I’ve got a book about the old barns of America. In the forward the author addresses the issue of how well barns were built ‘back then’.

His response is that barns of all qualities were built. The really well built ones survived.

It does seem that the nuclear industry is giving us a tour of the best built plants when they talk of their high capacity.

They plot the route so that we don’t drive past the rotting hulks of the plants that closed early.

On nuclear: the cost of taking care of nuclear waste for longer than humans have existed for should also be taken into account in the price and isn’t.

Wonderful wording skills

They must be laughing in the rear view mirror at the sight of our scramble to build something as absurd as a 1700 mile bituminous toxin pipeline across our central breadbasket and water supply.

The inscription in the mirror says “You’re farther behind than it appears.”

We know that our grid is about 44% coal, 20% nuclear, 9% renewable, whatever. We know that wind was 2% last year and is reaching 3% this year. These are meaningful numbers. They allow us to contrast and compare.

Nameplate capacity is meaningless when the percentage of hours different technologies operate at capacity (or percentage of capacity) is different.

You can’t compare offshore wind which might have a 50% capacity factor with solar which might have a 20% capacity factor on nameplate capacity alone. One meg of wind, nameplate, will yield 2.5x as much power as one meg of PV.

I provided stats that clearly show where we’re headed. Anyone who can’t understand the implications of that report most likely does not want to.

P.S. You’d do better to provide total renewable generation, e.g. Germany just went over 20%. Or announced targets: Scotland talking about 100% renewable electricity by 2020.

I’ve seen the uninformed / misinformers claim “until they improve the capacity factor of wind @ 30% it will never compete with nuclear @ 90%.” It is, of course, nonsense. You just build more wind turbines and spread them apart to collect all that ‘free’ energy.

There isn’t “a better measurement than nameplate capacity”. You can’t distil the myriad factors in to a single number. Not possible.

Note: obviously capacity factor is a useful and necessary statistic. I’m saying it’s mostly not used as such. It’s mostly used to confuse in the public ‘debate’.

Nuclear produces about 18%, so we have work left to do.

In 2010 wind produced 21% of electricity in Denmark, 18% in Portugal, 16% in Spain, 14% in Ireland and 9% in Germany. We’re installing wind faster and we can catch up with them.

Those are more meaningful numbers. They can’t be easily dismissed by people like John.

Are you not aware of how often he has visited renewable energy equipment factories the last year and how much of the stimulus money he steered into renewable energy and electric vehicles?

What I was talking about is using a better metric for determining the percentage of electricity we get from each source.

Time of production is important, but different. Solar can be very valuable because it produces when demand is generally highest. Utilities pay serious money for peak hour power and solar can be a bargain.

Protection against future increases in fuel costs is another advantage of renewable energy. Utilities can install wind, solar or geothermal knowing that their future costs are largely fixed and not subject to spiraling fossil fuel prices.

Capacity is not a red herring, it’s a useful statistic. We need to have a measurement of how much renewable generation we’ve brought on line and how large the job ahead of us is. We just need a better measurement than nameplate capacity.

* Renewables 2011 Global Status Report. Renewable energy accounted for approximately half of the estimated 194 gigawatts (GW) of new electric capacity added globally during 2010. Global investments in renewables up over 30% to a record $211 billion. http://www.ren21.net/REN21Activities/Publications/GlobalStatusReport/GSR2011/tabid/56142/Default.aspx + http://www.consumerenergyreport.com/2011/07/14/renewables-2011-global-status-report-released/

Solar doesn’t produce much electricity between midnight and 6 am – but people don’t need much electricity then either. So, criticising solar for having a ‘low’ capacity factor is misleading.

Similarly, nuclear’s ‘high’ capacity factor (which is actually closer to 70 or 80% worldwide) is not necessarily a benefit. E.g. France has to import electricity at times of high demand (and pays top price) while exporting during periods of low demand (and is paid bottom price).

Also, capacity factor is only one part of the energy equation. Free fuel forever and no emissions and no toxic waste and no risk of catastrophic failure are significant factors that leave nukes at a distinct disadvantage.

Capacity factor is largely a red herring used to try and beat down renewables. The fossil / nuke lobbies have little else to work with.

No generation source is 100% always on. Using maximum output numbers as a metric is not a very accurate way to describe how much each generation technology is providing to our overall total.

Wind is likely somewhere between 25% and 40% worldwide. Nuclear is probably about 90%. It’s going to take 3x or more nameplate wind to equal nameplate nuclear. Solar worldwide is likely under 20% of nameplate.

The big celebration should come when output from renewables surpasses nuclear.

No, the big celebration should come when output from renewables starts closing down fossil fuel generation. (Hopefully we dodge any more nuclear meltdowns in the interim.)