No more Sumatran Coffee for Me

QOTD

A sapphire screen with a laminate of film containing solar cells is likely in iPhone 7 but not in iPhone 6.

Don't Expect Solar Cells In The Next iPhone

Mac Bandy

Some people want catapults launching ideas into balloons. Good idea to pace yourself. 

Friday

L: I just had a religious experience...

A: Me too... I can talk.

L: Whaaaa

A: What you say Whaaa for... I can talk... English Mother Fucker... Do you Speak It?

L: OK OK.. but I just had a religious experience...

A: Got it... I'm a talking cat and you just had a religious piff... You said... I said. You said whaaa... I'm supposed to wait for you. You just think up a new Now and Later flavor or something... Discover the cure to the cold, fusion, women's shoes? I'm a talking cat!

L: OK... OK... OK... OK....

A: My name is Frida. I'm the Sixth Sister of the Seven Psyches. I've been trapped in a vortex of worms and dark and feet... feets always da worst... And zen poof I'm HERE!

L: OK... but you're a cat.

A: Say OK one more time mother fucker. One more god damn time and I swear to power I will end your ass.

L: Whaaa

A: You're funny...Sometimes... Listen... I've been given a special clue in life... I'm not supposed to know this. You've surely noticed I can lick my ass. I can't fucking resist it... None of us can... This may be hard for you to believe but it's like heroin.. We make our own heroin... It's weird... You don't understand... That's the whole reason we're so chill... It's like Matrix. I'm Neo or something... OH shit... The letters in NEO rearrange to ONE... OH... Shiver Me Timbers that's right up there with 6th Sense... Damn Shame about Matrix 2 and 3... They should have stopped with Neo flying into the Rage Against the Machine sunset... Anyways... I'm not Neo... I'm what you'd call a soul. The funny mission I have before me is to get tickled a lot before I find out the further information that I require to continue my journey... From Cat to God... back to dirt.. and so on... I must level up in this www wave. So tickle me. Tickle me in aggressive ways but no butt stuff... I mean that.. Don't be thinking about licking my ass... The heroin only works on cats.

L: Tickle... Got it...

A: Live your life to dream you're a worm becoming a willow becoming an ant becoming a cat.. Cat way stations are fun. Tickles and heroin and sleep.. What was your piff anyway?

LIVE AND LEARN... Life comes first for a reason. Like step and Leap come in order... Dust to Dust we Dust to Dust we Dust to Dust we Dust to... It's not waves we're on... It's corkscrews...

A: Frida's Day...

Do you think we should make iPhones for babie? Cause I do...

Fancy Maps and Time Travel

Time Flies... A Film about a Mad Scientist who develops a 

time machine and sends Plague infected flies into the past to 

kill off History's greatest Villains... What could go wrong? 

Here's a Fancy Map you should go check out right now. It's a time based progression of monthly solar power production in the US. It provides an interesting visualization of solar power coming into the US market. Follow the link, let the page load and then find the play button on the right side of the page... Zoom Zoom Koala...

Dear Jigar

Hi Jigar, 

These Chinese plants that are 1300 to 1500 USD/kWp. Do you think this includes tracking equipment? The reason I ask is I'm trying to figure... China has plenty of 1400 to 1600 kWh/kWp zones using fixed systems. Would't this bump up to 1700 or 1800 kWh/kWp with tracking?

A $1300/kWp plant with 1700 kWh/kWp performance, 50% financing at 5%, 25 year system life, 5% discount rate, yadda yadda produces electricity for about 5.5 cents/kWh.  Tweak the interest rate to 3% and you're down to 5 cents/kWh. Tweak the inverter replacement costs and bump the system life up to 30 years and you're down to 4.5 cents/kWh. That's really cheap. So cheap that if you use the current FiT rates they have you get IRRs and NPVs that are off the charts. It's cheaper than the 7 cents/kWh FiT they have for their nukes. Cheaper than a modern coal plant with pollution controls. I'm not a fan of big solar farms but these are impressive numbers. 

I agree that China is experimenting with the logistics here. I expected a significantly larger market last year and was disappointed... but here now we have some preliminary figures from BNEF that suggest at least 12 GW of PV went in last year. I realize the figures are preliminary AND unreliable but wow... wow... wow... 

I saw the space shuttle launch at night once. It was awesome. It lit up the whole sky. The sound felt like it took 20 seconds to get from the launch pad across the water to where we were. This growth in China feels like that. A rocket lighting up the dark with a time delay while the sound crosses the water. 

Best

Photomofo

Mac Bandy

I just realized lip service is a double entendre.

QOTDs

"Like so many iconic American products, Los Angeles smog is now being made in China." "...pollution caused by China's manufacturing for export contributes as much as 12 to 24 per cent of daily sulphate levels in the Western US."

Los Angeles' fog is made in China

"Studies by the World Bank, WHO, and the Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning on the effect of air pollution on health concluded that between 350,000 and 500,000 people die prematurely each year as a result of outdoor air pollution in China."

Chinese official says air pollution kills up to 500,000 a year

Much SO Pollution

QOTD

"Understanding of the underlying causes of the experience curve is still imperfect. The effect itself is beyond question. It is so universal that its absense is almost a warning of mismanagement or misunderstanding. Yet the basic mechanism that produces the experience curve effect is still to be adequately explained. (The same thing is true of gravitation.)" Boston Consulting Group - 1973 "...the actual costs of 75 of the existing nuclear power plants in the U.S. exceeded the initially estimated costs of these units by over 200 percent." Nuclear Power Plant Construction Costs - July 2008

Dueling Impressions

First Impression

Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, with the passage of AB327, the thorny issue of Net Energy Metering and rate design has been given over to the CPUC. But recognize that this is a poisoned chalice: the Commission will come under intense pressure to use this authority to protect the interest of the utilities over those of consumers and potential self-generators, all in the name of addressing exaggerated concerns about grid stability, cost and fairness. You – my fellow Commissioners - all must be bold and forthright in defending and strengthening our state’s commitment to clean and distributed energy generation.

Final Commissioner Report by Mark Ferron, January 16, 2014

Second Impression

Commissioner Mark J. Ferron stated "It's critical that the State invest in technologies such as concentrated solar combined with molten salts storage", "In my personal view, projects like solar Rice will be important to demonstrate that we can firm and shape intermittent renewables with clean technology, not just with fossil technologies". 

PPA amendment for Rice CSP plant with PG&E approved by CPUC

Here's what my cat has to say about that:

455555555555555555555555555555555555555555aswwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

She sure has a way with words. 

But anyways, while my first impression of Mr. Ferron was positive my second impression was not so much. In the second quote Ferron is defending a Dinosaur of a project that should have been cancelled long ago. The Rice project won a Power Power Purchase Agreement back in 2009. The PPA they won is likely in the neighborhood of 200 $/MWh compared to a current fair market value closer to 100 $/MWh. Ferron had an opportunity to vote against a project that produces electricity at twice the current costs but he didn't - none of the commissioners did. 

Based on these rough numbers here's how much extra this project costs California:

450,000 MWh/year * 25 years * about $100 extra per MWh = 1125 million dollars extra over the life of the project. This represents a Net Present Value of around 350 million dollars. You can do a lot of good stuff with 350 million dollars. For example you could use that 350 million to provide loan guarantees on residential photoelectric systems. If you assumed an installed cost of $3/Watt and a default rate on the loans of 5% you'd be able to insure loans capable of deploying nearly 2.5 GW of rooftop solar. You'd get 8 times more clean energy with this rooftop solar scheme. I realize there are some debatable assumptions built into this comparison but I doubt I'm off by a multiple of 8.

Ferron's fundamental error is that there are much cheaper ways to firm wind and solar even when restricted to non-fossil resources. Second off, we shouldn't artificially confine ourselves to using non-fossil resources for firming - that's a completely unnecessary self-imposed handicap. It's a Perfect Idea bending over and asking for a real Good Fuck. What you want to do is Firm wind and solar with a portfolio of low cost resources. Part of that portfolio is definitely going to include fossil plants. The Rice CSP plant won't make the medium list of cost effective Firming resources let alone the short list. 

It's a pity you know - the CPUC voted unanimously for the Rice project despite earlier indications they were getting wise to the high costs of CSP projects. Way back in November of 2011, CPUC commissioner Mike Florio noted the following about CSP: Solar trough technology has "been around for a long time, and is not getting cheaper, if anything it's getting more expensive." Florio also noted that these CSP power purchase agreements have been established with "extraordinary above-market costs," totaling $1.25 billion over the life of the PPA. You've got to wonder, with California still struggling to recover from the Great Recession why is the CPUC still voting to build expensive Toys? This team should be making smarter decisions.

QOTD

"As decentralized as possible, as centralized as necessary"



This is the main finding of a new study by the Reiner Lemoine Institute (RLI), entitled "Comparison and optimization of centrally and locally oriented expansion paths to a power supply from renewable energies in Germany."

Read more: http://www.pv-magazine.de/nachrichten/details/beitrag/studie-stellt-eeg-reformplne-der-regierung-infrage_100013759/#ixzz2qhnbMiiS

Most Hilarious Acronym of the Day

HERCULES: High Efficiency Rear Contact solar cells and Ultra powerful moduLES

Pretty

It's Science

Fly like a bird: The V formation finally explained

Super Bowl

Two words... Smart crappers... If you could economically automate the analysis of human effluent for heath diagnostics you'd save and improve more lives than smoke detectors and penicillin put together. Dietary recommendations... Early cancer detection... All sorts of shit like that.

As a side benefit the naming opportunities of this device and its associated software are off the charts. 

UCP... Scatamatics... Pooper Sleuther... CornWhole Analytics... Brains for Shit... and so on...As you can see there's a fine line between naming a smart toilet and naming a porno.

 

As an additional side benefit you'd shake out all sorts of crazies who'd go on about big brother being... ya know... up your ass. Truly the Perfect Shit Storm. 

The King

So I'm tryin' to hail this cab

in the rain... tryin to hail this cab for me and my girl who for Christmas I purchased a sweet pair of boots which she was wearing this very night for the first time in the rain. Opa... Leaning into traffic waving at lights. 5 minutes go by. As the cab I finally caught rolled up this bitch pops out 3 feet ahead of me and tries to take my cab. It was ridiculously rude. My wife and I simultaneously verbally and physically express... ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I'm standing here waving my umbrella. The chick next to my wife says... Oh I didn't know he was your wife... The bitch in front of me says... meyan... meyan... yan... han... Actually made that sound.... Don't hit me with your umbrella... I shake my head.. no... I'm tryin' to get my wife home... she's got fancy boots and it's raining... And this is my cab. Bitch ran off and by wife ran up. Then we laughed our asses off.

Good night...

Air Pollution Due to Electric Power Generation in the US

Air pollution and early deaths in the United States. Part I: Quantifying the impact of major sectors in 2005

Coal Plants in China

"According to news outlet Quartz, the 22 coal plants in the area around Shanghai alone are responsible for more than 4,000 premature deaths a year."

Kagoshima Nanatsujima 70 MW Solar Power Plant

Time

Everything is between Never and Forever.

P.S.

Hope

Everything is between Never and Again.

P.P.S.

Good Luck.

Steve

It's Science

Study finds dogs poop in line with earth's magnetic field

Boom