The amount of resources required to build renewable sources of energy is substantial. Comparing ground Solar PV and Stratosolar, there are several areas where Stratosolar requires far fewer resources including glass, steel, mass for storage, and land.

Glass: Conventional PV panels use glass for protection from corrosion, primarily from water. Stratosolar is situated where there is no water in any form, which simplifies the protection problem considerably. Stratosolar panels use no glass and weigh 2kg/m2 or less. Glass for conventional PV panels weighs about 10 kg/m2 and panel total weight approaches 20 kg/m2. 

Today’s PV production is about 200 GW/year and uses about 10 million tons of glass. Scaled up to 2 TW/year to meet a 2050 deadline for net zero CO2 would mean 100 million tons of glass per year. Today's annual glass production is about 200 million tons of which about 100 million tons is for flat glass. Glass production will need to expand rapidly as will the supply of sand and energy to make the glass. To reiterate, Stratosolar needs no glass.

Steel: today's PV uses steel for supporting structures, about the same weight as glass or about 100 million tons of steel per year. Stratosolar needs no steel. 

Energy storage: Ground based energy storage is mostly focused on battery and gravity energy storage technologies. Energy storage comes down to Wh/kg. Batteries range from about 200 Wh/kg for Lithium ion to less than 50 Wh/kg for various long duration storage technologies like flow batteries. Ground based gravity storage is about 0.3 Wh/kg. Stratosolar gravity storage is about 50 Wh/kg. If we estimate mass for storage based on daily storage of 10 hours for an annual addition of 1TW of electricity generation, or 10TWh/year  of storage, this results in the following annual demand.

Ground gravity storage: 40 billion tons of rock, dirt concrete or water.
Stratosolar gravity storage: 200 million tons of water.
Battery storage: 50 million tons to 200 million tons of chemicals.

Because it does not have long duration intermittency to deal with, the stratosolar mass is the complete solution whereas ground PV will need a combination of more storage, excess generation and long distance transmission, all of which add a need for more resources. 

Land: This is perhaps the most constraining resource for ground PV, mostly because of political constraints. Most estimates lowball the need by ignoring the increased demand from an all electric economy and the added demand from economic growth over 30 years. 
Ground PV needs relatively flat land and panels have to be spaced to limit shading. Averaged over all geographies PV generates about 10W of electricity per meter squared (10 W/m2). For 1 TW of new electricity generation this adds up to about 100,000 km2 of land per year, or a total of 3 million km2 over 30 years. The total land mass for the US, Europe and China is about 10 million km2 each. Much of this is mountains and hills or remote deserts. Each of these geographies would need to find flat land near urban areas approaching 1 million square km or build more than 100,000 km of new high voltage transmission lines to remote deserts. 
Stratosolar only directly affects a little land for the tethers and an assembly area. There would be an urban exclusion zone for the area beneath the array, which could be built over mountains or coastal waters. Arrays would be few, perhaps 100 for the US and 1,000 worldwide and would be positioned perhaps 200km from urban areas, minimizing the need for long distance transmission. 

Stratosolar drastically reduces the need for material resources and precious land and is far more sustainable than current intermittent energy sources.

By Edmund Kelly

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Bloomberg's latest global solar update includes their expectations out to 2030. They expect reasonable growth but no exceptional change that would reflect the world taking the latest IPCC warnings seriously or the US actually attaining the ambitious goals of the Biden administration. 

Bloomberg provides a factual business and market perspective on clean energy. This makes their projections more objective than many such as those from the IEA, EIA, or BP, which are more political and goal oriented projections that are influenced by either save the planet or climate denial interests.

Factual global reporting on where the money comes from, where it goes, and what clean energy it buys exposes wishful thinking and is immensely valuable. This value is enhanced because the data is continuously updated and has been for decades which allows for a reasonable projection of trends into the future based on insight rather than simple linear extrapolation. 

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The past decade has shown that while the major markets in China, Europe and the US have waxed and waned, the global market has shown sustained growth in Solar PV capacity while maintaining a constant clean energy expenditure of around $300B/y. Bloomberg's projection to 2030 shows an expectation of similar behaviour, with $/W cost continuing to decline enabling capacity growth within a fairly constant budget. 

In the US, the Biden administration has ambitious goals, but faces strong political headwinds from moderate Democrats within and Republicans without. History would not predict a significant change in the status quo. China has stabilized its internal deployments and only seeks to expand its exports. Europe has goals but is nowhere near the needed growth to decarbonize. The Bloomberg 2030 forecast appears to be highly realistic.

​Given the political and financial realities that this projection embodies, breaking this impasse will likely take a technological solution that relaxes these constraints. Fusion energy were it to succeed would be one such possibility that has shown some recent improvement in its prospects but is still a long shot. Stratosolar is another possible new approach but less risky, cheaper and quicker to demonstrate feasibility. 

By Edmund Kelly

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“The best part is no part. The best process is no process. It weighs nothing, it costs nothing, it can’t go wrong”...... Elon Musk.

General Elon principles:

1) Question the question
The superior stratosolar solution comes from looking at the solar electricity generation problem from a new and radical perspective. 

2) Reason from first principles.
Look at the solar electricity generation problem as a whole, move the location and thereby eliminate the unnecessary parts.

3) Kill your darlings
This is the fourth stratosolar design reboot. Build, test and continuously and rapidly iterate.

4) Undesign
No long term electricity storage, no long distance electricity transmission, no omniscient electricity grid control, one third the number of PV panels; provides fully dispatchable electricity from solar energy; a superior product at a fraction of the cost.

5) Ideas supersede hierarchy
Stratosolar does not have a hierarchy. Ideas win on a level playing field.

6) Everyone is a chief engineer.
This describes stratosolar to a t. 

Without knowing it we have been following Elon’s principles all along. This  speaks to the fundamental truth of the principles of innovating at the large scale.

By Edmund Kelly 

Bloomberg is broadening their clean energy investment survey to cover more than energy generation as shown in the latest graph covering up to the end of 2020 above. The yellow is the clean energy electricity generation component they have covered in the past. As can be seen, clean energy generation for 2020 is substantially unchanged from 2019. 

Clean energy investment has been substantially constant between $250B and $300B since 2011. This article covers things in more detail. In 2020 China and the US were down while Europe as a whole was up. Previously China was up and Europe was down. These changes are always directly related to policy and subsidy changes in each geography but the overall investment stays the same 

The bottom line is the world is not increasing its commitment to clean energy and at current levels of investment clean energy will not be significant until the end of the century, not 2040 as is the goal of many countries. The current investment limit is bounded by government support. To increase investment requires stand alone generation that can replace fossil fuel generation at a lower competitive cost without the limit of government support. 

Because intermittent generation relies on government mandates as well as subsidies, an investment is a complex and high risk venture that does not fit a market based model. The cost of intermittent generation does not reflect the increased price it brings to electricity consumers. This price is a result of the energy generation system as a whole becoming less efficient as it tries to adapt to intermittent generation. These inefficiencies grow exponentially as more intermittent generation is added to the grid and are at the heart of the stagnation in clean energy investment. If clean energy were leading to lower electricity prices, market forces would increase demand. This clearly is not happening.

Stratosolar represents a path out of this quagmire but to get out of the quagmire there first has to be an acceptance that there is a quagmire. The investment data clearly demonstrates a quagmire but we seem to have the blind leading the blind into a fantasy future. 

Falling capital costs enabled record volumes of both solar (132GW) and wind (73GW) to be installed on the basis of the modest increase in dollar investment. This is roughly 200GW. 

Total world energy demand is heading for around 30 TW by 2050 or about 1TW average new generation per year. This means that current generation alone is one tenth what is needed without adding in storage, transmission and other costs. 

Venture capital and private equity investment in renewables and storage increased 51% to $5.9 billion last year. Compare this to the $300B invested in wind and solar projects. Virtually none of this $5.9B was for new clean generation technology. This is the problem Stratosolar faces. There is no investment in new generation ideas. All the limited risk investment goes to storage and other status quo pursuits.

​By Edmund Kelly

Michael Schellenberger is a well known clean energy advocate. He is however a sceptic on intermittent renewables and an advocate of nuclear energy as the only viable energy source that can reduce CO2 emissions. This puts him at odds with the environmentalist status quo, of whom he was once a significant member. Here is a recent article where he takes aim at recycling and environmental contamination problems with PV panel based solar energy.

While he is biased against solar, many of the points he makes are valid. Solar PV has grown so fast that lifetime and recycling problems are only starting to get serious attention. Many panels have short lives due to quality issues brought on by the extreme pressure to reduce costs. The backing material in many panels has been reduced to inadequate protection levels and many junction boxes are defective. Glass based panels are difficult and expensive to recycle and are mostly dumped in landfills where they leach heavy metals. Solar financials are based on 30 year panel lifetimes which are not likely to be achieved.

Stratosolar uses lightweight panels and are not exposed to water based corrosion. They produce three or more times as much energy per panel. 

​By Edmund Kelly

I have previously published an analysis of the true future cost of electricity by projecting current trends into a future in which intermittent wind and solar predominate electricity generation. That analysis used data from Germany and California, where renewables penetration for large markets is the highest. The analysis shows the correlation of price rise with reduced capacity factor for both markets. Correlation is not causation so critics could claim these correlations are unique to factors in California and Germany. This new analysis uses overall US data for a much larger and more diverse market. The results are much the same as before which reinforces the causal link between reducing capacity factor and rising electricity prices.

As the EIA graph above shows, US generation has been stable at about 4000 billion kWh (4000TWh) from 2005 to 2020. While the overall generation has been stable, coal has declined, natural gas has grown, and renewables have grown. In this graph renewables include large hydro and bio (mostly burning wood).

From the generation capacity graph above, capacity grew from 800GW in 2000 to 1100GW in 2020.
Extrapolating, this would be from 900GW in 2005 to 1100GW in 2020. Most of this new capacity was renewables which grew by 150GW. Natural gas grew as coal declined for an overall gain of about 50GW.
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This means overall capacity factor has declined from 51% to 41% as renewables were added. The average price of electricity for the US has grown from around $0.09/kWh to over $0.13/kWh from 2010 to 2020.
This means that as capacity factor fell from 51% to 41% the price rose from $0.09/kWh to $0.13/kWh. 

Extrapolating forward from this US trend of rising $/kWh as capacity factor falls with added renewable generation, we get the graph above. When capacity gets to 2,500GW (2.5e12W) the capacity factor will have fallen to 18% and price will have risen to $0.30/kWh. Some of this new capacity will be from storage. Falling generation costs will be more than balanced by rising transmission costs. This graph does not have a timeframe for this additional growth. At current capacity growth rates it would be the end of the century.

This capacity of mostly intermittent renewables and storage might get close to 100% renewable generation at today’s electricity demand. However, demand will have to increase significantly to electrify the economy by charging EVs and supplying heat pumps for domestic and commercial heating and cooling etc. This would imply a need for significantly more generation. A conservative estimate for an all-electric US economy might be 5,000GW of mostly intermittent generation capacity compared to 1,100GW of capacity today. So, 3,900 GW of new capacity between now and 2050 would be 130GW every year. For comparison, currently all wind and solar total about 150GW.
 
So far, the average US electricity price rise has been about 45% as renewables penetration has been modest. As renewables penetration increases, and all the additional costs for excess generation, storage and long-distance transmission get added in, the price will increase as shown, even with a falling cost of generation.

For those who are convinced that global warming is an existential threat, paying a high price for electricity is seen as acceptable. They are happy to emphasize that the cost of wind and solar generation have declined while not mentioning the actual rise in the price of electricity.

However, we already spend 8% of GDP on energy both in the US and as a global average. If we move to an all-electric economy with high priced renewables generation the percentage of GDP devoted to energy will have to rise considerably above 8%. This will not be politically acceptable except for rich pockets of the globe. Most of the growth in energy consumption is in the developing world. They will make the same decision that China made around 2000 and favor economic growth over the environment.

This gets to the core argument. Solving global warming needs clean electric energy at prices below current electricity prices. This is something Stratosolar can potentially do but current intermittent wind and solar demonstrably cannot do.

​By Edmund Kelly

The goal of 100% renewable energy from intermittent wind, solar and battery technology is firmly established in California and Germany. These are the leaders that generally determine where the US and Europe are headed. The 100% goal was established by environmentalists and academics who back the achievability of 100% renewable energy with studies based on elaborate simulations. 

The trouble with elaborate simulations is that their assumptions are opaque. Most simulate generation and consumption but assume transmission that connects the two. Intermittent generation is simulated using a limited history. The combination of these assumptions assume massive transmission over unrealistic long distances and omits rare extreme events.

The graph above shows approximate yearly solar intermittency data for events affecting the entire state of California. The horizontal axis represents the duration in days of outages. The vertical axis represents the number of outages. The first data point on the left shows 20 outage events of duration one day. The point on the extreme right shows one event lasting around forty days every 150 years. The point crossing the horizontal axis shows one event lasting four days. On average events exceeding four days occur with rapidly decreasing frequency and are unlikely in any given year.

These intermittency events mostly occur due to winter storms. The worst storm recorded in California occurred in the winter of 1861/1862 when it rained for 40 straight days. The geological record shows that storms of this magnitude occur around every 150 years. The phenomenon driving these events are known as atmospheric rivers which transfer tropical moisture in quantities exceeding the flow of the Mississippi and which occur randomly. Other points on the graph come from recorded storm events, mostly atmospheric river events of shorter duration. 

Current solar tries to deal with these events through storage and excess generation and distribution. To simply supply nighttime electricity without consideration of outages takes about 25% of peak DC generation capacity. So 1 GW of generation needs approximately 250MW (2.5GWh) of battery storage. To cover outages of one day adds double this storage requirement (500MW). Four days adds 8X etc. Both solar and battery costs are heading for the magical $1/W and will probably go lower over time. 

As I have covered in prior posts, as we increase solar, wind and storage capacity, capacity factor falls and electricity price rises. Four days of backup triples the cost of electricity from generation alone. More storage costs more. It is clear that covering longer duration outages is economically very painful. Building storage that only gets used once a decade seems folly. At that duration it is hard to trust that storage would still work. Forty days is even worse. However that forty day outage can occur in any year, and when it happens electricity will be desperately needed. 

California could build excess generation capacity in neighboring states and build long distance transmission. Both of these are expensive and outage events can exceed the boundaries of California. This with some storage would possibly work but at a similar overall cost to building storage. 

Other parts of the US and Europe would have possibly worse long duration outage events. They generally are farther north and have worse winter weather than California. The graph details would vary but the overall curve is the same,  frequent short events and increasingly rare long events.

When we compare this solar energy situation with a Stratosolar solution, the long duration outage problem simply disappears. Stratosolar simply needs nighttime storage for a complete dispatchable non interrupted solution. As battery technology becomes viable, Stratosolar can use this and it also has the option to develop gravity energy storage. The cost of Stratosolar generated electricity with around $1/W for solar PV and batteries is considerably lower than today’s fossil fuel cost of electricity. Solar would be viable in the cloudy north. No geographical dependency.

By Edmund Kelly

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