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Solar is winning the energy race

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Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#111

Post by majoe »

foragerdev wrote: post #70
torginus wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is genuninely insane (in a good way!) I've encountered some degree of apprehension and disbelief from people in Western countries when I told them, that countries considered poor and backwards often are further along in the transition to renewables, and even for the everyman, installing solar and having (a usually Chinese) EV just makes sense - economically, and not only in terms of saving the planet. The markup o…

Yes, that's drive me insane, west which is biggest advocator of climate change and preaches renewable energy has not done as much as a poor country like Pakistan has done. And Pakistan is the one who is affected the most by the climate change. From September to February Pakistan AQI is basically unbreathable. Rain pattern is disturbed, winter has become shorter and summer has become longer, basically there is no spri…

> Yes, that's drive me insane, west which is biggest advocator of climate change and preaches renewable energy has not done as much as a poor country like Pakistan has done.

The "west" is not a single place and I hate that term, because it contains that "we against them" narrative, which is pushed on us from many directions in recent years. France, Germany or the USA all have a very different energy strategy, shaped by the availability of resources and geopolitics.

But for the average Joe, the situation across the globe and also in the "west" is not so different from what was described in other commments about Pakistan: People install solar on their rooftop, backyards, balconies etc. because it is dirt cheap now and amortises in a reasonable amount of time.

> EU has to do more and make it easier for them to install solar panels.

I can't speak for all countries in the EU, but at least in Germany, it's already quite easy and became even easier in recent years, e.g. private solar installations are exempt from various taxes.

The effort and money put into renewable energy in the EU is significant. In Germany around 60% of energy now comes from renewable energy [1] (Pakistan for comparison [2]), which was unthinkable 15 years ago. I remember quite well, that the fear mongers foretold, that we never will exceed 20% renewables or if we did, that the grid no longer will be reliable.

That said, you're right that the EU could and should do more. It feels like we're doing the "Energiewende" with one arm tied to the back. Unfortunately, there are many groups working against this goal by influencing the public opinion and it will stay like that for the foreseeable future.

[1] : https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-renewab...

[2] : https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-low-car...

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#112

Post by aurareturn »

raincole wrote: post #83
aurareturn wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US can have this too if it stops demonizing China.

Have what? The US uses far more solar energy per capita than Pakistan.

Have extremely cheap solar panels.

Solar energy per capita / income per capita. What results do you get?

The fact that income is so high in America but solar panels are not ubiquitous everywhere.

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#113

Post by hebelehubele »

raincole wrote: post #83
aurareturn wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US can have this too if it stops demonizing China.

Have what? The US uses far more solar energy per capita than Pakistan.

Americans use more of everything. It's better to look at percentages than absolute values.

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#114

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

Moldoteck wrote: post #109
don_esteban wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are looking at it from the point of view of 1st world country that has a functioning highly centralized generation and distribution system. My view is more from the 3rd world country where the generation and distribution is insufficient and unreliable. To goal is to have local generation closely tied to local production, greatly alleviating the need for global long-distance transmission. Yes, it does not work as…

"greatly alleviating the need for global long-distance transmission" - the need isnt gone. You still need transmission, especially with VRE where you want to distribute generation to capture higher variety of weather. Getting electricity for some unreliable home usage is one thing and should be pursued if there's no viable alternative, but the moment you want to go the next step, transmission is a must.

> "greatly alleviating the need for global long-distance transmission" - the need isnt gone.

Yes, that's what the word "alleviate" means: less severe, not gone.

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#115

Post by majoe »

snowchaser wrote: post #40
kwakubiney wrote: post #31

Might be a noob question, but why can't EVs have solar panels on them directly so they can get charged just by moving around? Or why can't we have SVs(Solar Vehicles)? Why do we have to use solar panels on EV stations rather than just having them on the vehicles themselves?

It’s a good question, but the reality is the energy required to power a car is far larger than what you can collect. The solar energy you can collect is about 750W/sq meter. A car roof is about 5’x5’, and if we are generous and include a trunk and hood area, maybe you are getting 60 sqft? Best case if the sun is right over the car you can illuminate about 5 square meters. That’s about 3.75KW. To convert that to a mor…

I recently read about Aptera, a company building a commercial solar car:

https://aptera.us/first-vehicle-off-validation-line/

I think it is quite interesting, because it also tries to be maximal efficient, which increases the "reach" that the panels provide.

Don't get me wrong, this is a enthusiast car, but I think the economics could actually work for a small city car. Currently here in Europe, buying a electric car makes sense for home owners, which can charge their vehicle for cheap at home (especially if you PV). But a lot of people living in cities don't have a cheap charging spot. A car with solar panels, which gains a few percents of charge each day (instead of losing some), e.g. enough for the daily commute to work, may be interesting for such people.

I would love to see a ultra cheap take on this. Maybe an electric tuktuk like someone else suggested, with some solar panels slapped on it.

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#116

Post by torginus »

spwa4 wrote: post #84
foragerdev wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's drive me insane, west which is biggest advocator of climate change and preaches renewable energy has not done as much as a poor country like Pakistan has done. And Pakistan is the one who is affected the most by the climate change. From September to February Pakistan AQI is basically unbreathable. Rain pattern is disturbed, winter has become shorter and summer has become longer, basically there is no spri…

It's not like Pakistan doesn't have these regulations, or doesn't try to tax solar power. It's just that the Chinese-Pakistan border is open and nobody's paying import taxes or listening to government regulations. So the problem in Western Europe is simply that government is actually effective. This generates surprising differences with Pakistan. The government is effective at forcing employers to actually pay their…

You misunderstand. Nobody should be getting short changed (who doesn't deserve it).

It's just that the difference between the cost of something that's safe and effective and one that is ensured to be safe and effective by the govt should be no more than 10-20%.

Instead it costs 3x as much, and comes with mandatory government monitoring, and the sword of Damocles over your head that things are liable to change in the near future on the governments whim' instead of you owning the solar plant you have bought.

All the subsidies the government hands out are calculated for it to cover the cost of a self-install, and then maybe a bit. So tax money (which is YOUR money) gets used by the system to support itself rather than you, even when its supporting you.

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#117

Post by bryanlarsen »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #102
GoToRO wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that when buying a car you are dealing with an oligopoly. You might think that you have a lot of options, but they all come from the same source. Furthermore, big money control not only car production, but oil too. If they allow the ceo of a car company to come with such a car, they loose billions in the oil industry. So they have no incentive to do that. New options do appear on the market like t…

> The problem with green energy is that it is very democratic and hard to control. It's not that I totally disagree with this - there is some truth to it. But it has no bearing at all on the question "can I put the panels on the car instead?" Which has been debunked in this thread and elsewhere many, many times. The counterargument to what you say is that Solar is in fact booming. It is coming - oil money can slow it…

> China doesn't have access to a lot of oil

Just an aside, but China is the 5th largest oil producer. They have a lot of oil. The problem is that they're the 2nd largest oil consumer, so are still importing. Their current course is sufficient to achieve energy independence.

It's kind of unfortunate they don't need to further decarbonize to achieve that independence. There are some other fields that aren't yet economically valid to decarbonize. If China had a non-economic reason to decarbonize jet fuel, steel, plastic etc they might drive enough volume to make them economic.

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#118

Post by usrusr »

cbmuser wrote: post #11
metalman wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Tax payer is funding a lot of resilience stuff. At least in places where resilience exists at all. GP is where emergency services will charge their radios once their generator fuel runs out. Or whoever the local community improvises as substitute to emergency services, if there aren't any. As a tax payer who doesn't have the opportunity to do anything like that I really don't mind subsidizing.

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#119

Post by BobaFloutist »

aurareturn wrote: post #112
raincole wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have what? The US uses far more solar energy per capita than Pakistan.

Have extremely cheap solar panels. Solar energy per capita / income per capita. What results do you get? The fact that income is so high in America but solar panels are not ubiquitous everywhere.

We can buy cheap solar panels in the US.

It's just tying them into your houses wiring, and therefore the grid, that's expensive. That, and putting them on your roof (Because anything roofing is really expensive, which makes sense since roofing is in the top 5 most dangerous jobs in the US, and it sucks to do, and it doesn't even pay that well even still!)

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#120

Post by BobaFloutist »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #104
snowchaser wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a good question, but the reality is the energy required to power a car is far larger than what you can collect. The solar energy you can collect is about 750W/sq meter. A car roof is about 5’x5’, and if we are generous and include a trunk and hood area, maybe you are getting 60 sqft? Best case if the sun is right over the car you can illuminate about 5 square meters. That’s about 3.75KW. To convert that to a mor…

I would love to see this laid out practically. For example, if you had an electric golf cart with a solar roof, on a sunny day… With two adults, a speed of 35 MPH, an LLM suggested a ratio of 10:1—that is, the power demands of the golf cart were 10x what the solar could deliver in real time. (LLM considered also aerodynamic drag, rolling resistance of golf cart tires…). When I suggest a speed of 25 MPH, the ratio cam…

To make the math more complicated, you could theoretically have an unfoldable solar roof. Say you have cute, tiny one-person car with trunkspace for two bags of groceries, call that 1/9 the footprint of a "normal" car, and give it an expanding roof that can fill up a typical parking space. So you get to multiply the numbers by 9, which would mean a 10-minute drive to the neighborhood grocery store would require 60/9 roughly 7 minute charging? That's getting really close to useable, so we must have cheated a little too much with some of the "simple" math. Also probably the unfoldable solar panel ideal really just doesn't work for some reason that's extremely obvious to engineers.
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