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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

#91

Post by ftth_finland »

fooblaster wrote: post #39
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 was the most comprehensive study I have read: [300 page pdf - warning] https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/... I have always been skeptical that grid storage was the hidden cost of solar, and that multiple weeks of total grid output storage were needed, but this makes convincing arguments that only a few hours of storage is needed, even in difficult areas.

A few hours in nowhere near enough.

In Finland solar produces no power three months of the year. The months before and after that are marginal. To add joy, there are windstill periods of days, sometimes more than a week, in winter.

To add insult to injury, there isn't enough transmission capability to import all the renewable energy we would need to solely rely on renewables. There isn't enough hydro either so rely on that to take up the slack.

So, grid storage really is the hidden cost of both solar and wind, and multiple weeks of total grid output storage is needed for energy security if relying on renewables.

To reinterate, I really want to learn more about real long term storage. Anybody know where I can find solid info on that?

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

#92

Post by constantcrying »

pfdietz wrote: post #71
constantcrying wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If my optimistic math is right you need around a dozen solar pannels per person. If a third of energy is supposes to come from solar around a billion sollar pannels are needed. If you don't think longevity and recyclability matters on that scale, I think you should reconsider what "sustainable" means.

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

#93

Post by raverbashing »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #12
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…

> I always found it particularly grotesque coming from the HN crowd, where an audience of mostly engineers and entrepreneurs seemed to have no problem finding impossible problems that could never be solved and would therefore render solar useless on a large scale. I guess your lesson here is that most people who call themselves engineers aren't by any meaningful definition. Don't expect individual creativity from a b…

Yeah. Maybe the engineers of yore (but there are some thorny stories from some SV engineers in the 70's), when to build something you really needed solid technical knowledge

But nowadays whoever knows how to put together a basic webpage in ~~PHP~~ React calls themselves an "engineer" and begins having grandiose ideas

No wonder they got bamboozled by Theranos, uBeam, etc

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

#94

Post by ZeroGravitas »

not_a_shill wrote: post #84
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you clarify what you are asking? If you mean: can we prove that man-made climate change is a factor in making some recent weather events (hurricanes, floods, wildfires, droughts etc.) worse, then yes: https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-how-climate-change-affect...

The context is I was responding to this post you made >(2021) And I'm not sure if it's posted by someone who still agrees with that conclusion or someone who think things have moved fast enough in the last couple of years to make it seem silly in retrospect. So I guess what I really want to know is: 1) what changed within the last two years that would cause an accelerating amount of climate change 2) how confident ar…

1) we continue to emit more GHGs than we ever have before every single year. The "good" news in 2023 was that our yearly output didn't rise as much as we feared it would, but it still rose.

2) We're very confident in that answer

3) We hope that this year, we might actually stop increasing the amount of GHG emitted, potentially even outputting slightly less than the year before. If the rollout of renewables, EVs, carbon fees etc. continues as it is then we'll hopefully see this rate fall over time, like the glide paths proposed for net zero 2050. But at the moment it seems like that will lock in centuries of heating, if we don't start global scale GHG removal at some point, on top of complete replacement of fossil fuels, which is a necassary but not sufficient step.

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

#95

Post by ftth_finland »

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #87
pfdietz wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I do not understand why there is not more focus on fuel synthesis. If electricity becomes “free” for hours a day, even crummy roundtrip efficiency seems like a great option to soak up extra capacity and get long term (seasonal?) storage.

Can you run fuel synthesis profitably purely on intermittent renewable power and scale up and down in real-time?

Capital costs are high and utilization will be low.

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

#96

Post by oittaa »

pfdietz wrote: post #88
timerol wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is this important? Because the potential impact of net-metered solar on electricity prices doesn’t even become relevant until you reach higher levels of penetration, or roughly 10% and beyond. I think what I said was in line with that video's conclusions, which seemed to be arguing for continued net metering in the eastern half of the country, and used CA as an example of when the current policy hits its limits…

Real time variable rates are needed. These would also incentivize all sorts of load shifting strategies, which are very economically advantageous, if the damned pricing system can allow them.

That's very common in Finland and I think in many other countries in Europe. People use their water heaters, charge cars, etc. during the night when it's basically free.

https://xn--shksopimukset-bfb6y.com/en/

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

#97

Post by pfdietz »

oittaa wrote: post #96
pfdietz wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real time variable rates are needed. These would also incentivize all sorts of load shifting strategies, which are very economically advantageous, if the damned pricing system can allow them.

That's very common in Finland and I think in many other countries in Europe. People use their water heaters, charge cars, etc. during the night when it's basically free. https://xn--shksopimukset-bfb6y.com/en/

The old scheme was variable rates on a fixed schedule. I'm talking about more flexible variable rates that correspond to actual conditions (both supply and demand), adjusted at high cadence.

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

#98

Post by ftth_finland »

pfdietz wrote: post #73
pydry wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Combustion turbines for 100% hydrogen are not commercially available today."

https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/levelized-cost-of-e...

How are you going to use hydrogen to generate electricity without generating CO2 and other emissions?

How are you going to make e-fuel or other synthetic fuels cost effectively? Even if electricity is free, the plants aren't.

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

#99

Post by pfdietz »

ftth_finland wrote: post #95
0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not understand why there is not more focus on fuel synthesis. If electricity becomes “free” for hours a day, even crummy roundtrip efficiency seems like a great option to soak up extra capacity and get long term (seasonal?) storage.

Can you run fuel synthesis profitably purely on intermittent renewable power and scale up and down in real-time? Capital costs are high and utilization will be low.

The key is sufficiently cheap electrolysers. They are below $300/kW now. The other steps (if any) have higher capital cost/energy cost ratios, so they can be done when energy is more expensive.

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

#100

Post by thelastgallon »

grej wrote: post #22
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.

I think solar makes sense in all of the places that otherwise are unused. Roofs and the shades of car parks, for example. But I am not a fan of giant fields of solar panels. Or worse, taking arable land and covering it with solar panels. Nuclear (smallest geographic footprint and smallest overall environmental impact) + solar & wind is the way forward.

40 million acres in US are used to produce ethanol, thats 10 - 15% of gasoline.

The same 40 million acres as solar fields, would cover 100% of electricity needs as well as work for some crops.

Agricultural subsidies for ethanol and biodiesel are worldwide, and could be 100 million acres wasted! Everyone's complaining about food prices these days, these 100 million acres could be growing food instead.

https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2022/03/10/solarfood-in-ethanol-...

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