I don't believe that. Have you a source for this claim?

In places where land is cheap and the sun shines a lot, it seems bonkers to even imagine that any other form of power would be cheaper. However, fossil fuels are still financially incredibly cheap despite their cost in human terms.

Less reliance on fossil will also have an interesting impact on world economics. There are various cost facts and predictions here, most of which are quite rosy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrating_solar_power

What happened to the planned solar farm in Morocco or Algeria? It was supposed to be over 100KM² and provide power for Europe...

Are you thinking of this - http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/23/solarpower.windpower?

I imagine the big wigs don't like the idea of relying on some north african country for their energy needs. Shame, as I think it's a great idea.

That scheme requires a gigantic investment and ONLY WORKS IN THE DAY
You would still have to invest billions more to maintain all the nuclear or gas generation required AT NIGHT


The 35bn sum involved is obviously a napkin estimate just for laying the power lines.

Anticipating a certain reticence on your part, I though perhaps I would look this up for you.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/ ... ble-energy


As for the awesomeness of Germany's energy policies...
http://www.economist.com/node/21526366
Collapsing solar industry, collapsing wind, lots of new gas powered stations to come, and/or imports of raw electricity. Well done to them, let's copy that one.

I thought part of the idea was to invest in storage technology, so that excess electricity generated during the day would be stored and released when needed.

That will need to be part of any plan to invest in renewable energy. It generates electricity as and when the resource is there, not necessarily when it is needed.

You can store energy either with a giant battery (inconceivable as far as I know with current tech), or by storing the energy in latent form by moving something heavy to a high place, or making something become very hot and then converting the heat or height back into electricity later. Any of those options is going to waste massive quantities of expensively gathered power.

Pumping a lake of any significant mass up a hill, only to pour it back down again 8 hours later uses gigawatts of power, and costs billions in capital investment. Your output for this massive investment would be a comparative trickle of energy. The idea that this is all powered by an excess (which implies that you get that energy pretty much for free) is a fallacy. You have to invest massively to get enough energy for this, and design your system specifically to generate the "excess", which negates its description as such.

My mistake I forgot about the year

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/09 ... europe.php

also 20% of Germany energy comes from renewables.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/09 ... energy.php

Solar-Gas Hybrid Power Plants provide for power all day and night. They cost far less than building two separate power plants; it's simply that you heat the boiler with whatever energy source is available when required.

As to storage, the most obvious method is probably hydrogen. Produced on site during the day (and possibly pumped directly into the public gas network - see Hydrogen Economy) and then burned at night.

Given that the sun is always shining somewhere, and more energy falls on the world's deserts in six hours than the world consumes in a year, the only true obstacle to a purely solar powered future is mankind's preference for killing each other rather than cooperating for the greater good.

I have to say I'd rather work night-shift cleaning big mirrors, than work down a coal mine where it's night all day and thousand of people die every year.

Well the 2013 prediction on the treehugger site looks very good. So good that one is inclined to inspect the methodology.


So the health of the German PV industry is a critical concern here. I wonder what my Economist link has to say about that?


Oh dear

I also enjoyed the bit where they say even after grid-parity, PV is going to still need subsidy. I am not qualified to understand their LCOE calculation, that is for investors to make a decision on. So the most damning thing I can say about it is, have a read, scroll down to the end...
http://www2.epia.org/documents/CITES/Co ... Report.pdf
The interesting bit is on page 32. They are basically asking for investors to grade their investment AAA and pretend there is no risk - that's part of their requirement for grid-parity.

I tried to follow the Chinese claims and see what they are based on, but all I saw was a press release that might have been based on some kind of genuine information, but might (more likely) be a pile of spin.


20%, with a commitment to raise that to over 30% by the end of the decade huh? Well, that's got to be expensive. Will it leave them enough cash on hand to bail out Spain with it's 5 billion Euro per annum subsidy commitment when the time comes?

I am not in support of subsidises even a green like moi does not approve of them.

An interesting infographic re insulation over new nuclear plant. Improving efficiency should be our first priority. Even then solar and wind may not be able to meet all the demand.

Well true, but that would be a fundamentally different plan to the one I was criticising. So it doesn't have the benefits of that one either (being predicated on improvements in PV technology that your plan doesn't use). Your version also has the alarming drawback of placing fossil fueled power plants two thousand miles or more from consumers. The distribution would necessarily eat up much of this produced power - you might create more noxious carbon than you save.

I considered mentioning that, but as it is by a huge margin the worst possible option, I left it out. Electrolysis is all very well in the chemistry lab, but it isn't used to create industrial hydrogen because nearly all the power goes to waste. If you simply burned the gas afterwards, I believe you would get back a fraction of a single percent of the electricity used in creating it. I don't think you would climb over the 1% barrier even if you used the far more obvious fuel cell approach. (presumably we have a science bod here who can verify or dismiss my claim).

I think a more certain obstacle to that plan is called resistance - in this case of the electrical variety rather than the French. It's a stretch to try and power London from North Africa, and a good deal of that power would go to waste. But if I want to watch telly at 10 o'clock at night, the nearest viable source of solar power would be somewhere like Texas, and I don't believe that's anywhere near feasible.

I would prefer to work in IT than either, so I am hoping nobody does anything to take away all my electricity - I am too fat and decadent to become a hunter gatherer.

That made me lol, but you're right. I imagine the longest power lines currently carrying current are probably in America, and 2000miles is quite a stretch. The usual answer is to increase the voltage to reduce the current, but there are practical limits to this. This is one example where high temperature super conductors really could revolutionise things, but as yet they are a pipe-dream.


I'm not sure where your 1% guess regarding H2 storage came from. Figures as high as 80% efficient have been quoted for electrolysis, and the high temperatures available at a CSP would be conducive to reducing the electrical power requirements. Even being relatively pessimistic and guessing 40% for conversion each way, that's still 16x more efficient than you suggest. Thermolysis is perhaps also an option for solar collectors, although I have no idea about the potential efficiencies.

One primary reason for suggesting hydrogen gas is that the distribution and storage network already pretty much exists, suggesting it's not an unachievable goal. I understand many countries have storage facilities for gas to last for months, and we have fuel pipelines running across the world. Even without, it's certainly less destructive than mining a mountain and creating a couple of large lakes.

Remember, not so long ago we used "town gas" - that was over 50% hydrogen.