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Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

arstechnica.com

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Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

#411

Post by FarmerPotato »

pksebben wrote: post #293
jacquesm wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, the master of bad takes is at it again. > Slavery had basically been a thing for all of human history up to that point, Except that of course it wasn't. > and based on my discussions on HN many smart people don't believe a lot of what Adam Smith said. And many smart people do. > There are still a lot of basic economic ideas that would make people much wealthier that struggle to get out into the wild. Yes, such as…

It really comes down to granularity at the end, and whether you attempt to look as closely as possible or you accept a certain lack of fidelity because it makes the abstraction work for you. In this case, I frequently hear people talk about how "the greeks and romans had slaves! and they were white! See, it's fine!" but that fails to take into account that there's a gigantic difference between slavery-as-a-legal-stat…

I don't see much difference when you consider the condition of farming and mining slaves in Roman society.

Slaves were spoils of war since before the Republic.

Even if a slave had valuable skills, and were treated better, they had no legal recourse against a Roman citizen. Their owner could sell them like chattel, break up families (slave marriage had no legal basis) and kill them outright.

The highly skilled could enter into a kind of indentured servitude. That's a separate category.

You hear romantic stories about household servants gaining high esteem and a few being granted or buying their freedom. These were the exception, against the backdrop of menial labor.

Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

#412

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

ericd wrote: post #341
kllrnohj wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even the solar panel market is self defeating. Once there is enough installed power the demand will drop off sharply as the refresh cycle is too long. The feedback loop of capitalism means we are likely to reach that point sooner than you would expect. No we won't. Even if we waved a magic wand and converted the entire planet to solar today, there would still be new installations tomorrow because energy demand is i…

That hasn’t really been true in the US in recent decades - efficiency improvements and deindustrialization were balancing increasing population. It’s recently started growing again because EVs, heat pumps, and DCs, but even a 3% increase in demand has caused a lot of growing pains.

We have a finite demand at a certain price point before running out of productive use cases.

Renewables lower the price, enabling use cases which fossil fuels were too expensive to support.

We are in for an incredibly interesting ride as we for the first time in generations lower the price floor for energy globally.

Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

#413

Post by ZeroGravitas »

dranudin wrote: post #407
dyauspitr wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Trump administration is intentionally trying to kill solar so that their oil buddies can make money for another 5-10 years. It’s insane to think that close to 80% of cars in shenzen are electric. I don’t even understand how that works. These EV cars have been around for about a decade. How has the entire population of the city purchased a new vehicle in that short span of time.

I guess most just did not have a car before...

It's quadrupled in population in the last two decades and gone from a manufacturing hub to China's Silicon Valley, so it's probably the least surprising place to be full of EVs.

Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

#414

Post by ZeroGravitas »

ertgbnm wrote: post #22

I am reminded by the perhaps revisionist history but still applicable belief that slavery was really ended by industrialization making abolition economically advantageous and not actually a socially driven movement. (In reality it was certainly a convoluted mixture of the two I'm sure.) I hope we are in a similar era with regards to climate change. Surely there's a lot of money to be made in harnessing effectively un…

I read a piece that calculated the economic value of the slaves just before the civil war and compared it with investments in fossil fuels.

It made a convincing case that people would rather start catastrophic wars than just transition to a better economic system, if a few rich people had a lot to lose.

Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

#415

Post by inglor_cz »

pksebben wrote: post #298
inglor_cz wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Oxen? Paid laborers? " In other words, animal and human muscle, we agree on that. I didn't claim that all human labour was non-free, far from that. Every classical civilization had paid artisans and employees as well. But the paid professions tended to be the skilled ones, and the non-free ones tended to be the arduous, backbreaking ones. "The South was notable in clinging to slavery long after it had been abolished…

> This is a system stretching over millennia not quite. 'Slavery' has been around that long. 'Chattel Slavery' started in the 1600s and peaked in the 1800s. So like, half a millenia.

Chattel slavery in the Islamic world definitely predates the 1600s. By a thousand years or so.

Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

#416

Post by mr_toad »

Retric wrote: post #294
roenxi wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Adam Smith famously wrote that slavery was economically detrimental way back in 1776. It still took nearly 100 years to abolish slavery... Slavery had basically been a thing for all of human history up to that point, and based on my discussions on HN many smart people don't believe a lot of what Adam Smith said. There are still a lot of basic economic ideas that would make people much wealthier that struggle to get…

Slavery in Europe was replaced with a more efficient system in the Middle Ages. So calling it a constant throughout history is only true in the way that slavery still exists today, in that you could find it somewhere on the globe.

That’s partly true, but it’s also the case that medieval Europe didn’t have any convenient sources of slaves. Conquests had dried up, Europe was effectively surrounded by stronger neighbors, and instead of being able to take their neighbors as slaves many of their neighbors were taking Europeans as slaves.

That didn’t change until the Age of Sail opened up new frontiers and the wheel turned again.

Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

#417

Post by mr_toad »

helterskelter wrote: post #304
legitster wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true the first mills were in the north because they had some good sites, but there are good mill sites throughout the South as well. More tellingly, when the first steam engines in the US were imported from Europe - they could have been just as easily installed in the South. I think more importantly, steam mills solved for a problem the south did not have. If one was to tell a southerner, I have a technology tha…

You still have to wonder why the south never built factories to compete with the north. They exported most of their cotton to the north just to buy it back again the the form of textiles, so slavery working by hand wasn't able to compete with factories on that level. I'd venture that the north's earlier industrialization built up experience and supporting infrastructure which made it a dubious business prospect for a…

> They exported most of their cotton to the north just to buy it back again the the form of textiles, so slavery working by hand wasn't able to compete with factories on that level.

It seems to fit the pattern of a resource curse.

Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

#418

Post by JumpCrisscross »

eucyclos wrote: post #379
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Slavery had basically been a thing for all of human history up to that point Would note that New World-style chattel slavery doesn't seem to have broadly historically precedented.

True, but if your point is that most slavery regimes throughout history were less awful for the slaves, it's also worth remembering that most accounts of those regimes weren't written by the victors of a war that saw the other sides slavery practices as justification for said war.

> if your point is that most slavery regimes throughout history were less awful for the slaves

Not at all. The fact that we have practically zero first-hand accounts from the slaves of antiquity speaks volumes to their treatment. My point is on scale (and with that, the institution's effect on the societies that hosted it).

Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

#419

Post by KellyCriterion »

jandrese wrote: post #226
floatrock wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese also have battery manufacturing, whose rapidly falling cost-curve is what is missing to enable 24/7 solar. American empire ruled with the petrodollar. Chinese will rule with the solaryuan if we don't get our shit together.

You just slightly missed the crux of the issue here. The big "problem" with renewables like solar is that once you've installed enough for yourself you are done for like 30 years. There is no monthly sun fee you need to keep paying. There is no solardollar , because there's nothing that needs to be extracted, transported, and sold every single day. A lot of billionaires are in an existential crisis over a world where…

> A lot of billionaires

But if you are already a billionaire, then you could stay calm? Transform your business or sell it now?

If I would be majority shareholder of lets say Exxon, even with upcoming solar I would be more relaxed than in any other job?

Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

#420

Post by KellyCriterion »

SlightlyLeftPad wrote: post #364
thelastgallon wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Old panels are continuously being replaced with new panels. This is happening now with a few year old panels. So many free old panels available, because new ones are producing 590W/panel. Over 25 years, there will be a lot more advances, panels that will be printed by textiles, or painted on surfaces, or grown by bacteria.

Wait, where are these free old panels and how do I get some?

if you are in EU: https://www.secondsol.com/en/index.htm
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