***Alternative Energy Forecasts*** 21

[deltawhy]

Hello, so I know everyone here has at least an opinion on this subject. I would like to see what the industry experienced members think of alternative energy and the forecast for the near future.

Within the next 5, 10, and 15 years, what do you think will become dominant in North America, Europe, and Australia?

One of the main issues plaguing alternative energy is the method of energy storage. What do you think will become dominant? New types of chemical batteries, flywheel storage, compressed air, water pumping, etc.

How about less known about methods, like plasma gasification and MSW energy?

Will micorgeneration become a major player, with the addition of hybrid and electric vehicles putting massive amounts of stress on the already stressed grid?

Any thoughts?

Regards

 

[KENAT]

Always the consumer, come on cranky108.

Posting guidelines faq731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

(probably not aimed specifically at you)
What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484​

 

[zdas04]

And it has come to pass:

KENAT (Mechanical) 13 Sep 11 11:07
... Be warned though, these types of threads often devolve into a debate over 'global climate change' and if people really are to blame.

I just read a couple of chapters of Without Hot Air and it is "unbiased" in the same manner that FoxNews is "Fair and Balanced". What I read was full of unsupported assumptions, opinions presented as facts, and "data" without numbers. For example:

Mythconceptions
Manufacturing a solar panel consumes more energy than it will ever de-liver.
False. The energy yield ratio (the ratio of energy delivered by a system over its lifetime, to the energy required to make it) of a roof-mounted, grid-connected solar system in Central Northern Europe is 4, for a system with a lifetime of 20 years (Richards and Watt, 2007); and more than 7 in a sunnier spot such as Australia. (An energy yield ratio bigger than one
means that a system is A Good Thing, energy-wise.) Wind turbines with a lifetime of 20 years have an energy yield ratio of 80.

Notice that he just says "energy ratio of ... 4" (the reference is pretty misleading too, it is to something that says solar panels last 20 years not that they have a positive energy ratio).

What went into that "energy ratio" number? Did they include the energy used to mine the ore? The energy used to transport the ore to the foundry? The energy used to transport the overburden away from the mine? The energy used in the Foundry? The energy used in trucking the raw materials to the factory? The energy used to create the box that the finished product is shipped in? How about the energy used by the factory workers to commute to work? Or, like most of these analysis, did they take the electric bill from the factory producing the panels and divide it by the number of square meters of panels produced during the month?

I work in an industry that uses a LOT of solar panels (yes, Oil & Gas is a very large consumer of Photovoltaic panels, we use them on remote sites to power automation and communications equipment, BP is the world's largest producer of photovoltaic panels) and it is a rare panel that survives 4 years without a fault. They tend to get covered with snow and a portion of the melt eventually defeats the seals and shorts out the panel. Or they get covered in bird droppings and the chemicals degrade the surface. If the life is 4 years instead of 20, then the energy yield ratio becomes 0.8 instead of 4, even when you understate the actual energy that went into the creation of the panel. When I've done solar vs. connecting to the grid full-life economics the break-even number was around 80 W of panels gave me the same economics as building a mile of single-phase power line (assuming annual replacement of batteries and replacing solar panels every 4 years).

To be fair, I only read a few pages and I could easily have missed competent, fair, and even-handed data included in the parts I didn't read, but I didn't see any in the parts I did read.

David

 

[cranky108]

Yes I am a consumer. I don't hord my money. And while I do grow some of my own food, I don't grow enough for my family.
That's why I work.

I do agree solar panels are cheeper than, say primary cell batteries (and smaller and lighter). They are also cheeper than long distribution lines. So they do have a place.

As well as wind energy, provided you have the ability to store that energy for a sunny day.

The primary purpose of the electrical network was to transport energy from large more efficent power plants to the consumers. So each block would not need an Edison battery plant. It was known there would be losses in the network, but those would be small compaired to the efficency gains of the larger power plants.

Granted things have changed. For a time electric utilities were prevented from building power plants that used natural gas. So they built coal fired plants.

There was an EPRI book on an idea of whole tree burning, but seeing how that took off, where will your idea be in a few years?

 

[josephv]

Here is an article from Scientific American

"Even accounting for all the energy--and pollution--involved in the manufacture of photovoltaic cells, they still produce less pollution over their lifecycle than other alternatives."

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=solar-cells-prove-cleaner-way-to-produce-power

 

[zdas04]

Articles like that are why I cancelled my subscription to Scientific American. I patently reject the concept that CO2 is a pollutant. The article takes that concept as a given.

David

 

[TED7]

Pulling a quote out of the Scientific American article...

"I think 30 percent of the energy consumption in the [manufacturing] facilities is easily met from the land they have available [on] the roof and in the parking lot,"

Most factories I have been in and around in the UK have roofs shaped like a buttress thread (I understand screws better than architechture). The vertical parts are windows letting light into the factory and face the sun all day, the rest is in shade most of the day (except summer when the sun is really high). We can't put panels on our roof and I would love to hear the justification for replacing all our parking spaces with PV panels.

Designer of machine tools - user of modified screws

 

[KENAT]

No, you put the solar cells on top of car ports over the parking spaces. In hot places (so not the UK most of the time) this would have the added benefit of shading one's car.;-)

Posting guidelines faq731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

(probably not aimed specifically at you)
What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484​

 

[zdas04]

The "shading" issue is one that is rarely considered with PV panels. If you can get 1W/m^2 then to run an (evil) incandessant lightbulb you need 100 m^2. Oh yeah, the sun is only up 8 hours/day in the UK winters. Oh yeah, it is cloudy about half the time in UK winters. So to run that 100 W lighbulb year round, 'round the clock you need to provide 600 m^2 of PV surface. That is a shade source 25 m on a side. A significant portion of the ground in the shade will never see sun and nothing will grow. That is to run one light bulb.

I did these calculations for a 5 hp pump motor and got a panel array that was 150 m on a side (and a LOT of batteries that also took up space) and I was over 6 acres of shade and nearly 9 acres that couldn't ever get enough light to grow weeds reliably.

Like I said above, I use PV cells. They are often the best tool for a particular job. Just like I try to avoid using a claw hammer as a screw driver, I don't want to use an excellent point-source power supply for jobs that should be sourced from a generator.

David

 

[lacajun]

Ninja182 (Mechanical)
15 Sep 11 11:08
Pulling a quote out of the Scientific American article...

"I think 30 percent of the energy consumption in the [manufacturing] facilities is easily met from the land they have available [on] the roof and in the parking lot,"

I don't think they've done much manufacturing.

Pamela K. Quillin, P.E.
Quillin Engineering, LLC

 

[deltawhy]

"1W/m^2", correct me if I'm wrong, does this sound extremely low? 1 watt per square meter of PV cells? Am I reading this right?

 

[TED7]

Bah! Shading cars. Real men get in and swear at how hot it is then burn their hands on the steering wheel.

Women open the door and let it cool down first.

Designer of machine tools - user of modified screws

 

[moltenmetal]

"The smart move would be to capitalize on whatever stupid decisions the government makes regarding the energy policy"

KENAT: that will not attract the smart money. Smart money stays away from anything that only makes economic sense when propped up by fickle, unsustaintable government subsidy. The smart money will only invest when there's a business model based on cost versus price. Until then, the only people you'll get in there are dreamers and dabblers.

David: you read the first few chapters of "Without Hot Air" and were turned off by the fact that he makes what I consider to be a reasoned, documented and compelling scientific case for being concerned about CO2 emissions to the atmosphere.

Whenever I recommend that book to someone like you, who is fundamentally skeptical about that subject, I suggest they skip those chapters- or else they'll miss his real point, which is simply this: don't propose any kind of solution unless it adds up- which you can determine on the basis of some pretty simple and difficult to dispute, half-order of magnitude scoping calculations.

 

[zdas04]

I read the first chapter and did not find it at all compelling so I jumped back to the write ups on individual technologies and found them worse.

I am quite skeptical on the subject. It bothers me no end that there is not a single unadulterated set of data in the world on the subject. Not one. These "scientists" modify raw data in place, destroying the original unmodified data. My training and experience says that people only do that when they are hiding something. Then I look at the models that they are using (see my May 27, 2010 Blog for a discussion of this) and see that the smallest grid size yet accomplished is roughly the size of the state of Colorado--to call that homogenous is ludicrous. I have no doubt that the climate is changing--it always has and it always will. My doubt is that anyone is close to proving cause and effect.

David

 

[lacajun]

Man, I am in David's camp.

Pamela K. Quillin, P.E.
Quillin Engineering, LLC

 

[sreid]

My two cents. Ultimately, solar cells are rocks that make power. Electrical solutions always win in the end. Hydrogen gas will also play a role [easilly transported using pipelines].

But for a long time into the future, oil gas and coal.

 

[zdas04]

Sreid, I always heard that the definition of "easy" is "someone else has to do it". I've been paid by a couple of clients to assess the difficulties of transporting and storing hydrogen. The issues are hugely difficult to overcome. Hydrogen will migrate through seals that are perfectly tight for methane let alone for petrol. Then a small accumulation has a wider explosive range than methane and when (not if) the leakage finds an ignition source it gets really exciting really quickly.

Before you can transport or store it you have to generate it. Steam stripping methane requires methane (which is not inexpensive), steam (which is very expensive to generate), and assorted piping and vessels. If I can use the hydrogen as a unique chemical in a process it might make sense to generate it, if I'm just going to burn it I'd be way better off burning the methane itself and skipping the steam-generation step.

Electrolysis is a non starter because it takes approximately the same amount of electrical energy as can be extracted in the most effecient combustion method developed today. If you used hydrogen to run a DC generator to power electrolysis you would find that you get far less hydrogen out than you burned to get it. Fuel cells, Solar panels, and wind turbines are a bit less obvious, but the data I was reviewing said that none of these technologies ever pay pack the energy used to create them.

My assessment is that hydrogen fuel will never be more than an expensive toy and a publicity gimmick.

David

 

[owg]

zdas04 has it right. The only good thing about hydrogen leaks is that they disperse very quickly. Then once its out there I suppose it slowly oxidizes to water. Gives off quite a bit of heat in the process. Does not sound good unless we have a global cooling problem by then.

HAZOP at

http://www.curryhydrocarbons.ca

 

[Fisch88]

deltawhy, sorry for posting this after all of the discussion, but here are some tidbits of information from Steven Koonin, Undersecretary for the US Dept of Energy (3.02Mb file). It is basically a presentation summary of the DOE energy strategies, from a conference where I heard him presenting. Some interesting bit of information regarding the direction our government is currently headed.

 

[moltenmetal]

David and I happen to agree about hydrogen. If the source energy is fossil-derived, it makes no sense whatsoever to generate hydrogen unless there's a direct use for the molecule- as a vector to electricity it is a poor one for many reasons. If the source energy is excess renewables, the storage problems of hydrogen make it a poor energy reservoir, with plenty of others of equivalent efficiency and far lower cost being competitive.

As to the embodied energy or energy returned over energy invested for photovoltaics, we still disagree. Again, I'd like to see the need for such studies to disappear, which will happen when we start taxing fossil fuel combustion emissions- at that point, price will tell all you need to know, and only truly feasible technologies will be invested in. But until then, the studies are still necessary, and they still show photovoltaics return many times the energy they take to manufacture.

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/17219

(a particularly good review of the studies on the subject)

They have many other disadvantages (cost being chief amongst them), but a less than unity EROEI does not appear to be one of them when you compare credible studies.

 

[zdas04]

Fisch88,
Thanks for providing that, I've seen most of it in other presentations, but having it all in one place is useful.

Moltenmetal,
If a study is done by industry (especially my industry of Oil & Gas) it is immediately rejected as propaganda. If

Sydney-based engineer and Network member Stephen Gale is Sustainable Development Projects Leader for HATCH –

http://www.hatch.com.au.

His role is to develop tools and systems to integrate sustainability into HATCH projects, allowing the engineering teams to apply sustainability principles in their work. With a background in engineering design and project management, Stephen has spent the last five years developing and delivering sustainable solutions. Here he reports on a literature study carried out jointly with his colleague Colin Bankier.

Then it is "scholarly". Looks to me like the authors have their own axe to grind. That doesn't make them wrong. It also doesn't make them right.

I haven't done my own study because it would be rejected out of hand. I do know that if I define "life" of a PV cell as "able to replace the power used over a month using the sunlight available during the month", then I find that in 3-4 years panels are "dead". That is why field automation systems record battery voltage every hour. When the panel stops replenishing the battery voltage by the end daylight more days than not we replace it. As an industry we replace a lot of panels every year. If you take 25-30 years as a life expectancy then the energy balance is clearly favorable. If you take 3-4 years then most of the researchers in the article would say it is a negative energy balance for most PV technologies.

David