Antinuclear

Renewable energy CAN provide “base load” power

The authors quash the myth that solar and wind are unreliable for “base load” energy. “The most important thing is to combine renewable energy sources into a bundle,”…..The first commercial solar power plants are already in operation with heat storage, allowing the plant to maintain power production 24/7……..

A carbon neutral solar and wind powered world in 20 to 40 years?, Indybay, by Takver –  Jan 26th, 2011 Is it achievable? You bet! All it takes is the political and social will to make it happen says two California based researchers who have just published a study of the material resources and technology required to power the world 100 per cent by carbon emission neutral alternative energy technologies.

It would also save 2.5 million to 3 million lives a year through slashing water and air pollution and simultaneously slow global warming and the problems of climate change, and develop secure, reliable energy sources and at costs comparable with what we spend on energy today.
It sounds like a no-brainer. Why don’t we do it?

“Based on our findings, there are no technological or economic barriers to converting the entire world to clean, renewable energy sources,” said Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University. “It is a question of whether we have the societal and political will.”

The study – Providing all global energy with wind, water, and solar power, Part I: Technologies, energy resources, quantities and areas of infrastructure, and materials – by Mark Z Jacobson and co-authored with Mark Delucchi, of the University of California-Davis, has been published in Energy Policy. Jacobson is the director of Stanford’s Atmosphere/Energy Program and a senior fellow at Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment and the Precourt Institute for Energy.

The world they envision would run largely on electricity. Their plan calls for using wind, water and solar energy to generate power, with wind and solar power contributing 90 percent of the needed energy. Geothermal and hydroelectric sources would each contribute about 4 percent in their plan (70 percent of the hydroelectric is already in place), with the remaining 2 percent from wave and tidal power…………….

The authors quash the myth that solar and wind are unreliable for “base load” energy. “The most important thing is to combine renewable energy sources into a bundle,” Jacobson said. “If you combine them as one commodity and use hydroelectric to fill in gaps, it is a lot easier to match demand.”

Wind and solar are complimentary. Wind often peaks at night and sunlight peaks during the day. Using hydroelectric power to fill in the gaps, as it does in our current infrastructure, allows demand to be precisely met by supply in most cases. Other renewable sources such as geothermal and tidal power can also be used to supplement the power from wind and solar sources.

“One of the most promising methods of insuring that supply matches demand is using long-distance transmission to connect widely dispersed sites,” said Delucchi. Even if conditions are poor for wind or solar energy generation in one area on a given day, a few hundred miles away the winds could be blowing steadily and the sun shining.

“With a system that is 100 percent wind, water and solar, you can’t use normal methods for matching supply and demand. You have to have what people call a supergrid, with long-distance transmission and really good management,” he said.

The first commercial solar power plants are already in operation with heat storage, allowing the plant to maintain power production 24/7……..

In Australia the feasibility of converting our energy sector to zero carbon emissions by 2020 has been detailed in a Beyond Zero Emissions award winning report – Zero Carbon Australia 2020. It requires a substantial investment in wind and solar power generation and a major upgrade to a high efficiency transmission grid. Economic modelling shows the Zero Carbon Australia 2020 plan could be implemented for a total cost of about $370 billion, or $37 billion per year – about 3 per cent of GDP per year for 10 years…..

All it requires is the political and social will to increase the rate of transformation and build the energy infrastructure for the future…….A carbon neutral solar and wind powered world in 20 to 40 years? : Indybay

January 27, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized