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Cheap Solar Power

keith.seas.harvard.edu

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Re: Cheap Solar Power

#51

Post by yeureka »

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #5
Amorymeltzer wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I particularly liked his point about bringing processes with a high electricity demand to those areas and cutting down on cost across the board. He gives aluminum, ammonia, and desalination as examples, which could do a lot for reducing costs of production while still overall "greening" the process. If they can take advantage of the cycling in prices, I can see regions like the American Southwest selling this as a bu…

The transportation fuels example is even more exciting, IMO. Transportation fuels are basically simple hydrocarbons that burn with oxygen to turn into CO2 and H2O. There's only engineering, capital, and energy costs that need to be overcome - then we can run that process in reverse and turning our current transportation infrastructure carbon-neutral.

There is a German startup working on this.

http://www.fastcoexist.com/3045743/a-german-startup-has-crea...

Re: Cheap Solar Power

#52

Post by epistasis »

tvchurch wrote: post #25
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you check what bird conservation organisations say, they are generally pro wind power, because most of the alternatives are worse for birds. They do want to avoid building them on busy migration routes though. Amazingly popular talking point amongst hypocritical fossil fuel industry supporters and semi-professional contrarians though.

Sure. Anyone pro- or anti-wind will say whatever argument they can to try to convince people. All I'm saying is before we decide to build more wind turbines, we should have an honest accounting of all of the benefits and costs laid out. There are locations where they make sense and places where they don't. And there are levels where some government support might make sense, and some levels where they don't. Even if p…

I don't think that there's an equal distribution of people willing to say whatever in favor of their end goals. Certainly not "anybody." Most pro-wind people are that way because of an honest accounting of the pros and cons, as there's no other reason to be in favor of it. There's not a super-strong political or economic constituency behind it. Those who are anti-wind however...

Re: Cheap Solar Power

#53

Post by wmeredith »

vackosar wrote: post #24

Is solar using rare metals that we will run out of soon? So will in the end solar fail anyway?

"Limited supplies of five rare-earth minerals pose a threat to increasing use of clean-energy technologies such as wind turbines and solar panels, a U.S. Energy Department report found."

Source is from 2012: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-01-05/five-rare-...

Re: Cheap Solar Power

#56

Post by homido »

If solar is such a good investment, why aren't power companies creating solar fields with a sense of urgency? Sure, there are a token few, but this is mainly for PR reasons or funded by grants ETC.

When businesses (wholesalers and consumers) start going to solar on a grand scale, Solar will have finally arrived as a cost effective alternative. Wake me when this happens.

Re: Cheap Solar Power

#57

Post by qbrass »

swsieber wrote: post #28
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the big financial problems for CCS (carbon capture and storage) is that CO2 is essentially worthless. If a market would suddenly arise for concentrated CO2, I do not think we would have much of a problem to fill demand.

So, really, if one wanted to fix CCS, you would just need to find a good application for CO2, like with peanuts and peanut butter.

It would have to be something that favors scrubbing CO2 over generating more of it.

Re: Cheap Solar Power

#58

Post by pilom »

thrownaway2424 wrote: post #39

When will this "duck pricing" actually trickle down to consumers? I'm on a PG&E rate plan that charges me an incredible $0.75/kWh during the afternoons of selected days. According to the figures in the CAISO paper, these are the hours of least net demand.

The CAISO paper looked at January and March. In the summer when air conditioners come on, the graph would have no dip and afternoons become the peak rather than evenings.

Re: Cheap Solar Power

#59

Post by agumonkey »

amalantony06 wrote: post #27

Given that Solar power is the fundamental source of energy leading to petroleum based energy (starting with photosynthesis), it's surprising that we still rely on petroleum to the degree we do today. In 100 years this would perhaps be something people would find shocking (like how we are shocked today at how mainstream slavery used to be 150 odd years ago). Solar Energy is unlimited, cheap and clean. My guess would b…

Because history made us build structures and lifestyles that require oil class energy density. We surely don't need it since we were born without. We don't need all of this. Not to that extent, we could cut worldwide transportation. We could eat less. Rethink housing. Even internet[1].

I'd like to see the time when energy will lack.

Sometimes I wonder how we could rebootstrap technology in a frugal manner. Have shelter, a bit of comfort, a predictable enough supply not to worry too much.

[1] just the other day I put a gif on imgur, 1Million views, a few TB of bandwidth.. I felt bad. So much for this. And that's not the most viewed, nor the longest. Imagine how much is used everyday.

Re: Cheap Solar Power

#60

Post by WillAbides »

icefo wrote: post #47
toomuchtodo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Human beings don't directly photosynthesize for clear reasons. I've always wondered why humans did not evolve to photosynthesize, and am interested if they could be permitted to evolve to using CRISPR.

Photosynthesis is terribly inefficient, something like 5-6% of the light is actually used to make glucose out of CO2 because the process is quite complex and humans don't have a huge skin surface. That's my opinion

> humans don't have a huge skin surface

That's easy to solve. We just start growing leaves.

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