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Global Solar Power Investment Will Top $1B per Day This Year

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Re: Global Solar Power Investment Will Top $1B per Day This Year

#71

Post by pfdietz »

constantcrying wrote: post #57
standardUser wrote: post #7

I get a little frustrated that all of the people who crapped all over solar power can now simply sit there quietly as it becomes a major component of electricity generation and pay no price for spreading anti-solar propaganda at such a historically critical juncture. I always found it particularly grotesque coming from the HN crowd, where an audience of mostly engineers and entrepreneurs seemed to have no problem fin…

Are there any news in regards to recycling or operation length? Solar obviously "works" if it has the surrounding infrastructure, like storage and weather. Hopefully green energy subsidies can end soon.

The worst case of all renewable equipment being landfilled would be acceptable. Any recycling would just be icing on the cake.

Also, the materials going into renewable infrastructure powering society will be small compared to materials going into society as a whole. If recycling can be done on the latter, it could be done on the former. If it can't be done on the latter, the former wouldn't matter. And the recycling on general materials is a problem that comes up even in a nuclear-powered society.

Re: Global Solar Power Investment Will Top $1B per Day This Year

#72

Post by xyzzyz »

r00fus wrote: post #48
vasco wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My imagination still prefers nuclear! I don't mind solar projects but think it's a big mistake to not invest in nuclear.

For baseload power I agree, but looking at Zaporizhzhia in Ukraine, it's hard not to see the downsides of nuclear: it's vulnerable to water/cooling issues and can be weaponized by terrorists or an invading army. Solar has none of these issues, and is resilient/decentralized as well.

Same can be said about cities: they are vulnerable to water issues (if a city loses access to water, it’s a major disaster), and military can weaponize them as fortification.

Does it mean that we shouldn’t build cities? No, obviously not, that’s silly: it just means that you have to make sure water is flowing, and that military invasions are hugely destructive.

Re: Global Solar Power Investment Will Top $1B per Day This Year

#73

Post by pfdietz »

pydry wrote: post #35
ftth_finland wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where can I find more information about this? I can find very little information about long term storage, not that 1-2 days is much. Most seem to think 4 hours qualifies as storage.

This model thinks that 5 hours gets us to 97%: https://reneweconomy.com.au/a-near-100-per-cent-renewables-g... 5 hours is pretty doable with batteries and pumped storage. It's a lot and very expensive but not an impossible amount and there aren't any cheaper/quicker alternatives that I'm aware of. I think Australia will be almost half way to 5 hours already once Snowy 2 is finished. That's just one pumped storage pla…

Glad to hear someone else beating the hydrogen (or some e-fuel) drum for that last few percent.

Re: Global Solar Power Investment Will Top $1B per Day This Year

#74

Post by prai1SE »

vasco wrote: post #11
standardUser wrote: post #7

I get a little frustrated that all of the people who crapped all over solar power can now simply sit there quietly as it becomes a major component of electricity generation and pay no price for spreading anti-solar propaganda at such a historically critical juncture. I always found it particularly grotesque coming from the HN crowd, where an audience of mostly engineers and entrepreneurs seemed to have no problem fin…

My imagination still prefers nuclear! I don't mind solar projects but think it's a big mistake to not invest in nuclear.

I‘m also a fan of nuclear but do you think as a global economy we can collectively invest into multiple huge industries at the same time which aim to solve the same issue (too-cheap-to-meter & renewable power, deployed asap to avoid runaway climate change)?

What I mean is that wind + PV are on a roll at the moment. This has turned into a huge and hungry global industry which has a lot of momentum (people wanting to work there, technical readiness, investors ready to supply capital, public acceptance, pretty decent public opinion on the industry). From personal experience, I used the live in Munich where one of the main industry fairs (Intersolar) takes place, and it‘s a huge and ever growing event.

So even though I like nuclear and agree that the currently running reactors should stay online as long as possible, I appreciate that getting the nuclear power industry to the same fitness level as the solar industry would take a long time (which we don‘t have) hence me preferring solar.

This is a zero-sum mindset, which I believe applies here.

Re: Global Solar Power Investment Will Top $1B per Day This Year

#75

Post by pfdietz »

kbar13 wrote: post #41
CyberDildonics wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I am not a fan of giant fields of solar panels. Or worse, taking arable land and covering it with solar panels. Why are there any negatives here? A field of solar panels is far more valuable than a field growing corn to feed to cows. Nuclear (smallest geographic footprint This doesn't matter, there is no shortage of land. People living in high rises in the center of big cities think there is, but once someone loo…

there are always environmental impacts to land when we deprive it of sunlight, which is why picking the low hanging fruit of covering man-made structures with panels would be preferable over large fields

Since there are environmental impacts of land use, it seems we should maximize the return from each unit of land, to minimize the impact per unit of benefit.

Now, compare the value returned by an acre growing feed grain, to an acre collecting solar energy via PV. The latter has enormously higher return.

The argument you are making is not an argument against freestanding PV, it's an argument against agriculture. And yet, it is selectively applied to PV.

Re: Global Solar Power Investment Will Top $1B per Day This Year

#76

Post by scythe »

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics

By absolute quantity: China, US, Japan, Germany, India

By proportion of electricity generation: Australia, Spain, Greece, Honduras (?!), Netherlands

Seeing the Dutch and Japanese rank so high despite having some of the worst possible geographies shows how far the world has to go.

Re: Global Solar Power Investment Will Top $1B per Day This Year

#77

Post by bwb »

xyzzyz wrote: post #72
r00fus wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For baseload power I agree, but looking at Zaporizhzhia in Ukraine, it's hard not to see the downsides of nuclear: it's vulnerable to water/cooling issues and can be weaponized by terrorists or an invading army. Solar has none of these issues, and is resilient/decentralized as well.

Same can be said about cities: they are vulnerable to water issues (if a city loses access to water, it’s a major disaster), and military can weaponize them as fortification. Does it mean that we shouldn’t build cities? No, obviously not, that’s silly: it just means that you have to make sure water is flowing, and that military invasions are hugely destructive.

That isn't a good analogy.

Cities have multiple water sources, and it is a very complex system. Not to mention we have special trucks and responses when that happens (at least in the USA).

Nuclear has some problems.

Re: Global Solar Power Investment Will Top $1B per Day This Year

#78

Post by xyzzyz »

megaman821 wrote: post #51
jackmott42 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have at times tried to explain realistic visions of what it takes for renewables to become, say, 75% of the grid and people have taken it as crapping on solar, because I describe how it will require trillion dollar scale storage solutions. But fossil fuels also require trillion dollar scale extraction solutions, so I don't see it as crapping on solar, it won't be easy but we will do it, I hope!

How can you accurately project costs of grid-scale store 1 or 2 decades into the future? It is an industry that is just starting out and projected to grow quite large. Profits and manufacturing labor account for greater than 50% of the battery costs now, so there is a good bit of room for prices to fall as manufacturing ramps up and the market becomes more competitive.

You don’t need to be very accurate, because the cost of storage is enormous even if you’re off by factor of 5.

Try it yourself: start from here https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/ and calculate how much it would cost to store one day of energy use in US.

Re: Global Solar Power Investment Will Top $1B per Day This Year

#79

Post by mikeyouse »

ftth_finland wrote: post #38
chinathrow wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even with current lead times?

If we start building nuclear now, in a number of years we we have nuclear power plants. If we wait the same number of years, we might have some form of viable long term storage. Or not.

The problem with nuclear is and has always been the opportunity cost. If you have $15 billion today -- you could tie it up for a decade and you might get a working 1GW reactor in 10 years (though probably more like 15).

Or you could spend $1 billion/year and end up with probably 15GW of utility solar in the same time frame? Even at a 20% capacity factor instead of a 95% one, you'd be making far more money from Day 1 with solar and since we're not remotely at the saturation point of renewables, every watt generated would still be useful. The right answer to whatever qualms people have about time-of-use / duck curves would be to invest more like $800M/year in generation and $200M/year in storage -- but still -- literal multiples of energy produced with almost zero ongoing costs.

Re: Global Solar Power Investment Will Top $1B per Day This Year

#80

Post by JumpCrisscross »

irrational wrote: post #53
thx-2718 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've observed the same. However I've also found, at least older engineers, often to be oddly conservative despite a huge overlap with being Star Trek fans. Makes no sense. Maybe it's like the brain gets really efficient at solving problems in a specific way that it gets harder to see problems from another angle. Regardless it's a really exciting time to be an engineer.

I don’t understand the Star Trek reference. Can you elaborate?

> I don’t understand the Star Trek reference. Can you elaborate

Not OP, but Star Trek posits a post-scarcity economy and progressive values. (It also presents a militarized society.)

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