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Solar is winning the energy race

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Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#11

Post by cbmuser »

metalman wrote: post #3
mytailorisrich wrote: post #2

Thank you, China. One question I have with solar is: what is the reasonable maximum it can produce as a proportion of each country's needs? Solar is the most guaranteed to be intermittent electricity source around, and can have high seasonality, too.

I live off grid, right on the 45'th parallel, and experience 4 full seasons. The solar array and battery bank I have is built from self sourced miss matched panels, and used batteries, it provides power for my house and a significant portion of my business (welding power is from an engine driven welder). In 10 years it has not just amortised it's costs, it has made me money, and qualifies as a tax right off. My up ti…

»In 10 years it has not just amortised it's costs, it has made me money, and qualifies as a tax right off.«

Great, so basically the tax payer is subsidizing your energy consumption.

Sounds like a fair system.

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#12

Post by Moldoteck »

tiku wrote: post #8

[flagged]

it's winning regardless - every kwh of solar is a kwh less of fossils. You can achieve even deeper decarbonization with nuclear but the perfect shouldnt be the enemy of good. There are countries where nuclear is politically hard and changing ppl's opinions is hard too. So it's either ren+ some fossil firming or just fossils

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#14

Post by mytailorisrich »

defrost wrote: post #5
mytailorisrich wrote: post #2

Thank you, China. One question I have with solar is: what is the reasonable maximum it can produce as a proportion of each country's needs? Solar is the most guaranteed to be intermittent electricity source around, and can have high seasonality, too.

From the article: Researchers at the Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology in Finland have worked out what a globally cost-effective energy supply could look like. Based on their model, 76% of the world's energy would come from solar. Wind power would make up an additional 20%, with the rest coming from hydro, biomass and geothermal energy.

Yes, that does not really answer my question, though. A global average is somewhat interesting but with solar the situation is bound to vary widly by location. Also, does 'solar' then include battery storage?

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#15

Post by micwag »

cbmuser wrote: post #7

[flagged]

> Germany has still over 100 active coal-fired power plants

No, Germany has 97 coal BLOCKS in its power plants (down from 150 in 5 years), but those are NOT all active.

Also Germany's coal consumption is at an all time low, down a third in only 5 years.

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#16

Post by adjejmxbdjdn »

cbmuser wrote: post #7

[flagged]

That’s a lot of text, none of which even attempts to refute the factual claim that solar’s generation share has increased from 1% in 2015 to 10% in 2025.

Also, talking of subsidies, the reason renewables like solar need subsidies is because its fossil fuel competitors not only get heavy subsidies, they get massive states to enter trillion dollar wars to secure fossil fuels.

They get a tiny fraction of the costs that governments all over the world are paying for fossil fuels and solar alone is already grown to double digit market share in about a decade from basically nothing.

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#17

Post by mixermachine »

cbmuser wrote: post #7

[flagged]

The article states the same solar production numbers as your comment. I agree that the headline is overly positive but the ramp up of solar can't really be denied. Change at this scale is sadly slow in this rather conservative sector.

The biggest thing is truly that solar has now reached a price tag where it just makes sense to replace other sources. You don't need to think about the environment any more to prefer it.

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#18

Post by defrost »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #14
defrost wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: Researchers at the Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology in Finland have worked out what a globally cost-effective energy supply could look like. Based on their model, 76% of the world's energy would come from solar. Wind power would make up an additional 20%, with the rest coming from hydro, biomass and geothermal energy.

Yes, that does not really answer my question, though. A global average is somewhat interesting but with solar the situation is bound to vary widly by location. Also, does 'solar' then include battery storage?

Australia isn't Norway, there are variations in land area, latitude coverage, existing legacy infrastructure, etc. - I'm not writing a country by country break down for you - the IEA has pages per major countries that show progress and plans.

Solar includes energy storage - be that thermal, battery, hydro, etc.

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#19

Post by Moldoteck »

cbmuser wrote: post #7

[flagged]

hydro is mostly tapped, solar on the other hand can grow a lot. And we are talking about electricity, not energy in general. Tackling energy is more about electrification.

Germany is against nuclear so the best it can do is expand renewables with fossils firming, gas to be more precise per fraunhofer. It's better than doing nothing bc it's clear nuclear topic will not change anytime soon there.

Germany is using in day to day about 20-25gw of coal, the rest is reserve.

The price is indeed a challenge - DE spends over 10x more than France on transmission and curtailment and that's on top of EEG fee. Add to that high CO2 tax and you get very high prices

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#20

Post by Moldoteck »

micwag wrote: post #15
cbmuser wrote: post #7

[flagged]

> Germany has still over 100 active coal-fired power plants No, Germany has 97 coal BLOCKS in its power plants (down from 150 in 5 years), but those are NOT all active. Also Germany's coal consumption is at an all time low, down a third in only 5 years.

fyi it's mostly because of becoming net importer and deindustrialization. Amount of low carbon TWh is unchanged since 2015
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