Seven New Developments in Renewable Energy 12 comments
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With solar and wind energy heating up gradually, there is breaking news everyday around the globe in this sector. This article will be updated weekly in the renewable energy sector summarizing what happened and what's coming up. I will keep it simple, straight and just focus on the facts.
- President-elect Obama on Saturday released his latest weekly speech to the nation, reaffirming his efforts to invest more on renewable energy as part of the nation's new energy plan.
- China Datang Corp., the China's second-biggest power producer, received state permission to build a 4.5 billion-yuan ($659 million) wind farm in Jilin province as the government expedites project approvals to spur economic growth. The plant will have a capacity of 400 megawatts according to a Bloomberg report.
- A-Power Energy Generation Systems, Ltd. (APWR) on January 2 announced it will celebrate the launch of its first wind turbine production facility, the largest in China, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony in Shenyang, China, on Sunday, January 11, 2009. Mr. Jinxiang Lu, A-Power's Chairman and CEO, said, "We look forward to having our investors join us at this extremely exciting, and historic, event, which marks the full launch of our wind turbine business in China. Our wind turbine facility, strategically located in the city of Shenyang, is the largest in China, with total annual production capacity of over 1,125MW of wind turbines."
- Photovoltaic module manufacturer Suntech Power Holdings Co. Ltd. (STP) announced that it is jointly constructing a 66MW on-grid photovoltaic project with Yunnan Provincial Power Investment and other investors. The project began construction in December in Shilin.
- Schmid Silicon Technology announced on December 31, 2008 it will invest in China to build a monosilan and polysilicon production plant. The company is expected to start production in June 2009, and annual production capacity can reach 540 tons of monosilan.
- According to a Chinese newenergy.com report(in Chinese: www.newenergy.com.cn), China's wind energy capacity has reached 1GW in 2008. Solar energy is expected to increase 30% in 2009.
- Energy firm RWE nPower (RWEOY.PK) has revealed plans to build up to three new nuclear power stations in Anglesey, Wales, the Guardian has reported. The British branch of the German-owned firm has announced its intention to make a 'multibillion-pound investment' in the area which could generate 3.6 gigawatts of energy which could provide power for up to 5m homes from 2012.
Disclosure: Long STP.
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This article has 12 comments:
"total annual production capacity of over 1,125MW of wind turbines" ...
"66MW on-grid photovoltaic project" ...
"China's wind energy capacity has reached 1GW in 2008" ....
"generate 3.6 gigawatts of energy which could provide power for up to 5m homes from 2012"
Peak generating capability is important.
But we think the concept of CAPACITY FACTOR is also important.
www.google.com/search?...
Fine to report kilo-, mega-, or gigwatts but kilo-, mega-, gigawatt HOURS probably should be reported too?
From all us electrical engineers out there (r there any others left?) Thanks!!
On Jan 05 09:42 AM billp37 wrote:
> "The plant will have a capacity of 400 megawatts according to a Bloomberg
> report." ...
>
> "total annual production capacity of over 1,125MW of wind turbines"
> ...
>
> "66MW on-grid photovoltaic project" ...
>
> "China's wind energy capacity has reached 1GW in 2008" ....
>
> "generate 3.6 gigawatts of energy which could provide power for up
> to 5m homes from 2012"
>
> Peak generating capability is important.
>
> But we think the concept of CAPACITY FACTOR is also important.
>
>
> www.google.com/search?...;q=capacity+factor+def...
>
>
> Fine to report kilo-, mega-, or gigwatts but kilo-, mega-, gigawatt
> HOURS probably should be reported too?
>
>
Here, public-utility cooperatives can probably lead the charge because they don't have to be burdened with the drag of greedy-CEO syndrome, anyway some of them don't.
I know China has probably has some dazzling corruption of its own, but given the consequences if one is caught, I really don't think it comes up to our knees, if there is a way to measure corruption.
Is there a greedy-CEO corruption index some place? If not, there should be. It might help out the ordinary working people of the world.
Having been to China, I just did not detect our level of corruption.
Maybe rate of incarceration per 100,000 persons would be a measure. I believe if we measure that way, the U.S. comes out first (Cheney owns private-prison stock, according to a recent lawsuit in Texas).
China, I believe, comes out second.
Disclosure: I own STP
But your point about capacity factor is correct.
300 MW wind power is equivalent to about 120 MW of steady base load power in kWhs.
That doesn't make the addition of wind or solar into a negative.
And if we are going to compare apples with apples then we must include the cost of externalities of fossil fuels and nuclear power.
In the case of fossil fuels, these costs are huge.
Not including these in cost comparisons is dishonest. In the price of oil and oil products, the cost of externalities is probably larger than the stated costs.
Just one example is that to supply one coal power plant requires a trainload of coal one mile long every single day. Sure the transportation cost is figured in the price of coal, but what about the pollution from using over 40% of all rail capacity in the U.S. to transport coal. What about the fact that freeing up this much rail capacity would allow us to transport more long haul freight by rail, which is many times more fuel efficient than trucks?
What about the cost blowing off the tops of hundreds of mountains for coal, and the cost of the billion gallon spill of toxic coal sludge on Christmass eve. Or the 300 million gallon spill in Kentucky 8 years ago, or the cost of 24,000 people per year dying from respiratory disease as a result of coal burning, or the cost of mercury poisoning our food fish stocks worldwide? And I've only scratched the surface of these costs.
Building new wind power is still less than a third the cost of building new nuclear plants. Wind and solar can be built faster than coal or nuclear plants. And they can go online as soon as parts of a system are built. For example some solar thermal companies build their large solar farms in modules of 25-100 MW which can go online before the rest is built. Stirling and Infinia both build solar thermal dishes using stirling heat engines rather than steam turbines. These can go online at 2-3 MW, or when each dish is installed.
The article I read yesterday said the solar project in China would likely reach 1GW capacity. It's a good start.
The good news is that China is a potential huge market for renewables, as is India.
"generate 3.6 gigawatts of energy which could provide power for up to 5m homes from 2012"
I did notice that this number of 5 million homes powered by new nuclear plants seems way too high, at least at the energy consumption rate of American homes. Steady power at that rate would power more like 2.5 million homes in America.
It may be accurate in England of course.
England has limitations on renewable energy due to geography. They don't have large open areas suitable for large wind and solar projects. We don't have that problem in the U.S.
Here's something new from Zenith Solar. At least I hadn't heard of it before.
Concentrated Photovoltaic system that also captures the heat, (which would normally be removed by cooling to keep the solar cells efficient). This is kind of a combination of solar thermal and photovoltaic.
They are located in Israel.
from their website:
"ZenithSolar system is designed to a concentration factor of 1000 X.
The ZenithSolar optical dish is based on a patented design, utilizing multiple simple flat mirrors mounted on a plastic surface.
The concentrated solar radiation is reflected from each individual mirror onto an array of solar cells. ZenithSolar uses field proven high efficiency multi-junction III-V solar cells.
In conventional CPV systems, the excess heat generated in the solar cell needs to be removed to avoid damaging the cell and to maintain high efficiency of electricity conversion. ZenithSolar utilizes the heat generated at the solar cell receiver to provide usable hot water heating, improving overall solar power conversion efficiency to 75%."
www.zenithsolar.com/in...
What a concept. This idea maybe could be extrapolated to other PV systems, at least in very sunny areas, where heat can become a negative for PV. I wonder if it would be feasable to use the heat from cooling the PV receivers to drive a steam turbine, providing a two prong electric generating system. Maybe the overall amount of heat isn't enough to bother with this approach, just a thought.
Yippee! So the electricity from a wind farm is less than 1 cent per KWH. Why bother metering it?
Fat chance, bucko.
Yippee indeed.
The cost of electricity from new nuclear plants is far higher than you must be imagining. Far far higher than you must be imagining.
You are completely uninformed and I am not afraid to say so.
Florida Power and Light has raised their estimate for two new nuclear plants proposed in Florida from about $4,000 per kWh to between $5,500 to $8,000/kWh. Wind farms can be built for $1,400 per kWh. Electricity from these new nuclear plants was estimated at between 12 and 17 cents kWh. Wind power is far cheaper than that.
But a new study puts the cost of new nuclear plants much higher than that. For one thing the study points out that power companies typically do not fully disclose the true cost of building nuclear plants.
The study was done by an expert on nuclear power costs.
from the study:
"Generation costs/kWh for new nuclear (including fuel & O&M but not distribution to customers) are likely to be from 25 - 30 cents/kWh."
"Recent construction cost estimates imply capital costs/kWh (not counting operation or fuel costs) from 17-22 cents/kWh when the nuclear facilities come on-line."
25-30 cents/kWh is about 3 times the national average.
Solar thermal can produce electricity at 12-17cents/kWh right now.
Within five years or less that will fall to less than 10cents/kWh
And as economy of scale is reached the price will drop to
5-8cents/kWh.
By then maybe the first new nuclear power plant will be up and running.
Where is your information that contradicts this? Have you done any research or do you just repeat preconceived ideas whether they are right or wrong. I have done well over 1000 hours of research.
Read for yourself:
climateprogress.org/20.../
Good luck Bucko
I applaud your enthusiasm, but for your vision to be correct flies in the face of reality world wide. Nuclear is what sustainable nations use for electrical production.
"Nuclear power is the lowest cost producer of baseload electricity. Average nuclear production costs have declined more than 30 percent in the last 10 years, to an average of 1.7 cents per kilowatt-hour. This includes the costs of operating and maintaining the plant, purchasing nuclear fuel, and paying for the management of used fuel. Electricity generated from nuclear power also has tremendous forward price stability because only a small part of production costs are fuel costs. Fuel accounts for 80 percent to 90 percent of the cost of electricity produced by fossil fuel-fired generation, making electricity from fossil plants highly susceptible to fluctuations in coal and gas prices."