Its interesting that the two major alternatives to fossil fuel energy (wind+ solar and nuclear) are mostly at odds with each other. In the debate, they both point out the weaknesses of the other, and to an objective outsider clearly paint a picture where neither is a viable solution. The problems with cost overruns on new nuclear plants in the US and Europe have sharpened the debate recently with Toshiba’s announcement of massive losses from its Westinghouse division. The pointers at the bottom below show three perspectives on Toshiba’s woes. 

My most recent blog posts have focused on the problems with intermittent wind and solar. Nuclear clearly has its problems too. Toshiba’s and others (Areva) problems at minimum show how hard current nuclear is, without even getting to how it could be modified to be more sustainable and load follow. With reactors being shut down in Europe, the US and Japan and cost overruns leading to no new orders, nuclear is not going anywhere. China is the only country adding any significant nuclear capacity. This would seem to end what had been seen as the beginnings of a nuclear revival.

Most nuclear advocacy centers on new designs to remedy problems with current reactors. Nuclear takes a long time from experimental to demonstration to production power plants. Minimally the sequence takes decades and costs billions to tens of billions of dollars. 

So, nuclear power and wind and solar face similar problems. Neither are viable replacements for fossil fuels and it will take significant development of new unproven technologies to make them so. Compare this with StratoSolar. Much of StratoSolar is just today's PV. The unproven parts are relatively simple engineering based on existing mass produced technologies. To follow the nuclear model, the first step is to build an experimental platform. This could be done in less than a year for a few million dollars. An experimental nuclear reactor is many years and hundreds of millions of dollars. Relative to a new nuclear reactor, StratoSolar demonstration and production platform steps are equally as fast and low cost as the experimental platform. The point is that StratoSolar is no more speculative than wind, solar and nuclear, when the development paths of each that lead to viability are objectively analyzed. 

The perspective that wind, solar and nuclear are all unproven and speculative is not the perspective of their advocates. Wishful thinking rules the day. Recently Bill Gates led the founding of Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV), a fund to invest in long term energy ventures. Given Bill Gates fondness for nuclear power, funding nuclear power is probably the focus of the fund. Given the funding required to get to production plants, its very unlikely that a private fund could raise the tens of billions required even to develop one new plant. Presumably the plan is to fund the earlier cheaper development stages and persuade governments to foot the major bills. Perhaps we can persuade BEV to fund StratoSolar? It might be high risk but its cheap and fast. Its actually a typical venture funded opportunity. 
 
By Edmund Kelly

Rod Adams: reporter
http://www.theenergycollective.com/rodadams/2398838/toshiba-announces-6-3b-writedown-229m-construction-company-acquisition
Jim Green: Friends of the earth:
http://www.theenergycollective.com/energy-post/2399091/nuclear-safety-undermines-nuclear-economics
Michael Schellenberger: The breakthrough institute
http://www.theenergycollective.com/shellenberger/2398737/nuclear-industry-must-change-die

PV is not a free market. It is dominated by China and the peculiarities of the Chinese economy.  China is both the largest manufacturer and the largest consumer of PV. This has all occurred extremely rapidly over about the last five years. 2017 appears to potentially be a year of reckoning for PV, as this blog article neatly summarizes. The total historical PV cumulative installed capacity is about 300GW, most of it installed over the last few years. 2016 Installed capacity alone was about 70GW, with about 30GW of that in China. US installed a record 12GW in 2016, driven by the potential expiration of subsidy incentives. Most projections have 2017 world PV installations falling well below the 2016 70GW due to reductions in China and the US, with no major new growth area to compensate.

These reductions stem in part from the limited ability of electricity grids to absorb PV. The long-term limit is based on the capacity factor limit of grids to absorb intermittent sources.  We are far from this limit, but short term constraints are showing up at very low levels of PV penetration. China’s current limit is the lack of long distance transmission capacity to take the power from the deserts in the west to the users in the east.  As discussed in this blog post, California is hitting problems due to the inability of fossil generation to ramp up and down quickly enough to compensate for rapidly changing PV generation as the sun sets.

Advocates for PV are focused on the falling cost of PV generation and seem to assume that once PV becomes the lowest cost of generation the world will magically switch to solar energy. The reality is far from this rosy scenario. The real cost of PV electricity will increasingly have to factor in the additional costs needed to incorporate it into the electricity supply system. California is showing the need for storage at very low levels of penetration and China is showing the need for long distance HV-transmission. Both technologies are expensive and in need of development, particularly electricity storage. They are both additions to the current grid and both exceed the cost of PV generation. Add to this the geographical variability of solar, particularly at northern latitudes and the economic case for solar to be a large scale, economically viable supplier of electricity is far in the future.

StratoSolar is low cost generation with low cost, fast response storage built in and no need for long distance transmission. It has no daytime intermittency problem and it works well at northern latitudes. It needs relatively minor short term development to prove its viability. In contrast, the storage and HVDC transmission technologies needed to make ground PV viable are in many ways more speculative, unproven and longer term than StratoSolar.
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By Edmund Kelly

Large new supplies of Helium have recently been discovered by employing modern exploration tools. This discovery may be the tip of the iceberg. There is considerable potential for discovering a lot more. This could have positive implications for StratoSolar as it raises the possibility of using Helium rather than Hydrogen as the buoyancy gas for large scale platforms. There is a lot of concern about the safety of Hydrogen and the use of Helium is a simple fix. As discussed in a question in this FAQ, current world Helium supplies are too limited for large scale deployment of StratoSolar platforms and the cost is already prohibitive. Hydrogen is a viable buoyancy gas that can be safely used with proper attention to safety engineering. However, the image of the burning Hindenburg still banishes Hydrogen from consideration. Abundant Helium resolves this issue and significantly simplifies the engineering of StratoSolar platforms.
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By Edmund Kelly

​Bloomberg came out with a  2015 update to their report on world investment in clean energy. Above are a couple of charts showing the overall investment by type and by region. Total investment rose slightly (3%) over 2014 to $328B of which $161.5B or 50% went to solar. The overall investment level has not changed significantly for the five years, 2011 to 2015. Over this period solar has stayed about the same percentage of clean energy investment. Annual solar capacity has grown from 25GW to over 50GW, so the average cost of solar has dropped significantly from about $6.40/W($161/25) to $3.20/W($161/50), moving solar closer to wind in cost. PV panel costs have not declined much over this period ( after a dramatic decline around 2011) so most of the solar cost reduction has been from the rest of the system. The rate of these system cost reductions is slowing. The overall world average cost covers a very wide range of systems, from high cost rooftops over $6.00/W to very large utility arrays at less than $1.50/W, along with large regional differences in labour and regulatory costs.

As the regional market chart shows, there has been a significant change in where the investments are taking place over the five years. The two biggest trends were the decline of Europe and the rise of China. Without China’s decision to dramatically increase its clean energy investment in 2014 and 2015, the overall market would have declined every year from 2011.
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Despite dramatic reductions in price, investment in solar has hardly increased. This tells us that solar investment is not yet driven by market forces. The price will have to fall substantially from current levels for solar to become market competitive. Overall the charts present a picture of a stagnant clean energy market. Given the need for government support to maintain the market, the world economic slowdown does not bode well for growth in the clean energy market, particularly in China.

Despite its greater than $300B/y size, the current clean energy market is not reducing CO2 emissions by any noticeable amount. Based on these charts it is not on a path to do any better. There is a need for a change.

StratoSolar makes today's PV a practical replacement for fossil fuels. Its an incremental improvement of PV, not a dramatic revolutionary new technology. It is easy, quick and cheap to prove its viability. The path we are on is clearly not working. It is worth giving StratoSolar a try. 

By Edmund Kelly

The attached white paper is a more comprehensive look at the impact of higher energy costs on reducing GDP growth. This tells us two things.

First, we are in serious economic trouble already with a low and declining rate of economic growth from the continually increasing cost of fossil fuels.

Second, replacing fossil fuels with more expensive alternative energy sources will only make the problem worse. So far, wind and solar have been a relatively small economic factor, but growth to a level where they can contribute to a significant reduction in CO2 emissions would quickly get us into economic decline, and the political unrest that comes with economic decline.

StratoSolar's lower cost of energy production than fossil fuels can reverse the current decline in the rate of economic growth by making energy cheaper on a continuing basis.

​By Edmund Kelly

The UN climate change conference in Paris starting today (Monday 11/30/2015) has focused attention on the CO2 emissions issue The politics is focused on what can be achieved politically, which is non binding commitments to reduce CO2 without specifics on how this will be accomplished. The conference has also prompted many articles and initiatives trying to leverage the publicity associated with the conference.

There are two related items that were specifically noteworthy. To coincide with the conference The Economist magazine has just published a 16 page report on climate change. This is a factual and pragmatic overview of the problem, the potential harm and the various approaches to solutions. The report summarizes the ineffectiveness of current subsidy policies, recognizes the political unlikelihood of a world carbon tax regime, and ends by advocating more investment in R&D.

Also to coincide with the conference Bill Gates announced a grand coalition pledging $B to R&D in energy innovation. The breakthrough energy coalition is a collection of VCs, entrepreneurs and tech titans. Its not clear how much money is involved or how it will be spent. It may be good news for innovations like StratoSolar, though many of those in the coalition have rejected the idea in the past. 

Either way the beginnings of a broader focus on energy R&D is welcome.
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by Edmund Kelly

By Edmund Kelly

The rapid drop in PV panel prices in 2011 has led some optimists to predict continuing rapid price declines, particularly in the US. The triggering event in panel price decline was the drop in the cost of poly-silicon from over $100/kg to under $20/kg. This drop in price came as a result of investment in poly-silicon capacity which broke a cartel that had been keeping prices artificially high. This article by Matthias Grossmann describes the history in detail and focuses on the conditions necessary for renewed investment in poly-silicon production.  He concludes that poly-silicon prices higher than the current $20/kg will be necessary to get investors on board. As supply is coming into balance with demand, that increased price is already happening, so investment in poly silicon production is likely to resume.

All this means is that rapid PV panel price declines from current levels are not likely and current price levels will prevail for some time. Current overall  capital costs for large utility arrays varies from about $1.50/W to $2.00/W depending on a variety of project specific details, like local labor rates, land and regulatory costs. Interestingly,  if low cost financing is available and you have the high capacity factor of a desert, this capital cost level can produce electricity competitive with fossil fuels without subsidy, as is illustrated by this project in Dubai. However 100% project financing at 4% for 27 years is not yet the norm. For StratoSolar financing we assume a working cost of capital of 8.5% over 20 years which results in about $0.06/kWh for electricity. At 4% financing we would be under $0.03/kWh. That is so low a cost for electricity that it would be immediately disruptive in all markets and would drive very rapid growth in installed capacity. This would drive down costs which would further drive down the cost of electricity.

If we can prove the viability of high altitude, buoyant, tethered, platforms, the foundations laid by PV growth and the continuing improvement in PV technology will enable spectacular rapid growth for StratoSolar systems worldwide. 

By Edmund Kelly

This article in next big future highlights the rapid advances in large scale desalination deployment that Israel has led over the last decade. Israel, a country of 8 million people, has gone from a precarious water supply situation to a position today where 50% of its water supply is from desalination and by 2020 it will be 70%. Fortuitously for Israel this has occurred while the Middle East is in the middle of a multi year drought which would otherwise have had a serious economic impact, as has occurred elsewhere in the Middle East.

As this recent paper illustrates in detail, reverse osmosis (RO) desalination has been steadily improving and is being deployed on an increasingly large scale worldwide, not just in Israel. The Israeli company IDE is selling water from the latest plant at Sorek for 58 cents a cubic meter. That is about $690/acre-foot, or less than much of the water purchased in California, some of which costs as much as $1,200/acre-foot. As the paper illustrates there are strong  prospects for further cost reduction.

Reverse osmosis currently consumes about 3kWh of electricity to produce a cubic meter of water. At $0.06/kWh that is $0.18/m3 or about one third of the cost. Providing the energy for desalination from a cheap and sustainable, high utilization source would alleviate a major environmental concern that limits a broader acceptability of desalination, particularly in California.

Currently wind and solar alternative energy sources are expensive and worse, have a low utilization. The low utilization means desalination plants would have an equally low utilization. The combination of high cost and low utilization makes desalination powered by current intermittent alternative energy multiple times the cost from fossil fuels.

The StratoSolar solution of high utilization PV combined with gravity energy storage provides a cheap, high utilization, clean sustainable source of energy for desalination. Its lower cost over time will help further reduce the cost of clean water. The continuous cost reduction learning curve of RO desalination combined with StratoSolar electricity would reduce water costs to around $0.20/m3 ($230/acre-foot) by the early 2020s. This would make desalination the cheapest and most environmentally friendly source of water, potentially reducing some of the environmental impacts of the current exploitation of natural clean water sources. 

By Edmund Kelly

A complete renewable energy solution requires the attributes of dispatch-ability and reliability of fossil fuel power plants at a lower cost of generation. PV panels have come down rapidly in price in recent years creating a wave of optimism for PV. A realistic analysis projects further price drops over time, but not at the recent precipitous rate of decline. Current PV price levels still need subsidy in all markets to generate electricity competitive with that from fossil fuels. Also PV is an unreliable and intermittent source of electricity that requires backup fossil fuel generation (or excess capacity and distribution) to handle unpredictable long duration weather outages and daily energy storage for nighttime generation. Currently there is no viable large scale energy storage solution other than pumped hydro. To provide renewable energy for less than fossil fuels, the combined cost of PV generation, backup generation and energy storage generation have to be less than the cost of generation from fossil fuels.

StratoSolar is a system solution that directly attacks all the problems of PV generation and transforms PV into a real, disruptive and transformative lower cost renewable energy solution.

• 3X more power for same PV panels due to more sunlight and colder environment.
• Same or lower capital cost as ground PV, declining in cost at the same learning rate
• No need for backup generation or excess capacity and transmission to handle unpredictable weather based long duration outages
  

Gravity energy storage is integrated with the platform for nighttime generation

• Low cost. $1.00/Watt (or $100/kWh)
• Long lived, 10,000 daily cycles
• No geographical constraint
• No material resource constraint
• Uses the same HVDC conversion and transmission equipment as PV generation.
• Motor/generator runs directly on the voltage from the PV array
  

StratoSolar is a combination of tried and true PV technology with a new unproven high altitude buoyant tethered platform technology. The risk is concentrated on the new technology of the buoyant tethered platform. Viability depends on whether buoyant tethered platforms can be built, deployed and not damaged or destroyed by environmental hazards over the 30 plus year lifetime of the power plant. Other risks are whether the predicted capital costs are achievable and possible regulatory impediments from the FAA and local authorities.

The new buoyant tethered platforms are really novel structural engineering towers. Large scale structural engineering is a well established engineering discipline. Building the first of a new class of large scale structural engineering projects could be compared with other once novel large structural engineering projects, like steel framed skyscrapers, concrete dams, oil production platforms or steel suspension bridges. This class of project always initially stretch human credibility but actually rarely fail because the structural engineering discipline is very robust. The same reasoning applies to StratoSolar platforms. 

By Edmund Kelly

There was a recent article in IEEE Spectrum that explained why Google halted an energy research effort called RE<C (Renewable Energy less than Coal). It prompted this critical analysis by Joe Romm. Its rare to see this perspective on clean energy  discussed in any detail, so I was pleasantly surprised to see two articles on this topic. Between them they explained two positions that have much in common but differ in important ways.

The Google engineers discussed how they had started with the goal of renewable energy less than coal and after several years of effort came to the conclusion that current technologies were not going to achieve that goal. In large part this realization came from the understanding that the problem was far larger than they had initially understood. Google halted their efforts in 2011. Google invests heavily in alternative energy deployment and in its operations is very focused on reducing energy, so halting RE<C was in no way a vote against clean energy or dealing with climate change.

Joe tried to paint the Goggle engineers as confused and misguided. Joe is a strong advocate for the status quo opinion on how to deal with climate change. Basically that position is;  what we have with current wind and solar is good enough and what is needed is policy change, preferably a carbon tax. This tax will somehow magically cause fossil fuels to decline and alternative energy to prosper.  Joe does not see RE<C as a necessary or desirable condition for dealing with climate change. At its core this is a view that politics can dominate the large scale economics of energy.

When Joe  discusses the problems with nuclear power he is happy to use the facts of nuclear costs to counter the optimistic promises of nuclear advocates. In contrast when Joe discusses energy policy he uses  the optimistic promises of carbon taxes rather that the facts of decades of failure to get agreement on such policies and the overwhelming evidence that such policies are unlikely to ever be approved at a global level.  On top of that there is no clear evidence that such taxes will have the desired consequences. Developing nations, where most new energy consumption is concentrated see higher cost energy as a threat to their development.

The central debate is simple. Some (including Bill Gates) see RE<C as a necessary condition for the world to deal with climate change. This opinion is guided by the facts on the ground and the central importance of economics in decision making. Joe and the status quo clean energy consensus he represents see economics as secondary to policy, and believe that advocacy will achieve policy change and policy change will lead to the demise of fossil fuels and the rise of clean energy.

StratoSolar is a solution to RE<C. As Joe makes clear, the clean energy status quo does not believe that such solutions can exist and that they are not necessary. Unfortunately this perspective is self fulfilling in ensuring no such solution sees the light of day.

By Edmund Kelly