So this dude is just a fucking sellout.
Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life
161–170 of 295 posts
Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
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%…
This is some bad reasoning. Solar efficiency is very different from say engine efficiency. A very efficient combustion engine is 35% efficient meaning it wastes 65% of the energy in the input fuel. Solar panels don’t waste sunlight and have no input costs. Rooftop solar turns 20% of something that would have been 100% wasted into high grade energy. A very efficient coal power plant is 45% efficient before transmissio…
> Solar panels don’t waste sunlight and have no input costs.
Not exactly, the point is that building and installing solar panels consumes resources and physical space. A solar plant with 100% efficient panels is 1/10th the size of today's solar plant, and as I mentioned, to generate comparable amounts of power to conventional sources requires huge amounts of landmass. Plus input materials. And it has to be replaced every 20 years.
> Rooftop solar turns 20% of something that would have been 100% wasted into high grade energy.
Not 20%, right, closer to 15%. Rooftop solar also kills about 10X as many people per generated TWh (0.44-0.83 people per TWh) as compared to nuclear power (0.04 people per TWh) - due to installation. [1]
I'm not advocating for coal of course, but it's wrong to say solar wastes nothing. There's input materials, plastics, silicon - all sorts of toxic chemicals - and generates tons and tons of e-waste that we don't really have a plan for right now. [2]
> Your numbers on solar panel degradation are also incorrect based on my experience in the industry. They do degrade but not at that at 2% per year for ten years.
As I mentioned, the degradation rate is highest in the first year, I said 2.5%, but then it drops off to about 0.5% in subsequent years. The data comes from an NREL analytical review. [3]
NOTE: I edited the number to more generously assume the 0.5%-1% degradation was not in percent efficiency but rather in percent capacity - which is 1/5th as much, to your point.
[1] https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-ener...
[2] https://www.wired.com/story/solar-panels-are-starting-to-die...
Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life
#163Clever writing can let you argue for any viewpoint. That doesn’t make it true. >I used to think solar and wind power were the best ways to reduce CO2 emissions. But the biggest reduction in CO2 emissionsduring the past 15 years (over 60%) has come from switching from coal to natural gas. Upgrading coal to gas is a great intermediate step. However, it’s not a long term solution because natural gas reserves are limited…
His credentials seem phenomenal:
I went to work in construction to build energy-efficient homes, and I started a company that built composting systems for cities and businesses. I became executive director of an organization that championed green building policies and became CEO of a consulting firm that commercialized clean energy technologies and ran energy-efficiency programs. I then founded a software startup to help promote green home upgrades, and I led business development for a company making wireless power technology.
Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Small correction: you mean altitude, not azimuth. Altitude is how far you need to tilt your head vertically to look at an object. Azimuth is the compass direction.
Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life
#165Clever writing can let you argue for any viewpoint. That doesn’t make it true. >I used to think solar and wind power were the best ways to reduce CO2 emissions. But the biggest reduction in CO2 emissionsduring the past 15 years (over 60%) has come from switching from coal to natural gas. Upgrading coal to gas is a great intermediate step. However, it’s not a long term solution because natural gas reserves are limited…
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.
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Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life
#166I would enjoy an HN that lacked the daily fission boosterism.
Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life
#167Clever writing can let you argue for any viewpoint. That doesn’t make it true. >I used to think solar and wind power were the best ways to reduce CO2 emissions. But the biggest reduction in CO2 emissionsduring the past 15 years (over 60%) has come from switching from coal to natural gas. Upgrading coal to gas is a great intermediate step. However, it’s not a long term solution because natural gas reserves are limited…
> Clever writing can let you argue for any viewpoint. That doesn’t make it true. If you lead with this, I expect a refutation of the points in the article. But in each of the statements you take issue with, I don't see any refutation, just additional data. > However, it’s not a long term solution because natural gas reserves are limited. Does the article claim that it is a long term solution? > So green energy has su…
I'm not sure we're the pure antinuclear stand would even come from
He clearly can't build a nuclear power plant so what he can do is build solar and wind.
And sure nuclear has plenty of problems like amount of uran, cooling water in the summer etc.
Independent of this, we have not even seen yet how a real solar society would look like because while we installed plenty, we have not really started to install what would be possible.
It should be a total no brainer for everyone to want to leverage their roof real estate by investing in solar.
Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life
#168Clever writing can let you argue for any viewpoint. That doesn’t make it true. >I used to think solar and wind power were the best ways to reduce CO2 emissions. But the biggest reduction in CO2 emissionsduring the past 15 years (over 60%) has come from switching from coal to natural gas. Upgrading coal to gas is a great intermediate step. However, it’s not a long term solution because natural gas reserves are limited…
> Nuclear is the safest way to generate electricity Until there is an accident, then it's literally the worst.
It depends on the reactor type. High pressure and plutonium fuel? Sure! Low pressure and natural uranium is much safer. Thorium and molten salt reactors may be better still.
Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life
#169Reading past what the author is saying...My takeaway is that the problem is that power generation is a really really really big problem. Really really big problems take lots of time and money to solve. Expecting it to not take lots of time and money is wishful thinking and the time spent trying to solve them is very much not a waste.
Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
That's not going to happen, though. What is going to happen is we'll invest trillions of dollars into natgas infrastructure and then go all whoopsie-daisies-we-can't-afford-to-just-let-it-sit-idle, and we'll be permanently locked into it.
Temporary hacks have an odd way of becoming permanent features, especially when mind-blowing amounts of money are on the line.