Climate Change and Clean Water - December 17, 2007
Your article "Climate Change and Clean Water" tends to imply that climate change is causing a water shortage. It is not. You do make the statement that "Global climate change and overpopulation are combining to threaten fresh water supplies." Climate change and fresh water supplies have no connections or links. The environmental elitists in the name of climate change pursue policies that will deny those with the least means the very necessities of life, which starts with cheap power. Without dependable, economical power supplies, which will never come in significant amounts from wind or solar, people will not have sufficient electricity, water, food, etc. The environmental elite will always find an issue to limit growth and this time around it is called climate change. It is interesting that you would think if climate change was such a significant factor that it by itself would eliminate the problem of overpopulation. If the environmental elitists get their way, maybe it will.
Bill Hollars
I agree that maintaining fresh water supplies is a critical policy dilemma of the 21st century, but if we use nuclear technology to make it feasible, how then do we deal with the nuclear waste problem? No one seems to want to accept the idea that the spent fuel might be stored somewhere near their homes.
There are no easy solutions, but we must consider the costs of "the nuclear solution" (if I may). We will still need to have a mechanism to deal with the spent fuel and in the face of NIMBYism, the question becomes: are people willing to accept spent fuel being stored near them in exchange for water security?
Sean Reilly, CEM
Your latest article on using nuclear power to meet the energy requirements of desalination quotes scientists who say that "...solar, wind and wave power are not cost effective fuel sources..." Again are ALL the costs being considered here, or are they using cost numbers carefully crafted by America's nuclear power industry? Are the costs of storing the nuclear waste factored in? Are the costs of decommissioning the nuclear plant factored in? Have the liability risks and costs been factored in for the possible nuclear radiation release incident? What about the costs of security for the nuclear power plant?
Nearly all the above-mentioned costs are ignored when our government and nuclear utilities do cost projections. Hence the continual labeling of solar and wind as "not economical".
Wind, solar, and geothermal are the true future energy sources for this planet. They may need a government subsidy to help get them started in the economically "warped" energy markets we currently have, but once they take of they will not need the constant, high-cost
subsidies that the nuclear industry will always require on... and they certainly do not pose the safety and terrorism risks.
Tom Rapini
As we all know, one cannot survive more than a few days without water. And too many have in the past died for the lack of a drink of water, and probably, and tragically, too many will in the future. Our neighboring State of Georgia is facing a real fresh water crisis.
So why are we not taking more drastic steps to protect our diminishing and precious resource.
The drought in Georgia is a case in point. 63% of their fresh water goes to power generation. Can we do without electricity? Of course we can. We did for thousands of years, but would rather not today. Electricity has provided our current "high standard" of life, however, we humans only reached this period in time because we had water to drink. That we cannot live or survive without fresh water EVER.
Currently those industries that use our precious water and the WV Department of Environmental Protection are seeking to remove the tier 2.5 designation from many West Virginia Rivers. To non-technical folks, that means allowing the levels of pollution to rise above the current minimums used to define safe drinking water. The engineers and scientists at DEP recommended against removing the designations, however, the lawyers and political leaders who are funded by the industries that will benefit form allowing more pollution in the water are trying to prevail...although have not yet. The West Virginia Environmental Coalition (WVEC) and many others are waging a tough battle to keep the 2.5 designations.
The coal industry in particular uses enormous amounts to clean coal...I've read numbers as high as 5 tons of water to clean each ton of coal. Whatever the number is, it is a non-life essential use of our water. Oh to be sure, the coal industry will say it is essential to them...but at what environmental cost? That cost, one of several so-called "external costs" that the coal industry does not pay, is assessed to all of us in the future. And of course it means the permanent loss of the BILLIONS of gallons that they are consuming.
After the cleaning process, they dump the resultant toxic water (it is actually more like poisonous mud) into abandoned mines and/or enormous sludge ponds held back by earthen dams. Marsh Fork Elementary School is just below one of hundreds of such "ponds" located around the State. That pond has several BILLION gallons of highly toxic waste laden with arsenic, mercury and many other poisons.
The spill a few years ago by Massey Coal into the Tug Fork River was such a failure to permanently manage and contain that particular toxic storage sludge reservoir. That spill was estimated to be 22 times the EXXON Valdez spill.
The proposed Coal To Liquid process plants require an even greater amount of water. Some literature states 7 gallons of water for every 1 gallon of fuels obtained form a CTL plant.
One cannot help but ask..."What are we doing to ourselves by diverting our precious water into these plants, when there are alternative energy technologies and transportation fuel options that do not use ANY water?" Some, like hydrogen power fuel cells actually produce pure water. Even Concentrated Solar Power plants recycle the little water they require.
Water is our most precious natural resource. We will have to rethink how we use it as its available amount continues to diminish. The IPCC reports, and many many scientists are warning us that global warming is causing an accelerated loss of fresh water.
Allan Tweddle
Jumpstarting Solar Power - December 19, 2007
May be a minor point, but the technology used in CA and Nevada on the existing large solar plants, developed by the firms from Israel and Spain are a form of solar thermal technology commonly called "trough" plants, because they involve rows and rows of parabolic mirrors that look like troughs. Running down the focal point of each trough is an evacuated tube that circulates a heat transfer fluid which is headered together and sent through heat exchangers to make steam for electricity. The concentrating solar technology is also considered a solar thermal technology, but is commonly referred to as the "power tower" type design, where an array of (almost flat) mirrors is focused on a specific area on a tower that contains a receiver (boiler) where steam is made directly (without heat exchangers and the heat transfer fluid). The benefits of the CSP is primarily the ability to achieve higher steam pressures and temperatures then from a trough plant, plus the HTF properties are! not environmentally attractive, so it is a plus to eliminate the need of HTF to generate electricity from solar. Photovoltaic designs are not considered solar thermal technology, but solar direct systems since no steam cycle is involved in the generation of electricity.
Craig F. Davis, P.E. Executive Engineer R. W. Beck International, Ltd
Gathering and using the energy from the sun must be a critical part of our future. As your article mentioned, solar power generation peaks at exactly the time when electric load peaks. In fact, it's the same cause: the sun. Load peaks because the sun heats our houses and businesses, pushing up electric cooling loads. Unlike the wind, which blows when electric load is low, solar power doesn't need to be stored. It can be used as peaking generation like a combustion turbine in many ways, although solar power is not very dispatchable.
Efficiencies and reliability may be low and cost high, but every technology common today had those maladies at one time. With continued investment, solar power will mature to a critical part of our energy supply.
William Quaintance
I applaud and support efforts by utilities and government agencies to support the development and growth of renewable energy sources such as solar. We need that type of energy in our mix.
Your article states that the upfront capital cost of the proposed Arizona 250MW solar concentrator project starting up in 2008 is $250 million. It is highly unlikely that this project can be built for this price tag, in my view. Fossil fuel energy projects today cost approximately $2 million per megawatt of power put in place. Construction costs are escalating due to inflationary pressure on labor costs and higher costs for materials due to strong demand oversees. Power project costs have doubled in the past five years. Solar projects are less economical and likely to be even higher than fossil fuel project capital costs.
Jim Greer
I believe a nuclear plant producing four times the energy of the proposed solar facility can produce electricity at under 10 cents per kwH without subsidies. It will also occupy maybe as much as 1/10 the land area of the proposed solar facility.
I am glad to learn that someone is again working on methods for storing solar heat, a process that was well studied and documented in the 1980s when I worked at the Solar Energy Research Institute (now NREL.) If there have been major breakthroughs in new storage methods, they certainly have not been publicized. The Barstow solar concentrating solar plant was to serve as a test bed for the dispersed reflector and it did so admirably. I presume that the designers of the new facility will build on that technology. Or, as often is the case, will they spend more money to re-invent the wheel?
Here are some concerns about dispersed reflectors that are never addressed or ignored.
Laws of physics. If a facility is to store energy to run for 20 hours without the sun, then it must have a reflector field large enough to both generate electricity and fill the storage. Exact calculations can be done, but here's a rough estimate:
If the plant is to produce 250 mW electrical, assuming 25% conversion from heat to electricity (very high for 1. sun to thermal, 2. transfer medium to steam, 3. steam to mechanical, 4. mechanical to electricity - four conversions) it will need to collect 1,000 mW thermal. At peak sunlight, a collector receives about 1 kW per square meter. The facility will need 1,000,000 square meters of collector (.386 square miles, or 247 acres.) That is for immediate electrical production. Suppose the facility has full sunlight for 10 hours per day. If it is to store, during that 10 hours, enough energy to operate for 20 hours without sunlight, then it must store twice as much energy as it uses, (assuming that there are no storage losses) making a total collector field equal to three times the electrical output. (One times the field for sunlight operation and two times the field for storage.) Thus the total collector area must be 3 million square meters or 741 acres, twice the figure i! n your article. However, this is just the collector area, not taking into account the facility buildings and the area required for the storage facility.
Environmental impact. While it may be argued that the solar facility is non-polluting and it certainly emits no direct "greenhouse" gases, there are a number of real impacts.
1. Bird deaths. I believe the Barstow facility has documented data, and maybe even pictures, of birds being fried/vaporized by flying into the concentrated beams.
2. Endangered plants. What happens to the plant life below the reflectors as its source of sunlight is cut off?
3. Endangered animals. What happens to the animals who lived in the desert and depended on the heat provided by the sun to keep them alive?
Survivability. Sand storms. It takes only one really good sandstorm to destroy the reflectors. Ask anyone who has had a car windshield rendered opaque by blowing sand.
Distribution. Attempts to run new power lines to distribute exiting power are opposed by almost every "environmental" group. Why do you think that power distribution from a solar facility will be treated any differently?
Real costs. The article mentions several times that tax breaks, financial incentives, regulations, etc. are necessary for solar energy to be successful. Translated, this means that we will all pay extra to subsidize the development of an energy source that is uneconomical and could never survive in the free market.
There may be a reason why solar energy as baseline power has not made any real impact on the energy supply mix. Could it be that baseline use of intermittent energy sources is not a very good idea? I suggest we spend our money supporting solar cells, which make a great deal of sense in specific applications (not baseline energy,) solar thermal which makes a great deal of sense in individual facility heating and cooling (not baseline energy,) and clean and safe nuclear energy, which has a long track record of producing cost-completive baseline energy.
Michael Z. Lowenstein, Ph.D. Chief Technology Officer Harmonics Limited
The 2008 Utility Forecast - December 21, 2007
Perhaps you should be a bit more calm about "demand for power 'surges'" - this seemed a bit curious to me, but one seems to see it stated regularly.
Shall we check out the facts?
A quick look at the EIA's information in the form of the "Annual Energy Outlook 2008 (Early Release)" shows a totally flat 2005 to 2006 for U.S. electricity - and a modest projected growth rate for the long term (2006-2030) of 1.3% annually, down from last year's 1.5%/year. Page 17 of the main PDF "Summary Reference Case Tables" shows total electricity use of 3818 B kWh in 2005, and 3821 in 2006 - an increase of less than 1/10 of 1 percent. See http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/index.html
This was from your "2008 Utility Forecast": ...Nationwide, state utility commissions are receiving an uncommon number of rate hike requests. According to Tom Serzan, vice president of Regulatory Research Associates, a subsidiary of SNL Financial, nearly $1.4 billion electric and $460 million gas base rate increases were authorized in 70 cases in 2005. And 2006 also proved to be robust. Future cases will also dominate the agenda, he adds, noting spending in transmission and generation is increasing as the demand for power surges...
Steve Bagstad
And of course, I can't help noticing the absence of any mention of demand-side policy or investment. The only indirect mention is the allusion to "the continued increase in power demand". Someone is overlooking some significant facts:
--The "continued increase in power demand" continues to shrink. In the 1940s and 50s, U.S. demand grew at 10-15% annually. When I came into this field in the 1970s, demand grew at 3-4% annually, and that was considered the minimum required for a modern economy. The 2006 EIA Annual Energy Outlook forecast an average growth rate of 1.7%/year. The 2008 AEO forecasts 1.% annual growth. This means that the federal government expects electricity demand to be 24% lower in 2025 than it thought just two years ago. The combination of higher capital and fuel costs, combined with federal and state policies pushing efficiency gains harder, is beginning to be noticed in forecasts.
--Some 15 states have or are developing Energy Efficiency Resource Standards, which, if fully implemented, could reduce national demand growth by 0.8% in 2020, further cutting the AEO expectations.
--Utility-sector energy efficiency spending is now over $2 billion annually, and growing, with major increases in the pipeline in states like Washington, Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois, Texas, North Carolina, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Maryland, beyond the "usual suspects" like California, New York, and Massachusetts.
Where does the industry think that asset and earnings growth is going to come from? It's less and less like to come from the supply side, with kWh sales continuing to slow down. We think that demand-side investments offer greater earnings growth potential than the supply side, if utility shareholder incentives are properly aligned. Yet no one seems to notice this.
Bill Prindle Deputy Director American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy
Respond to the editor.