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Solar and batteries can power the world

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Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#321

Post by rootusrootus »

gpm wrote: post #317
rootusrootus wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's on the high side, I would guess. Depending on what brand you want, you can get 10kWh of LFP for under a grand right now in the US.

With a BMS and inverter? What brand should I be looking at?

You will get a battery and BMS for that price. Decent inverters are expensive, however, so you won't get a whole 10kWh setup with appropriately sized inverter for under US$2K. Probably twice that.

I hesitate to offer any brand advice, because that is very situational, depends on what you're after, what experience level you have, what trade-offs you want to make, etc.

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#322

Post by mr_toad »

lstodd wrote: post #35
iamjake648 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a high efficiency heat pump, or how are you heating?

First question should be: what latitude? Because where I live around 55th this winter we had five straight weeks below -15c / 5f daily average plus enough snowfall that it was infeasible to clean anything but the most major roads. Solar is out of question in these conditions and when thermal pump fails you have to evacuate. When just grid electricity fails you have to either have some sort of stored fuel backup or ev…

> The article is typical handwavy crap which is popular among people living in what amounts to subtropics who can't even imagine how crazy they sound to most everyone else.

Most everyone else? Only about two percent of the Earths population live above the 55th parallel. There’s a big gulf between that and the ‘subtropics’.

I don’t disagree that solar/battery isn’t the answer for 100% of power needs, let alone 100% of heating needs, but if we got to even 50% we’d be in a lot better situation than we are now.

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#323

Post by Retric »

legitster wrote: post #158
Retric wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already have an electric grid we don’t need to build a new one from scratch just replace infrastructure that gets to old and add more for whatever extra demand shows up. Obviously other energy sources are going to exist and non solar power will be produced, but nuclear is getting fucked in a solar + battery heavy future. Nuclear already needs massive subsidies and those subsidies will need to get increasingly larg…

Nuclear costs are massively skewed by the compliance costs. Reactors that only took 5 years to build before ALARA are still safely running 80 years later. The 15-20 year build and certification time for new reactors is purely made up. The countries that are building our battery and solar pipeline (China, South Korea, Japan) are all building nuclear domestically at 1/3 of the cost of us. More importantly, for cobalt a…

> Maybe it won't be in the near future, or even in our lifetime, but there is no way the human race does not turn to nuclear eventually.

We already use nuclear, if you mean fission as a primary energy source…

Batteries don’t consume lithium, battery recycling doesn’t consume lithium, we a literally use the same lithium for hundreds of billions of years. So the only way humans are going to be forced to use nuclear is when the stars die.

I don’t think humans will last that long, but if they do I’m unsure what technology they’ll be using. Theoretically dumping matter into black holes beats nuclear, but who knows.

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#324

Post by audunw »

balderdash wrote: post #91
mbesto wrote: post #41

Fun fact, 12 million hectares of land of used to produce corn used for ethanol which is used to produce gas. I'll let you draw the conclusion. https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2025/04/trading-some-corn-e...

I’d rather people went rooftop solar, and put that land to producing food.

Why do you assume that solar and production of food is mutually exclusive on that land? Agrovoltaics is a thing and can often have benefits to the growing of crops.

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#325

Post by laurencerowe »

conorcleary wrote: post #163
jacquesm wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My conclusion is that you didn't even try to understand the GP.

No no, that argument is pretty old now. The amount of fuel you GROW on your own continent at any single or double digit percentage during wartime-anytime is probably a good long-term research project that shouldn't be interrupted by people online.

The problem is corn requires a lot of fossil fuel energy input, mostly in the form of fertiliser. The net energy output is only around 1.3 so an acre of corn produces maybe 400 gallons of gasoline equivalent output requires 300 gallons of gasoline equivalent in energy inputs.

Ethanol from sugarcane makes a lot more sense. Corn ethanol is just a wasteful subsidy for farmers paid for by drivers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_energy_balance

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#326

Post by morphle »

mbgerring wrote: post #62

If you’re one of the many companies working on reaching this goal, in defiance of everyone in this thread and elsewhere insisting it will never work, I’d like to work with you. I’ve worked with all of the largest solar, battery and EV companies, as well as America’s largest electric utilities, building complex analytics software to enable the clean energy transition. I’m looking for my next role to continue moving th…

I emailed you. You can work with us as it is a booming market in Europe and Ukraine (and probably in China too), you could expand our market into the USA. We build charging stations, big batteries (see my other posts in this thread and in my HN profile), Enernet smart grids and entire solar only neighborhoods (houses, solar, batteries, fast internet, water and sewage infrastructure) remotely, all based on 100% solar. From $40K per tiny house.

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#327

Post by laurencerowe »

zrail wrote: post #237
toasty228 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People still build houses like energy is cheap and abundant. A properly insulated house in any temperate climate require very little heating or cooling. Spend 50k on insulation that will last the life of the building instead of 50k on heating and cooling devices which will need constant maintenance and replacement + fuel and end up costing 10x more over the life of the building. A modern house with modern insulation…

Would you be willing to quantify what "mild" means to you, maybe in terms of a USDA zone? There are maps for both US and Europe: https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/pages/map-downloads https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:USDA_hardiness_zones...

Passive house standards first gained popularity in Germany and Scandinavia but it seems the principles have been adapted to quite a wide range of climate zones now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#328

Post by asdff »

mbesto wrote: post #41

Fun fact, 12 million hectares of land of used to produce corn used for ethanol which is used to produce gas. I'll let you draw the conclusion. https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2025/04/trading-some-corn-e...

Kinda funny how we invented a carbon neutral fuel system but we are like "lets only use it as a 15% mix" vs trying to design new engines for pure ethanol. You could fuel your car with hooch you made from yard waste.

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#329

Post by WillAdams »

asdff wrote: post #328
mbesto wrote: post #41

Fun fact, 12 million hectares of land of used to produce corn used for ethanol which is used to produce gas. I'll let you draw the conclusion. https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2025/04/trading-some-corn-e...

Kinda funny how we invented a carbon neutral fuel system but we are like "lets only use it as a 15% mix" vs trying to design new engines for pure ethanol. You could fuel your car with hooch you made from yard waste.

But is it carbon neutral?

How much energy in terms of calories does one get per acre?

What is the equivalent energy input in terms of diesel and so forth?

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#330

Post by asdff »

laurencerowe wrote: post #325
conorcleary wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No no, that argument is pretty old now. The amount of fuel you GROW on your own continent at any single or double digit percentage during wartime-anytime is probably a good long-term research project that shouldn't be interrupted by people online.

The problem is corn requires a lot of fossil fuel energy input, mostly in the form of fertiliser. The net energy output is only around 1.3 so an acre of corn produces maybe 400 gallons of gasoline equivalent output requires 300 gallons of gasoline equivalent in energy inputs. Ethanol from sugarcane makes a lot more sense. Corn ethanol is just a wasteful subsidy for farmers paid for by drivers. https://en.wikipedia.or…

>The net energy output is only around 1.3 so an acre of corn produces maybe 400 gallons of gasoline equivalent output requires 300 gallons of gasoline equivalent in energy inputs.

What is the problem, that sounds great? 30% free output out of your input is staggering honestly. Thank you sunshine and atmospheric CO2. You don't have to use fossil fuel for this. You can potentially run the farm equipment off ethanol if it were designed as such.

You can also only grow sugarcane well up to usda zone 8. Some people can do it as an annual but I guess it is tricky. Corn you can grow all the way into Canada.

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