I just found out that some company is planning on building a wind "farm" (power plant) a couple of miles to the west of my home. It is going to be something like 40,000 acres in size (62.5 square miles), using the biggest of the biggest wind turbines. At a discussion on this topic, one of the participants said something like, "it isn't perfect, but we need to do something about the energy problem." That is a true statement, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the "something" needs to be huge new power plants, or new high tension power lines to support those new power plants.
It has become abundantly clear that a massive effort is underway to shape the future of renewable power, and the approach that is currently winning is one where very large corporations will win by invading the public "commons" and corralling the available profits for themselves. Current legislation and financing is strongly biased toward huge, centralized, power generation facilities. These facilities are taking the form of the very large wind generation facilities, and the very large solar arrays using a variety of technologies. Almost no serious consideration is being made for planning toward small scale, localized power generation. There are currently laws on the books requiring power companies to accept locally produced power, but only up to a very small percentage of the total use. In California we are very close to those maximum limits - after which the only new renewable generation accepted will be from very large power plants covering hundreds of square miles of land.
One of the big problems with these very large installations is that they cause very large, negative, environmental and social problems. For example, wind turbines seem benign, but that is not the case if you happen to live near them. They are noisy, cause lots of bird deaths, and are an eye-sore. They prevent the land from being used for a large number of other uses, such as residential properties and other uses. Very large solar arrays also have heavy negative environmental impact in that they require large tracts of land to be flattened, graveled and sterilized with herbicides. All of the large arrays that are currently proposed take large tracts of land (usually publicly owned lands) out of the local ecosystem by fencing off and denuding dozens of square miles of land. This land is currently in the "commons" (where we all benefit), but are slated to be placed under corporate ownership and use for the profit of the corporate owners.
As far as I can determine, what is happening is that our common ownership of resources is being taken away and given to a few very wealthy individuals. What we collectively own is more than just the value of the land being used, it includes viewscapes from the installations and the new high tension power lines that will be required to support these huge installations, ecosystems and other important attributes. They have very definite, and potentially important, environmental impacts - but currently our regulatory watchdogs are placing an extremely low value upon these impacts. They acknowledge the presence of the impacts, but then judge them to be so low as to not require much, or any, corrective action. Basically, they are taking the position that these impacts are acceptable and need not be mitigated - with the result that the project can go ahead regardless of the impacts. Kind of the position of, "damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!"
This might be a reasonable position to take if there weren't better alternatives, but there are better alternatives that don't require the negative impacts or the creation of a whole new infrastructure supporting the new high tension power lines heading off into isolated parts of our country. We already have a solution that does not require new power lines and does not take any land out of use, or cause other environmental impacts. This solution is small scale, locally sited, solar (PV) power plants situated in locations that already are in use for other purpose.
It is my opinion that before we start messing with the large systems, we should maximize our use of small scale systems. If we then still need more power, we can think about the next step. We are not there at this time. For example, almost every single family dwelling the United States can harvest two to three times their energy needs from the area of their roof. It is true that many of the roofs are not oriented optimally, but that doesn't make them ineffective, it only makes them a bit more expensive to use. An east-west orientation is perfectly fine for harvesting solar energy, but it will take a few more modules to do so. They still have two to three times more power available than they need. Another example are parking lots. These are areas that are already pretty ugly and have been set aside for the sole purpose of parking cars. They could easily, and relatively inexpensively, be covered over with solar arrays. This would provide shading, cut down on the impacts of their "heat island" problems, and provide a lot of renewable power to the grid. They would turn parking lots from being a net expense to being a profit center for the owners. Not only that, but as we move into more and more electric cars, they could provide local charging for those vehicles, avoiding the requirement to ship the power off-site - an making even more profits for the owners of the arrays. Roofs and windows of large buildings such as shopping centers and factories are another good place to install solar modules. (Solar panels can be made to be transparent for use as windows.) They could be sized to take care of most, or all, of the power requirements of the building - or designed to make a profit for the building owners by selling excess power to the grid. Road sides along or between freeways are other examples. Once you start looking around you will find many, many ideal locations for solar modules that have little, or no, negative environmental impact.
Given a little thought, it becomes clear that we have thousands of miles of surface area that have already been taken over for uses such as these, there is no need to take any additional land to provide the amount of solar arrays that are needed to provide a major share of our energy needs. For example, in California there are about 6.5 million single family dwellings. If these average a roof area of 1500 square feet, that means there are about 360 square miles of roofs on homes. That is enough roof space to produce over 65 gW of power - it takes about 25 gW to provide electrical power for the entire state of California. It is clear that if we just used the available roof top space on the homes we would have far more power than we use to provide the energy needs of the entire State. Add to that the opportunities afforded by other spaces such as business rooftops and parking lots, and it is clear that there is not a "need" to use any other spaces. There is a desire to do so, but not a need. The interesting point is that this math works out for all States in the Union, not just California. All States have much more roof top and parking lot space to offset their entire energy budget, plus a very large surplus. There are differences in costs between locations, but not in the basic fact that there is more than enough energy available. All could easily produce excess energy at all times of the year for less than the current cost of power - generating a net savings, not an additional expense.
What this gets down to is a battle about who gets to benefit from solar production. If the modules are placed on homes, then the homeowner will benefit through vastly reduced power costs, and the potential to make a little on the side. If the sources of renewable energy are concentrated in large, centralized power plants, then the owners of those power plants will reap the profits. There is also the impact on the job force of these two approaches. Putting solar on homes and businesses will create a very large need for workers and will create hundreds of new businesses to service those needs. Putting solar in large centralized locations will produce a short term need for a few workers, and will create almost no new businesses because that work will be performed by existing very large construction firms.
That brings us to the point where the decision to go with small, local production or huge centralized production is really an economic decision/choice, it is not one having anything to do with physics or engineering limitations favoring either choice. Obviously the big players (the corporations that make their money selling power) would really like to maintain that business model. If we all make our own power, then their business becomes one of storage and distribution, not primary producers of energy. The big profits are involved in taking raw energy sources from the commons (from nature) and converting that to a salable product. They don't want to lose that profit source. However, losing the ability to be the primary energy producers does not mean that they wouldn't have an opportunity to make profits - there will still be a very large need for storage, distribution and providing off-time energy supplies. It will just be a different business model, but not the end of business.
There is of course a question of how all of these new solar systems would be financed. In many cases, they would be financed by the property owner who is looking for a better way to get a return on investment of their savings. However, in most cases, they would be financed just like power plants and things are financed right now, through loans from private financial institutions and government subsidies in the form of loan guarantees, tax incentives and outright grants - just like we have always done for the large power producers. By far the biggest "welfare" cost in the United States is the money that we give to wealthy power companies, we give them trillions of dollars to produce energy to sell to us at huge profit margins. The "welfare" to the power producers would be the same as it is today, but it would go to the individual home and business owner, not to the very large power companies. It would be money from the general public back to the general public, rather than from the general public to the very wealthy.
While it is abundantly clear that there is more than enough wasted space available to produce all the power we need, at a price that is much less than what we are currently paying, it is not at all clear how to convinced the large companies to play the game for our mutual benefit. There will need to be some significant modifications to the current power creating and distribution system to accomplish this, but that will be needed no matter which approach is used. The scary part is that we are at a turning point. Since the grid and supplies will need modification in any case, the decisions being made today will impact which approach we use in the future. We need to make the correct decision right now, not wait for the system to change and then attempt to go back and do the right thing.
The new role for the power companies is too much for this blog posting. That discussion will have to wait for another time.
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