Useful life - older solar farms in CA are replacing panels after 10-12 years. They still work, but they degrade and produce less. The solar farm cannot meet its power purchase agreement minimums and must replace the degrading panels. They can’t just add more because it violates the terms of their interconnection. The “old” ones are scrapped, of course.
Capacity factor - high time someone looked at capacity factor on a more granular level. State by state is interesting. I get a good laugh out of NY thinking they can rely on solar. Too far north and it snows. It is the minimums that count.
A couple thoughts. LCOE is extremely misleading and should be phased out of the discussion - as EBB has pointed out it's the total system cost. Second, solar is highly geography dependent for a number of reasons (among them amount of sunshine, environmental impact), so overall costs need to take this into account and will differ significantly across the country. I'm sensitive to this because I live in CT where solar farms are consuming forests and farmland.
Good point. Land use effects are important in determining overall cost, EROI and real emissions level of any power generation. That shouldn't be ignored. The land all has productive value, perhaps for agriculture or forestry or industrial/commercial/residential real estate. That is added cost of the solar & wind plants that typically use ~300X the land area.
It looks as though the LBNL capacity factors are on the basis of solar insolation. It would be interesting to see your analysis based on actual experience, rather than theoretical solar resource. Nad to see the impact of inevitable curtailment included in the analysis.
Note that EIA capacity factors need to be used with caution, particularly for fossil fuels. It is useful to assess them also using the context of availability factors.
Thank you Gentlemen, again! You have made a an extremely strong argument against closing what is already built. How does the energy cost compare for new construction of wind, solar, gas, nuclear, and coal if we discount the new EPA ruling?
Good analysis, but there are also a few important points that also need to be made that have to do with socialized system costs. These costs are typically dumped on unknowing grid customers. As anyone who has done a "Duck Curve' analysis knows, solar generation is the strongest when power is needed the least. This is at mid-day, and during the spring and summer seasons. The daily power yo-yo results in an end-of-day peaking power requirement when electricity prices necessarily shoot up to pay for the required costly peaking gas or internal combustion engine-based power generation. I've seen prices in the thousands of dollars per MWh area during the early evening in the ERCOT area. In the spring, when wind and solar power generation is the strongest, gas-based power is forced to ramp down to lower and inefficient operating rates to balance system electrical supply and demand. All of this to enable "as available" solar and wind power into the grid. In effect, improper pricing policies and governmental subsidies effectively create a wealth transfer from grid customers to the "green" alt-energy developers.
When you said "...solar generation is the strongest when power is needed the least..." I immediately thought you were in one of the Northern states which have low air conditioning (AC) load. In Texas AC load drives our peak, and there is a strong correlation between solar capacity and AC load.
When "power is needed the least" is in the nighttime hours, certainly not when solar capacity peaks. Using the ERCOT mobile phone app, anyone can see spot wholesale prices and verify this.
Solar power, even during high-demand summer, is a bump in the middle of the day, not a 24-hour resource. In the summer in Texas, it is hot most of the day including the early evening hours when the sun sets and normal demand picks up. No output leveling or storage is required for solar. Think about ERCOT power balances during the spring and fall. Renewable advocates love to point out that wind/solar on average are supplying up to 50% of required power during this period, when average wind velocity is seasonally high. What is going on with thermal power generation during this time? Where are these costs being sent? Another issue for renewables is days-long wind droughts during late summer and fall. Recently, I observed a time when ERCOT wind power was less than 2 GW out of 40GW capacity. Power prices in Texas are on the rise due in large part to accommodation of an increasing amount of renewables into the grid and the need to fill the end-of-day hole with high-cost peaking power. ERCOT has predicted a mid-teens probability of rolling brown-outs this August. The lack of new dispatchable power generation is at the core of the problem. And, all of this is before the EPA effectively shuts down our 14GW of coal fired power. We are in deep trouble.
Professor Gordon Hughes analysis for solar power in the UK found:
"prudence suggests that any project analyst should assume that opex costs will increase with age at 2.5% to 3% per year... In practice, therefore, the economic life of solar plants is likely to be little more than 20 years.
...the coefficient on plant age from age 4 onwards means that expected monthly output declines at a rate of 1% per year age after age 3. This coefficient is well determined and the 90% confidence interval is for a rate of decline in the range from 0.8 to 1.3% per year...Recall that the oldest plant in the sample is aged 9 years. The rate of decline may be higher or lower as solar plants move into their second decade. Still, if the pattern persists, the expected output from a solar plant at age 15 will be 11.4% lower than at age 1, holding weather conditions constant, and by age 25 the decline will be 22.2%....The combination of increasing opex costs and declining output means that it is unlikely that many plants will operate for significantly longer than the 20 year length of ROC contracts....
In the US case the decline in performance from age 4 onwards is 2.0% year for plants of 5+ MW and 1.9% per year for plants of 1-5 MW"
That needs to be taken into account in describing avg LCOE over plant lifetime. And if inverters and defective panels must be replaced, those costs need to be included.
Also transmission costs. Most conventional power plants, except for Hydro & Geothermal, are located close to the big load centers. And the transmission lines & substations are much more fully loaded due to the higher capacity factors than solar or wind plants. That translates into lower capital costs.
It gets worse than that. Solar peaks can easily exceed demand in the nearest load centers. That means transmission is desired to carry those surpluses long distances to areas of lower solar supply. Those costs are overall system costs that are ignored in most LCOE calculations. Australia is spending ~50% of the capital cost of solar + wind on transmission for that. Transmission that has had high maintenance costs and major failures.
Of course solar is unreal! Solar technology has been around for over 50 years without any true major improvements. People forget Jimmy Carter had solar panels not very different than what's out there today on the White House. Solar needs much much more than if it's the directly generate electricity. Why and again I ask why don't we emphasize solar hot water which could be used in every home in the United States and save on gas oil electricity Etc but there is no subsidy for that how come when it is the cheapest easiest simplest way for us to move forward
The LBNL capacity factors look high and more theoretically than practically based. In Alberta, over the last five years, the utility scale solar capacity factor was a little over 15%. Although it is slightly further north, Alberta has considerably more sunshine than Minnesota or Wisconsin and should experience higher capacity factors than these two states (20.5% and 17.1% respectively according to LBNL).
I have had solar panels on my roof for 3 years and have not had to clean them yet. However, it’s possible that I live in an area of low bird crap intensity so my panels don’t need to be cleaned regularly. What we need is a map of the United States which show bird crap intensity like we have solar capacity maps. Then we could factor this into the LCOE equations. As if the assumptions that go into calculating LCOE are not convoluted enough already.
GHE theory fails because of two erroneous assumptions: 1. near Earth space is cold & w/o GHE would become 255 K, -18 C, ball of ice & 2. radiating as a 16 C BB the surface produces “extra” GHE energy aka radiative forcing (nee caloric).
Both
Are
Just
Flat
Wrong
!!!
Without the atmosphere, water vapor and its 30% albedo Earth would become much like the Moon, a barren rock, hot^3 400 K on the lit side, cold^3 100 K on the dark.
“TFK_bams09” GHE heat balance graphic & its legion of clones uses bad math and badder physics. 63 W/m^2 appears twice (once from Sun & second from a BB calculation) violating both LoT 1 and GAAP. 396 W/m^2 upwelling is a BB calc for a 16 C surface for denominator of the emissivity ratio, 63/396=0.16, “extra” & not real. 333 W/m^2 “back” radiating from cold to warm violates LoT 1 & 2. Remove 396/333/63 GHE loop from the graphic and the solar balance still works.
Kinetic heat transfer processes of the contiguous atmospheric molecules (60%) render a terrestrial BB (requires 100%) impossible as demonstrated by experiment, the gold standard of classical science.
Since both GHE & CAGW climate “science” are indefensible rubbish alarmists must resort to fear mongering, lies, lawsuits, censorship and violence.
I think that you should track down Noahpinion's articles about renewable energy and analyze the assumptions behind the numbers behind his charts. I think this would generate your site alot of traffic, and you may even be able to change his mind.
His latest post on the topic uncritically shares charts from RMI. The numbers look fishy, but I do not have the time to analyze the assumptions. Maybe you do.
Useful life - older solar farms in CA are replacing panels after 10-12 years. They still work, but they degrade and produce less. The solar farm cannot meet its power purchase agreement minimums and must replace the degrading panels. They can’t just add more because it violates the terms of their interconnection. The “old” ones are scrapped, of course.
Capacity factor - high time someone looked at capacity factor on a more granular level. State by state is interesting. I get a good laugh out of NY thinking they can rely on solar. Too far north and it snows. It is the minimums that count.
A couple thoughts. LCOE is extremely misleading and should be phased out of the discussion - as EBB has pointed out it's the total system cost. Second, solar is highly geography dependent for a number of reasons (among them amount of sunshine, environmental impact), so overall costs need to take this into account and will differ significantly across the country. I'm sensitive to this because I live in CT where solar farms are consuming forests and farmland.
Good point. Land use effects are important in determining overall cost, EROI and real emissions level of any power generation. That shouldn't be ignored. The land all has productive value, perhaps for agriculture or forestry or industrial/commercial/residential real estate. That is added cost of the solar & wind plants that typically use ~300X the land area.
It looks as though the LBNL capacity factors are on the basis of solar insolation. It would be interesting to see your analysis based on actual experience, rather than theoretical solar resource. Nad to see the impact of inevitable curtailment included in the analysis.
Thanks for pointing this out to us. I’ll cross reference them with EIA to see how they compare to observed CFs.
Note that EIA capacity factors need to be used with caution, particularly for fossil fuels. It is useful to assess them also using the context of availability factors.
Exactly
Thank you Gentlemen, again! You have made a an extremely strong argument against closing what is already built. How does the energy cost compare for new construction of wind, solar, gas, nuclear, and coal if we discount the new EPA ruling?
Good analysis, but there are also a few important points that also need to be made that have to do with socialized system costs. These costs are typically dumped on unknowing grid customers. As anyone who has done a "Duck Curve' analysis knows, solar generation is the strongest when power is needed the least. This is at mid-day, and during the spring and summer seasons. The daily power yo-yo results in an end-of-day peaking power requirement when electricity prices necessarily shoot up to pay for the required costly peaking gas or internal combustion engine-based power generation. I've seen prices in the thousands of dollars per MWh area during the early evening in the ERCOT area. In the spring, when wind and solar power generation is the strongest, gas-based power is forced to ramp down to lower and inefficient operating rates to balance system electrical supply and demand. All of this to enable "as available" solar and wind power into the grid. In effect, improper pricing policies and governmental subsidies effectively create a wealth transfer from grid customers to the "green" alt-energy developers.
When you said "...solar generation is the strongest when power is needed the least..." I immediately thought you were in one of the Northern states which have low air conditioning (AC) load. In Texas AC load drives our peak, and there is a strong correlation between solar capacity and AC load.
When "power is needed the least" is in the nighttime hours, certainly not when solar capacity peaks. Using the ERCOT mobile phone app, anyone can see spot wholesale prices and verify this.
Not true. Solar peaks about 12PM - 2 PM. AC load peaks closer to 4PM - 7 PM.
That is correct.
Solar power, even during high-demand summer, is a bump in the middle of the day, not a 24-hour resource. In the summer in Texas, it is hot most of the day including the early evening hours when the sun sets and normal demand picks up. No output leveling or storage is required for solar. Think about ERCOT power balances during the spring and fall. Renewable advocates love to point out that wind/solar on average are supplying up to 50% of required power during this period, when average wind velocity is seasonally high. What is going on with thermal power generation during this time? Where are these costs being sent? Another issue for renewables is days-long wind droughts during late summer and fall. Recently, I observed a time when ERCOT wind power was less than 2 GW out of 40GW capacity. Power prices in Texas are on the rise due in large part to accommodation of an increasing amount of renewables into the grid and the need to fill the end-of-day hole with high-cost peaking power. ERCOT has predicted a mid-teens probability of rolling brown-outs this August. The lack of new dispatchable power generation is at the core of the problem. And, all of this is before the EPA effectively shuts down our 14GW of coal fired power. We are in deep trouble.
Professor Gordon Hughes analysis for solar power in the UK found:
"prudence suggests that any project analyst should assume that opex costs will increase with age at 2.5% to 3% per year... In practice, therefore, the economic life of solar plants is likely to be little more than 20 years.
...the coefficient on plant age from age 4 onwards means that expected monthly output declines at a rate of 1% per year age after age 3. This coefficient is well determined and the 90% confidence interval is for a rate of decline in the range from 0.8 to 1.3% per year...Recall that the oldest plant in the sample is aged 9 years. The rate of decline may be higher or lower as solar plants move into their second decade. Still, if the pattern persists, the expected output from a solar plant at age 15 will be 11.4% lower than at age 1, holding weather conditions constant, and by age 25 the decline will be 22.2%....The combination of increasing opex costs and declining output means that it is unlikely that many plants will operate for significantly longer than the 20 year length of ROC contracts....
In the US case the decline in performance from age 4 onwards is 2.0% year for plants of 5+ MW and 1.9% per year for plants of 1-5 MW"
https://www.ref.org.uk/attachments/article/374/Economic-Solar-Generation.pdf
That needs to be taken into account in describing avg LCOE over plant lifetime. And if inverters and defective panels must be replaced, those costs need to be included.
Also transmission costs. Most conventional power plants, except for Hydro & Geothermal, are located close to the big load centers. And the transmission lines & substations are much more fully loaded due to the higher capacity factors than solar or wind plants. That translates into lower capital costs.
It gets worse than that. Solar peaks can easily exceed demand in the nearest load centers. That means transmission is desired to carry those surpluses long distances to areas of lower solar supply. Those costs are overall system costs that are ignored in most LCOE calculations. Australia is spending ~50% of the capital cost of solar + wind on transmission for that. Transmission that has had high maintenance costs and major failures.
https://stopthesethings.com/2021/06/10/subsidy-bonanza-wind-industry-demands-even-more-subsidies-for-pointless-transmission-lines/
Those capacity factors look high, that must be strictly for utility scale solar generators. Wikipedia for overall national solar generation shows:
USA 21%
World 14%
China 12%
Japan 14%
Australia 15%
Germany 10%
UK 11%
Switzerland 10%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country
Of course solar is unreal! Solar technology has been around for over 50 years without any true major improvements. People forget Jimmy Carter had solar panels not very different than what's out there today on the White House. Solar needs much much more than if it's the directly generate electricity. Why and again I ask why don't we emphasize solar hot water which could be used in every home in the United States and save on gas oil electricity Etc but there is no subsidy for that how come when it is the cheapest easiest simplest way for us to move forward
The LBNL capacity factors look high and more theoretically than practically based. In Alberta, over the last five years, the utility scale solar capacity factor was a little over 15%. Although it is slightly further north, Alberta has considerably more sunshine than Minnesota or Wisconsin and should experience higher capacity factors than these two states (20.5% and 17.1% respectively according to LBNL).
Thank you for taking a look at this, good read with my morning coffee ☕!
Panels may have even shorter lifetimes, say 10 to 15 years, which I touch upon here:
https://tucoschild.substack.com/p/hail-marys-and-shattered-dreams-an
And the bird crap and dirt cleaning bills, oy vey!
I have had solar panels on my roof for 3 years and have not had to clean them yet. However, it’s possible that I live in an area of low bird crap intensity so my panels don’t need to be cleaned regularly. What we need is a map of the United States which show bird crap intensity like we have solar capacity maps. Then we could factor this into the LCOE equations. As if the assumptions that go into calculating LCOE are not convoluted enough already.
12 Gauge, 8 shot helps with the birds
GHE theory fails because of two erroneous assumptions: 1. near Earth space is cold & w/o GHE would become 255 K, -18 C, ball of ice & 2. radiating as a 16 C BB the surface produces “extra” GHE energy aka radiative forcing (nee caloric).
Both
Are
Just
Flat
Wrong
!!!
Without the atmosphere, water vapor and its 30% albedo Earth would become much like the Moon, a barren rock, hot^3 400 K on the lit side, cold^3 100 K on the dark.
“TFK_bams09” GHE heat balance graphic & its legion of clones uses bad math and badder physics. 63 W/m^2 appears twice (once from Sun & second from a BB calculation) violating both LoT 1 and GAAP. 396 W/m^2 upwelling is a BB calc for a 16 C surface for denominator of the emissivity ratio, 63/396=0.16, “extra” & not real. 333 W/m^2 “back” radiating from cold to warm violates LoT 1 & 2. Remove 396/333/63 GHE loop from the graphic and the solar balance still works.
Kinetic heat transfer processes of the contiguous atmospheric molecules (60%) render a terrestrial BB (requires 100%) impossible as demonstrated by experiment, the gold standard of classical science.
Since both GHE & CAGW climate “science” are indefensible rubbish alarmists must resort to fear mongering, lies, lawsuits, censorship and violence.
I think that you should track down Noahpinion's articles about renewable energy and analyze the assumptions behind the numbers behind his charts. I think this would generate your site alot of traffic, and you may even be able to change his mind.
Here is one example:
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/at-least-five-interesting-things-84f
His latest post on the topic uncritically shares charts from RMI. The numbers look fishy, but I do not have the time to analyze the assumptions. Maybe you do.
Another version of new math that I’ll have to go back to school and learn, but then they will change it because it doesn’t work
Excellent, Thank You