Uncle Rube's PV Solar is an Energy Sink?
Tell Me It Ain't So - Avert the Gaze
Credit @AlScottRational for posting this analysis. The authors soundly discredit the use of PV solar in areas of moderate isolation like Switzerland and countries north of the Swiss Alps. PV solar acts “as net energy sink.” Avert the gaze.
The authors establish that the "extended ERoEI (ERoEIEXT) for PV systems is below 1 and thus has a negative impact. Society receives few or no benefits from their use."
The purpose of such analyses should be to know whether such a system “is a net energy source or a net energy sink and how much it contributes to human welfare.”
Tell me it ain't so - avert the gaze: “The ‘mainstream’ methodology considers only about 30–50% of the total invested energy and this is an important source of misconceptions and errors.”
“In our paper (2016) we have worked with the value of 1300 kWhe/m2 as a cumulative energy demand (CED) for the manufacturing of a PV system having 2/3 as roof-mounted and 1/3 as free-field installed units.”
As much as I respect this analysis, the use of cumulative energy demand (CED) is a fatal, gross conversion error. The metric converts all energy inputs into universal, fungible energy units. There are two fatal problems with this conversion.
First: The forms of energy required to manufacture solar panels (diesel fuel, metallurgical and thermal coal, natural gas, crude oil)--mining equipment--are no more fungible than diamonds and carbon.
This conversion error has resulted in society wasting billions of gallons of diesel fuel to build machines to make garbage electrical service.
Second, the conversion error equates the valuable manufacturing inputs, which are physical commodities, with electrical energy service, which is not a commodity.
The “product” made by wind and solar is garbage service, not a commodity. We are wasting valuable commodities for garbage electric service. It's absolutely absurd and I'm increasingly frustrated so few people can see this.
The authors do touch on these points, albeit in different terms. They are addressing different methods used to convert primary and secondary energy. My point is that solar-wind secondary energy itself is Floober garbage. It's not valid secondary energy.
Avert the gaze—published PV lifecycle assessments blithely ignore little details such as the fuels and other fossil inputs required to manufacture polysilicon. Mining is magic.
This leads to one of my first Twitter threads - absurdities within absurdities.
Even assuming the validity of the now standard “input-output method” of comparing incomparable energy forms, published analyses have under-estimated the energy inputs - 1180 vs. 1335.
At this juncture, the authors address a factor I've not addressed before: The additional energy required to integrate solar into the grid. In my lay mind, it's kind of like the effort required to have a random number of road bikers merge into the Autobahn safely.
It turns out that the powers that be not only ignore upstream energy inputs such as mining and coking coal, but also the additional labor costs associated with PV solar. To their credit, these authors include it.
The labor demand relates not only to manufacturing but installation and service, balance of plant, etc. They did not include the labor cost, say, for constant snow and ice removal at the Travers solar plant in Canada (51 degrees latitude).
May I offer three additional factors these authors should include in further analyses?
1. All the energy associated with construction of totally unnecessary transmission systems: Mining, refining, manufacturing, transportation, erection.
2. The direct energy cost of shockingly enormous Reserve Power requirements (the trend is 300%).
3. The direct costs of literally wrecking thermal power plants early, and increased operation and maintenance costs, due to cycling. There are new terms for this - forced outages and such. Lifecycle assessments give wind and solar a Free Pass.
We occupy the Age of Energy Absurdities. Wind-Solar-Batteries are Rube Goldberg absurd Energy Sinks every place they operate.
Nuclear power is inevitable. Fission produces 6 orders of magnitude more useful energy than combustion. We occupy the Age of Energy Absurdities. The only way out of this is for enough common people to become educated and bring about changes through political processes. Until we do so, there will be unnecessary pain and suffering. 3,500 is way more than 600.
Much confusion is created by using the unclear terms "primary energy" and "secondary energy". It's best to distinguish "heat energy", which is the sum of the kinetic energies of trillions of vibrating molecules, from "useful energy", which is the ability to do work -- electric energy, or kinetic energy of an object, or gravitational potential energy. They are notated kWh(t) for heat (thermal) energy and kWh(e) for electric energy. See ElectrifyingOurWorld.com .
Excellent article. Covers a very important part of wind/solar/battery/hydrogen/agrofuel energy that is ignored by most media and completely ignored by grifters like Lazard in their LCOE calculations. Also a subject EIA, IEA and BP avoid like it was the plague. The net result is that changing the World to one powered by wind/solar/hydrogen/agrofuels is a physical impossibility. The people responsible for foisting these scams upon us deserve long prison terms.
Note that CANDU nuclear has the highest EROI of any energy source on the planet right now 120:1. And calculations for Advanced reactors operating on a closed fuel cycle have EROI of from 300:1 to 800:1.