Why Not Solar? Part II

In part one of this article, we looked at the fantasy world of solar energy. The point I was making is that advertising uses association to make us want to buy a product. Like all sellers of a product, solar proponents use beautiful imagery and appealing narratives to make solar energy look better than it actually is. We are left with an impression that if we can just convert the nation to solar, we will all be healthier, smarter, kinder, better looking, and nicer to animals. What I am saying sounds absurd, but don’t we all know that this is true with cars and beer? The advertising tells us that if we drink beer we will have so much more fun at parties, we will laugh a lot, and play healthy games such as volleyball. The best part of drinking beer is that women in bikinis will somehow appear. Not many people think this is true at a conscious lever, but the subconscious is so powerful. Our thinking brain rejects the ads, but our feeling brain eats it up. Beer advertising is the way it is because it works. Let me say it again, beer advertising with all of its stupid promises, works on you and it works on me.

 

It is the same with cars. If we buy the right kinds of cars, we will be more successful, people will envy us, and the opposite sex will want to be with us. We may think that those promises would not fool anyone, but advertisers make so much money because the stories that they write work. 

Part of the reason that car and beer ads work is that there is some truth to them. A car does make you more powerful, because in addition to being much more convenient that taking a bus, it acts as a status symbol. A car is the human equivalent of a peacock tail. The female peacock wants the male with the big pretty tail because he has demonstrated that he is healthy enough to pull off such an extravagant display. Similarly, many women want the man with the big car because it says something about his wallet size. Beer also delivers on some of its promises. It lowers inhibitions in some pretty positive ways. For people who are socially awkward or fear talking to strangers, it can make them laugh more easily and allow them to tell better stories without all of the nervousness. There have even been some studies that show that alcohol can sometimes increase learning. On the other hand, the beer ads conveniently ignore the weight gain, the missed work, the liver disease, and saying too much at the office Christmas party.

Getting back to solar power, the advertising has told us that a world filled with solar energy will be more beautiful and will have more woodland animals in it. People who use solar power are kinder, smarter, more intelligent, and more desirable to the opposite sex. Who wouldn’t want that? The kernel of truth in solar advertising is that solar panels really do generate electricity and they really do create a particular group identity. When you spend $25,000 to put solar panels on your roof, you will impress a certain group of people that you are willing to back up your ideology with big money. In some cases this will help you get friends and in some cases will get you dates. It s the same as with a flashy car, a cooler full of beer, or a strutting peacock followed by a group of adoring peahens.  The disappointing part is this; most of the promises advertised by the car, beer, and solar industry don’t come true. 

“Some guys spend their money on fancy cars…while others spend it on sexy solar panels.  I bet I get a lot more action from Mother Nature than anyone driving a Ferrari.” - Ryan van Duzer - http://www.elephantjournal.com/2011/05/duzer-duz-solar-power-video/

Sometimes a gift just drops in your lap. I discovered Ryan van Duzer after I wrote everything above. I was searching the web for “sexy solar” when I chanced upon Ryan and he is perfect. He even mentions fast cars and beers.  I would ask that you go to his web site and watch his video. He is young, good looking, adventurous, and he is so green. Here is the question, has Ryan found a solution for the nation’s energy needs. Are his solar panels really as inexpensive as he claims?

 

Something worth noting is that Ryan mentions that he is hooked up to the grid, or in other words, he is wired up to all of the same power plants as his neighbors. At night, or on cloudy days, Ryan is getting his electricity from coal and nuclear, just like his neighbors. In the summer, when the days are long, Ryan doesn’t use much coal generated electricity; however, in the long nights of winter, his electricity is the same as anyone else’s. 

Ryan said that he has a 3 kW system and it cost $18,000 before all of the grants and subsidies. A 3kW system in Boulder, Colorado produces about half of the total electricity that an average family would use, so a family of four with a moderate lifestyle could expect to pay $36,000 before all of the government money comes in.  In other states, where the sun does not shine as much, you will need even more panels. I live in Pennsylvania and my family of four consumes about 9,000 kWh per year. I found this by checking my electricity bills. Based on my location, I would need a system 3.3 times larger than Ryan’s, or I would need to pay $60,000. Of course, I could get government money to help, but where does that really come from? If you look at your pay check, you will see that money is taken out by Uncle Sam every pay period. You and I paid for Ryan’s solar panels. Did we get our money’s worth?

We should remember that Ryan’s solar system is backed up by power plants so that he will not be inconvenienced at night or when the sky is overcast. When he is not at home and the sun is shining, his extra electricity may very well be wasted. The idea is that his excess power can be used by other customers, but power does not work that way. The grid must be 100% reliable or else lights will go dim and computers will crash. The electricity cannot be stored, so it must be generated at all times. Since Ryan’s power is unreliable, the coal, nuclear, and natural gas plants need to run anyway. Ryan could choose to buy large banks of batteries to store the excess power that he generates, then he would be able to use solar power at night. The problem is that he would need a lot of very expensive batteries and they would need to be replaced every five years as they wore out. Batteries are also known to not be very environmentally friendly. They are made in giant dirty factories and require toxic chemicals that are transported in diesel guzzling ships and trucks. For that matter, solar panels are also made in giants dirty factories and their components are transported by diesel guzzling vehicles.

The upshot is that Ryan seems like a nice guy, but you and I paid for his ridiculously expensive power scheme. When the sun is not shining, he is still consuming coal and nuclear like anyone else. He may be generating excess power at times, but much of it is going to waste. He seems honest to me and is sincere. I caught only one factual mistake in the whole video, but it is a big one:

“It’s gonna produce 100 percent of my electricity for the rest of time . . . time . . . time!!”

Sorry Ryan, you are still coal boy, you are still glowing with nuclear power, and you are still nursing at the natural gas teat.

Why Not Solar?

The biggest problems in our world are greed, ignorance, and lack of imagination. If only we could better educate the common people, we could all live in a better world.

I challenge you to go to an image search engine and type in the words “solar energy future”. You will find page after page of beautiful architecture and healthy people. Strangely enough, many of the pictures will be dominated by brilliant blues and greens, but is that too surprising? These are the colors of earth seen from space and everyone knows that solar power will bring about a future where people live in harmony with the earth and space travel is common and exciting. If you don’t believe me just look at these pictures:

The solar future will be bright. Nearly everyone will be young, healthy, and sexy. The men will be beautiful and muscular and their days will be split between teaching university classes and swimming in the oceans protecting the fish farms from sharks. They will do this with long knives that they hold between their teeth. The solar future will be populated by heroic god-like men.

 As to the women, they will be thin, beautiful, and will mostly wear mini skirts and dresses that fall at mid-thigh. Most of them will speak with sexy British accents and be just as smart as the men. The children will push straight blond hair out of their eyes as they perform advanced math on their computers. In the solar future, our sons and daughters will be experts at integral calculus by sixth grade, but that is a given since they will be expected to design orbiting power stations before their sixteenth birthdays.

There will also be older people in the solar powered world. They will ride bicycles along highways shared with aerodynamic electric vehicles. When they have finished in the art studio, they will fly gliders to concert halls. Of course they will be active, because none of them will have creaky joints or painful illnesses. I have seen this future in countless movies, television shows, and books.

Sadly, there are bad people in the world. It pains me to say this, but in spite of all of the best efforts to educate the public, there are still people who are small minded, mean spirited, and want to run our country using oil and coal. These dangerous people are trying to stop the solar future so that they can continue to pollute the world. These people are not truly evil, but they have not learned that there is a better way. More than anything else, they are not educated. They don’t understand that with solar energy we will all be young, beautiful, educated, and live near the ocean, or at least be able to get to the ocean quickly in our gliders.

These banal people tell us that solar energy is not dependable enough. They argue that solar powered house would never have quite enough electricity and be dimly lit. They claim that making solar cells required big, ugly factories that spew toxins into the environment. They drone on that any realistic solar energy system will require enormous energy storage, such as batteries that would also pollute our environment and consume resources. The most petty and ill informed thing that the defenders of the status quo claim is that solar power is so insignificant today because it just doesn’t work very well. They are wrong and have not done their math very well. They don’t have smart children and they don’t teach university classes or have an art studio. They have not seen all of the blue and green pictures with solar arrays. If only people were better educated, our solar future could begin.

Solar energy produces less than 0.1% of the electricity in the US today. I want you to look into your heart and ask yourself a question. Is solar energy insignificant because it is being held back by uneducated and mean-spirited people, or because it doesn’t work as advertised?

We Shouldn’t Build Those Dirty Power Plants!

In recent years it has become difficult to build some types of power plants in the US. There were plans by various power companies to build a total of 151 coal-fired plants to meet rising electricity demand and also to compensate for the expected retirement of older plants that had outlived their useful lifespans.  However, as of 2011, one hundred of these proposed plants have been cancelled due to permitting issues, rising costs, and public opposition. It may be fair to say that the rising costs were to a large degree an effect of needing to comply with environmental regulations.  Coal is seen as a dirty power source and some vocal groups desire to shut as many down as possible. In a similar fashion, it is nearly impossible to build new nuclear plants in the U.S. for fear that they might leak radiation or that their waste will poison the land for millennia to come.

Figure 1: Electricity Generation in the US During 2010

Source: Energy Information Administration

The pie chart in Figure 1 shows the current mix of fuels used to generate electricity in the United States. If we decide that coal and nuclear are too dirty and dangerous for power generation, what will we use in its place? The choices are natural gas, dams (hydroelectric), biomass (wood and other plant material), wind, oil, and solar. Going down the list we see that some of these options cannot grow in magnitude as much as we would like. 

Hydroelectric dams cannot grow much in the US because many of the rivers that can be dammed are already dammed. In addition, many environmentalists would very much like to tear down the existing dams because they interfere with wildlife. 

Biomass usage may grow somewhat, but wood and plant waste are already being used to generate 2% of our electricity. It would be a fallacy to believe that plant waste is not already being used for useful purposes, so increasing electricity production from burning biomass would mean hampering other recycling efforts or changing land use. There is also the issue that biomass is a disperse energy source. This means that unlike oil and gas wells that produce large quantities of energy in a small area, plants grow over wide areas of land. It requires great expenditures of energy and releases particulates, nitrogen compounds, sulfur compounds, and carbon dioxide to gather, process, and transport so much plant material. 

Wind generation is environmentally unacceptable because the huge turbines kill wildlife such as birds and bats and it is visually unpalatable to neighbors such as Edward Kennedy, who don’t like windmills spoiling their view. Wind is also too unpredictable to generate reliable grid electricity. Yes, wind generates electricity, but not always when it is needed meaning that it does not contribute as much as people want to believe. Oil is too valuable for other purposes to be used to generate electricity. Finally, solar farms are put up not to generate electricity, but as giant green billboards. Solar power is like a giant two page ad in a major newspaper, we don’t expect media ads to generate power, they are there to send a message. Solar power farms are put up for the same reason; their use is more for sending a green message than actually generating power and that is why they generate less than 0.1% of the electricity in the country. Don’t get me wrong, solar cells on calculators are great, but no one should seriously expect them to power a house or factory.

Figure 2: Electricity Generation in the US

Source: Energy Information Administration

If we seriously look at our options for generating sufficient electricity, our only three choices are coal, nuclear, and natural gas, which is why they currently make up the majority of electricity production. It is not a conspiracy that wind, solar, and biomass are small players, it is just that they are unsuitable, at this point in history, for meeting significant portions of our nation’s electrical demand. I can imagine that some readers will be irate that electricity sources other than coal, nuclear, or natural gas are seen as unable to contribute much more than they currently do.  These other energy sources will be more closely investigated in coming weeks to clarify why their potential is limited.

Of coal, nuclear, and natural gas, the American people have decided that two of our three serious generating options are dirty and dangerous, which leaves just natural gas to take up the slack and this is what has grown for more than ten years. In Figure 2 we see that natural gas has grown while coal has declined and nuclear has remained flat. If coal and nuclear power will not grow, or even decline due to environmental concerns, then natural gas consumption must increase to accommodate population growth, economic recovery, larger televisions, and more central air conditioning. Can natural gas really meet this demand? The answer is far from clear. 

Before 2000, natural gas was described as “clean, cheap, and abundant”. As environmental laws became more strict, coal plants grew less desirable for electricity generation and as gas turbine technology improved, large numbers of gas-fired power plants were built. This quickly rising demand for natural gas hit a wall when supply could no longer meet demand. By 2003, natural gas prices began to increase and it became clear that conventional natural gas production was in decline due to dwindling geological reserves. Gas no longer seemed to be cheap and abundant. It was at this time that coal and nuclear plants began to again seem like a good idea. However, new implementation of fracking technology caused a surprisingly large increase in unconventional gas production and natural gas prices dropped. As it stands today, natural gas is expected to remain more affordable than just about any other energy source for decades to come.

Is it possible that gas, including unconventional gas, is not as abundant as currently believed? A few recent articles in the national media have hinted that reported reserves may be inflated for political and business reasons. As demand for natural gas increases due to ever more strict environmental laws, supply might not be able to keep up. What will the US do then? If there are not enough power plants to light all of the US houses, businesses, and factories, or if there is not enough fuel to keep the existing one running, the US power supply will become unreliable. If gas cannot meet these needs, coal and nuclear will be needed to bridge the gap. A healthy energy infrastructure has abundant spare capacity and a diverse fuel mix, so that when one electricity generation source becomes scare for a myriad of possible reasons, the other can take over. As it now stands, environmental laws are becoming strict enough to kill off coal and nuclear plants. If we ever reach a day when natural gas supplies are interrupted, which will the American people choose, strict environmental laws, or a vibrant economy?  We may discover the answer to that question in the coming years.