Solar and batteries can power the world • Hacker News Board

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#201

Post by mullingitover » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 4:29 PM UTC

tencentshill wrote: post #190

germandiago wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The economics only changed recently and infrastructure lasts a long time This needs investment also. An investment poorer people cannot or do not want to do. It is reasonable that when someone gives up a couple of things because that person is rich (rich as in a person in the developed world) the sacrifice is more or less acceptable. Now change environment and think that these sacrifices are way worse. Even worse t…

That's why it will require a functional government who can use taxes responsibly to make the technology affordable to everyone. The US had a pretty good start until one man decided to stop and try to reverse any progress made.

Not one man, he's financially backed by the wealthiest people in the world and politically supported by millions.

Acting like this blunder is some random stroke of bad luck isn't telling the whole story.

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#202

Post by ZeroGravitas » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 4:30 PM UTC

declan_roberts wrote: post #5

The article is just wrong. And only mentions energy used for heating in passing. Heating requires MASSIVE amounts of energy. I should know bc I have a whole house battery and solar system (almost 30 kWh battery and 24kW solar). It keeps the lights on, but not heating. I live in a mild climate. The reality is that battery/solar requires major quality of life and activity time shifting trade-offs.

Note that the article title has "the world" in it, immediately limits his specific claims to 80% of the world nearer the equatorr as most of the people in the world have more need for cooling than heating.

He even has a map that covers this and multiple paragraphs of discussion about high latitudes and wind in winter.

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#203

Post by coryrc » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 4:31 PM UTC

jakewins wrote: post #47

declan_roberts wrote: post #5

The article is just wrong. And only mentions energy used for heating in passing. Heating requires MASSIVE amounts of energy. I should know bc I have a whole house battery and solar system (almost 30 kWh battery and 24kW solar). It keeps the lights on, but not heating. I live in a mild climate. The reality is that battery/solar requires major quality of life and activity time shifting trade-offs.

Respectfully, 30kWh is not much in this context. In 10 years every modern 2-car home will have 200kWh on the driveway just from the EVs; add a 100kWh whole home battery at a price point close to a 10kWh battery today and the calculus changes in most of the world. The cost of materials going into modern batteries easily leaves room for another 10x reduction in price, IMO where this all is heading is obvious. Zero marg…

I bet you didn't even see the tragic farce when writing your solution. Land development requiring ”2-car homes" is the driver of the problem! An apartment only has to heat one or two walls facing the outside instead of 4. That's 50-75% right off the top of your energy usage, with the mean closer to 75%.

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#204

Post by pishpash » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 4:31 PM UTC

dnemmers wrote: post #98

chongli wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

66F is ridiculously cold to me, and I live in Canada where it can reach -40(F or C) in the winter. I would find that very uncomfortable and elderly people would be shivering constantly and highly susceptible to respiratory illness. I have a modern cold climate air source heat pump which essentially needs to run 24 hours a day to maintain a stable 20C when the outdoor temperatures reach -15C. Below that, the heat pump…

“elderly people would be shivering constantly and highly susceptible to respiratory illness.” At 66 degrees F? That sounds like put a sweater on if you’re chilly, not some near death extreme. Any evidence that such an ‘extreme’ would cause issues?

It depends on how fat you are. Whales have blubber too.

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#205

Post by zozbot234 » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 4:32 PM UTC

tenthirtyam wrote: post #30

panick21_ wrote: post #16

Nuclear could have powered the world easily and we could have done it with 1960s technology. And we could easily do electricity and heating with nuclear quite easily. The only thing that's actually tricky is synfuels and solar/battery doesn't solve that. High temperature reactors using heat to create hydrogen is arguable the better path to synfuels then electrolysis. And we can go to 100% of electricity from nuclear,…

IIRC nuclear doesn't really work well as the last 5-10%. Start-up and shut-down for nuclear reactors is a slow process. When it's generating, it needs to just keep on generating. Not so quick to dial down or up just because the wind is(n't) blowing.

It's not a technical limitation, it's economic. The cost of nuclear is almost all in building (and decommissioning) the plant, the fuel is almost free. So you want to produce flat out as long as you can get almost any positive price for the output.

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#206

Post by declan_roberts » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 4:32 PM UTC

aidenn0 wrote: post #100

PyWoody wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a northern climate and I know multiple people who are net zero with solar+basic battery. Proper insulation and good windows go a very long way. For instance, I set my heat to 66F during the day and 60F at night. When I wake up in the morning, the register is usually still above 60F.

At 66F, I struggle to do job because my fingers go numb and I can't touch-type well. If others have that problem, a small heat-lamp (like for a reptile cage) can locally heat just the area above the keyboard cheaply.

I use a desktop heating pad under my keyboard. It's an Apple thin, metal keyboard, which works really well for this. It uses about 20w.

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#207

Post by nradov » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 4:33 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #108

germandiago wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So here I go: if it is so stupid, why it is not done yet? Try not to blame anyone. Do it rationally if you can, from your message I understand your opinion. I say this as a person that has lived in a developing country the last 15 years. It is not that simple IMHO...

The economics only changed recently and infrastructure lasts a long time. It’s the same reason EV’s make up a far larger share of new car sales than a percentage of overall cars, EV’s sucked 20+ years ago yet there are a lot of 20+ year old cars on the road. The US stopped building coal power plants over a decade ago but we still have a lot of them. Meanwhile we’ve mostly been building solar, which eventually means w…

We haven't been building much battery storage to go along with that solar power. Perhaps we will eventually, but until that actually happens the base load requirement represents a hard limit on the amount of solar generation capacity that the grid can handle.

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#208

Post by palata » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 4:33 PM UTC

RandomLensman wrote: post #188

palata wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and there are alternatives That's a big if, though. Solar and batteries require globalisation, based on fossil fuels. I feel like nuclear reactors are a better choice. > in a conflict, not sure having many around is generally a good idea On the other hand, blowing nuclear reactors could be considered a big escalation. We see with Iran and Ukraine that it's not exactly the first thing one wants to target.

For shipping? Wind, Tidal or geothermal are also around, for example.

My point was that photovoltaic is "an alternative" to nuclear reactors, but an alternative that relies on globalisation. Nuclear reactors... much less.

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#209

Post by KaiserPro » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 4:33 PM UTC

brianwawok wrote: post #65

toasty228 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People still build houses like energy is cheap and abundant. A properly insulated house in any temperate climate require very little heating or cooling. Spend 50k on insulation that will last the life of the building instead of 50k on heating and cooling devices which will need constant maintenance and replacement + fuel and end up costing 10x more over the life of the building. A modern house with modern insulation…

In the short term the math is usually bad. Can be a 20, 30, 40 year payback on insulation. For the builder? It’s almost for sure a loss unless he can play the green card. For any individual owner? They are likely to leave before they recoup a project like this. Appraisals on houses are price per square foot with a bedroom and bathroom modifier. Until people start pricing in energy efficiency in homes, say a price mul…

> Can be a 20, 30, 40 year payback on insulation. For the builder?

In the UK, houses have energy ratings, which are largely not that useful, but they do allow estimated annual running charge.

The house that I live in we moved in and were spending ~1.7k on gas a year.

We needed to re-render the place, because it has a few missing pieces. we spent the extra £4 to put in 90mm of external wall insulation. We also had to replace the glazing. It was cheaper to get triple glazing (for some reason), however the results of that was that it was 6degrees warmer in winter, and 10 degrees (celcius) cooler in summer. Even with gas prices doubling, we spend about £70 on hotwater and heating.

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#210

Post by pixl97 » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 4:33 PM UTC

gus_massa wrote: post #145

kogasa240p wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn I didn't know it was that bad. Ideally you'd grow algae from sewer waste and make fuel from that, but this is the US we're talking about.

Algae needs solar light, so you will have to flood a lot of land to get enough. Also, in case of a war or blockade you can switch the corn use from etanol to food. You will have to eat tortilla and polenta for a year [1] but it's better than algae from seawater or famine. Here we use sugar cane to produce etanol, it's more efficient because it's a C4 plant. I guess it's possible in the south of the US. [1] It's not s…

>you can switch the corn use from etanol to food

Not that easily. Yellow dent corn is not edible without processing. So to switch that to food use you have to have factories to deal with it.

You'd be far better off taking the energy from panels and using it greenhouses to get human feed.