Seasonal variations in solar energy production

 https://carboncounter.wordpress.com/2015/08/11/germany-will-never-run-on-solar-power-here-is-why/

Why is the Texas electrical grid so fragile?

Texas doesn't have a reliable grid because wind and solar could never offer significant value if the requirements for dependable electricity were written down and enforced. And the politicians decided that growing wind and solar was more important than reliable power. And so the people of Texas paid the price for that decision.

https://judithcurry.com/2021/02/18/assigning-blame-for-the-blackouts-in-texas/

Traditional fossil fuel generation has (as does most hydro and nuclear) inherent capacity value. That means such resources generally can be operated with a high degree of reliability and dependability. With incentives they can be operated so that they will likely be there when needed. Wind and solar are intermittent resources, working only under good conditions for wind and sun, and as such do not have capacity value unless they are paired with costly battery systems.

If you want to achieve a higher level of penetration from renewables, dollars will have to be funneled away from traditional resources towards renewables. For high levels of renewable penetration, you need a system where the consumers’ dollars applied to renewable generators are maximized. Rewarding resources for offering capacity advantages effectively penalizes renewables. As noted by the head of the PUC in Texas, an energy only market can fuel diversification towards intermittent resources. It does this because it rewards only energy that is fed into the grid, not backup power. (Side note-it’s typical to provide “renewable” resources preference for feeding into the grid as well. Sometimes wind is compensated for feeding into the grid even during periods of excess generation when fossil fuel resources are penalized. But that’s another article. )

Traditional planning studies might recognize that wind needs to be backed up by fossil fuel (more so under extreme conditions) such that if you have these backup generators its much cheaper to use and fuel them, than to add wind farms with the accompanying significant investment for concrete, rare earth metals, vast swaths of land …. . Traditional planning approaches often have to go(be abandoned) to get around this “bias” of favoring capacity providing resources over intermittent resources.

When capacity value is rewarded, this makes the economics of renewables much less competitive. Texas has stacked the deck to make wind and solar more competitive than they could be in a system that better recognizes the value of dependable resources which can supply capacity benefits. An energy only market helps accomplish the goal of making wind and solar more competitive. Except capacity value is a real value. Ignoring that, as Texas did, comes with real perils.

In Texas now we are seeing the extreme shortages and market price spikes that can result from devaluing capacity. The impacts are increased by both having more intermittent resources which do not provide capacity and also because owners and potential owners of resources which could provide capacity are not incentivized to have those units ready for backup with firm energy supplies.

transatomic power

They discovered a math error in their fundamental assumptions and it turned out to not work after all.

http://www.transatomicpower.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/TAP-White-Paper-v2.1.pdf

Specifically, we have realized that our initial analyses of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) core loadings were centered around inaccurate assumptions about reactor behavior that, upon detailed review, had to be corrected. This led to the conclusion that while the reactor can achieve criticality on an SNF fuel load and an SNF fuel feed, it cannot maintain criticality for sufficient lengths of time to produce a sustainable net-negative waste profile.

The results have prompted a shift in focus to reducing the rate at which waste is produced while simultaneously utilizing the current commercial 5% LEU supply chain. Our new work has shown significant reductions in waste generation compared to large LWRs, and the TAP reactor is one of the only advanced reactor designs to accomplish this using 5% enriched fuel.

Hastelloy N used in fabricating the MSRE

http://www.thmfgrcs.com/ORNL-TM-3063.pdf

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS, PAGE 87

The heats of Hastelloy N used in fabricating the MSRE have shown a systematic deterioration of mechanical properties with increasing neutron fluence. The material exposed for the longest period of time in the core has reached a thermal fluence of 1.5 x 10^21 neutrons/cm2 and a fast fluence (> 50 kev) of 1.1 X 10^21 neutrons/cm2. These values are quite close to those anticipated for future reactors with a 30-year design life.

The ductility of the material was too low, but the microstructure was free of irradiation-induced voids and defects other than helium bubbles. Several heats of the modified alloys have been exposed to the MSRE and these have better postirradiation properties. They also seem to have good corrosion resistance.

The standard Hastelloy N removed from the core shows some evidence of corrosion. The corrosion seems generally to be due to the selective removal of chromium, as predicted by prenuclear tests.

Some observations that have not been explained adequately are

(1) the presence of grain-boundary cracks in the straps that held parts of the surveillance assembly together,
(2) the modified microstructure near the surface, and
(3) the formation of intergranular cracks originating from the surface when irradiated materials are strained.

One of the modified alloys, heat 67-504, was exposed to the cell environment. The fluence was higher in the core, but the postirradiation properties were superior to those of the material exposed to the cell environment.

We presently have no explanation for the observed behavior.

unreliable energy is especially harmful for the most vulnerable members of society.

Researchers are discovering that unreliable energy is especially harmful for the most vulnerable members of society.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/12/pricing-electricity-by-demand-hits-poor-elderly-disabled-harder/

The motivating principle behind demand-response pricing is that demand is flexible. People can put off running their clothes dryer, or put up with a few hours of somewhat warmer temperatures. But that's actually not true for everyone. The elderly and disabled, for example, may not tolerate even a few hours of elevated temperatures or could have medical equipment that simply can't be shut down. This could also hit the poor harder, as they tend to live in housing with less efficient appliances and poor insulation.

To find out whether there was any evidence that this sort of uneven impact was taking place, researchers Lee White and Nicole Sintov tracked a trial run of demand-response pricing. The trial took place in an unnamed utility in the US Southwest during summer. Because of the heat, there tends to be a spike in demand as people get home from work and turn on the air conditioning. To lower this demand, the utility raised the price of electricity used during this peak, offering two different plans. One simply had elevated prices for the whole period where demand was elevated; the second used even higher prices but limited them to a shorter period at the time of highest demand.

To figure out how this affected vulnerable groups, the researchers got thousands of the participants to fill out surveys regarding their experience.

The results confirmed some of the worries. The elderly and disabled ended up paying more than others under the same pricing scheme. (Households with children saw no significant change.) On the plus side, the lower-income households managed to use the policy to cut down on their costs relative to others on a similar pricing setup. Not surprisingly, however, they reported increased discomfort during the period of the test, presumably because they ran the air conditioning less often.

Bright Days for NanoSolar

When NanoSolar was founded in 2002, the Palo Alto (Calif.) solar-energy startup drew plenty of skepticism. After all, the dot-com bubble had been reduced to a soap stain two years earlier, just months after 34-year-old NanoSolar founder and Chief Executive Officer Martin Roscheisen had sold his e-mail list service eGroups to Yahoo! (YHOO) for $450 million. Now he was jumping right into the next hyped-up sector: alternative energy.

It didn't help that NanoSolar's investors included Google (GOOG) founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and Benchmark Capital, the venture-capital firm that struck e-gold with eBay (EBAY). What did a bunch of dot-com millionaires know about solar energy?

Quite a bit, it turns out. Three years later, things are looking much brighter. In the next six weeks, NanoSolar plans to begin building a factory in the San Francisco Bay area that could pump out as many as 200 million solar cells—semiconductors that convert sunlight to electricity—each year. That will be enough to fill 2 million average-sized panels.

NanoSolar's management claim the company's printing process is less expensive and more efficient than vacuum-based processes that have been used to make most thin-film cells in the past. And they say their cells will generate as much electricity as silicon cells—at one-fifth to one-tenth the cost. "We will be the cost leader," says Brian Sager, co-founder and vice-president of finance and corporate development.

What makes him so sure? First, a recent worldwide shortage of polysilicon has caused a scarcity of silicon solar cells and driven up prices. Second, NanoSolar has assembled a fortress-like portfolio of patents and trade secrets to keep its ink, product design, and printing process proprietary. The company believes no one will be able to copy what it is doing.

Another big plus for the company is the talent that comes along with its latest financing. Investors in the round include heavy hitters from the solar industry. Stuttgart private-equity firm Grazia Equity previously funded the world's largest installer of solar panels, Hamburg-based Conergy. Dimbach (Germany)-based Beck Energy designs and builds solar-power plants. And Christian Reitberger, a Munich-based partner at global private-equity firm Apax Partners, was an early investor in Thalheim (Germany)-based Q-Cells, the world's largest independent maker of silicon-based solar cells.

The keen German interest is no coincidence. With a 47% share, Germany is the world's largest solar heating market. The country's Environment Ministry subsidizes about 40% of the outlay for solar plants that heat drinking water. About one-quarter of NanoSolar's recent $100 million financing consists of subsidies and incentives from various governments, including Germany's. Now, NanoSolar just needs to make all that support pay off.

http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2006-06-25/bright-days-for-nanosolar

Soitec Solar 1 EIR

The concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) system uses a dual-axis tracking system. The components of the dual-axis tracking system include modules, described below, that are placed on the tracking system, the tracker unit, and the tracker control unit. Generally and from this point forward throughout the EIR, the CPV system is referred to as “trackers.” Two types of sensors are used to ensure that the focal point of the concentrated sunlight is exactly on the solar cells at every moment of the day:

(1) astronomical positioning and
(2) a solar sensor that seeks to position the trackers precisely perpendicular to the sun to ensure optimum system performance.

The entire trackers module assembly dimensions are approximately 48 feet across by 25 feet tall. Each tracker would be mounted on a 28-inch steel mast (steel pole), which, depending on wind loading and soil conditions at the site, would be installed by: (1) inserting the mast into a hole up to 20 feet deep and encasing it in concrete, (2) vibrating the mast into the ground up to 20 feet deep, or (3) attaching the mast to a concrete foundation sized to adequately support the trackers.

The ultimate height of each tracker in its most vertical position depends on how it is installed because installing the mast into a concrete foundation may increase the tracker height. In its most vertical position and assuming the use of a concrete foundation, however, the top of each tracker would not exceed 30 feet above grade, and the lower edge would not be less than 1 foot above ground level. In its horizontal “stow” mode (for high winds), each tracker would have a minimum ground clearance of 13 feet, 6 inches.

Soitec’s Concentrix modules, which are manufactured in San Diego County (Rancho Bernardo), are made up of a lens plate (Fresnel lens) and a base plate on which high-performance solar cells are mounted. The Fresnel lens focuses sunlight concentrated by a factor of 500 on the solar cells beneath.

The solar cells are optimized multi-junction solar cells (GAInP/GaInAs/Ge) in which three different types of solar cells are stacked on top of one another. Each cell is designed to convert a certain range of the solar spectrum: short-wave radiation, medium-wave radiation, and infrared. For almost 20 years, multi-junction solar cells have been used in space applications.

The solar modules are lightweight and surrounded by airflow both inside and outside the module. As a result, heat dissipates quickly from a solar panel. The normal operating temperature for solar modules is 20 degrees Celsius (°C) above ambient temperature; therefore, on a typical summer day at 40°C (104°F), the panel temperature would be approximately 60°C (172°F). When accounting for irradiance (a measure of solar radiation energy received on a given surface area in a given time), wind, and module type, it is expected that the peak module temperatures in the summer would be between 65°C and 70°C (149°F and 158°F), and the peak module temperatures in the winter would be between 35°C and 40°C (95°F and 104°F).

Although the CPV panels would be hot to the touch as a result of solar energy absorption, CPV panels are designed to absorb light energy inwards towards the panel to produce electricity. As opposed to mirrors which redirect the sun, CPV modules use Fresnel lenses to concentrate sunlight inside the module to produce electricity, and therefore, they would not noticeably affect the temperature of the surrounding area; temperatures below the modules would be nearly the same as ambient temperatures in ordinary shade.