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

#271

Post by macspoofing » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 4:26 PM UTC

black_puppydog wrote: post #268

macspoofing wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Frankly, and I'm sorry to sound rude about this, you need to stop using a country as an argument for which you clearly have no idea what the political & societal conditions are. I don't take this as rudeness but rather a result of a different worldview. The disconnect you and I have is that you believe that wind/solar can replace fossil fuels. In a universe where that fact is true, the fact that wind/solar hasn't be…

No, my point is that regardless of whether you or me are right, your use of Germany as an example is not holding up because you clearly don't bring the background knowledge to argue your point using this example. I'm not saying you're even wrong, just that this particular argument you're making is not informed enough to hold up.

>I'm not saying you're even wrong, just that this particular argument you're making is not informed enough to hold up.

Let's torture this a little longer.

Regardless of the minutia, and internal politics, the big picture reality is that Germany still invested in wind/solar to a greater extent then any advanced economy.

I understand you're saying that mistakes were made and more could have been done, and this political party didn't do a good job, etc., but that's par for course. That's how any complex government program is run in a democratic nation. In fact, maybe you even have to price that in. That is, if a well-managed, rich nation cannot shepherd through this transition, that also says something about the viability of wind/solar.

With respect to why Germany is still building natural gas pipelines. In my mind this was an actual rational decision because I truly believe that when it comes to high-level people in the know, there is an understanding that wind/solar is never going to work. You would not be spending billions of dollars when an alternative is both cheaper (as proponents of wind/solar claim), geopolitically less reliant on an authoritarian state, and also gives you political brownie points (because everyone loves wind/solar).

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

#272

Post by fluoridation » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 4:31 PM UTC

dpierce9 wrote: post #266

fluoridation wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what "efficiency" means, though. The efficiency of a power source is the ratio between the actually generated work and the work that could theoretically be generated. I don't know if the metric you're referencing has a name but let's call it "greenness". arcticbull's argument was that solar panels are inefficient at converting light into electricity, not that they're ungreen. dpierce9 tried to reframe the…

My argument has nothing to do with ‘greenness’. What I am talking about already has a name: marginal productivity or marginal efficiency. My point is if you have to dig and burn 2.5 rocks to get 1 rocks worth of energy you are really concerned with that ratio for a whole host of reasons and affects everything you do (it is one reason why coal plants are huge for instance). Now say you can get a rocks worth of energy…

That's fine, and that's a metric that's worth considering, but you're not talking about the same kind of efficiency arcticbull was talking about. When someone says that "a solar panel is 20% efficient" what they mean is that, of the energy contained in the light that hits it, 20% of it is converted into electricity and the rest is converted into waste heat stored in the panel. Yes, if the panel hadn't been there 100% of that energy would have gone unused, but that's a different discussion. It doesn't make what arcticbull said false. Optimistically a new solar panel is 20% efficient, and that efficiency becomes worse with age.

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

#273

Post by macspoofing » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 4:39 PM UTC

rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: post #267

macspoofing wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But we're in 2022 now, and we can easily and cheaply ramp up renewables greatly before we have a storage issue. Really? 'Easily' and 'cheaply'? So even with massive cultural pressure to move to renewables, somehow we don't want to move to a cheaper energy source? You sure about that? What if ... we can't actually replace fossil fuels with wind/solar.

You write about "massive cultural pressure to move to renewables" but what about all the money to be lost by the fossil fuel industry? Billions of € coming every year in deep pockets weight definitely more than the "pressure" of a Greta, a few Extinction Rebellion members and some ecologists/socialists. Let's look at the UK, between 2000 to 2021 Source: https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-uk-nuclear-output-falls...…

>Looks like we managed to replace 40% of fossil fuels in two decades, without much inflation (almost in line with countries who did not deploy renewables):

Just to get our terms in-line, renewables typically include hydro-electric. Hydro-electric is a great power-source if you have the geography for it. My province of Ontario, between Nuclear and Hydro, pretty much only derives 5% of power from fossil fuels. The problem is, there aren't any more places to dam to generate hydro. So that's done.

And yeah, there is a ceiling on how much wind/solar you can handle as a percentage of your power-mix because you need to rely on base-load to bridge the intermittency of wind and solar. I don't know what that percentage is ... maybe it's 40%, maybe it's 60% - but it's going to be somewhere in that range.

>We'll see how UK continues its transition, but I see renewables becoming cheaper while nuclear keeps rising.

It doesn't matter if they are free! You're not replacing fossil fuels with wind and solar because you still need to run your economy when the sun isn't shinning or the wind isn't blowing. You'll need base-load from somewhere else. Nuclear is actually terrible for that because it can't spin up and spin-down on-demand. Hydro and Natural gas are perfect for that, but like I said, if you don't have the geography for hydro, you're stuck with natural gas.

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

#274

Post by macspoofing » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 4:46 PM UTC

ikt wrote: post #246

macspoofing wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 w…

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

Yeah, so they'll use natural gas and coal as baseload.

>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

Expand the range to more than a day, and yeah, Gas+Imports(Coal?) is ~40%, so you're stuck on fossil fuels forever.

South Australia is also so small that it's almost pointless to use as a data point.

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

#275

Post by macspoofing » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 4:54 PM UTC

pfdietz wrote: post #244

macspoofing wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Obviously that's not true, but it is a data point you have to explain. For all the lip-service paid to wind and solar, nobody is actually acting like wind/solar are the future.

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

#276

Post by dpierce9 » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 5:14 PM UTC

fluoridation wrote: post #272

dpierce9 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My argument has nothing to do with ‘greenness’. What I am talking about already has a name: marginal productivity or marginal efficiency. My point is if you have to dig and burn 2.5 rocks to get 1 rocks worth of energy you are really concerned with that ratio for a whole host of reasons and affects everything you do (it is one reason why coal plants are huge for instance). Now say you can get a rocks worth of energy…

That's fine, and that's a metric that's worth considering, but you're not talking about the same kind of efficiency arcticbull was talking about. When someone says that "a solar panel is 20% efficient" what they mean is that, of the energy contained in the light that hits it, 20% of it is converted into electricity and the rest is converted into waste heat stored in the panel. Yes, if the panel hadn't been there 100%…

Articbull is saying nuclear is better than solar for the energy system. He bases this on a claim that solar panels are inefficient along a number of dimensions. Look at his actual comments, they aren’t narrowly related to lab or theoretical efficiency (he is making points about land use, death, etc). There is no real concept of physical inefficiency there is only relative efficiency. And relative efficiency of Rankine cycle prime movers vs semiconductors is not a strictly easy comparison. 20% of something free that would have been entirely wasted is different than 40% of something you have to find, dig out, transport, crush, then filter. I also didn’t say what he said about theoretical panel efficiency is wrong (except all his actual numbers were wrong until he edited them). I am broadly saying this point doesn’t support his conclusion.

Edit: you are also wrong about what happens to the energy that hits the panel. Some light is reflected, a lot of light passes right through the panel. Further, panels are designed for particular wavelengths which is why multi gap panels have theoretical efficiencies higher than any thermal plant. And some is turned into heat. All of this would have happened had the panel not been there too except no usable electricity would be created.

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

#277

Post by pfdietz » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 5:42 PM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #275

pfdietz wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Obviously that's not true, but it is a data point you have to explain. For all the lip-service paid to wind and solar, nobody is actually acting like wind/solar are the future.

Look, all that the lack of domination of solar/wind shows at this time is that solar and wind are not yet cheap enough to displace already installed, capital-cost-sunk fossil-fuel-using plants which are not being charged CO2 fees. Be able to achieve that would be remarkable.

However, in most of the world, most new generating capacity is renewable, even without CO2 charges. Renewables have crashed in cost so quickly that there's still a large installed base of fossil fuel capacity that just hasn't reached end of life yet. The persistence of this zombie technology doesn't mean renewables can't power the world, it just means zombies are hard to kill.

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

#278

Post by fluoridation » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 6:09 PM UTC

dpierce9 wrote: post #276

fluoridation wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fine, and that's a metric that's worth considering, but you're not talking about the same kind of efficiency arcticbull was talking about. When someone says that "a solar panel is 20% efficient" what they mean is that, of the energy contained in the light that hits it, 20% of it is converted into electricity and the rest is converted into waste heat stored in the panel. Yes, if the panel hadn't been there 100%…

Articbull is saying nuclear is better than solar for the energy system. He bases this on a claim that solar panels are inefficient along a number of dimensions. Look at his actual comments, they aren’t narrowly related to lab or theoretical efficiency (he is making points about land use, death, etc). There is no real concept of physical inefficiency there is only relative efficiency. And relative efficiency of Rankin…

> Look at his actual comments, they aren’t narrowly related to lab or theoretical efficiency (he is making points about land use, death, etc).

I don't know about deaths, but the point about land use is related to theoretical efficiency. If an existing solar plant that is 20% was 100% efficient it could generate five times as much power in the same space, or generate the same power in a fifth of the land it currently uses. The land used by solar power plants is very relevant when considering its practical utility.

> 20% of something free that would have been entirely wasted is different than 40% of something you have to find, dig out, transport, crush, then filter.

It's not free, though, because those rooftop panels will lose efficiency over time. Eventually they will need to be replaced or they will generate so little power that they may as well not be there. Since they need to be replaced over time then harvesting that 20% of sunlight is no longer free, but carries an ongoing resource cost. Is that more or less than the cost of getting the same total energy from a nuclear power plant?

> I am broadly saying this point doesn’t support his conclusion.

The conclusion is that solar and wind can at best only complement nuclear, and this is supported by various points about the inefficiency of solar panels. Setting wind aside for the moment, why do you think the fact that solar panels are inefficient and degrade over time doesn't affect their viability as an alternative to nuclear power?

Response to edit: I don't know whether the 20% figure counts in the theoretical 100% light that is reflected or unabsorbed. It seems to me that it shouldn't be counted, since if you're going to count light that couldn't have interacted with the cells anyway, then you may as well count light that hits the ground next to the panel, which would mean the panel is 0% efficient.

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

#279

Post by macspoofing » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 6:55 PM UTC

pfdietz wrote: post #277

macspoofing wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously that's not true, but it is a data point you have to explain. For all the lip-service paid to wind and solar, nobody is actually acting like wind/solar are the future.

Look, all that the lack of domination of solar/wind shows at this time is that solar and wind are not yet cheap enough to displace already installed, capital-cost-sunk fossil-fuel-using plants which are not being charged CO2 fees. Be able to achieve that would be remarkable. However, in most of the world, most new generating capacity is renewable, even without CO2 charges. Renewables have crashed in cost so quickly t…

>Look, all that the lack of domination of solar/wind shows at this time is that solar and wind are not yet cheap enough to displace already installed, capital-cost-sunk fossil-fuel-using plants which are not being charged CO2 fees.

Even if solar/wind were free, they still can't displace fossil-fuels(i.e. they need coal or natural gas to serve as base load). That's the problem.

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

#280

Post by pfdietz » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 7:04 PM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #279

pfdietz wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, all that the lack of domination of solar/wind shows at this time is that solar and wind are not yet cheap enough to displace already installed, capital-cost-sunk fossil-fuel-using plants which are not being charged CO2 fees. Be able to achieve that would be remarkable. However, in most of the world, most new generating capacity is renewable, even without CO2 charges. Renewables have crashed in cost so quickly t…

>Look, all that the lack of domination of solar/wind shows at this time is that solar and wind are not yet cheap enough to displace already installed, capital-cost-sunk fossil-fuel-using plants which are not being charged CO2 fees. Even if solar/wind were free, they still can't displace fossil-fuels(i.e. they need coal or natural gas to serve as base load). That's the problem.

Of course it could, in any number of ways. No, you don't need coal or natural gas to serve as baseload. One could, for example, make hydrogen, store that underground, then burn that when renewables are not directly available. If renewables are very cheap, one could simply heat some large thermal mass (rocks, sand) by resistive heating, then use that later to drive a thermal cycle.

Babcock and Wilcox is commercializing a system like that second right now, using sand heated to 1200 C to store energy for 100 hours or more, with a round trip efficiency > 50% and a storage cost of maybe $0.05/kWh.