Solar Power, Alchemy, and Magic Numbers

There are magic numbers in New Jersey: $450, $550, $771, $150 and $600.

In Jersey you can produce a widget that would cost you $150 to buy, use or sell the widget, and then sell it again for $450 to $550 – that is sell it for $600 or $700. The question is, how much does it cost to produce? And the raw ingredients and fuel are free, so the production costs are only are only the amortized costs of the machine.

Allow me to explain.

Jersey allows you to produce a widget of solar power, use it or sell it, and then sell it or sell it again for three times it’s current value or more. In Jersey, every kwh of power produced by a solar energy system is worth 3, 4 or perhaps 5 kwh. The answer, in a word, is SREC’s, Solar Renewable Energy Certificates.

Electricity producers In New Jersey have a choice. Produce power using solar, or pay “the Solar Alternative Compliance Payment” – a fine. They also have a way out. Rather than produce the power, they can buy the right to claim the solar power someone else produced. They do this via Solar Renewable Energy Certificates. Today, for “energy year 2008”, the “the Solar Alternative Compliance Payment” (the fine), is set to $771 per mwh (click here for NJ Clean Energy Page, here for SREC Trading Page). The SREC’s, therefore, are forecast to be worth $450 to $550 for every mega watt hour, mwh, produced. Electricity purchased from the utilities costs $130 to $150 per mwh. The total value of the electricity produced using solar power in NJ is the sum of the price you would pay if delivered plus the value of the SREC’s of that power.

If the electricity I buy costs $150 per mwh, and the SREC value of the electricity I produce is worth $450, the total value of the electricity is $600.

This is a New-Alchemy. It’s not turning lead into gold. It’s turning sunlight into money.

The questions are:

  1. How much – or how little – does it cost me to install a Solar electric generating system?
  2. How quickly will that system pay for itself?
  3. How many times will that system pay for itself over it’s 40 or 50 year life?
  4. Why aren’t more people doing this?

Solar Power Tax Deduction

The US Tax Code allows a one time tax deduction of up to $2000 and up to 30% of the cost of a photovoltaic solar energy system (Click here for IRS, or click here).

So any taxpayer who installs this kind of system will get back 30% of the first $6,666.67 – up to $2,000. Typical residential scale full sized solar energy systems cost $28 to $80 thousand, so that tax rebate is fairly trivial for most of the US. But if you live in NJ, California, or somewhere where electricity costs more than twenty Cents per kwh, it makes sense.

Consult your tax advisor. Then consult your local solar electric contractor.

Disaster Accountability Blog: Public Accountability Requires Citizen Action disasteraccountability.org

ap-alex-brandon-photo-via-daylifecom610x.jpgThe Disaster Accountability Project Blog reports that an investigation has been called for into allegations that the Corps of Engineers and contractors knowingly installed defective pumps in New Orleans.

In September of 2007 the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) ordered

Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, to conduct an investigation into the allegation that defective pumping equipment was delivered and installed at the three new gated closure structures in New Orleans. These are the main pumps protecting the city of New Orleans in the event of a major hurricane or flood. OSC said in its letter to Gates that they concluded the allegations made by this whistleblower had a substantial likelihood of validity and that these pumps are “inherently flawed” due to poor design and have still not been properly tested.

Also, the OSC went on to state this same pumping equipment had previously malfunctioned under favorable contractor testing conditions and was subsequently shown to be defective, yet was knowingly installed by the Corps of Engineers.

In addition, the OSC went on further to state the whistleblower, a veteran Corps engineer who was the Team Leader of Pumping Systems Installation for New Orleans, alleged USACE employees and MWI (the pump manufacturer) circumvented contract requirements in an effort to complete the task, all at the expense of public safety. It was reported that key safeguards were circumvented and “there is an erroneous assumption that…hydraulic pumps are fully operational, and hence, the risk to the public remains high,” in the words of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel.

New Orleans Pumps Still Questionable at The Disaster Accountability Project Blog.

Image by Alex Brandon of the Associated Press on DayLife.Com


Deep Geothermal

Dig 5 km, hit 200º C. Watch out for earthquakes!Actually, it’s a bit more complicated.  You dig two holes, each 5 km (3 miles) deep.  You lay a pipe in each hole, then pump water down into one hole, and up the other. The water heats up, and can turn a turbine. 

Geothermalfor heat is old news. Teams at Virginia Tech and Johns Hopkinsare studying atDeep Geothermal

for space heating atCrisfield (click here )and at the Institute of Geophysics ETH, in Zurich, Switzerland(click here).

Deep Geothermal could, theoretically, use the earth’s heat to generate steam for industrial process power. But is this feasible? What is the temperature at the bottom of a coal mine or an empty oil well? How hot is it down there? With what efficiency, if any, can this differential be tapped to boil water to create steam to turn a turbine to generate power? How deep a hole do we need to drill? What are the potentially harmful side effects?

According toNew Energy News, Article

Deep Geothermalis potentially the cheapest and most consistent, predictable form of renewable energy. The geothermal sources being probed are 400 degrees Fahrenheit and 3 miles into the earth’s crust (not the 1000 degree heat of the earth’s core). A scientist compared it to scratching the earth’s “shell.” Geodynamics Limited and Geothermal Basel (English) are racing to be the first to produce electricity in commercial quantities from the deep hot waters. When drilling reaches the deep enough, cold surface water will be pumped down to lift the hot water up where its steam will drive generators.

The Geopower Basel project is being drilled near Basel, Switzerland. Geodynamics Limited, Queensland-based, is drilling near the southern Australian town of Innamincka. Who will finish first?

Wired Gets It Wrong – Nuclear Power is Not Good For the Planet

Hummers: Illogical, Un-Economical, and Bad for The Environment. But They Sure Are Big!

Spencer Reiss, writing inWired Magazine says “Nuclear Power is The Most Climate Friendly Insdustrial Scale Form of Energy “. Forgetting for a moment that nuclear power requires fuel, waste management, national security infrastructure, massive government subsidies, including artificial limits to liability, nuclear releases tremendous amounts of heat into the environment, and new nuclear are estimated to cost about 2 to 4 times the price of new wind facilities, without cost overruns (and cost overruns are a given with nuclear power plants) and take 10 to 12 years.

The climate friendly industrial scale forms of energy are Solar, Offshore Wind,large scale Marine Kinetic –tapping the Gulf Stream, Deep Geothermal, CoGen, and the NegaWatts available via conservation. Just as a screw can propel a ship thru the water, a screw anchored to the ocean floor will spin because of currents, and can power turbines. Marine Current Turbines, Ltd., based in Bristol, England has just completed the world’s first megawatt scale tidal/marine current driven power plant in the Strangford Narrows in Northern Ireland. If with wind, the sky’s literally the limit, with MCT the sea’s the limit. Geothermal exploits temperature differentials for heating and cooling. Deep Geothermal

would use the earth’s heat in abandoned mines and wells to generate steam for industrial process power. Recycled Energy Development, RED

, of Westmont, Il does CoGen. REDcaptures industrial waste energy to produce electricity and thermal power, often without burning any additional fuel or emitting any additional pollution. For industrial partners, RED reduces energy costs substantially, increases reliability, and offers the opportunity for emissions credits. Akeena, Evergreen Solar, First Solar

, Sunpower, World Water and Solar, and Vestas Wind are old news. Ausradevelops and deploys utility-scale solar thermal technologies to serve global electricity needs in a dependable, market competitive, environmentally responsible manner.

Wired Magazinealso published a companion piece by Matt Power that says “Pound for pound, making a Prius contributes more carbon to the atmosphere than making a Hummer” (click here). The fallacy here is that they forget to mention that a Hummer weighs about three times more than a Prius, so to have an honest statistic you need to compare 3 pounds of Hummer to each pound of Prius. They do note that the operating efficiency of the Prius outweighs any manufacturing inefficiency. And they point out that it is better for the planet to buy a used car than a new car.

Tipping Point for Gas?

Peter Gosselin, writing in the Business Section of LA Times, Saturday, May 24, 2008, writes that Ford, GM, and Chrysler are in serious trouble because of the price of gasoline. He quotes Robert DiClemente, chief U. S. economist at Citigroup in New York “The economic outlook has been taken hostage by the relentless surge in oil prices.” Gosselin adds that Ford Motor Co announced Thursday, May 22, 2004, that it was abandoning any hope of making a profit this year or next now that sales of its gas-guzzling pickup trucks and Explorers have plunged.

Gosselin and Bill Vlasic, writing in the(Click here) (or here for New York Times home)quote Ford CEO Alan Mulally saying the auto industry has “reached a tipping point” where energy costs were fundamentally changing what kind of vehicles Americans buy.

While Gosselin and Vlasic write that Ford, GM, and Chrysler are in trouble, Toyota and Matsushita Electric are investing US $192 Million / 20 Billion yen to build plants to manufacture batteries for hybrids (Click Here).

You can see this by looking at the stock value of these companies. An investment of $2,000 in Ford and General Motors, on Dec. 24, 1999 would be worth Toyota and Honda would be worth about $540 today, not counting the value of any dividends paid, as both Ford and GM lost 73% of their value. On the other hand, An investment of $2,000 in Toyota and Honda stock on Dec 24, 1999 would be worth about $2,860, not counting any dividend payouts because Toyota increased 11.36% and Honda increased 72.53%. These data can be found on the Google financial pages, (click here).

Date Investment 12/2000 5/2008 % Change
Toyota $1,000.00 $1,113.60 11.36%
Honda $1,000.00 $1,725.30 72.23%
Ford $1,000.00 $274.10 -72.59%
GM $1,000.00 $273.20 -72.68%
       
Toyota & Honda $2,000.00 $2,838.90 41.95%
Ford & GM $2,000.00 $547.30 -72.64%

Mr. Gosselin can be reached at Peter.Gosselin (at) latimes.com

(Please Note that I am not licensed to sell investment advice. This should not be construed as such.  It is just an interesting observation. Note also that I have no investment in any of these securities. I do own a ’99 Chevy Malibu and a ’99 Mercury Sable. My next car will get 45 mpg, which means it will probably be a Prius.)

New Solar Handbag: with batteries, many buckles

Costume National reports on a new handbag with solar panels.

  As the venerable Joel Johnson of Boing Boing points out, it depends on how you feel about buckles. But it’s clear some amount of solar carried capacity makes some sense in a society in which people routinely carry things which need electricity – PDAs, phones, music devices, laptops, or some fusion of the above.

And Dr. Johnson notes that he’s “come to think that practical portable solar needs batteries to really be useful.” We agree, and we’d like to add Furman’s Rule of Most Critical Solar Applications: the most important solar installations at present are those which work and are visible, and thus serve to persuade people that solar works.

Via Joel Johnson on Boing Boing.

US Bike Sales Rising With Gas Prices | BikeRadar.com

Richard Peace of Bike Radar reports:

Numerous bike retailers in the United States are reporting a spike in sales on the back of the seemingly inexorable rise of gas prices at the pumps throughout the country.

In particular bike retailers are reportedly noticing a strong rise in commuter cycling queries — unusual in a market that is regarded as primarily a leisure and sports-based one. Recently the price at the pumps hit $3.60 a gallon and the net is full of reports from bike shops across the US noting the price squeeze effect on customers coming through their doors.

“We’re getting more and more customers that are buying bikes to commute in lieu of gas prices,” said Jarvis Polvado of the Texoma Cycling Centre in Wichita Falls, Texas. “Where I’ve seen the biggest increase is people buying bikes to go to work.”

“Everyone that comes in the shop is talking about the gas prices,” said Barry Dahl of Barry’s Bikes in Bismarck, North Dakota.

“People are using their bikes a lot more today for transportation purposes,” added Ken Hartley, owner of Hartley’s Cycle Shop in Hinsdale, Illinois. “We’re selling more racks, we’re selling more fenders, we’re seeing a lot of interest in locks to lock their bikes at the train stations.”

Richard Peace, US Bike Sales Rising With Gas Prices

On Bike Radar.

This is, of course, good news, but we think there are other steps in many communities, certainly here in New York: government support for bicyclists, employer-supplied bike racks, and perhaps tax incentives — like an exemption from sales tax on bicycles and relevant accessories (like racks). In many places, bike lanes don’t yet exist. And — as I believe we’ve reported on other occasions — there’s some evidence that there’s a tipping point of bicycle riders — after which automobile drivers start driving to accommodate them. If prices keep rising at current rates, most of these will be demanded, arranged, or get taken care of.

Thanks to our neighbor Joel Johnson of Boing Boing.

Decorated Marine, author of articles about PTSD, kills himself and brother several weeks after meeting President Bush

Exceptionally sad. Greg Mitchell reports about the deaths of Travis Twigg, 36, who enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1993, and his brother Willard, 38.

The epidemic of suicides among veterans of the Iraq war with PTSD continues. The latest that has surfaced involves a decorated vet who wrote about his PTSD for the Marine Corps Gazette– and this week killed himself and his brother after a long police chase in Arizona.

Police have discovered no motive for the killings, nor why the brothers earlier in the week may have planned to commit suicide by driving into the Grand Canyon — Thelma and Louise style.

Staff Sgt. Travis Twiggs, 36, who enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1993 and held the combat action ribbon — and met President Bush a few weeks ago — wrote a lengthy article in the January issue of the Marine Corps Gazette detailing his efforts to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder. Tom Ricks, The Washington Post military reporter, recalls in an online piece today, that he carried excerpts from that piece early this year.

Twiggs loved his country so much he named a daughter America, The Arizona Republic reports today.

His brother was Willard J. Twiggs, age 38.

“All this violent behavior, him killing his brother, that was not my husband. If the PTSD would have been handled in a correct manner, none of this would have happened,” Kellee Twiggs, the wife of Staff Sgt. Travis Twiggs, said. She said he began changing after his second tour of duty in Iraq, and worsened after he returned from his third stint there, when he lost two good friends from his platoon.
 Continue reading →

Think Progress » Webb: Bush Would Be First President In History To Veto Benefits For Vets

Senator Jim Webb of Virginia is the proponent of expanded veteran’s benefits, which have drastically declined in actual value since World War II. Webb’s proposed legislation would pay for the benefits by increasing income tax only on households with incomes in excess of $1 million annually.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and his allies have introduced their own version of the bill, which would reserve the most generous benefits for those who have served at least 12 years. Webb pointed out that it would exclude the vast majority of service members:

Seventy to 75 percent of the ground troops in the Army and the Marine Corps have left the service by the end of their first enlistment. And those are the people who are not being taken care of. … They are not getting an opportunity for the first-class education they deserve.

As Webb pointed out, conservatives need to match their rhetoric on supporting the troops with their actions.

Think Progress: Webb: Bush Would Be First President In History To Veto Benefits For Vets

McCain Criticizes Katrina Response as ‘Disgraceful’ – New York Times

Elisabeth Bumiller reports in the

Times

that Senator McCain has not only described the Administration’s reponse to Katrina a ‘disgraceful,’ but that he also believed that the President was directly responsible.

Asked at an outdoor news conference if he traced the failure of leadership straight to the top, Mr. McCain, who has vowed to campaign with President Bush, said, emphatically, “yes.”

Before his news conference, Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, spent about half an hour on a walking tour of rubble and still-dilapidated houses in the Lower Ninth Ward, all recorded by two packed, slow-moving flatbed trucks of reporters and camera crews who rumbled just ahead of the candidate and his wife, Cindy.

At least one resident was disturbed by all the media attention, particularly by the lack of seats for local residents at Mr. McCain’s 20-minute news conference. “We need to have an opportunity to have a meaningful dialogue,” said Mary Fontenot, who is with All Congregations Together, a church group working to rebuilding New Orleans. “Twenty minutes out on the lawn does not suffice, with a designated seating for traveling journalists.”

Elisabeth Bumiller, “McCain Criticizes Katrina Response as ‘Disgraceful’ “- The New York Times

Via Buzzflash.

Nuclear Plants: High Cost in Time and Money

Rebecca Smith reported in the Wall Street Journal that Florida Power and Light, FPL, is considering spending $12 to $18 Billion to construct two nuclear reactors at its appropriately named Turkey Point facility in southeast Florida.

Florida Power says “two advanced-design nuclear plants at Turkey Point that would add between 2,200 and 3,000 megawatts. If built, the units are expected to go into service in the years 2018 and 2020.”

John Dorschner writes in the Miami Herald that FPL wants to start billing today for plants that may or may not be built and running in 10 to 12 years!“ The average home electric bill in South Florida is likely to increase about $2.50 a month next year to start paying for two nuclear power plants that Florida Power & Light hopes to put in service in 10 or 12 years.” That’s like “buy now pay later,” except it’s “pay now, buy later”. And the plants haven’t been approved by Florida’s Public Service Commission. So it’s “Pay now, buy later — maybe!’

What about Wind Power? The 7.5 MW Atlantic County Utilities Authority Wind Farm cost an estimated $12 million, approximately $1.6 per watt. (click here)

Putting the pieces of this puzzle together, FPL wants to spend $12 to $18 Billion, assuming no cost overruns, to add 2200 to 3000 mw of capacity in 2018 or 2020. If $12 Billion builds 2200 MW, then we are looking at $5.46 per watt of capacity. Similarly, if $18 Billion builds 3000 MW, we are looking at $6.00 per watt. That’s about what it costs to install commercial scale PV solar, and about four times what it costs to build land based wind farms, and twice what it costs to construct an offshore wind farm. And it takes a whole lot less than 10 or 12 years to install solar panels and build wind farms. Since there is no fuel, there is no fuel cycle, there are no fuel costs, there is no waste heat, and are no toxic or radioactive wastes with wind and solar.

Let’s ignore for a second the fact that nuclear plants present terrorists with targets, the massive subsidies that the government provides nuclear power, the national security ramifications of nuclear power, and the fact that the NRC fires whistleblowers and ignores critics — which in and of itself is a cause for concern — the regulator appears to be incompetent. Why should we spend Billions to build nuclear plants that won’t be operational for at least 10 or 12 years when we could spend a fraction to build solar and wind systems — which are available almost immediately with no pollution, no security challenges, no potential for disaster, and no need for incompetent government regulators?

  Nuclear PV Solar PV Solar Wind — Offshore Wind — Onshore
  FPL Turkey Point NJ Residential NJ Commercial Estimated NJ ACMUA
Cost $12 Billion $80,000 $20 Million $24 Million $12 Million
Capacity 2.2 GW 10 KW 3.5 MW 7.5 MW 75 MW
Cost / watt $5.45 $8.00 $5.71 $3.20 $1.60
Fuel Unknown $Zero $Zero $Zero $Zero
Safety & Oversight Unknown $Zero $Zero $Zero $Zero
Security Unknown $Zero $Zero $Zero $Zero
Waste Management High $Zero $Zero $Zero $Zero

Solar Balloons – The Sky’s the Limit

Solar Balloons can power remote areas and quickly provide emergency power in disasters. Joseph Cory, of Geotectura.com, and Pini Gurfil, his research partner in the Haifa Technion, Haifa, Israel, are developing the balloons. Helium balloons floating above the trees or tethered to the roofs of buildings, can provide more power in less space and at lower cost than roof mounted or ground mounted systems. They can also be deployed very quickly in an emergency.

Where conventional PV Solar installations are two dimensional, these are three dimensional.

Initial research, using computer models and a prototype, shows that a 10 foot diameter PV Solar balloon provides the energy of a 269 square foot PV Solar surface. The cost of the balloon is targeted at $4000. The cost of a comparable surface mounted system is estimated to $10,000.

I read about this on Pinkus Javits’ SustainabiliTank blog,Gizmundo,and Israel 21C .