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Solar is winning the energy race

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Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#121

Post by 3eb7988a1663 »

awongh wrote: post #55
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.

There must be some kind of calculation generally based on latitude? A sub-question that I would be curious about is how much climate in that region then affects the total possible solar energy. How much is the variance from a naive calculation just based on latitude? One other second-order effect is: developed economies are heavily weighted towards places that are cold / farther north than less developed places (as a…

You can look at maps of solar insolation[0] - these give you typical levels of solar input. There is of course weather variations, but the long-term trends should be consistent.

One thing that can catch me is how much more north Europe is than basically all of the USA. The general solar insolation is worse, yet they are still doing a healthy business of solar. The panels are so cheap that even if you are in a crummy environment, you can just add more.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_irradiance

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#122

Post by 3eb7988a1663 »

broken-kebab wrote: post #53
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…

I have my quite positive experience with solar too. But "90% population" claim is unrealistic. For starters, solar needs batteries to be truly effective. Batteries need rare-earth metals which is a narrow bottleneck. It's fine to buy 4 batteris for yourself but procuring a million will raise prices and probably break backs of many projects. A trillion, and you probably igniting wars for resources. Also we can't multi…

Yet the US government just asked for $200 billion to materialize out of thin air to support a needless conflict. Even if it cost a trillion dollars, that is decades of long term energy independence.

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#123

Post by mytailorisrich »

3eb7988a1663 wrote: post #121
awongh wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There must be some kind of calculation generally based on latitude? A sub-question that I would be curious about is how much climate in that region then affects the total possible solar energy. How much is the variance from a naive calculation just based on latitude? One other second-order effect is: developed economies are heavily weighted towards places that are cold / farther north than less developed places (as a…

You can look at maps of solar insolation[0] - these give you typical levels of solar input. There is of course weather variations, but the long-term trends should be consistent. One thing that can catch me is how much more north Europe is than basically all of the USA. The general solar insolation is worse, yet they are still doing a healthy business of solar. The panels are so cheap that even if you are in a crummy…

Yes, Europe is very North. Also comparing with China: Beijing is the same latitude as Madrid.

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#124

Post by torginus »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #97
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…

Europe can and should do more but it also leads per capita solar installs.

Europe no longer can afford to act like it's in a privileged position, and one of the things it cannot afford is to spend exuberantly for the same results others get for the fraction of the price.

And I'm saying that with the best of intentions.

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#125

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #120
JKCalhoun wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> To make the math more complicated, you could theoretically have an unfoldable solar roof.

This is not completely theoretical, this guy did it on his Tesla:

https://www.dartsolar.com/

https://www.reddit.com/r/TeslaLounge/comments/194ajsm/my_tes...

I doubt that it will go mainstream, since you can only unfold it when the car is at rest. And it's permanently like having a loaded roof-rack for aerodynamics and weight. You'd always be asking - why not get put the panels on the roof of a house or other fixed structure? Easier and you can add even more of them.

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#126

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

majoe wrote: post #115
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 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…

Aptera have been promising this product for a long time now. I'll be surprised if they ever ship.

> Don't get me wrong, this is a enthusiast car

Right, it's about as commercially appealing as a Sinclair C5.

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#127

Post by mixermachine »

Gud wrote: post #96
patall wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that always posted without stating the magnitude of the effect? The numbers that you find online are around 15% relative loss at 60°C vs. 25°C panel temperatur (I remember a HN comment reporting 12% comparing peak April to peak July). That is significant, but not world changing, especially for AC.

What about panel degradation?

It exists and does degrade panels but the time horizon is pretty wide. Real world data shows something like 0.5% to 0.7% degregation per year on average. At the start the degregation is higher and but it slows down with age.

So a 20 year old panel might be at around 80% in the worst case. Often they are in much better shape. This seems like a pretty good deal to me.

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#128

Post by mixermachine »

spwa4 wrote: post #86

The problem solar will create is that solar doesn't work for highrises. It works for suburbs. Electricity companies will be forced (more and more) to tax suburbs for nothing (for the sun, Louis XVI-style) to keep reasonable energy prices in cities. Unless of course, cities think ahead for once and city hall gets large solar collectors (at least the physical area) along power lines NOW .

This seems quite strange to claim. Basically every city in the developed world already has power plants on the outside and a lot of wires to get the electricity in

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#129

Post by GoToRO »

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…

As a personal challenge, you should refrain from using the word "debunked" for a full year.

Re: Solar is winning the energy race

#130

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

GoToRO wrote: post #129
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

As a personal challenge, you should refrain from using the word "debunked" for a full year.

Thank you for the suggestion, and I will give it all due consideration.
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