Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We're going to need a lot of solar panels

caseyhandmer.wordpress.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 842 posts

Re: We're going to need a lot of solar panels

#141

Post by standardUser »

jtolmar wrote: post #110
standardUser wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you, that is what I gathered, give or take. I guess I was just taken aback by the idea that instead of displacing natural gas we would use more energy to make natural gas. Seems like the ultra-gargantuan investments needed for this kind of transition would be better spent transitioning to a mostly-electric energy economy.

If you're a central planning committee trying to solve for the best outcome under physical constraints, nothing beats nuclear power and railroads. If you're living in an economic system where investment is primarily determined by rate of profit, then you need to identify a solution where everyone involved is making more money than they would be without you. So it's very important they're competing with oil on economi…

Maybe if natural gas was in short supply I could understand their angle. But it isn't, so I don't. Seems like a solution in search of a problem. Meanwhile, global warming, the paramount problem, needs fast solutions, not elaborate stopgap workarounds.

Re: We're going to need a lot of solar panels

#142

Post by kragen »

walrus01 wrote: post #4

We're going to need a lot of solar panels and an efficient way to transport power from a very sunny place to another location where the loads are. For instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_DC_Intertie The pacific DC intertie right now often ends up being used to transport power from hydroelectric dams in WA/OR to California. But there's nothing to say that something couldn't function the other way if there…

The article we're commenting on is about a moderately efficient way to transport power from a very sunny place to another location where the loads are: you manufacture methane in the sunny place and then ship it to where the load is, either through a pipeline, through a liquefaction terminal, or after an additional process step such as hydroxylating it into methanol.

This also provides long-term grid-scale energy storage.

In a lot of cases, though, it might be cheaper just to build ten times as much solar panel capacity in the not-very-sunny place where the loads are as to build HVDC transmission lines or gas pipelines.

Re: We're going to need a lot of solar panels

#143

Post by chroma »

walrus01 wrote: post #47
dangerlibrary wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until energy density of batteries improves by a couple orders of magnitude, we're at least going to need hydrocarbons to fly planes, no?

maybe , but it's also a national embarrassment that most of the major population centers in the US Northeast seemingly cannot be connected by 350 km/h high speed rail such as what China has very rapidly built since 2010. Flights of 1-2 hour duration between many locations in North America should be replaced with rail in most scenarios. either the political will or budget to do this apparently does not exist. https://…

It's clear that the US cannot build high speed rail. Since 2009, California has spent tens of billions on HSR and has nothing to show for it. There are too many hurdles to overcome. Existing rail lines have turns that are too sharp for HSR, so the government must use eminent domain to take people's property. Construction is delayed by environmental reviews. There are issues with noise. You have to build train stations in urban areas where real estate is ridiculously expensive. Smaller towns along the route can threaten to block or delay the rail line unless they get political favors. And so on.

The easiest way to improve transport in the US would be to abolish the TSA and go back to pre-9/11 screening. That would reduce the time needed to arrive before a flight, making flying more competitive for shorter distances. When electric planes are introduced, they'll most likely be for shorter flights at first (since battery tech won't have the range for cross-country or cross-oceanic flights). Then we'll have similar travel times as high speed rail, similar environmental impact, and more flexibility than HSR (since it's easier to fly more/fewer planes to various airports than to build new tracks).

Re: We're going to need a lot of solar panels

#145

Post by WalterBright »

walrus01 wrote: post #4

We're going to need a lot of solar panels and an efficient way to transport power from a very sunny place to another location where the loads are. For instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_DC_Intertie The pacific DC intertie right now often ends up being used to transport power from hydroelectric dams in WA/OR to California. But there's nothing to say that something couldn't function the other way if there…

Europe would then become the vassal of whoever is running Libya with their hand on the circuit breaker.

Re: We're going to need a lot of solar panels

#146

Post by celtain »

acyou wrote: post #137

In general, increasing the concentration of any product in a closed system requires net energy input across the system boundary. Larger increases in concentration need more energy input than smaller increases of concentration. Concentrating atmospheric CO2 involves increasing the concentration from approx. 400 ppm, to a higher target concentration. That's 0.04%. There is no way around the energy input requirement wit…

>Unless you have zero access to point sources, point source capture will always be more "Environmentally Friendly" than atmospheric carbon capture.

Ideally we'll get to a point where every CO2 point source either stops being a point source, already has a mechanism for capturing the emissions, or can't economically accommodate carbon capture for some other reason (airplanes, probably).

At that point we might still have too much CO2 in the atmosphere. We'd have to figure out some way to get it out, whether that's by manufacturing hydrocarbons, planting trees, something else, or all of the above.

Re: We're going to need a lot of solar panels

#147

Post by WalterBright »

adaml_623 wrote: post #90
ben_w wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A global grid was my favourite solution until recently. The problem is that it needs the combined cables to have cross section in the order of a few (3?) square meters (at 640 kV), and that in turn is in the order of 52 years of global copper production (we make more aluminium than copper but Al is a worse conductor). Using even higher voltages makes everything much easier, and the cables’ combined cross sections may…

The good news is that humanity has saved up a few trillion for emergencies. The bad news is that it's been saved up and hidden in tax havens. Pity

High taxes always drive capital away into unproductive tax havens.

Reagan's achievement was to eliminate tax shelters in exchange for lower tax rates. This pulled the investment out of those unproductive shelters into productive activities, leading to the prosperity of the 80s.

Re: We're going to need a lot of solar panels

#148

Post by thatcat »

kragen wrote: post #142
walrus01 wrote: post #4

We're going to need a lot of solar panels and an efficient way to transport power from a very sunny place to another location where the loads are. For instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_DC_Intertie The pacific DC intertie right now often ends up being used to transport power from hydroelectric dams in WA/OR to California. But there's nothing to say that something couldn't function the other way if there…

The article we're commenting on is about a moderately efficient way to transport power from a very sunny place to another location where the loads are: you manufacture methane in the sunny place and then ship it to where the load is, either through a pipeline, through a liquefaction terminal, or after an additional process step such as hydroxylating it into methanol. This also provides long-term grid-scale energy sto…

Piping ch4 would lead to release from all the inevitable pipe line leaks and limit the reduction in carbon emission.

Re: We're going to need a lot of solar panels

#149

Post by Retric »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #131
walrus01 wrote: post #4

We're going to need a lot of solar panels and an efficient way to transport power from a very sunny place to another location where the loads are. For instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_DC_Intertie The pacific DC intertie right now often ends up being used to transport power from hydroelectric dams in WA/OR to California. But there's nothing to say that something couldn't function the other way if there…

The same author has a really good blog article with the math showing that it's cheaper to build solar locally in places with poor insolation than it is to build high voltge DC lines to bring it in from sunnier places. https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2020/12/27/the-future-of-...

The author is making the classic mistake of assuming exponential trends continue indefinitely. Solar installs are becoming dominated by non solar panel costs. Some of those can continue to get cheaper, but land costs for example aren’t dropping.

As to long distance power transmission and solar, it’s less about local vs long distance transmission of power but redundancy of generation. Batteries you discharge nightly vs weekly or monthly have very different cost vs benefits. You can minimize the risks of panels failing to recharge batteries by adding 0.1-4x more panels, or import from somewhere unlikely to have a shortfall when you need power.

A HVDC grid between 8 locations looks rather different than one between 2.

Re: We're going to need a lot of solar panels

#150

Post by WalterBright »

lotharcable wrote: post #123
ben_w wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A global grid was my favourite solution until recently. The problem is that it needs the combined cables to have cross section in the order of a few (3?) square meters (at 640 kV), and that in turn is in the order of 52 years of global copper production (we make more aluminium than copper but Al is a worse conductor). Using even higher voltages makes everything much easier, and the cables’ combined cross sections may…

Money != Wealth You can go ahead and force every billionaire to sell off everything they own and hand it to the government and all you end up with is a one time boost to government tax receipts. That's it. One time boost. Next year those billionaires will be gone. There won't be new ones. And it won't create any more food. It won't solve shortages. It won't create more solar panels. It won't create 1 mile of copper l…

The communists have repeatedly done the equivalent, which is nationalizing industries. It never, ever produced better results.
Post reply on HN