Why we should think....Part 2

[biffvernon]

doesn't all get used

most of it isn't actully very

Oh it all gets used and it is all useful. At times of surplus it may be exported and sold at a low price so that it does not appear to be financially useful but it will be offsetting the use of other fuels, probably mostly gas during short term fluctuations. It does illustrate the point that dealing with surplus electricity on windy days is more often a problem than dealing with a shortage on calm days. But it is not an insurmountable problem.

Smart metering and distributed battery storage associated with electric cars could make a big difference over coming decades. The report Lost in Transmission is a first an necessary step.

 

[NT]

New goods take energy to produce. This energy can be in a range of forms, not necessarily producing harmful side-effects.
Part of the production and transport cost of a new item pays for this energy use.
New good are usually bought with money.

That is as far as the link goes. There is no direct link at all between the cost of an item and the amount of energy involved in its manufacture and delivery.
Sometimes, for example when buying aluminium ingots, most of the cost goes towards energy costs.
Sometimes none of the cost goes towards energy. For example, there is a Queen Victoria £5 stamp on Ebay at the moment with bids at £1, 650. If the person who first bought it for £5 paid for the energy used to produce it (and deliver a parcel), and it has sat in a drawer evr since, where does the extra £1, 650 of energy come from?
Sometimes money can produce a negative amount of energy, for example by buying loft insulation. Part of the total price will cover the energy costs of manufacture and delivery, but over time the net result will be a drop in energy use greater than than the amount used to produce and deliver the insulation.
Sometimes, spending more uses more energy, for example buying a bigger house. Sometimes, spending more uses less energy, for example paying someone £10 for your car to be washed by hand, rather than spending £5 for the full cycle at Tesco's.

It is possible to earn money without expending any energy, for example by leasing your spare field to a farmer. It is possible to expend lots of energy and earn nothing, for example as a voluntary helper.

It is easy enough to show that mass consumerism is probably not very good for the planet without needing to concoct a notion that energy use is the only factor. For any company with shareholders, maximising profit is the only guiding force when goods are priced. If a company can cut costs by reducing energy use they will do so, but don't expect the price on the shelf to change.
There is no-one in B & Q calculating the amount of energy used to manufacture and deliver each item in the shop! Someone guesses the demand for an item, and the highest price they can get away with. If they get it wrong, and supply exceeds demand, someone else guesses how much the price will have to drop beofre they can flog the surplus, however much energy was used.
Our milkman used to come every weekday. The round was then changed to every other day. The dairy used less energy, but the price of a pint stayed the same.

I get the impression you missed the thread on this first time round. I think we have a big enough topic in this thread already. If you want to take it to its own thread maybe we can address these issues / questions.


NT

 

[NT]

... emanating from human aura ...

We once had a guy turn up at the door (*) of our office / workshop wanting to know if we would build him a device to photograph human aura.

Opportunity missed. Lay the human subject on a metal table and take a kirlian photograph. Table, camera, HV generator.


NT

 

[MdB]

Opportunity missed. Lay the human subject on a metal table and take a kirlian photograph. Table, camera, HV generator.

Opportunity very much missed. Anybody else volunteering?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirlian_photography

 

[Flyfisher]

Blimey - I thought I was joking about auras and stuff, but then I've never been inside an 'alternative lifesytle shop before. I must find one and see what I'm missing :lol:

For example, there is a Queen Victoria £5 stamp on Ebay at the moment with bids at £1, 650. If the person who first bought it for £5 paid for the energy used to produce it (and deliver a parcel), and it has sat in a drawer evr since, where does the extra £1, 650 of energy come from?

Perhaps a more apt question is where does the £1,650 come from and how much energy has been used in earning it? The issue is not as simple as the embedded energy of a particular item.

Is it just a coincidence that the richest nations in the world use the most energy?

 

[DaveBrigg]

Thanks for the further details about wind power, which clarified and added extra detail to the debate. As was pointed out earlier, technology is improving, and I'll wait to see if Denmark meet their target of increasing the 20%.

As for the money=energy - I think I saw something earlier, but the thread was becoming unravelled, and tangled. Rich countries do use more energy, but they also drink more beer and buy more ice cream. Can anyone provide a formula which is more precise than this? How much energy was used to create the £1650? Who knows. Maybe it came from house price inflation (no direct energy use), maybe it was inherited, maybe it came from a bank robbery, maybe it was earned by a pilot taking a 747 to Australia. Is there any correlation between the sum, and the amount of energy used in each case?
I agree with NT - this thread is tangled enough, and I'll resist any more posts about money and energy before I completely lose the will to live.

 

[MdB]

PV (photo voltaic) generation has been quite rightly (IMHO) been panned here as being non green due to its high cost compared to the amount of energy it generates. However technology marches onwards, costs come down and performance improves. It is claimed that $1/W production cost will be shortly achieved (double this for sale price). If true, this starts to get PV into the realms of being sensible in sunny places.

http://www.industryweek.com/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=14932
http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/07/09/23/1639205.shtml

 

[Penners]

PV (photo voltaic) generation has been quite rightly (IMHO) been panned here as being non green due to its high cost compared to the amount of energy it generates.

Isn't there an argument that we have to work towards a system that ignores the commercial cost of any renewable energy system? If the only way of reducing our carbon effluent is to build renewable systems that are not in themselves commercially viable, then that's the route we shall have to take.

After all, we're going to be paying ever-increasing carbon taxes. Isn't it logical to use the income from these to subsidise the construction of renewables?

 

[Flyfisher]

After all, we're going to be paying ever-increasing carbon taxes. Isn't it logical to use the income from these to subsidise the construction of renewables?

Eminently logical, to me anyway, but probably too logical for the government, which does not have a good track record on hypothecation of taxes.

 

[NT]

After all, we're going to be paying ever-increasing carbon taxes. Isn't it logical to use the income from these to subsidise the construction of renewables?

Eminently logical, to me anyway, but probably too logical for the government, which does not have a good track record on hypothecation of taxes.

It seems at first sight to ignore some of the principles of government.

1. everything can be skimmed and used for vote winning purposes

2. juggling money around is one way to get approval for problem solving, while the problems it causes elsewhere take time for the public to notice

3. that the less the public understands the system the less they will object to it or try to interfere with it.

4. Government is control, and the more you control the more of your own political ideas you can implement. Control means government taking ever more money so it can control its spending, rather than letting us buy our own bin bags for example.


NT

 

[NT]

It is claimed that $1/W production cost will be shortly achieved (double this for sale price).

Claims of economic viability just around the corner have been a feature of PV for decades.

If we extract the claimed facts from the quote, we get: PV power is not available for $2/watt.


NT

 

[Penners]

Broadly I agree with you.

But your binbag analogy is a bit reductio ad absurdum isn't it?

 

[NT]

PV (photo voltaic) generation has been quite rightly (IMHO) been panned here as being non green due to its high cost compared to the amount of energy it generates.

There are other issues too. What do you think would happen to our environment if everyone and their dog had a bank of lead acid cells at home?

Isn't there an argument that we have to work towards a system that ignores the commercial cost of any renewable energy system? If the only way of reducing our carbon effluent is to build renewable systems that are not in themselves commercially viable, then that's the route we shall have to take.

If cost outstrips value of energy returned, there is good reason to propose that they are energy sinks. The calcs that show a bit of positive energy payback are based on only the energy used in the manufacturing line. If only that were all the energy it took!

Then theres that absence of scientifically valid evidence for an upcoming crisis and absence of any reality-based plan to avoid it, which dont really make me think we have to take that path for any valid reason.


NT

 

[NT]

But your binbag analogy is a bit reductio ad absurdum isn't it?

I dont see how it would be. Rather than being an extension of claimed logic, its just a small example of the problem that we can all relate to. If I bought all my own binbags I'd pay less for them and would buy them in a format that didnt cause such problems at use time that I considered just binning them.

Is the binbag example an analogy? I just saw it as one of numerous possible examples. The laptops purchased for over 2k each would be another example.


NT

 

[biffvernon]

The problem with guessing the cost effectiveness of something like pv is that we (not even NT) do not know what the price of electricity will be over the lifetime of a pv system. If you think the the price will stay the same for thirty years then you may judge pv to be expensive. (You would also be totally off your trolley.)

The pv industry is undergoing enormous changes right now. There is very rapid expansion in all sectors. Thin film technology is coming on stream. Production facilities are integrating cell and panel production into one continuous automated process. Total production is set to rise rapidly over the next several years, with particularly large expansion in China.

Production costs will tumble, but remember that total system costs won't see the whole benefit as part of it is quite mature technology. Perhaps more significantly, supply will continue to lag behind demand. There is a limit to how fast factories can be built and people trained up in the industry. The price you pay will therefore relate more to the costs in other energy sectors than to the actual production costs of pv systems. There is no chance that pv will become so cheap that it will be worth leaving oil in the ground. But pv will become cheap enough to make a serious contribution to electricity production.

 

[Flyfisher]

There are other issues too. What do you think would happen to our environment if everyone and their dog had a bank of lead acid cells at home?

Indeed. Or if everyone had a 'green' electric car stuffed full of batteries.

 

[NT]

The problem with guessing the cost effectiveness of something like pv is that we (not even NT) do not know what the price of electricity will be over the lifetime of a pv system.

Indeed. There is also amortisation to consider. Even with best estimate figures PV doesnt look an attractive prospect for most apps.

If you think the the price will stay the same for thirty years then you may judge pv to be expensive. (You would also be totally off your trolley.)

hehe. In 1930s lectrickery cost around 5p a unit, today its around 10p... Not a lotta change for 70 years.

Seriously though, I'm sure the real cost will fall. Equipment becomes ever cheaper to make over time, cheaper to maintain as its reliability improves and cheaper to run as automatic control improves and falls in price. This and technological improvement are why electricity has fallen in real terms to somewhere in the ballpark of 1/100th of the 1930s cost.

The pv industry is undergoing enormous changes right now. There is very rapid expansion in all sectors. Thin film technology is coming on stream. Production facilities are integrating cell and panel production into one continuous automated process. Total production is set to rise rapidly over the next several years, with particularly large expansion in China.

Production costs will tumble, but remember that total system costs won't see the whole benefit as part of it is quite mature technology. Perhaps more significantly, supply will continue to lag behind demand. There is a limit to how fast factories can be built and people trained up in the industry. The price you pay will therefore relate more to the costs in other energy sectors than to the actual production costs of pv systems. There is no chance that pv will become so cheap that it will be worth leaving oil in the ground. But pv will become cheap enough to make a serious contribution to electricity production.

Yes. I guess its serious now in its own little corner, it cuts out lots of battery costs and long wiring run costs, but sure its not likely to be producing significant grid power in its present guise, no matter how efficient production becomes.

OTOH it might just save quite a lot of energy, if not ever produce it. Imagine if pv cost falls enough for most battery portable appliances to have a PV surface on top. Then imagine ICs can in future be fabricated within the solar film, ie the electronics and pv function are one and the same panel, further cutting costs and enabling the use of acres of silicon in portable appliances. Appliances will then be designed to live on whatever energy they can get from indoor lighting, and will have a giant amount of inbuilt processing power that they can use to squeeze every possible last drop out of the lemon. This means battery appliances that no longer need batteries. And batteries are a grossly inefficient way to move energy about, so the energy savings would go far beyond what the panels would generate.


NT

 

[biffvernon]

For the last 70 years we have been on the upslope of the oil production curve, unconstrained by geology. This has allowed all energy costs to fall in real terms. But that is no guide to the future.

Conventional crude oil reached its maximum production in May 2005 and the peak of all liquid oils was in July 2006 at 86.13 million barrels per day. It is just possible that this peak may be slightly beaten in a couple of years with new oil fields coming on stream but with the rapid decline of several of the worlds largest mature fields this is looking increasingly unlikely. We are on a plateau and will soon be experiencing the oil depletion curve. That will be a very different world. With oil at double or treble today's price, the relative cost of pv and other sustainable electricity sources will look much more favourable.

Schemes to harvest Saharan sunshine by 2050 may appear fanciful. Technically realistic, they depend on a world economy capable of large investment surviving that long.

 

[Penners]

This is currently the world's largest PV array - a 10MW installation in Germany.

There's an 18MW installation planned for the Nevada desert, at a cost of USD117-million. How does that compare with, say, a nuclear cost-per-MW?

 

[biffvernon]

There's no comparison. With pv you pay the price on the ticket. With nuclear you keep paying to decommission after you've lost your revenue stream and then you pay to take care of the waste for many generations to come. But you don't care because you will be long dead before all the bills are paid. And the Government underwrites the insurance because the commercial insurance world won't touch it.