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We're going to need a lot of solar panels
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Re: We're going to need a lot of solar panels
#282In general, increasing the concentration of any product in a closed system requires net energy input across the system boundary. Larger increases in concentration need more energy input than smaller increases of concentration. Concentrating atmospheric CO2 involves increasing the concentration from approx. 400 ppm, to a higher target concentration. That's 0.04%. There is no way around the energy input requirement wit…
Point source capture is pointless: We need the capacity to reduce the atmospheric CO2 concentration. Capturing every molecule of CO2 emitted at its source wouldn’t solve global warming.
Re: We're going to need a lot of solar panels
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Edit2: Closest found was 9k per acre a little over 250 miles away.
Re: We're going to need a lot of solar panels
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I also use sunelec as a general small quantity pricing benchmark, but for the west coast, their prices can be matched from several distributors that ship from California warehouses.
Re: We're going to need a lot of solar panels
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Edit2: Closest found was 9k per acre a little over 250 miles away.
250 miles is a totally normal distance for high voltage AC electrical transmission lines.
Re: We're going to need a lot of solar panels
#286It’s been a while since I’ve read something that made me feel as excited and optimistic. I hope it pans out. It feels like early Intel days, seeing what costs would be if sales were orders of magnitude more than what they are and start selling at those prices now. A self-fulfilling prophecy of supply and demand.
The technology and economics are there for renewables. The big barrier is political.
There is deeply entrenched ideological opposition to renewable energy at some (but not all) utilities, all the way to the leadership.
And just because an energy source is the cheapest, doesn't mean that it will be the one chosen by the entrenched monopolies that are our utilities. There are lots of bad incentives out there.
Re: We're going to need a lot of solar panels
#287Re: We're going to need a lot of solar panels
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
Absolutely. California alone is curtailing enormous amounts of renewables, hundreds of thousands of MWh/month (depending on the season). That is literally clean energy being thrown away (which, depending on system design, is variably tolerable; you're balancing cost, transmission congestion, and renewables offsetting fossil combustion). More transmission, more batteries, more storage, more load shifting (both tempora…
California's oversupply problem is caused by, allow me to guess, fixed 24/7 electricity rates. These fixed rates remove all incentive for load shifting. Make electricity cheap when the sun shines, and expensive at night, and the market will shift demand. There are lots of cheap and easy ways to shift demand, I've outlined several on HN.
I'm more likely to be dubious about the free markets supposedly unique ability to solve problems than not.
But buying electricity at $50/mwhr at noon and reselling it at $200 mwh six hours later.
Re: We're going to need a lot of solar panels
#289Earlier 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…
> Some of those can continue to get cheaper, but land costs for example aren’t dropping. The great thing about solar is that you can put a lot of it directly on rooftops in most places. Obviously not on top of skyscrapers in NYC, but there are plenty of homes and businesses with ample room for panels.
Rooftop solar is now far more expensive than utility scale solar. As a renter who subsidies this through my electricity bills I don’t understand why I should be subsidising more artisanal scale generation for homeowners at 3x the price of utility scale solar.
Re: We're going to need a lot of solar panels
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Our very existence is the problem, and our insatiable appetites for reproducing and consuming. Would you tell an animal that? What about bacteria? I think the optimistic view is fashion is cyclical and the contrary will become fashionable again.
> Would you tell an animal that? What about bacteria? Yes, see: every “invasive” species. Or bacterial infection.
Yeah but would you tell a living plant that to their face? Those poor ivy, kudzu, algae, and dandelion weeds! /s