Middletown Mayor Daniel T. Drew and Michael Silvestrini, CEO of Greenskies Renewable Energy, LCC, jointly announce an agreement to locate up to 3 Megawatts of solar photovoltaic generation capacity on city property. The solar facilities will be constructed by Greenskies at no cost to the city. One Megawatt of solar capacity will be located on the capped municipal landfill adjacent to the city’s recycling center. The ground-mounted solar panels will cover about 5 acres and provide electric generation for the nearby Remington Building and other city electrical accounts at a rate of $.06 per kilowatt hour. Currently, the Remington Building pays $.15 per kilowatt hour, so this is clearly a very favorable rate.
Based on output projections by Greenskies, the city will avoid approximately $70,000 in electricity costs for the first year alone, create a significant number of construction jobs and bring in needed tax revenue. In addition, the financial benefit of this agreement will likely increase over the expected 20 year lifespan of the project. The cost of grid-supplied electricity has risen over the past 30 years and is expected to continue to rise; however, the power produced from these sites will remain permanently fixed at 6 cents per kWh.
As Mayor Drew pointed out, “These long term agreements will save city taxpayers millions of dollars over the 20 year term, produce needed tax revenue every year and create a significant number of construction jobs in the near term.”
The attractive financials underlying this agreement stem from the federal economic stimulus package of 2009, as well as recent Connecticut legislation (PA11-80) that allows increased distributed generation for municipalities through “virtual net-metering.” The new law permits excess generation from one site to be credited to other municipal accounts.
Because of the foresight and readiness of Greenskies Renewable Energy, whose headquarters are at 10 Main Street in Middletown, and thanks to expedited action by Mayor Drew, Director of Planning, Conservation and Development, William Warner, and the Common Council, certain federal tax benefits that otherwise would have expired on Dec. 31 were captured. The project will also be eligible to sell zero emission renewable energy credits (known as ZRecs) at a regional auction in March. These beneficial federal and state programs coincide to create an ideal financial situation, as Greenskies Chairman Bob Landino explained to the Common Council at its meeting on Dec. 21.
Middletown taxpayers and a local business will both benefit from this exciting opportunity, said Common Council member Gerry Daley. Council member Phil Pessina mentioned that taking “waste property” where we used to dump our trash and transforming it for an environmentally productive use has been the vision of the Jonah Center for Earth and Art since 2004. Now that vision is becoming a reality. The City of Middletown and Greenskies Renewable Energy, LLC celebrate this agreement as a model public-private partnership that benefits the local economy in an environmentally friendly way.
Showing posts with label solar power. Show all posts
Showing posts with label solar power. Show all posts
Friday, January 6, 2012
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Solar Power to Meet US Energy Needs Would Cost $45,000 per US citizen
At least, this is the figure that William Trousdale, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Wesleyan University, arrived at while preparing for his talk Monday evening at the Russell Library. This was the third in the series of seminar presentations by Trousdale and moderated by Marvin Farman on "Global Warming and Energy Options".
Imagine a few hundred thousand of these. [photo credit: solarishi]
In a detailed presentation, Trousdale calculated the cost based on the total estimated field of photovoltaic cells required (20,000 square miles, or an area the size of about 3 Connecticuts) to satisfy per capita US energy consumption at 5,000 kilowatt hours per year. (This consumption figure is a conservative projection, and is about half of current consumption rates). The construction cost of the solar field alone would amount to over $29,000 per person. Add another $15,000 or so per person for energy storage (solar and wind both require storage systems, since the power is wasted otherwise) and about $670 per person for transporting the energy on massive high-capacity aluminum lines from the southwest--where the sun shines--so as to minimize loss, and we're at around $45,000 per person. (Actually, the power transmission estimate here is also low, since it does not include the cost of financing.)
Given that the US population stands at around 300 million, Trousdale concluded that the US would need to spend in the neighborhood of about $13.5 trillion to create a solar energy system that could satisfy US energy requirements. This assumes, not unreasonably, that the US population can conserve energy to the point that it ends up using about half what we currently consume. Given that the US has spent the last six or seven decades ginning up a frenzied consumer culture, the casual observer may be forgiven for thinking that such conservation is beyond the realm of the possible. But, as Trousdale noted, the American people have sacrificed for massive projects before. He pointed to the Hoover Dam and World War II in particular.
This array is said to power 10,000 homes in Sevilla, Spain. [photo credit: treehugger.com]
$13.5 trillion is a lot of money, approaching the size of the US annual GDP (about $14.26 trillion in 2009). By contrast, it was estimated that building the equivalent capacity of nuclear power would cost somewhere between a quarter and a half of that amount. According to a Trousdale (in a follow up email exchange), "current Department of Energy estimates are that nuclear power is not much different from solar but it gets close to one half when storage is factored in. ["Storage" here refers to "storage of power", not fuel rods, on which see below. Nuclear, unlike solar, does not require facilities to store power.] Any large scale nuclear endeavor, a thousand or so one thousand megawatt plants, would be done with a standard design, greatly reducing the cost per unit. According to reports China builds nuclear power plants at about one sixth the cost in the USA." Of course, with nuclear you do have greater risk and political opposition associated with storage of spent fuel.
So much depends on whether we think we face a crisis with respect to global warming and whether we can come up with ways of dealing with radioactive waste. As to the former question, a close reading of essay in the New York Review of Books, June 12, 2008, by the eminent physicist Freeman Dyson, entitled "The Question of Global Warming", is in order. Dyson suggests that simply planting lots of trees may be the best thing we can do in the short term to deal with the excess of carbon in our atmosphere.
As to the question of what to do with spent fuel rods, this is harder to resolve. One solution that has been mooted by some governments (e.g., the Indians, Russians), and discussed in a previous session, is to build breeder reactors that consume most of the spent uranium and actually produce, in some cases, more usable fuel than they consume. [photo credit: Defence Forum of India] But this creates other issues, such as the production of weapons-grade plutonium and the potential for extremely high exposure when the plutonium is extracted for reprocessing. Trousdale also mentions (in a follow-up email) subcritical reactors, "which, according to their backers, have the potential of burning not only all of the Uranium but most of the radioactive waste as well." Finally, there is also (for those willing to wait a little longer) fusion technology. Fusion devotees are particularly focused on the LIFE project at Lawrence Livermore Labs in California, an experimental laser-aided system that (according to the folks in California) "has the potential to meet future worldwide energy needs in a safe, sustainable manner without carbon dioxide emissions." According to a current story in The Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription only), the Livermore scientists are reporting a "major breakthrough." But they seem to be in the habit of doing so, as in this story from March. (Then again, were I on the verge of a technological breakthrough that would change life as we know it, I'd probably brag about it too.)
In any case, the talk attracted a large audience, including scholars, energy plant entrepreneurs, and movement environmentalists. A lively discussion followed the presentation, some of which focused on the importance of cleaner fossil fuel solutions in the short term, such as "clean" natural-gas-fed power plants that run at about 55 to 59% efficiency (depending on whom one is talking to, which in any case is substantially higher than conventional steam turbine plants which operate at about 40 to 45% efficiency) that may act as a bridge to future long-term solutions.
Imagine a few hundred thousand of these. [photo credit: solarishi]In a detailed presentation, Trousdale calculated the cost based on the total estimated field of photovoltaic cells required (20,000 square miles, or an area the size of about 3 Connecticuts) to satisfy per capita US energy consumption at 5,000 kilowatt hours per year. (This consumption figure is a conservative projection, and is about half of current consumption rates). The construction cost of the solar field alone would amount to over $29,000 per person. Add another $15,000 or so per person for energy storage (solar and wind both require storage systems, since the power is wasted otherwise) and about $670 per person for transporting the energy on massive high-capacity aluminum lines from the southwest--where the sun shines--so as to minimize loss, and we're at around $45,000 per person. (Actually, the power transmission estimate here is also low, since it does not include the cost of financing.)
Given that the US population stands at around 300 million, Trousdale concluded that the US would need to spend in the neighborhood of about $13.5 trillion to create a solar energy system that could satisfy US energy requirements. This assumes, not unreasonably, that the US population can conserve energy to the point that it ends up using about half what we currently consume. Given that the US has spent the last six or seven decades ginning up a frenzied consumer culture, the casual observer may be forgiven for thinking that such conservation is beyond the realm of the possible. But, as Trousdale noted, the American people have sacrificed for massive projects before. He pointed to the Hoover Dam and World War II in particular.
This array is said to power 10,000 homes in Sevilla, Spain. [photo credit: treehugger.com]$13.5 trillion is a lot of money, approaching the size of the US annual GDP (about $14.26 trillion in 2009). By contrast, it was estimated that building the equivalent capacity of nuclear power would cost somewhere between a quarter and a half of that amount. According to a Trousdale (in a follow up email exchange), "current Department of Energy estimates are that nuclear power is not much different from solar but it gets close to one half when storage is factored in. ["Storage" here refers to "storage of power", not fuel rods, on which see below. Nuclear, unlike solar, does not require facilities to store power.] Any large scale nuclear endeavor, a thousand or so one thousand megawatt plants, would be done with a standard design, greatly reducing the cost per unit. According to reports China builds nuclear power plants at about one sixth the cost in the USA." Of course, with nuclear you do have greater risk and political opposition associated with storage of spent fuel.
So much depends on whether we think we face a crisis with respect to global warming and whether we can come up with ways of dealing with radioactive waste. As to the former question, a close reading of essay in the New York Review of Books, June 12, 2008, by the eminent physicist Freeman Dyson, entitled "The Question of Global Warming", is in order. Dyson suggests that simply planting lots of trees may be the best thing we can do in the short term to deal with the excess of carbon in our atmosphere.
As to the question of what to do with spent fuel rods, this is harder to resolve. One solution that has been mooted by some governments (e.g., the Indians, Russians), and discussed in a previous session, is to build breeder reactors that consume most of the spent uranium and actually produce, in some cases, more usable fuel than they consume. [photo credit: Defence Forum of India] But this creates other issues, such as the production of weapons-grade plutonium and the potential for extremely high exposure when the plutonium is extracted for reprocessing. Trousdale also mentions (in a follow-up email) subcritical reactors, "which, according to their backers, have the potential of burning not only all of the Uranium but most of the radioactive waste as well." Finally, there is also (for those willing to wait a little longer) fusion technology. Fusion devotees are particularly focused on the LIFE project at Lawrence Livermore Labs in California, an experimental laser-aided system that (according to the folks in California) "has the potential to meet future worldwide energy needs in a safe, sustainable manner without carbon dioxide emissions." According to a current story in The Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription only), the Livermore scientists are reporting a "major breakthrough." But they seem to be in the habit of doing so, as in this story from March. (Then again, were I on the verge of a technological breakthrough that would change life as we know it, I'd probably brag about it too.)In any case, the talk attracted a large audience, including scholars, energy plant entrepreneurs, and movement environmentalists. A lively discussion followed the presentation, some of which focused on the importance of cleaner fossil fuel solutions in the short term, such as "clean" natural-gas-fed power plants that run at about 55 to 59% efficiency (depending on whom one is talking to, which in any case is substantially higher than conventional steam turbine plants which operate at about 40 to 45% efficiency) that may act as a bridge to future long-term solutions.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
The Global Warming Debate and Energy Choices
7pm, Monday, November 8
Hubbard Room
Russell Library
William Trousdale, Wesleyan Professor Emeritus of Physics, and Marvin Farbman, former Director of CT Legal Services, will lead this last session in the seminar series. The program will examine the pros and cons of solar power along with other energy choices.
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