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.

Ausra's First U.S. Solar-Thermal Plant Begins Operations

David R. Mills The Chairman of Ausra, Inc., a developer of concentrated solar power technology, has made some very astonishing claims about the potential costs of his compact linear Fresnel reflector technology. Indeed, compared to other CSP technologies, compact linear Fresnel reflector would appear to require far lower material inputs and with them lower construction expensis. Mills claims

The current cost of a CLFR system is approximately US$3000 per kW; we believe it will drop rapidly to US$1500 per kW within a few years as a result of a numerous technical improvements already identified. At a future estimated cost of $1500 per peak kilowatt, this is ($672 - $1456 billion)/0.93 (the 0.93 because we only supplied 93% of power in the case calculated), or about $723 - $1566 billion in capital investment to provide a grid which supplies the great majority of static and vehicular loads.

While I have dismissed most claims about Concentrated Solar Power, i am reserving judgement about Mills claims until demonstrations and cost data from actual projects become available. Elsewhere Ausra has claimed that it can deliver its CLFR system @ 10.4 cents per kWh with prices dropping to 7.9 cents in three years. Yet Ausra will not tell us how much its 5 MW Bakersfield demonstration facility will cost, but it is reported that Ausra raised &60 million in October to complete the Bakersfield facility, in addition to the $40 million it raised last year. Investors include KERN Partners, Generation Investment Management, Starfish Ventures, Khosla Ventures and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. According to Ausra, "confidentiality agreements" prevent it from revealing how much the Bakersfield facility actually costs.

Ed Ring of ECOWorld has come up with some interesting numbers on Ausra costs:

Ausra’s Kimberlina (Australia) plant cost $15 million and produces 5.0 megawatts, a cost of $3.0 million per megawatt. Ausra’s planned Carrizo plant, intended to produce 177 megawatts at a cost of $500 million, is estimated to come in at $2.8 million per megawatt. . . . Ausra’s estimated capacity factor, in the only slightly less hot and sunny southern San Joaquin Valley is between 18% and 22%.

Ring has also come up with some information on land use with Austra technology:

Ausra’s Kimberlina plant, at a slightly lower 1,800 full-sun-equivalent hours per year, but a much higher output of 320 megawatts per square mile in full sun, can generate an impressive 576,000 megawatt-hours per square mile per year. Ausra’s planned Carrizo plant, at full scale, projects a somewhat lower 206 megawatts per square mile in full sun, but that still equates to 370,000 megawatt-hours per square mile per year. . . . Ausra’s Carrizo solar field, megawatt-hour vs. megawatt-hour, will consume literally ten times less land than Optisolar’s Sarnia solar field, should not be lost on anyone considering desirable options for utility scale solar development.

This is impressive coming from Ring who is one of the few sober and reliable observers of the renewables field.

Does Austra's technology represent a breakthrough that is going to make make concentrated solar power a viable replacement for coal, at least in reliably sunny places like the Southwest? We can go to the paper by Austra's David R. Mills (and Robert G. Morgan), and look at the system in greater detail. Mills makes some interesting observations about the generation dynamics of solar power. First the amount of solar heat input into a concentrating system varies by the time of day with maximum heat coming at noon (surprise). Thus if the generator is capable producing 5 MWs at noon it will begin producing 0% of capacity at dawn, will gradually rise to 100% of capacity at noon, and drop off again to 0% of capacity at dusk. Mills and Morgan are so confident of the viability of their concept that they propose to double the heat collection of their system without increasing generator rated capacity. That means that heat input for a considerable pat of the day will exceed the ability to use the heat to to generate electricity at noon. The choice would be to either dump the exra heat or to store it. Storage would be desirable because that would allow power to be generated on demand independently, rather than depending on sun shine.

Mills and Morgan claim,

Very low cost water-based thermal storage is expected to be commercialized within two years using (our?) own technology under development. Thermal storage can actually lower kWh cost because it reduces turbine size required for a given thermal output. In STE designs using storage and no fuel, there is long term also immunity from fuel cost rises.

How much storage do they need to give overnight base load power? Mills and Morgan claim that by tripling their heat gathering installation they can they could store enough energy to provide 16 more hours of electricity. Thy believe that with this system they can satisfy California's energy demands for most of the year. Winter electrical generation would, however be a problem, with a shortfall likely due to the shorter solar day. In Texas the tripled system would encounter shortfalls during both summer and winter, and the gathering system would have to be quadrupled in order to cope with summer peak demands.

So how much is this going to cost? Mills and Morgan are very circumspect about what they tell us. They toss out figures like $3000 per kW with out tying that figure to a capacity factor. I am going to make an educated guess that the $3000 figure is for am around .20 capacity factor system with no storage. Since Ausra’s Carrizo solar field only produces 2/3 the electrical output of the Bakersfield facility per land unit, some energy storage is probably involved. How much? We don't have a hint. Mills and morgan claim technological improvements are in the offing, that will have the cost by KW of output. The most likely way to accomplish this would be by improvements in gathering technology. So either they intend to double energy capture per unit of output through a 33% improvement in capture technology and a 50% increase in land use, or they are going to store a rather modest amount of energy that would allow some power generation on demand.

So how much is base load electricity going to cost using Ausra technology. We can start but taking the$3000 figure and calculating the cost of tripling electrical output. That would take us to $9000. Ouch, that would be overnight costs. If we project things out 5 years, inflation would take us to somewhere around $18,000 per kW. Ouch! Ok let us go to the lower $1500 per kW figure with technological advances. Unfortunately we don't know how that figure is calculated. If it is calculated on the basis of the Bakersfield system, that means that Mills and Morgan believe that with improved technology they could deliver the Bakersfield system at half its current price. If this is a claim about the 3x gathering capacity system it would indeed be impressive, but if we assume the Bakersfield facility is the referent then a 3x facility would come to $4500 per kW, about the current overnight costs for nuclear plants.

There are some other disadvantages. According to information in the Mills and Morgan paper, the 3x California facility would operate at from a little more than 40% of capacity to somewhat more than 60% of capacity depending on the time of the year. This compares to the average of 92% capacity for todays nuks. Thus at the same price the nuclear power plant with the same nameplate output rating would produce significantly more power over a given period of time.

There is an old Jewish saying, "If you are planting a tree and you hear that the Messiah is coming, don't go check on it until you finish planting the tree." Mills and Morgan wrote their paper at a time when they were beating the bushes for money. They had a considerable interest in presenting the best possible case for their product. Yet at the same time, they have a responsibility to potential investors to not misrepresent the risk they might be incurring. They, of course did not mention the taboo word "inflation". That word only applies to the cost of nuclear power plants, and it is absolutely forbidden among renewable supporters to mention inflation in connection to the future cost of renewables, while the same word must always be mentioned in connection with the terrible, horrible nuclear power plants. Mills and Morgan have, of course, honored that tradition. Hay, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers have economists. on staff or under contract They know the score, or at least they should. They should know how to figure things out. Unfortunately, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers' judgement has not been to good lately, and having a would be "soft path" energy provider walk hand in hand through the door with Amory Lovins, might count little to much in their reckoning. We shall see how the Ausra story unfolds.