One thing I find strange with my country is we seem not to care that even today when solar panels are being installed on large scale from Canada to Tasmania and powering everything from Airplanes, Cars, and Laptops to Fish Tank filters etc.

Sadly, there seem to be persons whose charge is to tell others that Solar is too diffuse a source of energy to be practical.

Much as I respect their tenacity, I indeed cannot say I’m a big fan of their logic as well as their convention of rejecting evidence they hate, or perhaps their universal lack of knowledge of the reality of how solar power is currently used in the world.

“Choosing coal for our electricity today, is not only too diffuse to be practical, but also very primitive.”

Energy and environmental managers have pronounced Coal as the dirtiest energy source among its fossil fuel siblings. Environmental Statistics have also proven that it is the principal source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions such as Sulphur dioxide (SOs), Nitrogen Oxide (NOs) etc, which are the supreme challenge to our climate.

As we talk today, countries such as the USA and the UK who were once depending on this source are shutting down their Coal Power Plants to reduce emissions into the atmosphere. Other countries in Europe have made regulations to decommission their coal powered plants. Incontrovertibly, these toxic mixtures of chemicals are not only harmful to human health but also generates acid rain and polluting water bodies and other natural habitats. 

Conversely, Solar Panels give off no contamination; the main contamination that occurs as a consequence of solar panels is the assembling of these gadgets in industrial facilities, the transportation of the merchandise, and the installation. That means, once they’re actually installed, they are doing absolutely nothing negative to the atmosphere; this is a huge difference than what you see from other forms of energy such as coal.

Again, while Coal can be transported safely, it is a very heavy and bulky load. Providing Coal Supplies to areas where coal is not available is very expensive. A case of such is Ghana. Ghana has no coal deposits unlike we have abundance of sunshine, hence, the need to import from other countries such as Australia or South Africa.

This importation might further put much pressure on our weak Cedi and subsequently on the balance of payment deficit of the country which is currently receiving treatment at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the IMF. This makes its availability and cost effectiveness questionable.

Countries such as India, South Africa, Russia and the USA have abundant coal reserves have huge coal reserves, it is estimated that it would only last for the next 200 years, which makes it a non-renewable source of energy.

Similarly, the world’s oil reserves will last for about 50-60 years, Meanwhile, Sunlight is available throughout the world and can easily be harnessed by every nation at every corner which can be utilized till the end of this planet. Solar is not only renewable, but sustainable.

Sustainable simply means to be able to meet the needs of the present without compromising the needs of the future generations. Sun is going to last for another 6.5 billion years, according to NASA and there is no way that we could over consume it. The only drawback is that it can only be harnessed during daytime.

The generation of energy from the use of Coal, Fossil Fuels and other renewable energy sources (e.g. Wind turbines) might be incredibly noisy, yet solar energy produces power quietly. That way, we won’t have to worry about sound pollution to the area of the solar farm. This makes it much more pleasant for communities who live around solar power plants. Solar power plants operate silently and are therefore preferred by many people.

Much as I agree with some protagonist of coal, on the issue that coal power has played an essential part in the global electricity generation constituting about 41%, I simply do not go with the logic that without coal in the electricity generation mix, the world will be in partial darkness. Let’s not forget that “The total annual radiation from the sun is more than 7500 times the world’s annual total primary energy consumption”.

Additionally, the claim of “Clean Coal” makes Coal Power generation extremely costly, hence the Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) is more expensive than today's electricity prices.

To start with, one of the several Gasification Challenges of the Carbon Capture and Storage Technology (CCS) is that the construction costs is an issue.  IGCC without carbon capture is generally considered to be more expensive to build than pulverized coal without CCS. This is so because of the lack of a mandate, carbon market price or regulatory framework, most recent plants have been proposed without CCS, though that is beginning to change.

The CCS technology in Clean Coal cannot be mentioned without addressing the issue of its Post Combustion Capture Challenges, one of which is that incremental improvements in the efficiency and costs of PCC processes are likely following initial commercial-scale demonstrations.  Technology developers to date have had little incentive to optimize solvents and process configurations for the power industry. Also, PCC will significantly increase electricity generation costs from traditional coal power plants. 

For new plants, PCC with current technology might increase the levelized cost of electricity by more than 80 percent. Retrofit costs for existing plants will be site-specific but could approach one half the cost of building a new coal power plant (without PCC).  

Finally, the single largest challenge facing sequestration is scaling up the technology to a level large enough to address climate challenges.  While enhanced oil recovery (EOR) has been used at large scale for decades, there have been relatively few sites where large amounts of CO2 have been injected into geologic brine formations.

More larger field demonstration projects are needed worldwide. Science and industry experience strongly indicate that sequestration is safe when practiced in an appropriate site. However, managing hundreds of sources injecting into a single sedimentary basin requires a high level of knowledge sharing and project coordination, as well as research and development support.

Monitoring, permitting and long-term care programs must also be developed so that commercial and public sequestration sites can be developed and environmental protection assured.

Nonetheless, I distrust many people will think this is the right way to go about comparing them.

In conclusion, it seems to me Ghanaians are apathetic to put solar panels on the ground, this is less true in places such as Europe and India but this still does not make solar power is too diffuse to be practical. In the case of India, almost all of their solar capacity consists of low efficiency (15%), thin-film solar panels mounted on the ground which produce much less electricity per square meter than any coal plant operating at its originally intended capacity.

But despite this, India is now building huge solar farms that will produce electricity at a cost of about 12 cents a kilowatt-hour which is competitive with electricity from new coal plants. So while Indian solar takes up more land than coal per kilowatt-hour produced, it’s obviously not too diffuse to compete with it even when coal power is not paying anything close to the full cost of the harm it causes.

While looking at the area of land required is one way to consider how diffuse a source of electricity is, another is to study the average number of kilowatt-hours produced per kilogram of mass required. A solar system with 25% efficient panels that receives a not-particularly impressive average of 4.0 to 4.5 hours of sunlight a day will produce about 600 kilowatt-hours per kilogram of its total system weight over its lifetime.

Whereas coal power, due to the massive amount of coal it burns, will only produce about 2 kilowatt-hours per kilogram of mass required. This makes electricity from solar approximately 300 times more concentrated a source of electricity than coal power. If the mass of the oxygen required to combust the coal is included then rooftop solar is about 600 times more concentrated.

Solar power is a much more concentrated source of electricity than coal in terms of the amount of land it requires. And in places where solar power is more diffuse than coal in terms of land used, it is still competitive with new coal even when coal doesn’t pay anywhere near the full cost of its externalities. And in terms of kilowatt-hours produced per kilogram of mass required, solar power is a far more concentrated source of electricity than coal anywhere in the world and the only thing that can change that is if you make me include the mass of the sun in my calculations.

Maxmillan Kwarteng, BS., MBA., MIAENG

Gramax Energy Group

odeneho21@hotmail.com

0203369968/0249294482