Canada to Build 40MW Solar Power Plant 402
IceDiver writes "According to an article in the Toronto Star, an Ontario company has been given approval to build a 40MW solar power plant near Sarnia in Southwestern Ontario. This is enough power for about 10,000 homes. The plant will cover 365 hectares (1.4 sq. miles) and is to be operational by 2010. OptiSolar, the company building the plant, claims to have developed a way to mass produce the solar panels at a dramatically reduced cost, making the plant competitive with other forms of power generation. 'Compared to coal, nuclear power, even wind, solar's squeaky-clean image comes at a high price. OptiSolar is selling the electricity to the province under its new standard offer program, which pays a premium for electricity that comes from small-scale renewable projects. In the case of wind, it's 11 cents per kilowatt-hour. Solar fetches 42 cents per kilowatt hour, nearly four times as much.'"
and coal? (Score:4, Informative)
40MW is not that much (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ratio's (Score:5, Informative)
365 hecters = 39.3 million square feet. The average [census.gov] size of new homes are ~2.4k square feet each, or 24 million square feet total. This doesn't count roof space though, as a two story house will have half the roof expected.
It's close, but not a match.
Hmm... 40MW over 10k homes only leaves 4kw average draw per house, or 16 amps of 240 during the day. Figure a 50% load factor(High end), that's 1,440 kw/h per house. At my local price of $.08/kwh $115.20 of electricity. I saw that Canada's subsidizing solar to the tune of $.24/kwh, so it'd end up being $345.60 of electricity.
This is considered good how?
Biggest Shame: Emotion Trumps Science (Score:4, Informative)
Building a solar-panel power station is "cool", "neat", and "oh, so hip". However, it makes no economic sense. Solar power is about 3x the cost of the most expensive nuclear power.
Nuclear power is the way to go.
Re:or evertything else... (Score:5, Informative)
No misunderstand the program. It isn't end-consumers who pay the $0.42/KWh, its the Province of Ontario, through the Ontario Power Authority. It simple gets pumped into the grid, and the consumers continue to pay the standard rate. The contract with the Province is good for 20 years.
The idea is to spur development of renewable energy sources, while fossil fuel based plants are taken offline. It's a pretty sweet deal for the microgenerators (the program is only open to projects that generate a maximum of 10MW at a voltage of 50kV or less).
Note that during peak periods, an extra 3.52/KWh is paid out, and the contract is indexed to inflation. And anyone in Ontario can apply to have their renewable resource microgenerator included in the program simply by filling out an online form.
IMO, this is an excellent program. Ontario has been rebuilding nuclear capacity, has a lot of hydroelectric generation, and has been taking fossil fuel based plants offline (slowly). My family has some holiday property in central Ontario that goes unused for much of the year, and I've long thought that we should invest in some solar panels and a small wind turbine hooked into the power grid to generate some revenue. A program like this could very well make it worth it in the long run. Every such project, no matter how small, is that much less reliance needed on a fossil fuel-based plant somewhere.
Yaz.
Re:or everything else... (Score:5, Informative)
Oops -- I forgot the URL to the programs website, for the interested:
http://www.powerauthority.on.ca/sop/ [powerauthority.on.ca]
Yaz.
Re:or evertything else... (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not a "greenie". I can, however, use proper capitalization, grammar, and spelling.
You have to realize that in Ontario many of the existing large-scale power stations are slated to be shutdown within the next 20 years anyhow. Where do you think the capital construction costs for new and/or retrofitted plants is going to come from? Those exact same taxpayers. Who pays for the environmental consequences? Those exact same taxpayers. Who pays for the extra healthcare costs associated with the pollution the existing coal fired plants spew into the atmosphere? Those exact same taxpayers.
The Province specifically capped this program to smaller installations. Capital infrastructure costs money, but once installed will provide benefits for many years to come (and should for significantly longer than then 20 year contract period). The taxpayers are going to wind up paying for this new infrastructure in one way or another -- an incentive like this to create new jobs, new power generation, with the side benefits of a cleaner environment and lessened health care costs (remember, health care in Canada is paid for by the Province), and it's an all-around winning scenario.
I think it is you that needs a lesson in economics. A few lessons in English and typing wouldn't hurt either while you're at it.
Yaz.
Re:When the sun sets... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I'm not impressed (Score:3, Informative)
So as it pertains to your argument, were the wealthy given benefits of expensive dam construction? No. The federal government secured funding to benefit all, rich or poor. (In the grand scheme of things, consider all of the beneficiaries poor). Sure, there were exceptions..but would you consider hydroelectric plants as dead-end technology?
Canada has no energy crisis or an energy shortage.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data
As you can see, Canada is the #1 supplier of oil to the US. Their population is around 33 mil and most of the population lives right next to the US border. So why would they bother with PV arrays? They are going to charge consumers normal electric rates for use --- however, big government projects are very patient. As inflation goes up and time goes on, the electricity will more than pay off for itself. Peak oil is theorized to start strangling energy exports in the next 10-15-20 years while this PV array will last 20-30-40 years without breaking a sweat.
So the moral of the story? Count your chickens before they hatch.
Re:While it is a good idea (Score:5, Informative)
Take a look at this map:
http://www.solar4power.com/map2-global-solar-power .html [solar4power.com]
Re:or evertything else... (Score:5, Informative)
A few points:
FWIW, I haven't lived in Ontario for a few years. I have family that still does, however. IMO, this seems like a pretty good investment on the part of the Province and on the part of taxpayers -- taxpayers get clean burning energy, pollution-related health care costs decrease, jobs are created, and with a bit of luck and ingenuity green power related industries move to Ontario due to its expended market. Sounds like a pretty good deal to the citizens of Ontario to me.
Investments cost money. Governments have been investing in fossil fuel based power plants for decades, through either direct ownership or subsidies. Hell, chances are very good that the power in whatever region you're living in is or has been subsidized by tax dollars. Why start bitching about it just because in this case it's a green technology subsidy
Yaz.
Re:Only for a very few homes, though. (Score:4, Informative)
A 40MW plant of solar is unlikely to enable the takedown of even a single coal plant. Even ten of them is unlikely to. Ten of these solar plants would cost $3Billion dollars, which, depending upon which figures you use, would result in 1-3GW of new nuclear plant capacity, which would enable the shutting down of a number of coal plants.
Is it just me, or does it appear that somebody's being awfully free with the troll mod on anybody being down on solar power, or this install of it?
Re:Photovoltaic vs. SEGS (Score:3, Informative)
Re:simcity (Score:5, Informative)
Re:or evertything else... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:or evertything else... (Score:3, Informative)
That said, the fact that research was 100% halted in the early 1990s by the Clinton administration on one of the most promising of these breeder types (the IFR) due to proliferation concerns (showing a fundamental lack of understanding of the reactor, only seeing the name breeder and saying "breeder = proliferation" even though the waste products from the IFR would have been utterly useless for building nuclear weapons) means we're 15+ years behind in that regard.
Re:Biggest Shame: Emotion Trumps Science (Score:3, Informative)
> If you can use breeders, you will get maybe a 100 years (depends how much we use). If you add in thorium, several
> hundred years.
Twenty years--lets look at that the number carefully. The current mineral inventory of uranium, coupled with current enrichment technology and usage gives you about 70 years [world-nuclear.org]. If one projects that number of reactors triples, then we can get the twenty years that you quote.
Let me present the following, albeit rough, argument. The historical trading range for U3O8 has been about $10 in "current year" dollars--in 2006 dollars, the prices has traded in the $10 - $80 range. The two excursions has been in the 70's and 2004+. From 1980 until 2004, the global demand has been low and the HEU blend down program with Russia introduced a cheap source of U3O8 into the market. Thus, investment in uranium mining, conversion, and enrichment has been low. When one factors in loan financing and depreciation, there is little incentive to invest when there is over 30+ years of inventory available.
Lets adopt the 20 year inventory as factual. The assay of U235 in the tailings from enrichment is typically around 0.3% (vice 0.711% in natural uranium)--the amount varies due to the price of uranium feed versus the cost in enrichment. Depending on how many SWU's one uses, current enrichment technology can produce natural uranium feed equal to about 10% - 25% of the mass of the DU feed. If one uses a more efficient enrichment technology, for example atomic vapor laser isotope seperation (AVLIS), even more natural uranium could be produced. Another option is to recover uranium from the oceans.
So depending on what the projected trend is on the price of uranium and the rate of new uranium ore discovery, the economics of tailings enrichment or new enrichment techologies may become viable. If one then factors in reprocessing of spent fuel, the viability of the uranium fuel cycle goes far beyond twenty years.
The biggest problem with solar power is that only 1366 W/m^2 reaches the upper atomosphere of the Earth. Thus to generate 1GW, you would need a 700000 m^2 (0.73 km^2) at 100% effiiciency. If you didn't want to build an orbiting power station, then the solar fluence becomes much less. Lets say half makes it to the surface in the mid latitudes (in North America the range is 125 - 375 W/m^2 [wikipedia.org]) and you can make solar cells that are 50% efficient (current cells are 15%) you will need 2.9 km^2 to generate 1 GW. The net generating capacity of the United States is 978 GW [doe.gov], thus one would need 2900 km^2. Of course, one needs sunshine for solar collectors to work, so lets assume in the summer you have a 50% split between day and night and that you get full power for the 12 hours of sunlight. Lets further assume that the night time power consumption in the summer is 20% of the daytime power consumption. Lets further assume that there is some magical energy storage system that is 100% efficient, you would then need 3500 km^2, which is 10 times the size of New York city. If one assumes you can site the collectors with a 50% density (e.g. 1 m^2 collector requires 2 m^2 of real estate), then you need 7000 km^2 (20 times the size of NYC or twice the size of Rhode Island).
For a point of comparison, the Palo Verde nuclear power plant generates 3800 MW and the plant is sited on 16 km^2, thus it generates 0.24 GW/km^2. My widely optimistic solar power plant generates 978 GW in 7000 km^2, which is 0.14 GW/km^2. This does not factor in the "off site" requirements (uranium mines, enrichment, solar panel manufacturing, etc.) but does provide a rough comparison of the two technologies. The Palo Verde generates electricity at 1.33 cents/KWH. A