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

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

#291

Post by stevage » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 4:00 AM UTC

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…

Well the author points out with data to back them up that people have incorrectly assumed many times along the way that the exponential trend was about to end, while in fact it's accelerating.

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

#292

Post by Retric » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 4:02 AM UTC

walrus01 wrote: post #285

Retric wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Running normal high voltage lines 250 miles isn’t free, and that cost should be part of the comparison used.

Also, the cheapest land I found was 4k/acre, still well above pfdietz’s estimate.

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

#293

Post by stevage » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 4:03 AM UTC

walrus01 wrote: post #278

incompatible wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Australia and its policy on coal mines and such seems like a bizarre version of USA Republicans. It's like English-colonialism Texas.

Yes, although with our recent election result, it looks like the tide may finally have turned. The pro coal government really sucked. They went from "we support renewables in theory but the economic case isn't there" to "we will do anything possible to continue to burn coal, including buying uneconomic coal power stations whose owners don't want to run them anymore'.

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

#294

Post by Terr_ » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 4:03 AM UTC

oneoff786 wrote: post #226

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-...

Wow shoutout to insolation being an amazing word

I get the feeling that one could shorten it to "solation" and it would still have the same meaning, etymologically-speaking.

Like inflammable/flammable.

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

#295

Post by elihu » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 4:04 AM UTC

pclmulqdq wrote: post #204

elihu wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious if anyone knows the cost/benefit analysis of HVDC over aluminum cables versus using high-temperature superconductors like ReBCO tape. Maybe supply of yttrium is a bottleneck preventing large-scale use of ReBCO? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare-earth_barium_copper_oxide

High voltage solves a lot of materials problems for wires. I assume that almost everything about superconductors is expensive to do, not just the raw materials, which makes it too costly (in both energy and money) to use them as wires.

I assume there's a really high fixed cost involved in creating a cable installation that's insulated and continuously chilled to liquid nitrogen temperatures, but maybe there's a break even point if the amount of current you're moving is large enough? I mean, if you're comparing with an aluminum or copper cable with a cross section measured in meters, that isn't cheap either.

There might not be a break-even point. Maybe ReBCO tape is just more expensive per amp it can transport than ordinary conductive metals like aluminum. Maybe HVDC lines can be boosted to arbitrarily high voltages such that you never need huge cables in the first place.

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

#296

Post by specialist » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 4:04 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #147

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

High taxes always drive capital away into unproductive tax havens. Reagan's achievement was to eliminate tax shelters in exchange for lower tax rates. This pulled the investment out of those unproductive shelters into productive activities, leading to the prosperity of the 80s.

The revenue corollary of PAYGO.

I support tax cuts being tightly coupled with much reduced tax avoidance. Retroactively.

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

#297

Post by maerF0x0 » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 4:05 AM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #252

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.

While the cost of the hardware has, many factors still apply such as efficiency and thusly the total area of solar required.

You're right though that the book is not up to date, and getting long in the tooth in some aspects.

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

#298

Post by caseyf7 » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 4:06 AM UTC

Why is China’s photovoltaic potential so low?

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

#299

Post by tsimionescu » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 4:09 AM UTC

pydry wrote: post #212

pclmulqdq wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would become a lot less real too. The wealth of people who mostly get it from stock ownership is a complete fiction, driven by the scarcity of shares on the open market. If Jeff Bezos dumped his entire holding in AMZN shares, the whole company would be worth a lot less. Not due to any sort of magical effect of Jeff Bezos, but due to the market being flooded with supply.

I guess this means if a hypothetical Bill Gates sold off the vast majority of the 45% of Microsoft stock he owned then the company would then be worth a lot less? It really is weird how frequently I see the view you espouse and how nobody who repeats it seems to consider the clearest, most obvious counterexample that so completely disproves it.

So you think that Microsoft stock price wouldn't go down significantly if Bill Gates put 45% of the company up for sale?

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

#300

Post by Retric » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 4:09 AM UTC

pfdietz wrote: post #267

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…

> 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.

Land is just an example, running new HV power lines from ultra cheap land to consumers is another cost that’s not dropping.

If hypothetically ~10% of costs are fixed the maximum theoretical cost reduction is 90%. Which the quoted 10% annual cost reductions in solar hit in 22 years. But more realistically the closer you approach theoretical maximum the more difficult it is to improve at the existing rate.