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

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

#241

Post by acidburnNSA » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 2:27 AM UTC

kragen wrote: post #237

acidburnNSA wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst builds ever are worse than PV (this is how lazard computes it) but Hualong 1 and APR1400 designs are cheaper when you consider full systems costs. We'll build those.

Maybe, we'll see. The Chinese Communist Party doesn't seem to agree with you, even though the capacity factor of PV in the PRC is absolutely abysmal. The figures I've seen suggest that the capex cost of a coal power plant — which is basically a nuclear power plant without the nuclear reactor — is high enough to be uncompetitive with PV in most of the world now, even if the coal were free . So I'm skeptical that GE or…

That's not what I heard at all.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-11-02/china-cli...

Are you thinking of lcoe instead of total system cost by chance?

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

#242

Post by m463 » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 2:28 AM UTC

walrus01 wrote: post #159

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…

With bulk PV panels by the pallet already at something like $0.42 per STC watt the majority of a residential or small commercial install is already dominated by the cost of labor and other components. I could theoretically go out and buy a pallet load of twenty, 360W rated, 72 cell panels at something like $160 per piece, costing something like $3,200 + $400 LTL freight. But it's going to cost way more than that to p…

I always liked perusing https://sunelec.com because they have interesting per-pallet or per-container pricing

plentiful wattage would be an interesting DIY project.

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

#243

Post by incompatible » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 2:33 AM UTC

thejarren wrote: post #63

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…

Just to add to this conversation a bit, did you know Singapore is running power wires to gather solar from Australia? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia-Asia_Power_Link

Remarkably, this was being planned even while Australia had an anti renewable energy government, which was more interested in promoting the coal industry. Yet as the maps make clear, Australia with its climate, location, and low population density, is potentially a solar energy superpower.

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

#244

Post by intrasight » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 2:33 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…

"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway." –Andrew Tanenbaum, 1981

We deliver everything else by road. We should deliver power by road. The roads are already there. Once most long-distance trucking is done by robot (~10 years me thinks), there will be plenty of bandwidth. We need "standard units of power" (Sups) that are interchangeable with and usable with everything that produces and consumes power. The interfaces should be standardized. The internals can be proprietary.

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

#245

Post by 8note » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 2:34 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #150

lotharcable wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money != Wealth You can go ahead and force every billionaire to sell off everything they own and hand it to the government and all you end up with is a one time boost to government tax receipts. That's it. One time boost. Next year those billionaires will be gone. There won't be new ones. And it won't create any more food. It won't solve shortages. It won't create more solar panels. It won't create 1 mile of copper l…

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

Aramco has done great though

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

#246

Post by zmix » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 2:35 AM UTC

Article has very good wording!

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

#247

Post by 8note » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 2:36 AM UTC

pclmulqdq wrote: post #205

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…

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…

As a limiting case, a private system can't do it cheaper than a public one. A private system needs to skim profits off the top, which will always limit how cheap it can go

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

#248

Post by 8note » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 2:37 AM UTC

kortilla wrote: post #111

adaml_623 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The good news is that humanity has saved up a few trillion for emergencies. The bad news is that it's been saved up and hidden in tax havens. Pity

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…

Haven't the covid losses already paid back? We aren't in absolute catastrophe

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

#249

Post by scaramanga » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 2:38 AM UTC

As in many times more solar panels than can be constructed with all of the resources that can possibly ever be extracted from the earth? I suppose that is true, and an be verified with some pretty simple back of the envelope calculations.

I must admit, I only skimmed through the apparently meaningless technobabble, but if someone could let me know succinctly, we still don't have anything more effective at carbon sequestration that trees, right? And how well are trees doing?

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

#250

Post by epistasis » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 2:38 AM UTC

azinman2 wrote: post #239

Given all of the factors involved to manufacture the capacity the author is talking about (we'll ignore labor & land costs to install), wouldn't it be better to put that into cheaper/safer/smaller nuclear power? It already runs 24/7 with no CO2.

Run the numbers, I don't think there's any chance of nuclear providing any sort of economic competition. Even at hopelessly optimistic prices like $7k/kW overnight cost, nuclear is at a huge disadvantage to current solar pricing. Much less the pricing for solar at halfway through the nuclear reactor's life, 20-30 years from now.

Additionally, we have little hope of scaling nuclear construction capacity to meet the necessary demand. Whereas solar/wind/storage is way ahead and scaling at ridiculously high rates.

Spend 5 years building a reactor, and you get a some number of GW. Spend that same construction capacity building mines and factories, and you get some GW/year additional production capacity.

Construction capacity is fixed, really bad, and productivity has not increased in years. Applying that construction capacity to nuclear is a linear attack to energy production. Applying that construction capacity to solar/wind/storage is an exponential attack on energy production.