We're going to need a lot of solar panels • Hacker News Board

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

#201

Post by borissk » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 1:21 AM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #155

Retric wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 v…

Moore's law will eventually stop, too. But people have been predicting the end for 50 years and it still looks like it has at least another 10 to go. It seems quite clear that solar costs will continue to drop exponentially until the end of the decade, which is all the author's assumptions need. Land in a desert can cost as little as a few hundred dollars per acre, so it's far from being a dominant factor. And in oth…

Moore's law already stopped - since Intel's 10nm process was delayed by 5 years. The exponential grown continues, but a lot slower than predicted by Moore.

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

#202

Post by Retric » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 1:26 AM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #155

Retric wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 v…

Moore's law will eventually stop, too. But people have been predicting the end for 50 years and it still looks like it has at least another 10 to go. It seems quite clear that solar costs will continue to drop exponentially until the end of the decade, which is all the author's assumptions need. Land in a desert can cost as little as a few hundred dollars per acre, so it's far from being a dominant factor. And in oth…

The article suggested local production, good luck buying land anywhere close to NYC at 100$/acre.

Mores law also failed several times. More revised his initial 1965 estimate for a doubling every year in 1975. He predicted various doubling rates with the weakest form being transistors on a single chip every 2 years starting in 1980.

So, it’s current form isn’t an exponential increase in density but in terms of transistors on a single chip. If density actually doubled every 2 years then starting from 1971 an Intel 4004 @ 188 t/mm then we should have hit 6 million t/mm in 2001 and 197 t/mm in 2011. Except chips only broke 6 million in 2012 (11 years late) and are nowhere near 197 million t/mm in 2022.

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

#203

Post by anu7df » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 1:27 AM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #182

kortilla wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a bad take. The US alone effectively created that much money out of thin air during the pandemic. All of the countries combined printed far more. Doing the same for an energy project that might actually pay back (unlike the covid losses) is far less disruptive. Finally, the amount of money hidden away in tax havens by the rich is nothing compared to this. Don’t drag down something as important as the climate cri…

> The US alone effectively created that much money out of thin air during the pandemic. All of the countries combined printed far more. The difference being that most of that money ended up in rich people’s pockets, and are now causing a global economic crisis.

I am not sure of that. If all that money ended up in rich people's pocket, never to see the light of day again we won't be having the inflation crisis. The money through various investments is now out in the open, driving up inflation. It is still unequally distributed and that is causing issues. If there was a magical way to distribute that money equally between everyone inflation won't be an issue. Unfortunately magic isn't real.

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

#204

Post by pclmulqdq » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 1:29 AM UTC

elihu wrote: post #168

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…

I'm curious if anyone knows the cost/benefit analysis of HVDC over aluminum cables versus using high-temperature superconductors like ReBCO tape. Maybe supply of yttrium is a bottleneck preventing large-scale use of ReBCO? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare-earth_barium_copper_oxide

High voltage solves a lot of materials problems for wires. I assume that almost everything about superconductors is expensive to do, not just the raw materials, which makes it too costly (in both energy and money) to use them as wires.

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

#205

Post by pclmulqdq » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 1:32 AM UTC

walrus01 wrote: post #162

WalterBright wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Government owned, government built, government run regional monopoly electricity generators in North America are already the absolute cheapest dollars per kilowatt hour in the continent. It's not communism. I am referring to hydro quebec, and to the hydroelectric dams in central Washington State. Would you claim that if we had let the free market build those hydroelectric dams using private capital instead, that we w…

I would claim that, yes, private capital would generate power more cheaply with those dams, but that isn't the only reason those dams are there. They serve several alternative functions (ie preventing flooding, keeping lakes full) that a free marketeer would not do.

However, dams are cheap enough for power generation that even with government inefficiency involved in their construction and operation, the power is so cheap that it doesn't matter.

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

#206

Post by stefan_ » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 1:33 AM UTC

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…

Even places that are not very sunny get a preposterous amount of sun energy per square meter and solar is in any case to be synergistically combined with wind energy. This is a total non-concern, nobody needs to start building in Libya of all places.

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

#207

Post by acidburnNSA » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 1:34 AM UTC

kragen wrote: post #158

acidburnNSA wrote: post #144

You could satisfy the world current demand for energy by covering 0.08% of the Sahara Desert with nuclear power plants.

Nuclear power plants cannot operate in the Sahara Desert; they need access to cooling water.

They'd have to use dry cooling in that environment. A bit more cost but fully doable. You can reject 375 degreeC core heat even in the Sahara

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

#208

Post by stefan_ » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 1:34 AM UTC

oceanplexian wrote: post #13

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…

On one hand it’s an interesting engineering challenge, but I am always perplexed how covering hundreds of square km of an ecosystem with glass is “good for the environment”. It sounds like something future generations will shake their heads at while trying to dispose of all the toxic waste.

Wait until you hear about how we invented synthetic fertilizer and added 5 billion humans in as many as 100 years. Won't somebody think of the ecosystem!

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

#209

Post by pclmulqdq » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 1:35 AM UTC

pydry wrote: post #126

billiam wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People that charge class warfare just don't want anything to change. Wealth accumulated by the rich mostly by burning dinosaurs is just as fictitious as any QE from the Fed.

It's only fictitious if Jeff Bezos is comparing his wealth to your wealth. Try to tax it away and use it for something that would benefit everyone and suddenly it becomes a lot less abstract to him.

It would become a lot less real too. The wealth of people who mostly get it from stock ownership is a complete fiction, driven by the scarcity of shares on the open market. If Jeff Bezos dumped his entire holding in AMZN shares, the whole company would be worth a lot less. Not due to any sort of magical effect of Jeff Bezos, but due to the market being flooded with supply.

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

#210

Post by lenkite » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 1:39 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #145

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.

No worries - There will be another NATO "freedom/democracy" mission as soon as that occurs.