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

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

#241

Post by macspoofing »

Splendor wrote: post #61
macspoofing wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to say. Hard to say who is even knowingly lying. It started as a hopeful message, that turned into a feedback loop where one group repeats the talking point of another, that is picked up and repeated by another, etc. At this point, it's part of 'common knowledge' that we are transitioning to solar/wind and big oil/big gas and corrupt politicians are preventing that transition.

So the government is both promoting the lie and preventing the transition?

The government isn't preventing any transition. There is no transition. Wind/Solar cannot replace fossil fuels. But it is a talking point of every politician that wants to be seen as environmentally conscious to talk about a potential transition. I think some of those politician know that can't happen and they are lying about it. I think some of those politicians don't know that it can't happen and will never work.

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

#242

Post by macspoofing »

goodpoint wrote: post #80
DangitBobby wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What motivation do you think they have to lie?

Oil, gas and nuclear companies are among the most wealthy and powerful is the world and have been actively lobbying for decades.

Natural gas companies are some of the biggest backers of wind and solar projects. Care to guess why?

Nuclear as a lobby is dead. Do they have any institutional power? America can't even keep existing nuclear power plants open, much less build new ones.

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

#243

Post by mdavis6890 »

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…

I think you're missing the fact that solar and wind, being quite mature and otherwise unencumbered, have been pretty well optimized to what physics and chemistry will allow. Further gains will be slow and incremental.

Nuclear has been around quite a while as well, but is heavily encumbered by public sentiment, sub-optimal regulations, and knowledge atrophy. There is much more room for optimization before running into physical laws.

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

#244

Post by pfdietz »

macspoofing wrote: post #240
pfdietz wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wind/solar can power a modern economy, and probably more cheaply than nuclear can.

There is no country on Earth that is powered by wind/solar or replaced fossil fuels with wind/solar.

Ah yes. If something hasn't happened yet, it's impossible. This is an excellent future-oriented mindset you have there.

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

#245

Post by arcticbull »

dpierce9 wrote: post #218
arcticbull wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never said anything about coal, and I updated the degradation numbers per your suggestion, but the degradation numbers themselves come from NREL. I think you're confusing the derating due to temperature with degradation. They are additive.

Panel temps go up and down depending on time, date, location, and weather. On cool, sunny spring days you can see panels produce more than they are rated. You can’t simply apply a fixed worst-case derate for all time to all panels regardless of installation details. Further, the derates are not additive, they are multiplicative. (A a 20% panel which has degraded in lab efficiency by 10% operating at 90% thermal effic…

A device that's 15% efficient is inherently more wasteful than a device that's 100% efficient, right? Therefore we're wasting something. That thing isn't input fuel, it's the materials used to build the device, and manage its lifecycle. That doesn't mean it's free - it just means we're considering different inputs.

Total efficiency here is the sum of all inputs over outputs. For solar panels that's land use, that's glass, silicon, plastic, PCBs, etc - in addition to the sun.

Otherwise, in your model, a panel that's 100% efficient is inherently the same as one 15% efficient.

In your model, a battery is infinitely efficient - after all it has no inputs, only outputs! Once you get to that point your model needs to be adjusted.

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

#246

Post by ikt »

macspoofing wrote: post #221
thesimon wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if its so cheap, why is Germany building natural gas pipelines to ship Russian gas for decades to come? Because Gerhard Schröder, the former chancellor who approved NS1 in his last days, liked Russia, which earned him nice board seats on Russian energy companies. And because Angela Merkel had her constituency in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the landfall site of the pipelines. And LNG was always associated with fracking…

>Because Gerhard Schröder, the former chancellor who approved NS1 in his last days, liked Russia, which earned him nice board seats on Russian ene Yeah - it's always corrupt politicians and big oil, big gas, big whatever. Alternatively, maybe it means that wind/solar cannot meet German energy needs. And by the way, this isn't just Germany. It's every country that doesn't have access to hydro or nuclear.

> And by the way, this isn't just Germany. It's every country that doesn't have access to hydro or nuclear.

I don't believe Australia plans on going to Nuclear any time soon.

For those of you interested you can see a complete breakdown of our power generation here: https://opennem.org.au/energy/sa1/?range=1d&interval=30m

Of interest is SA which has a wind/solar/gas mix, Tasmania which is Hydro/Wind, and Vic/NSW/Qld who are all still heavily using fossil fuels.

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

#247

Post by dogman144 »

fundad wrote: post #175
dogman144 wrote: post #122

I live in one of the beautiful western states where due to the wide open spaces, wind, and carbon reliance due to lack of many of their economic options, wind farms are taking off. Up front, I get it. Wind and solar are likely a large part of how we avoid burning down the world. Without it, Climate change hits this area just as hard. That said, wind farms built to preserve the environment aren’t exactly preserving na…

Sounds like I get to drive around the open land in your state for hours and 3-40 minutes of driving is line of sight to a power installation. The wind farms will go up in NY, Boston etc but it will take a while because of the same NIMBYs. They do wield more NIMBY power because they can raise more money. Income inequality is the system working as designed, we won't nationalize any part of our power industry because th…

Not sure on what you mean by the first part? But if you’re saying they’re pretty out of way except for 30-40 mins of a long drive, that’s not really the case unfortunately although I could see how that’s your impression. Installs or planned installs are common across the state so getting hard to avoid.

Important caveat perhaps is I’ve lived in the coastal centers for long stretches. Def aware of the financial and power imbalance, but they’re making a mistake by flexing it or dismissing it this way. As the all of these natural resource and climate concerns heat up, the state out here have some important leverage - breadbasket, minerals, headwaters of the 2-3 major US rivers, and so on. I’m interested to see how it all plays out, but I disagree that the schedule of change will be dictated by he NIMBYs.

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

#248

Post by marssaxman »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #154
Analemma_ wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Rooftop solar in Seattle pays for itself in 7-9 years Can you show me the arithmetic for that? I understand rooftop solar to cost $20,000 - $25,000. Is your non-solar electric bill over 7-9 years really more expensive than that? Seems impossible.

I'm afraid I don't have the exact numbers anymore, but I determined that the 2700W solar panel array installed on my Seattle house for about $14k in 2013 (including a new breaker panel) had paid for itself before the end of 2019. The system worked really well.

People often think that solar won't work well in Seattle because it's cloudy so often, but light still comes in through the overcast, and solar panels don't care which angle the photons hit them from. Meanwhile, lower ambient temperatures mean the panels work more efficiently.

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

#249

Post by seanmcdirmid »

marssaxman wrote: post #248
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rooftop solar in Seattle pays for itself in 7-9 years Can you show me the arithmetic for that? I understand rooftop solar to cost $20,000 - $25,000. Is your non-solar electric bill over 7-9 years really more expensive than that? Seems impossible.

I'm afraid I don't have the exact numbers anymore, but I determined that the 2700W solar panel array installed on my Seattle house for about $14k in 2013 (including a new breaker panel) had paid for itself before the end of 2019. The system worked really well. People often think that solar won't work well in Seattle because it's cloudy so often, but light still comes in through the overcast, and solar panels don't ca…

Solar won’t work on new townhomes in Seattle with rooftop decks (since we don’t have to worry about snow so much?). There is simply no place to put them unless you give up your deck.

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

#250

Post by marssaxman »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #249
marssaxman wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm afraid I don't have the exact numbers anymore, but I determined that the 2700W solar panel array installed on my Seattle house for about $14k in 2013 (including a new breaker panel) had paid for itself before the end of 2019. The system worked really well. People often think that solar won't work well in Seattle because it's cloudy so often, but light still comes in through the overcast, and solar panels don't ca…

Solar won’t work on new townhomes in Seattle with rooftop decks (since we don’t have to worry about snow so much?). There is simply no place to put them unless you give up your deck.

Alas, indeed. I'd have installed solar panels on the townhouse I bought in 2020 if there were anywhere to put them, but there would only be room for 800 watts, at most - not really worth it.
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