‘Insanely cheap energy’: solar power continues to shock the world

Post by CryptoPunk » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 8:26 AM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #290

CryptoPunk wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think any serious free market advocate thinks the government doesn't have a place in restricting and producing negative and positive externalities, respectively. A free market generally means one where one's control over their person and private property is not restricted as long as that control is not being exercised to violate other's equal right to their person and private property, and to the commons . Bu…

Distilled down to its essence a free market grants you protection from involuntary transactions and access to voluntary transactions. Externalities are involuntary transactions, from a free market perspective they aren't any different from robbery or the dreaded... taxes. However, taxes are collected by the government that our population has voted in (in democratic nations). This is also why we prefer government mono…

Post by fho » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 12:08 PM UTC

jillesvangurp wrote: post #234

jacobolus wrote: post #70

> "[in 2000] Shi agreed and ended up settling in the small city of Wuxi" A bit of a tangent, but it’s always strange to me when people describe Chinese or Indian cities with millions of residents as "small". Wuxi had >1 million people in 2000, and today has like 3.5 million (6.5 million in the prefecture). This article makes it sound like a minor town in a remote province, but Jiangsu has about the same population as…

I used to have a Chinese colleague who when asked where he came from would answer that he was from "A small town, you wouldn't know it. Only 3M people". He was right; I had never heard of it. I guess in China, which has multiple mega cities, that is indeed a bit unremarkable. It's all relative.

Post by svachalek » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 3:31 PM UTC

jillesvangurp wrote: post #234

jacobolus wrote: post #70

> "[in 2000] Shi agreed and ended up settling in the small city of Wuxi" A bit of a tangent, but it’s always strange to me when people describe Chinese or Indian cities with millions of residents as "small". Wuxi had >1 million people in 2000, and today has like 3.5 million (6.5 million in the prefecture). This article makes it sound like a minor town in a remote province, but Jiangsu has about the same population as…

I used to have a Chinese colleague who when asked where he came from would answer that he was from "A small town, you wouldn't know it. Only 3M people". He was right; I had never heard of it. I guess in China, which has multiple mega cities, that is indeed a bit unremarkable. It's all relative.

Post by dzhiurgis » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 9:33 PM UTC

supermatt wrote: post #336

dzhiurgis wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

18-25 €/kw = €200 per year times 25 years = 5k€ of 8k€ install is 62.5% of your system cost... This actually buys you some off the shelve batteries (5kwh so far IIRC) which might alleviate your line capacity issue (not sure tho). Plus they reserve right to set it whatever they want it and you have no practical way to sell your investment...

Yeah, batteries won’t cut it really - need to store thousands of kWh for winter. I’ll have to look into the terms some more - afaik nothing is finalised yet, awaiting change in law. Thanks for input!

Post by hebrox » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 2:23 PM UTC

ahartmetz wrote: post #273

hebrox wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I look at this chart [0], seeing that we’re wasting about 2/3 of our energy, I expect the energy demand to drop significantly if we electrify everything and have more local energy sources. [0]: https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/

Note that much of the waste probably comes from thermal / fossil power generation, which is unavoidable even in theory (cf. Carnot efficiency). That is, unavoidable unless chemical energy is turned into electrical energy directly like in fuel cells (these have smaller but still surprisingly large losses), or the rejected thermal energy is used for heating.