Re: Question for William Mook

On Dec 22, 12:38 am, Monkey Clumps <spacebrai...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Dec 19, 8:38 am, Monkey Clumps <spacebrai...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:





I know that you intend to use CPV system to generate hydrogen rather
than sell electrical energy to the grid.  However, I am curious if the
hydrogen end of things didn't pan out, what sort of cost would you
have for kWh?  Are there technical issues such as energy storage and
power demand vs. insolation that make selling to the grid impractical
for you?  I would think wind energy would have the same issues since
you can't control when the wind blows. Maybe the issue is converting
the DC from you solar system  to high voltage AC?  You have been
talking about plant costs of $.07 per peak watt, which seems to be way
below any other type of power plant, including coal or gas.  Even if
your cost doubled to convert to grid AC it seem you would still be way
ahead of the competition.

I think your plans for hydrogen are exciting, but would a more
straight forward approach for you be to buy some cheap desert land
somewhere between LA and Las Vegas, build a giant CPV farm and just
sell the electricity to the grid?  California could certainly use the
power on hot sunny days.

So after writing pages and pages about your CPV invention, now you
clam up?  If my suggestion is stupid let me know. It seems like an
obvious question since the keystone of your plan was low cost
production of electricity from solar.  As Dan Lancaster says
electricity has far higher "exergy" than hydrogen.  So why not just
sell the electricity?  What up dog?- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I didn't clam up - I was busy replying to the tons and tons and tons
pointless argumentation you and the other stooges have been dumping on
me here as you persistently oppose any attempt of mine to teach you a
little about aircraft design principles! lol. I also have other
stuff I'm doing - even before Christmas.

Your question is a common one and has been answered before - though
its been a while since anyone has asked it. I might have someone put
up a web page on it since it is such a common question.

The answer revolves around balance of system costs and their impact on
solar power costs.

Recall, that my goal is to produce low-cost energy that's competitive
and to do that with sunlight you have to reduce capital costs to a
minimum, since on Earth, they're in the dark most of the time.

So, here's my setup to produce hydrogen;

solar panel --> DC power --> variable load electrolyzer --->
hydrogen

Now, solar panels produce electricity in response to sunlight. That
means the power they make changes with lighting conditions. Now, any
electrical generator must feed its energy into a matched load. If not
you have problems. Brownouts, short circuits etc.

This means that the amount of energy you make with a solar panel, aka
the power level of the generator, varies with lighting conditions -
and you've gotta have the load to match it EXACTLY to have efficient
production. That's why there's a VARIABLE LOAD electrolyzer in the
process above. When lighting conditions change, the production of
hydrogen changes to match it. This system is simple and the hydrogen
is produced at a cost that less than that of any of the fuels I
compete against on a heat value basis-, coal, oil natural gas - and
can burn in anything that burns them - and I can use hydrogen to make
coal into petrol. The market for protons used this way, is largely
unregulated and market prices for highly energetic liquids, like
gasoline, are at an all time high.

What you propose is that I replace the setup above with a setup that
produces electrons and sell those to people who want them. The
markets for electrons are regulated, and their prices are not driven
by the market as much as the prices for say crude oil.

Now logistically it seems like this would be simpler setup though;

solar panel --> DC power

And it would be if this is all I needed. But, DC power generated at a
rate that depends on lighting conditions isn't as high quality as AC
power generated in response to loads.

In order to respond to loads instead of sunlight, I've got to add a
SECOND power source that's independent of sunlight to my solar panel,
and then shed load to that power source when the solar panel loses
output and get it back when the solar power increases output. So, the
actual system looks like this;

solar panel --> DC power ---> Peak power match <-- Second
Source
|
V
DC Load
|
V
Inverter
|
V
AC Load

Now, for all intents and purposes, this second source has to be as big
as the solar panel or larger to be of any use. to this sytem. When
the sun isn't shining the solar panel is standing idle. When the sun
is shining the second source is standing idle. So, you're adding
hardware and costs and not making good use of it

And we're not done adding hardware either. Of course we don't use DC
power in our power grid. We use AC power. So, we need more equipment
on top of all of this to invert the DC to AC. This by itself adds
$0.20 per watt or more. Recall, my system above costs less than $0.07
per peak watt.

Now, we ALREADY have a second power source, that's already powering
the AC Grid, so all we have to do is invert and tie into that right;
something like this;

Solar panels --> DC Power --> Peak Power Match --> Invert --> Grid

This is every bit as complex as my first diagram, and the parts cost
more. The peak power match and inverter (aka intertie) cost nearly
$0.50 per Wp. Not too much if you're paying $5.00 per Wp for the
panel, but a deal breaker when your Wp drops below $0.07.

Another thing, we still NEED the secondary power source. WE ARE NOT
RIDDING OURSELVES OF THE RELIANCE ON FOSSIL FUELS, WE ARE CREATING A
*REQUIREMENT* FOR FOSSIL FUELS.FOR OUR SYSTEM TO WORK. Which makes
those who sell fossil fuels happy, but doesn't really help us move
forward into a post fossil fuel age.

Also, the way people USE power, means that this will never be more
than 15% of our total energy supply when hooked up this way. Check it
out;

Power levels flowing through the power grid are at about 50% peak
throughout the day 24/7. About two hours before sunrise, you start to
see power levels increase as folks wake up and turn *** on, and then
continue to rise s they get to work and turn more *** on. There's a
slight dip at lunch, and then a rise again, that peaks after sunset,
when they get home and turn more *** on. It starts to fall again
after 9 pm, to the 'baseload' level.

Now, the solar panels don't produce ANY power at night. They start at
zero near sunrise, and rise along a cosine curve until local noon is
reached (assuming there's no clouds) and then, the cosine curve drops
after noon, until it drops to zero again near sunset.

Take the area of the solar curve and the area of the use curve, and
divide the two, and you'll see that over the course of a day, even
though the solar panels are producing ALL the energy being used, the
TOTAL energy they make in a day is only 15% of all that energy that's
consumes. - AND THE COSTS ARE HIGHER TOO.

Finally, in the real world of power generators, that 50% baseload
capacity doesn't vary. Its produced baseload plants that either
cannot vary their output much, or take days to respond to changes in
demand. The only thing you're replacing are so called peaking plants
- which is only half the capacity in most places. Those peaking
plants also have limits. They can vary their output over a wide
range, but if you turn them OFF - it may take hours or days to turn
back on again. In that case you have to keep the generators rolling
to keep them synchronized and so forth - and to keep the boilers
ready.

All this means is that you would be hard pressed to provide more than
8% of your total needs with solar power connected to the grid like
this. And as a matter of fact, most utilities have sponsored
legislation to limit subsidies to 4% of the total energy usage for
these reasons.

Consider it this way..

I have under construction two coal to liquid facilities that will each
produce 200,000 barrels per day of petrol from low rank coal. 28,000
tons of carbon each day is directly hydrogenated by 2,500 tons of
hydrogen each day at each site. To make this hydrogen I require 125
GWh of electricity each day at each site. In a year each site makes
45,656 GWh.

At these sites average insolation is 4.5 hours per day, so 28 GW of
solar panels are needed at each site. The cost of the solar system is
$1.9 billion. The cost of the coal conversion system is $3.5 billion.
The value of 200,000 b/d of oil is worth $109 billion- NET value then
is over $100 billion per site. We only need the approval of the land
owner to move forward. The products we sell we sell into an
unregulated market anywhere in the world.

So, over six years we've invested, including land etc., $6.5 billion
and created an asset that's worth over $109 billion. That's 60% per
annum rate of growth on your capital.

There are 155 electrical power companies, or electrical utilities in
the United States operating 16,924 generators that have a collective
capacity of 1,075 GW.

If I restrict my attention to NERC Region WECC we see that there are
26.3 GW of installed capacity. So, already just ONE of my system
which I am already building is more than double to triple the size I
could ever concievably put on the grid in the Mojave desert.

In terms of energy WECC's electrical energy use is 216,788 GWh per
year. For reasons I've already stated only 4% of the WECC's
electrical energy use could be from solar - and this s 8,671 GWh -
only 20% of ONE of my sites.

Now, on the positive side I'd get wholesale generator pricing for
those GWh - instead of thermal fuel pricing. So,lets look at that.
Say I get $0.03 per kWh - that means I get $30,000 per GWh. That's a
value at 15x earnings of $3.9 billion.

What does the system cost? Well, there's something like 2,100 hours
of sunlight per year in the Mojave, so that's good. Dividing that
figure into 8,671 GWh obtains 3,9 GW. Alright, now, $0.05 of the
$0.07 is for the panel, so multiplying this figure by $0.05 per Wp, we
obtain a total panel cost of $199 million. Not too bad. Now,we have
to build an intertie (none on this scale exist) and inverters (none on
this scale exist) so, I've gotta add a supply chain to that. I looked
at this, andthe costs woud come out on a system this size, about $0.30
per peak watt. So, we multiply that up and obtain; $1,17 billion.
Altogether $1.369 billion.

So here we have a system that might take 10 years to get approved -
sells its electricity in one place - is highly regulated - costs $1.4
billion and at the end of the day, is worth maybe $4.0 billion
That's a respectable 11% growth rate - but still not the kind of
returns I need to OWN a large piece of the pie going forward.

Exergy if it makes any sense at all, makes sense to an engineer trying
to determine the greatest efficiencies possible for his system. I
have created a very low cost solar panel technology and variable
electrolysis technology. I did not produce low cost intertie, low cost
inverters or anything like that. I didn't see HOW to do it. I didn't
see HOW I could do something special that would put me ahead of
others. So, I'm stuck with low cost solar panels and low cost
electrolysis.

USING THESE - its easy to see WHY as a *business* decision - I decided
to make use of hydrogen the way I did.

I have several other projects in negotiation;

(1) additional coal to liquid projects using hydrogen
(2) upgrade residual oil with hydrogen
(3) coal replacement with hydrogen in power plants
(4) model hydrogen economy in a small European nation

Finally you spoke of acquiring land. Land may be acquired in ways
that allow me to get paid for doing so. Namely, I look at sunny
lands that possess other resources, but have liabilities associated
with them, I am paid to take those liabilities by way of reclamation
costs.

.