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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

#191

Post by wcoenen »

jacquesm wrote: post #151
wcoenen wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss timerol's point as nonsense. I live in Belgium. I was doing some electrical work in my home recently. On the 29th of May, I noticed two out of three phases were close to 250V instead of the intended 230V. This is the limit where inverters of solar installations switch themselves of; it indicates more solar power was being produced than could be absorbed by the grid. It turns out the…

Oh, and as for the 'intended 230 V' -> grid voltage can be between 228 and 252 inclusive without violating the standard. Nominally it is 240 V, not 230 V. The way inverters inject power into the grid is by syncing to it and then leading the phases a bit to cause current to flow. The RMS voltage will rise as a consequence of that.

Did you catch the "Belgium" in my comment? Here in the EU, the grid voltage is targeting 230 volt (± 10%). (Either between the two phases in a two phase system, or between phase and neutral in 3 phase systems.)

This is specified by the EN 50160 standard: https://www.se.com/ww/library/SCHNEIDER_ELECTRIC/SE_LOCAL/AP...

The range you specified sounds like the US tolerances.

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

#192

Post by pfdietz »

coldpie wrote: post #189
pfdietz wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is not a great and proven solution. It's a terrible solution, because it costs too much. All sorts of terrible solutions are available if we discard cost consideration. Cost is an inescapable part of engineering. Nuclear has the disadvantage that they've been trying for longer than either of us have been alive to make it cheap, and it hasn't worked. This real world evidence can't be easily dismissed, especial…

> It's a terrible solution, because it costs too much. That's a reasonable position, and I think reasonable people can disagree here. I disagree for two reasons: 1) I think (could be wrong) the cost is largely regulatory. I suspect (could be wrong) that we could streamline that without sacrificing real safety and dramatically lower the cost. 2) Even still, the cost is absolute peanuts compared to the cost of climate…

(1) there is an often heard argument, or at least excuse, but it has problems. First, the cost problem is pretty much universal. Nuclear has stalled out everywhere (even in China it's experiencing cost problems and is underachieving). This suggests issues that go beyond local regulatory burdens. Second, what's the alternative? Just trusting the builders/operators to be good boys? That won't work. Appointing Philosopher King Regulators who can tell ahead of time just what regulations are actually necessary? How can they do that?

I will agree that one particular regulatory framework in the US could use serious rework or even revocation: NEPA, the law that requires laborious environmental impact statements. It's sand in the gears for dubious benefit for not just nuclear but all sorts of efforts. The big regulatory lawsuit that hit nuclear back in the 1970s involved NEPA (the "Calvert Cliffs Decision").

(2)'s first sentence would be a valid argument if the choice were between nuclear and climate change. But that's not the choice being made. That nuclear is better than climate change is damning with faint praise, the "it's better than a poke in the eye" of energy arguments.

As for naval reactors... putting a nuclear reactor in a ship increases the overall cost of building and operating that ship, compared to burning oil. And this is true even though burning oil is very uncompetitive for grid power generation. There's a reason the majority of the ships in the US Navy are not nuclear powered.

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

#193

Post by standardUser »

oh_sigh wrote: post #52
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…

Well, anyone who believed in solar could have invested in solar-related technologies, and anyone who didn't believe in solar probably wouldn't invest. So, if you put your money where your mouth is(/was), you could be reaping the benefits. FSLR is +260% and SEDG is +440% over 5 years. Plus, something far more important than money, is that any time a solar-denier talks about anything forward looking in the future, you…

Meh, there's some truth there, but we all know it's more complicated than just "buy solar stock -> make lots of money". An industry can BOOM while perfectly rational investors lose a buttload of money because the particular companies/etfs they picked weren't the ones that benefited from the boom.

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

#194

Post by jacquesm »

wcoenen wrote: post #191
jacquesm wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, and as for the 'intended 230 V' -> grid voltage can be between 228 and 252 inclusive without violating the standard. Nominally it is 240 V, not 230 V. The way inverters inject power into the grid is by syncing to it and then leading the phases a bit to cause current to flow. The RMS voltage will rise as a consequence of that.

Did you catch the "Belgium" in my comment? Here in the EU, the grid voltage is targeting 230 volt (± 10%). (Either between the two phases in a two phase system, or between phase and neutral in 3 phase systems.) This is specified by the EN 50160 standard: https://www.se.com/ww/library/SCHNEIDER_ELECTRIC/SE_LOCAL/AP... The range you specified sounds like the US tolerances.

Fair enough, but I've never seen it drop below 228 and I've never seen it go above 253 and 240 is the rough midpoint between the two. I suspect this was to accomodate the UK which did have nominal 240V so that all of Europe could be 'one standard' without the requirement for gear to have many different voltage selections. So now the only time you see 230 is when the sun isn't shining the rest of the day you're much closer to 240. Incidentally: this is also why a bunch of older appliances are at risk of burning out. If they were marginal when we were still nominally 220V then 230V was already pushing it and 253 V (still within EU tolerance, 230 x 1.1 is 253!) will definitely cause damage. Newer gear is more forgiving about this. Hence the spike in business at white goods stores during days with lots of sunshine...

Older appliances typically had a whole raft of supply voltages to choose from 100, 110, 115, 120, 200, 220, 240 and sometimes even 127 and 245 and I'm pretty sure I've seen even weirder ones (150, 185 iirc). Now it's just 120 or 240 for regular consumer gear. BTW, brownouts are more of a risk than overvoltage, with brownouts a powersupply that autoranges might accidentally pick the lower voltage and then when the brownout ends magic smoke comes out.

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

#195

Post by fooblaster »

ftth_finland wrote: post #175
fooblaster wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

did you read parts of the link at all?

Yes, but it's 280 pages. Which parts in particular address long term storage? Searching for "storage" gives very few hits. This was perhaps the most pertinent hit: "IT IS GENERALLY NOT ECONOMICALLY FEASIBLE TO store electricity in bulk. The widespread deployment of new storage technologies and/ or high penetrations of electric vehicles may someday change this, but these developments are unlikely before 2030." along w…

This is my fault. I posted the wrong study:

https://energy.mit.edu/research/future-of-energy-storage/

See chapter 6 for modeling storage and the amount of storage needed for various levels of decarbonization.

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

#196

Post by fooblaster »

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.

Crap, posted the wrong link earlier. What I meant to post was a different study from the same series.

https://energy.mit.edu/research/future-of-energy-storage/

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

#197

Post by oblio »

scythe wrote: post #76

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.

Japan's geography isn't bad for solar.

60% of the islands have a warm climate, Okinawa is super sunny.

They have a ton of roofs to put solar on.

On top of that, they should be good for wind.

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