Re: Are there likely to be severe power shortages

Dirk Bruere at NeoPax wrote:
w_tom wrote:
On Jun 25, 2:12 pm, Dirk Bruere at NeoPax <dirk.bru...@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
And what you are overlooking is that solar will probably be about a
quarter the price of nuclear, so demand will shift accordingly.
Right now electricity at night is cheaper.

Again, you missed the entire point. Your reasoning is again
completely subjective. If you know this, then you have numbers.
Where are your numbers? That was the point. Your entire conclusion
is wild speculation because (and again) you don't have numbers. What
do major electric consumers do. Work 24/7 because their factories
are that expensive or cost too much to shutdown for 8 or 16 hours.
Disagree? Fine. Where are your numbers? Where is your research?
That was the point. No numbers is a symptom of junk science
reasoning.

The numbers come from historical trends continuing for PV costs ie a
fall of 16% per annum. At $1/W PV becomes cost competitive with new
coal fired power stations, and with nuclear since French experience
suggests costs are similar.

$1/W is allegedly already here (Nanosolar), or more conservatively,
about 4 years away, depending on who you believe.

That corresponds to PV cells costing $200 per sq metre (assuming 20%
efficiency). There are no physical barriers as to why the price should
not continue to drop far below that price. For example, Nanosolar
prints PV ink onto stainless steel substrate. There is no inherent
reason why
that has to limit the technology - any suitable conductor would
suffice.
It is quite foreseeable that ultimately PV prices will drop by a
further factor of ten, to $20 per sq metre. 0.1 $/W or maybe even
lower. So low,
in fact, that physical structure costs will dominate. The result will
be electricity so cheap that no other technology will be able to
compete
for daytime power. Power at night will, by comparison, be grossly
expensive.

I don't see any other technology, esp nuclear, being about to drop its
price by a factor of ten over the next decade or two.

And if the only people using PV to produce electricity were specialist
companies, and if they chose to compete on price by reducing it to the
lowest instead of maximising profit by charging the highest possible while
still just maintaining an advantage, some of that might work. But in the
real world, what you are likely to get is established companies setting up
for solar alongside their conventional generating methods, providing power
24/7 through a combination of means and using the PV to reduce costs while
lowering prices very little.


.

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