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Semi-transparent solar panels allow concurrent production of crops and power

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Re: Semi-transparent solar panels allow concurrent production of crops and power

#101

Post by dang »

quotemstr wrote: post #70

Besides: nuclear power plants take up very little space. I really can't seriously people pushing solar, wind, and so on while they eschew nuclear power (and increasingly hydropower too). Fake environmentalists: "We have an existential crisis! We must change our energy strategy to save humanity!" Engineers: "That's quite a problem. Here's a way to solve it. It's called fission. Here are some power plant designs." Fake…

Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24253613.

Re: Semi-transparent solar panels allow concurrent production of crops and power

#102

Post by missedthecue »

imtringued wrote: post #87
quotemstr wrote: post #70

Besides: nuclear power plants take up very little space. I really can't seriously people pushing solar, wind, and so on while they eschew nuclear power (and increasingly hydropower too). Fake environmentalists: "We have an existential crisis! We must change our energy strategy to save humanity!" Engineers: "That's quite a problem. Here's a way to solve it. It's called fission. Here are some power plant designs." Fake…

Do you know what? Private industry doesn't care about nuclear. The only way to build nuclear is through government projects which is why there is immense pressure by nuclear companies to publicly dismiss everything that can support itself. Companies set up their own coal plants, natural gas plants, solar farms, wind farms and so on but what they don't do is build their own nuclear plants. Come up with better power pl…

There aren't 6 billion permits, licenses, and regulations to comply with when setting up a solar farm. On top of this, you don't assume much liability when installing a solar panel. You do when creating a nuclear reaction. Pouring the concrete and building the core of a nuclear plant is not inherently more expensive than plenty of other projects that private industry funds.

The cost overruns in nuclear come from necessary but burdensome regulatory requirements.

Re: Semi-transparent solar panels allow concurrent production of crops and power

#103

Post by newyankee »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #8
newyankee wrote: post #6

I cannot imagine the revolution that solar power will produce if it can fall another 3-5x in the next 10 years. It is already at grid parity. Although my personal hope is for storage, inverters, controllers and other technologies to get cheaper. Especially longer term storage beyond 4 hours.

I think it’s unlikely you see any fossil generation in the mix in 10 years except in the most remote of locations (with no solar or wind potential). Wind and solar are already around 2 cents/kWh utility scale, and batteries are catching up. No fossil or nuclear generation can compete with that.

Which means we need battery storage at LCOE 4000) would really help in lowering costs.

Re: Semi-transparent solar panels allow concurrent production of crops and power

#104

Post by vmception »

chrisco255 wrote: post #15
vmception wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just waiting for it to be economical in the nearer term and all of this stuff will magically start appearing. Everyone goes through the motions of thinking about solar solutions to energy, and then they realize how little power they provide and how many they need en masse and then scrap the idea. Once the math adds up for a quicker ROI, the plans will stop getting shelved and will be presented as novel by different p…

I think we're already there for regular PV. It's getting to the point where a home system will almost pay for itself in less than 10 years.

I'm thinking 3 months would be ideal

Re: Semi-transparent solar panels allow concurrent production of crops and power

#105

Post by imtringued »

manfredo wrote: post #20
toomuchtodo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s unlikely you see any fossil generation in the mix in 10 years except in the most remote of locations (with no solar or wind potential). Wind and solar are already around 2 cents/kWh utility scale, and batteries are catching up. No fossil or nuclear generation can compete with that.

> Batteries are catching up. Are they? The US consumes 11.5TWh of electricity daily. It's estimated that it needs 3 weeks if storage to get to 100% carbon free [1]. By comparison global battery production in 2019 was 300GWh [2]. Even if you factor in the fact that the curve of battery production is rising, it'd take decades to fullfil just the US's storage demands with batteries. There are other storage options like…

This is getting tiring... No, nobody is insane enough to only use batteries. They are primarily used to load-shift by a few hours within a 24 hour window. This is mostly useful for PV because it has a very low window during which it generates energy. Longer term storage would simply involve power to gas infrastructure. Alternatively you can use natural gas as your storage mechanism until power to gas has been implemented.

A lot of complaints against renewables are rooted in the myth of "baseload". For renewables to be effective they have to be available 24/7 except this is completely wrong. The atmosphere doesn't care if you pollute at 3 am or at 3 pm. A kilogram of CO2 is a kilogram of CO2. All you have to look at is how much renewable energy has been produced per year and divide it by total energy produced per year to calculate the renewable share. As long as that number goes up you're reducing CO2 emissions. Of course at some point you hit a roadblock where that share ceases to go up because you need to store energy but no country on earth has reached that point.

Here is an in-depth article that explains how 100% renewables could be implemented: https://cleantechnica.com/2020/02/09/correcting-anti-renewab...

Re: Semi-transparent solar panels allow concurrent production of crops and power

#106

Post by jodrellblank »

orev wrote: post #75
quotemstr wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be real for a second. Climate change isn't going to destroy Oregon's wine-growing regions within our lifetimes. A solar farm will change it within months. You can support or oppose solar farm bans according to your liking, but you should do so on the basis of facts. The two forces aren't even close to equal in magnitude and timing.

The “not within my lifetime so who cares” trope has been around for decades, and guess what? Climate change is happening faster than anyone imagined, mostly because scientists can only present findings on things they are certain about, which makes the predictions conservative. Most people are already seeing the impact of climate change, and if it’s not visible to you personally, it has never been easier to seek out i…

No matter how you try to write it politely, "I don't agree with your position, kill yourself" is a shitty comment.

Re: Semi-transparent solar panels allow concurrent production of crops and power

#107

Post by skriticos2 »

codefreakxff wrote: post #79
quotemstr wrote: post #70

Besides: nuclear power plants take up very little space. I really can't seriously people pushing solar, wind, and so on while they eschew nuclear power (and increasingly hydropower too). Fake environmentalists: "We have an existential crisis! We must change our energy strategy to save humanity!" Engineers: "That's quite a problem. Here's a way to solve it. It's called fission. Here are some power plant designs." Fake…

The tone of your post (being simultaneously dismissive and insulting to those who have a different view than you) is very trollish. The problem many people have with nuclear power are things like accidents making areas uninhabitable, radiation making people sick, disposal of waste rods is difficult, some materials can be used to make weapons, and the cost to make a safe plant are staggering and leading to cancellatio…

Agree.

Compared to renewables - nuclear is a big risk (financial and operational). Also nuclear needs a lot of water, which is getting to be a serious problem. Compared to coal/gas/biomass they look great though in our current terraforming predicament.

There is no way we could build enough of them in the near term to matter, so that makes this discussion moot anyway. There is simply not enough expertise and production capacity left. Very few nuclear plants have been completed recently and the institutional knowlege is fading. It takes a lot of time and effort to reinvigorate that, especially since the nuclear industry is so extremely conservative.

Also the conversation is not being done on technical merits - but political inertia, an unwillingness to change and special interests by established energy companies (coal, gas).

As you say, renewables are still winning (slowly) because of the low risk profile and generally being price competitive.

Not that it matters much, we are mostly over the point of no return. It's just a matter of time before this ball is getting very unpleasant, sadly. We are just playing with the dial on how quickly that happens.

Re: Semi-transparent solar panels allow concurrent production of crops and power

#108

Post by evan_ »

ape4 wrote: post #11
Grakel wrote: post #2

There's no shortage of open area to put solar panels. If we put a (nearly) continuous strip in every highway median, that would be a huge step forward, and still take up practically zero useable space. Even 1% of the federally owned land in the sun belt would generate an enormous amount of power.

Vehicles often crash into things beside a highway.

That will surely be taken into consideration from the start, and they will be designed in easily replaceable sections. If a car hits a section maybe it will be disabled but the rest of the cells will be fine and a crew will be dispatched to repair or replace the damaged cells.

Re: Semi-transparent solar panels allow concurrent production of crops and power

#109

Post by pjc50 »

vmception wrote: post #104
chrisco255 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we're already there for regular PV. It's getting to the point where a home system will almost pay for itself in less than 10 years.

I'm thinking 3 months would be ideal

Very few things have a return that quickly. In an era of 25 year mortgages, a 10 year payback is very reasonable.

Re: Semi-transparent solar panels allow concurrent production of crops and power

#110

Post by hobofan »

everybodyknows wrote: post #56
mrfusion wrote: post #48

Could we design one to mostly get energy from green light which plants reject anyway?

From the abstract: >selective utilization of different light wavelengths

Yes, it says it in the abstract, but isn't really given special attention to in the article itself.

Looking at the graphic it looks like a fairly normal absorption spectrum for a solar panel without it being specifically tailored to this use-case. It seems like there might still be something won by specifically tailoring it to be complementary to the plant absorption spectrum. On the other hand it might also not be economically viable due to lack of scale and varying requirements for wavelengths between plant species and stages of plant development, which makes some optimizations moot.

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