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Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

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Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

#511

Post by pfdietz »

thorncorona wrote: post #478
pfdietz wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fusion is the answer to "how can we extract R&D money for decades without ever actually delivering anything." There is little prospect it's going to be competitive, particularly DT fusion. The engineering/economic obstacles are profound even if all the plasma physics problems are solved. Most of the efforts being touted are obvious nonstarters.

That is what they say about self driving cars, and there are services which are commercially available right now.

So, no technology is impossible? Every dream can come true? That's what I'm getting from the logic of the argument you're making there.

Sometimes technologies really do have showstoppers. There are fundamental reasons to think fusion is not going to be competitive. I know of no fundamental reason self driving cars would be impossible. The analogy doesn't work.

Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

#512

Post by epolanski »

derektank wrote: post #391
epolanski wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Averaging 10 years puts you at 2036 and is itself somewhat pessimistic. The average time globally is 14 years. The latest point of reference in the west, Vogtle was announced in 2006 and came online in 2025, 19 years later. It took 7 years alone just to start building it. There's no chance this would take less time in Italy, where you need to also find a suitable place, you don't have the know-how and there's an an…

They go over budget because regulatory burdens are very high, not because of any fundamental unknowns in deploying the technology. A motivated national government could reduce the cost substantially.

You make it sound like the regulatory burdens don't have a purpose and are merely annoyances.

Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

#513

Post by youngtaff »

roxolotl wrote: post #21

It genuinely makes me so sad to see the US not doing the same. Having grown up to the constant beat of “energy independence” as the core goal of a party it seemed obvious that the nearly limitless energy that rains down from the sky would be the answer. But instead we’ve kept choosing the option which requires devastating our, and other’s around the world, community. That’s not to exclude the harsh reality of mining…

Texas… look at Texas where the amount of electricity generated from the solar farms has outgrown the amount generated by coal

Gas still dominates but wind and solar are both increasing

https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/chart-solar-is-fi...

Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

#514

Post by alias_neo »

jacquesm wrote: post #168
alias_neo wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK, it's expensive, and it's not the technology, it's everything else. I don't see how that can improve unless the installation costs come down, and I don't know how that could/would happen. I had solar installed last year, at the end of the summer, it cost roughly £14,000 for a system that can produce 6.51kWp and with 12kWh of battery storage (about 10kWh usable). The 465W all-black panels (14 of them) I had…

You were ripped off.

I wasn't ripped off, but I didn't go for the cheapest quote either. I wasn't trying to suggest my installation was typical or what someone could expect to pay in the UK, the point I was trying to make was the cost of labour adds significantly, and overall even if you paid half what I did, it's still too much to expect the majority of UK households to take it up.

My system is larger than typical for a UK home, I also paid a premium to have it installed by a company with an excellent reputation for their work, I'd had a new roof the week before and wanted a high quality installation.

I also went with a company that let me decide how I wanted it installed; other companies wanted to put the batteries in my loft or under the stairs which was an absolute no from me, I don't want them inside my home, and I had them install the batteries and inverter in a brick out house on the opposite end of the property to where the consumer unit is, again, at a premium.

I had per-panel optimisers and monitoring hardware installed, and because I wasn't aware of it until later, I added the bird-mesh on after signing the contract and did get ripped off on that part (NOTE: if you get solar in the UK, and have ever so much as seen a pigeon, get bird mesh).

It's also worth noting that checking today, all of the hardware has dropped in price, my panels are now 20% cheaper, batteries are 15% cheaper, inverter is 10% cheaper, and I imagine installations and labour might be cheaper in the winter than the peak of summer like I had mine installed.

All of that said, the total cost of installation doesn't really matter so much as the ROI, which for me works out at most ~6 years, if none of the hardware fails in the meantime.

EDIT: There's a mistake in my previous comment which I based all of the subsequent numbers on; the cost of 2 batteries + inverter was closer to £5k not £3.5k.

Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

#515

Post by youngtaff »

Rover222 wrote: post #235
lostlogin wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you point at criticism from the left? I haven’t noticed it.

Mostly just saying the sentiment I've seen on reddit comments or X posts, stuff like this: https://x.com/duncancampbell/status/1647109450438955008 I'm not saying the idea is institutionalized by the democrats, but I think musk/tesla hatred is kinda driving it

But he specifically points out that those a Right Wing talking points!

Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

#516

Post by youngtaff »

nandomrumber wrote: post #355
diego_moita wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is "talking points" just a roundabout way to summarily dismiss the opposition's arguments and imply they're dumb/misguided? For me, yes it is. It wouldn't if policy discussions were purely technical and well informed. In the arena of public discourse they aren't. The majority of the population (including HN) is tribal, ideologically biased, emotionally driven and badly informed. Public discourse, particularly in Am…

You don’t consider that oil & coal are doomed and destroying the world to be green-agenda talking points?

The fact that burning oil, coal and gas contribute to pollution and are one of the causes of climate change is a scientific reality

Scientists at Chevron came to this conclusion in the 70s

Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

#517

Post by albumen »

socalgal2 wrote: post #380
mlmonkey wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those windmills in the East Bay are decades old. And the Mojave solar concentrator is being shut down, from what I've heard. The article here starts with: Last year China installed more than half of all wind and solar added globally. In May alone, it added enough renewable energy to power Poland, installing solar panels at a rate of roughly 100 every second. Is the US anywhere in this ballpark?

My point was the photos. They aren't convincing to someone who's seen US installations. If that was the goal then the article failed. A graph comparing China to the US would have been better.

The pics show renewable energy integrated with other activity (e.g. sheep grazing among solar panels); integrated into urban environments (on every rooftop and streets) and contrasted against ancient Chinese culture (e.g. temples). I think this makes the imagery substantially different from the alternative-offered US RE installations.

Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

#518

Post by ben_w »

lateforwork wrote: post #220
samiv wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With China's huge resources both natural and human it's only expected that China will again reclaim its position as the leading country in science, technology, production and generally everything. If you assume that .5% of population are "einsteins" then China has 7.5m einsteins who are now able to access universities and advance sciences whether it's AI or solar power or self driving cars. There's no doubt about the…

China draws mainly on the talents of the best of its billion+ population. But America has had its pick of the best of the world's 8 billion people. We are taking a break now, but starting 2029 America will resume having its pick of the best.

> We are taking a break now, but starting 2029 America will resume having its pick of the best.

Don't count on it.

Some people may be willing to uproot their lives and move continent in the hope that 4 years later you won't re-elect another one like Trump, but it won't be as many as before. Heck, there was a brief window where I had the opportunity to migrate to the USA, but just the US electing Trump the first time ruled it out for me.

Not that I'd call myself "the best", but I was good enough if I'd wanted to. But I do also know some really good Cambridge graduates who were expressly asked by their American employer to relocate to the US, declined.

Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

#519

Post by youngtaff »

gehsty wrote: post #204

Chinas policy around energy works and it has allowed them to become the world’s engine for renewable power. They get the benefit of energy efficiency and being a critical trade partner for every country in the world. My experience is that the UK (for example) doesn’t really know why it is building offshore wind. Is it to reduce bills to consumers (OFGEMS remit), is it to create local jobs in manufacturing (Clean Indu…

We're building offshore wind to provide clean power, that will be cheaper than gas and we won't have to rely on largely autocratic countries for that gas

Got a long way to go as electricity is only a portion of our energy consumption - heating and transport are still largely fossil fuel based ATM

Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

#520

Post by youngtaff »

gehsty wrote: post #207
raphaelj wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK is actually world leading in wind electricity generation (especially offshore). So it's not all bad.

I guess we are. But who are the plants owned by, who built the and where did the components come from, are we also switching them off because our grid cannot handle transmit huge volumes of renewable energy from Scotland to London, and turning on gas power plants to make up for it. You also have situations, like today, where a German developer has handed back a seabed lease for 3GW of offshore power because they didn…

The interconnection problem is being solved by several large cables down the east coast

Leasing the seabed before you win a CfD auction is a commercial risk but they probably didn't win because their bid price was too high

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