Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

I love reading the popular political blogs. People spill their guts. They are like nudist colonies. They have another similarity. Both the ideas presented in the blogs and the people in nudist colonies are not as good looking as the ones in magazines.

This week while reading one I noticed one piece declaring that energy was "a scare commodity" and another declaring the same thing about water. These are the sort of ideas that drive me nuts.

One of the best things about being a parent is getting to read children's books without having to do so in a closet. My favorite is "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs." This is a story about a place called Chewandswallow which (in the words of the publisher) "... was very much like any other tiny town except for its weather which came three times a day, at breakfast, lunch and dinner. But it never rained rain and it never snowed snow and it never blew just wind. It rained things like soup and juice. It snowed things like mashed potatoes. And sometimes the wind blew in storms of hamburgers."

Energy is not scarce. Water is not scarce and there may not be a place like Chewandswallow but there are the two things which as long as I can recall actually fall out of the sky. In case you have been inside too long these are called sunlight and rain.

All of the energy on the earth with the exception of radioactivity and the lunar component of tidal energy comes from the sun.

The solar energy which hits the earth's atmosphere is the equivalent of 10,000 times all of the energy usage on the planet. Granted, it does not all make it to the surface but use the following as data points regarding what does make it here. Using present photovoltaic technology (15% efficiency) a grid half the size of the state of Nevada would produce all of the energy used in the US from sources other than nuclear, wind and hydro. A grid taking up the entire Sahara desert would provide 35 times the amount of all energy consumed by everyone on the planet.

Problems?

The issues are:

1) getting the cost of photovoltaic (PV) cells down and making them more efficient. (Photovoltaic cells turn light into electricity.)
2) moving the energy around. We already have a network in place for that - the electrical grid. It would need upgrading if it, in the future, had to move around the energy now generated by fossil fuels
3) storing energy produced in the daylight for night time use. This could be solved using energy storage devices such as flywheels or hydrogen
4) creating low cost, rapid recharge batteries for cars to eliminate entirely the usage of gasoline and every other liquid fuel.

For some reading material see:

Nanosolar is a SF Bay Area company which not has the financing in place to build a factory which will triple existing photovoltaic manufacturing capacity in the US.

Lithium based battery technology may be developed so that cars which run on electricity drained from batteries which can be rapidly recharged are practical. See this page.

What is Needed?

Upgrading of the electrical grid to make more capacity and redundancy available and infrastructure to replace "gas stations" with battery recharging stations or hydrogen fueling.

We talked about hydrogen previously. See: Rate Watch #334 The Hydrogen Economy.

Issues with Solar

There are some annoying issues with solar. Solar power is much more practical is places which get a lot of reliable sunlight but not everyone lives in Phoenix. This necessitates a cost to move the power around. Solar is DC and we use AC so there is an energy cost conversion. The sun does not shine at night so the energy must be stored. There are potential solutions: batteries, flywheels, and chemical conversion to things such as hydrogen which can then be turned into energy at night. Energy storage can also use gravity. During the daytime water can be moved uphill and converted, in effect, to hydroelectricity at night. This is called "pumped hydro storage." There are about 90 gigawatts of this on line in the world. It is costly and has long led time but is reliable and low tech.

To be sure, methods of storing very large amounts of energy need to be developed it we are to phase out the use of fossil fuels. There is an organization devoted to energy storage. Another place to find info on this is EPRI (Electric Power Research Institute). In the interest of disclosure (right, me doing full disclosure) I have done mortgages for some folks at EPRI which is a local (Palo Alto) company and I will undoubtedly get e-mail from those folks fleshing out my humble discussion of this relatively arcane topic. Use the blog guys!

Try these: no pollution (except that associated with manufacturing this stuff, energy independence (no OPEC), no carbon dioxide (global warming) produced as is produced by burning coal and other fossil fuels.

Water Anyone?

Folks are always concerned about water. There is a lot of water in the world. It even falls from the sky with regularity. If we get energy sources such as PV down then we can use that energy to desalinize sea water and address the annoying problem which is that folks have chosen to live in places where there is little fresh water.

A common method or desalinization is reverse osmosis (RO). This is used on naval vessels, cruise ships, coastal Mexican resorts, Caribbean Islands and the Mideast. The limiting factor here is expense. Couple inexpensive solar energy with RO an we have solved both the energy and water "problems."

The issues are technological. Making them social or political is idiotic. Yes, people should not waste energy and they should not smoke but they do. Ranting about the social meaning of how much of the world's energy the US consumes is rendered moot if we can find ways to harness the sun's energy to produce low cost, nonpolluting, don't give a damn penny to Saudi Arabia sources of energy.

Let me extend this. It is not merely technology but technology coupled with capital that makes things happen. There are enormous markets for both energy and water so the motivation to manufacture these two things inexpensively at a profit is there. The fact that energy companies have made enormous profits in the last few years should provide sufficient motivation.

It would also help to have an education system which actually teaches the basics of technology (math and science) as well as it teaches recycling. It would also help to have a media in which there are non-luddite writers who can actually explain the advantages of technology to folks but wait a second my phone is ringing, it's the tooth fairy. Oh and by the way the Spell Check in my version of Dreamweaver does not recognize "photovoltaic." The problem is deeper than I thought. Then again these folks (Macromedia) are here in SF so I may give them a call.

A Last Word

I am not stating or implying that solar is the only answer. I am stating that there is no shortage of energy but merely a shortage of the technology to convert the sun's energy and store it.

---

Dick Lepre

Comments

[ryoung42]

Why not let mother nature do the conversion? There is a company in Canada (Iogen Corp.) that has a process to get ethanol from cellulose (like corn stalks and such) The basic process uses enzymes to break down the cellulose into simple sugars that can be fermented to get ethanol. The beauty of the process is that the what is left after the simple sugars are removed for fermentation can be burned to produce the energy to keep the process running. If I understand what the company is claiming correctly they can produce a viable replacement for fossil fuels at a net zero cost in energy terms. Lets all hope this isn't just so much fairy dust.

[bosman]

I'm a long time subscriber to ratewatch - enjoy it. Your comments are dead on regarding energy and water - I feel nuclear is probably one of the best solutions currently available for minimizing environmental impact - especially greenhouse gases. I'm commenting because I think the solution to energy storage and water availabilty are one and the same. You've already identified it - Hydrogen. The technology has been proven for many years in our space program. RO is great, but membranes get fouled and efficiencies go down, an energy consumer. Hydrogen and oxygen yield electricity and water.

[lewis cary]

I live off the grid (I *was* hoping to be connected by now). I bought 480W (6x80) panels. I measure about 350W actual power. I would love to be totally solar, but do not have the budget to cover my garage roof like 'stars' do in Hollywood. So I make a lot of diesel smoke :) Lew

[Jamie]

Isn't this still an issue of basic economics--the relationship of supply, demand, price, and elasticity?
To the extent that we start producing energy from other sources (biofuels, solar, hydro, whatever) the price of oil will fall. Other countries (that have not constructed solar grids as big as half of Nevada) will reap the benefits of lower energy costs. They will increase their energy (oil) use which will negate the environmental benefits of our conversion to solar. In effect, we will subsidize their higher standard of living.

I think the argument for moving away from fossil fuels must be based on dollars and cents -- the cost per kilowatt hour.

[thebizofknowledge]

You've done an excellent job of explaining and summarizing this issue. I think the main problem is that we are so dependent on non-renewable energy sources that we need an "attitude adjustment" to make us look outside that very limited box!