161–170 of 405 posts
I just upgraded the solar system at my family's off-grid cabin. It's incredible how much battery technology has improved over the last 10 years. Everyone is getting tired of me checking the panel to see how many watts we're bringing in. Next project, install a shunt and get a Raspberry Pi talking to it over USB. And then I'll be able to build a Grafana dashboard. :)
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I don’t know how you can be against solar unless you’ve been given some uninformed talking points. Are they against solar subsidies or other policy provisions? It’s hard to understand someone who is against passive energy collection.
I am against it for one reason only, but it's very solvable, IMO, and it's the amount of space they take up. I live next to 200+ acres of solar farms. A part of me cries a little when I see so much beautiful land and trees cut down and these lifeless panels taking up so much space. We have so many buildings, and structures already (think parking decks, tops of apartments, homes, offices, even parking lots) that we co…
*electricity . Gas is heavily used for heating , cooking & industrial uses (e.g. drying agriculture like hops, boilers etc). I raise this point since policymakers get confused and try to ban gas, only to realize how critical gas is for food & industrial applications that consumers enjoy after the fact.
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Indeed. Steel mills, aluminum smelters and glass factories really adore the intermittent nature of renewables.
Germany screwed themselves.
And while the extreme right wing propaganda claims that Germany is doomed because of the Energiewende for the last 20 years or so, it is somehow still the third largest economy.
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That's for 5000 people. And only covers heat. Happy if it can scale and move from prototype to long-term deployment at a reasonable cost, serving heavy industry in manufacturing.
> That's for 5000 people. And it's quite compact. > And only covers heat. Is that not useful?
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Is this the version he reuploaded? I saw it the day he posted it, and I have never seen that man more passionate and awesome. He mentioned later that he toned it down, which is almost a bummer!
If this is the video I'm thinking of, both versions are up. I think the toned down version is meant to be more palatable to certain people.
I know some people who are adamantly against solar and wind (personally I like both but I can see some shortcomings - for example I have heard that ai datacenters are using gas at times because of its flexibility) So what are some of the best talking points to "sell" solar and wind to the unconvinced? Or will they just adopt it once it's seen everywhere?
Do people people really hate sun and clouds and stuff?
Or are they against the physical capture of geographical processes? ...
I've heard "muh birds" a few times. Ironically, it seems only those who eat chicken who seem to be worried about it :/
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Let me preface this that I am a huge advocate for renewables, and have been spending borderline unreasonable amounts on turning my home green. The rub with "solar is cheaper" is that those values are almost always calculated using an ideal environment. Solar is cheapest when you are using flat barren land in Arizona where an acre costs $500, the sun shines 330 days a year, you are bulk buying 750 MW of panels, and th…
Every kWh your panels make from sunlight that you use immediately (or store "behind the meter"), you don't have to buy from the grid. And not buying something tends to be cheaper than buying :)
How is that working for German industry where you need dense energy if you are going to continue build anything big..
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I'm not against solar, my primary issue is that in northern Europe there's not much sun at some times. Energy storage and "smart grid" are not there yet, in my view, but maybe should have come first. Hydrogen (electrolysis) sounds a bit wild and impractical to me.
Finland: > The net result: Pornainen fulfilled all of its municipal climate targets with a single installation. Oil use dropped 100 percent, emissions fell 70 percent, and woodchip combustion was cut by 60 percent. According to the Mayor of the Municipality of Pornainen, Antti Kuusela, the municipality now heats all its public buildings, including a new sports arena opening in September 2026, entirely through this di…
>During the coldest, most expensive stretch, the wood chip boiler became the primary unit, and the sand battery supplemented it.
Remarkably: heat is pointed to as "wasted energy" when doing EROEI analysis and discounted, this is done to strengthen the case for Solar vs Gas.
Finland's energy mix is ~6% solar [1]... maybe it's not a larger portion of the grid supply because Finns realize it doesn't work in the winter?