Solar energy at a capital cost of €760 per kW around the corner!

probe

A nightmare for the dozy, expensive, pig inefficient, grossly over-manned, most expensive and polluting electricity supplier in Europe - the ESB.

Take a house that has a maximum electric power demand of 30 amps (i.e. 6,9 kW at 230v). Spend just over €5,000 on solar for your roof and or garden, even in almost sun-less Ireland, and you will be in a position to export huge quantities of electricity to the national grid during the daytime. Buy a few kW back when the sun goes down from the ESB and you will still be largely in positive territory! With under-floor or heat pump or storage electric heating and time switches on your water heating, washing and dishwashing machine etc, one can make the most of the sunlight produced electricity - which is what nature intended. Moore’s law will apply to solar big time!

High time gov.ie make the national grid a two-way street and allowed consumers to install meters that can run in either direction...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2007/02/19/ccview19.xml


.probe

Capt'n Midnight

The "tipping point" will arrive when the capital cost of solar power falls below $1 (51p) per watt, roughly the cost of carbon power. We are not there yet. The best options today vary from $3 to $4 per watt - down from $100 in the late 1970s.
...
It is based on a CIGS (CuInGaSe2) semiconductor compound that absorbs light by freeing electrons.
...
"We don't need subsidies, we just need governments to get out of the way and do no harm. They've spent $170bn subsidising nuclear power over the last thirty years," he said.
...
His ultra-light technology, based on a copper indium compound, can power mobile phones and laptop computers with a sliver of foil.

Be interesting to see if the cost of indium goes up..

Lennoxschips

Can't help but think that this guy is a salesman looking for investment, but it would be great if it's true! I'll keep my eye on it.

Nukem

probe wrote:

High time gov.ie make the national grid a two-way street and allowed consumers to install meters that can run in either direction...

That combined with district heating via a reneawable CHP plant sustaining 10,20...... (required no. of houses) would be ideal and has been proposed by CHP companies and knocked back as the two way street is more of a one way down a severe incline:rolleyes:

Do-more

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

Be interesting to see if the cost of indium goes up..

Probably worth a cross post on the investing forum!

Oldtree

I understand that one of the excuses for not allowing two way traffic is that the amature exporter may electrocute themselves...........

It seems that the ESB are so happy with their connector from NI with the nuclear generated electic, that they have plans for constructing another one later this year, and on line by 2012. Still its good that construction of a nuclear plant is banned here in green ireland.

While I would try to be as green as I can, it was unsettling to read that even if all the tillage land in ireland was planted with rapeseed that only 12% of our own bio diesal needs could be met. (USA only 25% of their needs)this means that the rainforests, whats left of them have to come down and be planted with rapeseed to meet our needs. To me that means that we either ban the car or accept the construction of our own nuclear power stations, and hopefully be able to contain the future problems. This is a logical conclusion, but not one i am happy about!

Do-more

It seems that the times may be a changing for the ESB...

Bertie pledges to help householders go green

"In time, we will ensure that energy produced in the home and at work can be sold back into the national grid."

Now the question is, how long is, "in time"?

Note: All pre-election promises should be taken with a pinch of salt and this isn't even a promise.

Capt'n Midnight

And he doesn't have to do anything. At present and for a very long time the ESB have been obilgated to buy power from any provider once it reaches a certain KWh.

Admittedly they pay a terrible rate, but if you supply enough power they must buy.

Thanks Bertie for promising to deliver what already exists.

probe

Oldtree wrote:

I understand that one of the excuses for not allowing two way traffic is that the amature exporter may electrocute themselves...........

If they are concerned about this, they should do the decent thing and disconnect all households from their network! There are so many opportunities to electrocute oneself in the home. Anyway this is a non-excuse.

It seems that the ESB are so happy with their connector from NI with the nuclear generated electic, that they have plans for constructing another one later this year, and on line by 2012. Still its good that construction of a nuclear plant is banned here in green ireland.

While I would try to be as green as I can, it was unsettling to read that even if all the tillage land in ireland was planted with rapeseed that only 12% of our own bio diesal needs could be met. (USA only 25% of their needs)this means that the rainforests, whats left of them have to come down and be planted with rapeseed to meet our needs. To me that means that we either ban the car or accept the construction of our own nuclear power stations, and hopefully be able to contain the future problems. This is a logical conclusion, but not one i am happy about!

Conventional nuclear is not a long term solution. One is left with growing quantities of waste that will last for thousands of years and a finite supply of raw material - the price of which is skyrocketing as it stands. I live in the most nuclear country on the planet (France) - so I have no hang-ups about the technology. Even France is working hard to replace conventional nuclear - the writing is on the wall.

At the end of the day all energy must come from the sun or moon directly or indirectly - i.e. solar, wind, wave, tidal or hydro. That is what nature intended. Everything else is just a short-term loan to get things started! The loan is maturing ever so quickly and loan maturity notices have already started arriving in the mailbox from the lender in the form of climate change events…

.probe

Do-more

Oldtree wrote:

I understand that one of the excuses for not allowing two way traffic is that the amature exporter may electrocute themselves...........

I believe the problem the ESB quote, is one of isolating lines for repairs by there own linesmen. Power can be readily isolated from their own supply, maintenance can begin and then the wind starts to blow and juice can be feed into the isolated section of line from a household wind turbine electrocuteing anyone working on it.

I don't know how this problem is dealt with in other countries, but I imagine it would be possible to fit an interlock which would only allow current to be fed to the grid if the grid was in fact live, can anyone shed any light?

SeanW

probe wrote:

If they are concerned about this, they should do the decent thing and disconnect all households from their network! There are so many opportunities to electrocute oneself in the home. Anyway this is a non-excuse.

Conventional nuclear is not a long term solution. One is left with growing quantities of waste that will last for thousands of years and a finite supply of raw material - the price of which is skyrocketing as it stands. I live in the most nuclear country on the planet (France) - so I have no hang-ups about the technology. Even France is working hard to replace conventional nuclear - the writing is on the wall.

At the end of the day all energy must come from the sun or moon directly or indirectly - i.e. solar, wind, wave, tidal or hydro. That is what nature intended. Everything else is just a short-term loan to get things started! The loan is maturing ever so quickly and loan maturity notices have already started arriving in the mailbox from the lender in the form of climate change events…

Well, there's no sense in turning this into another debate about nuclear power, but I'll say this much, if France was "working hard to get away from fission" they wouldn't be building a new 1630MW reactor at Flamanville of the new EPR tpye, which I've read is safer, 16% more fuel efficient than previous designs, and has a design life of 60 years.

France can't drop nuclear power in any significant way because they'd get hammered by Kyoto fines.

Coal, filthy as it is, will allow us to keep on "borrowing" as you put it. Question is, do we want that to happen?

A nightmare for the dozy, expensive, pig inefficient, grossly over-manned, most expensive and polluting electricity supplier in Europe - the ESB.

It's not the ESBs fault, they're hampered by government policy of the promotion of peat-fired power generation and the ban on nuclear fission. They also have to provide electricity regardless of the weather ruling out many renewables. That leaves them with just fossil fuels and a few hydroelectric dams.

I concur with many of the above comments, it would be interesting to see if this lives up to expectations and I'll be watching.

probe

SeanW wrote:

Well, there's no sense in turning this into another debate about nuclear power, but I'll say this much, if France was "working hard to get away from fission" they wouldn't be building a new 1630MW reactor at Flamanville of the new EPR tpye, which I've read is safer, 16% more fuel efficient than previous designs, and has a design life of 60 years.

France can't drop nuclear power in any significant way because they'd get hammered by Kyoto fines.

France is a big, bureaucratic country. Flamanville is being constructed today because this project has been in the pipeline for many years.

France has huge, untapped wind power, for example along the Rhone Valley, in Brittany and in the Perpignan/Pyrenees areas.

France has massive solar capability – almost totally unused because nuclear at 2c per kW has killed off the alternative market for anything else. But the yellow cake raw material supply won’t last forever and will get more and more expensive to source as supplies become harder to find, more expensive to extract, as more countries jump on the bandwagon (too late!).

And of course France has ITER (the 10 billion experimental nuclear fusion station in Cadarache) http://www.iter.org/ which is located at 13108 Saint Paul-lez-Durance if you want to find it on your GPS or click below for a map of the area:

http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=43.685622~5.709454&style=r&lvl=10&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&sp=Point.r8dv5fhg8684_Saint-Paul-lez-Durance%2c%20Bouches-du-Rh%u00f4ne%2c%20Provence-Alpes-C%u00f4te%20d%u2019A

Nuclear fusion is not a choice for someone starting in the game in 2007 – particularly a small country. By all means take advantage of it by buying nuclear produced electricity via an Eurogrid and use the same grid infrastructure to export wind produced electricity in return. Any form of nuclear has almost zero CO2, so Ireland will get recognition for this in the Kyoto balance sheet.

Ireland has a huge choice of safe, economic green energy options designed by nature, which will keep running until the sun goes out and the moon is blown up. Why look anywhere else? (Aside from backup connections to the rest of Europe which will be great for exporting the stuff, and necessary until storage technologies reach maturity).

.probe

Oldtree

From my above post about bio diesal production only being a possible 12% by using all available tillage lands, what would we need in terms of windmills, chp plants, etc to supply our current needs? and also given that wood produced energy is only carbon neutral and not carbon negative, how can we change climate change for the better? does the pollution from the production and installation of a windmill negate the pollution production from an existing source in its lifetime? Does all the renewal types of energy that currently exist, and the pollution from them, outweigh the potential pollution from a nuclear facility? Are there any real options out there to deal with current supply, rather than in a lovely future where all homes will be passive and produce their own power needs from a windmill and a wood fired boiler, and cars will run on water?

probe

The key strategy in renewables, as in most other areas of life, is not to put all your eggs in one basket.

The current peak electricity demand in Ireland is about 4.5 GW. The highest evening peak demand ever was on 19.12.2006 when it hit 5.035 GW.

Current installed and working wind generation capacity peaks at 643 MW. Typical output oscillates from extremes of about 30 MW to around 500 or 600 MW. Probably averaging about 200 MW.

So if you went for a total wind solution, you would need at least 20X the current windmill capacity. No big deal here – many of them could be located offshore. On a windy day you would have about 10 GW of production and a demand of around 4 GW. Leaving you with a surplus of around 5 or 6 GW to export or store or turn into hydrogen (which is another form of storage). Denmark has about 4GW of connectivity at present with neighbouring countries (SE, DE and NO).

As I write this, Ireland is producing very little wind energy (about 30 MW less than an hour ago). Here in the South of France where I am at this moment, the wind is blowing at over 60 km/h. It is also very windy right now around Bordeaux, and in Belgium, the Netherlands, Northern Germany and most of the Mediterranean. Which is why green energy needs an Eurogrid to match supply and demand across the continent and take advantage of nature.

It also needs storage capacity – which is where I see electric cars (be they battery or hydrogen powered) have a big contribution to make while they are parked doing nothing else.

Conventional nuclear would be a short term solution for Ireland that would leave a legacy of waste with a half-life of several thousand years. If you want to avail of nuclear electricity – buy it from France. French surplus generating capacity is 3X Ireland’s total demand for electricity and they are producing it for about 3c per kW. Norway is selling hydro electricity to the Netherlands over a cable running under the North Sea – which is a far greater distance than France to Ireland.

Britain has a huge energy shortfall coming up in the coming decade as North Sea gas runs out, and as they are forced to shut antiquated nuclear reactors that are 30 years past their planned shut down date, as well as some antiquated coal generating stations that are far beyond EU pollution limits. Imported pipeline supplies of gas will be reaching a crunch point around the same time as Russian gas starts to go past its peak. There will be a ready demand for every kW of surplus electricity that Irish windmills can produce and export to GB.

In reality wind will be one part of the solution. Wave and tidal energy, which Ireland has in abundance are also prime sources. Tidal energy has the benefit of being totally predictable because the tides rise and fall twice a day every day. They don’t give off CO2 or any other pollutants and tidal turbines rotate at about 15 RPM which is so slow that fish can easily swim through them while they are rotating under water. Silent. Causing damage to nobody.

Ireland is sitting on a green energy goldmine. However it remains fixated by the ESB/CER mafia and their unthinking supporters in Government.

.probe

PS: Notice how the price of uranium has moved over the past 2 years or so!

http://www.infomine.com/investment/metalschart.asp?c=uranium&u=mt&submit1=Display+Chart&x=eur&r=15y#chart

Keeks

It is very easy to say to put wind turbine offshore.....a little more difficult to do it. There aren't really that many suitable locations. Ideal situation for an offshore windfarm would be somewhere that is in shallow waters and has weak currents.

rules out most of the south and west coasts where all the good wind sites would be.

There is also the little matter if grid connections. No problem there. Easy says you. The esb have to provoid you with a connection. True and believe it or not they do try there best.

But guess what stops them. NIMBYism

We all want green energy. But when it comes to putting the infrastructure in place to provide us with it, no-one wants pylons near them because they fear it will devalue their property or it they wont be able to sell any site etc....

SeanW

Importing nuclear electricity from France is actually a pretty good idea. BTW the recent rises in the price are more corrections than indications of future supply.

There has been minimal Uranium exploration over the last 30 years, because firstly the nuclear industry took some major hits over that time, meaning there was less demand than expected, then when the Soviet Union broke up, many of the Cold War enemies nuclear weapons stockpiles were reprocessed into commercial fuel, then President Clinton privatised a body that had been storing Uranium in 1998, that stockpile was subsequently dumped onto the market.

The low Uranium prices were unsustainable and there was always going to be a correction.

Modern nuclear reactors are more fuel efficient than older ones, like the EPR for example. The inevitable correction in prices should spur the Uranium miners to go exploring, and a new US programme, the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, should see US nuclear "waste" being reprocessed into new fuels. The cost of Uranium is a small fraction of the cost of providing nuclear energy anyway so it's not a huge big deal.

Back on topic, the real problem that will limit renewables is their weather dependency, renewables alone will simply never be enough, even if an appropriate amount of cells and turbines were present, the requirement to cover peak demands, which could happen during a calm, cloudy night, means that there will ALWAYS need to be something else.

JosephQ

As I have said on another tread we could cut down the amount of Power stations be they nuclear (imported from anywhere) fossil etc if the goverment put into plan a energy saving bill in the form of that all new build to start of with had to provide some form of renewable energy such as a small wind turbine ( I,ve seen some no bigger than A sky dish nobody complains that they are unsightly) on all say south facing roofs solar panels.:)

business's small and large also to put up some of the above.:D


As for the ESB cartell!! they can easily stop back surgeing of power in repairing lines British Rail have being doing this for years all you have to do is to isolate the downed line at both sides also before the linesmen work on the line is to check that a register that should be compulsary for all energy providers ( home turbines, solar, generators etc.) to be on if not they then could be charge with such things as willful death or injury to secondry parties

probe

Keeks wrote:

It is very easy to say to put wind turbine offshore.....a little more difficult to do it. There aren't really that many suitable locations. Ideal situation for an offshore windfarm would be somewhere that is in shallow waters and has weak currents.

Why rule out areas with strong currents and wave motions? That is where all the action is! It costs money to run grid connections to offshore wind turbines. One might as well install devices at the base of wind turbines to collect energy from wave motions and tidal flows. Use the same grid connectivity to transmit this power back to the network.

An offshore wind farm that ignores the energy in the water movements “beneath its feet” is a waste of investors’ money! When the wind stops blowing for a while, waves and tidal movements still keep happening. This is one of nature’s batteries waiting to be used.

.probe

probe

SeanW wrote:

Importing nuclear electricity from France is actually a pretty good idea. BTW the recent rises in the price are more corrections than indications of future supply.

[Forgive the repetition please, if you have got the message already]

The energy flow consistency of green energy is why I proposed that Ireland needs heavy duty grid connections to mainland Europe, as a matter of urgency, at least until large scale electric energy storage technologies become cheap. Grid connectivity is a battery, a route to export surplus green energy and a source of additional energy when required.

1) Grid connectivity of at least 4 GW between Ireland and the rest of the EU [excluding GB] would be necessary, based on currently predictable demands, rail electrification and the decline of natural gas supplies etc. Britain should be considered exclusively as an energy export market for Irish wind and other green energy from 2010, unless policies change in that country dramatically. Britain has almost zero grid connectivity with the rest of Europe. Appropriate measures should be in place to prevent energy shortages in the British grid bringing down the Irish grid. These things happen in milliseconds – as we saw in France last year where EdF had the first network outage in 30 years because of a problem in the German grid, when the German grid system switched off a high capacity line running over a river in Germany to allow a tall ship to pass underneath cables safely. Half of Germany was without electricity for about an hour as a result – which caused a huge spike in demand on the French system causing over 1 million French households to be without power for 30 min. This in turn rippled into Spain, Italy and Belgium because these countries also depend on France for electricity supply.

2) Given that gas and other hydrocarbons are limited, the infrastructure should use renewable systems as much as possible. Financing costs are low thanks to the Euro’s low interest rates. Conventional electricity generating plant is like a car - it burns out when you have reached more than 300,000 km (assuming it is a good European brand) rather than an Asian tin can. If you don’t use it, it holds its value and will keep working for longer. Make the windmills (and other natural sources) do the hard work. This cuts the depreciation charge on gas and other generation kit and extends its life and reduces maintenance costs. Interest and depreciation are the two major costs of capital intensive plant of this nature. Wind and similar energy capacity needs to be matched using some financial mechanism with backup sources (eg if you have 500 MW of wind, you have to pair with 500 MW of conventional or import over cable capacity).

Aside from energy, we need hydrocarbon resources to produce a zillion high value chemicals that are vital to modern society. Not to mention aviation. There is a double whammy from burning off these raw materials needlessly – climate change and critical raw material problems for future generations (as in your kids’ lifetime).

3) At the expense of tautology, the private car will in time turn into a massive network based energy storage system. Whether it runs on hydrogen or batteries or whatever. The electric motor offers even better acceleration performance than a petrol engine, given the juice – as in 0 to 100 km//h in under 4 secs. Sure you can get 0 to 100 km/h in just over 2 secs in a petrol engine Bugatti with a top speed of around 407 km/h, but it costs about €1.3 million in a free market (ie not Ireland). Electric cars (be they battery or hydrogen powered) are capable of meeting any real world performance need. And if you had enough battery / hydrogen fuel cell power at your disposal, an electric car could zoom past even a Bugatti. (I freely admit that any other car manufacturer would have a huge challenge matching the refinement of a Bugatti – I’m attempting to underscore that the electric motor can surpass the performance requirements of 99.99999% of the motoring public).

Back to the real world - the key is diversity of resources.

As it stands Ireland has virtually all its electric energy eggs in the natural gas basket. Which is a gross waste of a limited natural resource – particularly when this raw material is converted into electricity.

Of all the European countries, Ireland has no excuse.

It has a mild climate – there is no need for any artificial heat in any building if it is properly insulated at any time of the year. Neither is there is need for air conditioning.

Ireland has several hundred GW of energy resources within its territorial water/landmass between wind, wave and tidal sources – aside from solar and geothermal.

Ireland is the only country in the EU that hasn’t electrified its rail network (aside from a token job with DART in the 1980s).

For once in 800 years, Ireland has the financial resources to correct these mistakes.

Innovative initiatives are contagious – Ireland stopped smoking in workplaces and various forms of this ban were copied in Italy, Spain, France, etc. Ditto for plastic bags. There are no plastic bags available in supermarkets in most parts of France or Spain anymore – one has to bring a bag or buy a proper durable bag (which is even better than the Irish idea of a 15c tax on a throw away bag).

3 GW electric submarine cable systems are available on the market – eg ABB and no doubt there are lots of others
http://www.abb.com/industries/us/9AAC751070.aspx?country=IE

Their Norway Netherlands cable is 560 km long – far longer than Cork to France.
http://www.abb.com/global/gad/gad02181.nsf/0/8c5558c304d0eb13c1256f77003a33a1?OpenDocument

The marginal cost of nuclear power produced in France is around 2 or 3c per kW. The ESB, who sell electricity for around 15c per kW (most expensive in Europe) won’t like this idea of importing large quantities of electricity and using wind and other green energy which Ireland has in super abundance to export in return.

However one has to ask the question – which is more important, the future of Ireland or the ESB vested interest?

As storage technologies improve (which includes hydrogen), Ireland will become less dependant on imported energy. The goal should be electric rail, trams, buses, cars, home heating and industrial applications, all from green sources. Ultimately the country will be forced to do it. It will be more pleasant to do it in a planned way, without blackouts and blackmail – rather than waiting until we a gun to the jaw and the lights are out (aside from climatic issues).

As far as uranium is concerned, while the price is no big deal at the input level, the huge increase in cost does signify shortage of supply. New supplies are more expensive and difficult to exploit. Not to mention all the risks of the supply chain and the “disposal” (read storage ad infinitum) costs and risks of leftovers. Green energy sources are infinitely easier to source and manage in the case of Ireland in particular and the required competence is readily available.

Simple things like the quality of road signage and markings, the mess at Dublin airport, Ireland’s inability to deliver an integrated public transport NETWORK, Ireland’s antiquated non codified legal system that has barely changed since the Norman “invasion”, the absence of motorway service areas, Ireland’s hang ups about thermal waste recycling into energy, the impossibility to buy a decent cup of coffee in Ireland etc etc would convince me that Ireland is a totally unsuitable location for conventional nuclear generation. Period.

Nuclear has to be done properly and professionally and is best done on a large scale. If a country can’t produce a decent cup of coffee, what hope them running a safe nuclear reactor!


.probe

Sarsfield

I feel obliged to point out that there is, in fact, some excellent coffee to be had in Ireland. If you can't find it then it throws the quality of your research, and hence the content of the rest of your post, into doubt.

Oldtree

Wow, mr/mrs probe, quite a read.

Just one thing, a bugbare to me really. A well insulated house such as a passive house needs ventilation and this requires energy to run the ventilation systemor HRV, from what I hear 100 watt fans, and they can run up quite a bill if constantly running. other solutions require a passive intelligent venting system such as Passivents, but the heat lost by venting needs to be replaced.

nonetheless a good read.