Spanish solar market crashes after (previously 575%) federal subsidy is reduced. $26 billion in taxes already sunk on just 2.5 GW of solar capacity

[New York Times] Spain's Solar Market Crash Offers a Cautionary Tale About Feed-In Tariffs

Such programs would do well to learn from Spain's mistakes, solar executives and analysts say. In just one year of boom, the country committed itself to solar payments estimated at $26.4 billion, which in turn led to taxpayer backlash and bust.

This is the contractually guaranteed subsidy, to be paid out over 25 years (source), for the 2,460 MW of solar power installed in 2008 (out of 3,000 MW cumulative - so basically all of it.) Based on this table of Spanish solar plant capacity factors (weighted average 18.9%), this would be equal to about 450 MW average output. But this is likely an overestimate, because a large (how large?) fraction of the solar power is residential rooftop PVs, not solar plants, and these get much lower capacity factors (they are not sun-following, they are at bad angles, they get less frequent cleaning).

To be clear: the subsidies, once granted, were guaranteed for 25 years at a rate indexed at 575% of market value. The subsidy changes affect new solar plants (hence the market collapse), but not existing ones: their subsidy will continue unaffected.

The production of electricity of photovoltaic origin is remunerated at a price equivalent to 575% of the Spanish reference rate (TRM) for the first 25 years and 460% from then on, according to Royal Decree 436/2004, which updates the legal and economic framework for the production of electricity under the Special Regime.

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea//news/article/2007/03/acciona-inaugurates-solar-garden-with-9-55-mwp-capacity-47844

Incidentally, $26 billion is also the very infamous, much-maligned bid cost for two (2) ACR-1000 CANDUs in Ontario (recent discussion). That is, likewise, a lifetime cost, including all fuel and operations over 60 years. So let's compare: $26 billion for an average output of 450 MW over a 20-25 year lifespan, vs. $26 billion for (2 * 1,200 MWe * 0.95 capacity factor) = 2,280 MW over 60 years, plus some new highway exits (how did that get into the AECL bid anyway). That is, 80-100 TWh (over 20-25 years) vs. 1,200 TWh (over 60 years). Same cost (modulo interest rates and related financial quirks.)

(But there is a significant consistency problem with my numbers (a bias in favor of solar). If you divide the $26.4 billion, divided by the current subsidy rate of 0.44 €/kWh = 63c/kWh, is only 42 TWh, not 100 TWh. I do not know whether this reflects interest rate corrections, inflation corrections, variations in subsidy rate, or an overestimate on my part of the average capacity factor.)

There is one ray of hope. According to the NYT article, many of the solar plants receiving subsidies are under investigation for fraud. Perhaps if they are found ineligible, a few tens of billions will be saved.

Toronto Star reporter Tyler Hamilton on the cost of electricity

I accidentally discovered a very amusing coincidence in the archives of the Toronto Star.

I think we're all thoroughly sick of the AECL bid story, so I won't even mention it. Go read some other blog.

But when I ran into a slightly older (2007) article while researching the Denmark wind grid, I just happened to notice that the author was the same one who wrote the "$10,800/kW" story. And I find this very amusing, because this article... well...

[Toronto Star] Nobody wants to pay the price of going green

Canadians need a reality check, so let's put our electricity rates into perspective. According to a recent survey of electricity rates in 14 countries – including the U.S., Australia, South Africa and 10 countries in Europe – Canada ranked as second lowest with an average rate of 6.18 cents (U.S.) per kilowatt-hour. NUS Consulting Group International, which conducted the survey, ranked Denmark the highest by a long shot, with an average rate of 22.89 cents.

...

Denmark also leads the world with the deployment of renewable and low-emission energy production. More than 40 per cent of electricity in Denmark comes from the country's hundreds of combined heat and power systems, which produce electricity from municipal waste, waste gases, biomass and natural gas, then use leftover energy for district heating.

Denmark is also the world leader in both onshore and offshore wind development and, unlike Canada, no longer depends on big, centralized power plants that represent major points of failure and massive upfront investments (not to mention huge risk shouldered by taxpayers).

Okay, so Tyler Hamilton, the one who wrote that outraged attack on Ontario's nuclear power costs, is confronted with the fact that Denmark's costs quadruple that of Canada's, because of its government-mandated wind experiment (20% penetration, by far the highest in the world). So, his reaction?

It turns out that high electricity prices in Denmark drove change and are a result of change. Denmark was forced to operate more efficiently, which at the same time improved its environment and helped the country be more productive and competitive.

The average Dane's annual energy consumption is less than half that of the average Canadian. Energy efficiency in Denmark improved by about 13 per cent between 1990 and 2004, partly due to programs for investment in district heating, more efficient household appliances and vehicle and industrial efficiency.

Low electricity prices in Canada, on the other hand, have resulted in us being big energy users – and wasters. Per capita, we're the 27th biggest energy consumer out of 29 OECD countries – and 28th when it comes to energy efficiency.

Ludicrous electricity costs are a GOOD thing - they force consumption to go down, and promote efficiency!

The message here is that we shouldn't be afraid of rising electricity rates. Indeed, we should encourage it. By doing so, we motivate our communities to become more efficient, competitive and productive, and we end up achieving a level of energy savings that counteracts the higher costs we impose on ourselves. It also reduces the need for new power plants, translating into additional cost savings.

Idle

I've figured out the issue with the blogroll widget (right side of the blog) - when it doesn't show the most recent post, it is because it cannot find an RSS feed or similar which it can parse. But linking directly to the RSS feed, instead of the blog, fixes this! This fixes both the RealClimate blog and NNadir's blog - you should add them like this:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/realclimate/HYVV

http://feeds.dailykos.com/dailykos/user?user=nnadir

And in general, if Blogger can't detect the latest posts, try linking to the blog's XML feed.

Before

after

Red-hot irony

Hemlock Semiconductor Plant (Clarksville, TN)

From an article on new solar-PV semiconductor plants in Tennessee:

At least at the outset, these solar companies' demand for electricity may actually increase the state's dependency on polluting, coal-fired power plants operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority.

...But the state's budding solar sector also is an outgrowth of its established chemicals industry. The companies themselves cite access to cheap and reliable power and proximity to chlorine suppliers as main reasons for putting their plants in Tennessee.

The Tennessean

Of course Tennessee is in the coal-rich Appalachian mountains - that's why it is all cheap:

EPA Power Profiler (using 37201 - also shows per-kWh emissions of CO2, SOx, NOx)

And there's further irony deeper in the article (page 4):

A state law passed last year says that Tennessee will pay for any carbon-emission taxes placed on solar plants like the Hemlock and Wacker facilities through a federal cap-and-trade system. The law places no limit on how much the state will pay out.

State officials say the law was needed to persuade Hemlock and Wacker not to locate outside the United States, where there is not a threat of a carbon tax. They say they plan to lobby Congress to carve out an exception for plants that make solar and green energy generation equipment.

Hehe.

Some idle calculations on wind statistics

Here are some very simple mental models of wind statistics. Not large-scale statistics, but statistics of a single wind turbine. In particular I want to the interesting effect of the power coefficient (that is, the varying efficiency as a function of wind speed).

The Danish Wind Association has readable introductions on these topics:

WindPower.org | Describing Wind Variations: Weibull Distribution

WindPower.org | The Power Coefficient

In short: the probability distribution for wind speeds is usually modeled as a Weibull distribution with k~2 - sort of like a right-skewed Gaussian. And the efficiency of wind turbines is greatest at typical, moderate wind speeds. It is decreased at high speeds (or else they would exceed their capacity), and in fact they completely shut off at gale speeds >25 m/s. There is also a low-speed cutoff.

As an example using their power calculator, using the settings for Beldringe, Denmark (k=1.97, λ=7.4): (range is 0-25 m/s, peak is ~5.2 m/s):

Of course the parameters vary over geographic locations - some being windier than others. The numbers aren't fixed, although the shape is pretty generic. Think of it as a qualitative model, perhaps.

Now, the total power density is cubic in wind speed. (KE is ∝ v^2; and mass flux per area is ∝ v^1; so KE flux per area is ∝ v^3). So ignoring the efficiencies of turbines in harnessing this fluid power, the average power harnessed is the integral of the product of these, v^3 and the Weibull PDF:

You can see, most of the wind power is at higher speeds, even though they are rarer. v^3 is a very steep function.

But real-world wind turbines don't quite have the v^3 dependence (read the Power Coefficient link if you haven't already). Here for example is the power curve for a 3 MW Vestas turbine:

Vestas V-112

The curve is from the brochure - I've extracted the raw data from the image, for further use. In gray is a scaled v**3 for comparison - scaled to match the center behavaior of the power curve.

Here's the power coefficient of that turbine, as the ratio of the power output to v**3 (y-axis scale isn't specified - don't have enough data to calculate it (what's the theoretical limit for a turbine?) - although the WindPower link suggests the peak is around 44%): -

In gray is the total power potential - the one above calaculated as v**3 times the Weibull distribution. You can see how it sort of lines up with the peak turbine efficiency (that's the intention, I guess). This is one of the methodological issues with my wind-intermittency exploration - different locations need different turbines, with different power coefficient curves, to match the regional windiness.

So finally, let's compare the total power potential, with the predicted generation for this particular wind turbine:

(The relative scale is arbitrary - I tried to get a close fit for readability; don't misinterpret this as meaning 100% efficiency). One particular point (actually the motiviation reason for this whole post): the amount of power below the cutoff - the area of the small triangle in the lower leftcorner - is very small. Some innumerate commenters suggested that wind intermittency can be managed by harnessing this power - by designing wind turbines which can function in low wind speeds <3 m/s. Obviously this is nonsense. There is almost no useful power available at low speeds - again, reflecting the steep v^3 power dependence.

As a final bonus feature, here is the PDF for power output (x axis is power):

(Not shown is the probability for 0 power, which in this model is about 15%)

Greenpeace celebrates solar "conversion" of ex-nuclear power plant

Now, a 1.2 million Euro project has turned the nuclear power plant into the largest solar power station in Austria.

...

If a nuclear power station can go solar, then why can’t our entire energy system be diverted to clean and safe renewable energy sources, backed by energy efficiency and conservation?

(Greenpeace) Nuclear power goes solar

Casual readers may be excused for taking this at face value - that the solar plant somehow replaces, or is an equal of, the nonfunctioning nuclear reactor whose name it takes. It seems the writers intend to convey this misimpression with their phrasings.

Of course, it is not so. The lies exceed in magnitude those of the "freighter ship converted to solar power" story I blogged recently. The discrepancy there was a factor of 10,000; here, it is a factor of 30,000.

For in fact, the Zwetendorf solar "power plant" (largest solar plant in Austria!) is merely 180,000 kWh/year electricity, or 20.5 kW average; compared to the nuclear reactor it "displaces", which is 692 MW. It is less than 1/30,000 the size. (N.B. typical nuclear capacity factors are 90%+, so equating nuclear capacity=average output is reasonable). Sources:

(Der Solarserver) Österreich: Solarstrom statt Atom; Photovoltaikanlage am AKW Zwentendorf in Betrieb genommen (in German; translation here)

(IAEA) Nuclear Power Reactor Details - ZWENTENDORF

Neither of these numbers, naturally, appears in the Greenpeace press release. (What did you expect?)

A certain Greenie, who I will not embarass by naming, actually made the following argument: that obviously the solar plant is much cheaper, since it only cost €1.2 million, vs. "billions" for nuclear power plants. (Hilarious, isn't it?)

I do not know the cost of the Zwentendorf reactor, so I will make a comparison with a much more recent, modern, and larger reactor: the Flamanville #3 EPR.

The economics of nuclear plants being as they are, the EPR is much larger than the older Zwetendorf reactor: 1,650 MWe vs. 692 MWe. Over twice as big. 80,000 Zwetendorf "solar power plants".

(EDF) EPR - Flamanville 3

After recent cost overruns, the current estimate is €4 billion for this EPR:

(Bloomberg) EDF Says Flamanville Reactor Costs Rise by One-Fifth

And indeed, Zwetendorf solar plant is much cheaper, because it is much smaller. To equal the output of this EPR, it would take 80,000 of them, at an extrapolated cost of €97 billion (!!!)

Greenpeace, of course, is very concerned about the cost of energy. They are up in arms over the €4 billion pricetag of the EPR:

(Greenpeace) EPR history repeating: costs up 20 per cent at Flamanville

(Greenpeace) Flamanville: spinning the cost increases

Need I say more?

One more little detail: the EPR has a 60 year operational lifespan. Solar PVs only last 20-25 years. Another factor to consider. Sources:

(Areva) EPR - A cost effective reactor

(SPI Renewable Solutions) The Cost of Solar Panels

By the way, EDF has a photojournal of the Flamanville construction. Check it out.

(EDF) views of Flamanville #3

Also, there's a movement for starting up the Zwentendorf reactor. Check that out too.

Start Zwentendorf

(Rod Adams' Atomic Insights) Start Zwentendorf - A campaign to reduce radioactive air pollution by starting up an existing reactor plant

How to create SVG graphics in Blogger on the fly; also, some blog maintenance

A while back, I asked my readers about embedding SVG (vector) graphics in Blogger. I'm happy to report I've solved the problem myself. Here's the trick to do it, for anyone who is interested.

The problem, it seems, is that Blogger serves its documents with html mime types - which should be obsolete - and so no part of a document can ever contain an SVG element (which is not supported by plain html). The solution is to create a new document in an inline frame.

Here's the iframe:

<iframe type="text/xml" src="about:blank" name="myIFrame" ... onload="..." > </iframe>

If you are hosting an XML document elsewhere, you can simply point the 'src' attribute to that URI and you're done! But I will show how to create a new document, on the fly.

Now here's the "onload" attribute. This is Javascript that is executed (once) when the iframe is first created. I've named the frame ("myIFrame"), so now we can find it:

var idoc = window.frames['myIFrame'].document; var ihtml = idoc.getElementsByTagName('html')[0]; ihtml.setAttribute('xmlns', 'http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'); var ibody = idoc.getElementsByTagName('body')[0];

And now, we have an XML document in which we can (dynamically) create an SVG object, and draw stuff in it:

var isvg = idoc.createElementNS('http://www.w3.org/2000/svg', 'svg'); isvg.setAttribute('xmlns', 'http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'); isvg.setAttribute('version', '1.1'); ... ibody.appendChild(isvg); var ishape = idoc.createElementNS('http://www.w3.org/2000/svg', 'circle'); ishape.setAttribute('cx', 50); ... isvg.appendChild(ishape);

And that's all. The blue circle in this post is a proof of concept: you can find it in the source code (search for "myIFrame").

In related news, I've improved (I think) the blog's geometric layouts - the CSS. I've shrunk the width of the main text, and added sidebars on the right side (blogroll, links, archives browser). To keep large tables from being clipped off, I've changed the overflow: property to 'visible'. Let me know if there are any reading difficulties or missing objects. :)

(update) To clarify - if you are hosting a static SVG document somewhere and wish to include it in Blogger, try this template:

<div style="margin: 10px 10px 10px 10px"> <iframe type="text/xml" src="http://www.your-svg-document-uri.svg" width="500px" height="500px" style="border: none; overflow: hidden;"> This is an error message. If you are reading this, something broke. You may need to upgrade your browser. </iframe> </div>

The 'src' attribute is for the URI where your document is hosted. You should set the 'width' and 'height' attributes to the same values as your SVG object, otherwise your graphic will either take too much space, or have parts of it clipped off.

Sustainable energy and the Kardashev scale

The y-axis is power; the x-axis is time. For a finite energy resource, the product [energy] is a constant, which is a diagonal line on this (log-log) plot. This represents, for a given civilization power consumption (y axis), the time scale over which it is maintainable (x axis). For renewable sources, the limiting factor is power - a flat horizontal line.

Energy potential by source

The units are in watts of thermal power equivalent. For some sources (e.g. wind), this does not make sense. So I've multiplied them by a factor of three. This is roughly an equal footing: for instance, 1/3rd is a typical thermal power plant efficiency. But vehicle engines are less efficient. And natural gas heat is more efficient (100%, actually). So the exact factor is debatable. Luckily this plot is logarithmic.

For the nuclear reactions, I use the following energy densities. For D+T fusion, 17.6 MeV over 4 amu = 424 TJ/kg. (Why 4 amu not 5? Because this is really D+D fusion, breeding tritium from its own neutron flux.) For proton-proton fusion, 26.73 MeV over 2 amu = 645 TJ/kg. For the fission breeding cycles, 190 MeV over 238 amu = 77 TJ/kg. For the once-through fuel cycle (the current method), we're limited to the fissile isotopes (U-235), and even then the limiting factor is not energy potential but the mechanical lifetime of fuel rods. Assuming enrichment from 0.7% to 3% U-235, and a burnup of 60 gigawatt days per metric ton U, this is 1.2 TJ/kg of the original, natural uranium.

For the fusion reactions, I use the mass of the earth's hydrosphere, 1.4 10^21 kg, as the supply of hydrogen fuel. 1/9th of the mass is hydrogen, and of that, 0.03% is deuterium. This excepts the "Jupiter" scenario, which is total fusion of the entire 1.9*10^27 kg mass of Jupiter (mostly pure H2).

There are three solar scenarios. One is the energy potential of the entire surface of the earth. Another is a Dyson ring, 10 kilometers in width at a solar radius of 10 million km. The last is a complete Dyson sphere, which is level II on the Kardashev scale for extraterrestial civilizations.

For the fission fuel supply, there are six lines, properly representing the wide range of figures represented in media sources, including the alarmist 'peak uranium' stories which use the lowest figure (overlaps natural gas). They are the permutations of three levels of ore - high-level conventional, phosphate rocks, and seawater - and closed vs. once-through fuel cycles (as above). From the IAEA red book, the first two numbers are estimated 4.7 million and 35 million metric tons uranium metal, respectively. The seawater figure is 4.5 billion tons, from the concentration figure of 3.2 ppb and the mass of the earths' oceans (given earlier). Note the seawater figure flattens horizontally at a certain level: this represents the rate of erosion of uranium from rivers, as referenced by Bernard Cohen in this Am. J. Phys. article. (32,000 tons/year). In this sense, fission is indeed a fully renewable resource, although at a far lower potential than wind or solar.

For wind, wave, geothermal, I simply stole figures from wikipedia [1] [2] [3]. The wind figure potential is slightly pragmatic, in that it ignores wind over open ocean (unlike the solar power figure). Same with the wave figure - apparently it only includes near-shore waves (but this makes small difference, since the "build-up" length for ocean waves is thousands of miles anyway: a mid-ocean wave farm would leave a wake thousands of miles long). The geothermal figure is the geological rate of heat dissipation out of the earth's crust, which is probably a huge overestimate. (But I'm ignoring near-surface pockets of heat, which can be exploited faster than natural conduction rates, but non-renewably so.)

I coudn't find a hydroelectric potential figure, so I made a quick estimate. From the histogram, I eyeballed an estimate of 500m for the average elevation of earth terrain (above sea level). Likewise, I eyeballed an average rainfall of 100 cm/year. Assuming they are uncorrelated, this represents a hydroelectric potential of 0.15 W/m^2, or an upper limit of 20 TW for the entire earth. This is the blue line between geothermal and ocean uranium breeders (they are all squished together).

Don't forget, I multiplied hydro, wind, and wave potentials by 3 to convert to thermal power equivalents. So the 20 TW of hydropower electricity are slightly greater than the 40 GW of geothermal heat.

The fossil fuel figures (coal/oil/gas) are from BP's statistical review. They are proven reserves, so they are underestimates.

Finally, the biomass figure is my own estimate, based on the IPCC figure for the carbon throughput of photosynthesis on earth (120 billion tons/year). This is the entire biosphere, not just anthropogenic farming.

The demand figures are (i) current world (thermal energy) consumption, and (ii) my guess at a near-future stablization point, which is a population of 10 billion with the same per-capita energy consumption as present-day USA.

Suggest improvements in the comments, and I may include them.