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You're asking legitimate questions, but I'm not sure if it's reasonable to expect a good answer. You seem to want a perfect plan to go solar. If you look at pr
by hannob 11y ago
You're asking legitimate questions, but I'm not sure if it's reasonable to expect a good answer. You seem to want a perfect plan to go solar.
If you look at predictions for renewables from a few years ago you will find out that they are all - no matter who you asked - largely wrong. I remember that not that long ago nobody would have expected that prices for onshore wind and solar would go down so rapidly. On the other hand offshore wind was often praised as the tech that would make renewables cheap. The opposite has happened. Onshore wind and solar got cheaper in a speed that even the most outspoken renewable advocates hadn't predicted, offshore wind is one of the most expensive ways to get renewable energy.
Basically today there is not a single country that largely relies on "new" renewables (wind + solar). Denmark comes close, but they are small and interconnected with neighbors that have a lot of water power capacity and pumped storage.
I think it is pretty much impossible to predict which techs will work out in a future grid that will need a lot more storage tech. Some things we think today are promising will spectacularly fail and maybe some things we don't have on the radar yet will provide solutions.
- paulsutter 11y agoI'm not asking for predictions, I'm looking for a statistical analysis that takes into account historical weather, seasonal, and load across geographies weighted by use. This is all measured and recorded. Has anyone analyzed it? Should I pay someone to do that myself? Is anyone interested to try? That's what I'm asking.
- lawpoop 11y agoIf you look at the book "Sustainable Energy without the hot air" you will find it chock full of data. Problem is, it's for the UK, not the US. But FWIW, I think the UK is more north than the continental US. http://www.amazon.com/Sustainable-Energy-Without-Hot-Air/dp/0954452933 http://www.amazon.com/Sustainable-Energy-Without-Hot-Air/dp/...
- Retric 11y agoThat has a lot of issues. So don't trust their numbers. EX: They use 10% for solar cell efficiency when some current systems are over 22%. http://www.sciencealert.com/panasonic-has-produced-the-world-s-most-efficient-rooftop-solar-panel-with-22-5-module-efficiency http://www.sciencealert.com/panasonic-has-produced-the-world... And lab results are even higher.
- ksrm 11y agoThe book is over 7 years old now, published just before PV prices crashed. Here are the citations for the 10% figure: http://www.withouthotair.com/c6/page_47.shtml http://www.withouthotair.com/c6/page_47.shtml Overall I thought the book was excellent. Some of the numbers are slightly off but a lot of the calulcations are intentionally back-of-the-envelope. What were the other issues you had with it?
- Retric 11y agoMixing units when not appropriate. Heating is a great example, solar hot water heaters or sunroofs can cheaply collect a lot of heat. Heat pumps can also extract energy from air pushing up there numbers.* Further, insulation can make a large difference without directly showing up on heating or cooling numbers. All of which make the "Heating, cooling 37 kWh/d" a meaningless number. Transportation is another area, we don't care about the energy content of gas when IC engines have such terrible efficiency numbers. "not on my street", "not in my back yard!" page 109 are also complexly arbitrary issues. Consider, farmers love wind power as a very small footprint brings significant revenue. Sheep can happy eat grass under a wind turbine. (*): A solar room can collect heat which is then redistributed though a home or even concentrated by a heat pump at extreme efficiency to heat a house without being uncomfortably warm or ugly.
- classicsnoot 11y agoFWIW I read this[0] here, but IIRC it was not well received. Most of the complaints where about Nuclear's Profit model issues, not the actual presentation of data. [0]http://energyrealityproject.com/lets-run-the-numbers-nuclear-energy-vs-wind-and-solar/ http://energyrealityproject.com/lets-run-the-numbers-nuclear...
- epistasis 11y agoThere are several of these out there. http://scholar.google.com http://scholar.google.com is a good way to find high quality information without all the political crap. I've liked the roadmaps from Stanford's Mark Jacobson. If you want the high-level general public view, check out: http://thesolutionsproject.org http://thesolutionsproject.org Or for more in depth information you can check out the links on his website, including to the summary papers published in the scientific literature: http://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/WWS-50-USState-plans.html http://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/WWS-5...