China is also now facing an interesting problem as solar + batteries are cheaper than coal today. But coal currently is around 60% of its electricity supply it uses around 10 trillion kwh. So 6 trillion kwh * $0.08c is $600 billion ie it will have to destroy a $5-600 billion industry that employees millions of people. But at the same time it will be getting cheaper energy and the cost of producing energy will keep getting cheaper each year that would be another deflationary pressure on its economy.
Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system
291–300 of 607 posts
Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system
#292The 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.…
Interesting side effect is that this reliance on cables introduces a dependency on copper which already is in short supply and which can be mined only in specific regions. So it re-introduces some geo-political dependencies. Not in the way fossil fuels or unranium do, because a copper cable won't "burn up" to produce the energy, but they do need some upkeep. Another dependency this introduces is the network itself. A…
The Spain/Portugal blackout happened when network management failed to predict a workable source mix. Basically human error.
Political pressure is hardly a renewables problem, and is more likely to mitigate it than make it worse.
Currently we get a lot of energy by shipping it as physical cargo around the world through various unstable regions after it's produced by hostile regimes - which is not exactly a recipe for reliability.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/investigation-into-s...
Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system
#293I 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 recent Spain-Portugal outage showed that there is not enough inertia in the system.
At the moment it showed nothing, because it's still under investigation. You might be referring to the FUD campaign that started the same day of the blackout.
But it is true that inertia is provided mainly by conventional power plants, and they are being removed from the grid. It is also true that, if finally the lack of inertia is confirmed as the cause of the blackouts, there are alternative ways to provide inertia in the system: synchronous condensers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_condenser) like the one in Moneypoint (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moneypoint_power_station).
Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's geopolitical implications. Solar is long stability, short conflict. It's easy to cut undersea cables, it's easy for instability arriving to one the landlocked countries in the middle of transit. This creates systemic risks that are asymmetric with respect to offense and defense. Many would see this as an invitation to retreat from solar, but I view it as the opposite. Widespread solar will cause peace via the…
> similar to the role that trade plays in staking everyone in mutual stability That's a nice idea in theory but isn't worth much in practice if one of the trade partners has 19th century style imperial ambitions.
they were cut off from trade as much as possible (of course there have been rogue nations, but those weren't equivalent in trading/buying power) - and that's one of the reasons, they're not winning the war, even though they were superior in almost all metrics, not at least military and economic power.
if nothing else this will serve as a warning and a cautionary tale for future aspiring conquerors.
Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I think the article still doesn't address the mismatch between solar energy production and consumption, which needs to be filled by storage mechanisms There's going to be a beautiful synergy here between electric vehicles and solar. Because an EV battery is already easily enough to power most houses through 14-16 hours of darkness, so if it can be a sink for solar during the day it can then be a source during the n…
We usually drive to work. That means that when the sun’s shining, the car isn’t home. Conversely, if we didn’t drive to work, we probably wouldn’t have a car. On the other hand, we have a big solar array at work so if we had on-site parking (we don’t) we could drive our power home. It’s probably impractical in reality though, the tax treatment would be chaos and we use the power we generate at work during the day on-…
Nobody said that you have to use your home or work solar. If you fill up part of your car using some fast charger network (which would still be solar powered), it would still work.
Moreover, even if we take the top 25% percent of commute distances (which is >40km per day), that still leaves you with 10 days until you have to recharge. If you recharge every weekend, you still have plenty of battery capacity for your needs outside of sun hours (you likely will need only 1-2 kWh per day anyway).
Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system
#296While the US is busy trying to revive the oil-soaked 20th century, places like Namibia are leapfrogging straight into a distributed, solar-powered future with YouTube tutorials... It's like watching the fossil era get out-hustled in real time.
The oil-soaked 20th century created all the millions of necessary precursors to miracles like phones and youtube and people in Namibia being able to get them. It's not out-hustled; it's just a miniscle increment. But it's good to see.
Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Ah yes, what Europe needs once more is to become existentially dependent on a region that is both culturally and geographically distant and where Europe has very little ability to enforce and police it's interests. Have we learned nothing from the 2022 energy crisis? The number of starry eyed suggestions here about distributed worldwide power networks and load balancing is astonishing given the realities that we actu…
The "realities" are a direct result of a fossil economy which is still stuck in the 19th century.
Oil and gas have caused far more wars than electricity has.
Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system
#298> ...people are now putting up a gigawatt’s worth of solar panels, the rough equivalent of the power generated by one coal-fired plant, every fifteen hours. This is amazing! Whether you believe photovoltaics are the most efficient form of green energy production or not, you cannot argue the impressive economics behind them. Successful engineering has to meet the market at the end of the day.
It is, unfortunately, also an apples to oranges comparison. A coal plant actually generates 1GW, 24/7, while "a gigawatt's worth" of solar panels is theoretical peak capacity at noon on a cloudless day.
> A coal plant actually generates 1GW, 24/7, while "a gigawatt's worth" of solar panels is theoretical peak capacity at noon on a cloudless day.
This is called "capacity factor". Other things like maintenance also affect it, no power plant actually generates "24/7". A simple back-of-the-envelope estimate would put solar power's capacity factor at around 25%, so that "gigawatt's worth of solar panels" would generate an average of 250MW. Which is still an impressive number.
Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system
#299The 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.…
> All you need to get at that is cables
I don't understand your point. Power grids are a thing, and these enormous battery banks are attached to them.
It's true that power grids are independent from each other, but it's not a simple matter to just connect them all and observe a huge benefit as solar farms in Africa power the US or something. When everything is working that is certainly a possible outcome, but when things break, the operators of these grids need to know what the other grid operators are doing, and supply must be routed to demand correctly or you'll just create more outages. power grids aren't a simple mesh where any substation can power any home.
Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's blatantly false. The panels themselves are typically rated for a 25-year service life [1,2]. Inverters are typically rated for about a decade [3,4]. Solar panels also must be cleaned periodically [5], otherwise their output is reduced. It's a power plant. It will need maintenance. As PV technology improves, there's also pressure to buy better solar panels [6] to replace older, lower-performing panels, resultin…
That's a blatantly disingenuous argument that misses the point. Setting aside the accuracy of the 25-year figure, is it easier to buy solar panels once to use them for 25 years or stockpile 25 years' worth of fossil fuel? I'm not arguing against maintenance items like cleaning, because obviously fossil fuel power plants need maintenance too. I'm directly responding to the perceived geopolitical risk. The question is:…
Making a solar panel isn't rocket science. China has just cornered the market right now. If supply dries up, you can make your own solar panels. It will take a few years to get the volume up but your current supply of panels will last until you do.