On 6/11/06, Leigh Meyers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Jim Devine wrote: > http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-op-monbiot11jun11,1,45211.story > >> From the Los Angeles Times
Monbiot is overlooking an obvious solution for dispatchable electricity. Parabolic mirrors in deserts can run rankine turbines; this is being done in the California desert right now for around 11 cents a kWh. Now the advantage of this is that you store the heat to run these turbines when the sun is not shining for about $40 per kWh equivalent of capacity. That brings the price up - but not higher that nukes. So you have fully dispatchable electricity - suitable for base and load following. What about people not near deserts? Well, given that HVDC lines can move electricty up 5,000 kilometers, this is not a big problem. For example the nearest place to London you could put turbines is North Africa. The distance between Tripoli and London is about a bit under 2,400 kilometers. By the time you run a line via continetal Europe and the Chunnel, the distance will be a lot longer as the crow flies - but still nowhere near 5,000 kilometers.. If you count value of liablility limitations all nuke plants receive, solar electricity still remains cheaper than nuclear electricity - even before you count social costs. Of course the politics of shipping electricity from Libya to London is one hell of an obstacle; but Monbiot is arguing that there is a technical barrier, and on that he is wrong. Why is this so little noticed? I think that part of the problem is that most people who pay attention to solar have a small-is-beautiful fetish. Solar thermal electricity in the desert is large and centralized. But it is also about the only way I know of the produce large amounts of fully dispatchable renewable electricity (suitable for both base and load following). Other truly dispatchable sources (like hydro and geothermal) have very limited potential with current technology. Other sources with large potential tend to be variable; while they can be shaped up to a point by sources like hydro and geothermal; there is a limit to this. If you add electrical storage that raises the costs immensely. So after beating their heads against a wall looking for a decentralized renewable source, renewable advocates give up and turn to nuclear or coal or living in peasant huts - without ever noticing there is a reliable renewable source of solar electricity we know how to use now - that happens to be a large industrial centralized source.
