July 11, 2009

July 11, 2009

MÖKENERGY

2009 marks fifteen years experience in designing and building CPV (Concentrated Photo Voltaic) systems that produce electrical power at substantially reduced cossts when compared to conventional photo voltaic systems. MÖKENERGY has achieved costs of seven cents per peak watt. At these prices hydrogen is made at $0.11 per kg and gasoline from CO2 for $0.20 per gallon.

Concentrated Photovoltaics radically reduced energy costs By William Mook

It costs about a dollar a square inch for a wafer of silicon. Expose that silicon to sunlight and you’d need about eleven square inches to make one watt of power in full sunlight. This translates to over fifty-cents per kilowatt-hour of energy, about seven times more costly than electricity you buy from your local utility. Even though there is no fuel burned in the process. Others have attempted to reduce the cost of solar panels by reducing the cost of that square inch. Using surplus silicon taken from the consumer electronics industry has cut costs in half,

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while limiting the amount of silicon available for solar use. Using less costly polysilicon also reduces costs, but the efficiencies are reduced as well. This achieves costs of one-third that attained by using wafer silicon. Yet, new uses of polysilicon in manufacturing MEMs devices and HDTVs has caused a rise in prices of polysilicon as solar use grows. Companies like Nanosolar have taken silicon dust mixed in a binder to create printable solar panels that have the potential to lower costs to one-fifth the cost of wafer silicon systems.

I have been working for fifteen years on another idea. What if we could concentrate light to a tiny spot and build a photocell to convert light to electricity at that tiny spot? How inexpensively could solar panels be made if we did that? The answer is, less than a penny a peak watt!! This is hundreds of times less costly than any system now contemplated, and changes the paradigm of solar from one of many high-cost alternatives to existing energy systems, making solar the primary energy of the twenty-first century capable of replacing fossil fuels while lowering energy costs overall.

MÖKENERGY July 11, 2009

Solar cheaper than oil? our society is built on low-cost energy From 1850 through 1950 the cost of primary energy decreased from an inflation adjusted $150 per barrel to $2 per barrel!! Over this period a society built on low-cost energy arose to replace a society based on slavery. Since 1950 the price of oil has risen to exceed $50 per barrel and social progress has ended. Despite massive computerization, automation and extensive use of robotics, the rising cost of energy has stalled the rise in living standards enjoyed through the 1950s and has put on permanent hold many of the futuristic dreams of the 1950s. At present, alternatives to fossil fuels are expected to cost far more than fossil fuels while lowered expectations are sold as a natural consequence of environmental concerns. Meanwhile, more people work more hours for less, while energy companies report record profits which is a direct consequence of higher cost energy. Why are energy costs rising? Because the amount of fuels our industry is set up to use are limited. If you believe the energy companies there are no good alternatives. This is not true. Why would the energy companies lie to us? Because it benefits them for energy costs to rise. They sell a commodity that is in short supply. The only way they can maintain high profits is to sell what they have at high prices. Low cost alternatives

Electrolytic Hydrogen Fifty-two megawatt-hours of DC solar electricity makes a metric ton of hydrogen from nine metric tons of deionized water when the sun shines at less than $110.

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“Hydrogen at $110 per metric ton makes gasoline, diesel fuel, and jet fuel from coal at $0.20 per gallon today while building a hydrogen infrastructure that does away with oil and coal altogether in less than ten years.” William Mook, founder MÖKENERGY

US Primary Fuel Production

break this cycle. That’s why low-cost alternatives have been routinely ignored and marginalized. In 1956 King Hubbert chief geologist for Shell reported that he was able to compute the logistic curve for oil production in the US and throughout the world. All geologists know about the logistic curve. It applies to anything you look for. Whether quarters in a change jar, or oil in the ground. In 1956 enough data was available to know conclusively that oil production in the USA would peak in 1970 and oil production would peak in the world in 2015. That’s why in 1956 Louis Strauss, said to science reporters

during questions asked at a press conference that, “By 1970 power would be too cheap to meter” Who was Louis Strauss? Director of the Atomic Energy Commission. Dr. Strauss was replaced later that year by Eisenhower. Since that time Hubbert’s findings as well as low-cost nuclear, have been marginalized while alternatives like solar are approached in ways that avoid or ignore their potential to lower overall energy costs. Before the 1990s CPV wasn’t even considered a viable alternative because many felt wrongly it was impossible to increase intensity on PV cells to more than 2x ambient.

Balance of System Cost the other cost center

Too little load, and you have a burn out. So, energy load, and energy source must be balanced to work efficiently and safely. To achieve this balance requires a substantial investment in balance of system costs. So, even if solar panels were free along with solar energy, these costs make solar energy non-competitive with even today’s energy prices. Is there a solution? Certainly! Don’t use DC electricity to make AC electricity. Use DC electricity instead to make hydrogen from water. Why hydrogen? Because hydrogen can be used to make fuels we use today at less cost than we pay today.

Electricity is a high-value commodity. So why use it to make a low value fuel that when burned makes heat? AC electricity available on demand is certainly a high-value commodity. But, what about DC electricity available only when the sun shines? That is not so valuable. In fact, considerable processing of DC electricity is needed to make practical use of it at all. To work efficiently, a solar panel must be tied to a balanced load. Too much load, and you have a brown out.

MÖKENERGY July 11, 2009

USA as an energy exporter Coal water and sunlight 9,800 square miles of ultra-low-cost solar panels installed on a handful of abandoned mine lands in the US West is sufficient to produce 300 million tons of hydrogen gas from 2,700 million kiloliters of water each year. The 300 million tons is piped to all of the nation’s 1,036 coal fired power plants. There, 180 million tons of hydrogen is burned to replace the 1.14 billion tons of coal now burned at these plants. Meanwhile, another 120 million tons of hydrogen is combined directly with the coal at each of these plants to produce 7 billion barrels of liquid fuel products, including gasoline, diesel fuel and jet fuel. For an assured supply of hydrogen gas under all weather conditions and seasonal variations, a 100 day supply of hydrogen gas is stored in spent oil wells across the nation. This process mobilizes immobile oil now trapped underground. This oil, added to conventional oil production allows the United States to export two billion barrels of liquid fuel products even while consuming 6.8 billion barrels of liquid fuels each year. Since this approach to energy requires the production, storage and distribution of massive quantities of hydrogen gas, the development of a hydrogen economy is a natural consequence of this approach. Eliminating the burning of coal reduces America’s carbon footprint by half. The development of hydrogen sources from sunlight and

Ultra-low-cost Solar panels costing less than $28 per square yard feeding low cost variable load electrolyzers produce hydrogen at less than $110 per metric ton. Low cost hydrogen delivered by pipeline to America’s 1,036 coal fired power plants is burned instead of coal eliminating most of our country’s carbon emissions. The stranded coal is converted at the coal fired power plant into gasoline, diesel fuel and jet fuel in quantities large enough for the USA to export these fuels to Asia.

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“The USA today has the capacity to arrange its existing resources so that it becomes the world’s largest exporter of oil products.” William Mook

water sets up the beginnings of a hydrogen economy which eliminates the balance of fossil fuel use throughout the world with hydrogen exported from the USA.

Add water to sunlight and get low-cost hydrogen. Send that hydrogen to coal fired power plants to be burned to eliminate half our carbon footprint. Convert the unburned coal to gasoline to eliminate our oil import problem. Export excess along with hydrogen to balance our economy.