Subject: Re: Solar Energy

From: [email-masked] (Nick Pine)
Date: 7 Sep 1995 14:48:55 -0400

As I read this discussion, it seems to me even in context, this discussion
of solar electric power ("solar energy") may be giving solar thermal power
a bad name, especially when the sweeping conclusions fail to mention the
difference. It seems to me that it would be nice to point out once in a while
that solar electricity is not the same as solar thermal power, rather than
just lumping everything under the sun into the word "solar," as in "solar
energy is not economically practical today."

Stephen Lajoie <[email-masked]> wrote:
>Will Stewart  <[email-masked]> wrote:
>>>[email-masked] (Stephen Lajoie) writes: 
>>
>>[Steve believes that use of solar energy for future energy needs of the
>>US would take up an area the size of Colorado]

"Solar energy" to me is heat energy, not electricity. We need to heat houses.
That is a present and future energy need, that is best served by small
distributed systems. In most cases, the south side of a house has more than
enough surface area to heat the house, at a solar thermal collection
efficiency of about 50%.

>Irrelevant. That is not solar power.

Solar power to me is thermal power, not electrical power.

>>>Then, when we figure the cost of solar...

The cost of solar to me is the cost of glazing and 55 gallon drums, systems
that cost 25 cents per peak watt or less, including storage and conversion. 

>>>Furthermore, the cost of the additional land, the cost of materials 
>>>needed to build the collector

Collectors to me are inexpensive thermal collectors, not electrical collectors.

>>...You seem obsessed with a centralized solar facility

You seem obsessed with electricity, not solar thermal power, but the language
you use seems to cover both, and your generalizations seem overreaching.

>>Again, you seem stuck on centralized solar as the only possible solution.

Both of you seem stuck on electrical energy, vs heat energy.

>... when the engineering guys at the utility do a study to see if the thing
>is going to be profitable, they always give it the thumbs down. Solar sells
>good vibes and karma, not practical energy alternatives.

Maybe the wrong guys are evaluating the wrong technology. If you gave
the Ford engineering guys a new Chevy to take apart, do you think they
would be objective in their assesment of the Chevy?

"Solar," as I use the word, works nicely. It is easy to use the warmth
of the sun to heat houses, and perhaps water. Making electricity may be
economically practical for more than a few people, in a hundred years.
 
>>>As far as solar goes, it's barely half a percent in the U.S. energy equation.

Are you counting clothes drying, food production, or rain production, to name
a few ways the sun helps us without our having to put it through wires? Let's
do an energy pie that includes all the ways the earth uses the sun, and see
how big a slice all other forms of energy get. Can you imagine making rain
with electrical pumps and hoses and giant sprinklers attached to high altitude
balloons? One can calculate the annual energy required to do that rainmaking
job, and the cost, if the pumps are PV powered...

>>...I will not dismiss solar from helping to meet those needs in the future.

What kind of "solar"?

Nick

---

From: [email-masked] (Nick Pine)
Date: 18 Sep 1995 12:01:35 -0400

Stephen Lajoie <[email-masked]> again conflates solar thermal and
electrical energy, while miscalculating the US energy pie: 

>>> But, you neglect the losses in the battery...

About 10%, BTW. You have to put in about 10% more energy in charging a
battery than you get out when discharging it. Not very important, I'd say. 

>... I note that there is no large scale 
>presence of solar energy in the U.S., less than 1/2 of one percent.

Au contraire, I think that with proper accounting, over 99% of the
energy present in the US would be called "solar."

>>... it looks worse, i.e., less economical, when you insist that solar must
>>exist completely independent from the current structures. 

"Solar" what?

>Excuse me for using good engineering practices.

OK, but I haven't seen that yet.

>I didn't know that solar engineers were suppose[d] to throw that book out.

Ie economics? Some of us don't.

>But when you crunch the numbers, solar just doesn't cut it.

"Solar" what? A 2 year payback for space heating seems nice to me. Regardless
of context, it still seems unfair to baldly state these conclusions in
overly-general language. It gives some economically-practical solar
applications a bad name, among undiscerning readers.

>Only by considering a completely independent solar energy system can the 
>cost of reliability be factored into solar.

Bullshit. Users want reliable electricity, say an availability of at least
0.999999, ie an expected outage period of less than 30 seconds a year, with
or without the grid. It's cheaper to do it with. But a properly-designed 
solar-electric system with enough batteries and some redundancy (eg two
inverters) can be more reliable than today's grid, at a higher cost.

>Solar, in some cases, is practical in limited and small scale systems to
>supplement power grid usage.

This seems unlikely, even with synchronous inverters instead of batteries
and inverters, assuming you mean "economically-practical." Economically-
practical solar electric systems tend to be far from the grid. 

>While this lowers demands on the grid when the solar conditions are
>favorable, the variation in the power demand on the grid becomes greater,

Agreed.

>with the peak power requirements becoming just as
>high as if there were no solar.

I doubt the peak power requirements would be just as high. It seems to me
that if a lot of people made solar electricity, and used a few batteries,
the peak power requirements for the grid would be lower than if that were
not the case, not counting the fact that solar-electric people tend to be
electrically frugal. How often do you think everyones' batteries would all
be discharged at the same time? That's possible, but not too likely. Once
in a hundred years? It would be interesting to try to work out some numbers
and probability distributions. 

>The effect is to pass on more of the non-recurring cost to the other grid
>consumers.

Sure. And that's one of the reasons utilities have minimum monthly bills,
eg to cover the cost of meter reading, even if the reading this month
is the same as the reading last month.

>But consider, what if everyone had a solar system? The advantage over your 
>neighbors would be lost. The cost of the grid, which is needed to provide
>the reliability, would increase for everyone,

It seems to me that the cost of the grid would stay the same, but the
cost of centrally generating the electricity would decrease, because
there would be less of that needed.

>and this would be the hidden cost of solar. 

Of "solar" what?

>Thus people would buy more solar, and the grid would increase in cost more,

No. The cost of wires and poles and transformers does not increase if
people make solar electricity and sell it back to the grid. In fact, it
may decrease, if there is more electrical energy being decentrally generated
in an area, so there is less transport capacity needed from the outside,
on a statistical basis. 

>until the entire energy system went to hell, and power became unreliable. 

Seems to me that in principle, decentralized electricity sources should
make the network more reliable, not less reliable.

Nick

(Still hoping someone will send me an a.e.r. charter or description,
so I can start creating sci.a.e.)

---

From: [email-masked] (Nick Pine)
Date: 26 Sep 1995 01:30:31 -0400

Bob Apthorpe <[email-masked]> wrote:

>Why would I want to generate my own electricity when I can pay someone else
>to do it for me?

I used to work for Western Union, 20 years ago. Many of the vice presidents
still had their old telegraph sounders on their desks. One of their corporate
goals was to "exploit the world of data communications, at 50 baud and below."

Early in the company's history, Alexander Graham Bell spoke with the president
of Western Union, offering to sell them his "telephone" invention for $8,000.
The president told him that was a ridiculous invention with a ridiculous
price, and said "Why would anyone want to use this 'telephone' of yours
to contact another person when he could simply send a telegram?"

Nick

---

From: [email-masked] (Nick Pine)
Date: 30 Sep 1995 07:16:58 -0400

Barry Smith  <[email-masked]> wrote:
 
>...Solar technology (like bicycle technology) can fit in well
>with a different lifestyle, but an emotional involvement with your
>heating system is not required for the technology to be effective. :-)

It probably helps :-) It seems to me that many people have built their
houses, if not lifestyles, around their heating systems, eg kiva fireplaces
in the US Southwest, massive Russian fireplaces, or traditional Chinese
"fireplaces" that serve for cooking, house heating and beds. 

>... like any new technology, solar technology is for the zealot, the
>adventurer, the avant-garde, the technology buff ... and the wealthy.

I realize that you are still rambling on about PVs here, but solar house
heating reminds me of sailing:

   1. Sailing is something you do because you want to do it, not
   because you have to do it. For some it is an expensive hobby. 

   2. Sailing is a relatively old technology. So is solar heating.

   3. Sailing well requires expertise of a particular and somewhat
   mysterious kind. Motorboating requires less expertise.

   4. Sailboats use natural forces to accomplish something that can be
   more conveniently done with fossil fuels, as does solar heating.

   5. Sailboats use less energy than motorboats. In fact, some
   high-performance sailboats have no motors at all, which is analogous
   to high-performance solar houses, with no backup heating systems. 

   6. Most importantly, performance matters in sailing. It would be nice
   if people began to think more about the performance of solar houses,
   and about their cost-effectiveness. I'd like to see passive solar house
   heating as a competitive sport, where performance matters. Sailboats
   are pretty, but looks are incidental to serious sailors. That is quite
   different from the perspective of most architects and house buyers
   in this country today. 

It seems to me that passive solar house heating is a natural thing for
low-income people, who might be in a better position than rich people
to appreciate the lower heating bills and the extra floorspace and the
chance to grow food in the winter that comes with a low-thermal-mass
poly film sunspace. Low-income people, eg those who live in mobile homes,
might also be less rigid in their ideas about what a house "ought to
look like," aesthetically, than people who live in million dollar houses. 

>(Bill Gates would improve his image if his house had a PV system.  ;-)

Not in my book, especially on that island in downtown Seattle.

OTOH, it would be nice if Dennis Weaver had added a solar closet or two
to his two million dollar collection of old tires. 

Nick

---

From: [email-masked] (Nick Pine)
Date: 11 Oct 1995 20:30:50 -0400

Michael O'Brien <[email-masked]> wrote:

>Maybe having a discussion between a solar guy and a guy whose furnace puts
>out 275,000 Btus per hour is trying to bridge too wide a gap!

Mebbie so. That must be a big house with no insulation, in Georgia...
Reminds me a bit of the guys in Wiconsin who used to carry big chainsaws.
Macho thing. "My chainsaw is bigger than your chainsaw."

>...when you find yourself caculating out 40 foot walls of glass, there
>is no way!

I had in mind 40 foot walls of polyethylene film, at 5 cents per square foot.

>The building is just too inefficient, and if someone tried to
>heat it with solar they would go nuts and blame all the failures and
>hassles on that crazy solar nonsense.

Well, yes. If you are determined that something will not succeed, it won't.
As they say, "Once you have made up your mind, the reasons don't matter." 
 
>You can't nuke big stupid buildings with solar just to show it could be done.
>It's overreaching!!

I disagree. It seems to me that if we can make unsuitable buildings 100%
solar heated, at a low price, that bodes well for newly designed ones with
solar heating in mind. My 1820 stone farmhouse with the polycarbonate roof
comes to mind. I hope to use only the sun to heat it this winter.

Nick