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We're going to need a lot of solar panels

caseyhandmer.wordpress.com

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

#221

Post by rfrey »

WalterBright wrote: post #188
Aeolun wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that we would have better results right now? Think of the shareholders! All that lost value could have gone to line their pockets, but instead it’s being used for the good of society (to be fair, probably to those same shareholders through different companies at exorbitant rates).

> All that lost value could have gone to line their pockets, but instead it’s being used for the good of society That is indeed the pitch the communists make. How is that working out for them?

It's working out great for the communist governments of Quebec and Washington State. The communists in Norway also seem to be doing ok.

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

#222

Post by WalterBright »

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…

Most dams are privately owned.

https://www.fema.gov/sites/default/files/2020-08/fema_living...

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

#223

Post by sbierwagen »

ianai wrote: post #213

“Our process works by using solar power to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, concentrating CO2 from the atmosphere, then combining CO2 and hydrogen to form natural gas” Tell me if this sounds familiar. How about we store that natural gas underground in the same areas we’ve been taking it out? Sounds kinda like a natural for energy storage and a little carbon sequestration. (Can’t be sure with myself whether I’m s…

If you're doing carbon sequestration you skip the part where you convert it to methane and just sequester the captured CO2.

Given the scale of the problem, something like that will (should?) be done. If we take it seriously and figure out a political solution, eventually every current natural gas well will be converted to CCS and run in "reverse", as it were.

However, the energetics are such that most carbon capture, barring nanotech magic, will be done via enhanced weathering or tree burial.

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

#224

Post by sbierwagen »

zizee wrote: post #116
leobg wrote: post #79

What would interest me: Can I do this locally, at the site of the consumer? Take the unused PV output of my house in summer to fill my house’s tank with natural gas for use in winter? Is that something that would be technically feasible today?

Why convert to gas for heating later when you can just store heat itself?* There was an article/discussion here recently about heat batteries using sand to store heat for months, to use for heating in winter. This tech seems fairly simple to implement at scale. https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2022-07-19/sand-battery-... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32006791 *This is a rhetorical question, I'm sure everyon…

In the residential context, the magic word here is "ground source heat pump". A really big coolant loop that stores heat underground. Depending on the jurisdiction and loop size, figure it will cost $15,000+

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

#225

Post by WalterBright »

Hammershaft wrote: post #198
WalterBright wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Reagan created and governed on unprecedented peacetime deficits caused by his military spending and tax changes. If his policy had any meaningful influence over the economy of the 80s it's likely the massive deficit spending. That said, the link between presidential policy & short term economic changes is universally overstated. The government can cut down basic research funding and the effects won't be felt for a ha…

My point was his policies caused a shift in investment capital away from unproductive tax shelters and into productive investments. Eliminating the tax shelters was part of the deal he made with Democrats to get the budget passed.

That can't help but produce positive economic changes.

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

#226

Post by oneoff786 »

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-...

Wow shoutout to insolation being an amazing word

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

#227

Post by uwuemu »

borissk wrote: post #201
bryanlarsen wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even that "exponential" growth is a not a thing anymore. There are factors which make it less obvious (growing TDPs of modern CPUs and GPUs; going wider, i.e. increasing the number of CPU cores, instead of faster; making chiplets and building cpus out of them instead of big single dies), but these factors only postpone the inevitable (there's only so many levers you can pull and most of them have already been pulled). We're a couple years away from the silicon limit, the 2nm situation already looks grim.

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

#228

Post by defrost »

WalterBright wrote: post #222
walrus01 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Most dams are privately owned. https://www.fema.gov/sites/default/files/2020-08/fema_living...

"never ever" is both a strong claim and ridiculous.

I'll take the Australian Snowy River Hydro scheme over the mess in Texas any day.

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

#230

Post by WalterBright »

defrost wrote: post #228
WalterBright wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most dams are privately owned. https://www.fema.gov/sites/default/files/2020-08/fema_living...

"never ever" is both a strong claim and ridiculous. I'll take the Australian Snowy River Hydro scheme over the mess in Texas any day.

How about the California power system?
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