Just think.

One place where one could go and get good information on wind, solar, nuclear, coal, and all other forms of electricity production.

The real energy story is that there are no energy sources that can solve the world’s energy problems in their entirety (at least in the short to medium term… long term, there are possibilities). Oil, gas, coal, solar, wind, nuclear, whatever. Each, by itself, is only a partial solution. Each has limitations, side-effects, or both. The question that needs to be asked and answered is not “where are we going to find a clean, cheap energy source to provide all the energy we need?” (answer: you won’t), but rather, “is our energy portfolio going to be a smart energy portfolio or a self-destructive portfolio?”

I would like to think, for the sake of my kids and the generations that will follow them, that the answer will be a smart portfolio. If that is the case, then, like any business portfolio manager, when confronted with changing situation you change your portfolio.

Climate change, peak oil, pollution concerns, security concerns…. seems like there are plenty of pretty strong hints that a portfolio adjustment towards a cleaner, truly sustainable, and ultimately, cheaper energy portfolio is long overdue. The message that the media (hopefully all, but at least scientific and investigative) somehow needs to grasp and hammer on is that “we already have an energy portfolio, but it frankly stinks…. it’s [long past] time to get a better one.”

http://www.spiegel.de/ international/ germany/ 0,1518,576078,00.html

“Nature has no comment on the price of base load solar, which could easily drop 30% to 50% over the next several years, making it the cheapest form of carbon-free baseload power.”

Are you talking about 24/7 base load or 6hr base load for AC load?

Where do you expect the cost improvements? The thermal plant is mature technology and likely to go up with inflation as all other thermal sources.

Do you expect the cost of tracking mirrors to drop dramatically? They are not exotic technology. Steel and glass plus labor to install.

[JR: I and most others expect all of those to drop as economies of scale and the learning curve kicks in. I am talking, as I have said many times, about load following in this country. There is no point in wasting money to provide power at 4 am now, or, for that matter, ever.]

How do you propose shutting down coal power plants and not building more nukes if you dismiss the economics of thermal storage out of hand?

I’m scratching my head….

Michael

[JR: I have no idea what you are talking about. I am supporting the economics of the solar baseload with thermal storage. Have been for a while. In this country, people are basically giving away electricity in the early morning. I don’t really see how that is going to change in the next quarter-century. If we shut down coal plants, we will be replacing them with wind power, which delivers more than enough electricity in the early morning. I don’t propose shutting down the nuclear plants or the Hydro plants. So, along with wind, we’ll have a huge amounts of carbon free power at 4 am for decades. I just don’t see the economics of providing more than 4 to 6 hours of storage for baseload solar. I am scratching my head.]

Solar thermal has a bright future providing power for the peak demand period — from early afternoon to early evening. Don’t make it out to be more than it can be. Look, you yourself say “There is no point in wasting money to provide power at 4 am now, or, for that matter, ever.” And that’ll be true even if the cost comes down to 50% of that $0.17/kWh figure.

The arguement that you are making, that the wind doesn’t always blow in one particular place applies to nuclear, coal, hydro and gas. A some given points in time each individual plant goes offline.

Nuclear, for example, has to be shut down periodically for maintenance. Nuclear can only provide baseline by linking multiple nuclear plants.

Going higher wouldn’t make sense unless there would be a specific baseload demand (such as industrial processes etc.).

They take the reliability of coal plants as a baseline, and look at what fraction of interconnected wind farms can be counted on to be as reliable as the coal plant. They write,

“Firm capacity” is the fraction of installed wind capacity that is online at the same probability as that of a coal-fired power plant. On average, coal plants are free from unscheduled or scheduled maintenance for 79%–92% of the year, averaging 87.5% in the United States from 2000 to 2004 (Giebel 2000; North American Electric Reliability Council 2005). Figure 3 shows that, while the guaranteed power generated by a single wind farm for 92% of the hours of the year was 0 kW, the power guaranteed by 7 and 19 interconnected farms was 60 and 171 kW, giving firm capacities of 0.04 and 0.11, respectively. Furthermore, 19 interconnected wind farms guaranteed 222 kW of power (firm capacity of 0.15) for 87.5% of the year, the same percent of the year that an average coal plant in the United States guarantees power. Last, 19 farms guaranteed 312 kW of power for 79% of the year, 4 times the guaranteed power generated by one farm for 79% of the year.

To illustrate the first point, the capacity factor of the Stirling Energy Systems plant being built in Victorville, CA for Southern California Edison is estimated as 23.9%, not 14%. Shame on Nature for being so sloppy.

A good reliable source could bring all this scattered information together where even lazy, sloppy journalists could have it at hand.

Think of a site where a handful of skilled writers could produce concise, easy to read summaries of where we are and where we are likely to go in the near future.

All the “Cyrils” and “Earls” could be the stringers that bring data to the discussion.

Please see Solar Thermal Power as the Plausible Basis of Grid Supply, by David Mills and Rob Morgan. In particular see Table 2 where it suggests SM3 could provide 92% of the US supply at 7.8 cents per kWh, 365×7. Given that we already have 7% hydro and 20% nuclear, and 2.4% other renewables, we need only 71%, and they offer us much more. For Ausra, Thermal Energy Storage actually allows them to achieve lower cost. They write, “This is shown for the blended state case, in which 92% of the blended state annual load can be supplied by the cheapest array option, SM3. The explanation for the cost minimum is as follows: below SM3, the turbines produce less output per day because there is less array per turbine, increasing kWh cost.”

Caveat: To my knowledge, Ausra has not yet demonstrated the Thermal Energy Storage system on which this is based.

IS then the maximum ratio as small as 2. or is it larger?

Joe,
It is still seems quite daft for you to publicize solar thermal with storage as “solar baseload” and then dismiss the notion that there is an economic reason to use solar thermal AS baseload. You are contradicting the notion of what baseload is, as pointed out by other commenters.

[JR: It might be daft if I hadn’t it explained it so many times. CSP with 4 to 6 hours storage is load following from dawn to well past the evening time of heavy usage. That is what I would call “better than baseload.” Midnight to 6 am is heavily oversubscribed, in places you have to give away or throw away electricity — and that isn’t going to change as we aggressively move toward wind, unless we also aggressively toward for plug-ins. But if we did plug ins, then, again, what would be the point of wasting money giving CSP 10 to 12 hours storage? There is no question you could put in enough storage to make CSP technically baseload, but you’d be crazy to do so. So CSP with 4 to 6 hours is load following and “effectively baseload.” I’m using baseload solar as an understandable shorthand. You don’t have to.]

The economics of baseload are that the higher utilization rate of your capital expenditure in the turbine allows for lower per kilowatt costs; one of the most expensive parts of the solar thermal plant is the turbine. Thermal storage will become cheaper as more of it gets built; furthermore the lowest per kilowatt costs that I have been quoted for a solar thermal plant with storage have been for plants with 16 plus hours of storage and continuous summertime operation.

In a solar-dominated renewable grid, nighttime power will not be nearly as cheap as it is now; it’s current low cost is partly a function of demand but also of the efficiency and cheapness of coal and to a lesser extent existing nuclear power plants (that operate at 90% capacity).

[JR: This is an incorrect statement, assuming you were counting wind, which is almost certain to outpace PV and CSP for at least the next decade if not longer.]

Ausra is currently acting more as a (much appreciated) publicist than a technology company in the area of thermal storage and solar baseload though may well come up with their own solution. Other companies with higher temperature plant designs already have storage solutions.

I believe the one promising solution would be “combined renewable power plants” that use a variety of renewable generators to further extend thermal storage capacity which may function as a power reserve for less easily storable renewable energy sources.

[JR: I doubt this solution makes much sense. Anything other than thermal storage is expensive, wind almost anywhere on the grid is a good match for baseload solar, and plug ins solve the rest of the problem.]

But in the load following solar thermal grid, demand and supply match almost perfectly, so there will be relatively little variations in daytime vs nighttime electricity costs.

What matters, then, is the average levelized cost in a hypothetical solar thermal load following grid vs a coal grid with gas peak assist. The coal grid could benefit more from cheap storage. Such as demand side thermal storage; AC cold (ice) storage and space heating hot (water) storage. Which will certainly be cheaper than expensive natural gas peakers. But then a wind grid using that same demand side thermal storage would be cheap, up to a very large penetration of wind, which is a limit so high it’s not very relevant for us now, and not an argument against wind for the forseeable future. And coal has other costs, such as the greenhouse gas which has to be offset or sequestered. And something has to be done about heavy metals from coal burning and the impact of coal mining. Then there are the rapidly risen coal prices. Is a reasonably responsible coal grid going to be cheaper than a wind grid? I don’t think so, not by much anyway. And such a wind grid is definately not anymore hypothetical than a clean coal grid, and would certainly be cleaner than the cleanest coal. Considering technology, politics and economics right now.

And nuclear? IMHO it depends firstly on economics, but many may disagree with me on this issue, which is somewhat understandable.

Divorcing ourselves from the huge energy stores in coal, natural gas and uranium deposits will have consequences as we shift more to depend on energy flows rather than energy stores or stocks. I think it desirable to move in this direction rapidly but that doesn’t mean I and or we need to paper over some real engineering and economic challenges involved in the transition.

Joe,
I’m surprised at your arrogance: you think you can take the power engineering concept “baseload” and make it mean whatever you want it to mean. Neither I nor other readers can be expected to read your previous posts like the Talmud and refer to them…your blog is good but not THAT good.

I don’t want to minimize the usefulness and importance of load-following solar thermal plants (6-8 hours storage). But they aren’t “baseload”. I think you are mistaking the positive current economics of building solar thermal “load-following” plants which cover what currently is the most expensive day and early evening power and the desirability of also creating true solar baseload. If we are shutting down coal plants, the night time power starts to get expensive too.

It might be better if you took more of a yeshiva-bocher’s approach to the challenges of power engineering, power plant economics and how we can make renewables reproduce some of the utility of fossil generators on the grid. For instance your assertions about wind power need substantiation. If you’ve looked at the power density profile of wind over time you start to see the challenge. Wind power requires storage and or firming to create the smooth “baseload” power profile upon which power users have come to depend. This is not a trivial problem and that non-triviality requires time and money to resolve. $.15/kWh for all-night clean power looks pretty good from there.

True solar baseload has the storage issue pretty well in hand. Therefore it is worth pursuing. At least the companies Solar Reserve and Sener Ingeniera think that it’s worth pursuing…and they are experts in the area of solar thermal and thermal storage (and you’re not).

So just blithely asserting that we can throw renewable energy FLOWS at the grid, sprinkle in some plug-in vehicles, and hope they will produce usable power is skating over the complexities of the task ahead of us. I expect a little more depth of understanding of the issues from a guy with a physics Ph.D.

I agree that calling it ‘load-following solar power’ is not only more descriptive, but IMO sounds a whole lot better than ‘baseload solar’.

As I’ve said many times, we must have a major shift to plugs in. But we could take 20% wind before that. In any case, yes, smart plug ins plus wind are plenty good.

Many other countries need something closer to true baseload, but even they won’t be baseload, since true baseload is constant power. We need near-baseload, which is closer to load following.

All you other folks out there can call it “load-following solar power” or “contribute solar thermal electric power” or whatever, but the term load-following has no meaning for 99.99% of people and therefore will go nowhere.

I have explained many times why I call it baseload solar. To those who think load-following sounds better, I say, go for it. I’m gonna
stick with baseload solar.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in a rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”

Baseload sounds good but already means something different (very important). Load-following also means something and, as David Benson points out, is just a little bit more obscure than “baseload”. How about “demand-responsive” or “demand-following” solar. How about “solar on tap”?

The shorthand of misusing an already existing term is going to short-circuit the public education process that has to take place about what we are going to need renewables to do if we are going to cut carbon emissions substantially. Finding baseload alternatives is perhaps the most difficult and pressing issue and you’re kind of obscuring it by borrowing this term and screwing around with its meaning.

CSP with 4 to 6 hours storage does not “follow the load” because the load doesn’t disappear at 2 am! So much for “load-following solar.”

Now you are certainly entitled to say if you want, “but load following means something different than its specific words.” But then you give up the semantic argument.

Equally important, there are many different definitions of “baseload.” Here is the the one from the online Energy Dictionary, which is the one Wikipedia relies on: “Most commonly referred to as baseload demand, this is the minimum amount of power that a utility or distribution company must make available to its customers, or the amount of power required to meet minimum demands based on reasonable expectations of customer requirements. Baseload values typically vary from hour to hour in most commercial and industrial areas.” Hmm. Baseload values vary from hour to hour in most places. Who would have guessed?

If we weren’t fighting an active disinformation campaign, I might be more sympathetic to your arguments. But the biggest rap on renewables is that they can’t provide baseload power and hence can’t replace coal or nuclear. That is a message pounded in over and over again. The point of the name baseload solar is to take that myth head on. No other name does that. And if it leads to a even more informed discussion by would-be semanticists, all the better.

I’ll guess we’ll have to agree to disagree on whether its a good name or not. BTW, your other are equally inaccurate.

That said, I might do a post on this, just so I can always link to it and thus eliminate any confusion or ambiguity. Defining one’s terms solves any semantic or technical problem.]

Therefore, every baseload plant must be coupled with peaking plants that can produce the grid power beyond the minimum. Peaking power plants are
much more expensive per kWh than baseload plants in large part because their capital investment must be charged against operation a fraction of a day, instead of over 24 hours a day. In some sense this results from the artificial separation of plants into baseload and peakers. If you build a coal plant, a paired peaker is essentially required. It would be more appropriate, IMO, to lump these two plants together, rather than keeping them separate. It is the cost of power from the combination that is relevant.

One reason Ausra sees Thermal Energy Storage (TES) as important to bringing down the cost of their Concentrated Solar Power plants is that it allows them to amortize the capital cost of turbines over a larger number of hours per day. For example, in a CSP plant without TES, the capital cost consists of the collectors (cost C) and the turbines (cost T). Then C+T is amortized over 12 hours a day (and only at peak power for part of that). The cost per kWh is proportional to (C+T)/C. The
cost is reduced if you add TES (cost S) where S

The above is a simplistic analysis, but it should give the idea. I would imagine, for example, that it would often be a good idea to have two turbines per field: you run both during peak load, and shut down one when load falls off. Then you have (6C+2T+2S)/6C and you’ve got a combined baseload+peaker (breakeven S<2T). This sort of CSP+TES should be compared to baseload+peakers, IMO.

How about some backup for the claim that Norway’s hydro is unused? The way I understand it, Danish excess wind is sent to Norway, which uses it instead of hydro power. When Denmark needs more than its wind provides, Norway generates power from the water that was held back courtesy of Danish wind. Hydro should be used as storage for other technologies, rather than as primary power. Does anyone know the extent of its storage use in the US. I know there is some, but how much?

In 1999 the EU had 32 GW capacity of pumped storage out of a total of 188 GW of hydropower and representing 5.5% of total electrical capacity in the EU.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity

That’s dedicated storage; it doesn’t count hydro used for load-following without pumping water back uphill during periods of low demand. Hoover Dam, with a nameplate capacity of 2,080 MW, is producing an average of 500 MW.

http://www.usbr.gov/ lc/ hooverdam/ faqs/ powerfaq.html

No, you didn’t understand the more important argument that the average levelized cost is more important than either night time or daytime power costs. Please read my posts completely before making accusations.

As I’ve pointed out before, the energy revolution also needs to be one of education. Too many people know too little about ‘tricity and that’s a real problem in any democracy.

And my designations of these power plant are NOT inaccurate. Just asserting something doesn’t make it true.

Talk to those who apply “baseload” to a power plant or source (and not demand) and they apply it to a 24×7 power source with a basically flat power output profile. “load-following” power plants do not always follow the load but are somewhat more responsive to power demand and are supposed to chop predictable peaks in power usage (A STE plant with 6 to 8 hours storage is well-designed for this purpose) . Finally “peakers” are fast ramping powerplants (usually gas-turbines or hydro) that cover surges in demand. Still faster are frequency regulation plants that regulate the AC frequency of the grid. It’s all about speed of response, levelized cost per unit power and, especially important in the case of renewables, availability and strength of the primary energy.

Earl,
Information about how Denmark handles wind is easy to find. I am not writing a dissertation here in the comments section.

Try here:
http://www.theoildrum.com/ story/ 2006/ 8/ 31/ 194053/ 962#more

One reason that wind is a good match to plug-in cars is that they could in theory ramp up and down quickly in response to what is being generated, instead of having thermal power plants trying to accomplish the same thing. Eventually we will have other devices doing the same thing via smart grid technology: e.g. heat pumps will produce extra heating or cooling when there is extra wind energy, and less when there is not enough. Many water pumps can shift work to times when power is available. While the production of fuels from electricity (e.g. hydrogen or methanol or gasoline) is unlikely to be a major power demand (it is too inefficient), there may be some, and such production could modulate production in response to wind variation.