A new detailed analysis has been published on the intermittency of renewables, "Household Solar Photovoltaics: Supplier of Marginal Abatement, or Primary Source of Low-Emission Power?"
Here are some observations about this article:
- Any future scenario involving the continuing indulgence or
coddling of fossil fuel interests is delusional. Catastrophic climate change is
at the door. Even if our only issue were peak oil, it is already too
late for a smooth "transition" or "energy conservation." We are in a
state of emergency and it is time to stop kidding ourselves about our
plight, especially within the well-informed but small peak oil / EROI /
climate change / renewables community. More than ever, the world needs
clear, honest, deep understanding. The politicians and the business
community will catch on only when we get real ourselves and "tell it
like it is."
- Given the high risk of social disruption due to climate change,
the only rational future for nuclear power (including nuclear weaponry)
is rapid decommissioning and secure sequestration. The last thing
humanity needs is coastal nuclear power plants flooded by sea level
rise and on-river nuclear power plants running out of cooling water
while marauders are out on the front lawns of the nuclear industry
custodians. Others may be in denial about this risk, but we need not
indulge their fantasies of a nuclear resurgence.
- That leaves us with only one sane course of action: demand
destruction combined with renewables. Any challenges to high EROI
renewables carry the responsibility to find high
EROI solutions. If batteries don't cut the mustard, then forget
batteries. If the main challenge is intermittency, then it is time for
us to set the bar higher and put qualified intermittency engineers to
work. Many serious developers are working on low cost, high capacity, high
round-trip efficiency storage. And they aren't wasting
their time on batteries. If trees can survive the night (and
winter even in Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia and Siberia), then so can
humans.
- By the way, a good peer reviewed scientific report on the
costs and impacts of intermittency can be obtained from the UKERC:
http://www.ukerc.ac.uk/support/Intermittency
It explains the important concept of "root mean square error" and
debunks a lot of the myths about intermittent generation.
- Likewise, if we need a smarter grid to make renewables work,
then we need to put more smart people to work, and pronto. One can identify the challenge and the inadequacy of efforts to
date. Fine. Then what happens? (Robert Heinlein's admonition comes to
mind: "Always listen to experts. They will tell you what can't be done
and why. Then do it.")
- Residential rooftop solar has a place but it carries the
challenges of high installation cost, poor orientation/shading, roof
penetrations, etc. These issues stand in the way of large scale high
EROI deployment.
- Better we look elsewhere. Stronger candidates are low profile
commercial buildings, parking lots and streets (integrated with
grade-separated transportation).
- Nor does the need for scale necessarily imply huge remote solar
farms out in the deserts. That's appropriate if we are up to something
out there in the first place, but extensive transmission and
environmental costs can be mitigated by integrating most renewables
into the urban fabric.
- Charlie Hall's claim that society's EROI has to be on the order of
magnitude of 10 is similarly built upon the premise of many steps
between, e.g., the well and the wheel. No wonder he's right. We fly
rednecks from Houston to extract oil offshore in Angola, ship it to
refineries in Rotterdam, conjure magic potions and send it off to who
knows where by truck no less, and then run it through a 15% efficient
engine pushing around mostly metal. What a waste! By uniting generation
and application (source and sink) within a single physical structure,
much of that inefficiency can be readily eliminated and the minimum
EROI can get back down to a reasonable number.
- There is no significant future for electric cars (and thus
V2G). Using the Biblical cliche, it doesn't make sense to put new wine
in old wine skins. In the context of peak oil, humanity is poised to
eliminate the treacherous bad engineering (misnamed "auto"-mobile /
"free"-way) that willy-nilly juxtaposes children, pedestrians and
bicyclists (not to mention pets, squirrels and deer) against heavy fast-moving machines on the same terrestrial
plane. With grade-separated Solar Skyways, for example, we
can reclaim the streets for people-not-machines and meet our energy
needs as well. In the process, with a 10X improved solution, we can
drastically cut the source-to-sink steps which whittle away at full EROI / LCA / efficiency considerations.
For any new scientific inquiry, we must question the
assumptions which underpin the conclusions reached. If one picks a
marginal set of underlying premises, one will get marginal results.
And though one's conclusions may be valid within the present political
framework and technology mindset, the science behind
EROI and
LCA
relate first and foremost to physics, not BAU economics or political
intransigence. As long as we are considering such scenarios as high
residential rooftop solar deployment, it makes sense to also put forth
bold scenarios with sound physics, irrespective of the political /
industrial challenges we face. In the emerging milieu of severe natural
consequences,
bold is where the opportunities can be found.