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Solar is winning the energy race

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Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#21

Post by wartywhoa23 »

foragerdev wrote: post #10

Solar is not less than revolution in Pakistan. Almost every home and factory has solar installed on their roofs. More affluent houses have almost gone off grid; others are selling back to grid and others who can't afford has their own small scale 12V solar panels to run fans in the scorching summer of Pakistan to save electricity bills. It is all done by people independently without much support from the government a…

> Every home and factory has solar installed on their roofs.

Looking at Karachi's 2025 satellite imagery in Google Earth, I find this utterly overstated. Maybe 5% of houses have them on their rooves at best.

And that is in the largest city in Pakistan, where people ostensibly have much more money to throw at solar panels than in rural areas.

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#22

Post by mixermachine »

foragerdev wrote: post #10

Solar is not less than revolution in Pakistan. Almost every home and factory has solar installed on their roofs. More affluent houses have almost gone off grid; others are selling back to grid and others who can't afford has their own small scale 12V solar panels to run fans in the scorching summer of Pakistan to save electricity bills. It is all done by people independently without much support from the government a…

Especially for hot and sunny areas solar is insane. At mid day, max heat, you get the peak production and can run your AC at full throttle. That enables you to efficiently work at nice temperatures.

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#23

Post by red75prime »

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.

The heat and electricity energy storage need to grow to 46000 TWh [1]. The current value is about 10 TWh.

[1] https://uk.eragroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Global_sy...

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#24

Post by Moldoteck »

doener wrote: post #4
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 think the key is to combine it with a strong, digitalized grid and a lot of BESS—a technology which is now getting progressively cheaper, just like PV. https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-transport/new-record-l... I believe it is realistic to expect that, in combination with other renewable energy sources such as wind (which, for example, generates more energy at night than during the day), biomass, and hydropowe…

ren will not reach 100% in EU because of necessary grid costs and plain data that shows there are continental weather patterns that VRE+bess alone cant solve. Hydro is already mostly tapped and Norway+Sweden dont want interconnect expansion

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#25

Post by Moldoteck »

mmooss wrote: post #6
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.

Connect enough grids and the sun is always shining.

that's delusional if you look at EU generation data unless you suggest US-EU-Russia cable

Edit for downvotes, check https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&... winter data and navigate through countries and tell me how sun's always shining in EU in winter and what capacity factor it can get in certain timeframes

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#26

Post by ZeroGravitas »

foragerdev wrote: post #10

Solar is not less than revolution in Pakistan. Almost every home and factory has solar installed on their roofs. More affluent houses have almost gone off grid; others are selling back to grid and others who can't afford has their own small scale 12V solar panels to run fans in the scorching summer of Pakistan to save electricity bills. It is all done by people independently without much support from the government a…

Recent Bloomberg opinion pice about factories there and in nearby countries shifting to renewables:

Asia’s Industrial Revolution Is Switching Off Gas

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-03-22/asia-s...

> The Chief Financial Officer of Pakistan’s Fauji Cement Co. installed its first solar array in 2019 at Jhang Bhatar, about 50 kilometers (31 miles) west of the capital Islamabad. There are now 69 megawatts of panels across the company’s five main sites, at least twice what Tesla Inc. appears to have on the rooftops of its gigafactories in Nevada and Texas.1 They contribute about 23% of the company’s electricity, with a further 35% coming from recovering waste heat from its coal-fired clinker kilns.

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#27

Post by nmehner »

cbmuser wrote: post #7

[flagged]

It is working perfectly fine: https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE...

Heat pumps and electric cars are so much more efficient than ICE engines or gas heating. This is why the share doesn't change a lot. Even looking at consumption in Norway: https://robbieandrew.github.io/EV/img/NORenergy_road.svg You don't see the electric share going up a lot. Still oil consumption is collapsing-

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#28

Post by actionfromafar »

foragerdev wrote: post #10

Solar is not less than revolution in Pakistan. Almost every home and factory has solar installed on their roofs. More affluent houses have almost gone off grid; others are selling back to grid and others who can't afford has their own small scale 12V solar panels to run fans in the scorching summer of Pakistan to save electricity bills. It is all done by people independently without much support from the government a…

Also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46070915

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#29

Post by energy123 »

cbmuser wrote: post #7

[flagged]

The energy transition in Germany sucks because they are replacing nuclear with solar when they should have been replacing coal with solar.

That doesn't mean renewables are bad, it just means that turning off already built nuclear plants is bad... Which is an entirely different matter.

If you look at China, they are building so much more solar than they are building nuclear, and they have no anti-nuclear sentiment. Their technocrats have decided, correctly, that solar is cheaper and better at current market prices.

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#30

Post by defrost »

red75prime wrote: post #23
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.

The heat and electricity energy storage need to grow to 46000 TWh [1]. The current value is about 10 TWh. [1] https://uk.eragroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Global_sy...

That's in line with estimates being bandied about in the Finnish dissertations.

Addendum: please don't downvote @red75prime for bringing a fact to a fact based discussion.

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