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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

#261

Post by elihu »

walrus01 wrote: post #53
jjk166 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hundreds of square km is not a lot, and the ecosystems where these systems would be installed are typically not rich havens of life. The US's power consumption would require about 6000-9000 sq km of solar panels (assuming ~15% efficiency) For comparison in the US there are about 13000-33000 sq km of parking lots, 93000 sq km of alfalfa cultivation, 69000 sq km of fallow agricultural land, and the mojave desert is abo…

> parking lots This is how much of downtown Tulsa, OK is covered in parking lots: https://i.redd.it/ukzcn1xx6cc91.jpg There is no technological problem to covering a parking lot in PV, it's a question of the political will and money to do it.

The problem with covering a parking lot with solar panels is that it's usually a lot more expensive than covering rural land with solar panels. The panels have to be mounted higher off the ground so vehicles can get beneath them, they're usually expected to have a reasonably visually-appealing design, and all the wiring has to be kept safely out of the way and inaccessible to pedestrians. This drives up costs.

If land was truly scarce, parking lot solar would be a good option but I expect most installations will use the cheaper option of just building solar farms a long ways away from people.

Solar parking lots also might make sense in situations where all the power is being used on-site, and it's cheaper in the long run than buying power from the local utility.

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

#263

Post by natch »

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…

For places and times without sun there are other solutions such as natural gas. We are not trying to entirely eliminate all uses of fossil fuels for energy; just reduce them drastically where practical. There is also nuclear (longer time scale), hydro, wind, batteries, and transmission lines, among others.

You can cherry pick any one of these alternatives to criticize. Of course every solution has its issues. But they can each be used as needed to suit the situation.

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

#264

Post by zbrozek »

WalterBright wrote: post #220
zbrozek wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most of California (served by PG&E) it's really expensive during the day, blisteringly expensive in the evening, and really expensive at night.

> really expensive during the day Doesn't really seem to fit with having surplus power.

I blame the CPUC for basically everything regarding the crappiness of being a grid customer in California. PG&E is exactly the result you'd expect to get in our regulatory environment.

Our regulators rubber stamp every tariff plan the company puts forth, and lets them get a larger profit margin on capex vs opex. So of course the optimal strategy is to run all equipment to failure and replace it with maximally expensive everything as frequently as possible.

Torching the state is the business plan.

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

#265

Post by tstrimple »

TheLoafOfBread wrote: post #124
whimsicalism wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Energy storage

Could you be more specific? Because battery energy storage barely works for houses and you can't build pump storage everywhere. Then there are few prototypes like Power-To-Gas which has promising prospect and rest is in level of sci-fi

These are old talking points. Solar plants with gigawatts of storage are being built right now, today. Costs for such large scale storage are dropping quickly and are estimated to cost half of what they do today in 2030. Nuclear proponents need to update their material with the times. They keep insisting that nuclear is "The Only Way" meanwhile, in reality, we're building renewables backed by storage at higher rates than ever before. Solar plus storage is cheaper and faster to build TODAY than nuclear has ever been.

https://electrek.co/2022/03/07/solar-and-battery-storage-mak...

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

#266

Post by scaramanga »

atty wrote: post #135
standardUser wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you, that is what I gathered, give or take. I guess I was just taken aback by the idea that instead of displacing natural gas we would use more energy to make natural gas. Seems like the ultra-gargantuan investments needed for this kind of transition would be better spent transitioning to a mostly-electric energy economy.

In the long term, complete displacement of hydrocarbons from the economy is probably the end goal. However, we are nowhere near being able to do that right now. Obviously for the billions of vehicles on the road and the current grid power generation we need not just solar/wind generation, but also massive amounts of grid storage (or massive increases in nuclear) and vehicle batteries. But in industry there are tons o…

No, I think we are quite near to being able to achieve that.

There may be billions of vehicles on the road, but as soon as the system fails to be able to upkeep all the deployed capital required to maintain them in operating condition (road resurfacing, parts manufacture, refinement and transportation of fuel, maintaining the value of currency in order to motivate the workers to participate in all of the necessary steps, security from hostilities, roads not being flooded/melted, and so on). In such eventualities sizeable portions of the fleet may be rendered inoperable quite quickly and cars will be displaced, out of necessity, by walking.

What you're making is a different point, it's not that we can't displace hydrocarbons, it's that we can't displace them with something equivalent-or-better. We can probably displace cars with walking, concrete structures with ad-hoc shelters, and hospitals with prayer. That is all not just very achievable, but has actually been increasing in inevitability during our prior decades of "inaction" (obviously you can't really call it inaction when we're taking positives steps to hasten these outcomes)

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

#267

Post by pfdietz »

Retric wrote: post #149
bryanlarsen wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

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…

> but land costs for example aren’t dropping.

In the US, land is widely available at around $1000/acre. The current cost to cover that with PV is around $100,000/acre (depending on the fill factor).

So, land costs are not a substantial obstacle to reduction in the cost of PV energy.

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

#268

Post by pfdietz »

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…

A world powered by PV will be mostly powered by larger scale ground mounted PV, not by PV on the roofs of homes and businesses.

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

#269

Post by pfdietz »

Retric wrote: post #202
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…

The article suggested local production, good luck buying land anywhere close to NYC at 100$/acre. Mores law also failed several times. More revised his initial 1965 estimate for a doubling every year in 1975. He predicted various doubling rates with the weakest form being transistors on a single chip every 2 years starting in 1980. So, it’s current form isn’t an exponential increase in density but in terms of transis…

You can get land in upstate NY for $1000/acre. There's a lot of cheap rural land even on the east cost.

Arguing that Manhattan is expensive therefore PV doesn't work is like arguing Manhattan is expensive therefore agriculture doesn't work.

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

#270

Post by pfdietz »

manmal wrote: post #127
ttyyzz wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hydrogen. This is my neighbor: https://hoermannsolar.de/wohnen-im-wasserstoffhaus/

I keep reading that H2 storage is difficult, lossy, and dangerous. H2 gas stations have blown up every now and then. Has that changed?

Hydrogen can be stored underground (and is), just like natural gas. This is much cheaper per unit energy storage capacity than storing energy in batteries.
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