Solar-thermal assisted CHP
SB412 Testimony
Submitted to the (California) Assembly Committee on Utilities and Commerce by Jonah Crawford, CEO, MicroGrid Systems Inc. on Monday, June 29, 2009
Honorable Members,
The public analysis prepared for the June 29th Assembly Committee on Utilities and Commerce states:
“When results of this study are assessed with the quantity of demanded installed capacity, one could conclude that even moderate subsidies and policy incentives could induce a significant over-investment in CHP or to a point where the marginal benefits significantly decrease.”
However the report fails to qualify this adjective ‘marginal’. With or without fossil fuels when a technology or grouping of technologies such as CHP reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% there is nothing marginal about them.
The report goes on to state:
“The ARB's target of 4,000 MW of CHP would equate to about 6.7% of total system power, which far exceeds existing solar (368 MW or 0.6%).”
and further that:
“The utilities have been collecting a surcharge for the SGIP and it has not been fully expended. The current unexpended balance is about $200 million.”
So after 78 months with this very attractive SGIP incentive in place why does wind, solar and fuel cell technology account for less than approximately 2.1% of the State's total installed capacity ?
Could this be the failure of previous public analysis to anticipate the economic realities of solar PV, fuel cells, and wind technology ?
For all its proven benefits, relative to both the amount of power PV and wind deliver from a given area, and the volumes of power our society demands these technologies remain prohibitively expensive. Furthermore the dream of converting vast tracts of California’s deserts into PV and wind farms is already showing signs of becoming yet another environmental nightmare.
This is not to say that one day wind and PV won’t deliver on their promise, or that their incentives should be removed. However the economic realities of these technologies should be recognized as an inconvenient truth.
Solar-thermal assisted CHP offers rate-payers and the State a middle ground, critical path towards meeting the State’s greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets.
Submitted to the (California) Assembly Committee on Utilities and Commerce by Jonah Crawford, CEO, MicroGrid Systems Inc. on Monday, June 29, 2009
Honorable Members,
The public analysis prepared for the June 29th Assembly Committee on Utilities and Commerce states:
“When results of this study are assessed with the quantity of demanded installed capacity, one could conclude that even moderate subsidies and policy incentives could induce a significant over-investment in CHP or to a point where the marginal benefits significantly decrease.”
However the report fails to qualify this adjective ‘marginal’. With or without fossil fuels when a technology or grouping of technologies such as CHP reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% there is nothing marginal about them.
The report goes on to state:
“The ARB's target of 4,000 MW of CHP would equate to about 6.7% of total system power, which far exceeds existing solar (368 MW or 0.6%).”
and further that:
“The utilities have been collecting a surcharge for the SGIP and it has not been fully expended. The current unexpended balance is about $200 million.”
So after 78 months with this very attractive SGIP incentive in place why does wind, solar and fuel cell technology account for less than approximately 2.1% of the State's total installed capacity ?
Could this be the failure of previous public analysis to anticipate the economic realities of solar PV, fuel cells, and wind technology ?
For all its proven benefits, relative to both the amount of power PV and wind deliver from a given area, and the volumes of power our society demands these technologies remain prohibitively expensive. Furthermore the dream of converting vast tracts of California’s deserts into PV and wind farms is already showing signs of becoming yet another environmental nightmare.
This is not to say that one day wind and PV won’t deliver on their promise, or that their incentives should be removed. However the economic realities of these technologies should be recognized as an inconvenient truth.
Solar-thermal assisted CHP offers rate-payers and the State a middle ground, critical path towards meeting the State’s greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets.
- This grouping of technologies provides five times greater solar efficiency than PV and at roughly 1/5 the installation cost.
- Thus by utilizing solar-assisted CHP, per incentive dollar five times the total output power of PV can be installed with a net 60-90% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
In the UK millions of tons of carbon emissions will be offset in the next decade through grid-tied household micro CHP installations.
SB412 represents an important opportunity to set in place the same technologies that are effectively reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the EU under the Kyoto Protocols.
CHP is the critical path for California to securely meet its demand for new power, reliably and with far less emissions.
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