Solar costs, and the future of electrical generation.

There is a considerable gap between the actual cost of solar thermal power generation systems and what we have been told to expect. When renewables advocates talk about ST costs, they talk about cost projects made several years ago that did not survive testing by recent cost realities. This gap between expectations and experience has been apparent in actual cost data for existing and projected solar thermal projects. I have pointed to the evidence on ST costs in a number of posts as data has become available. Solar thermal lags far behind nuclear in its ability to produce power on demand. In short, solar thermal ceases to be a bargain as soon as you want to switch the lights on.

The renewables crowd keeps telling us that this is about to be fixed. That the day of cheap solar thermal generated electricity on a 24 hour a day basis is said to be at hand. We know this must be so, because Joe Romm keeps telling us that solar thermal power is now base power. Unfortunately, many of us noticed some time ago that just because Joe Romm states something the proposition does not become fact.

Last year the sun shown on the solar thermal industry in California. PP&E handed out contracts to Solar Thermal manufacturers as fast as the applications flew though the door. This was occurring despite evidence of truly atrocious cost-to-capacity-factor ratios. The best I was able to determine facilities that generated on average 20% of their nameplate capacity were costing $4.00 a name-plate watt to construct. It is evidence of exactly how screwed up thinking about energy is in California is that there is not a ratepayers revolt against the solar thermal scam.

Last fall I called attention to Ausra, an ST business that had its origins in Australia. Ausra claims to be able to lower ST costs, including heat storage costs, through a series of low cost technological innovations. Ausra was the apparant darling of some California venture capital firms that were moving to become players in the the California renewables generating market. Ausra told the VC people that it could provide round-the-clock ST electricity at a cost that was too low to meter. That was the story, but my review of published cost data for Ausra's Barstow project was inconclusive, but suggested that matters might not be nearly as happy as Ausra claimed. Furthermore, a careful analysis of Ausra performance claims yield a remarkable amount of wiggle room, if those claims were ever brought up in court. Thus Ausra's low cost claims could be marked down as unconfirmed, pending further investigation. This judgment suggested that it would not be a good idea to invest the widows and orphans funds in Ausra just yet.

It is not surprising then that Ausra is retrenching. Ausra's chairman, president and CEO, Robert Fishman now acknowledges that Ausra cannot raise the finances for a large project on the basis of his companies performance on its 5 MW pilot project. "That's simply not reality. The finance market will not support it." Fishman has not acknowledged Ausra's cost data from its Barstow pilot project, but clearly Ausra expectations are being trimmed, as is corporate staff.

It should be quite clear by now that California's most excellent renewables adventure is not going as well. Producing low cost renewable electricity in California is going to prove a tremendous bust. California is running out of good land-based wind resources and offshore wind resources will be quite expensive to exploit. The cost of Solar Thermal is quite outrageous given its truly modest capacity factor. Constructing a renewables system with adequate energy storage would carry a price tag that would be considerably higher that constructing a nuclear power generating system of similar capacity. Now conventional nuclear generating systems are hardly cheap, and conventional nuclear might not be the best long run fossil fuel replacement. A better solution is needed.

My readers by now know where this is headed. California's renewables subsidies could be better spent on LFTR technology. For what California will spend subsidizing overpriced pathetically inadequate renewables technology, California rate payers could have low cost electricity from safe, non-wasteful, sustainable generation-IV nuclear technology.

It will not happen of course. First, the renewables myth serves the interest of the fossil fuel producers. As long as there are the notion persists that renewables are the answer to peak fossil fuels and global anthropogenic global warming, the fossil fuel interests will continue see their products being burned to generate electricty. The renewbles crowd, Amory Lovins, Joe Romm, and David Roberts, may not be taking money under the table for the coal barons, but they are certainly serving the interest of coal by propounding their anti-nuclear ideology.

We are not yet ready to turn to advanced nuclear technology to do what renewables and conventional nuclear technology cannot do, that is take the world economy off its carbon habit. But the ability to do so, the ability to actually control carbon emissions while generating massive amounts of electricity, is about to be taken seriously. By 2012 low carbon power will be a matter of the most serious global concern. Athough our day has not yet arrived, it is coming. It is coming soon. The Sun probably is not going to shine on Ausra this year or the next.