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

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

#251

Post by 8note » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 2:39 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #225

Hammershaft wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The investment shift being into military contracting though?

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

#252

Post by bryanlarsen » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 2:41 AM UTC

maerF0x0 wrote: post #192

The amount of solar panes we need was first impressed upon my by David Mackay's "Without Hot Air"[1]. I personally think solar is a useful tool for certain applications, but powering all of humanity with it feels like a step backwards paradigmatically. Really roughly speak we can think of solar as a step forward in human compatible photosynthesis. Humanity went to another tier of energy when we started to harness fir…

Without Hot Air and this blog are polar opposites. Without Hot Air uses costs from 2008 and assumes that they won't improve.

The costs of solar have reduced by 90% since 2008 so McKay's conclusions are horribly wrong.

OTOH Casey Handler is betting his company that the costs will improve from current values.

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

#253

Post by Teever » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 2:41 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #232

rfrey wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The communists in Norway, like Russia, benefit enormously from pumping oil out of the ground, which goes to the government. In Norway's case, it's 20% of the GDP. Probably much more today with all the oil price increases.

Can you comment on the communists of Quebec? As a Canadian, this is what I find lacking in debate on American sites like Reddit or HN.

Canada is very similar to the United States, another way of saying that is that Canada does things slightly different yet the results seem to be profoundly different than the States.

Why is that, and what are we as Canadians doing that Americans and others around the world should attempt to copy and improve upon?

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

#254

Post by Consultant32452 » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 2:44 AM UTC

8note wrote: post #247

pclmulqdq wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

"Your margin is my opportunity." ~Jeff Bezos

Private is cheaper if there is competition. Monopolies are always more costly, public or private.

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

#255

Post by dhritzkiv » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 2:45 AM UTC

intrasight wrote: post #244

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 everyth…

I don't know if I quite understand this idea, but why road and not rail, or something more purpose built? High production locales and high demand ones are most likely to be spread across long distances

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

#256

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 2:45 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…

[deleted]

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

#257

Post by scaramanga » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 2:45 AM UTC

standardUser wrote: post #30

Can anyone provide a summary of this blog post? I am finding it strangely tricky to follow.

Looks like hopium peddling around their new invention which will solve climate change (spoiler alert: it absolutely won't) and generate limitless energy at the same time (spoiler alert: we have effectively limitless energy in the form of fossil fuels, and even if you ignore climate change, we have already used it to basically destroy our own future by treating the earth as a garbage dump / shithole to be asset stripped of everything of worth to convert it into worthless landfill while basic human needs are still unmet).

Let me know if you're interested and PM be because, gosh, do I have the investment opportunity of a lifetime for you. /s :)

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

#258

Post by kragen » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 2:48 AM UTC

acidburnNSA wrote: post #241

kragen wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Thank you for linking this article! It answers a lot of questions I'd had after reading some poorer coverage of this initiative last year.

I'm definitely not talking about LCOE; I'm just talking about up-front capex. Conceivably nuclear plants could be cheaper to build than PV farms, but still have a worse LCOE, but I don't think they're even cheaper to build. Even for China, which is the best in the world at building things.

This article says the PRC plans to build another 147 GW for a total of 200 GW by 02035, over 14 years, averaging 10 GW per year. Total PRC marketed energy consumption is on the order of 6 TW (6000 GW), though I'm extrapolating that from a figure of 28 PWh/year in 02010 and an increase in energy consumption of 90% since then, and I'd be delighted to have more reliable data.

So the plan is to add an additional 2% to their energy supply (assuming capacity factor 90%) in the form of nuclear — over the course of 14 years, during which time their total energy consumption will presumably roughly double.

In that context this doesn't seem like a huge bet on nuclear to me.

The article says, "China keeps the exact costs a state secret, but analysts including BloombergNEF and the World Nuclear Association estimate China can build plants for about $2,500 to $3,000 per kilowatt." That's roughly six times the cost of PV plants—barely competitive with PV in polar and cloudy regions where PV capacity factors are 10-15%, completely unviable in sunny regions where PV capacity factors approach 30%.

I don't have figures yet for 02021 (do you?) but in 02020, looking only at electric power generation, they installed 48.2 GW(p) of new solar, 71.7 GW(p) of new wind, and 38.4 GW(e) of new coal. If the capacity factors are average for the energy source, that would be 6.3 GW(mean) of new solar, 16 GW(mean) of new wind, and 19.2 GW(mean) of new coal, and yes, PRC's average coal capacity factor really is reported to be just 50%. Solar and wind have been rising much faster.

So that's the context in which I'm saying the CPC doesn't seem to think nuclear power is economically competitive with renewables. It's already installing more renewables than nuclear, even after derating for the different capacity factors and including these future nuclear plans, which may fail to materialize, and it has been for years.

What's your interpretation?

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-energy-climatechang... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26227823 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-coal-idUSKBN2A308U https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_policy_of_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_China https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PV_cume_semi_log_cha... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics#Countr...

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

#259

Post by jprd » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 2:50 AM UTC

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 isn't, not when there is a better _commercial_ system in the world. If the "invisible hand" was real, great. As it has been a constantly manipulated and managed construct within the world of global finance from the moment Adam Smith shared it with anyone, it completely ceased to have any meaning going forward other than license to savage.

Economics isn't science or maths when you get past the micro level. It is psychology.

If there is a Capitalist society that also has a deep respect for mental health, I say it only exists in Science Fiction from the 50s and 60s.

The goals of communism are pure and true, but insanely unrealistic considering we're talking about humans who still instinctually believe in a reality where scarcity is anything other than a human construct.

On the other hand, naturally, barely restrained capitalism is just going to be a giant cancer where the rich feast off the poor until it all goes down in flames.

What's needed is a shared sense of morality, community and survival across our species.

History says we're fucked.

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

#260

Post by scaramanga » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 2:52 AM UTC

krallja wrote: post #217

standardUser wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe if natural gas was in short supply I could understand their angle. But it isn't, so I don't. Seems like a solution in search of a problem. Meanwhile, global warming, the paramount problem, needs fast solutions, not elaborate stopgap workarounds.

> if natural gas was in short supply You are aware of the situation in western Europe, yes?

Remind me, western europe, that is the place where offshore wind is way cheaper than natural gas and other alternatives but where the political and economic system seems to be completely unable to connect investments with rational policy goals (survival, independence) and needs of the population (maintaining core temperature within non-lethal ranges, etc.)? :)

So I mean, I assume the original point is about supply/demand, but supply of gas is already short, prices are already high, alternatives are already cheaper, and yet our system is still failing to take any action that might lead to a survivable outcome. So the supply/demand thing seems like a completely meaningless tangent at this point??