Discussion Notes - Solar Thermal - February 5, 2008
Scientific
Parabolic trough – other tracking system
Only 1 axis of rotation
Sun tower
Multi-junction solar cell (currently in use in satellites)
Environmental
Disposal of heat transfer material
Social
Degree of residential integration of technology (why don’t more people use it)
For H2O heaters, or home heating
Political
SEGS – made in response to ^ oil prices
Economics
Material costs?
Solel, a company with projects in Israel, Spain, and California, producing electricity at rates that will rival rates of natural gas production, 10 cents per kWh; they hope to lower costs to 7-8cents per kWh.
How many Mw powers a city? What is the metric?
Scale of project?
Competitive on small scale
Larger scale will be competitive in near future
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Sam: chose mnemonic "Samurai"
Create energy warm house, have lenses that absorb lenses
Reeve: Israel, home scale, everyone has solar panels and water heaters. Portion of water heating needs.
Shyaam: Green house effect inside glass, allows more concentration of heat
Smart architect, dark walls, deciduous trees outside
Alex: PV not the future. Considers Nanosolar different
Mo: Israeli Solar Company: Solel
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Format: We will have only 2 small discussion rotations so we can get to the bigger discussion. This meeting went overtime and we got good feedback about the larger forum style.
Circle: Table arrangement in circle works.
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NY Times Article on Future of Energy:
Study Suggests That, Unlike in the '70s, Energy Lessons Will Last
The oil shocks of the 1970s produced a flurry of attention to alternative sources of energy, but it faded once prices dropped in the mid-1980s. Now, with oil prices again high and climate change moving up the list of public concerns, interest in alternative energy is once again at fever pitch.
Is history about to repeat itself?
Not likely, according to a leading energy consulting firm. In a report scheduled for release Tuesday, the firm, Cambridge Energy Research Associates, concludes that multiple factors will continue pushing the world toward greater use of alternative energy sources like sun and wind power, regardless of what happens to oil prices.
“The focus today on clean energy is not a bubble or passing phenomenon,” the report says. “Unconventional clean energy is now poised to cross the divide and move from the fringes of the energy sector to the mainstream.”
What makes today different from the 1970s is growing apprehension about global warming as a threat to political security and the environment, according to the report. That is pushing governments to demand, and subsidize, greater use of alternative energy.
“Climate change and putting a price on carbon will change the dynamics of the energy marketplace,” said Daniel Yergin, chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates and a leading historian on the oil industry. He noted that with the Chinese and Indian economies growing rapidly, “you need renewables as part of the solution to meet this astonishing demand growth.”
The report notes that renewable fuels will remain small compared with conventional fuels for many years, and their rate of adoption will be determined by the intersection of government policies, economic growth rates and technological breakthroughs.
But the report projects that rising private and public investment in clean energy — including biofuels like ethanol; renewable power, including wind, geothermal and solar generation; nuclear energy; and techniques to capture and store carbon emissions — could surpass $7 trillion by 2030. In 2007, roughly $125 billion was invested in such energy sources worldwide, said Robert LaCount, lead author of the report, about 20 percent more than the year before.
Other analysts say there is no guarantee energy in the future will be cleaner because renewable energy is effectively in a race with other unconventional sources, like liquefied coal, Canadian oil sands and oil shale, which emit higher amounts of carbon dioxide than conventional hydrocarbons. While several major oil companies have joined smaller firms in investing in wind, geothermal and solar energy sources, they are investing far more money at the moment in oil sands.
Environmentalists at the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Pembina Institute have estimated that at least 20 percent of the pollution reductions coming from the new vehicle fuel economy standards law, which Congress passed in 2007, would be negated by the additional production and refining of oil sands in Canada by 2020.
“Producing more low carbon fuels is all well and good, but their benefits can be washed out if we don’t tackle the threat of high carbon fuels like oil sands at the same time,” said Deron Lovaas, an analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Development of renewable energy sources has taken significant leaps. The American wind industry, for example, expanded its generating capacity 45 percent last year, generating enough power for 1.5 million households. Accounting for 30 percent of the new American power-production capacity last year, wind reached 1 percent of the country’s electricity supply, according to data from the American Wind Energy Association.
A recent study by Emerging Energy Research, another
The Cambridge Energy Research Associates study projects that installed capacity of geothermal power should increase by 50 percent or more in the next five years as the number of countries using it doubles, to more than 40. .
The study also noted serious limitations for clean energy development. It estimated that “meaningful deployment” of technology to capture and store carbon dioxide emissions is at least two decades away. It acknowledged the challenges for nuclear power “with regard to policy, capital costs, waste management — and public opinion.”