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Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

arstechnica.com

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Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

#231

Post by jandrese »

nerdralph wrote: post #203
devin wrote: post #181

Does anyone in these comments have any tips for would-be solar farmers or people who are generally interested in being part of building out the future of our grid? I'd like to get my hands dirty. I'm talking about getting into 5-10 MW projects, not solar on a roof.

Don't start with a 5MW project. Start with a 10-20kW ground-mount project in your back yard. Then build a 100-200kW project before trying MW.

I think the hardest part of building a solar farm is the permitting. Many municipalities are hostile to the idea of converting farmland into solar fields, even with agrovoltaics. There are special interest groups that may come in and try to derail your project by propagandizing the local community against it. "But what will we eat?" is a propaganda point that you will hear a lot even though it's totally bogus.

If I were doing this I'd be looking for a partner that is already in the business. The politics are a lot more complicated than the technology. It would be very easy to get screwed over if you don't know which palms to grease.

Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

#232

Post by thrance »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #26
ertgbnm wrote: post #22

I am reminded by the perhaps revisionist history but still applicable belief that slavery was really ended by industrialization making abolition economically advantageous and not actually a socially driven movement. (In reality it was certainly a convoluted mixture of the two I'm sure.) I hope we are in a similar era with regards to climate change. Surely there's a lot of money to be made in harnessing effectively un…

> With a bit of social pressure we should be able to extinct the fossil fuel industry Taking Europe versus China, California versus Texas, it seems like social pressure is less effective than markets. Let markets build the power source they want to build and lo and behold you get lots of solar and wind and batteries.

If we let the markets have their way, Earth becomes unhabitable. Coal and oil plants aren't being shut down. In fact, we have more than ever with additional ones on the way.

Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

#233

Post by tonymet »

ertgbnm wrote: post #22

I am reminded by the perhaps revisionist history but still applicable belief that slavery was really ended by industrialization making abolition economically advantageous and not actually a socially driven movement. (In reality it was certainly a convoluted mixture of the two I'm sure.) I hope we are in a similar era with regards to climate change. Surely there's a lot of money to be made in harnessing effectively un…

Slavery was ended in the USA by the Civil War veterans.

Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

#234

Post by selimthegrim »

legitster wrote: post #64
peyton wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

- The difference between Ben Franklin writing about farming in the 1770s and the civil war was that industrialization didn't hit the US until the 1810s/1820s when the first steel mills and steam engines were set up. - "These people categorically did not want to start a farm; otherwise they would not have been facing famine." The vast majority of immigrants to the US at this time WERE farmers who were not allowed to o…

- The South was staunchly anti-immigrant and barely had any cities at the time.

New Orleans has entered the chat.

Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

#235

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

jandrese wrote: post #226
floatrock wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese also have battery manufacturing, whose rapidly falling cost-curve is what is missing to enable 24/7 solar. American empire ruled with the petrodollar. Chinese will rule with the solaryuan if we don't get our shit together.

You just slightly missed the crux of the issue here. The big "problem" with renewables like solar is that once you've installed enough for yourself you are done for like 30 years. There is no monthly sun fee you need to keep paying. There is no solardollar , because there's nothing that needs to be extracted, transported, and sold every single day. A lot of billionaires are in an existential crisis over a world where…

An interesting prospect is the grids getting smaller. Becoming distributed again.

Why pay the enormous maintenance cost for a continental scale grid when you can in your neighborhood have a small local grid with solar, wind and storage followed by a tiny diesel/gas turbine ensuring reliability through firming.

When deemed necessary decarbonize the firming by running it on carbon neutral fuels.

Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

#236

Post by jandrese »

margalabargala wrote: post #219
bilsbie wrote: post #209

I was curious to try a project: can I charge my car 100 miles per day for under $1000 all in? I’m trying to source a battery power pack and cheap panels.

That would be around 30kwh per day so probably not, but you could get close. Assuming you're in the US, new solar modules go for about $0.28/watt. If you dump the entire $1k into just modules, that will get you about 3.5kW of panels. Which will probably hit your target on sunny days during the summer. But that doesn't include inverters if you want to do a grid tie, or batteries if you don't, or wiring, or whatever yo…

$1,000 is definitely too ambitious for that much energy. Even just the charging plug for the car is going to take a sizeable bite out of that.

Another way to think about this is that $1,000 is about 20 tanks of gas, assuming you get 400 miles per tank that's 8,000 miles, which is less than a year of driving for the average American. You can increase your budget and still come out way ahead.

The other consideration is that this scheme only works if you only drive at night, otherwise you'll need a battery to store that power while your car is out and about during the day, or you'll need to grid tie and use the grid as your battery.

Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

#237

Post by [deleted] »

inglor_cz wrote: post #173
05 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharashka

Sure you can stuff smart people into penal colonies, but what is their productivity? I am not aware of anyone like Kapica or Kolmogorov producing their best results in a penal camp. OTOH we have a notorious railway tunnel in Prague from the 1950s, designed by imprisoned engineers. Guess what, it is half a foot too narrow to put two tracks into. Someone got the last laugh.

[deleted]

Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

#238

Post by 8ytecoder »

margalabargala wrote: post #211
viewtransform wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California power generation profile yesterday showing solar and battery proportion. https://engaging-data.com/california-electricity-generation/...

Is California enough to drag the rest of the country with them, though?

Texas, technically, generates more TWh than California. I think a data center boom followed by a bust would help a lot more than what California can do. Unlike in cars, CAs market size or regulations can’t help/hinder other fuel sources as much.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_renewab...

Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

#239

Post by pm90 »

helterskelter wrote: post #200
legitster wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am reminded by the perhaps revisionist history but still applicable belief that slavery was really ended by industrialization making abolition economically advantageous and not actually a socially driven movement. (In reality it was certainly a convoluted mixture of the two I'm sure.) More or less. Adam Smith famously wrote that slavery was economically detrimental way back in 1776. It still took nearly 100 years…

The south wasn't really situated for industrialization at the time. They didn't have enough rivers that could turn a water wheel effectively. (That's what I've heard anyway)

Hmm, this doesn’t seem to be accurate. The missouri/mississipi rivers come to mind, as do many other river systems.

Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

#240

Post by embedding-shape »

inglor_cz wrote: post #173
05 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharashka

Sure you can stuff smart people into penal colonies, but what is their productivity? I am not aware of anyone like Kapica or Kolmogorov producing their best results in a penal camp. OTOH we have a notorious railway tunnel in Prague from the 1950s, designed by imprisoned engineers. Guess what, it is half a foot too narrow to put two tracks into. Someone got the last laugh.

Does it matter what their productivity is as long as it's above 0 of whatever? Leon Theremin invented the "Buran eavesdropping system" while "working" at the sharashka, used to spy on embassies in Moscow via their windows.

Another fun anecdote related to Theremin:

> Theremin invented another listening device called The Thing, hidden in a replica of the Great Seal of the United States carved in wood. In 1945, Soviet school children presented the concealed bug to the U.S. Ambassador as a "gesture of friendship" to the USSR's World War II ally. It hung in the ambassador’s residential office in Moscow and intercepted confidential conversations there during the first seven years of the Cold War, until it was accidentally discovered in 1952.

Interesting life in general: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Theremin

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