Vandergraaf, Chuck wrote:
>
> The link that Dan supplied is, unfortunately, not the type of information I
> would be looking for. Rather than supplying a list of links to
> environmental groups, what I would want to know, for alternatives, are
> answer to, at least, the following questions: 1),what is the TOTAL cost to
> the environment of your proposed alternative and 2), what fraction of the
> TOTAL required demand can be met by your proposed alternative.
Chuck, Glenn and list,
I picked a link, conveyed the question, and received this reply. Hope it
sheds some light.
Dan Eumurian
hope4you@CenturyTel.net
Subject: Re: Total costs of solar energy
Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2000 21:54:45 -0400 (EDT)
From: John Michael Byrne <jbbyrne@UDel.Edu>
To: hope4you@centurytel.net
CC: Jon R Rosales <jrosales@UDel.Edu>
Dear Mr. Eumurian,
Thank you for your inquiry. I would welcome the lyrics of "Use It Again,
Sam!"
I have tried below to answer the questions posed by your colleague. I
have
also copied one of our doctoral students, Jon Rosales, who is currently
in
Minnesota. He can elaborate on my comments. Please let me know if you
find
that responses, as they often do, generate more questions. Regards, John
Byrne
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
John Byrne, Director Phone: (302) 831-8405
Center for
Energy & Environmental Policy FAX: (302) 831-3098
University of Delaware E-mail: jbbyrne@strauss.udel.edu
Newark, DE 19716-7301 USA Website: http://www.udel.edu/ceep
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
On Tue, 18 Jul 2000, Dan Eumurian wrote:
> Dear Dr. Byrne:
>
> I am a music teacher, piano dealer/tuner, singer-songwriter-publisher
> specializing in environmental songs among others,
REPLY: I envy such a life. I played piano as a child and then forgot
--my
biggest regret.
> and a member of the American Scientific Affiliation listserv. The ASA
> is comprised of Christians in the sciences, theology and philosophy. I
> hold an M.A. in theology.
>
> One of our ASA list members recently posed a series of questions on
> energy costs. I found your website through a link from the website of
> Joyce Johnson Rouse, an environmental singer and friend of mine. Would
> you be so kind as to respond as you see fit to these questions, or to
> steer me toward sources which might address them? I apologize for the
> man's skeptical attitude.
REPLY: No apology needed. As you well know, questioning is how we learn!
>
> "What are the costs, financial and environmental, of producing the
> photovoltaic panels (including the energy required in production of
> the silicon cells, handling and disposing of the wastes generated in
> the production of the panels),
REPLY: By conventional measures of cost, PV panels cost about $5 per
peak
Watt of electricity supplied. Throughout most of the US, this would be
equivalent to $0.20 per kWh, compared to dirty coal plants which can
produce electricity at $0.05 per kWh ... and warm the planet. As long as
the latter is not a cost that we address (and currently we don't), dirty
coal plants are more "economical."
> how much real estate is required per MW generated,
REPLY: I think that your colleague is getting at the fact that solar
light
is diffuse and needs a larger area to collect its energy than dirty
coal,
for example. But the real estate question has a couple of problems. If
you
consider the geology of fossil energy, then real estate must become a
three-dimensional question. In which case, PV -- a 2-dimensional energy
collector -- will require a lot less real estate than dirty coal. And if
you consider that dirty coal degrades the "real estate," while PV does
not
(at least while it collects energy), you're probably more interested in
PV
than dirty coal from a "real estate cost" standpoint. But the bigger
problem is that sensible use of PV (see below) would use as its "real
estate" rooftops and wall surfaces, i.e., areas that already are in use.
Thus, it should have litle in the way of real estate requirements.
> what is the upkeep (how do you keep bird poop, dust and debris from the
> surfaces of the solar panels and what are the risks in doing so, e.g.,
> workers falling off the panels and being injured or killed),
REPLY: Yes, like car windshields and home and office windows, you have
to
wash panels once or twice a year. I don't know how many workers fall off
panels per year; I also don't know how many workers are injured while
washing windshields and windows -- but PV maintenance is unlikely to add
considerably to the statistic, since sensible use of the technology
would
mean co-maintenance of windows/windshields and panels.
> what is the expected life of the panels,
REPLY: Panels are now rated to last 25 years. Field experience suggests
that this is about right.
> how does one recycle
> them or dispose of them (and what is the environmental impact), etc.
>
REPLY: Actually, there is already a vibrant recycling market. Because PV
panels contain valuable processed silicon, companies sell the old panels
to others who extract the silicon from them. One company in Delaware,
AstroPower, actually makes panels from recycled cells.
> Once I have these data, I'd want to know how much of the demand for
> electricity would be supplied by these panels, whether they could be
> used in urban areas or only in rural settings,
REPLY: Your colleague asks excellent questions here. Indeed, these are
the
core issues. Let me begin with urban energy demand. By shifting the bulk
of the costs of energy use to the natural environment and to future
generations of humans and other species, the industrial era brought
about
its ally -- the cheap energy era. In this era, we demand a lot of
energy.
Indeed, the carbon released from energy combustion is now over 7 billion
tons per year ... and rising. Please note that currently only 40% of the
world's population -- the urban part -- have access to "reliable"
commercial (i.e., you have to pay for it) energy services. As that
number
grows, we'll be releasing 2-3 times as much carbon as now. How much is 7
billion tons? More than the tonnage of all steels and other major metals
produced worldwide per year. It also is enough to change the chemistry
of the atmosphere. I don't know about you, but when I was growing up I
couldn't imagine that human beings could change the sky. So, we have an
enormous demand for energy in urban areas, measured not only by its
quantitative amount, but by its environmentally disruptive power.
PV cannot supply that enormous energy demand. Nor should it.
If PV is to make a difference -- ecologically, socially, technologically
-- it should offer an alternative to the enormous energy demand of the
cheap energy/industrial era. What is that alternative? To begin, PV
should
be used to cut energy demand in urban societies by collecting solar
energy
at the peak of energy demand -- hot summer days ... the same time when
solar energy is at its greatest availability. In this role, PV reduces
energy demand and the scale of energy systems. Instead of using
conventioanl energy only during these peak periods, we would use PV to
run
the meter backward by supplying converted solar energy back into the
grid.
Note that our cheap energy era has resulted in energy demand during peak
months that is almost twice as high as the average. The result is that
we
build our power plants to meet these peaks ... and 30-40% of the
capacity
of these plants (MW) sits idle, unused, for 80% of the year. With PV
deployed on rooftops of urban buildings (what is called the solar
shingle), we can cut our extravagant energy demand. Also, since these
very
large plants lose about 20% of their energy in transmission and
distribution, rooftop PV allows us to reduce the transmission and
distribution capacity of our energy systems. And we can then move away
from large-scale plants that are hopelessly beyond democratic control.
Currently, our cheap energy system requires experts to run it for us and
they get very confused, even so! That's why we experience loss of power
periodically; and why, probably for the computer you are using, you have
purchased an uninterruptible power supply (a fancy way of saying
batteries
for energy when the lights and computers go out). When you use rooftop
PV
(which comes with battery storage to smooth out its supply) to cut peak
demand and provide emergency power services, its economics are quite
good.
Indeed, we have published a stream of papers over the last 5 years
showing
that the savings in energy bills and the cancelled need to buy emergency
power equipment equals the cost of PV at today's prices. That is, PV's
economic benefits, measured in the (inaccurate) unit of cheap energy
prices, pay for its current costs (capital and maintenance).
This e-mail is getting VERY LONG, so I won't take you through how
essentially the same function can be served by PV in urban transport.
For rural needs, the role of PV is different. Please note that most
people
in the world do not have reliable access to electricity. Living in rural
areas, families have no light at night except that provided by candles
or
kerosene lamps; no refrigeration for medicines; water pumps that require
great human and animal exertion to work. We have worked for 7 years on
the
high plain of Inner Mongolia in China to learn about the needs of rural
people. It's been an amazing lesson. Unlike urbanites, rural people do
not
live life by the motto of more is better. Balancing demand with nature's
supply is a fundamental idea applied in every aspect of life. Working
with
rural communities in one of the most beautiful parts of our planet, we
have tried to design very small wind-PV systems that can provide about
30
kWh per month. This would mean lighting at night for community education
-- people are busy during the day with farm and animal chores;
refrigerated medicines so that animals live -- and women and children
eat
(when meat is scarce, children and women are often the last to eat in
the
countryside); improved water pumping for better yielding fields,
healthier
animals and healthier people. For comparison, urbanites use about 2,000
kWh for non-transport energy. Demand is amply served in the rural areas
by
very modest wind and PV systems. Indeed, you need only a 400 W wind
turbine and 50 W of PV (not much real estate -- a few square feet!) to
change lives and livelihoods in Inner Mongolia. And cost? If you compare
the cost of running a small diesel generator to serve rural needs -- and
include the expenses of transporting the fuel and travelling back and
forth to rural towns to get parts and to have maintenance work done on
these small generators -- the wind-PV system we learned how to design
from
rural families costs about one-half that of a diesel generator per kWh.
> and under what weather and climatic conditions they can be used. For example, in > Yellowknife, NWT, or Fairbanks, AK, solar panels are not much help in the winter!
> Even along the west coast of BC, there are often long periods of rain.
REPLY: The wonderful thing about renewable energy is that it is
available
EVERYWHERE. While solar energy may not be abundant in Yellowknife, wind
(harvested by very small wind machines -- you can buy the 400 W machines
from factories in China -- they have over 60,000 sold across western
China; no US or Canadian company makes such small wind machines) is
abundant; and the region has geothermal, small hydro (not the big stuff
that destroy rivers and communities), and a host of other options. Of
course, I presume that we are not trying to build a New York City in
Yellowknife -- hopefully, we can leave some real estate for other
species.
>
> The same calculations need to be done for wind power, biomass, etc.
> Only then can we determine if these alternatives are economically and
> environmentally viable. Yes, I know that environmentalists will point
> at government incentives to oil companies and the displacement of
> aboriginals due to hydro-related flooding, but these costs can be
> quantified. I also am aware that we can do a lot by using passive
> solar heating, increase insulation, and plant trees to decrease a dependence
> on air conditioning. However, even the cost of increased insulation needs
> to be factored into the equation and the costs and risks of the disposal
> or recycling of insulation material must be taken into consideration."
REPLY: Quite true. We should also factor in the costs of a warmer
planet,
a less biodiverse planet, and a less democratic and less equitable
planet
if we leave things as they are.
>
> This e-mail is already long, so I will simply offer to send you the
> lyrics to my recycling song "Use It Again, Sam," from my cassette
> "Challenges: We Need Each Other," at no cost or obligation, if you might
> be interested. Thank you in advance for your kind consideration.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Dan Eumurian
> 1634 Barlow St.
> La Crosse, WI 54601
> (608) 788-8637
> hope4you@CenturyTel.net
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