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In Denmark, the spread of solar panels has become a divisive issue

theguardian.com

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Re: In Denmark, the spread of solar panels has become a divisive issue

#121

Post by solarkraft »

etiam wrote: post #90
jmward01 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been watching the math of batteries and cargo ships and we may not be too far from shipping electrons generated in the Sahara to the UK and Europe at a reasonable price. That totally changes the game if you have cargo ships moving to where the power will be needed. I can imagine these ships going to where the weather is predicted to cause an issue to help even out the grid and just in general creating a responsi…

Does it still work out if you take into account the insurance premiums for a cargo ship stacked with batteries? Can't imagine the fire hazard is pretty.

Wait until you hear what other stuff gets shipped

Re: In Denmark, the spread of solar panels has become a divisive issue

#122

Post by Dylan16807 »

littlestymaar wrote: post #52
delusional wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a terrible argument on the face of it. "They can't make any energy, but also they make so much energy they can't use it all". I actually live in Denmark, and we can produce solar energy just fine. My dad installed rooftop solar 10 years ago, and that thing has 90% of his electricity usage since then. It's still producing at around 85% capacity too.

> that thing has 90% of his electricity usage How is that supposed to work with cloudy days with barely 7 hours of daylight in winter?

Those days add to the 10%. Is that not obvious?

Re: In Denmark, the spread of solar panels has become a divisive issue

#123

Post by kalleboo »

card_zero wrote: post #99
recursive wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wind and solar can provide enough energy. You may be referring to their well-publicized variability. Energy storage can solve that.

The next phase in these conversations is usually to argue back and forth about whether energy storage is going to be good enough soon, or never will be, or already is. You're naive if you think your storage solution can handle the massive reserves required, unless you're not naive for technical reasons. Don't ask me, this part is always inconclusive.

> You're naive if you think your storage solution can handle the massive reserves required

The Scandinavian grid which Denmark is part of has 120 TWh of storage capacity (hydro in Norway and Sweden) which is literally 4 months of electricity consumption.

Re: In Denmark, the spread of solar panels has become a divisive issue

#124

Post by carefree-bob »

nixpulvis wrote: post #97
carefree-bob wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I don't think you're qualified to make this assessment. If a large majority of the scientific community is treating it and calling it an existential threat, I'm tempted to agree. In fact, I think most widely held scientific stances on this are meant to be balanced and as agreeable as possible, so I personally believe it's likely to be worse than the mainstream opinion. Climate migration is already an issue. Extreme c…

Of course I'm qualified to make the assessment, as the respectable scientific community has been warning people to not make such bombastic statements, and similar warnings were in the IPCC. You really aren't doing yourself any favors by pushing hysteria into scientific disciplines. This is exactly why the climate movement has lost so much credibility and suffered so many policy setbacks.

No, the world is not ending. The clouds are not burning. There is no risk to life on earth. These are technical discussions about whether sea levels will increase by 2mm per year or 3mm per year.

Re: In Denmark, the spread of solar panels has become a divisive issue

#125

Post by carefree-bob »

card_zero wrote: post #92
carefree-bob wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I've never been able to decide whether it is or not. I'm still vaguely scared of the clathrate gun, permafrost releasing extra CO2, and phytoplankton shrinking under ocean acidification so we can't have as much oxygen as we're accustomed to. Edit: one of those crossfire situations where the downvotes could be coming from either direction. I'm going to assume they mean "don't be scared".

I don't know who downvoted you, people treat this topic with religious zeal. Yes, basically all the arguments trying to claim that the influence of CO2 has positive feedbacks relies on cascades of things amplifying warming.

And that's certainly something to discuss, whether there exists a type of rube goldberg machine where higher levels of CO2 cause the permafrost to melt which cause even higher levels of CO2 which cause something else to release even more CO2, etc.

I certainly wont deny that such a sequence of events is possible, and it's worth studying. But on the other side of that you have basic physics, which shows that the warming effects go with the log of CO2. That really slows things down by quite a bit. It turns a doubling into an additive factor.

Now, could it be that the cascade of events is such that it overcomes the logarithm? E.g. that it is an exponential or super-exponential chain of events that would release exponentially more CO2. Uhh, maybe, but this is not something to try to terrify the population with. And it sounds extremely unlikely. So you need an extremely precarious set of assumptions -- or just deny physics outright -- to overcome Arrhenius' Greenhouse rule. Logarithms cover a multitude of growth sins.

Re: In Denmark, the spread of solar panels has become a divisive issue

#126

Post by card_zero »

kalleboo wrote: post #123
card_zero wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The next phase in these conversations is usually to argue back and forth about whether energy storage is going to be good enough soon, or never will be, or already is. You're naive if you think your storage solution can handle the massive reserves required, unless you're not naive for technical reasons. Don't ask me, this part is always inconclusive.

> You're naive if you think your storage solution can handle the massive reserves required The Scandinavian grid which Denmark is part of has 120 TWh of storage capacity (hydro in Norway and Sweden) which is literally 4 months of electricity consumption.

Yes but (deja vu here) pumped hydro storage benefits from geography, so it's only a solution for Norway and Sweden and other bumpy places.

Re: In Denmark, the spread of solar panels has become a divisive issue

#127

Post by deaux »

danw1979 wrote: post #58

I took a stroll recently through the countryside around Swindon, UK, where there’s a massive new solar farm on formerly arable land. One thing I only just realised was how the view from the ground is so badly affected when you’re down amidst the endless rows of panels - they reach well above head height. It’s basically like walking through a industrial estate, just with more grass in between. Really very bleak. Give…

> Give me an onshore wind farm over this.

Guess why those aren't common? Largely because the same people vehemently opposing these solar parks, have already been blocking onshore (and even near-coast offshore) wind for more than a decade.

Re: In Denmark, the spread of solar panels has become a divisive issue

#128

Post by deaux »

mellosouls wrote: post #27
dathinab wrote: post #21

not buying that this isn't anti renewable propaganda for the US the images in the article looks bad until you take a short look at satellite images and realize: - it's not the norm but the exception - the photos are made to make it look maximally bad in a deceptive/manipulative way, and that is even in context, that Denmark is a special case in that it both quite small and has little "dead" (not agriculturally effici…

"not buying that this isn't anti renewable propaganda for the US" Its the Guardian so that is a very unlikely motivation.

Haha, the Guardian is just as much in bed with the capital class.

Re: In Denmark, the spread of solar panels has become a divisive issue

#129

Post by gottorf »

ceejayoz wrote: post #37
karamanolev wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a fan of Texan electrical isolationism, but "people dying every winter from power outages" is stretching it a bit...

Every winter is a stretch, yes. But they did get a big warning shot in 1989 and 2011, and ignored those lessons for cost reasons. A couple hundred people died.

> But they did get a big warning shot in 1989 and 2011, and ignored those lessons for cost reasons.

Cost is always a valid reason!

> A couple hundred people died.

Looks like about a thousand people in the US die of hypothermia every year, on average. So this happens frequently in states that aren't in its own interconnection, too.

Re: In Denmark, the spread of solar panels has become a divisive issue

#130

Post by deaux »

The Guardian here using the word "climate" 6 times. They mention prices and economics zero times. They talk about energy sovereignty zero times. While the US attack on Iran has massively increased fossil fuel prices.

Framing solar expansion as being for the climate rather than the number one way reduce cost of living for everyone, boost the economy through cheap electricity, _and_ decrease dependency on other countries (a proper nationalist goal), is simply propagandizing for fossil fuel and capital interests. That's what the Guardian is doing here. Choosing that framing in an article less than 3 weeks after the attack on Iran is deliberate.

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