A New Use for Solar Energy - Highway Right of Way 22 comments
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During a recent work meeting with the western renewable energy zones group, it became clear the recent push for renewable energy in the western US has major wildlife and environmental implications.
The main issues of public land managers and wildlife stakeholders are the new roads and infrastructure placed on previously undisturbed public lands. The western US has huge potential for renewables such as solar, wind, and geothermal. Just like the fossil fuel energy booms of the past, the rush to build these renewable power plants on public lands would adversely affect wildlife corridors and ecosystems.
These issues have me thinking more about the economic and environmental benefits of the distributed nature of solar technology. Wind and geothermal power only work in particular areas of the US, in most cases far away from the end electric user. Also, the wind and geothermal resources are mainly on public lands.
Solar, on the other hand, can work anywhere. Some solar application works best in high hot light areas like the desert southwest, whereas other solar applications work best in cooler defused light areas of the country. I started to think about all the land masses in the US that are already disturbed or used, and could be levered as solar energy resources.
Commercial Rooftops
New solar firms like Solyndra produce thin film solar technology especially for commercial rooftops. In only commercial applications we could supply the US with 25% of all our electric needs from these rooftops. Solyndra has entered into a contract with ENERGY STAR®-certified cool roof systems from Carlisle Construction Materials (CSL). This combination of the reflective roofing membrane with Solyndra's solar systems increases the output of the Solyndra PV system up to 20%.
The above estimate of 25% of the US electric grid is based on the approximate efficiency ratio of 15% for Solyndra's PV system. These solar thin film technologies are still in the early stages of development, so over time we should see significant improvements in efficiency and cost.
Already, solar thin film firms can produce solar energy at grid parity. These cost breakthroughs in solar have been achieved by focusing on the cost side, not the efficiency side. These new thin film solar technologies are less than half as efficient as silicon based solar cells, but can cost 80-90% less to produce. My article on solar economics describes in more detail the different solar technologies and the economic considerations.
So, with commercial rooftops, the US could replace more than 25% of the grid. What about other brownfield land solar development? While driving many hours across the desert southwest on interstate I-15 it hit me.
Highway right of way solar - ROW solar
On both sides of I-15 all one can see is scrub, weeds, debris, and power lines. Highway departments must keep their right of way clear of invasive weeds such as Russian thistle (tumbleweed), cheat grass, etc. Mowing or pesticide spaying operations are the most common methods. Instead of spending all those tax payer dollars trying to control plant growth, why don't we use solar systems to create electricity along these highways?
By designing the proper alignment of solar systems along these highway, land managers could also funnel wildlife away from dangerous highway crossings and into safe wildlife corridors. In the desert southwest, miles of small fences are built along highways to protect the desert tortoise from getting killed by cars. Larger structural solar systems could also protect larger animals such as cattle, deer, and antelope. These larger animals also cause many serious accidents and human deaths on our highways.
How much acreage are we talking about? The first estimate to consider is the amount of land that highway departments currently manage. This is a small subset of all right of way highway acreage. Road Ecology: Science and Solutions, written by Richard T. Forman in 2002, is a good source of information on managed right of way land along our nations highways.
Forman's book states that California manages 230,000 acres of right of way on 15,000 miles of highway, about 15 acres per mile of highway. In the US we have about 4 million miles of roads, or 60 million acres of right of way to manage. On many sections of highways in the western US, the highway right of way is contiguous to federal land like the BLM. By using a small amount of this BLM land, we could easily double the amount of land available for solar energy.
Depending on the particular solar technology, one needs 2-4 acres of land to place a 1 megawatt solar power system. So a conservative estimate for US highway solar would be 20 million megawatts of total capacity.
In 2006 the existing US capacity for electricity was about 1 million megawatts. So just in the disturbed land along our nation highways, we could have almost 20 times more capacity then currently installed. Here are some energy figures from 2007:
The U.S. electric power industry's total installed generating capacity was 1,089,807 megawatts (MW) as of December 31, 2007.
Total U.S. electricity generation was 4,159,514 gigawatt-hours (GWh).
The capacity of different power plants will produce different amounts of total electric generation. A coal or natural gas fired plant can run almost all the time. A solar power plant may only average 8 hours a day of energy generation. So the real effective electric generation for the 20 million megawatts of highway solar capacity would be about 7 million megawatts of full generation capacity. This is 7 times the electricity we currently consume in the US.
In summary, right of way highway solar is a great solution to our nation's energy needs, as well as reducing costs to manage these right of ways. Another benefit would be to help wildlife managers create wildlife corridors for both human and wildlife safety. Lets preserve our undisturbed public lands by implementing solar technologies on these existing managed lands.
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This article has 22 comments:
Outside of that, there are some ideas worth exploring here.
Sigh... its a sign of the times that something like this should even come to mind...
It might not take highway lighting totally off the grid but it would reduce the amount of electricity that has to be generated using fossil fuels.
A 1000 Watt (1000wp) solar array operating for 6 hours at full capacity will produce six (6)Kilowatt hours ( KwHr )
A 1000 Kw solar array operating at full capacity for 6 hours will produce six thousand (6000)KwHr
A 1 Gw nuclear plant operating at full capacity will produce six million (6000000) KwHr
The watt is a unit of instantaneous power; voltage X current
Electricity is sold as power used per unit of time; KwHr.
A generating device such as a solar panel will have a nameplate or peak rating (Kwp) that indicates available instantaneous power at full sun condition. It will not operate at that level continuously.
365 days/year x 24 hours/day = 8760 hours/year.
The author quotes generating capacity of 1,089,807 megawatts.
Per year, that is 9,546,710 thousand megawatt hours. That assumes that our entire generating capacity is operating 24/7.
So, if I take into account that we probably are quite a bit under 100% untilization of our capacity, the author has given an estimate of something less than 9.5 million thousand megawatt hours of electrical power production for 2007.
You give a quote of 4 million thousand megawatt hours of capacity for 2006. This number is less than 1/2 the author's number, but is certainly in the same ball park when dealing with numbers that have 15 powers of ten in their magnitude. If your number is actual electrical power production for 2006 (rather than production capacity), then the author's numbers and your numbers come closer to each other.
I don't think you need to be alarmed by your suspected disagreement.
- fixed position solar panels have peak production only a few hours a day.
- clustering solar panels is done to minimize costs. when you decide on a line vs matrix approach it raises costs.
- along a highway add damage and security costs which would not exist in a solar farm.
- solar panel wattage is based on no line voltage (in other words dead short conditions). comparing power plant output to solar panel output will give you erroneous results.
- i think everyone believes solar energy means solar panels. there is another proven technology which can provide power 24 hours per day and uses solar mirrors.
www.edison.com/pressro...
> jack
Aalan;
The wildlife slant in this issue was two fold. One is the idea of not disturbing public lands for new solar energy development, and the other idea is that if we spend the money for the structures of solar highway projects, we could easily augment with other wildlife barriers to help eliminate wildlife/car collisions.
Bob;
The theft issue was the first negative I thought of also. These ROW systems would need be large enough so that theft could not be easy even in a large commercial vehicle. Also we could install RF devices like the home prisoners have on their ankles.....
To all;
My numbers about current capacity, actual eclectic produced, and solar potential along US highways, etc. are all HUGE ballpark type numbers. I did not intend as a scientific analysis. I have not found any hard core estimates on all the managed ROW on all our highways so if anyone has a link. please post. I just wanted some numbers for a starting point of discussion.
GM;
The actual non-subsidized cost of pulv. coal power in much higher than 4-5 c. Also the distribution cost of pushing electrons for these large coal plants is a big cost. The maintenance on these plants is huge, as will cap n trade pollution taxation, etc..Once you make coal plants clean - no NOX, SOx or Mercury emmisions, then the cost doubles.
My residential daytime electric rate is .10 kWh, and I live in a cheap, mainly coal area. the US average is .16 cents. Current non-Si solar can compete with these numbers.
That means, build both express and local, two direction electrified ferries to haul the cargo, vehicles and people (as well as carry the electrical power [ya, an electron at a time, for the doomsayers]) and we will have eliminated our dependency on foreign and domestic crude - since 70% of all crude consumed in the US is burned in transportation an 80% of that is wasted because of 20% efficient ICE's, every stretch of installed electrifed ferry has a substantial increase in transportation productivity, first on corridors between major cities independent of state lines, and then cross country non-stop routes.
Switzerland already does this by the way (they just drive buses full of people up onto a railroad car and let them drive off at the desired stop - the folks never get out of their seats - same can be done with vehicles, just like they do via water ferries; and then, the trucks with cargo; maybe even ship cargo without the trucks; duh!!!!!
Now this would be a terrific Obama infrastructure progam puttling all the Wall Street, Detroit and Houston folks to work. We'll let the illegals retrain and supervise them. If they work, they get paid, period. If they don't work, they get fired. No bonus's..Real work for real pay. Unbelievable.
My guess is that interstate hiways are generally within 50-100 miles of any wind and solar farms making connections less complicated than the doomsayers say. (should solar and wind farms be more desirable than your idea). You know, idiots still like to throw empty bottles from their cars which would destroy the solar panels along the hiways - just more targets.
I think this can also spawn coop arrangements in the right areas where wind power plants can hook into this distribution system. I suspect that this would spread the capital cost of the distribution system across multiple providers making renewable concentrated energy investments more practical.
Keep on driving and thinking...
> That means, build both express and local, two direction electrified
> ferries to haul the cargo, vehicles and people (as well as carry
> the electrical power [ya, an electron at a time, for the doomsayers])
> and we will have eliminated our dependency on foreign and domestic
> crude - since 70% of all crude consumed in the US is burned in transportation
"The Roads must Roll" by Robert A Heinlein. This fiction assumed cheap solar power and electric operated movers as a major transport means. Sometime before the 50s, since I read it then.