Re: Destroy this argument....

On Mar 30, 1:01 am, xnich...@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Most recent studies of PV show that the initial cost of production can
be recouped in 1-5 years
PV can reproduce 30 times the energy input during its manufacture.
There is also the additional cost of mountings and/or motors to track
the sun.
There's no technical data available for the CO2 budget for these
cells, but it's implied in the above statements.
Obviously, any electrical storage would be an additional cost.

Solar trough generators are slightly different inasmuch as they
generate electricity by heating water to drive a turbine.
During periods of low insolation, this can be supplemented by other
power sources, such as gas turbine (or perhaps even wind power)

A third alternative is to install PV at the site where the electricity
is being consumed, such as on rooftops.
This is cheaper due because there are no significant cabling costs or
transmission losses.

The Portuguese plant and similar Las Vegas Springs P/V plants have
very little impact on land use or agriculture.
They allow for the land underneath the panels to be used as shaded
grazing or parking vehicles.
Post production maintenance costs will be far lower than for fossil
fuel or nuclear plant.

The crucial issue in the cost of manufacturing PV cells is the cheap
electricity needed to produce molten silicon.
Iceland and Norway have some of the cheapest electricity available and
a lot of spare capital.
The Icelanders are keen to export energy to Western Europe, but long
distance cables or hydrogen generation/transport are very expensive.
Perhaps the best way to do it would be to go into manufacturing PV big-
time?

As for unintended environmental consequences, I can't see that being a
major problem, even if this technology were upscaled to hundreds of
square kilometers.
If anything wouldn't they actually act to increase the albedo of the
land surface they were on. Perhaps it would even help reduce global
warming.

At the moment GE and Powerlight are building these plants because
they get subsidies from the Portuguese govt. and EU, even though
conventional gas fired power would be cheaper. This is because
Portugal has had a very large increase in CO2 emissions in the past 5
years.

What none of your conventional cost-benefit analyses include is the
cost of environmental destruction.
The AGW models for Portugal and the Southern Mediterranean imply is
desertification within 100 years.
The loss of agricultural production will be massive, not to mention
what will happen to the sea itself, which is already under severe
ecological stress.

If you include those factors in your costs and assume that it will
become much cheaper to produce solar cells, it seems to me like a no-
brainer.

Alex...what desertification in Portugal are you referrign to? Global
warming? If that is the case, then it's still hard to argue against a
few reactors going in on the West coast of Portugal (as opposed to the
South coast). IF you include enviromental damage, then nuclear is a
top contender.

If PV costs can be recovered in 5 years, so can nuclear. It's all how
you juggle the numbers (actually at 400,000,000 a year return for 1k
MW plant is doable at, I think, .05 a kilowatt charge, so 4 years for
$1.6 bilion USD: C H E A P :)

I've made this point, somewhat quietly, that if US prices for retail
power average 6 to 14 cents a KW hour, then ANYTHING that comes in
under this number is, in theory, doable, utility charges, wheeling
fees, nuclear decomissioning, "profits", maintainence, etc
nothwithstanding.

All power in the state of California right now is being bought by the
utilities at $43/MWhr...this includes nuclear, hydro, geothermal, wind
and, mostly, gas.

David

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