Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life • Hacker News Board

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#131

Post by rcMgD2BwE72F » Wed, Jun 22, 2022, 4:08 PM UTC

treeman79 wrote: post #110

rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>People have been claiming peak oil since the 1930's. Yawn. Are you claiming fossil fuels aren't limited? Also, oil peak is widely believed to have been reached already https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-world-has-already-passe... If the cost of extraction rises due to oil and gas being more and more difficult to access (because it's limited, obviously), you could claim demand has peaked but it would still be due t…

There have been articles for many decades now that we are reaching the peak of what can be pulled out of the ground. That we will simply run out of oil. This is a lie. There is plenty of supply. This is the argument op is making. Whether to burn it or not is a different question.

It's also interesting to know that Russia could not maintain its production of oil at last year's market price, due to the lack of investment (it had simply become unprofitable). https://ogst.ifpenergiesnouvelles.fr/articles/ogst/full_html...

The war may force Russia to sell their oil to non-Western countries but the crisis helped support oil price and made global investments in O&G profitable for them again (and for every other producers too). Just like with the war in Iraq - which explains why Putin did not oppose the US invasion for long after they realized it would bring enormous profits to Russia.

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#132

Post by thehappypm » Wed, Jun 22, 2022, 4:08 PM UTC

vkou wrote: post #116

thehappypm wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does storage matter short term? If my utility runs a gas generator, wind and solar allow it to run at some fraction of its capacity most of the time. Sure, overnight when there’s little wind, the gas might go full throttle. But that’s still a huge reduction in emissions if most of the time the grid is fully wind/solar.

The problem is that we don't need to halve our emissions, as would happen if we fully switched from coal to natgas (Presumably sourced from a magical, peaceful land of unicorns, as opposed to, say, the Russian Federation, or some middle eastern despot.) We need to zero our emissions, if we want to avoid climate catastrophe. And natgas isn't going to do that for us.

I think you’re letting perfect be the enemy of good. How do we get to zero? First cut in half. Then cut the second half. Waiting for a perfect solution today when there’s incremental progress to be made is foolish

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#133

Post by arcticbull » Wed, Jun 22, 2022, 4:08 PM UTC

ZetaZero wrote: post #124

ShockTohp wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But solar and wind are no where near sustainable, or efficient. They are extremely fragile and have serious detrimental effects on their local environment. Nuclear is the best option and gas is a massive improvement. The whole point of this article is that we are chasing a utopian ideal instead of actually fixing the problems. Once again, perfect is being the enemy of improvement.

How are solar and wind not sustainable or efficient? We've just recently hit the 20% mark here in the US. I'm all for a smart blend of nuclear/wind/solar/etc to achieve clean energy https://electrek.co/2022/05/10/us-hits-a-record-20-of-electr...

They're not efficient at turning sunlight into power - somewhere around 20% depending on the technology, which continues to improve albeit slowly. This efficiency goes down about 2.5% in the first year and another [edit](0.5%-1%) in each subsequent year [1]. These numbers are all at 25C, which is significantly lower than a black solar panel is going to be out in the sun - which reduces its efficiency a further 10-25%. [2]

So typical 20% efficiency solar panel at 45C in year 2 is already starting at 17.5% efficiency, and by year 10 is down to just [edit](15%) efficiency.

And then while lower temperatures do improve efficiency, they tend to happen in higher latitudes which get less sunlight to begin with.

60% of Ontario's power (about half of Canada by population) comes from just 3 nuclear plants (Bruce, Darlington and Pickering). Replacing them with solar panels would cover an area the size of the entire greater Toronto area in silicon and plastic, give or take. [3] And it would need to be replaced every 20 years.

Solar and wind play a role, but nuclear does too.

Edit: Corrected degradation amount per dpierce9

[1] https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Solar_cell_efficienc...

[2] https://www.cleanenergyreviews.info/blog/most-efficient-sola...

[3] https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/pr...

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#134

Post by miguelazo » Wed, Jun 22, 2022, 4:08 PM UTC

Amazing that this guy could write this and not realize he was just thinking on a time horizon that is way too short. Such an American mindset (and I say that as an American). Of course there are tradeoffs with any energy source. The point is that some are FAR worse than others. Sad this guy managed to get so disillusioned because he lost sight of the big picture and long term horizon.

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#135

Post by xbar » Wed, Jun 22, 2022, 4:09 PM UTC

tsjackson wrote: post #13

The cost per kWh of solar and wind is a third of natural gas and nuclear. It's not even close. Filling the gaps left by intermittent production with storage is rapidly decreasing in costs, and will soon be low enough that Solar/Wind/Storage will outcompete Natural Gas or nuclear 95% of the time. There is probably a small role for other sources in filling capacity gaps during uncommon weather events (i.e. natural gas…

There are fairly simple economics of implementation that have prevented a complete transition over the past 20 years. It's not even close.

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#136

Post by totalview » Wed, Jun 22, 2022, 4:09 PM UTC

TheBlight wrote: post #127

ZetaZero wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are solar and wind not sustainable or efficient? We've just recently hit the 20% mark here in the US. I'm all for a smart blend of nuclear/wind/solar/etc to achieve clean energy https://electrek.co/2022/05/10/us-hits-a-record-20-of-electr...

How does solar work in the winter in northern latitudes?

Alaskan here; it doesn’t work so hot in the winter months. Even if they are kept clear by maintenance workers (not that hard or expensive to hire someone to clear snow from a panel) the sun’s azimuth is so low in the winter that there is hardly any energy produced.

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#137

Post by edent » Wed, Jun 22, 2022, 4:10 PM UTC

TheBlight wrote: post #127

ZetaZero wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are solar and wind not sustainable or efficient? We've just recently hit the 20% mark here in the US. I'm all for a smart blend of nuclear/wind/solar/etc to achieve clean energy https://electrek.co/2022/05/10/us-hits-a-record-20-of-electr...

How does solar work in the winter in northern latitudes?

Pretty good. You can download several years of data from my domestic panels at https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/07/1800-days-of-minute-by-minu...

Sure, some days they'll be covered by snow. But in industrial systems that can easily be melted / brushed off. Obviously they don't generate as much in winter as in summer. But cool bright winter days are surprisingly plentiful.

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#138

Post by Retric » Wed, Jun 22, 2022, 4:11 PM UTC

breytex wrote: post #22

Retric wrote: post #9

Reading that is a sad reminder of why people make such poor decisions. He’s still arguing about things in the abstract without a basis in the underlying mechanics of these systems. And the sad thing is he’s effective at convincing people.

Can you elaborate on where the author is wrong?

“Trillionsof dollars were spent on wind and solar projects over the last 20 years, yet the world’s dependence on fossil fuels declined only 3 percentage points, from 87% to 84%.”

Core issue is he’s at best justifying his points with sloppy thinking, we didn’t just transition to solar for fun we got actual energy from those investments. The world also spent around 100 trillion on just oil over 20 years excluding natural gas and coal yet tomorrow we are going to still need to spend more. So, on that basis it looks like a great investment and huge progress.

Except look at where exactly that 87% number is from, it includes fuel oil to heat homes while excluding passive solar gain. So it’s a number that does represent something just not “dependence on fossil fuels.” After all the primary use of energy by humanity is either plants converting sunlight to chemical energy or even more holistically the energy needed to keep the earth from freezing. In the end he picked those numbers because saying saying humanity’s dependence on fossil fuels dropped from something like 0.00087% to 0.00084% just doesn’t have the same impact.

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#139

Post by Analemma_ » Wed, Jun 22, 2022, 4:12 PM UTC

TheBlight wrote: post #127

ZetaZero wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are solar and wind not sustainable or efficient? We've just recently hit the 20% mark here in the US. I'm all for a smart blend of nuclear/wind/solar/etc to achieve clean energy https://electrek.co/2022/05/10/us-hits-a-record-20-of-electr...

How does solar work in the winter in northern latitudes?

Very well. Rooftop solar in Seattle pays for itself in 7-9 years, and we have the least sunlight and cheapest grid power of almost any place in the continental US.

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#140

Post by Retric » Wed, Jun 22, 2022, 4:12 PM UTC

fundad wrote: post #56

Retric wrote: post #9

Reading that is a sad reminder of why people make such poor decisions. He’s still arguing about things in the abstract without a basis in the underlying mechanics of these systems. And the sad thing is he’s effective at convincing people.

Sounds like anybody who goes to work for the fossil fuel industry. "Trillions spent on solar and wind" but apparently what we spent annually on Fossil Fuels is not significant enough to mention and Nuclear power can't cost too much because government money pays to build the plants.

Exactly, he’s not comparing costs vs gain just tossing around various numbers.