After Gutenberg

Subtitle: “Gosh! Doesn’t it seem like just last year that…”

“The scorching California sun has pushed the states power generation structure to the limits,” says the Naib. Under this near record breaking demand for power, says Japlopnik, and with “temperatures edging into the triples across the sunshiny golden state, the Governator has declared a heat emergency. Mr. Freeze Schwarzenegger has ordered cooling centers for overheated citizens open in ten California counties.”

The Naib wants Renewable Energy and the Naib wants it now!

The Naib wants solar in the summer, wind in the winter, and geothermal all year round.

Solar power is so key for situations like this because it produces peak load during these super hot days of summer when demand for power is at its peak. Similarly it is most often the windiest in the winter, during another peak demand for heating costs.

Add geothermal, which is a constant renewable energy resource, and you have a way to “smooth out” peak load with clean energy.

Meanwhile, there now is a Stage 1 emergency, the first of three steps that lead to a blackout. Utilities will be forced to cut power to parts of the grid in order to avoid a system wide crash. “We still a long way from a Stage 3 alert and blackouts,” said Stephanie McCorkle, a spokeswoman for the California Independent System Operator.

Before mandating reductions, the utilities are tapping operating reserves and stepping up calls for conservation. The Naib notes that demand is coming close to using all the available supply.

For two days now demand has surged well over forecasted limits (1000 MW over!), if that happens again today they will set an all time record for energy demand.

There is another alternative to any such broad stroke reductions. When a utility customer grants the company control over energy consumption on the customer’s side of the meter for conservation / energy efficiency, load management, and load building, then the company has extended its operating reserves in preparation for such crises.

Demand side management requires greater system sophistication than some utilities want to implement. Greater reliability means a paradigm shift, i.e., recognition that an upward aggregation of local generation, storage, and load control can make a difference. Furthermore, the environmental contribution of such technologies is fundamental, not secondary to such development. It is noteworthy that some of the areas where high temperatures are contributing to peak demand are areas well-suited for solar thermal electric power plants that run off the heat provided by the Sun.

California’s all-time record energy demand of 50,270 megawatts was set last July during a two-week heat wave blamed for hundreds of deaths. This year electricity again is in scarce supply. Simultaneously in the northern and southern parts of the state, temperatures are high. There also are high temperatures throughout Arizona, New Mexico complicating the state’s efforts to pull in energy.

California’s electric usage curve yesterday hit a maximum of 48,000 megaWatts (48 gigaWatts); and, because it’s close to California’s total capacity (about 55,000 megaWatts), there was a “flex alert”.

Doug Korthof asks, “O.K., how much solar power it would take to meet ALL of that 48,000 megaWatts; and, not only get rid of the daytime alert, but also allow them to shut off nuclear and out-of-state coal plants?”

We’re dealing with capacity, or energy generated, so we would need, at only 10% efficiency of 100 Watts per square meter, about 480 million panels (48,000/100), or about 480 million square yards.

Let’s say there’s about 10M buildings, commercial and residential, with roofs, and that each roof averages 30 square yards. That takes care of 300 million of the panels right there.

Of course, there’s shading and other issues; but Santa Monica did a “rooftop resource” study that proved they could produce their own peak energy — all of it. So let’s stick with these numbers, for now.

Photo: Borrego Solar Systems, Inc.
At the Fairbanks Ridge Family Apartments, 20 carports will be generating power. Using solar energy for air conditioning makes particular good sense.

The other 180 million panels would, if used to cover parking garages and carports, be 6 panels per car, since there are 30 million cars in California. So we could build “solar porticos”, such as at SCAQMD and at the Helms site in Culver City, and in many other places where cars park. And we’d need to shelter each car with a
portico of only 6 square meters.

Well, this is just a thought experiment, but you get the picture. There’s LOTS of unused solar peak resources, and EVERYWHERE you see a sunny field or rooftop, that’s a potential revenue source.

All it takes is the will.

Now let’s look at the cost. 480M panels, installed, amount to about 48,000,000 kilo-Watts (48,000 mega-Watts). The rule of thumb for installed systems is $9-$10/Watt, but for large systems, and those without red tape, it’s about $8/Watt. So that’s a total of less than $480,000,000,000 or 480 Billion dollars for ALL of California to “go solar” and get rid of other daytime power plants!

And this is a one-time expense, not a recurring nightmare like San Onofre, which discharges nuclear waste each day into the Ocean outfall, along with two BILLION gallons of heated water riddled with dead and dying Ocean creatures. And which discharges radioactive Xenon periodically from the two remaining containment domes, which drifts out over the highway nearby.

This means San Onofre, Palo Verde and Devils Canyon NUKES can be closed, the coal plants in NV and UT can be shut down, and the obsolete single-pass steam plants that are killing the Ocean in Huntington Beach and Los Alamitos can be shut down until upgraded!

Not exactly a lot of money, considering how much we blow down the rat-hole on natural gas, coal, nuclear power, and the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the other handouts to Big Oil.

P.S. Doing ALL of America would be about 8 times the cost for California, or less than 5 Trillion dollars. Amortized over 25 years, that’s 200 Billion per year. About what the gambling industry makes.

The value of the PDSI (Palmer Drought Severity Index) is reflective of the how the soil moisture compares with normal conditions. A given PDSI value is usually a combination of the current conditions and the previous PDSI value, so the PDSI also reflects the progression of trends, whether it is a drought or a wet spell.

Now Korthof is in the solar biz, so he is promoting what he knows (and by which he profits), whereas Khosla suggests that improved transmission plus greater investment in CSP (Concentrating Solar Power). This blog would take the sackcloth Woolsey approach and say that both are correct. From a strategic sense, installing photo voltaic systems would seem to make sense wherever there is the potential for water shortages. From a political sense, centralized, utility scale solar thermal electric power make sense where there is sufficient energy and adequate transmission capability.

Since each depends upon solar energy, neither addresses the intermittent nature of solar, which is an oversight of the Korthof thought experiment.