Renewable Energy Solar Energy Wind Energy Geothermal Energy Bioenergy Hydropower
 

Is the Transmission 'Problem' Real?

By Stephen Lacey, Editor
August 19, 2010   |   33 Comments

Do you like this research & reports?

Email   Bookmark Bookmark   Print   Feed   Share
 

California -- Aside from policy stability, it's probably one of the most widely-cited problems facing the renewable energy industry: The lack of transmission. But is the problem really as big as we're told? Or are utilities using it as an excuse to get more money for an unnecessary build-out of infrastructure and increase profits?

"This effort is not surprising considering that network upgrades create more rate base and therefore higher profits for IOUs."

Jaleh Firooz, former transmission planner, SDG&E
33 Reader Comments
Comment
1 of 33
Thank you for finally exposing the SCAM that Big Transmission is! It is 100% designed to increase profits, both in the construction (with guaranteed 12% profit margins) and in the operation (especially now that we have quietly moved to nodal billing so power gets repriced dozens of times before it hits your home or business). Ms. Firooz is very smart and is right on target.

The other way, as you mention, that Big Transmission really hurts us (assuming we set aside the enormous global warming impacts of the SF6 it spews into the environment, as well as the habitat and species losses and eminent domain and fires) is that it recentralizes our power grid at the exact moment we should be DEcentralizing it.

For one thing there is ZERO economy of scale with PV except for modest installation simplifications. As for pricing, families who get together (like at 1BOG) can purchase panels and installation "in bulk" and that gets them an average 20% discount. For another thing, by the time you factor in transmission losses and costs, remote CSP is FAR more expensive per MWh than in-city PV, not to mention far worse for the planet, both locally (huge ecosystem destruction and water waste) and globally (enormous construction and manufacturing emissions).

For another thing, why on EARTH would we trust another phase of our energy future to the fine folks at Chevron, BP, Goldman Sachs, Sempra, etc.? Aren't they the ones who have been killing our planet for profit? That is exactly what they intend to KEEP doing with Big Solar and Big Wind. These things are boondoggles in the extreme, and I would be very surprised if they netted ANY GHG reductions compared to the gas they are offsetting. Why haven't they been required to prove they will, by the way? One would think that if we are doing all this to save us from global warming, we would run the cradle to grave emissions comparisons with gas and with local PV to see who wins. Obviously CSP ain't replacing coal anything soon.
Comment
2 of 33
August 20, 2010
As an Electrical Engineer who has started up a Renewable Energy Development Company, I start with the premise of no new powerlines for any new project. I scope out the transmission facilities prior to siting any development. Most investors want to use their own land, but they usually have no usable powerlines available. I finally removed all references to using their own land from all marketing. If the great recession caused by the last 2 Fed Chairmen proved anything, it is land is worth less than its carrying and opportunity costs. Distributed generation and the smart grid is what renewable energy developers need to focus on. Powerline upgrades are all that is needed if you know your business. 25MW Solar PV power plants intelligently sited is all you need. Look at the approach in California to site such plants outside all small and medium sized cities. You avoid transmission line losses (12%?) and localize disturbances. The only reason any electrical engineer worth anything would build losses and less reliability into a system is because he was told to. Probably by a electrical utility company executive! When everybody generates their own clean energy onsite, what is a utility to sell? If you take into consideration basic service charges each month and the cost of electricity, I can already take energy misers off-grid. The service charges alone pay for the intial batteries and the rebuilding required over a 20-25 year lifespan. Such service charges can add up to $5000/25 years. I would recommend to utility executives to become electricity misers and go off-grid themselves. Take the money that they pay to their employer for electricity and put it into their IRA pretax. Said company will match at least a percentage of it. What would their ROI be then? If these executives are all that smart, they should be able to figure this out themselves. Electricity is not rocket science. Thomas Edison said "I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy". His only sin was ac.
Comment
3 of 33
August 20, 2010
Sometimes things just don't add up. $1.8 billion cost for 150 miles of grid. This is a cost of $120 million dollars a mile. Who is fooling who. Is that a good investment? You end up with a losses. As a customer of the grid we have no return on investment with electric bills. I just don't understand why we are still using technology that was developed back in the late 1800's to power our future. Does no one understand we have a choice. Produce electric power at our homes and businesses or stay a customer of the electric utility company. Very shortly electric power will be un-affordable! FIT will drive the cost of a $100.00 electric bill over $400.00. The grid is old but it still works! The only good solution to these problems; high cost and reliablility is to go off the grid all together.
Comment
4 of 33
August 20, 2010
I believe we should just stop thinking of net-zero energy and concentrate on zero energy. Of course there need to be local grids for campuses and communities, but these should be self contained zero energy cases. Selling back power to utilities is nonsense - it just extends the problem.
Comment
5 of 33
August 20, 2010
Grid, Smart Grid, New Transmission Lines- What a Crock of ___.

If more people utilized their own Renewable Energy Production for Home or Business use. I believe it would lessen the need for Grid Improvements simply because the Energy needed for each House Hold or Business is produced on site- no extra power lines will be needed.

Simpleton Example: if 5 of the 10 Houses on my Block utilize RE Producing Systems. This can lower the need of Electricity Generated by the Electric Company by 1/2 for my Block. With no Transmission Lines Needed.

The only drawbacks I for-see is the Loss income from the Taxes the Government levies on every bill. [My last bill had between $5-$10 dollars worth of Taxes.] And, the Revenue for the Electric Companies and those they employ.

Both of which are small prices to pay in lieu of the Eventual Global Warming which is increasing every year. Worst Case Scenario: We can live without Electricity- But we can't live without food. Our Food comes from the Earth if the Earth is too Hot to support Vegetation where will our meals come from?

I welcome all Green and Eco Friendly Comments on my Green and Eco Friendly Web Site: http://www.stlouisrenewableenergy.blogspot.com. If you have Green and Eco friendly information to share I offer Guest Post Opportunities.

Build Green,
Scotty
Comment
6 of 33
August 20, 2010
The utilities are correct in that there should be a worldwide link to smarten up all worldwide grids. Energy resources using wind & sun can be linked globally over a 24 hour period at any time.
Electric vehicles and robotics using swappable, rechargable batteries will keep the grid from being overloaded.
Their (utility) only overload could come from the data demand -not from the robotics and vehicles.
I disagree on the comment regarding FIT's. They are a must. Allowing consumers the opportunity to benefit (20 million rooftops) from our natural resources will provide jobs and economic awakening.
Comment
7 of 33
August 20, 2010
The real limitation with feeding solar power into the grid isn't transmission anyway. It is the dynamics, the fact that the sun only shines in the day and can turn on and off sporadically with clouds. The real drawback with grid-tie solar is the increased use of peaker plants to deal with these increased dynamics. New transmission lines will do nothing to address this issue. A better idea is distributed generation brought down to the level of each home and building so that the energy is used where it is produced so that it doesn't need to be transmitted at all. Of course, to do this, there needs to be some local energy storage but with intelligent load management this can be kept to a minimum. The cost of local energy storage can be further offset if it serves the double function of energy storage for UPS systems and the recognized values of autonomous energy security. An example of these things being fully implemented in systems today is at http://www.transverter.com/smart.html
We all recognize that the grid will have problems and limitations moving into the future. There are two ways to deal with this, feed the old dinosaur or work on evolving the things that connect to the grid, the houses, the buildings. The Smart Grid can be implemented from the bottom up, one house at a time, so that it is something that the existing grid can easily deal with. As this approach was deployed, eventually, the need for peaker plants would disappear altogether and people wouldn't even be talking about new Transmission lines. Microgrids could evolve to the point that the grid was viewed as just one of many sources feeding into the mix. See http://www.transverter.com/micro.html
Comment
8 of 33
August 20, 2010
OffGridSolar - the cost is $12m/mile, not $120. In most non-Kalifornia parts of the country it'd be closer to $1.2m/mile.
Comment
9 of 33
August 20, 2010
People! For crying out loud, how can we have a meaningful discussion on these important topics if we can't do basic math. 1.8 billion dollars (that's $1,800,000,000.)divided by 150 miles is $12,000,000. per mile. That's twelve million dollars per mile. OKAY! C'mon.
Now let's discuss whether that's a significant number, a bargain or a boondoggle.
Comment
10 of 33
August 21, 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abHbcZvOoWc
Comment
11 of 33
August 21, 2010
Many of us in Minnesota have been advocating for more of a distributed approach to renewable energies. It has fallen on deaf ears from the MNPUC and the legislators in our state. The "experts" are the utilities, apparently, and those of us in the renewable sector have little or no creditibility.

Also a problem has been the environmentalists, ironically enough, who are being funded by corporate interests, utilities and the Iberdrolas and NextEras, etc., wanting the transmission infrastructure build out so they can deliver 1000's of MW's of wind (and coal) into our state (Minnesota). Our challenge is in getting the decision makers to develop a much smarter approach to energy delivery which has to include an all inclusive economic discussion. It aint happening. Communities continue to export billions of dollars when those dollars could be retained by these communities. Community wind, photovolatics and on site generation are getting short shrift, unfortunately.

Once you can get legislators to wake up to the economic impacts renwables could have for states and local economies then you will have a significant shift in how energy is generated.
Comment
12 of 33
August 21, 2010
In addition to growing availability of distributed power sources (wind, solar, vehicle-to-grid), time of day pricing can shift loads to non-peak times and thereby reduce the need for high capacity transmission lines with low utilization.
Comment
13 of 33
August 22, 2010
Its been said that a healthy human brain has the ability to create new neurological pathways or, "information highways" as I like to call them, in order for the person to deal with new situations the arise in life. There is a story that is told by some Quantum physicist that goes something like this: When Christopher Columbus' armada first arrived in the Caribbean Islands the natives there could not see the ships on the water. They new something was there but had no preconceived notion of what. But one "shaman" kept going back to the beach each day looking out across the water until one day he saw that they were ships! He then called the others to the beach and told them "those are ships." They could all see them from then on. This is known as a paradigm.
Just because all of our minds are being flooded with stories of how RE is the future of energy, it does not automatically mean a paradigm has been created. In truth, RE is simply an extension of or, a perpetuation of an existing paradigm. The paradigm that is, the use of energy to serve the human race with nothing more than a convenience and, in exchange for that convenience we are heating up Earths atmosphere. For the sake of convenience, we are changing energy into heat, pollution or no pollution, it makes no difference. There is little doubt in my mind that if we were to phase out, over the coming century, all of these energies the we have taken for granted over the past century, world wide human population would decrease by an amount equal to the increase we have seen of nearly 5 billion people in just the last 100 years. But of course we all know that the "power that be" would never let that happen. Why? At this point it makes little to no differnce weather its crude oil or photovoltaics or wind energy or methene hydrates, because non polluting energy suppliers have choosen a path that is parallel to polluting energy suppliers. Not in the sense of pollutiuon but int the sense of perpetuating the use of energy
Comment
14 of 33
August 22, 2010
thomas-schmidt-36371: The use of energy by humans is entirely appropriate. It is the availability of energy and the ability to intelligently deploy it that has allowed us to build a global society and a quality of life that doesn't involve dying in terror at age 35 in a damp cave.

Waste of energy, that I'm all for fighting. One can also argue that we are overpopulated and have become so due to cheap energy -- lack of an appreciation for the value and proper use of energy, that I'm all for fighting.

But if you think a human can survive, much less enjoy a long life, without using a lot of energy, you are lying to yourself.
Comment
15 of 33
August 22, 2010
This discussion misses the big picture. The grid, and a far better and extensive one, is sorely needed.

The right problem to solve in the energy space is how to make it practical to get nearly 100% of all energy usage (displacing the fossil fuels we use to heat our homes, fuel our cars, and make electricity) to come from clean, renewable sources. Key to this is a way to deliver these "green electrons" to consumers in a cost-effective, non-obtrusive way.

Let's look at local solar. It cannot solve the problem. Solar energy density is too low to supply the energy needs of US households, given the density at which we live, the conversion efficiency from photons to the other forms of energy (heat, electricity, transportation fuel), and our desired standard of living (read: per capita energy consumption). For this source to be significant in the big picture, solar needs to be harvested en masse where it is economical to do so, and transported to consumers. This is akin to food production – even in the suburbs (which average ~3 people/acre), population density is too great to grow all of one's food in one's backyard (you need to dedicate over 1 acre/person if you are not vegetarian).

Per the EIA, the US per-capita residential energy use (electricity, heating, transportation) is ~150 GJ/yr. Over the US over a year solar flux averages ~140 W/m2. At 10% efficiency (conversion, storage, reconversion), this calculates out to ~340 m2/person (1/12 acre) dedicated to energy harvesting. Usable US residential rooftop space for PV (per The Energy Foundation) is ~10m2/person, so the shortfall is 34X. Even improved efficiency won't span this gap.

Improved transmission line technology must be developed to allow moving large amounts of electric energy over long distances at high efficiency and at low cost – and do it invisibly. Then renewable energy has a chance to supplant fossil fuels across ALL of their uses.
Comment
16 of 33
August 23, 2010
I'm still reeling from go_undergrounds info that per capita energy consumption in the US is 150 GJ/yr.... unless I am mistaken that is about 41,600 kWh per year... about five times the per capita energy consumption in the UK - which is just over 8000 kWh (see below).... Really puts US energy consumption into context....

If US energy consumption was reduced to European levels, and the conversion efficieny of PV went up to nearer 20% (not far off the best systems today) then the 10m2 of roof space could provide about a third of the average energy consumption...

Although that would still leave plenty of room for utility scale renewable energy and storage systems...

Best!

http://www.decc.gov.uk/assets/decc/Statistics/publications/ecuk/269-ecuk-domestic-2010.xls
Comment
17 of 33
August 23, 2010
The UK data that TheMushyPea cites does not include residential transportation, so it is not a fair comparison. In the US 45% of a household's energy use (66 GJ/yr/person or 18,500 kWhr/yr/person) is for family vehicles. I expect this to be a much smaller number in Europe, as more energy-efficient public transportation is the norm. So the ratio between the countries will be somewhere between 2.8 and 5 when residential transportation is factored in. Of course, electrification of transportation will immediately drop the energy intensity of the sector due to the higher efficiency of electric motors compared to internal combustion engines (even if the electrons come from combustion-driven power plants).
No image available
Comment
18 of 33
Anonymous
August 24, 2010
Johnlhie write in comment #11:
"Community wind, photovolatics and on site generation are getting short shrift, unfortunately."
and several others comment on their notions about distributed generation.

If would be well to remember that much of the US population lives in large cities, where, for instance, you cannot locate wind turbines and where distributed rooftop solar PV will never be able to provide all of the energy needs. Major enhancements to the nation's electricity grid are essential if urban centers are to be able to reliably employ renewable power.

Firooz is arguing about specific requirements in CA for grid reliability and suggests that at times of peak transmission grid congestion standby methane generation could be used, thus reducing the need for major new transmission projects. This argument is not without merit. Nevertheless, as CA moves to a larger share of renewables in its generation mix some increase in transmission capacity is going to be required to meet the same levels of energy demand. Greater grid interconnectivity is essential to smooth out some of the intermittency from wind power and other variable generation schemes and new transmission lines are needed to connect areas with large renewable generation potential to the extant grid. A few rural recluses willing to invest in expensive storage may be able to dispense with grid access, but the vast majority of the population needs grid access and will benefit from grid improvements.
Steven
Comment
19 of 33
August 24, 2010
Distributed solar will be needed in large cities as electric vehicles come into their own. We will not be able to stop the charging of these vehicles during peak periods. Therefore, without distributed power generation or storage we will need to rebuild intra-city grids. A massively expensive and daunting task at best. Seen in this light, the utilities are shooting themselves in the foot by fighting FITs. Overloaded intra-city grids could force the public to move permanently away from utilities. Distributed solar in cities looks like a bargain!

A separate point -- the calculations made above for personal energy use vs distributed solar do not take into account the ability to cogenerate hot water from solar collectors.
Comment
20 of 33
August 24, 2010
I believe the best interests of the planet are to give citizens options on how or whether to interact with 'the grid'. Individual and community based generation, storage and load balancing will eventually lead to the collapse of the utility business model. Deregulation means energy production, storage and transmission will be de-coupled and
'markets' and 'services' will predominate. Why shouldn't a utility think more like a bank and encourage customer production/investment? It can make money without building multi-billion dollar plants by distributing, storing and managing distributed generation to ensure every kWH expended is at the lowest cost, financially and environmentally. If I had a million solar customers producing energy for me at peak daylight hours, why wouldn't I want to "Bank" it and give it back to them at off peak rates? The smart utilities will figure out ways to make money as service provider, just as telcos have become data repositories and backup centers. Those that get it and adapt will eventually receive much better than 12% returns.
Comment
21 of 33
August 24, 2010
This project might benefit from using superconductor technology to reduce transmission losses and to reduce the size of the right of way.

If I had a plug-in hybrid vehicle, I would probably charge it at night instead of during the day when I have need of the vehicle.

I like Steven's suggestion to use methane(natural gas?) for local power generation. There are some small gas turbines, http://www.capstoneturbine.com/, that might work for cogeneration as well as fuel cells that use natural gas, http://www.clearedgepower.com/.

FIT doesn't follow the principles of accounting and economics and results in poor allocation of resources. (i.e. The best place to use PV is in the SouthWest or rural areas where power lines aren't available.)
Comment
22 of 33
August 24, 2010
go_underground's argument for expanded transmission completely ignores the role of increased efficiency of energy use. Conservation and efficiency being the cheapest, greatest sources of energy, should be our priorities. Americans' profligate use and waste of energy is why we're having this discussion at all. E.g., buildings here consume about 40% of the total U.S. energy demand; traditionally, our construction methods are notoriously inefficient. Europe's PassivHaus model, as one example in many, points the way to a future of vastly reduced energy demand. So before planning to move more energy/power, we must first ask, do we need it? The answer is no. I may not be willing to go as far as Mr. Schmidt, but there is an insidious myth we worship in our time: that is a lockstep between energy consumption rates and measures of "prosperity."
Comment
23 of 33
August 24, 2010
Two things;
My ute charges nearly a dollar a day just for hook up. The power I produce to sell back must exceed that to gain on them. That is about 30 bucks a month. Increase in grid deployment and complexity will certainly increase the per-diem charge. Smart- for their profits.

I gotta plug for distributed solar thermal again. The DOE says over half of energy use in this country is for heating, and if much of that could be laid off on DST, the grid build out would be far less demanding. And DST wattage is nearly five times less costly to obtain than PV or wind. Five times more efficient. More bang for the buck. Yet PV is the darling tech here.

This past Monday, I visited the public library in St. Croix Falls, WI. They have 38 CVT collectors on the roof, totaling about 190K BTU's/Hr on sun. And sun pipes all over the roof for light..
They took the initiative, raised funds, and decided to DO something! They are just down the street from a huge hydro plant, so power would not have been a problem otherwise, I expect.
Comment
24 of 33
August 24, 2010
Energy efficiency and conservation will only go so far. They are not the long term answer. Of course it makes sense to trim fat. But just like with school budgets, you run out of fat pretty quickly, and further cuts cut services (which for energy equates to lowering one's standard of living). Indeed, long-term subsidizations of energy costs in the US have made energy inefficient buildings and transportation the norm.

I see no reason to believe that per-capita energy use in the developed world won't continue to rise as our standard of living rises, as long as we have adequate supplies of clean, low-cost energy to work with. We can't even conceive of the novel ways humanity will be using energy 100 years hence.

It is true that using solar heat for household heating needs is far more energy efficient than having electricity as the intermediary for heating applications, and this thus lowers the requisite collection area, but it does so at the cost and complexity of another energy harvesting system (thermal collection, storage, plumbing, etc.)

Burning natural gas (which is a fossil fuel) still pumps new CO2 into the atmosphere, causing global warming.

As shown before, local generation from renewables, with the technologies presently available, does not scale to the level needed to address our energy needs. Yet we direly need a way to get off of fossil fuels. An expanded electrical grid is a key piece of the puzzle. Renewables can't fill the bill unless they are aggregated across wide geographies to average out wind, solar, tidal, etc. variations, to limit the amount of storage needed. High transmission efficiency is needed once power is moved over large distances to keep losses in check. Generation will be distant from population centers because populations aren't collocated with good harvestable resources. The challenge is to create a modernized grid that doesn't disrupt vistas, interfere with wildlife, lower property values, cost a fortune, etc.
No image available
Comment
25 of 33
Anonymous
August 24, 2010
In comment #23 Phil states: " The DOE says over half of energy use in this country is for heating, and if much of that could be laid off on DST, the grid build out would be far less demanding. "

Presumably Phil means to say that over half of RESIDENTIAL energy usage is for heating, which is about right if one includes both space and water heating (note the distinction between residential usage and all usage, which would include large amounts for transportation and industrial purposes). However, only about 20% of ELECTRICITY usage is for space and water heating (http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/recs/recs2001/enduse2001/enduse2001.html). Furthermore, in CA peak demand would be for summer days due to A/C needs and space heating during such times is minimal. Because the transmission grid has to be sized to meet peak demand, when heating demands are pretty low, a major shift to solar thermal heating will only slightly impact transmission grid needs, contrary to Phil's claim.

I'm curious which utility gets away with nearly $30/month for grid access--I have paid less than $10/month in every state I have lived in....
Steven
Comment
26 of 33
August 24, 2010
Most of the wind/solar energy won't be fed back into the grid anyways. It will go directly to the consumer. With the coming electric car market and 20 million (for starters) rooftops feeding into home battery systems (note microsoft possibly entering the battery market). These technologies are making it safer for the consumer to use the new batteries.

Battery production technology advancements

http://www.batterypoweronline.com/eNewsletters/BP-eNews-10/BP_Newsletters_0610.htm#7

http://www.batterypoweronline.com/

Job creation -yes. More (energy) dollars into the pockets of consumers (direct economic stimulation).

We don't need to develop any other types of energy that are prone to being utilized by monoplolistic thinking utility companies. This includes concentrated solar, big solar, thermal, nuclear, etc..
Comment
27 of 33
August 24, 2010
Most people live in urban or suburban areas.Check the demographic maps.Most people have city water,sewage, electricity,and paved roads. They work in energy hungry buildings and with energy hungry hospitals.I am confident isolated farm houses and cabins can produce enough for their very small needs.
But,if we move toward electric vehicles, and if we electrify the trains,then it seems we should go back to the utilities and help them devise a cheap method of sending renewable energy to their centralized hubs.
No image available
Comment
28 of 33
Anonymous
August 25, 2010
electric38 writes in comment #26: "Most of the wind/solar energy won't be fed back into the grid anyways. It will go directly to the consumer. With the coming electric car market and 20 million (for starters) rooftops feeding into home battery systems (note microsoft possibly entering the battery market)."

Virtually all wind power is fed directly into the grid, contrary to the claim above. Indeed, the wind industry is especially dependent on a robust grid to smooth out intermittency by pooling resources from a wide area. Home battery systems are enormously expensive and are not likely to play a significant role in the near future. Microsoft is a computer company and may be interested in batteries for small electronic devices but is extremely unlikely to be entering the large capacity market. Electric vehicles are not going to achieve widespread usage for many years and in any event have limited charging capacities and will mostly be charged during off peak hours; any effect they might have on the transmission grid needs is going to be pretty small for at least the next decade.
Steven
Comment
29 of 33
August 26, 2010
The monopolistic nature of big energy is to place roadblocks at every corner for RE. The way we take back our energy dollars is to remove ourselves from the grid. A lot of new RE products are coming out that will allow anyone to become independent of the grid.

Even today, many products if people would just use them would save them money and eliminate the government from spending our tax dollars on useless ventures. I say that because no matter what they do they will not reduce the cost of energy we consume if we buy it from them. That alone will create a Big Business for RE companies and incentive for consumers of Electricity to find a final solution.

Our company offers that final solution and with it takes any consumer of electricity off the grid. We offer it without any up front costs, no government assistance and no future investments needed. Our service is selling Electricity Generated onsite where consumed for 50% of current charges effectively removing the consumer off the grid completely.
Its completely green product, no solar panels, no windmills, uses no chemical reactions, needs no storage systems, has a small footprint and provides 100% power on demand 100% of the time. With a product like this, you do not need the grid.

The current situation requires a different thought process and approach. Our product eliminates these issues and creates jobs. RE creates jobs when entrepreneurs seek solutions despite the efforts of big energy to squash them. If they will not allow us to sell power like they do by allowing easy access to the grid why should we support their activities and pay for useless transmission lines when technology allows for onsite production of power. RE manufacture will just to become creative to become competitive. It is the current situation!

www.electric-energy-today.com
Comment
30 of 33
August 26, 2010
As I recently wrote to Craig Shields of 2GreenEnergy, let's really challenge your mind. Would there be a 'Transmission Problem' if the utility companies could get their electricity at a lower cost right in the middle of the area where it is consumed?
Under pressure from a DOE director, I took a deep look at the BIPV "problem" and was amazed to discover that almost no one was looking at the 'whole system/situation and only concentrating on the cell/array where very minuscule improvements are occurring. When I combined ALL of the costs of a solar system IN PLACE ~ the cell/array, the panel in which it is lodged, the inverter, the land or roof occupied, the structure supporting same, and the skilled labor and extensive machine to install all of this,I was amazed to discover that the electric generation and transfer portion constituted barely 1/3rd of the cost of an installed PV system is the cell/array, wiring and the inverter. So I went to work on the rest. The result is 'e~TECH's BI-SOLAR, (www.enlighten.us)a built-in solar system that IS THE ROOF (or wall) with the option of all 6 forms of solar. It will encapsulate virtually every solar manufacturer's product(s) and is projected to cost less than a conventional non-solar roof BEFORE incentives, subsidies/tax rebates, etc. Therefore, since it is omni-directional (every direction except direct true north, why not make your entire roof BIPV and get a large check from the electric company each month for your excess electricity? Studies show that in most of the nation, this check will cover a major portion of your mortgage. Wouldn't every electric company like electricity delivered during peak hours right in the neighborhoods where they need it and at a cost only existing hydro can beat? What builder will dare build using a conventional roof when a solar one is less expensive? Ironically, the BIPV version comes at a lower in place cost than a stand-alone one.
technotard
Comment
31 of 33
September 2, 2010
Hard not to see that urbanized areas will need more help than suburban or rural areas. In saying that, I think it is still less expensive to generate on site power without a costly grid. See the Bloom Energy fuel cells. Other makers of fuel cells are out there. The only way to get our money back from the utilities is to produce our own energy. to help do this, see www.nogridusa.org
Comment
32 of 33
September 28, 2010
The problem is real. I am working in the direction of Distributed Generation
see my web page www.negrinienergy.com
Comment
33 of 33
January 18, 2011
"The most high profile project is the Sunrise Powerlink being developed by SDG&E, a $1.8 billion, 150-mile line that will stretch from the Imperial Valley in southern California to San Diego. " $12 million a mile is really high, especially considering the modest transmission capacity. Has anyone seen a cost breakdown on this? sound over the top. This could be put underground for less money.
Add Your Comment

Registered users, please make sure to Sign-In. We and others want to know your ideas and opinions. If you are not yet Registered -- it's quick and easy. Just click below.
Thanks!

Register Now   Sign-In
Sign Up

Stephen Lacey

View Stephen Lacey's Profile
About: I am a reporter with ClimateProgress.org, a blog published by the Center for American Progress. I am former editor and producer for RenewableEnergyWorld.com, wh... more »

Stephen's Articles

Saudi Arabia Unveils $100 Billion Plan to Make Solar 'A Driver for Domestic Energy for Years to Come'
Memo: Group Wants To Create Fake Grassroots Wind 'Subversion' Campaign That 'Should Appear As A Groundswell'
Three Charts Illustrate Why Solar Has Hit a True Tipping Point
More »

Recent Research & Reports

New Wind Prospecting System in Development at the University of Barcelona
The Forest's Treasure: A Profitable Solution to Woody Waste
Discovery of Plant Proteins May Boost Agricultural Yields and Biofuel Production
Rutgers Builds Solar-Powered Computing Center, Studies Power Management
Can We Reduce the Ecological Risks of Extended Bioenergy Production?

Advertise With Us

Growing Your Business? Learn More about Total Access Featured Total Access Partners
 
Ocean Renewable Energy Coalition Met Office American Wind Energy Association Geothermal Energy Association Biomass Thermal Energy Council (BTEC) SolarNexus Admirals Bank
World's #1 Renewable Energy Network
PennWell
Renewable Energy World Magazine International Renewable Energy World Conference & Expo North America Renewable Energy World Conference & Expo Europe Renewable Energy World Conference & Expo Asia Renewable Energy World Conference & Expo India Renewable Energy World Conference & Expo Africa
RenewableEnergyWorld.com Solar Power Gen Conference & Expo Hydro Review Magazine Hydro Review World Magazine
HydroVision International HydroVision Brazil HydroVision India HydroVision Russia
Twitter Facebook Linked In RSS Feeds e-Newsletters