LA Weekly

Six power plants of *capacity.*

I doubt that the capacity factor for these solar panels is higher than 15%.

What does this mean? You can install solar panels until you're blue in the face and replace zero power plants because the electricity simply isn't there.

Fifteen percent? The general rule is that PV generates 50 percent of its rated capacity. How d'ya figure it's 15?

I run an awful lot of junk off my two solar panels propped up sloppily on the roof. I don't know how you can argue that solar power in sunny California, properly installed for maximum capacity, would replace "zero" power plants. It simply doesn't make rational sense to say so.

Also, to be realistic, California is just not going to build new nuclear plants anytime soon -- the current safety and waste issues are staggering, and until they solve them, the CPUC is not going to jump up and down and cheer for nukes; it's enough to keep the two remaining ones running. You have to allow that solar at least makes a dent in our coal consumption.

We may or may not need the nuclear wedge. We sure as hell need the solar one.

Judith

I suggest you try it for yourself. Get a voltage and amperage computerized datalogging system and hook it up to your arrays. It's really not all that complicated or expensive, and will tell you a lot.
Capacity factor doesn't really tell the whole story, either. Solar panels are incapable of generating electricity a significant amount of the time (at least 50%, obviously); thus, the capacity factor itself is slightly misleading. Essentially, it's not a constant undervolt but a varying undervolt that is completely useless at least half of the time.

I bet you're connected to the grid. Those solar panels "run" nothing--they feed electricity back into the grid when the sun gets around to shining. What's the difference? A lot, from an electrical perspective. You couldn't take the grid away at any time.

Coal-fired plants can't load follow. It's not going to dent coal. It may dent gas--but not by very much, and you could replace the baseload-operated gas with nuclear and get much better savings.

The CPUC isn't going to go nuclear. I know that. They're wrong to not do it, and throwing money at solar panels isn't going to solve the problem. I ask you:
1. What safety problems exist?
2. How is the waste problem unsolved? Geological storage is a bad idea, but it would work; the ACR-1000 (currently in the licensing process) can eat waste; so can the Integral Fast Reactor. How about the 30,000 people who die every year inhaling coal's waste problem? I would think that the "problem" of keeping every ounce of fuel ever used over the life of the plant onsite and under control is slightly better than the real public health hazard of killing people by the thousands.

How do you reason that we need solar and not nuclear? We need electricity. We can get it by destroying the planet and killing people or we can get it in a responsible way. Solar doesn't make enough of an impact to make a difference in getting rid of coal.

I didn't say we need solar and not nuclear. I said that I know we need solar. I'm not sure about nuclear. I'm a fence-sitting American journalist on that one.

My solar output is not connected to the grid. I have a few solar panels and a few batteries. My solar "generator," as I call it, does indeed "run" what it runs. When the sun isn't shining, I use the electricity stored in the batteries. It's very crude, but it's allowed me to experience what's possible with solar. I have not had the same experience with nuclear -- not least because, unlike my solar setup, any nuclear generating facility has to be protected by layer-upon-layer of security to keep it safe.

You say your solar panels and associated batteries run an awful lot of junk and are not connected to the grid. That implies if the batteries ran down at midnight, the "junk" would be inert until the sun appeared next morning. Is that true?

(If true it would explain why only junk loads are on that system; things whose on-demand operation you care about, such as presumably the computer, are plugged in normally.)

--- Graham Cowan, former hydrogen fan,
solar fan if it makes boron

But the batteries don't run down at midnight. And I do charge my laptop and cell phone on them.

Shouldn't we be exploring all sources of non-carbon-emitting energy? I don't quite understand this hostility toward solar.

And you can't seriously be arguing that you can only power "junk" on solar power, can you?

"An awful lot of junk" was your phrase for your solar power system's load set. We've since clarified that to some extent, and now know it includes a notebook computer and a cell phone. Also, it sounds as if you recharge these things only from the solar plant.

By saying "an awful lot" you gave the disturbing impression that you might be thinking you were generating an awful lot of power, but averaged over 24 hours the recharging of these things takes only about as much as a nightlight.

Neither Peterson nor I have expressed any hostility towards solar power.

Analogy: if someone wants to avoid having a proper infant seat installed in a car, and says, "He'll be perfectly safe in my lap. With my arms around him, even if we crash, he won't go anywhere", pointing out that this is false does not amount to hostility towards the embracing of children.

Similarly, in saying that solar power installations of the sort you have experimented with don't replace any hydroelectric, combustion, or nuclear plant, Peterson is being entirely truthful and not in the least solar-hostile. However much of such plant would be needed if there were no solar plant at all is still needed for dark weeks such as Vancouver has been having.

When the sun returns, solar electricity plants can again allow those other plants to save fuel. The capacity to burn that fuel, or in the case of hydro, to let it descend, still must exist.

Solar power stations don't just have dark weeks and dark nights; if they're on Earth and in one of its temperate zones, they have a dark season known as winter.

That is why I see a bright future for them when devices powered not by electricity but by boron combustion are common. Solar power stations that produce energy in this form can easily have a whole winter's worth of it set aside by the end of northern-hemisphere September. It could just be piled outside, on the ground. I discuss this somewhat in the comments section of http://www.energypulse.net/centers/article/article_print.cfm?a_id=1163 (my comments are easy to spot: they're the ones with links highlighted in bright yellow).

--- Graham Cowan, former hydrogen fan
boron as energy carrier: real-car range, nuclear cachet

That's a *terrible* analogy! But okay. You say you're not hostile toward solar, and that's great. I believe Stewart, however, sees it as a direct threat to nuclear power's hegemony on the earth. That's an overstatement. But the nuclear folks always write in when I post something pro-solar (and I have been guilty in the past of pitting one against the other myself. I was wrong).

You say:

"By saying 'an awful lot' you gave the disturbing impression that you might be thinking you were generating an awful lot of power, but averaged over 24 hours the recharging of these things takes only about as much as a nightlight."

Maybe (we still have "an awful lot" of Christmas lights up, all running on solar). But that proves another point: How much electricity do we need, really? I mean, if I had a Sunfrost refrigerator, I'd be running that off my solar plant, too. And with all my lights compact fluorescent, and my toothbrush manual, and my habits daytime -- well, I'm not using very much power at all. And having your own little generator puts you in touch with just exactly how much you use.

I will look into boron. I don't know much about it. Carbon-neutral, I presume?

Yes. I don't see what is terrible about the analogy I used.

I would amend your observation about an in-house solar electricity plant's ability to teach you how much electricity you really use thus: it can teach that lesson if and only if you disconnect from the grid. Maybe you don't handle the utility bill, but for real learning, it would have to be true that no-one in your household does so because there isn't one.

You haven't, I think, tried to solar-power the microwave.

--- Graham Cowan, former hydrogen fan
http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan/Paper_for_11th_CHC.html
boron as energy carrier: real-car range, nuclear cachet

The point of solarizing your house is not to suddenly ONLY use solar. But, to make a dent in your usage from other power sources. Who cares whether the power goes out to the grid or stays in my own home? Overall the power is being used somewhere, and it's coming from a perfectly renewable resource. Using solar power is like carpooling. Sure it doesn't solve our gasoline consumption, but it does make a dent in it. Why are you "non-hostiles" requiring it to be solve the entire problem in one swoop? It's a long term aid to the problem, and no one thinks it's going to solve everything.