Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system • Hacker News Board

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

#301

Post by supplied_demand » Thu, Jul 10, 2025, 11:59 AM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #256

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)

You might say "any country relying on international pipelines for gas would need to build and maintain full local backup capacity", except they didn't. Hence the Russia/Ukraine war causing all sorts of problems.

==the Russia/Ukraine war causing all sorts of problems.==

Problems, yes. Catastrophes, no. It's not clear that they "needed" full backup capacity.

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

#302

Post by sojournerc » Thu, Jul 10, 2025, 12:00 PM UTC

happyraul wrote: post #170

pzo wrote: post #139

good article I just don't know why author prefer to spell all numbers using words rather than digits. It's very mentally taxing for me to read, e.g: >> of twenty-one thousand respondents in twenty-one countries, found that sixty-eight per cent favored solar energy, “five times more [...] could be just: >> of 21,000 responders in 21 countries, found that 68% favored solar energy, "5x more [...]

That's simply good writing practice. I find it more taxing to read digits than prose.

I was taught numbers up to ten should be spelled, the rest use digits

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

#303

Post by actionfromafar » Thu, Jul 10, 2025, 12:02 PM UTC

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #254

pjc50 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like everything else in manufacturing, economy of scale wins. There's been plenty of subsidization efforts, but they made the mistake of subsidizing technologies that were too innovative and too early on in the scaling curve. e.g. Solyndra with CIGS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solyndra > Between 2009 and mid-2011 the price of polysilicon, the key ingredient for most competing technologies, dropped by about 89% due…

Apparently the Chinese solar industry are baffled by the US obsession with Solyndra. It makes so little objective sense to be that angry about a failed investment in new tech that they thought there was something deeper going on that they didn't understand. edit: I tried to Google for the source of this, but was stymied by the fact that Solyndra tried to sue Chinese manufacturers. I did find this time capsule comment…

The US has a lot of obsessions foreigners make little objective sense of.

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

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Post by myrmidon » Thu, Jul 10, 2025, 12:06 PM UTC

usrusr wrote: post #279

myrmidon wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How are you so confident that extinction is off the table? Because even the worst-case scenarios (=> think RCP8.5) are just not enough to get rid of us. I can totally see populous breadbasket states turning into unliveable deserts, billions of deaths from famines and heatwaves, iconic coastal cities being lost to the sea and a giant loss of biodiversity-- but I simply don't see this eradicating our species. Humans…

But what's the probability of those direct climate effects happening without an all out nuclear war on the side, as a second order effect of the climate change? Humans are prone to fall for whatever radical ideology crosses their path when the future looks bleak.

I don't believe in world-war as byproduct of climate change yet.

I think capability to wage war internationally will probably decrease thanks to climate change; it is much easier for a state to prevent the peasants from starving than to feed/equip/fuel an army.

I also don't really see the incentives working: Countries like Bangladesh that are gonna suffer disproportionally are mostly not in a position to wage war offensively, and famines/heatwaves are not gonna make it any easier.

My admittedly cynical outlook is that it will just be business as usual: More affected/poor nations struggling, while wealthier western states moan about refugees, use their wealth as buffer and proceed to not care about people dying elsewhere.

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

#305

Post by Tade0 » Thu, Jul 10, 2025, 12:07 PM UTC

berkes wrote: post #280

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.…

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…

It's a non-issue. Copper isn't that short in supply.

A typical car uses ~25kg of copper - that's enough for approximately 0.5m of HVDC.

The EU currently produces 12mln cars annually, down 3mln from the 2017 peak.

In other words there should be no issue with ramping up demand for the equivalent of 1500km of HVDC annually in the EU alone - a rate much higher than the local bureaucracy could manage issuing permits for.

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

#306

Post by myself248 » Thu, Jul 10, 2025, 12:14 PM UTC

loudmax wrote: post #286

rpozarickij wrote: post #179

> Solar power is now growing faster than any power source in history, and it is closely followed by wind power—which is really another form of energy from the sun, since it is differential heating of the earth that produces the wind that turns the turbines. It's interesting to realize that the vast majority of the energy used by humans comes from the sun (with the exception of nuclear and geothermal energy). Even hyd…

At some level all fossil fuels come from the sun. Fossil fuels come from biomass accumulated over millions of years. The energy that went into gathering all that carbon and hydrocarbons came from the sun. Take it a step further and nearly all our energy comes from nuclear fusion, with the exceptions you noted.

I refer to my solar panels as nuclear power, just to mess with people:

I use a gravitationally-confined fusion reactor, and pull power out of it by allowing the radiation to excite unbound electron-hole pairs in a semiconductor substrate. It's dangerous; even miles away from the reactor itself I can't expose myself to the radiation for too long or I get a painful skin reaction, and that might lead to cancer someday, but hey, it's cheap and quiet and I don't pay for the nuclear fuel!

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

#307

Post by pornel » Thu, Jul 10, 2025, 12:15 PM UTC

xbmcuser wrote: post #291

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 ge…

Of all the places I think China has the least sentiment for protecting business of industries it doesn't want, to keep a line going up on paper.

Their push for renewables and energy independence is very deliberate. When they reach the goal, it's not "oh noes, our precious coal jobs, how are we going to placate rural voters and coal lobbyists", it's cheaper energy, and workers freed to be moved to more productive things.

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

#308

Post by pshirshov » Thu, Jul 10, 2025, 12:16 PM UTC

passwordoops wrote: post #202

pshirshov wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China produces pretty much all the solar panels Why didn't other countries build up solar industries? Were busy with fossils? Were too greedy to subsidise?

You forgot being too concerned with maintaining environmental and air quality regulations. There's a reason Shanghai is known for really bad air quality. There's a reason the rate of GHG emissions are accelerating

> maintaining environmental and air quality regulations

Yeah, that's the primary concern for the US, right.

> There's a reason the rate of GHG emissions are accelerating

If you wanted to say that they "produce solar panels with energy from fossils" bring your sources please.

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

#309

Post by pshirshov » Thu, Jul 10, 2025, 12:17 PM UTC

buckle8017 wrote: post #185

pshirshov wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China produces pretty much all the solar panels Why didn't other countries build up solar industries? Were busy with fossils? Were too greedy to subsidise?

China builds solar panels using electricity produced by burning coal. China is by far the world largest producer of green house gases.

> China builds solar panels using electricity produced by burning coal.

Source? From everything I can find, at this moment China has around half of the generation coming from clean/renewable sources.

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

#310

Post by myself248 » Thu, Jul 10, 2025, 12:18 PM UTC

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…

The US used to produce tons of solar panels, and LiFePO4 batteries too, but we let those industries fail. (I've been to quite a few plant auctions. It's sad, picking through the bones of random tools and support equipment, but nobody's bidding on the big crown-jewel machines because they had one purpose and that simply doesn't work in our market anymore.)

There are still a few solar panel plants in the US, but nothing like we had.