SunEdison, Xcel announce (50 MW) solar project (in SE New Mexico)

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jAlFEJOVq7gTzxtRJqypCEZy4NPwD9CP7CN00

SunEdison, Xcel announce solar project

(AP) ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — North America's largest solar energy services provider and a Western utility are planning to install five photovoltaic solar facilities in southeastern New Mexico.

SunEdison and Xcel Energy's Southwestern Public Service Company say the 50 megawatt project will be one of the largest in North America. The five installations will be capable of generating enough electricity to power more than 10,000 homes.

…

The project will be built, financed and maintained by SunEdison under a 20-year agreement with Xcel, which will then buy the power.

Officials expect the project to be fully operational by the end of 2011.

[msongs]

1. solar for residential/business rooftops, NOT solar for corporate thieves nt

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. You need to face facts

Rooftop solar is impractical for most people.

I’d love to have solar panels on my roof, but:

1. My roof faces East/West, not North/South.
2. My roof is shaded by trees.
3. My roof is on the North side of a hill.

So, I buy 100% “green” electricity from http://www.sterlingplanet.com/residential/">Stirling Planet.

[kristopher]

3. Rooftop solar will form the backbone of our new, renewable grid.

It isn't going to be the first major technology to roll out, but it is going to be the most fundamental.

[NNadir]

4. As I recall, there were people here saying the same thing 8 years ago.

That would be about 200 billion tons of dangerous fossil fuel waste dumping ago.

Results of all this talk? http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/alternate/page/renew_energy_consump/table1.html

Denial...never under estimate it.

There will be no solar powered "new" electrical grid. With all the hype, if there were going to be one, it would have come years ago.

Here in New Jersey, for more than a week, all the roofs have been covered with snow.

There are no sleigh and reindeer tracks on any of them, and none of them are producing electricity for the "new" renewable grid.

[madokie]

5. If the repukes hadn't taken over in '81 and proceeded to dismantle any and all

that President Carter had started we wouldn't be quite where we are today.

funny that you think that snow blocks out the sun. I have a small unit set up for recharging my rechargeable batteries and I just checked it and looks like it is putting out about the same as on any sunny day and it has a good 4 maybe 5 inches on snow on it right now.

[kristopher]

6. Since your goal is the slander of renewable energy as a class in favor of nuclear

This is a more appropriate reply than a specific comment on solar.

http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/EE/article.asp?doi=b809990c

Energy Environ. Sci., 2009, 2, 148 - 173, DOI: 10.1039/b809990c
Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security

Mark Z. Jacobson

This paper reviews and ranks major proposed energy-related solutions to global warming, air pollution mortality, and energy security while considering other impacts of the proposed solutions, such as on water supply, land use, wildlife, resource availability, thermal pollution, water chemical pollution, nuclear proliferation, and undernutrition.

Nine electric power sources and two liquid fuel options are considered. The electricity sources include solar-photovoltaics (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal, nuclear, and coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The liquid fuel options include corn-ethanol (E85) and cellulosic-E85. To place the electric and liquid fuel sources on an equal footing, we examine their comparative abilities to address the problems mentioned by powering new-technology vehicles, including battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and flex-fuel vehicles run on E85.

Twelve combinations of energy source-vehicle type are considered. Upon ranking and weighting each combination with respect to each of 11 impact categories, four clear divisions of ranking, or tiers, emerge.

Tier 1 (highest-ranked) includes wind-BEVs and wind-HFCVs.
Tier 2 includes CSP-BEVs, geothermal-BEVs, PV-BEVs, tidal-BEVs, and wave-BEVs.
Tier 3 includes hydro-BEVs, nuclear-BEVs, and CCS-BEVs.
Tier 4 includes corn- and cellulosic-E85.

Wind-BEVs ranked first in seven out of 11 categories, including the two most important, mortality and climate damage reduction. Although HFCVs are much less efficient than BEVs, wind-HFCVs are still very clean and were ranked second among all combinations.

Tier 2 options provide significant benefits and are recommended.

Tier 3 options are less desirable. However, hydroelectricity, which was ranked ahead of coal-CCS and nuclear with respect to climate and health, is an excellent load balancer, thus recommended.

The Tier 4 combinations (cellulosic- and corn-E85) were ranked lowest overall and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste. Cellulosic-E85 ranked lower than corn-E85 overall, primarily due to its potentially larger land footprint based on new data and its higher upstream air pollution emissions than corn-E85.

Whereas cellulosic-E85 may cause the greatest average human mortality, nuclear-BEVs cause the greatest upper-limit mortality risk due to the expansion of plutonium separation and uranium enrichment in nuclear energy facilities worldwide. Wind-BEVs and CSP-BEVs cause the least mortality.

The footprint area of wind-BEVs is 2–6 orders of magnitude less than that of any other option. Because of their low footprint and pollution, wind-BEVs cause the least wildlife loss.

The largest consumer of water is corn-E85. The smallest are wind-, tidal-, and wave-BEVs.

The US could theoretically replace all 2007 onroad vehicles with BEVs powered by 73000–144000 5 MW wind turbines, less than the 300000 airplanes the US produced during World War II, reducing US CO2 by 32.5–32.7% and nearly eliminating 15000/yr vehicle-related air pollution deaths in 2020.

In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered. The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss, and the biofuel options provide no certain benefit and the greatest negative impacts.

[pjlindsey]

7. Jacobson's analysis heavily slanted against nuclear power

Mark Jacobson's analysis makes a huge presumption about nuclear power: that by default it will lead to nuclear war, therefore one must include the environmental/economic effects of nuclear war in the cost of nuclear power. Several people have demolished his recent SciAm article:

http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2009/10/jacobson-delucchi-plan-revealed.html

http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/11/03/wws-2030-critique/

http://thoriumenergy.blogspot.com/2008/12/review-of-mark-z-jscobsons-review.html

Please read these critiques before taking Jacobson's analyses at face value.

[tialsedov]

8. He was demolished be in *essense* he lied. In order

to make nuclear look like a high carbon emitter, he had to include the "the chance that every 30 years there is going to be a nuclear war...". Seriously. That is the 'science' this guy uses. Pathetic. Read the links provided above by pjlindsey.

DW

[kristopher]

9. His analysis is objective.

Over a number of years many, many people have done the same basic analysis that Jacobson has published in several peer reviewed journals. Specialists in energy systems and carbon management are required to look into all available technologies in detail in order to separate the bullshit from reality. Jacobson just had the great idea of putting all that standard research into an article for publication.

I went to your first link and what was the first thing in the first paragraph? The "significant criticism" of Jacobson that is being pointed to was rejected for publication in a peer reviewed journal. That means the criticisms didn't pass even first cut review for validity.

Going on to point to crap written at various websites dedicated to supporting nuclear energy is not a substitute for peer review as a convincing refutation. Especially since Jacobson's analysis shows nuclear to be a very poor choice for meeting our climate change and energy security needs.

http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/EE/article.asp?doi=b809990c

Energy Environ. Sci., 2009, 2, 148 - 173, DOI: 10.1039/b809990c
Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security

Mark Z. Jacobson

This paper reviews and ranks major proposed energy-related solutions to global warming, air pollution mortality, and energy security while considering other impacts of the proposed solutions, such as on water supply, land use, wildlife, resource availability, thermal pollution, water chemical pollution, nuclear proliferation, and undernutrition.

Nine electric power sources and two liquid fuel options are considered. The electricity sources include solar-photovoltaics (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal, nuclear, and coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The liquid fuel options include corn-ethanol (E85) and cellulosic-E85. To place the electric and liquid fuel sources on an equal footing, we examine their comparative abilities to address the problems mentioned by powering new-technology vehicles, including battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and flex-fuel vehicles run on E85.

Twelve combinations of energy source-vehicle type are considered. Upon ranking and weighting each combination with respect to each of 11 impact categories, four clear divisions of ranking, or tiers, emerge.

Tier 1 (highest-ranked) includes wind-BEVs and wind-HFCVs.
Tier 2 includes CSP-BEVs, geothermal-BEVs, PV-BEVs, tidal-BEVs, and wave-BEVs.
Tier 3 includes hydro-BEVs, nuclear-BEVs, and CCS-BEVs.
Tier 4 includes corn- and cellulosic-E85.

Wind-BEVs ranked first in seven out of 11 categories, including the two most important, mortality and climate damage reduction. Although HFCVs are much less efficient than BEVs, wind-HFCVs are still very clean and were ranked second among all combinations.

Tier 2 options provide significant benefits and are recommended.

Tier 3 options are less desirable. However, hydroelectricity, which was ranked ahead of coal-CCS and nuclear with respect to climate and health, is an excellent load balancer, thus recommended.

The Tier 4 combinations (cellulosic- and corn-E85) were ranked lowest overall and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste. Cellulosic-E85 ranked lower than corn-E85 overall, primarily due to its potentially larger land footprint based on new data and its higher upstream air pollution emissions than corn-E85.

Whereas cellulosic-E85 may cause the greatest average human mortality, nuclear-BEVs cause the greatest upper-limit mortality risk due to the expansion of plutonium separation and uranium enrichment in nuclear energy facilities worldwide. Wind-BEVs and CSP-BEVs cause the least mortality.

The footprint area of wind-BEVs is 2–6 orders of magnitude less than that of any other option. Because of their low footprint and pollution, wind-BEVs cause the least wildlife loss.

The largest consumer of water is corn-E85. The smallest are wind-, tidal-, and wave-BEVs.

The US could theoretically replace all 2007 onroad vehicles with BEVs powered by 73000–144000 5 MW wind turbines, less than the 300000 airplanes the US produced during World War II, reducing US CO2 by 32.5–32.7% and nearly eliminating 15000/yr vehicle-related air pollution deaths in 2020.

In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered. The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss, and the biofuel options provide no certain benefit and the greatest negative impacts.