"Clean Coal" Claims that Solar can't handle Baseload power demands!

[freebeard]

Hydroelectric can't even keep up with demand

Stand the equation on it's head. Why do people insist on living beyond their means?

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by aerohead

I located this reference as well:
Photovoltaics Today and Tomorrow, by H.M. Hubbard, Director, Solar Energy Research Institute, Golden, Colorado, SCIENCE, VOL. 244, 21 April 1989.
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As of 1989, Coal and Solar PV were of equal cost, $ 0.30-kWh.
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References:
Solar Energy Research Institute
Bell Telephone Laboratories
National Science Foundation
US Department of Energy ( DOE ) National Photovoltaics Program, Stanford University.
Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, Inc., New York.
University of New South Wales, Australia.
Atlantic Richfield Company ( ARCO )
ARCO Solar Inc.
Pacific Gas & Electric, Davis, California test site.
Chronar Corporation, San Diego, California.
SeaWest Power Systems, San Diego, California.
Hespiria Plains solar farm, ARCO Solar, Inc..
Sandia National Laboratory, Albuquerque, New Mexico.
US Patent Office.
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, CalTech, Pasadena, California.
Pacific Northwest Laboratory, Richland, Washington.
American Chemical Society.
Photovoltaic Energy Systems, Casanova, Virginia.
'Social Costs of Energy Consumption,' O. Hohmeyer, ( Springer-Verlag, N.Y., 1988 ).
K.W. Boras, personal communication.
Electric Power Research Institute, Palo Alto, California.
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Washington, D.C..
Florida Solar Energy Center, Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Illinois.
Secretariat of International PVSEC-2, Tokyo, Japan.

Amazing how corrupt everyone becomes when they allow ideology to replace reason.

Solar was never cheaper than coal. The only way it gets cheaper is to artificially inflate the cost of coal, or hide the costs of solar in the accounting bucket of other generation sources.

How would you like to be connected to this power station? Your washing machine will speed up and slow down erratically as the available sunlight constantly changes. Make sure you slowly increase electricity use starting around 10am, and be completely done with electricity by 6:30pm.



100% of people and sources saying solar is cheaper is 100% wrong, regardless of their reputation, which should be dirt in light of the fact that no utility is offering to lower electricity costs for their consumers because they went 100% solar.

That's the argument kill-shot. There's nothing further to discuss. There's no comeback.

[aerohead]

Since 'solar' can't defend itself against the 'coal faction,' I'll introduce the data, regarding ' supply intermittence.'
This data is from 1989, so bear this in mind, however you probably won't find this sort of information in the prospectus's of coal companies:
* Out of 8640-hours a year, the average coal-fired electric power plant is online for 6718-hours.
* 77.7% of the time.
* Out of service 1922-hours/year ( 22.24% offline )
* Each 4.5- power plants require the equivalent of 1-additional power plant to cover their load during their 1922-hours of downtime.
* A 600-MW boiler consumes 2,799,166-tons of coal/year ( Solar, zero fuel )
* The same boiler consumes 39,188,333-tons of atmosphere/ year ( Solar, zero )
* Some Southern coal-fired power plants require a 3,000-mile railroad roundtrip for daily fueling, and multiple trains a day. ( Solar requires zero 'fuel' transportation ).
* The 1,500-mile return trip is all dead-heading, no productive work being produced from diesel-powered locomotives, plus helper locomotives added to assist in climbing grades. Half -way across the USA carrying 'nothing.' ( Solar requires nonesuch )

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

I raise you Germany.


All you have to do is show is some electricity market where power got cheaper after adding a lot of renewables, not talking markets like Hawaii or Alaska where they use diesel and coal to generate power that hasto be barged 2,000 miles, those are messed up markets, they are tiny and don't relate to any large nations, be like comparing grapes to water melons.
If you answere "hydroelectric" them my answer is "great", but my next question is "where we going to put it"?

Factor in free healthcare, free college, and paid vacation for every German National, and your pricing argument pulls the pin on it's own grenade.
A higher standard of living than that of the USA is the unmentioned caveat in your calculus.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

You just described advagrid. They buy up public utilities, double prices, cut the maintenance budge.
A public utility might become corrupt, a private one is all but guaranteed to become corrupt.

Publicly-owned services can out-perform everything but agriculture and retail merchandising.
Making America Great involves dumping deregulation, and corporate 'personhood.'

[aerohead]

I'm unsure what 'real world ' you're referring to.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by aerohead

Publicly-owned services can out-perform everything but agriculture and retail merchandising.
Making America Great involves dumping deregulation, and corporate 'personhood.'

If by outperform, you mean deliver the least value for the dollar than any other organizational institution.

I'm open to the idea of re-regulation, but the fact is that electricity nationwide has gotten cheaper over time. It was $0.18 / kWh in the 70s and steadily declined in cost to about $0.14 / kWh. Something appears to be working well there.

There do need to be tweaks made to the bidding process, especially in light of the fact that solar and wind generation is always incorporated into the supply and compensated at a price way higher than their bid, shifting cost onto the other generation sources.

[aerohead]

The fact is, in 1989, electricity, sourced from coal-fired power plants had a production cost of $0.30 / kWh, same as solar-PV.
I provided the community of participants referenced by the author of the paper which under-girded the quanta.
If you have counterfactual evidence to the contrary, you're certainly free to share it. Who, what, when, where, and how.
Your prima facie evidence must represent the 'social cost' of coal-based electricity. Which will eliminate around half of the economists in the USA.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

If by outperform, you mean deliver the least value for the dollar than any other organizational institution.

I'm open to the idea of re-regulation, but the fact is that electricity nationwide has gotten cheaper over time. It was $0.18 / kWh in the 70s and steadily declined in cost to about $0.14 / kWh. Something appears to be working well there.

There do need to be tweaks made to the bidding process, especially in light of the fact that solar and wind generation is always incorporated into the supply and compensated at a price way higher than their bid, shifting cost onto the other generation sources.

* As to 'performance,' America's Golden Age of prosperity occurred pre-deregulation.
* The metrics by which 'value' is evaluated would require specificity. There is no agreement nor consensus among economists as to what 'value' constitutes, nor how it would be quantified, which make our task challenging.
* We need to specify whether we're discussing 'price' or 'cost.'
* Consumer 'price' is what I experience as a consumer, in my case, what I pay my electric CO-OP for a kWh. $ 0.13. According to my CO-OP, non- CO-OP Texans pay $ 0.22/ kWh on average, for shareholder-owned provider- power.
* 'Cost' is more difficult to nail down ( somewhere at home I have some numbers ).
* Anyone exposed to climate science will be acquainted with the argument that, the price we've been paying since 1958, has in no way reflected what it will actually cost us, as 'goods and services' we've enjoyed free of charge are lost, one after another in the Anthropocene, as a consequence of 'cheap' energy, priced with dubious accounting practices.

[freebeard]

'real world'
<HR>
I'm unsure what 'real world ' you're referring to.

I'm not sure how you get the Horizontal Rule tag to work.

...as well as the reference you referenced.