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Solar’s Future is Insanely Cheap

rameznaam.com

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Re: Solar’s Future is Insanely Cheap

#31

Post by yoavm »

maheart wrote: post #12

I recently watched the documentary "Planet of the Humans". For context, the writer of the documentary is an environmentalist. One of the stated points was that solar and wind cannot be relied upon 24/7 -- to account for the lack of reliability, you need to have a backup power generator (e.g. coal power plant) running. The thing about coal plants (does it apply to natural gas plants too?) is that if you "idle" them, t…

a natural gas plant doesn't really suffer from this "idle" problem you're describing with coal power plants. it's also much cleaner.

Re: Solar’s Future is Insanely Cheap

#33

Post by avmich »

lallysingh wrote: post #16
Barrin92 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure about the resource costs of solar in particular but the question is a very salient one. Vaclav Smil has a great piece on this. "What I see when I see a wind turbine" "the quest for renewable electricity generation. And yet, although they exploit the wind, which is as free and as green as energy can be, the machines themselves are pure embodiments of fossil fuels. • Large trucks bring steel and other raw…

Sounds like a bullshit purity test.

Yeah :) . They can't see those machines using electricity instead of diesels, they can't see steel making without atmospheric pollution, and same goes for cement.

I guess some people have hard times adjusting to some novelties. Their arguments don't stand, and they don't see that.

Re: Solar’s Future is Insanely Cheap

#34

Post by avmich »

Barrin92 wrote: post #30
arthurcolle wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems a little silly - of course to develop future technologies we need to use existing technologies. Imagine debating using an abacus to develop a computer - "ah but we must remain pure to the hopes, dreams and philosophies of what the computer aspires to be." Yeah, ok. I'll be over here funding wind turbine companies, you can debate the merits of the methodology and strategies of funding green tech with petrol…

I don't understand your comparison at all. Given that the primary problem that a wind turbine seeks to solve is environmental, the environmental costs in making the turbine have to be considered. There's no relationship to computers here, it's not a question of philosophical purity, but of correct evaluation of the costs and benefits of a technology.

> the environmental costs in making the turbine have to be considered.

Of course it is considered, and few short decades ago that was a valid counterargument. Not anymore - and not later, given the pace of development in efficiencies and breadth of applications.

Re: Solar’s Future is Insanely Cheap

#35

Post by cycomanic »

Barrin92 wrote: post #9
undershirt wrote: post #4

Is solar just a stopgap tech? Like, do they still require fossil fuel energy to create, not to mention maintain and rebuild? And I know we’re now strip mining the ocean for battery metals. I don’t yet sense the sustainability in this amid all this economic hand-waving of “it’s getting cheaper”. (forgive my tone, i have a hard time of making sense of the big picture of renewables, hoping to eventually see how it actua…

I'm not sure about the resource costs of solar in particular but the question is a very salient one. Vaclav Smil has a great piece on this. "What I see when I see a wind turbine" "the quest for renewable electricity generation. And yet, although they exploit the wind, which is as free and as green as energy can be, the machines themselves are pure embodiments of fossil fuels. • Large trucks bring steel and other raw…

Well we should ask this for every energy technology and fortunately people have done this. The term for this is energy return on investment (EROI) where solar has between 8.7 and 34 and wind between 10 and 20 (although other literature says 20 to 50). A value 1 means you get as much energy as you invested. So for solar that means you get your energy used for production back in 1 to 4 years.

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment

Re: Solar’s Future is Insanely Cheap

#36

Post by alextingle »

Barrin92 wrote: post #27
lallysingh wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a bullshit purity test.

It's not a bullshit purity test at all. It highlights the extremely neglected costs in raw material and non-electrifiable infrastructure that is required to produce materials that are nominally 'green'. In some cases it's questionable if some green technologies actually are a net positive at all. There is a strong 'abundance' bias implicit in articles by people like Ramez Naam, who push so strongly for green energy p…

> It highlights the extremely neglected costs in raw material and non-electrifiable infrastructure that is required to produce materials that are nominally 'green'.

Ignored by whom? You?

In fact, embedded energy is a huge consideration in the evaluation of green technologies.

Re: Solar’s Future is Insanely Cheap

#37

Post by 205guy »

undershirt wrote: post #4

Is solar just a stopgap tech? Like, do they still require fossil fuel energy to create, not to mention maintain and rebuild? And I know we’re now strip mining the ocean for battery metals. I don’t yet sense the sustainability in this amid all this economic hand-waving of “it’s getting cheaper”. (forgive my tone, i have a hard time of making sense of the big picture of renewables, hoping to eventually see how it actua…

In the big picture, you could say that fossil fuels are a stopgap technology (with complex manufacturing and lots of parts needing maintenance) until engineers invent(ed) better/cheaper batteries. But the way I prefer to see it is that solar is helping the transition to 100% renewable energy.

Another way to see it is that we already have an electric grid, so we are just finding ways to provide electric power cheaper--then the "efficient market" will figure things out. Also, electricity is used directly in manufacturing, for example smelting aluminum, and that is often done with renewable electricity (hydro in the US Pacific Northwest, geothermal in Iceland). Trains in many parts of the world run on electric power, and of course you can charge EVs with solar power or other renewable energy. And I'm sure some ICE cars are manufactured with electric-powered tools that run on solar energy during the day.

PS: if you know your tone is off, why not ask in a different tone?

Re: Solar’s Future is Insanely Cheap

#38

Post by avmich »

clairity wrote: post #25
undershirt wrote: post #4

Is solar just a stopgap tech? Like, do they still require fossil fuel energy to create, not to mention maintain and rebuild? And I know we’re now strip mining the ocean for battery metals. I don’t yet sense the sustainability in this amid all this economic hand-waving of “it’s getting cheaper”. (forgive my tone, i have a hard time of making sense of the big picture of renewables, hoping to eventually see how it actua…

with enough infrastructure, particularly batteries and interconnected smart grids, you could average out solar power generation across the globe and fuel the whole world on solar many times over. 10% of our energy needs come from 440 nuclear power plants worldwide. for comparison, the sun is a nuclear plant 1.3 million times the size of the earth. all life on earth basically runs on solar energy (or a derivative of i…

Yes. Nuclear energy proponents sometime seem to forget that solar energy is effectively thermonuclear energy from a big free source reactor - the question isn't in having that reactor, or running it, the question is just in catching energy it radiates. Solar guys become increasingly good at that - together with wind guys, who employ that energy after another free conversion into moving air.

Re: Solar’s Future is Insanely Cheap

#39

Post by CapitalistCartr »

sephamorr wrote: post #28

Power markets are more complicated than most people realize. One thing to note is that solar power can be cheaper than gas, but still not be economic. The fact of the matter is that an intermittent kWh is not as valuable as an on-demand reliable kWh to a utility who's number 1 priority is reliability. Even as solar is acquired at lower and lower prices, if evening power is generated by expensive and inefficient gas t…

Solar all day, NG all night would be a major improvement over our current system. Especially as batteries get better.

Re: Solar’s Future is Insanely Cheap

#40

Post by _-david-_ »

Retric wrote: post #6

Another aspect of this is the cost of the physical solar cells have dropped low enough that other costs have become significant. This is pushing companies to increase efficiency which opens the door for other applications. A hypothetical cheap ~30% efficient solar panel could add something like 40 miles of range per day to a car in ideal conditions. That starts to look actually useful vs a simple gimmick.

>A hypothetical cheap ~30% efficient solar panel could add something like 40 miles of range per day to a car in ideal conditions.

Does this take into consideration the increased weight of the solar panel and any additional equipment?

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