Renewables Just Keep Getting Better

[Sylvia Else]

On 15/10/2019 1:14 pm, Bill Sloman wrote:

He and Sylvia Else seem to be unaware that back when solar cells were more expensive, there were setups that exploited expensive high-yield cells by using solar concentrators that raised the incoming optical flux by a factor of twenty or so.

How is that relevant?

Sylvia

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 15/10/19 05:32, Rick C wrote:

On Monday, October 14, 2019 at 6:09:39 AM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 14/10/19 09:33, Rick C wrote:
On Monday, October 14, 2019 at 4:05:02 AM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:

And so we are back to my earlier (unoriginal[1]) point: basically you
can use the energy in the light for photosynthesis or electricity;
make your choice

I already replied to that point didn't I?

Yes. You had no answer.

For some reason you *deliberately* snipped your reply and *chose* to make
it difficult to assess. Here it is again...

You are getting your posts confused...

This is what your posted and my reply...
Basically you can use the energy in the light for photosynthesis or
electricity; make your choice

Solar cells are optimized by assuring they receive direct light from the sun
as much as possible. Land is not the quantity to be optimized in most
installations, so you will want to leave space between rows to prevent one
row shading the other. This naturally will leave some land not covered with
solar cells and will receive diffuse light from other parts of the sky.
Grass won't grow great, but it will grow. Not sure it will be robust enough
for animals to graze on. I know sheep grazing messes up the grass because
they don't cut it, they pull it up by the roots. Cows not so much. Cows
like to rub against things and will knock over anything that isn't pretty
firmly in the ground, like fences.

So, we agree. Good. Let's move on.

So while solar panels at latitudes away from the equator will have room for
light to reach the ground, it's not particularly useful for either solar
power or crop growth other than selected species.

So, solar farm make the ground not useful for crops.
So, we agree. Good. Let's move on.

Of course you can't use the same light for both crops and solar cells.
That is totally obvious. So what is your point?

The UK is densely populated to an extent I expect you cannot appreciate.

Land is at a premium, and we have to import ~50% of our food.

Thus removing farmland is a risky option in the long term.

I expect the US is different; so what.

So what is your point??? I have already said many times in many posts in
many threads that the UK is clearly a third world country when it comes to
renewable energy and especially solar power and EVs.

Alt-right style insults don't make your case.

The UK will be left
behind while the rest of the world advances and cleans up their energy
generation. I thought it was you who had pointed out that nuclear is very
unpopular in the UK, so I suppose the UK will be stuck with carrying coal
from Newcastle.

You are showing your ignorance and prejudices, again.

Coal is on track to be phased out by 2025.

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Tuesday, October 15, 2019 at 4:22:41 PM UTC+11, Sylvia Else wrote:

On 15/10/2019 1:14 pm, Bill Sloman wrote:

He and Sylvia Else seem to be unaware that back when solar cells were more expensive, there were setups that exploited expensive high-yield cells by using solar concentrators that raised the incoming optical flux by a factor of twenty or so.

How is that relevant?

Think about it. The optical concentrators wouldn't have generated a particularly uniform density of illumination either, and the peak flux would have been quite lot higher than your raindrops could have managed.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Sylvia Else]

On 13/10/2019 10:53 pm, Sylvia Else wrote:

https://www.in.gov/iurc/files/2018%20NIPSCO%20IRP.pdf

From that document I have extracted the following diagram

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dg09th5086y6d7i/capacity.png?dl=0

DSM stands for demand side management - essentially, some customers
agree to stop using power if necessary.

I find it difficult to see how the diagram on the right for 2028 can
possibly represent a secure supply. Or even a supply during the evening
and night. The battery storage component is very small - it's really
just about levelling out the short term variations in solar. It
certainly doesn't represent storing solar generated energy for use at
night, or during prolonged periods of rain [*].

Those supporting high levels of renewable energy might at least try to
explain how they think this is going to work.

Sylvia.

 

[Sylvia Else]

On 15/10/2019 6:04 pm, Bill Sloman wrote:

On Tuesday, October 15, 2019 at 4:22:41 PM UTC+11, Sylvia Else
wrote:
On 15/10/2019 1:14 pm, Bill Sloman wrote:

He and Sylvia Else seem to be unaware that back when solar cells
were more expensive, there were setups that exploited expensive
high-yield cells by using solar concentrators that raised the
incoming optical flux by a factor of twenty or so.

How is that relevant?

Think about it. The optical concentrators wouldn't have generated a
particularly uniform density of illumination either, and the peak
flux would have been quite lot higher than your raindrops could have
managed.

That's hardly a compelling argument. Concentrators may be carefully
designed to equalise the light over the cell area.

The problem as I understand it is that before a current can flow through
a solar cell at all, there have to be free electrons in it. No free
electrons, then no current, even if there's a voltage across the cell.

So put 10 cells in series, but shield one from light, and what you get
is not 9/10 of the current, or 9/10 of the voltage, but a lot less of both.

Sylvia.

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Tuesday, October 15, 2019 at 7:02:37 PM UTC+11, Sylvia Else wrote:

On 13/10/2019 10:53 pm, Sylvia Else wrote:

https://www.in.gov/iurc/files/2018%20NIPSCO%20IRP.pdf

From that document I have extracted the following diagram

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dg09th5086y6d7i/capacity.png?dl=0

DSM stands for demand side management - essentially, some customers
agree to stop using power if necessary.

I find it difficult to see how the diagram on the right for 2028 can
possibly represent a secure supply. Or even a supply during the evening
and night. The battery storage component is very small - it's really
just about levelling out the short term variations in solar. It
certainly doesn't represent storing solar generated energy for use at
night, or during prolonged periods of rain [*].

Those supporting high levels of renewable energy might at least try to
explain how they think this is going to work.

The link isn't from any kind of explicit supporter of renewable energy - its from the Northern Indiana Public Service Company LLC, which is in the business of keeping its customers happy. It's happy to claim to be planning to support renewable energy, but it clearly doesn't expect its customers to dig deep into the plan.

The South Australian utilities seem to have been happy to invest heavily in intermittent renewable sources without bothering to think to hard about what would happen when they weren't delivering, and got their Tesla power pack after they'd been jeered at about it.

Lots of people seem happy to work like this - if it isn't broken, don't fix it.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Tuesday, October 15, 2019 at 7:00:21 PM UTC+11, Sylvia Else wrote:

On 15/10/2019 6:04 pm, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Tuesday, October 15, 2019 at 4:22:41 PM UTC+11, Sylvia Else
wrote:
On 15/10/2019 1:14 pm, Bill Sloman wrote:

He and Sylvia Else seem to be unaware that back when solar cells
were more expensive, there were setups that exploited expensive
high-yield cells by using solar concentrators that raised the
incoming optical flux by a factor of twenty or so.

How is that relevant?

Think about it. The optical concentrators wouldn't have generated a
particularly uniform density of illumination either, and the peak
flux would have been quite lot higher than your raindrops could have
managed.

That's hardly a compelling argument. Concentrators may be carefully
designed to equalise the light over the cell area.

They might be, but that would cost money. I don't see any sign that anybody is spending that sort of money on the gear that showed up in the wikipedia link I posted

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrator_photovoltaics

Fresnel lenses are pretty crude as lenses go.

The problem as I understand it is that before a current can flow through
a solar cell at all, there have to be free electrons in it. No free
electrons, then no current, even if there's a voltage across the cell.

Really bad thinking. A photon hitting a solar cell creates a pair of charge carriers, with a certain amount of free energy.

If you were using the junction as a detector it would be biased so that positive charge carrier was swept to the negative electrode, and the negative charge carrier swept to the positive electrode.

If you use to generate power it operates with a small bias in the other direction, so that some of the positive charge carriers still make it to the positive electrode, and some of the negative charge carriers to the negative electrode, but some recombine without doing you any good.

A bigger bias means that fewer charge carriers make it to the electrodes, so you get less current, but at a higher voltage.

All this happens in a space that is small enough that charge carriers from different photons don't interact.

So put 10 cells in series, but shield one from light, and what you get
is not 9/10 of the current, or 9/10 of the voltage, but a lot less of both.

Obviously, but you clearly don't understand why.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 15/10/19 12:45, Clive Arthur wrote:

On 14/10/2019 05:04, Bill Sloman wrote:

There are farmers in Australia who are grazing sheep between solar panels. One
advantage is that any weeds don't get tall enough to shade the solar panels.

Presumably one can drive the flock from one paddock to the next and leave it
fallow for long enough to let the grass recover, but not long enough to allow
any weeds to get inconveniently tall.


The obvious thing to do is cover the sheep with solar panels.

That would work, except when they are mating

 

[Clive Arthur]

On 14/10/2019 05:04, Bill Sloman wrote:

There are farmers in Australia who are grazing sheep between solar panels. One advantage is that any weeds don't get tall enough to shade the solar panels.

Presumably one can drive the flock from one paddock to the next and leave it fallow for long enough to let the grass recover, but not long enough to allow any weeds to get inconveniently tall.

The obvious thing to do is cover the sheep with solar panels.

Cheers
--
Clive

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Tuesday, October 15, 2019 at 10:45:58 PM UTC+11, Clive Arthur wrote:

On 14/10/2019 05:04, Bill Sloman wrote:

There are farmers in Australia who are grazing sheep between solar panels. One advantage is that any weeds don't get tall enough to shade the solar panels.

Presumably one can drive the flock from one paddock to the next and leave it fallow for long enough to let the grass recover, but not long enough to allow any weeds to get inconveniently tall.

The obvious thing to do is cover the sheep with solar panels.

It might seem less obviously correct after you'd tried it.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[whit3rd]

On Monday, October 14, 2019 at 5:45:33 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:

On Mon, 14 Oct 2019 14:17:54 -0700, boB <boB@K7IQ.com> wrote:


The solar industry is being heavily over-regulated these days.
Everybody wants a piece of the pie.

Without the over-regulation, and the subsidies, there wouldn't be much
of a solar industry.

Yep, and without the regulation, standardization and technician training would be
a nightmare. Having fifteen disjoint solar industries, like too many chefs, or
fifteen packages/pinouts for an op amp, can ruin the soup.

When something of value is built with a subsidy, that subsidy is only a loan; taxes will
pay it back.

 

[Clive Arthur]

On 15/10/2019 13:19, Bill Sloman wrote:

On Tuesday, October 15, 2019 at 10:45:58 PM UTC+11, Clive Arthur wrote:
On 14/10/2019 05:04, Bill Sloman wrote:

There are farmers in Australia who are grazing sheep between solar panels. One advantage is that any weeds don't get tall enough to shade the solar panels.

Presumably one can drive the flock from one paddock to the next and leave it fallow for long enough to let the grass recover, but not long enough to allow any weeds to get inconveniently tall.

The obvious thing to do is cover the sheep with solar panels.

It might seem less obviously correct after you'd tried it.

I suppose it's something only androids dream of.

Cheers
--
Clive

 

[keith wright]

On Tuesday, 15 October 2019 00:41:26 UTC-7, Tom Gardner wrote:
....

So, solar farm make the ground not useful for crops.
So, we agree. Good. Let's move on.

....

And yet there are many projects showing that crops and solar can coexist favorably:

eg https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190729123751.htm
https://www.futurity.org/agrivoltaics-farming-solar-panels-2152772/
https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/farmers-guide-going-solar

kw

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 15/10/19 18:14, keith wright wrote:

On Tuesday, 15 October 2019 00:41:26 UTC-7, Tom Gardner wrote: ...

So, solar farm make the ground not useful for crops. So, we agree. Good.
Let's move on.

...

And yet there are many projects showing that crops and solar can coexist
favorably:

That's overstating it.

Lab experiments are a start, but no more. Most lab projects
in most disciplines fail to reach wide scale adoption.


> eg https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190729123751.htm

A trial covering a massive 175m2. A start, but by no means
conclusive.

The claimed advantages in Arizona are not relevant to the UK.


> https://www.futurity.org/agrivoltaics-farming-solar-panels-2152772/

Another very small trial; even those results are inconclusive.

"Futurity is your source of research news from leading universities."



> https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/farmers-guide-going-solar

Potentially the least self-serving of those references, but
it is a Q&A session of possibilities rather than demonstrated
successes.

"SETO funds innovative cooperative research and development
projects that drive down the cost of solar electricity and
improve the performance of solar technologies that enhance
grid reliability and security. "

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 2019-10-15 08:53, Clive Arthur wrote:

On 15/10/2019 13:19, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Tuesday, October 15, 2019 at 10:45:58 PM UTC+11, Clive Arthur wrote:
On 14/10/2019 05:04, Bill Sloman wrote:

There are farmers in Australia who are grazing sheep between solar
panels. One advantage is that any weeds don't get tall enough to
shade the solar panels.

Presumably one can drive the flock from one paddock to the next and
leave it fallow for long enough to let the grass recover, but not
long enough to allow any weeds to get inconveniently tall.

The obvious thing to do is cover the sheep with solar panels.

It might seem less obviously correct after you'd tried it.

I suppose it's something only androids dream of.

Cheers

I saw what you did there.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

On Mon, 14 Oct 2019 21:42:23 -0700 (PDT), Rick C
<gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote:

On Monday, October 14, 2019 at 9:27:09 AM UTC-4, k...@notreal.com wrote:
On Sun, 13 Oct 2019 21:15:55 -0700 (PDT), Rick C
gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sunday, October 13, 2019 at 4:10:52 PM UTC-4, boB wrote:
On Sun, 13 Oct 2019 08:13:40 -0700, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com
wrote:

On Sun, 13 Oct 2019 22:53:35 +1100, Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid
wrote:

On 13/10/2019 7:23 am, Rick C wrote:
I ran across this article about an Indiana utility having rejected a bid for fossil fuel generation based on cost and risk.

"Vectren’s 2016 proposal to replace coal with a gas plant was declined as too large and financially risky for the small utility, requiring a new bid – which recently came in showing wind, solar and storage dominating the list of offers."

In addition it seems another Indiana utility is going hard on for renewables...

"The Northern Indiana Public Service Company (NIPSCO) learns fast. In 2018, the utility published research suggesting that closing coal plants early, and replacing them with renewables and energy storage, would save customers $4.3 billion. Around the same time as the above bids, the utility announced it would be closing a majority of its coal facilities by 2023 (thus the need for the following procurement), and all coal facilities by 2028. Coal lobbyists, expectedly, have flooded the state’s legislature."

They are looking at adding "2.3 GW of capacity from solar power plants coupled with energy storage". The costs they are expecting to see...

"A preview of where pricing might come in could be seen in the below image, from a summer of 2018 NIPSCO RFP, where we saw bids for solar power at 3.57˘/kWh for 1.3 GW-AC, and 705 MW-AC of solar+storage at an extra charge of $5.90/kW-Mo."

If I understand the storage costs, they seem pretty trivial. I'd love to have my power supplied this way. It would cut my electric bill in half. Good thing my power is local, but not so local it comes from the expensive nuclear power plant next door.

I'm wondering how soon it will be until no one even thinks of any other energy source. Certainly nuclear is a bad idea going forward.


Their desire to get rid of coal seems to be related to some issues
specific to them regarding coal supply. They wouldn't apply world-wide.

The referenced 2018 document is

https://www.in.gov/iurc/files/2018%20NIPSCO%20IRP.pdf

From that document I have extracted the following diagram

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dg09th5086y6d7i/capacity.png?dl=0

DSM stands for demand side management - essentially, some customers
agree to stop using power if necessary.

I find it difficult to see how the diagram on the right for 2028 can
possibly represent a secure supply. Or even a supply during the evening
and night. The battery storage component is very small - it's really
just about levelling out the short term variations in solar. It
certainly doesn't represent storing solar generated energy for use at
night, or during prolonged periods of rain [*].

Sylvia

[*] My own solar panels do reasonably well under cloud, but their output
drops to pretty much zero in rain, presumably because the drops of rain
on the panels mess them up optically.


Storage is one big problem with solar and wind. We are now having big,
week-long, deliberate [1] blackouts in big regions of California, and
I hear people talking about getting residential batteries. They
haven't done the math.

Even funnier, they are talking about using the batteries in their
electric cars to power up their houses.


[1] PG&E is delivering a public lesson on the value of electricity.
Yes ! absolutely !

In California where the sun actually kind of works, home solar and
batteries with inverters can help carry them through times of power
outages like this just fine... But those people would have to
conserve on their electric usage compared to how cheap and
uninteruptable their utility electricity normally is.

I guess week long electrical outages will be the new normal. Sounds like a huge incentive to install wind/solar and backup. Just make sure the system is the type that will power your home when the grid is down.

I'm wondering if this outage is PG&Es way of Enroning California again. This is because they can't make their system work without starting fires?

Like all of California, PG&E is going bankrupt. No money for
improvements and the state just can't resist piling on more
regulations. The reason the outages were so long is that the state
requires that every inch of the system be inspected before being
re-energized. It was equated to having to call out an electrician to
inspect the wiring in your entire house, every time you blow a fuse in
an old house.

Your starting premise is wrong, that the outages happened because of an electrical problem in the first place.

Like always, you can't read. Try it again. I'll let you move your
lips this time.

>"PG&E has planned these purposeful blackouts for fear that its power lines and other electrical equipment may start fires during vulnerable times."

But they must inspect the entire system before re-energizing it.

>So the system was not faulty and the length of the outage had nothing to do with "inspecting the system".

Wrong.

"Past power shutoffs in Northern California this year, like the ones in Napa County and the Sierra Foothills, were resolved in one day or less. However, the company warned customers earlier this year that it may keep the lights off for as long as seven days in particularly dire fire conditions."

Do you ever read before you write about this stuff?

You can't, obviously.

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Wednesday, October 16, 2019 at 10:58:16 AM UTC+11, Phil Hobbs wrote:

On 2019-10-15 08:53, Clive Arthur wrote:
On 15/10/2019 13:19, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Tuesday, October 15, 2019 at 10:45:58 PM UTC+11, Clive Arthur wrote:
On 14/10/2019 05:04, Bill Sloman wrote:

There are farmers in Australia who are grazing sheep between solar
panels. One advantage is that any weeds don't get tall enough to
shade the solar panels.

Presumably one can drive the flock from one paddock to the next and
leave it fallow for long enough to let the grass recover, but not
long enough to allow any weeds to get inconveniently tall.

The obvious thing to do is cover the sheep with solar panels.

It might seem less obviously correct after you'd tried it.

I suppose it's something only androids dream of.

Cheers

I saw what you did there.

Philip K Dick "Do androids dream of electric sheep?"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Androids_Dream_of_Electric_Sheep%3F

Clearly the idea is dick-headed.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Robert Baer]

Sylvia Else wrote:

On 15/10/2019 6:04 pm, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Tuesday, October 15, 2019 at 4:22:41 PM UTC+11, Sylvia Else
wrote:
On 15/10/2019 1:14 pm, Bill Sloman wrote:

He and Sylvia Else seem to be unaware that back when solar cells
were more expensive, there were setups that exploited expensive
high-yield cells by using solar concentrators that raised the
incoming optical flux by a factor of twenty or so.

How is that relevant?

Think about it. The optical concentrators wouldn't have generated a
particularly uniform density of illumination either, and the peak
flux would have been quite lot higher than your raindrops could have
managed.




That's hardly a compelling argument. Concentrators may be carefully
designed to equalise the light over the cell area.

The problem as I understand it is that before a current can flow through
a solar cell at all, there have to be free electrons in it. No free
electrons, then no current, even if there's a voltage across the cell.

* But i have to PAY for those electrons as they flow thru my home.
Hell, i had to pay for the wires!
Nuttin' free, sweetheart.

So put 10 cells in series, but shield one from light, and what you get
is not 9/10 of the current, or 9/10 of the voltage, but a lot less of both.

Sylvia.

 

Robert Baer <robertbaer@localnet.com> wrote in
news:MswpF.57465$O_.41969@fx39.iad:

Sylvia Else wrote:
On 13/10/2019 10:53 pm, Sylvia Else wrote:

https://www.in.gov/iurc/files/2018%20NIPSCO%20IRP.pdf

 From that document I have extracted the following diagram

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dg09th5086y6d7i/capacity.png?dl=0

DSM stands for demand side management - essentially, some
customers agree to stop using power if necessary.

I find it difficult to see how the diagram on the right for 2028
can possibly represent a secure supply. Or even a supply during
the evening and night. The battery storage component is very
small - it's really just about levelling out the short term
variations in solar. It certainly doesn't represent storing
solar generated energy for use at night, or during prolonged
periods of rain [*].


Those supporting high levels of renewable energy might at least
try to explain how they think this is going to work.

Sylvia.
Try??
When you are getting PAID to support "renewables"?

I saw a very well made scale replica of a working steam locomotive
engine on "American Pickers" the other day, and that sucker looked
cool. Ought to bring back steam powered cars maybe. Fire them with
NG or such.

 

On Tuesday, 15 October 2019 08:04:39 UTC+1, Bill Sloman wrote:

On Tuesday, October 15, 2019 at 4:22:41 PM UTC+11, Sylvia Else wrote:
On 15/10/2019 1:14 pm, Bill Sloman wrote:

He and Sylvia Else seem to be unaware that back when solar cells were more expensive, there were setups that exploited expensive high-yield cells by using solar concentrators that raised the incoming optical flux by a factor of twenty or so.

How is that relevant?

Think about it. The optical concentrators wouldn't have generated a particularly uniform density of illumination either, and the peak flux would have been quite lot higher than your raindrops could have managed.

whoosh.