Making Renewables Cost Competitive

Flying unicorns sprinkling pixie dust all over the land.

Your answer is probably politically incorrect. but physically right on target, hence my vote for you.

Maybe in the future, a power source that doesn't contradict the laws of nature as we know them or require immense amounts of land will be discovered.

"without driving up costs"

why don't we just go ahead and solve the poverty crisis, "without driving up costs"

For God'd sake, the intellectual capacity of the people has never ever been in greater decline. Donald Trump is a major political figure. Surely we are doomed.

Kindly look up my entry to NASA CONTEST. Lot of hype has been created by solar PV panel suppliers. Solar cell efficiency is still around 14% (commercial ones, in the lab people might claim 22 to 25%).

Congratulations! Your entry "USING SOLAR ENERGY EFFICIENTLY" has been qualified by the review team as meeting the requirements for the Create the Future Design Contest.

View your submission here:http://contest.techbriefs.com/2016/entries/sustainable-technologies/6623

I hope to make a few more entries in the field of sustainable power generation at low cost.

I read your post. It illustrates your lack of understanding. You are comparing apples and oranges.

To put it simply, solar PV now averages around 15.5% efficiency in producing DC power, and we have inverter technology basically perfected, converting that to AC with 98% efficiency.

Solar thermal is far more effective at producing heat energy, but then you have to convert that heat to electricity, in order to make it useful, unless what you really want is heat. The operating efficiency, not even including the very high infrastructure, operation and maintenance costs, is very low, which why you don't see much energy being expended in the design and construction of these plants. There are still reasons to build them though, when you need heat energy.

A good analogy would be trying to justify using PV to power resistance strips to make heat. In that case, PV would indeed be a poor choice, because of the conversion requirement. There are better ways to make heat than from electricity, and better ways to make electricity than from low grade heat.

I am not comparing apples and oranges. I am not looking for heat generation. The pictures I have posted in create the future contest are helping to generate electrical power from heat. Even if one is interested in generating heat from solar, those parabolic reflector designs are poor and inefficient- that is my point. I have made a second post under NASA - in response to some queries that I received- which makes matters more clear.

There are solar thermal plants used to generate electricity. Specifically coming to Indian context, solar cells / panels are imported and hence - I am far more conscious of investment cost on solar pV and panel side. As against this entire solar thermal electrical power generation plants can be designed and built in India of any capacity. Further thermal power plants are more reliable than solar pV systems which have power electronics systems following PV panels. Further grid interfacing is another issue. Even if we consider micro grid stand alone systems, Solar thermal electrical power generation has higher efficiency - if only solar energy to heat energy capture part is more efficiently designed.

Hence my focus was to prove- this part is inefficient today and hence there is a wrong belief that solar thermal electrical power generation is expensive in terms of Rs or $/ KWh generation.Hence investment is getting diverted more towards solar cell/ PV- which is a wrong policy of the Government- that the objective with which I made this post.

"This study pushes the envelope," says Mark Jacobson, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, who was not part of the study. "It shows that intermittent renewables plus transmission can eliminate most fossil-fuel electricity while matching power demand at lower cost than a fossil fuel-based grid-even before storage is considered."

Isn't THAT convenient!! One of the biggest hurdles to "renewable" energy is storage! The wind doesn't always blow.....the sun doesn't always shine.....the tide isn't always moving rapidly....waves aren't always big.....Why don't we just forget about THAT inconvenient truth and talk about how we have ALREADY solved all these problems? Then....all we have to do is tax everybody ELSE to pay for all this stuff and get moving on it already!! Shall we?? (We'll just worry about the cost of storage after we have spent all the taxpayers' money to take this ponzey scheme over half way....and force those taxpaying idiots to pay the rest later!!)

The wind is always blowing somewhere, and the sun is shining 100% of the time on a big piece of the earth. It is about transmission and storage, but mostly, transmission.

Renewable resources are much like non renewables in that there is not always coal to be burned sitting next to the boiler, there is not always natural gas in the pipe line: You have to work to get it there.

Most importantly, there is not an unlimited atmospheric sink to dump the trash in. No problems are ever completely solved, that is what living is for. What an imp you are. My stomach hurts, I can't go to school today. WAAA WAAA WAAA. No one matters but me!

"The wind is always blowing somewhere, and the sun is shining 100% of the time on a big piece of the earth. It is about transmission and storage, but mostly, transmission."

Really? Are you kidding me/us? Really thought this through, have you??

So, where is this readily available generation of Terawatthours of energy that can so easily be "transmitted" to the U.S., during the time the entire country is dark simultaneously? Who will generate it for us, and sell it to us at a fair price? How much to lay those large cables across the sea floor that are terrorist-proofed?

Oh.....I know.......The Chinese will dredge up an island off the West Coast of the US and load it with PVs.....

Even more to the point WHY WOULD WE WANT TO TRANSMIT THAT MUCH ENERGY when, (as I previously stated, STORAGE IS THE KEY) when we can generate it ourselves, store it ourselves, and transmit it to ourselves?

Your answer was VERY POORLY thought through.

I think you have proven yourself to be the "imp" here. Nice going.....

Recently, the UK managed to supply half the nations power requirements for several hours from renewable sources.

UK Power

Portugal achieved 100% for 4 days in a row!!!

Portugal Power

Its coming!!