Comparison of terrestrial PV and SPS

> Update: Oops -- just finished downloading it and it won't run in the
> Ghostscript PDF display system under GNU/Linux.

Well, I downloaded it again and it still didn't open properly (and both
files are different sizes!) but I remembered the by submitting my
interests and loosing privacy to Adobe they will convert it on their web
site to HTML, so it seems to be working there:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/access_simple_form.html
(although the figures get messed up).

A couple basic flaws in its analysis:

* while it is true that demand for electric power varies over time NOW
such as in the article looking at New York City power use, that is given
the current infrastrucutre and industrial use. If we generated hydrogen
or synthetic fules from electricity, then demand curves could be more
easily adjusted to supply, as production of hydrogen or liquid fuels (or
other energy intenseive processes like aluminum production) could
smoothly match changes in demand so all the power was used more
effectively. IMHO that change in use assumption undermines a major
premise of the paper for makign SPS more cost effective.

While the grid is not discussed, the paper does refer to a case for high
price power delivery where "... distribution system is doubled. This
trade-off is only reasonable if the ground infrastructure cost is not
the major fraction of the power cost." So, I think this paper has
already made a fundamentally bad assumption at least as far as
residnetial power judging from my electric bill (almost half the cost
beign for "delivery").

Also, the paper for example "Figure 6 compares the power required for
New York with the power produced by a fixed solar plant designed to
supply power during this daytime peak." So in an effort to compaer
apples to organes, it turns the potentially distributed non-delivery
cost ground based solar apple to a centralized grid-dependent
high-delivery cost orange.

Anyway, I may not be doing the paper justice as I can't properly see the
tables and am just skimming it for first impressions at this point. But
at first glance it seems to me it is not seriously addressing grid
issues, security, and distribution costs. Becuase I had trouble readign
the tables -- does it even produce a firm cost for delivered electricity?

--Paul Fernhout