SOLAR TODAY - July/August 2010

“Not for us,” said Albert. “Our resources are right here.” Lovins added that
it’s a myth that all of the solar resource is in the Southwest and all the wind
in the high plains. “The Mojave is only twice as sunny as Buffalo,” he pointed
out. “Which means,” Albert said, “that as the price of PV falls, it makes less
sense to build expensive transmission lines. We expect to build a business
model in cooperative distributed sources.”
Lovins was happy to elaborate. That transition to local, distributed
energy is already happening around the world. “We’ve been modeling the
Texas ERCOT system and getting higher contributions from renewable just
through accurate forecasting,” he said. The grid already has the capacity to
balance intermittent feeds: “There’s no such thing as a 24/7 power plant.”
Moreover, he pointed out, 17 percent of global generating is already from
micropower sources, and 91 percent of all new generating capacity worldwide
is now from micropower sources. “Distributed energy is cheaper and carries
lower risk than nuclear and other large-scale projects,” he said.

Albert pointed out another advantage of distributed fossil-free energy.
“It’s predictable — you know what the costs are. The cost of coal will go up
steadily. Natural gas is very volatile; in the last couple of years, it’s dropped
from $14 to $4 but will inevitably go up again.” Hayes backed him up: “A new
natural gas well has a 50 percent reserve depletion in the first year.”
And Zoi said, “PV is headed to $1 per watt, installed. At $1 per watt, we
win. The problem is: How do renewables compete in liquid fuels for trans-
portation? That’s one of the things we’re looking at with ARPA-E — we’re
supporting R&D for disruptive technologies to solve that problem.”
For the full report, see tinyurl.com/solar2010plenaries. ST

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