31–40 of 43 posts
This article is a bad rewrite of this one from a month ago: https://www.ecoticias.com/en/japan-super-solar-panel/12474/ > Scientists in Japan have been discussing the possibility of using a material called perovskite for solar panels > The perovskite tandem cell has a theoretical efficiency limit of 43 per cent, while the silicon-based cell has a theoretical efficiency limit of 29 percent. It is speculated that these…
Only 20? Why not 50? 100? These are rookie numbers. As long as you're just making shit up, I want a solar panel more powerful than 9000 nuclear reactors.
In my experience, no matter how many panels you install, Solar can cover power consumption 30-40% of its max capacity. Winter, night, bad weather will eat the rest. To go beyond the 30-40% you will need energy store or alternative sources. This is still great but not a 100% solution.
Most people who care about independence should be concerned with having a system that can run in island mode but at least 90% of systems installed today are grid tied and cannot function as an island
It makes absolutely zero sense for me, a homeowner in New Mexico, to have my own storage facilities capable of getting me through a winter heating season (using air-source heat pumps). It makes much more sense for the storage to be centralized, scaled and managed, while my own PV array contributes to it during the summer time.
>Renewable energy in Japan will receive a *seismic shift* Maybe not the best analogy for the most earthquake-prone country in the world?
Aspiration for 20 GW of power by 2040, or in 15 years time. In the period 1980-1990, I repeat in a 50% shorter period commencing forty years ago , France installed 34 GW of nuclear. All I want is for someone advocating renewables over nuclear to give me a single example of a buildout of available-in-winter power exceeding that target with the forty years of investment available. Or to agree that we have, fundamentall…
Both wind and solar have deployed faster than nuclear ever did globally. And that's in Wh terms, you specify capacity but I guess you'd be annoyed if I replied that renewables beat that capacity easily, like China deploying 80GW of wind just last year. Here's an article looking at per capita increases show that France and Sweden did really well but renewables are accelerating past their records: https://www.sustainab…
Perovskite cells still don't make much sense for the majority of applications (and I suspect they never will): they're expensive, generally use toxic materials, and degrade much more quickly than silicon panels. Silicon panels are cheap, non-toxic, and long-lasting and plenty efficient enough for 90% of use cases.
Agreed, thought if we could get silicon + perovskite working well with stable perovskite that combined efficiency might be worthwhile.
Aspiration for 20 GW of power by 2040, or in 15 years time. In the period 1980-1990, I repeat in a 50% shorter period commencing forty years ago , France installed 34 GW of nuclear. All I want is for someone advocating renewables over nuclear to give me a single example of a buildout of available-in-winter power exceeding that target with the forty years of investment available. Or to agree that we have, fundamentall…
> we have, fundamentally and quite deliberately, become worse at generating [nuclear] energy Yes. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014... Nuclear has a negative learning curve: it gets more expensive over time. Solar gets (spectacularly) cheaper over time. You might not like it but that's what the built infrastructure and its invoices tell us.
How Record Breaking Perovskites Are Here NOW [2024-12-17]
Undecided with Matt Ferrell
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEgkTnkNhRs
My noob takeaway, from Ferrell and others, is that solar cells will continue to improve (per cost-learning curve) for the foreseeable future. It's no longer the bottleneck.
We now need to focus on the current bottlenecks. Like policy, building codes, installation costs, inverters, coercing utilities and their regulators into accelerating grid improvements (to accommodate new generation, storage, and customers), etc.
Lastly, per Jenny Chase (Bloomberg NEF), we urgently need to double down on renewable competitors to solar, like wind and advanced geothermal. To keep those tech stacks in the running (cost of capital, ROI). So they remain commercially available for use cases not addressed by solar. Lest they be left behind and therefore more likely to stay on fossil carbon.