An Unhealthy Obsession With Solar

Australian politicians and the press seem to have an obsession with solar power. The way the popular press tells it, solar will single handedly move us off fossil fuels and in particular the dreaded coal to the brave new world. But taking my time to try to understand the exponential growth of solar has left me with a feeling that this belief may not seem to be all that it is. Like other renewables such as  wind, there are still significant obstacles to be overcome for more extensive and large scale deployment of solar and for that matter many other renewable sources. 

What makes me a bit skeptical is that these obstacles are not being brought to open debate but swept aside in the rush to promote solar. As I have said in my earlier posts, I am a firm believer in renewables but I just want to try to be open and objective and while having solar panels on my rooftop is my megre contribution to the climate movement, it behoves me to try to gain a proper understanding of the issues at hand.

Solar proponents are quite open in discussing the issue of intermittency. This issue stems from the fact that, simply put, the sun does rise at dawn and sets at dusk each day and therefore means that solar is unable to generate electricity at night. Add to this, cloud cover and inclement weather and this reduces even the hours available when the sun is technically in the sky. It therefore makes a great deal of sense that battery storage is being held out as the solution to this problem. Store electricity when it is being generated in excess of immediate use for later use when the sun is not shining. 

While much has been made of Tesla (and they are certainly not the only manufacturer, just the most well marketed) the fact still remains that we are still quite some years away from economical large scale battery storage which constrains their use in the immediate and short term future for large scale storage. Current innovation in this area is most likely to result in the uptake of battery storage for small scale use predominantly in the residential market. This will certainly contribute to lowering the amount of electricity puchased by residential users from retail energy companies, a fact that they are well aware of.

As far as I can determine, there are currently no major projects to store electricity any where in Australia. I do not know whether this is becuase of technical or economic constraints. It should be noted that electricity storage is actually neutral in the sense that it does not matter what source the electricity is generated from. Once generated it is indistinguishable from all other sources and this is actually a good thing. The number of high profile solar farm projects is well reported but almost nothing is being reported about large scale battery or any other form of electricity storage which is significant in its deathly silence. 

The next issue is one of capacity. This simply means that solar PV panels can only generate a proportion of the maximum rated output throughout the day. This is easy to see for yourself. Just check your solar converted panel and you will almost never find that the output is close to the maximu rated output of the system you installed. The IReNA (International Renewable Energy Agency) estimates that in Northern Europe solar has an average capacity of just 15%.   This problem gets worse the further away you get from the Equator. We are fortunate that in Australia that we are blessed as the sun baked country but nevertheless, we cannot get carried away with the reported outputs of electricity that are being quoted for new large scale solar farms. It does not take a genius to figure out that our average effective capacities far exceeds the 15% for Northern Europe. But for comparison sake, the IReNA reports that coal plants typically operate between 70-80% of capacity.

Another obvious issue is seasonality, which to be fair, all the suppliers of solar systems I evaluated before installing my system told me about, even producing charts showing the impact on electricity generation of the seasons in different parts of the Australia. 

So what does all of this mean to a non engineering person like me? I certainly have not changed my view on the benefits of solar but this view is a very limited view affecting only the electricity I do not have to purchase from the energy companies and the excess electricity I sell back to them. But in attempting to learn about the broader implications for energy generation and consumption in Australia from a amateur point of view, I have found that solar electricity only accounts for a very small, albeit growing proportion of the total electricity generated in the country. While it is growing very fast, it still accounts for only 2% of total electricity produced in Australia and has a long way to go for it to even reach half of the 85% of total electricity currently being generated from fossil fuels. 

This should not discourage people from installing solar systems for their homes especially as costs continue to fall. For me the logical question to ask is whether we have an unhealthy obsession with just this one source of renewable energy. We should demand that the government take steps to invest in all technologies that will move us away from high polluting fossil fuel sources but we need a balanced approach that considers all forms of renewables, including, whether we like it or not, nuclear. To do this we need to have a open and balanced public debate on all options and not just solar even though solar appears to be the leading candidate at the present time. So let us collectively move forward objectively by having greater transparency and less bias in the media so that we can make more informed decisions about our future.