Energy Biz - March/April 2008 - (Page 33) Here comes tHe by ken Trade imbalances are accelerating. We may soon be sending half a trillion dollars a year abroad for energy. Is this sustainable? Can we do anything about this incrementally, or do we need a grand plan — an emergency response? By some measures, it might even be too late. However, we are much closer to a feasible solar economy than people realize. Simply capturing the value implicit in a 60-year lifetime would allow solar firm peaking power to be directly cost competitive with natural gas by 2015. This means we can soon reach the tipping point at which we can reduce both energy dependence and CO2 emissions without societal cost. This gives us an entry into the solar economy at just the price of priming the pump. Once we have large, successful systems, and the regulatory climate changes to support solar, the solar economy will become self-sustaining. We can solve global warming and energy shortages by harnessing sunlight in the Southwest. The solar resource is up to the task. Modern solar technology has two credible, economical options — photovoltaics and concentrating solar power. There are practical means of storing the solar electricity to make it firm and dispatchable. And if we move to mostly electric transportation through hybrid vehicles, solar electric can do it all. A secondary but important aspect of our soutHwest solar Powers america plan is to max out most other nonsolar renewZweIbeL, jameS maSon and vaSILIS fThenakIS ables like wind, geothermal, geothermal heat pumps and biomass. We also expect to max out distributed and rooftop photovoltaics. ILLUSTraTIon by bryan peTerSon Local and national policy makers, utility EDiTOr’s nOTE “A Grand Plan for Solar Energy” graced executives and regulators will play a crucial the cover of the January issue of Scientific American magapart. Our plan needs their full-fledged particizine. The subhead: “By 2050, it could free the U.S. from pation. We think this is likely, based on the foreign oil and slash greenhouse emissions.” EnergyBiz attractive value of the shift to solar and the contacted the authors of the piece and invited them to submit additional thoughts about their ideas that would be important role that decision makers will have relevant to our readers. Their submission follows. in this evolution. There is plenty of sunlight in the world — about 40 minutes is equivalent to all the energy humanity uses. There is plenty of sunlight in the Southwest, enough to meet a tripling of energy applications during the century to about 30,000 terawatt-hours, which is 3.4 terawatts of production capacity at 100 percent annual capacity factor. And the sunny weather in the Southwest is dependable enough to ensure continuity of supply, with the right storage capabilities. Based on a traditional 30-year analysis period, intermittent solar on a utility scale without subsidies is today about 15 cents a kilowatt-hour for the lowest-priced systems and similar for concentrating solar power without storage. To transform this intermittent electricity feedstock into firm power, we need storage. Solar systems have exceptionally long, useful lives. The simple, nontracking photovoltaic system is especially rugged and long lasting, with only a predictable annual degradation of about 0.5 percent per year for most technologies. These systems could last 60 years. Conventional plants also are often refurbished after 30 years and are able to continue. The major difference is that the costs associated with conventional plants are mostly fuel costs, so lasting 60 years doesn’t save much. But with solar, especially nontracking photovoltaics, there is no fuel cost. Carbon dIoxIde emIssIons are aCCeleratIng. sun SOlaR ElECTRIC INCENTIvES Solar is closer to being economical than we realized. But to jump-start its adoption and to wring out the last few cents necessary to make it directly cost-competitive, we see an opportunity to incentivize solar installations in the Southwest. Existing solar companies are already projecting a 50 percent reduction in the cost of intermittent solar electricity. www.energycentral.com E n E rgyB i z 33 http://www.energycentral.com
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