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Paper-Thin Solar Makes Any Surface Photovoltaic

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Re: Paper-Thin Solar Makes Any Surface Photovoltaic

#101

Post by 8note »

akira2501 wrote: post #79
Swenrekcah wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a purely market driven world oil would have been phased out decades ago because of all the negative externalities that the pure and perfect market would have priced in. I understand your point, I just take issue with the phrasing that subsidies for renewables are skewing the market, since in fact they are rather correcting it. Secondly because the oil industry is subsidised as well.

> In a purely market driven world oil would have been phased out decades ago because of all the negative externalities that the pure and perfect market would have priced in. People who say this don't seem to realize that it was only 70 years ago we were just stopping the use of horses and other beasts of burden to do the majority of farming, and of course, replacing them with tractors... or the impact this had on pro…

Markets are susceptible to local maxima, which includes beasts of burden over oil, and oil over renewables. Subsidies are good for overcoming them.

Re: Paper-Thin Solar Makes Any Surface Photovoltaic

#102

Post by 8note »

kragen wrote: post #86
jldugger wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bear in mind that China has like, no oil[0] or gas[1] at all. Their investments into renewables is kind of a life of death situation, not just for the world, but the PLA specifically, who would likely monopolize domestic oil production in any military engagement. Also worth mentioning that Beijing sits on one side of a mountain range, and the other side is arid desert. It's kind of a no brainer to drop solar panels t…

investment into renewables is a life or death situation for every country if your energy costs 7¢ per megajoule and you are being invaded by an opponent whose energy costs 0.7¢ per megajoule you are probably going to lose i don't understand why the capacity factor for utility-scale pv in prc is so low but evidently they did not 'drop solar panels [in the desert] and tramsmit power to the nearby megatropolis'

There's important ifs and buts to that.

The energy costs of solar at night are infinite, unless you add plenty of storage, whereas the energy costs of nat gas stay roughly the same at night

Re: Paper-Thin Solar Makes Any Surface Photovoltaic

#103

Post by 8note »

jcampbell1 wrote: post #58
mrguyorama wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Republican party in the united states is so anti-green energy, they removed solar panels from the white house in the 80s, shortly after they were installed, just because they didn't like them. They also blamed wind turbines for the extreme grid failure in Texas last year, and it is a current talking point that "wind and solar can't ever work" and that wind turbines kill so many birds that we can't possibly ever u…

Texas is one of the reddest states yet produces significantly more wind+solar power than liberal California. Government policy is far less important than economic realities. People are self-absorbed and think their political opinions are important. The real world works more like a cowboy hat wearing power company executive saying, "Holy shucks, this solar/wind installation is going to save us more on NatGas than it c…

How liberal is California though?

People vote for the Democrats, sure, but do the Democrats do things to help the poor or the rich there?

Or is a liberal vote one to give nimbys the power to nimby?

Re: Paper-Thin Solar Makes Any Surface Photovoltaic

#104

Post by 8note »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #97
hedora wrote: post #8

This is a similar, commercially available technology: https://www.sunflarearray.com/ If Tesla Roof hadn't strung us along, we might have gone with Sun Flare. (We ended up with conventional panels instead.) Any, the difference between Sunflare isn't really explained at the beginning of the article. It sounds like the prototype is more like a stetchy piece of fabric than a roll of paper.

Strung along how?

It's solar city, so there likely wasn't a working product

Re: Paper-Thin Solar Makes Any Surface Photovoltaic

#105

Post by notatoad »

gilbetron wrote: post #35
photochemsyn wrote: post #24

Monocrystalline Si solar panels have so many advantages that it's hard to get interested in anything else for home or business construction. Lifetime is measured in decades, not years; efficiency is approaching 25% while prices are dropping (only expensive multi-junction III-V types are better, currently limited to satellite power systems); and for variable surfaces, they can be manufactured as small shingles as well…

A lot of areas in the US are great for solar, but for many of the urban areas, it sucks. Solar in and around LA or Denver? Great! Solar in and around Detroit or Chicago? Awful. I brought out an installer and he literally LOLed when he saw my house. Great trees, wonderful yard, compact house, but hardly any location for solar given the amount of sun we get where I live. Not to mention the carbon costs of producing sol…

there's other types of solar than just residential rooftop solar. large scale solar installations can be built hundreds of miles from the cities they serve.

Re: Paper-Thin Solar Makes Any Surface Photovoltaic

#106

Post by kragen »

8note wrote: post #102
kragen wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

investment into renewables is a life or death situation for every country if your energy costs 7¢ per megajoule and you are being invaded by an opponent whose energy costs 0.7¢ per megajoule you are probably going to lose i don't understand why the capacity factor for utility-scale pv in prc is so low but evidently they did not 'drop solar panels [in the desert] and tramsmit power to the nearby megatropolis'

There's important ifs and buts to that. The energy costs of solar at night are infinite, unless you add plenty of storage, whereas the energy costs of nat gas stay roughly the same at night

irrelevant if what you need the energy for is making methanol to run your tanks and missiles on

somewhat relevant, but not overwhelmingly, if what you need the energy for is running the tank and missile factories; solar intermittency just means you can only run the factories for one shift instead of three, so your capacity is three times as expensive

but historically many factories have only run one shift most of the time anyway so clearly this is not an overwhelming factor

being able to use processes that your competition would find outrageously inefficient because you can afford orders of magnitude more energy is a bigger advantage

think of victorian-era industrial-revolution britain against the zulus

Re: Paper-Thin Solar Makes Any Surface Photovoltaic

#107

Post by kragen »

jldugger wrote: post #95
kragen wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can you estimate what fraction of their power generation does that installation account for like roughly how many square meters is it

Almost certainly fuckall. I found three of these just by browsing the area but I'm not convinced they're even solar and not just... random arid agriculture I don't understand. More likely these are demonstration installs. The big ones seem to be more in the northwest[0], much further out. The land there is even less productive, but I don't understand how transmission losses don't eat them alive. [0]: https://www.nsen…

they've built all of the biggest hvdc systems in the world since 02010 and are building more all the time

prc has had 800 kilovolt uhvdc since 02010; 12 years later there still aren't any in europe, north america, africa, or australia, though a european company was the lead contractor on the 02010 project

but plausibly the answer is that transmission losses do eat them alive and they have to curtail pv output in the northwest because there isn't enough local demand

Re: Paper-Thin Solar Makes Any Surface Photovoltaic

#108

Post by dtgriscom »

gilbetron wrote: post #35
photochemsyn wrote: post #24

Monocrystalline Si solar panels have so many advantages that it's hard to get interested in anything else for home or business construction. Lifetime is measured in decades, not years; efficiency is approaching 25% while prices are dropping (only expensive multi-junction III-V types are better, currently limited to satellite power systems); and for variable surfaces, they can be manufactured as small shingles as well…

A lot of areas in the US are great for solar, but for many of the urban areas, it sucks. Solar in and around LA or Denver? Great! Solar in and around Detroit or Chicago? Awful. I brought out an installer and he literally LOLed when he saw my house. Great trees, wonderful yard, compact house, but hardly any location for solar given the amount of sun we get where I live. Not to mention the carbon costs of producing sol…

It was good for your installer to reject the installation. Around here (Boston area) I've seen multiple North-facing roofs with solar panels. I'm sure the installer still gets paid; it's just that the homeowner never recoups their investment.

Re: Paper-Thin Solar Makes Any Surface Photovoltaic

#109

Post by osigurdson »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #99
osigurdson wrote: post #88

I've always thought cost and area were the most significant barriers to solar panel adoption - not weight.

Area can be cheap depending on where you go. Cost breaks down into a few components: manufacturing, transport, and installation. All three are impacted by weight. They weigh less, so there are less raw materials involved. So you would expect that to impact production cost. Also, with flexible materials like this, they likely get produced on rolls. So machines might be a bit different and maybe run a little faster/eff…

>> So, yes, weight is a big deal.

Not if it costs more. It doesn't by definition cost less because it weighs less.

Re: Paper-Thin Solar Makes Any Surface Photovoltaic

#110

Post by parineum »

gofreddygo wrote: post #96
laurencerowe wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Domestic rooftop solar no longer makes financial sense. Panels have gotten so cheap that installation costs now dominate. Utility scale solar can be built outright for the 30% subsidy offered on domestic solar.

> Utility scale solar can be built outright for the 30% subsidy offered on domestic solar. What does that even mean ? I have a ton of sunlight all throughout the year (almost). What do I do to harness it ?

Buy some property in the middle of nowhere and just put a bunch of panels on the ground.
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