" [ref]

Half a trillion dollars does seem "ridiculously expensive".
But, I believe that was at one point in our recent history, very near our "trade deficit" portion, for a single year, in energy imports.

pfoogling for where I made that comment...
Energy Secretary Steven Chu Not to Serve a Second Term

Drats! I didn't post it there. Anyways, as I recall from his lecture, we were being drained at a rate of ≈$400 billion per year.

So I consider this a "fill and drain" problem.

 

[mheslep]

Nor can I understand anyones stance on not going 100% renewable.

100% carbon free power is certainly possible. Several countries in the world have done so using hydro and/or nuclear. Among the near 700 posts in this thread are many indicating 100% *variable* RE is not feasible.

 

[mheslep]

I believe Mark addressed that; "This amounts to ~$494 billion for all of the additional turbines proposed here" [ref]

Which is not journal published literature. PF seems to have regular attempts at submissions from somebody trying to reference comments on his blog or similar. A Nobel Laureate once tried, and failed.

 

[OmCheeto]

Which is not journal published literature. PF seems to have regular attempts at submissions from somebody trying to reference comments on his blog or similar. A Nobel Laureate once tried, and failed.

Looked "official" to me.

1. M.Z. Jacobson, M.A. Delucchi, G. Bazouin, Z.A.F. Bauer, C.C. Heavey, E. Fisher, S.B. Morris, D.J.Y. Piekutowski, T.A. Vencill, T.W. Yeskoo, 100% clean and renewable wind, water, sunlight (WWS) allsector energy roadmaps for the 50 United States, Energy and Environmental Sciences, 8 (2015) 2093- 2117.

2. IRENA (International Renewable Energy Agency), Renewable Energy Technologies: Cost analysis series. Hydropower, Vol. 1(3), IRENA, Abu Dhabi, 2012.​

My apologies, that it actually wasn't "journal" published.

ps. That's pretty cool that PF beats up on errant Nobel Laureates. I know how people can be, when they think they're smarter than everyone else.

 

[mfb]

I would guess the opposite, that, say, improving the *existing* Hoover Dam from 2 GW to 30 GW is challenging in the extreme, and probably impossible to do without making the dam-reservoir-downstream system unsound. Is there some literature from the engineering community indicating this is the case, that the increase in mechanical loads, the head, downstream increase/decrease in flow, the spillway flows in a newly constructed dam on the same site is feasible, never mind modifications to an existing facility, is just a matter of expense?

If you throw unlimited money on it, which Jacobsen seems to do...

100% carbon free power is certainly possible. Several countries in the world have done so using hydro and/or nuclear.

Only a small number of countries can produce a large fraction of their electricity demand via hydro, and even the number of countries that can use it as large buffer is small. Add Iceland with abundant geothermal power. That leaves nuclear power as affordable, reliable and nearly CO2-neutral option.

 

[ISamson]

When humans become smart enough (hopefully soon..) solar energy will surely take over. We will realize the dangers of fossil fuels and fully take over our energy production.
Solar energy is the answer.

 

[Borek]

When humans become smart

O, sancta simplicitas!

 

[ISamson]

O, sancta simplicitas!

Sancta simplicitas. Literally.

 

[jim mcnamara]

Well this thread is going to locus disputationem, since we all can read Latin. (bad grammar, but it's been almost sixty years since I did any Latin. mea culpa)
Moved to general discussion.

EDIT: should be:
locum disputationem

 

[jim mcnamara]

After mentor discussions the decision is to lock this thread. Thread closed.