{"id":2321,"date":"2008-09-19T11:41:11","date_gmt":"2008-09-19T18:41:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lee.org\/blog\/?p=2321"},"modified":"2008-09-19T12:07:18","modified_gmt":"2008-09-19T19:07:18","slug":"solar-futures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/2008\/09\/19\/solar-futures\/","title":{"rendered":"Solar Futures"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>(<a href=\"http:\/\/www.redorbit.com\/news\/business\/1413689\/cost_to_build_power_plants_skyrockets\/index.html\">via<\/a>)<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8230; coal-fired power plant is currently under construction in West Virginia. It is the 695-megawatt Longview plant in Monongalia County. Ground was broken in early 2007 for the $1.83 billion dollar plant &#8211; the first coal-fired plant built in West Virginia since 1993.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>so it costs $2.6 million per megawatt of capacity to build a coal fired power plant.<\/p>\n<p>(<a href=\"http:\/\/www.greentechmedia.com\/articles\/nanosolar-to-build-10mw-power-plant-1409.html\">via<\/a>)<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8230; Nanosolar had teamed up with Beck Energy to build the 10-megawatt power plant, which would cost around \u00e2\u201a\u00ac30 million ($42.75 million).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>and it costs twice as much, $4.3 million per megawatt of capacity to build a solar powered power plant&#8230; <strong>only this plant needs no fuel <\/strong>except the sun for the next 10-30 years.<\/p>\n<p> \u00a0<br \/>\nUgh, there are way too many variables for me to actually say the solar plant is the way to go. The primary questions being:<br \/>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>How much does it cost to fuel the coal plant per megawatt-hr<\/li>\n<li>What is the solar panel replacement regimen? Do panels need replacing after 5 years? 50?<\/li>\n<li>Are the numbers I&#8217;m looking at correct? A 10 megawatt solar plant obviously can&#8217;t produce at night so we&#8217;re not comparing apples to apples&#8230;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Ok, lets take a stab at it&#8230;. coal costs about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eia.doe.gov\/cneaf\/coal\/page\/coalnews\/coalmar.html\">$70 per short ton<\/a>. Coal plants actually produce about 2.5 mWh\/ton of coal (<a href=\"http:\/\/science.howstuffworks.com\/question481.htm\">How much coal is required to run a 100-watt light bulb 24 hours a day for a year?<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p>To power the plant for 1 hour and generate 695 megawatts, you need (695\/2.5) 278 tons of coal (wow, that&#8217;s a lot of truckloads of coal). That coal costs $19,460. To power the plant at full power for 10 years, you&#8217;d have to buy $1,704,696,000 in coal. (I&#8217;m not counting any other operating expenses but assuming fuel is the largest expense)<\/p>\n<p>So with the solar plant, you&#8217;d spend twice as much to build the plant, an extra $1.83 billion and you&#8217;d recoup $1.7 billion in fuel costs over 10 years.<\/p>\n<p>Oop, I&#8217;ve assumed that the solar plant is capable of running at full power 24 hours a day. Unless the plant is <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Solar_power_satellite\">in orbit<\/a>, it only gets good sun 8 hours\/day&#8230; 1\/3 of the day, tripling the payback period from 10 years to 30. In general amorphous solar panels have a life of 10+ years while crystalline solar panels have a 30+ year life. My first guess is that since Nanosolar&#8217;s panels are flexible and &#8220;printed&#8221; instead of grown crystals that they will have a similar lifespan to amorphous panels. But I certainly could be wrong, after all, they&#8217;ve got the word &#8220;nano&#8221; in the company&#8217;s name. And, more importantly, they put a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nanosolar.com\/Designedtolast.htm\">25 year warranty<\/a> on the panels, hmm!<\/p>\n<p>If the solar plant has a useful life of 30 years without major repairs (total panel or inverter replacement), it would seem that <strong>the costs of a solar plant are conceivably comparable to a coal fired plant<\/strong>. And that&#8217;s what we&#8217;ve all been hoping for. And then there&#8217;s that whole carbon-neutral, no-sulphur-dioxide, renewable thing&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Very exciting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(via) &#8230; coal-fired power plant is currently under construction in West Virginia. It is the 695-megawatt Longview plant in Monongalia County. Ground was broken in early 2007 for the $1.83 billion dollar plant &#8211; the first coal-fired plant built in West Virginia since 1993. so it costs $2.6 million per megawatt of capacity to build [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2321"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2322,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2321\/revisions\/2322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}