Solar used to feel pretty distant from everyday life. But now more and more rooftops are generating power, and even rural areas can run on their own. People who aren’t into tech can still feel the shift. It really is like getting electricity straight from the sky.
Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system
541–550 of 607 posts
Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system
#542Earlier quoted context omitted.
Solar panels are not that hard to produce. China just does it cheaper than other countries. Any industrialized country can easily set up the necessary infrastructure if they choose to do so for strategic reasons.
They’re not hard to produce but they are hard to produce really cheap as in as cheap as China. For lots of reasons (state aid being one, extreme competition being another). It’s hard in a capitalist country to do things that don’t make business sense - eg long term thinking. So I don’t see any reasonable route where China isn’t still making all the panels any time soon.
As long as China keeps making the panels and selling them for cheap there is no problem at all with that. When they decide to stop doing that other countries can pick up after a short ramp up time, for a little more money.
Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system
#543Earlier quoted context omitted.
Transmission lines are a interesting idea, but expensive. Once solar is cheap (like now, as it already is), you can put in 3x what is needed on a sunny day, and power everything on cloudy days. Solar runs on cloudy days. Night obviously requires a different solution. Start by installing solar over all parking lots. To think that you won't be able to run a 100% solar/wind grid is a bet against human ingenuity. If gene…
Solar over parking lots is so good. it creates power, shade, and reduces reflected heat.
And you can't make a parking lot any uglier.
Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system
#544Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even magnesium powder wouldn’t detonate when you’re talking tons of the stuff on a boat for the same reason small hydrogen balloons can go bang, but the Hindenburg just created a huge conflagration. You get limited mixing due to the volumes of material involved. Even burning across several seconds is just vastly less dangerous than an actual detonation. Same issue with grain silos exploding because of the mixture of…
Yes, that's why I said, "dry magnesium, no". A pile of dry magnesium powder only burns at the surface as air diffuses into it. If you have it mixed with the oxidizer so that the flame can propagate through the whole mixture, it will, and the propagation speed is determined by factors like the reaction speed, gas production, and thermal conductivity. The reaction speed in turn is governed by the particle size, since t…
> for a small enough particle size and an oxidizer concentration close enough to stoichiometric, you will.
Sure but nobody is going to ship large quantities of magnesium like that: “Use proper packaging: Ensure the magnesium is sealed in moisture-proof, airtight containers.” https://www.freightamigo.com/blog/hs-code-for-containing-at-...
> Small hydrogen balloons do not in fact go bang
It’s not a supersonic detonation but even normal balloons pop with a small bang, pure hydrogen balloons are louder. Though a you mention hydrogen + oxygen is significantly more extreme.
Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system
#545Earlier quoted context omitted.
That most counties need to import oil and gas to keep the lights on and industry functioning means you don't need to send gunboats of yore. See Smedley Butler's rant. Now when they get in a pickle they need foreign currency. And that's how they get ya. Renewables however flips things back.
That's an excellent point, and one I hadn't really internalized. Thank you.
Instructive to read up on the 2022 Sri Lanka protests.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Sri_Lankan_protests
Debt crisis and sharp spikes in fuel and oil costs resulted in shortages of both. Also shortages of fertilizer. Which resulted in shortages of food.
If I was a Sri Lankan politician I wouldn't want a repeat of that.
Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system
#546The article doesn't mention a technology that deserves some attention because it counters the biggest and most obvious deficiency in solar: the sun doesn't always shine. That technology is cables. Cables allow us to move energy over long distances. And with HVCD cables that can mean across continents, oceans, time zones, and climate regions. The nice things about cables is that they are currently being underutilized.…
HVCD Was supposed to be the answer for china’s big renewable energy surplus out west while most of its energy needs are in the east, but for some reason it hasn’t worked out so they are leaning on nuclear and coal more for eastern power needs. I guess when the imbalance is huge, it’s not that easy. They could move more manufacturing out west, and I think they are doing that to a point, but water supply becomes an iss…
UHV (both AC and DC) has worked out as planned in China, so much so that there's still more under construction today and scheduled for the future.
It seems premature to write that all off given it's ongoing.
Nuclear is also expanding as planned, as a small percentage of renewable power, and China's coal use is peaking and starting to level and planned to fall in the short term future.
The interesting nuclear project to watch in china is their third generation salt reactors .. their small pilot has been running for a whilke, their second gen is completed (?) and starting to return data at the next scale up, and the third generation plant is in the initial construction phase (to be modified on the fly as results come back from the pilot and second gen plant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-voltage_electricity...
Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system
#547Earlier quoted context omitted.
Better grid connections helps with variable weather but it does nothing for solar biggest down side. Seasonal variation from December to May is enormous. Storing months of power is a problem with no known solution.
Power2Gas and using the existing infrastructure for gas storage is a known solution for storing months of power. It might not be the cheapest solution though.
Methane storage is only like a few weeks at most.
Storing months worth of power is not something we do with natural gas or even oil today.
Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system
#548Earlier quoted context omitted.
why? much more expensive, much slower. This reflexive "nukes are the only way" meme amongst technical folk really has gotta die.
More expensive in what way? "Cost" is what everyone quotes about why nuclear isn't great, but isn't the whole idea behind shelving fossil fuels and switching to alternatives due to downsides that are secondary to cost? To me, renewables (solar and wind namely) have many more downsides than nuclear. So if we are doing things not because of cost anyway , why not nuclear? What do you fundamentally care about? The power…
in $/kwh.
We are in fact doing things soley because of cost, and pretty much only because of cost, because capitalisim. Solar and wind are now cheaper than all alternatives in most situations, so they are rapidly becoming all thats being built. We are doing the cheapest thing, which just so happens to be great for carbon, luckily for us. If we get out of this climate mess it will almost be by accident, because we made solar cheap, not because we chose to do the right thing.
Honestly you need to look into numbers for some of your points, and you'll see the folly. Land usage, its a non issue. For eg, its estimated that if around 1/3rd of the land the US currently uses for corn ethanol was converted to solar, it would power the whole country. And thats existing used land without talking about the insane amount of empty spaces that exist. non issue.
For storage, solar+24hr storage is now cheaper than new gas, and dropping fast (https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-electricity-e...).
Yes there are new nuke designs that are cool, but they're at least 10-20 years away from deployment at scale, by which time renewables and storage will be much cheaper still, and the transition will be mostly over. Im not anti at all, they're just too late, too slow and too expensive.
I think you need to catch up on developments in the last few years, and re-evaluate what seems ridiculous to you, a lot has changed very quickly. Cheap energy abundance via renewables is now a very likely outcome.
Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system
#549The article doesn't mention a technology that deserves some attention because it counters the biggest and most obvious deficiency in solar: the sun doesn't always shine. That technology is cables. Cables allow us to move energy over long distances. And with HVCD cables that can mean across continents, oceans, time zones, and climate regions. The nice things about cables is that they are currently being underutilized.…
HVCD Was supposed to be the answer for china’s big renewable energy surplus out west while most of its energy needs are in the east, but for some reason it hasn’t worked out so they are leaning on nuclear and coal more for eastern power needs. I guess when the imbalance is huge, it’s not that easy. They could move more manufacturing out west, and I think they are doing that to a point, but water supply becomes an iss…
This seems to be quite far from reality?
Nuclear power is a minuscule part of the Chinese grid. 4.4% and shrinking and with their recent number of construction starts will likely land on ~2% of the grid mix.
Their coal usage has started to shrink.
How can they lean on technologies they have started to replace with renewables and storage?
Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system
#550Earlier quoted context omitted.
its not a green plant if they conveniently escape all accounting. its a scam.
They're also not escaping any such accounting, but that wasn't my point. PV pays its own energy cost in a few months these days. But even then, the very first PV had to be made with mostly fossil fuels and some hydroelectric, now the new ones in China are made with 35% renewables. Grids have the same question: how green it is to modify today is the current status of the power supply (etc.), not the status it will be…
I remember seeing such a paper linked by a nuclear bro.
Going on and on about how important the LCA was and how nuclear should be the choice.
After pages and pages of ”sciency” equations it ends with the Chinese average grid mix in terms of gCO2/kWh.