Let me reiterate that, while these stories are real, they are also intended to be allegorical metaphors for the utter chaos inside the Alternate Energy (AE) movement today. Where to begin, where to begin? Appropriately, let’s start on the sunny side of the street and take a peek at solar AE.
There are two main routes to exploit solar energy’s role in our modern and sophisticated culture: the solar array (pompously named the Solar Energy Generating System, SEGS) and photoelectric cells. The principle behind the SEGS white elephant process is to find a nice sunny spot in a desert and cover it with acres and acres of mirrors. Thousands of them, all focused on a central vessel where water is heated to some ungodly temperature and the resulting steam is used to drive turbines to make electricity. The mirrors are computer controlled to follow the sun as it traverses the heavens.
This concept seems like a marriage made in heaven for AE aficionados: Preferred desert location (where most people won’t even be confronted with the sheer ugliness of the installations); lots of free sun; the Mojave, location of most of the dozen or so plants in existence in the U.S., is conveniently close to major urban areas so that electricity transmission losses do not reach unacceptable levels; while the mirror manipulating technology is a little demanding, the rest of it (mirrors, boilers, turbines) is simplistic old-hat; desert solar arrays have enough available space to be built large enough to put a (meaningful?) dent in the potential expansion of carbon-based plants; operation is not manpower intensive and does not require nuclear scientists to run the plant. Oh, happy day!
But, but.....wait! These plants are horrendously capital intensive. We can’t afford them! No problem. The Federal government guarantees loans to make this AE approach viable. Huh? Yeah, it’s called a subsidy. Huh? If your solar adventure flunks, then the good ol’ U.S. of A. will let all of it’s $ investment slide. Since a couple of these plants in the Mojave have already been “decommissioned,” then you’d think that the government would have learned something about the level of risk it’s taking with our money.
Behold the latest SEGS solar array to be built in the Mojave. It came on-stream in 2014 and cost $2.2 billion, about 73% of which was covered by the government. It is the biggest of its kind in the world. It covers about 3500 acres and consists of almost 350,000 mirrors in pairs, each pair occupying about 150 square feet---roughly the size of your average double garage door. Since start-up, the plant has consistently run at no more than 40% of its intended capacity. Nobody can explain this devastating anomaly. So far, the operator blames the weather, clouds (isn’t that the same thing?), and con trails (the streaks of condensation left by high flying aircraft---in other words, very high, very narrow clouds---again!) and also suspects North Korea of having a role.
So you think that this failure to perform is a storm in a tea-cup? After all, the product is “free,” so who cares if there’s a lot less being made than was intended? Well, chaps, the customers do. The company that owns the plant has several contracts with large power companies. Failure to deliver is cause for cancellation. If the major customers walk away, then it’s “sayonara” to the SEGS solar array---to which I say “hooray!” In the greater scheme of things, if the plant were to be shuttered because of under-performance, it would be no great loss to the grid. Even if it ran at its promised full capacity without interruption, it would be a microscopic fraction of California’s electricity consumption.
And, how ’bout them photovoltaics? It seems like that those black panels are everywhere these days. They are based on the ability of some chemicals to generate electrons (electricity) when light is shined on them. Thus, photo = light; voltaic = electricity; PV for short. The PV cell is made from two or more very thin wafers of chemical substances possessing the appropriate property. Silicon is commonly used at the cheaper, low-end of the technology. Due to their fragility, the size of PV cells is kept small. Since the power produced by the cell is dependent on its surface area, then that from just one tiny cell doesn’t come anywhere near to usefulness. To get to pragmatic power levels, hundreds of cells are connected together in a supporting panel. For larger power off-takes, panels can be joined together to form---you got it--- an array.
Am I going to gripe about PVs? Of course. Because they are inefficient. That is to say, for a certain amount of the sun’s energy falling on a PV cell, you don’t get much of it back as electricity. For today’s commercial panels, the efficiency level is between 14 and 19%. A standard is sometimes used to calibrate how much electrical power this sort of efficiency represents. Thus, for a panel one square meter (a bit under 1.2 square yards) in area, operating at 20% efficiency, 200 watts of electricity are produced. That’s enough to power two old-fashioned 100W light bulbs. In addition, this amount of power must be generated under ideal conditions, and in real life, this is hardly ever---maybe never---the case. For example, in 2014, the standard panel in Colorado (classed as a moderately sunny state) produced only 48 watts. Obviously, in Colorado, there are many days where the sun is either nowhere to be found or is too weak to produce much of anything. Plus, real-life panel performance is also notoriously susceptible to deposits of atmospheric dust and pollen, and to other contaminants such as bird poop, autumnal junk, etc.
What’s the take-away here? Well, remember it’s a heavily subsidized industry, especially the huge arrayed “PV power stations” involving millions of panels. To reduce the vast acreage needed to support these installations, PV cells of somewhat higher efficiency than the common-or-garden silicon cell are used. Thereby adding even more to the cost of generation. And when you hear anecdotes about the glories of the PV route to “free” energy, make sure that you are getting on-the-ground, actual data and not some wistful Garden of Eden version!
