Solar Power is Not as Easy as it Looks

Adding the first increment to the grid is far easier than adding the last, if we want to decarbonize electricity. Review of "Taming the Sun", by Varun Sivaram

Global warming is no longer a future problem, but a now problem, and getting rapidly worse. We need a total societal focus on extricating ourselves from fossil fuels. Putting aside the brain-dead / know-nothing ideology of the current administration, the world is broadly, if grudgingly, onboard with this program. What is lacking are the political will and technical means to get there. California now gets 29% of its electricity (including imports from other states) from renewables, of which 10% is photovoltaic (PV) solar power. The grid operator shows a pleasing daily graph of solar power taking over one-third of electricity demand around mid-day.

A typical day on California's power grid. at mid-day, and fair portion of the state's power comes from solar power (teal). But come sundown, many other plants need to ramp up to provide for peak demand.

 
Varun Sivaram's book is an earnest, somewhat repetitious though well-written and detailed look at why this picture is misleading, and what it will really take to go the rest of the way to decarbonization. Solar power has very bad characteristics for electrical grid power- the grid operator has no control over when it comes in, (it is not dispatchable), and it all tends to come in at the same time of day. While this time (mid-day) is typically one of heavy usage, it is not the peak of usage, which comes during the transition to cooking and evening activities, from 5 to 7 PM. This means that not only does the rest of the grid have to work around solar's intermittency, but the rest of the grid has to constitute a full fleet of power plants for peak needs- solar will not reduce the need for either baseline or peak power capacity.

This is extremely disappointing, and means that adding the first 10% of solar to the grid is relatively easy, but adding more becomes increasingly difficult, and offloads rising expenses to other parts of the system. We do not have the technical means to economically address these issues yet. Solutions come in two basic forms- energy storage, or alternative modes of non-CO2 emitting generation.

Storage technologies by current capacity and capability. Pumping water uphill into reservoirs is the only existing method of storing power in grid-scale amounts over long periods.

Storage is easy to understand. If we could only bottle all that solar electricity somehow, all would be well. Even if we can't save summer power for winter, but save it only for a few days, we could build enough solar generation capacity (at the current cheap and falling prices) to cover our needs at the lowest production time of year, and throw away the excess the rest of the year. This assumes that, over a suitably large geographic area, there will not be so much extended cloud cover that this could not be reasonably planned. But such storage technology simply does not exist yet. The diagram above mentions some of the major candidates. The best known are chemical batteries, like lithium ion. This is how off-grid and home backup systems manage the intermittency of solar power. But these are expensive, which is why it is cheaper to buy power from the local utility than to go off-grid, and also cheaper to build a grid-tied solar system than go off-grid. The most mature grid-scale storage technology is hydropower- pumping water back uphill into a reservoir. This is obviously not available in most places where storage is needed.

Where various storage technologies are in development.

Other methods like flywheels, raising and lowering rocks, etc. are all on the drawing board, but not yet in practical deployment at grid scale, or even demonstrated to be economic at that scale. Making fuels like hydrogen or hydrocarbons from solar energy is another prospect for storage, but again are not currently economical. Hydrogen has been touted as the all-around fuel of the future for many uses, but is so difficult to handle that, again, it is far from currently practical. Getting there will take money and effort. 2050 is when we need the power sector substantially decarbonized, world-wide (if not sooner!). It sounds far off, but it is only about 30 years- a very short time in power technology terms. The scale needed is also gargantuan, so we need these solutions to get off the drawing board as soon as possible- there is no time to waste.

The alternative methods of no-carbon generation are currently wind and nuclear, with CO2 storage (sequestration) from fossil fuel plants as a further option. Carbon sequestration is not a new technology, and is something that would be directly motivated by a carbon tax, though it is also phenomenally wasteful (as are many of our more adventurous methods of producing fossil fuels, like tar sands)- a fair fraction of the energy produced goes right back into compressing and pumping the CO2 back underground. Wind is also getting to be a mature technology, and shares with solar the problem of intermittency, so is not a solution for dispatchable or baseline power. Sivaram does note at length, however, that a helpful technology for both solar and wind is long-distance DC transmission, which would allow rich sources, like the plains states, or the Sahara, to be connected to heavy users.

The dream of the next generation of nuclear power, which has not been demonstrated at grid scale.

That leaves nuclear power as an important element in future power systems. Generation IV nuclear power promises cleaner, proliferation-proof, more efficient, and more sustainable nuclear power. China has several programs in development, as does the US. Again, as with all the other necessary technologies for a fully sustainable grid, these are not mature technologies, and need a great deal of research and development to come to fruition. I will not even delve into fusion power, which is not demonstrated terrestrially in principle, let alone development.

The point of all this, as made at some length by Sivaram, is that the key to getting to a decarbonized future (for electricity, the easiest energy sector to deal with) lies not simply in scaling up the PV present into a glorious future. Rather, it lies in further intensive research and development of a variety of complementary technologies. The next question naturally is: will the private sector get us there, even if there were a carbon tax? The answer is- unlikely. The Silicon Valley model of venture capital is not well-suited to the energy sector, where innovation comes in small increments, the regulatory weather is heavy, and the scale in time and capital to money-making deployment is huge. There needs to be continued, and vastly expanded, government direction of the research, along with much other public policy, to address this crisis.

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World of Warlords

Why does the US keep funding warlords? And then wonder why "those people" are always fighing each other? Review of Ronan Farrow's "War on Peace".

What went wrong? We have asked ourselves that after countless foreign debacles, from Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq. Why does every intervention turn to ashes, and every good intention end in embarrassment and hatred? Ronan Farrow, celebrity diplomat and journalist, has an answer. Though he has been through a rough family life, Farrow is a smart cookie, and after starting with an absurdly puffy profile of Richard Holbrook, the book eventually settles down into sharp vignettes of American policy and institutions gone awry, and a case for rebuilding our diplomatic capabilities. Part of the war of the title is being waged on the State Department, conducted by the military and successive presidents ending up with our absurdly anti-State current executive. But it is facile to call that a "War on Peace", as though State is our Department of Peace. It is, rather, our reserve of strategic, long-range thought and professional experience in international affairs, and arm of American power, whether advancing that power dictates peace, war, or cold war.

"There are two types of military dispute, the one settled by negotiation and the other by force. Since the first is characteristic of human beings and the second of beasts, we must have recourse to the second only if we cannot exploit the first." -  Cicero, as quoted in the book. Which is incidentally ironic, given the relentlessly bloodthirsty culture and methods of Rome.

The Pax Americana of the post-war era has served us very well, not to mention most other countries. It has been a time of dramatically improving living conditions, rising population, and governance. It has been built on overwhelming conventional power, combined with formal alliances with countless partners and soft leadership by a system both prosperous and just (more or less) which others can aspire to. The outstanding example of this is China, which in its emulation of our mode of production has lifted itself out of dire poverty over the last four decades, and done so very peacefully.

On the other hand, we have made countless blunders when trying to force conditions to our favor more actively. Iraq is a shining example. We destroyed a country only to belatedly realize we had no idea how to run it or whom to hire to do the job. Then we skidaddled prematurely, leaving behind chaos. We have stuck more persistently with Afghanistan, (up to the present moment, at least), but remain in a quagmire of epic proportions with a government that is hopelessly corrupt, filled with warlords. This is where Farrow's book starts to come into the picture. Why so many warlords? Why all the corruption, and why is the facade of democracy so thin?

Afghan president Ghani, trapped in a power structure full of warlords, armed militias, and corrupt elements.

Going back to the start of the war in 2001, we used existing forces that were already arrayed against the Taliban, namely the warlords of the Northern Alliance. Integrated with a US air campaign, they quickly swept the field. But then, in the absence of other alternatives, we kept turning to them to run things, and kept arming them and turning to them again. The CIA and the military led the way, partnering with whoever could supposedly provide the goods- that is men and power, to use our guns and intelligence. But it was always a rotten deal, buying long-term dysfunction for short-term convenience. After World War 2, would we have turned to extremist militias to run Germany and Japan, just because they were most enthusiastic to kill their enemies? Funding and arming the most extreme elements of a society is certainly the best way to get those arms used, but not always the best way to rebuild that society.

Indeed much of our foreign policy over the last few decades has consisted of arming our motley friends. Pakistan is exemplary in this regard. We have been shipping them billions of dollars of military aid since 1955. And what do we have to show for it? A country that is one of the leading state sponsors of terrorism, which is in perpetual cold war if not armed conflict with both of its neighbors India and Afghanistan, whose clear policy is to destabilize Afghanistan, and which lies to us and the world without compunction. And which has blithely acquired nuclear weapons along the way, subjecting the whole world to the spectre of extreme Islamist takeover of a cataclysmic arsenal.

It has not been a very successful policy, whatever benefits the CIA may think it has gleaned over the years. The worst part is that all this aid has strengthened the military as the leading institution of Pakistan, leading to innumerable coups, overwhelming political power even when a general is not serving as president, as well as economic and media power, to the atrophy of civic life and democracy. The best that we could do at this point is to issue a heartfelt apology to the Pakistani people that we have contributed to the militarization of their society, cut all military aid, and focus on continuing constructive dialog with everyone in the region, especially India.

Similarly, in Central and South America, we have spent far too much time and money chasing leftist mirages with right-wing funding, helping to cause the chaos that is now driving so many migrants to our borders from El Salvador, Guatamala, and Honduras. Instead of dramatic stunts of cruelty at the border, we would be much better served setting up a region-wide peace and governance process to help these countries regain stability and democratic institutions. Where is that effort? Nowhere to be seen in this administration. Farrow describes a long-term trend by which the military and the intelligence/security complex in Washington has gained power and money, versus our organs of diplomacy and long-term intelligence, which have atrophied. Nation-building became a dirty word. So now we are now dealing with a series of unbuilt nations, several of which we have unbuilt ourselves. Fear has gained over reason, much to the detriment of our domestic institutions, not to mention our approach to world affairs.

One might even say that the US has become one of the greatest terrorist regimes in the world, engaging proxy wars and armies across the globe often to rather dubious ends and resulting in vast "collateral" damage. It is our lack of expertise and inability to understand other cultures and conditions that leads to the horrors/blunders of Vietnam and Iraq. And that can not be fixed with more know-nothing "strength" from dotards, or with ever higher military budgets and military "aid" packages to anyone willing to throw their own people under the bus of American interests. We are the policeman of the world, at least for the moment. The question is whether the model we pursue is one of SWAT-style military policing, or one of community policing. The former breeds problems on both the short and long terms, while the latter solves them.

And one can note that these practices and attitudes do not stay safely abroad, far from our own culture. The militarization and warlordism of our foreign policy sees its reflection in the growing domestic mania for guns, security, walls, and the installation of a would-be warlord in the White House. While the most grievous harms of this administration may be the diminishment of our network of international relationships and influence, US society is being corroded internally as well by the pessimistic, fearful, and ignorant tenor of the security state.

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Screwy Locomotion: the Spirochete

How do spirochete bacteria move?

Getting around isn't easy. Some of our greatest technological advancements have been in locomotion. Taming, then riding, horses; railroads, automobiles, airplanes. Microorganisms have been around for a long time, and while flying may be easy for them, getting through thicker media is not, nor is steering. The classic form of bacterial motion is with an outboard motor- the flagellum. The prototypical bacterium E. coli has several flagella sprinkled around its surface. Each flagellum is slightly helical, thus forming a languid sort of propeller, which if turned along its helical axis, (at roughly 6,000 rpm), can propel the bacterium through watery media. Turning multiple flagella in this same direction (counter-clockwise) encourages them all to entangle coherently and unite into a bundle. It turns out, however, that bacteria can easily switch their motors to the opposite direction, which causes the flagella to separate, and also to flail about, (since for a left-handed helix, this is the "wrong" direction), sending the cell in random directions.

A typical bacterium with multiple flagella, which will cooperate in forming a bundle when all turned in the same direction, consonant with their helicity (i.e. counter-clockwise).

These are the two steering options for most bacteria- forward or flop about. And this choice is made all the time by typical bacteria, which can sense good things in front (keep swimming forward), or sense bad things in front / good things elsewhere (flail about for a second, before resuming swimming). The flagellar base, where the motor resides, uses both ATP and the proton motive force (i.e. protons that were pumped out by cellular respiration, or the breakdown of food). The protons drive the motor, and ATP drives the construction of the flagellum, which is itself a very complicated dance of self-organization, built on the foundation of an extrusion/injection system also used by pathogenic bacteria to inject things into their targets.

Animated video describing how the flagellum and its base are constructed.

But sometimes a bacterium really needs to get somewhere badly, and is faced with viscous fluids, perhaps inside other organisms, or put out by them to defend themselves. One human defense mechanism is a DNA net thrown out by neutrophils, a type of white blood cell. Spirochetes have come up with an ingenious (by evolution, anyway!) solution- the inboard motor. This is not a motor sticking out of the bottom, but a motor fully enclosed within the cell wall of the bacterium.

Choice of directions (small forward or back arrows) that are dictated by the rotation of the flagella (blue). One set of flagella originate at the rear, and a second set originates at the front. Only if they turn in opposite directions (top two panels) does the spirochete swim coherently, either forward or back. 

How can that work? It is an interesting story. Spirochetes, as their name implies, are corkscrews in shape. In mutants lacking flagella, they instead relax to a normal bacterial rod shape. So they have flagella, but these are positioned inside the cell wall, in the periplasmic space. Indeed they form the central axis around which the corkscrew rotates, with one set of (approximately ten) flagella coming from the rear and another set from the front, each ending up around the middle. If each set rotates as hard as it can, they drive their respective ends to counter-rotate, in reaction. If the front motors (of which there are several) turn their flagella counterclockwise, as viewed from the back, they will, in reaction, drive (and bend) the nose into a clockwise orientation. If the back set of motors run clockwise, driving their flagella counterclockwise (also as seen from the back), then the rear part of the bacterium counter-rotates in clockwise fashion, and the coordinate action drives spiral bending and an overall drilling motion forward.

Video of a non-spirochete bacterium with its flagellum stick to the slide, causing the tail to wag the dog.

Video of spirochete bacteria in motion.

On the other hand, if the motors on the opposite ends of the bacterium go in the same direction, then the flagella induce opposite, instead of coordinate, counter-rotations, and the bacterium doesn't tumble randomly, as normal bacteria do, but contorts and flexes in the middle, with a similar re-orienting effect. This ability incidentally shows the remarkable toughness of these bacteria, considering the lipid bilayer nature of their key protective membranes. These bacteria can also easily reverse direction, by sending both sets of motors in reverse, operating very much like little drills. How this exquisite coordination works has not yet been worked out, however.

Reconstruction, drawn from electron microscopy, of one end of a spirochete, showing the motor orientations, the sharp hook/base of the flagellum, the membrane and cell wall structure, and one of the signaling proteins (MCP), which transmits  a sensory signal to dictate the direction of motor rotation.

One thing that is known, however, is that spirochete motors are massive- almost twice the size of E. coli motors, with special outside hooks to propagate power through the tight turn inside the periplasmic space. It is interesting that these motors can be scaled up in size, with more subunits, and more proton ports for power, as if they were just getting more cylinders in a (fossil fuel-burning) car engine.

Structure of the Borrelia flagellar motor, showing the stator (blue), which is attached to the membrane and stabilized against rotation; the rotor (yellow spokes and teal C-ring), and the gateway ATPase complex which unfolds and transmits the structural components (proteins) into the central channel from which they build the machine.

All this is in service of getting through messy, gelatinous material. The model for most of this work is the spirochete responsible for Lyme disease. The characteristic red ring seen in that infection is thought to track the progress of the spirochete outward and away from the original tick bite site, in relation to the immune system catching up via inflammation. But such viscous environments are quite common in the organic muck of the biosphere, including biofilms established by other bacteria. So the evolutionary rationale for the superpowers of spirochetes is probably quite ancient.

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Psychodrama of the Reformation

Luther's personal demons drove the split of European Christendom. A second post from "Fatal Discord", a double biography of Luther and Erasmus, by Michael Massing.

It is hard to believe, but Martin Luther was ridden with self-doubt. That is what drove him to become a monk, to confess his sins for hours a day, and to search for a way out through the scriptures and other theological writings. When he came across Augustine, he underwent a sort of conversion experience which seems to have led to a decade-long burst of energy, rebelling against the Catholic church and pouring out a prodigious flow of theses, tracts, and books on his new evangelical theology, including a full German translation of the Bible. (It is worth noting parenthetically that in these early days of printing, the pamphlets and books brought out by Luther and his adversaries were easily as intransigent, abusive, and uncivil as our current twitterverse, an atmosphere that may have had something to do with the brutal wars that ensued.)

"Now, in reading Augustine himself, Luther found nothing about free will, good works, or doing one's best. Instead, he found stern pronouncements about human wickedness, divine majesty, and undeserved grace. If Augustine was correct, the selfish urges and prideful thoughts that were continually welling up in him represented not simply his own personal failings, but ingrained features of human nature. As forbidding as Augustine's theology might seem to others, Luther took great comfort in the idea that his fate was not in his own hands."

The issue was free will. If god creates everything, rules all, and sees all time, then how much power do humans have? None, obviously. It was John Calvin who took Luther's position to its full extent, arguing for full pre-destination of everyone's fate, with a decided minority pre-destined (elected) to enter heaven, and all others going to hell. The Catholic church, despite Augustine's influence, took the more practical route of claiming some free will, such that prayer, putting money in the collection plate, feeding the poor, and even buying indulgences, would all be put on the sinner's tab when they got to the pearly gates.

Opening page of Matthew from the Luther Bible, 1534.

It is difficult to run a society without rewards for good behavior, so while the Catholic church did not go the whole way to Pelagianism, it did run a middle course, rewarding (in the next world, at least!) good works, while also holding god to be super-powerful, just not all-powerful. Luther's epiphany that faith alone saves, and that good works count for nothing, solved his personal dilemma, and fueled his world-shaking rebellion. But it also left his parishoners with little incentive to do good works, or even to attend church. Luther was faced with continuing apathy through his later years in Wittenberg, reduced to berating his dwindling flock for its moral and religious laxity.

It was in the peasant's rebellion, starting about seven years after his electrifying theses, that the problems of Luther's theology really became apparent, causing self-doubt and confusion to creep back in, gradually sapping Luther's confidence, productivity, and influence. The peasant's revolt was driven by a new crop of preachers more extreme than Luther. If rebellion against the Catholic church for its worldly excesses and oppression was permissible, why not rebellion against the landowners and lords whose oppression was even worse, and whose theological support far weaker? And if all believers are priests, and all can read and interpret the bible, then why listen to the doctors of theology from Wittenberg? Luther was aghast at what he had unleashed, and turned completely around to support the nobility in this bitter and ugly fight, full of unspeakable tortures and massacres.

Luther continued to collaborate closely with the temporal authorities for the rest of his career, and the Lutheran church became a state-affiliated chuch, ridden with many of the same compromises and theological perplexities that characterize the Catholic church, and which Luther had originally thought he had escaped. The energy of the reformation would re-emerge in the Calvinists, Puritans, Methodists, Quakers, and countless other sects of which there are now many thousands. Purity is always energizing, but neither practical nor defensible in what is, in reality, a godless and complicated world. In the end, the attentive tolerance of humanism regularly turns out to be the better solution.

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The Peregrinations of Humanism

What happened to the project of Erasmus? What used to be solidly Catholic turned into atheism, aka "secular humanism".

Have there ever been non-secular humanists? Yes, virtually all were Catholic back when humanism was truly in flower, in the 1400's and 1500's. There have even been humanist popes! Humanism was a big theme of the Renaissance when Western intellectuals turned their attention to the languages and authors of antiquity with new vigor. The preceeding movement of scholasticism had built on an earlier encounter with Aristotle and Neoplatonism, which led to the founding of many universities and reached its peak in the output of Thomas Aquinas. But scholasticism was more concerned with conforming Aristotle to Catholicism and making a show of reasoned logic / dialog, (dialectic), rather than truly plumbing the depths of Aristotle's profound corpus and methods. They knew he was the intellectual giant of antiquity and far beyond their own achievements. Only with humanism was Europe ready to deal more deeply with the ancients.

This was a time when scholars started hunting in earnest for manuscripts hidden in cloister libraries, and encountered both manuscripts and scholars fleeing the now-defunct Byzantine empire. These scholars improved their Latin based on a wider familiarity with these sources, and started learning Greek and even Hebrew. Erasmus of Rotterdam was one of the greatest of these hunters and scholars, and turned his learning into (among many, many other projects) a newly corrected edition of the Bible, with Greek facing the Latin, the first time the Latin Bible had been (intentionally) revised in over a millennium. This story is told in the outstanding book, Fatal Discord- a parallel biography of Erasmus and Martin Luther.

Luther obviously runs away with the show, and the book, by fomenting a fundmental revolution in Western culture. Author Michael Massing suggests that Europe faced divergent paths, Erasmus representing the more liberal, reformist, and moderate course, which could have saved everyone a lot of trouble. Luther read Erasmus's new bible and other writings, was also inspired to learn Hebrew, and based much of his revolution on Erasmus's ideas. But Erasmus never renounced the Catholic church, and hated warfare above all other forms of waste and injustice. He was in this a humanist to the core. Luther was more of a fundamentalist, standing on Sola Scriptura- of his interpretation, naturally- come hell, high water, or martyrdom.

So what is humanism, after all? In a theological sense, it is attention to and learning from diverse aspects of the current and past world, in contrast to assuming that one's scripture contains all knowledge. If the world, humans, and human reason are all made by god, then this wider field of inquiry is not only permissible, but essential, to fully appreciate her work. On a pedagogical level, humanism became the program that Erasmus set up based on his thrilling scholarship- the learning of Latin foremost, from the great classical authors, and then Greek as well, along with rhetoric, grammar, and some logic- the Latin trivium, in short. While revolutionary in the fields of biblical studies, higher criticism, and philology generally, this program eventually fossilized into the "liberal" education in the classics that was standard through the 19th century, plaguing young minds with dead languages, long after Latin had lost its role as the universal intellectual language of Europe.

And on an ethical level, humanism is the sense that truth and scholarship must be beneficial, over their opposites, and that, in line with the rest of renaissance sensibility, human achievements and flourishing are the measure of social and theological systems. While the neoplatonists where quite consonant with the abstract, ethereal concerns of the Catholic church, other authors and ideas from antiquity were much less so, and the humanists, Erasmus as a prime example, turned into a somewhat skeptical if not critical community within the church, urging reform from the bloated, corrupt, militaristic, and intellectually lazy institution it had become.

This breakdown became evident in the confrontation with Luther. In response to his copious tracts, books, and theses detailing the problems of the church, its response was simply to assert that he was wrong, and that any opposition to the pope and tradition was inadmissible. The Catholic church failed to make a serious intellectual case, and it would take decades, if not centuries for it to do so. Book burnings were the first response, followed by the Index of banned books, which featured not only those of Luther, but those of Erasmus as well. This spelled the inevitable end of humanism in the Catholic church, since skepticism and intellectualism are incompatible with hierarchy and fealty.

Humanism had a much longer career in Protestant lands, with their greater freedom and diversity. Charles Darwin came within a hair's breadth of becoming an Anglican minister, and mostly viewed his naturalist interests in the positive light of god's work on earth. But they inevitably parted ways even here, as the mechanisms of nature gradually revealed themselves to be anything but divine. Now one hardly hears about religious humanism, as humanism has become synonymous with thorough theological skepticism and this-world ethics. What would Erasmus say? The EU has named its internal student exchange program after him, in honor of his pioneering role in promoting pan-European projects and intellectual community. He would have been appalled at the way the Protestant reformation bled Europe and led to ceaseless division. But I am sure he would still be in the intellectual, cosmopolitan vanguard, which remains humanist today.

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