PV Solar and Vermont: Not a Good FIt. Guest Post by Charles Kelly

PV Solar Energy and the State of Vermont: Not a Good Fit

It is interesting to witness all the hype about PV solar energy fields in Vermont, and how these fields will be a panacea for our future energy needs. Even if we put aside the vast land area that solar requires, there is real concern that our energy planners are over-selling Solar Photovoltaic. Excessive investment in solar will cause taxpayers to pay substantially more for their electricity to the detriment of their personal savings.

Over-reliance on solar is an ill-conceived strategy. Our state energy planners seem more concern with hitting the perceived hot buttons of green energy and the subsidies that come with it, than conducting a pragmatic and thorough study of how well PV solar energy fits in our state.

Cost and Efficiency

Here are a few facts about solar, backed up by creditable data:

• Solar panels are not remotely competitive with Coal, Gas, or Nuclear with regards to efficiency, cost, and materials.
• Because of cloud cover; solar radiation reaching Vermont is 40% less per year (8 MJ/m2) than that reaching Montana, at the same latitude, and 59% less than New Mexico. In other words, we pay the same for solar panels, but unlike other states we get less production per panel.

Solar Technologies and Critical Materials

There are two basic solar panel technologies: crystalline silicon and thin film.

Silicon panels are more efficient, but costs more. Silicon semiconductor manufacturing, particularly the cutting of silicon ingots, is an energy-intensive, CO2-producing process. Taking this into account, the total net energy generated during the life (~ 25 years ) of the panels is reduced by as much as 10%. In addition panel output degrades about 0.5% per year due to aging, a significant reduction over 25 years.

Thin film panels use exotic rare earth metals, such as cadmium telluride, gallium arsenide, and indium. Only two nations, China and Mexico, have significant deposits of these materials. So much for being energy independent with PV Solar. Even with these sources, there are not enough of these materials on the planet to satisfy world need. There are no proven substitutes. The 2011 U.S. Department of Energy report Critical Materials Strategy outlines the severity of material limitations not only for PV solar, but wind power as well.

Efficiency, Cost, and Materials: The Three Warning Signs

Efficiency, cost, and materials are three warning signs that should not be ignored by state energy planners,. Planning decisions made now will affect rate payers and taxpayers alike for the next quarter century and beyond. Why jump into a technology that is not suitable for the New England area? In time, household and business electric bills will be much higher due to rolling the expensive solar energy into rate schedules. At that point, it will become abundantly clear to the average Vermonter that we have been misled, whereas the top 1% of households that are part of tax-shelter LLCs will have enjoyed a lucrative 20-year joyride courtesy of Vermont's SPEED program.

About Charles Kelly:

Charles Kelly, BME and MME Villanova University, P.E. Pennsylvania and Vermont, Consulting Engineer to Lithium Battery Industry. Granted two U.S. patents for battery and composite material design. Senior Principal Design Engineer (Ret.) Enersys Advanced Systems. Project Engineer (Ret.) Raytheon Engineers & Constructors for PSC of NH Seabrook Nuclear Station. Supervising Test Engineer (Ret.) for power industry components, Schutte & Koerting Co. Philadelphia, PA.

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Solar panel illustration from Wikipedia

Science in Midsummer: Gordon Conference, High Temperature Materials and Thorium

It's summer, so brief a season in the Northeast. Time to kick back a little and enjoy science, instead of attending an endless series of meetings about Vermont Yankee (though the talking fish are amusing).

Blog Carnival

If you also want to kick back a little, let me recommend the 11th Carnival of Nuclear Energy, now playing at Next Big Future. Watch Dan Yurman take a hatchet to the latest New York Times hatchet job on nuclear, while I comment on an editorial in the Brattleboro Reformer and Rod Adams discusses nuclear proliferation and why it can't happen with used power-reactor fuel. Only one location has all these features, and it's the Carnival!

Summer in Maine: High Temperature Materials Conference

I went to Maine, specifically to Colby College for the High Temperature Materials, Processes and Diagnostics Gordon Conference. The picture in the upper left is the picnic area near the pond, where the Thursday night picnic was held. (More about the conference at the end of the post, for those who are interested.)

A Gordon Conference is a heady atmosphere of scientific excitement and cooperation. I would go just for that, in all honesty. The difference between a Gordon Conference and a local hearing about Vermont Yankee--it's as if these events take place on two different planets.

I don't just go for the atmosphere, however. I worked toward my Ph.D. in high temperature chemistry and geochemistry, and part of my working life was also spent in that world. To me, the problems of energy are materials problems.

Basically, the two problems are:

• Thermodynamics, specifically the Carnot Cycle constraints
• Materials, specifically the fact that metals melt

That kind of sums it up. These are huge issues. These issues are reality.

Push and Pull

The Carnot cycle controls the theoretical efficiency of heat engines. It pushes us to operate at higher temperatures, because it mandates that if you get more efficiency from a heat engine when you run the hot part of the cycle to a higher temperature.

The problem is that only a few materials can maintain integrity at high temperatures, and even these materials have their temperature limits. Conference presentations cannot be reported (see note below about Gordon Conference philosophy). However, I did find a good website about gas turbines materials development. This site describes some of the aspects of developing and using high temperature materials.

At lower temperatures, you have more choices. The availability of many well-characterized materials for low temperature construction pulls engineers to design processes at lower temperatures, giving up some thermodynamic efficiency for flexibility of design and ease of operation.

At the conference, I showed a poster (poster session) about some aspects of development of the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor. Just for fun, I include a video on this subject. This video is a ten-minute remix of three one-hour talks. Sit back and enjoy!

It's summer, after all.

Gordon Conference Background (if you are interested)

The Gordon Conferences are very specialized meetings for researchers in a specific field. They are small and they are set up for free exchange of information. People cannot quote your Gordon Conference material later, and no hard copies are handed out. This encourages suggestions, discussion, and the willingness for scientists to go out on a limb and float new ideas to their peers.

Conference sessions are held in the morning and the evening, with free time in the afternoons for hikes, swimming, and scientific discussion. Gordon conferences are deliberately international in scope. Scientists from at least twelve countries were present at the conference I attended.

Materials

Welcome, Nuclear Archer!

In the past few days, the nuclear industry has a new blogger, Nuclear Archer. He is doing a great job of explaining materials science, right down to the grain boundaries in steel. My favorite quote from his most recent post:

(A) reactor is just a design until the metallurgists say if it can be built or not.

So true! He's being honest about the materials challenges, and serious about the solutions. This blog fills an important gap in the blogosphere, in my opinion. Most nuclear bloggers are systems people. This new blog concentrates on how materials work or fail. Welcome, Nuclear Archer!

Gordon Research Conferences

This may not be totally relevant, but this summer I will attend (again) the Gordon Research Conference on high temperature materials and chemistry. Since I no longer do active research in this field, I am honored to be allowed to attend the conference. I am especially excited about the nuclear sessions.

However, I will not be blogging about the conference. Gordon Research Conferences are meant for working scientists from all over the world. At these conferences, people critique ideas, trade hypotheses, and discuss experimental methodologies. Scientists can speak freely because the discussions and results are not made public. The Gordon Conferences are a ferment of ideas and international cooperation. Later, many published peer-reviewed papers result from ideas hatched at these conferences.

However, the conferences have also been called the Leisure of the Theoried Class. (That was a little joke.)

I won't be blogging in mid-July, but I will be thinking about nuclear power.