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In Denmark, the spread of solar panels has become a divisive issue

theguardian.com

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Re: In Denmark, the spread of solar panels has become a divisive issue

#211

Post by Dylan16807 »

littlestymaar wrote: post #209
Dylan16807 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You haven't linked the photo… The one at the top of the article. > They wouldn't, they'd just put more panels on a bigger surface. Given a specific budget they can only buy so many panels. Free land would change the tradeoffs. > And again, industrial actors are maximizing the economic output they can make. Based on current costs. Change the costs and the methods change too. > Whatever decision you take at your leve…

This makes no sense: solar plants in the deserts have the same shape yet even though the land is pretty much worseless. Where did you get your morning shade fixation from?

They don't build them in deserts that far north, do they?

I got this "fixation" by doing the math to figure out why panels do so badly when there's still seven and a half hours of daylight.

The insolation per square meter of ground is very low when the sun is near the horizon. But the insolation of a flat surface at 60 degrees of tilt is still pretty good. If you avoid shade.

Please tell me you have no disagreements with that. It's basic math.

So as you said with basic panels "one cell being shaded criples the output of the entire row". Normal commercial installs don't try to capture the morning sun. But in the middle of winter in Denmark the "morning" sun is basically all you have access to.

You said "They don't care about shade when the sun is low because when the sun is low the incidence angle is terrible in the first place."

If you tilt really far and avoid shade, you counteract the bad incidence angle. A single square meter of panel can absorb the light that would have hit 6 square meters of ground.

Re: In Denmark, the spread of solar panels has become a divisive issue

#212

Post by ChoGGi »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #167
shibapuppie wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the over-under on tire and brake dust settling on panels next to (presumably) high-speed motorways?

I'm betting the effect is a rounding error compared to road salt build up.

Not everywhere uses salt, lots of grit used around here.

Re: In Denmark, the spread of solar panels has become a divisive issue

#213

Post by expedition32 »

mikaeluman wrote: post #3

The dirty secret is of course that the Danish power grid would be totally unusable without the base power provided from Sweden and Norway. They almost suffered a catastrophic shutdown a year or two ago and the situation has not improved

Yeah and entire countries would shut down without LNG and oil- it's almost as if we are all living in an interconnected world!

Re: In Denmark, the spread of solar panels has become a divisive issue

#214

Post by marssaxman »

amarant wrote: post #202
marssaxman wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether you store it or not, getting free energy from the sun for half the year is better than getting no energy from the sun. Every marginal reduction in fossil fuel usage helps.

Scandinavia is actually seeing a pattern where in the summer, there is so much electricity produced that it's approximately free, and in the winters, when solar panels produce nothing, there's not enough to go around so prices are sky high. It's a very weird situation where it's financially difficult to build new power because you'll be doing it entirely for free half the year, but then you get 4-5 months that are an…

A mix of renewables definitely seems like the way to go, but I also wonder whether we might start to see some seasonal industry based on power prices - bitcoin mines, or even aluminum smelters, which only run during summertime? Though I suppose less capital-intensive processes would make more sense.

Re: In Denmark, the spread of solar panels has become a divisive issue

#215

Post by littlestymaar »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #211
littlestymaar wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes no sense: solar plants in the deserts have the same shape yet even though the land is pretty much worseless. Where did you get your morning shade fixation from?

They don't build them in deserts that far north, do they? I got this "fixation" by doing the math to figure out why panels do so badly when there's still seven and a half hours of daylight. The insolation per square meter of ground is very low when the sun is near the horizon. But the insolation of a flat surface at 60 degrees of tilt is still pretty good. If you avoid shade. Please tell me you have no disagreements…

> They don't build them in deserts that far north, do they?

I'm not aware of any desert in Denmark…

But you say the design is driven by lack of space, then why do they use the same design in deserts?! That's my question. Denmark doesn't have much free space, but Sweden do, land is cheap in many places there, yet the Swede don't design their plant differently.

> Normal commercial installs don't try to capture the morning sun. But in the middle of winter in Denmark the "morning" sun is basically all you have access to.

And yet you insist commercial plants don't do that? Why? Are they stupid?

> If you tilt really far and avoid shade, you counteract the bad incidence angle.

Only the vertical angle, not the horizontal one… And again it makes no sense to optimize for winter morning sun when there's only 2 hours of sunlight per day in average during winter…

You could set up a football field of our perfectly optimized morning sun solar panels, plus the same for evening sun, and you'd still have failed to power a house for the full month between January and February where the sun often don't show up once, and in that time span you've already exceeded the 10% non-solar budget in that mental exercise…

Re: In Denmark, the spread of solar panels has become a divisive issue

#216

Post by JumpCrisscross »

teamonkey wrote: post #201
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is 100% an existential threat, but the existential bit happens in 100 years No, it’s not, and no, we don’t know that. Humans will survive climate change. Rich countries will survive, too. We will all suffer. Economically, healthwise and aesthetically. But that’s not existential. Framing it as such is disingenuous and counterproductive.

Perhaps we should be using ‘apocalyptic threat’ instead?

Sure. That’s fair. I still think it’s potentially hyperbolic, but it’s closer to true than false. “Existential threat” is just plain wrong.

Re: In Denmark, the spread of solar panels has become a divisive issue

#217

Post by amarant »

marssaxman wrote: post #214
amarant wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scandinavia is actually seeing a pattern where in the summer, there is so much electricity produced that it's approximately free, and in the winters, when solar panels produce nothing, there's not enough to go around so prices are sky high. It's a very weird situation where it's financially difficult to build new power because you'll be doing it entirely for free half the year, but then you get 4-5 months that are an…

A mix of renewables definitely seems like the way to go, but I also wonder whether we might start to see some seasonal industry based on power prices - bitcoin mines, or even aluminum smelters, which only run during summertime? Though I suppose less capital-intensive processes would make more sense.

There is lots of talk of green steel in Sweden. The basic concept is to use the cheap energy during summers to produce hydrogen, and then burn that hydrogen to melt iron and make various alloys.

So far a few attempts have been made, lots of investments, but unfortunately it hasn't worked out yet.

Re: In Denmark, the spread of solar panels has become a divisive issue

#218

Post by danw1979 »

pjc50 wrote: post #76
danw1979 wrote: post #58

I took a stroll recently through the countryside around Swindon, UK, where there’s a massive new solar farm on formerly arable land. One thing I only just realised was how the view from the ground is so badly affected when you’re down amidst the endless rows of panels - they reach well above head height. It’s basically like walking through a industrial estate, just with more grass in between. Really very bleak. Give…

How much extra on your electricity bill are you prepared to pay to not see it?

I seem to have come across as a nimby in my comment…

I’d happily pay less on my bill if it meant gas no longer set the price of electricity in the UK, even if it did mean covering loads of arable land in panels.

It still doesn’t mean they aren’t bleak to look at.

I get why people don’t like them. I get why people don’t want a wind turbine on every peak in the Cambrian hills.

Personally I’d rather have the latter - sparse but huge industrial objects - than the widespread low level monotony of a solar farm.

Unfortunately we need both.

Re: In Denmark, the spread of solar panels has become a divisive issue

#219

Post by zipy124 »

signatoremo wrote: post #89
zipy124 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The guardian have previously been found to generate a significant amount of ad revenue from fossil fuel companies. They aren't politically aligned with it, but are financially. Remember that a large portion of the left in the UK are also anti-solar since they are pro-green nature and they have yet to make a choice on this. P.s I am pro renewable and pro-solar/wind/nuclear just to clarify that this is nothing about my…

Cite your source. The Guardian stopped accepting ads from the fossil industry 6 years ago - [0] It is convenient to be suspicious against news that isn’t aligned with your views. [0] - https://www.theguardian.com/help/insideguardian/2020/jan/29/...

I'm aware of this policy. I cannot re-find the source, but there was an investigative piece somewhere that found they continued to take money from fossil-fuel aligned companies. I cannot find it after trying to look again admittably, though I am unsure if it because of my poor memory and that it didn't exist in the first place or because search engines are poor at this sort of thing. They do however continue to take ads from very high carbon industries like airlines and the such however.

They largely share my views, I am not suspicious because they don't align with my views, I am suspicious of all profit-motivated companies equally.

Re: In Denmark, the spread of solar panels has become a divisive issue

#220

Post by Dylan16807 »

littlestymaar wrote: post #215
Dylan16807 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't build them in deserts that far north, do they? I got this "fixation" by doing the math to figure out why panels do so badly when there's still seven and a half hours of daylight. The insolation per square meter of ground is very low when the sun is near the horizon. But the insolation of a flat surface at 60 degrees of tilt is still pretty good. If you avoid shade. Please tell me you have no disagreements…

> They don't build them in deserts that far north, do they? I'm not aware of any desert in Denmark… But you say the design is driven by lack of space, then why do they use the same design in deserts?! That's my question. Denmark doesn't have much free space, but Sweden do, land is cheap in many places there, yet the Swede don't design their plant differently. > Normal commercial installs don't try to capture the morn…

> I'm not aware of any desert in Denmark…

Right! A lack of places with such super free land that also have horrible sun angles.

> But you say the design is driven by lack of space, then why do they use the same design in deserts?!

The desert builds don't have to deal with the same horrible sun angles.

But whatever, I might be wrong on what they would do with free land. That was a guess, I admit it. That guess was to illustrate my point about angles. It's not a critical part of my argument.

It's a fact that solar panels on a roof avoid the shading problem, while a normal commercial layout does not. Pure mathematics.

> Only the vertical angle, not the horizontal one…

The horizontal angle doesn't change very much. If you point flat 50-60 degrees south (the year-round optimal angle for Denmark) you will get a significant amount of sun no matter the season if you avoid shade. Winter sun is less than average but it's close to 50%, not 5%.

> And again it makes no sense to optimize for winter morning sun when there's only 2 hours of sunlight per day in average during winter…

That's so close to understanding my argument!

Commercial plants don't bother. They're not optimal for winter. But if you build on a slanted roof you get that optimization for free. So a home install actually becomes better than a commercial install for this specific use case.

But it's not 2 hours of significant light, it's more than that. Clouds don't make the sun useless.

> where the sun often don't show up once

Nah.

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