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Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system

newyorker.com

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Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system

#241

Post by m_fayer »

notTooFarGone wrote: post #40
LetsGetTechnicl wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What "critical look" is there to take? How about the way that the US gov't subsidizes the oil and gas industry, and is about to restart the coal industry? For some reason gov't investment in industry is only bad when China does it.

China bad when it's the only country that actually does something meaningful. Cheap batteries are fueling energy transition and the demand is only met by huge overproduction by china. China is actually carrying our lazy asses.

Seriously, thank you. I’m aware of the complexities and injustices and manipulations and repressions perpetrated by the Chinese state.

But this isn’t Russia or Iran. They’ve also done so so much good while the west studies its own navel and makes “wealth” out of paper and bits.

I’ve often thought “yes, but where’s the goddamn gratitude”. It’s good to see it.

Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system

#242

Post by HappMacDonald »

OtherShrezzing wrote: post #213
card_zero wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tidal power doesn't come from the sun either. It slows the earth's rotation by a tiny amount.

Is the origin of that rotation not also the gravitational wells created by the Sun?

IIUC it's only half from the Sun's gravity well, the other half of that energy gradient is from the Moon's gravity well.

Also IIUC "energy from the sun" is really shorthand for "Energy emitted by solar fusion", which tidal would not involve.

Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system

#243

Post by chopin »

jdlshore wrote: post #110
xnx wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very cool. I'm guessing you must live somewhere with mild winters. Insulation can do wonders, but it can be overcast for weeks in the north.

Solar panels are so cheap that it makes sense to overbuild, such that even an overcast winter day meets your electricity needs.

In my experience this requires overbuilding by a factor of 10. That's not a good allocation of money.

Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system

#244

Post by HPsquared »

CrossVR wrote: post #223
HPsquared wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any country relying on international cables for electricity would need to build and maintain full local backup power capacity. The combined cost of cables + backup may be more than storage cost. (Of course there are many factors which affect all these costs)

Norway, Denmark and The Netherlands are all part of the European Union. Would you make the same claim if we were talking about US states? (With Texas being a special exception)

It's a risk management thing. "Can a trade dispute or undersea 'accident' lead to mass blackouts?"

Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system

#245

Post by tonyedgecombe »

Mengkudulangsat wrote: post #235
jillesvangurp wrote: post #175

The article doesn't mention a technology that deserves some attention because it counters the biggest and most obvious deficiency in solar: the sun doesn't always shine. That technology is cables. Cables allow us to move energy over long distances. And with HVCD cables that can mean across continents, oceans, time zones, and climate regions. The nice things about cables is that they are currently being underutilized.…

I do not feel as optimistic about any uptick in cables as I do about solar and wind. Solar and wind can grow through a multitude of small, plug-and-play projects. Cable projects like HDVC are still giant, long-term punts.

A lot of the wind projects could be classified as "giant, long-term punts".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsea_Wind_Farm

Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system

#246

Post by tonyedgecombe »

nradov wrote: post #228
jillesvangurp wrote: post #175

The article doesn't mention a technology that deserves some attention because it counters the biggest and most obvious deficiency in solar: the sun doesn't always shine. That technology is cables. Cables allow us to move energy over long distances. And with HVCD cables that can mean across continents, oceans, time zones, and climate regions. The nice things about cables is that they are currently being underutilized.…

Cables can be a great option in certain places but geography and politics limit where they can be used. No one is going to run a cable across the Pacific Ocean so that Russian solar power can supply evening peak demand loads in western North America.

No, but it might make sense to run them from the east coast to the west in America.

Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system

#247

Post by ZeroGravitas »

jonplackett wrote: post #158

> Instead of relying on scattered deposits of fossil fuel—the control of which has largely defined geopolitics for more than a century—we are moving rapidly toward a reliance on diffuse but ubiquitous sources of supply. The sun and the wind are available everywhere I’m all for solar - but does it really solve the geographical / geopolitical issues of oil, as it’s currently rolling out? China produces pretty much all…

At the very least it has solved it for China, and that is one key driving force of their moves in this area.

Whether that makes a global conflict more or less likely is an interesting question.

Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system

#248

Post by DesertVarnish »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #194
DesertVarnish wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Difficult engineering problem but working from first principles suggests that the energy requirememts are not insurmountable. The roundtrip efficiency is worse than batteries but much better than photosynthesis. Terraform Industries (and others, like Synhelion) has a plausible if slightly optimistic target to be price competitive with fossil fuels for methane in the early 2030s. Some places with very cheap to extract…

Terraform Industries (and others); I'd seriously consider taking a long bet that these companies turn out to be better at converting investor capital into employee salaries, for a finite period of time, than they are at converting atmospheric CO2 into natural gas. If such a technology was possible then it would be far better to start with carbon capture from existing emitters. The concentration of CO2 being easily 3…

For hydrocarbon synthesis, hydrogen production from electrolysis dominates the energy usage, along with driving the Sabatier process. DAC might be like 5-10%.

Higher CO2 concentration is better but certainly not needed, it doesn't make or break the economics.

Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system

#249

Post by cinntaile »

markus_zhang wrote: post #238

I recall that other power plants such as thermal power is still required to provide “inertia” for the whole system, as solar fluctuates a lot. The recent Spain-Portugal outage showed that there is not enough inertia in the system. I don’t really understand inertia in power plants but I wonder if it helps to push nuclear as primary and solar as secondary?

The more likely future imo is different forms of dedicated inertia rather than inertia that you used to automatically get from old school power plants with big turbines. Both will coexist of course. Financial incentives for different support systems for electrical grids will continue to evolve in the foreseeable future.

Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system

#250

Post by HappMacDonald »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #197
buckle8017 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better grid connections helps with variable weather but it does nothing for solar biggest down side. Seasonal variation from December to May is enormous. Storing months of power is a problem with no known solution.

North south connections enable solar power from Africa to be used around the year. And while solar is down in the winter, wind production usually peaks. If you have thousands of km of cable, there is a lot of power that can be moved around.

buckle may be referring at least partly to the north-south landmass imbalance.

inb4 someone tries to invent floating solar farms to try to fill the Pacific with, lol.

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