161–170 of 256 posts
Any country using fossil fuels is stuck in the past; solar is the future, economies are driven by energy, and refusing to act on this is irresponsible.
So..., every industrial country in the world?... I wish I lived in an alternate reality where the hippies and greens didn't effectively scuttle nuclear power development.
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To stimulate local production. But local producers just raised their prices. And, when the new import tax was announced it immediately resulted in shortages because companies kept solar panels in stock to sell them after they raised their prices. Sounds like some good lobbying to me.
Shortages? Raised prices? I've been tracking prices for solar for the last couple of years, and I've only seen them go down. Pulled the trigger and purchased our own install because they went down yet again this year.
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There is some other interesting economics at play. Solar is more suitable for local, small scale production for a few reasons including relative costs and the way those costs are distributed (capital cost vs variable cost). That in itself is interesting for all sorts of reasons, many of them applying to countries like India with infrastructure difficulties. About 7 years ago I visited Cow Bay, north of Cairns, Austra…
Can't the same be said for local nuclear?
"Solar energy prices hit a new record low in January with the auction of 420 megawatts in Rajasthan at 4.34 rupees a kilowatt-hour. In comparison coal tariffs range between 3-5 rupees/kWh." So the headline here is, as is usually the case with articles in this space, misleading at best. It's slightly cheaper than the highest-end coal, but dramatically more expensive - nearly 1.5X more - than the lower end. Overall, it…
No. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11524691 Why does solar always need batteries? These are not "advances". India is adding 20k MW of solar and 10k MW of wind p.a. China is at 20+20. US at 20+20. Europe at 20+20. 30% of all new power capacity additions globally will be from renewables for the foreseeable future. Probably more. This is without "batteries". Without subsidies. The need for "baseload", "storage…
Maybe I'm misunderstanding your comment, but how is my desire for electricity at night time "not relevant"?
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No. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11524691 Why does solar always need batteries? These are not "advances". India is adding 20k MW of solar and 10k MW of wind p.a. China is at 20+20. US at 20+20. Europe at 20+20. 30% of all new power capacity additions globally will be from renewables for the foreseeable future. Probably more. This is without "batteries". Without subsidies. The need for "baseload", "storage…
> The need for "baseload", "storage", or "the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow" are red herrings. They are not relevant. Maybe I'm misunderstanding your comment, but how is my desire for electricity at night time "not relevant"?
"Solar energy prices hit a new record low in January with the auction of 420 megawatts in Rajasthan at 4.34 rupees a kilowatt-hour. In comparison coal tariffs range between 3-5 rupees/kWh." So the headline here is, as is usually the case with articles in this space, misleading at best. It's slightly cheaper than the highest-end coal, but dramatically more expensive - nearly 1.5X more - than the lower end. Overall, it…
No. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11524691 Why does solar always need batteries? These are not "advances". India is adding 20k MW of solar and 10k MW of wind p.a. China is at 20+20. US at 20+20. Europe at 20+20. 30% of all new power capacity additions globally will be from renewables for the foreseeable future. Probably more. This is without "batteries". Without subsidies. The need for "baseload", "storage…
They aren't red herrings they are poor excuses when used as a reason to not to expand renewable but they aren't without their merit.
We need to improve energy storage considerably to be able to push renewables to be actually a major part of the electric grid.
A a major part is a very important definition here because they need to be dependable, it's nice when you have a headlines that Denmark has reached 90% of it's energy production with wind for period X but we also need to put it into perspective that it was only a few hours in a single day on a specific year.
Solar and wind are being constantly improved it's true but we also need massive improvements in energy storage as well as to renew our interests in better and safer nuclear reactors to actually drive out Fossil Fuel completely and have an abundance of energy that could be used to improve everything around it.
Our energy goals shouldn't be aimed at something comparable to fossil fuel we should find ways to produce 10 times what we produce now in a cheap, reliable and environmentally sound fashion. If we have an abundance of electricity many other things can improve, we can stop sucking out out underground water and make desalination cheap for everyone, we can grow more crops faster reducing the amount of food, we can produce more at lower costs.
Energy is a much larger bottleneck than people assume, especially to developing countries, better energy production, better grids mean that everyone in Africa can get a water purified, an AC and a fridge, it also means that we can start treating the sewage which is a problem now in many parts of Africa where NGO's gave them a water pump and forgot that they also need plumbing and septic treatment facilities.
So while you might claim that solar and wind are here in a massive way, we haven't even touched the tip of the iceberg as far as energy production goes and where we should be. And sadly too many people in the environmental lobbies want to cut down on energy production rather than to increase it 10 fold.
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No. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11524691 Why does solar always need batteries? These are not "advances". India is adding 20k MW of solar and 10k MW of wind p.a. China is at 20+20. US at 20+20. Europe at 20+20. 30% of all new power capacity additions globally will be from renewables for the foreseeable future. Probably more. This is without "batteries". Without subsidies. The need for "baseload", "storage…
The need for reliable energy or energy when the sun is not shining is critical important--according to the people of India. For example, according to this article in ClimateWire (a trade pub) http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/stories/1060026477/ Dharnai, a community of about 3,200 people in eastern India's Bihar state, had been without electricity for three decades. So when activists with Greenpeace set up a solar-po…
India is quite capable of having unreliable power without solar. I agree that people should not be fobbed off with unreliable solutions, but that doesn't mean solar can't be a big part of the grid mix. It sounds like the activist microgrid was inadequate.
http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/standpoint-what-is-the-real...
"It is believed that, out of the 70 million tonne of diesel consumed in the country per year, about 20% or 14 million tonne is used in captive power generation."
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IMO it makes quite a bit of sense to exclude a few areas from enforced free trade. Otherwise we could as well argue that countries must allow a free market for acquiring military services. The thing is, it's silly to only do this for agriculture. There's a few areas that are vital for a nation to have some sense of independence, and allowing the protection of energy infrastructure is certainly one of them. Don't get…
You need to be a pretty big country with a wide variety of natural resources to be truly independent (for instance, your "independent" agriculture is only independent if you have domestically produced fuel, fertilizer and machinery, etc. etc.) In today's world I think it's pretty tough (how many countries have their own chip fabs and how many don't? Chips go into a whole lot of products indirectly, etc.) Of course ha…